B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days' discussion in the United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan's motion to strike "male" from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:
Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther, and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.
Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the XIV. and XV. Amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the XIII. Amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the United States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights—the right to vote and to be voted for:
I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of our country became "citizens," they took their place in the body politic as a component part of the "people," entitled to equal rights, and under the protection of these two guardian principles: First, that all just governments stand on the consent of the governed; and second, that taxation without representation is tyranny; and these rights it is the duty of Congress to guarantee as essential to the idea of a Republic.
The preamble of the Constitution of the State of New York declares:
We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Constitution.
Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom from the United States Constitution, or of the State conferring the blessings of liberty upon the people; and the same is true of every one of the thirty-six State Constitutions. Each and all alike declare rights God-given, and that to secure the people in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is their one and only object in ordaining and establishing government. And all of the State constitutions are equally emphatic in their recognition of the ballot as the means of securing the people in the enjoyment of these rights. Article 1 of the New York State Constitution says:
No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.
And so carefully guarded is the citizen's right to vote, that the Constitution makes special mention of all who may not vote:
Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime.
In naming the various employments that shall not affect the residence of voters, the 3d section of Article 2d says
That being kept at any almshouse or other asylum, at public expense, nor being confined at any public prison, shall deprive a person of his residence,
and hence his vote. Thus is the right of voting most sacredly hedged about. The only seeming permission in our constitution for the disfranchisement of women is in section 1st of Article 2d:
Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, etc., shall be entitled to vote.
