as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, will bound from their subject position to the proud platform of equality.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic republican government—the ballot.
The early journals of Congress show that when the Committee reported to that body the original Articles of Confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4th said:
The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse between the people of the different States of this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States (paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted), shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the several States.
Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all—in order to produce the desired result—a harmonious union and a homogeneous people. Luther Martin, Attorney-General of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature of that State of the convention that framed the United States Constitution, said:
Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter up on the original principles of government; that the reason why each individual man in forming a State government should have an equal vote, is because each individual, before he enters into government, is equally free and equally independent.
James Madison said:
Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them.
Also,
Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.
And these assertions of the framers of the United States Constitution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire history of our Government.
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:
I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the Declaration of Independence.
