CHAPTER XXIII.
THE NEW DEPARTURE.
THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.
Although with Charles Sumner many believed that under the original Constitution women were citizens and therefore voters in our Republic, much more bold and invincible were their claims when the XIV. Amendment added new barriers to the already strong bulwarks of the Supreme Law of the land.
The significance of these amendments in inference to women was first seen by Francis Minor, of Missouri, a member of the legal profession in St. Louis. He called attention to the view of the question, afterward adopted by many leading lawyers of the American bar, that women were enfranchised by the letter and spirit of the XIV. Amendment. On this interpretation the officers of the National Association began soon after to base their speeches, resolutions, and hearings before Congress, and to make divers attempts to vote in different parts of the country.
At a woman suffrage convention in St. Louis, October, 1869, the following suggestive resolutions were presented by Francis Minor, Esq., enclosed in the accompanying letter to The Revolution:
St. Louis, Oct. 14, 1869.