Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/276

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
262
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

of New York. The defendants were represented by George M. Brady, Roger Howell, Jacob M. Moses and Assistant Attorney General Lindsay C. Spencer. The case occupied four full days and the petitioners lost. Judge Heuisler ruled that the power to amend the Constitution of the United States granted by the Fifth Article thereof is without limit except as to the words, "equal suffrage in the Senate." He added: "The court is further of the opinion from all the exhibits and other evidence submitted that there was due, legal and proper ratification of the amendment by the required number of State Legislatures." Mr. Wheeler contended that three-fourths of the States had not legally ratified, to which the Court answered: '"There was one legal and proper ratification of the amendment by the required number of State Legislatures."

The case was carried up to the State Court of Appeals and argued on April 7. On June 28 the Judge affirmed the decision of the lower court. The case was then taken to the U. S. Supreme Court, which gave a decision adverse to all these claims and established the validity of the Federal Suffrage Amendment beyond all further controvesy.

MARYLAND. PART II.[1]

The Woman Suffrage League of Maryland was organized Feb. 27, 1917, in Baltimore at a meeting called with the approval of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. J. Ross Thompson of Garrett Park was elected president and served for two years. The league started with a sustaining membership of 1,400, including organizations in Baltimore and thirteen counties. By 1920 the city was organized by congressional districts and some of these by wards; twenty of the twenty-three counties had organizations, some of them strong branch leagues, others merely small groups with a chairman.

The history of the league must be traced through its mother, the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore, back to the Mary A. Livermore League, a society of Friends, which had been founded

  1. The History is indebted for this chapter to Miss Clara Turnbull Waite, vice-president of the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore.