Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/789

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Woman's Claim Placed upon Record.
755

that a married woman rested under a special disability in regard to her civil rights, thus sustaining the action of Illinois in refusing to admit Mrs. Bradwell to the bar of that State.

The decision in the case of Mrs. Minor, that the political rights of women were wholly under the control of their respective States was still more emphatic and discouraging. Had Judge Chase lived, we have every reason to believe that in this case too, he would have dissented, and that his opinion would have had great weight in the general discussion. Although defeated at every point, woman's claim as a citizen of the United States to the Federal franchise is placed upon record in the highest court of the Nation, and there it will remain forever. As Milton so grandly says in Paradise Lost:

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost: th' unconquerable will
And courage never to submit or yield!