Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1875 — The United States Supreme Court on the Woman-Suffrage Question. [ARTICLE]

The United States Supreme Court on the Woman-Suffrage Question.

In the Supreme Court of the United States .at Washington, Oct. 4, in the case of Virginia L Minor and Francis Minor, her husband, p laintiffs in error, vs. Reese Happeisett, in error to the Superior Court of the State of Missouri, Chief Justice Waite.dcliverd the opinion of the court ,U> the effect tliat the Fourteenth Amendment of.the Constitution does not confer upon women the right to vote. The court affirms, ic the decision that women have always been considered citizens under the Constitution and entitled to all the privileges aftU immunities of citizenship, but iu the admission of this general point the court decides that suffrage is not one of the privileges and immunities of the citizen, and titat it is nowhere made so in express terms, and even further than this, that suffrage was not coextensive with the citizenship*of the States at the time of its adoption. Applying these general facts to the constitutional amendments, the court shows that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never contemplated that it conferred the right of suffrage even upon the colored, persons because it invested them with citizenship, and, taking this view:, iieyEarned the Fifteenth Amendment tc prevent any State denying them the right of, f uffrage because of race, color, or previous-condition of servitude. Upon this point thocourt said:

•“The Fourteenth. Amendment had.already previdedthat no State should make or enforce gny.iaw which should abriflge the privileges en immnsuties of citizens of the United States. If suffrage was one of these privileges u r immunities why amend the Constitution r‘o prevent its being denied on account of race, etc.? Nothing is more evident- tjmn that tie greater must include the less, axd if all wfee.,jalready protected whygohirougli vith the form of amending Uie Constitution to protect a part?*’ ' i

The deciska clcsts with tie following statement: “ Certainly if the .courts can consider any question settled .this ir one. For nearly ninety years the people .have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not.necessarily confer the right .‘of suffrage. If uniform practice long continued can settle the construction of so important aa instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly k, most .certainjr it lias been done here. Our province is to decide what the law? is, not t« declare what it should be. We have givet this cate the careful consideration its importance demands. If th e law is wrong it ought to be but the power for Jhat is not -with us. Th* arguments addressed to us bearing' upon such a vi«v of the subject may perhaps be sufficient to induce those having tLte power to make the alteration, but Uiey ought not to be' permitted to influence o.'ir Judgment in determining the present rights of the parties litigating befoVa-us. ' So argument as to women’s nrei oMuftraiTecan be considered. We c®»orily act upon her rights as they exist-..lwismpt for us to look at the is at an end lfcwe find it is within the power of a Start* to withhold.’ * .