consigning your case, and with it the hopes of multitudes of your sisters, who, less favored than yourself, in not actually having been allowed to enter the sacred precincts of the polls, have put their trust in you as in one who should not fail, sooner or later, to achieve a victory for herself and for us all? Have you considered the result of white male legislation for nearly one hundred years, in elaborating a jury that must inevitably consist of fools or knaves, and twelve of these to declare in unison upon a case of which they have formed no previous opinion, though the papers have rung with it, and you have lectured every night for more than a month to crowded houses upon it? But even this difficulty you are able to meet, and we leave our destiny in your hands with unfaltering hope and faith, saying only, as many a time before, God bless Susan B. Anthony In conclusion, let me urge upon you, dear friends, one and all, that each man and woman of you shall work for impartial suffrage as though the welfare of our beloved country depended upon the devotion of each single life, and the day is ours. I am now and always yours for liberty,
Isabella Beecher Hooker.
Washington, May 5, 1873.
Miss Susan B. Anthony: Your favor requesting my opinion of the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the New Orleans and Bradwell cases, was received yesterday. I had not then seen those decisions, indeed they were not ready for distribution until to-day. I have very hastily run over them and only feel prepared to say that there is nothing in them necessarily conclusive of the suffrage cases. The opinion of the Court in the New Orleans cases is given by a bare majority, four out of the nine justices dissenting, and the majority expressly say: '"We hold ourselves excused from defining the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, which no State can abridge until some case involving those, privileges may make it necessary to do so." This language leaves us entirely at liberty to present the question whether suffrage is one of these "privileges" to their consideration. There are expressions in the dissenting opinions that upon the rules of interpretation applied to any other subject than the rights of women would indicate that the minority were fully prepared to admit that the recent amendments to the Constitution the new magna charta as one of the justices styles them recognized the right of suffrage in women. Justice Field says: "That only is a free government, in the American sense of the term, under which the inalienable right of every citizen to pursue his happiness is unrestrained, except by just, equal, and impartial laws." Justice Bradley says: "The States have not now, if they ever had, any power to restrict their citizenship to any classes or persons. A citizen of the United States has a perfect constitutional right to go to and reside in any State he chooses, and to claim citizenship therein, and an equality of rights with every other citizen, and the whole power of the nation is pledged to sustain him in that right. He is not bound to cringe to any superior, or to pray for any act of grace, as a means of enjoying all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other citizens." Such language on any other subject would be conclusive, but the crust of custom and prejudice is hard and thick and strong, and the heat of the lava
