Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/587

prohibiting the importation of certain persons until after the year 1808; and in another provision which provided that those held to labor, escaping to another State, should be surrendered to their masters on demand. The Constitution of the Union, made in pursuance of this very Declaration of Independence and conforming to it, recognized a distinction between the white race and the black race, and recognized and provided distinctions between the male and the female portions of the people of the American Union, and thereby in the most absolute manner drew the civil and political distinctions that have been kept up in one way or another from that day to this, and which I contend, with a view to good government, so far as the male and female portions of the American people go, ought to be kept up and perpetuated. It seems to me that any one who will take into consideration the facts to which I have called attention must see that the broad, radical construction which the Senator puts on the Declaration of Independence can not be sustained by reason, authority, or practice.

But, sir, I want now to refer to the position taken by the Senator from California [Mr. Sargent]. He says that under the Constitution by the XIII., XIV. and XV. articles of Amendment, Congress has no power to deprive the females of this country of the right of suffrage. That I deny as emphatically as I can. I read from Paschal's Annotated Constitution, p. 65:

18. But citizenship of the United States, or of a State, does not of itself give the right to vote; nor, e converso, does the want of it prevent a State from conferring the right of suffrage. (Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard, 422.)

The right of suffrage is the right to choose officers of the Government, and it does not carry along the right of citizenship. (Bates on Citizenship, 4, 5.) Our laws make no provision for the loss or deprivation of citizenship. (Id.)

The word "citizen" is not mentioned in this clause, and its idea is excluded in the qualifications for suffrage in all the State constitutions. (Id., 5, 6.)

Mr. Sargent.—What clause is he commenting on?

Mr. Merrimon.—He is commenting on section 2 of article 1. He says further:

American citizenship does not necessarily depend upon nor co-exist with the legal capacity to hold office or the right of suffrage, either or both of them.

No person in the United States did ever exercise the right of suffrage in virtue of the naked, unassisted fact of citizenship. (Id.)

There is a distinction between political rights and political powers. The former belong to all citizens alike, and cohere in the very name and nature of citizenship. The latter (voting and holding office) does not belong to all citizens alike, nor to any citizen merely in virtue of citizenship. His power always depends upon extraneous facts and superadded qualifications; which facts and qualifications are common to both citizens and aliens. (Bates on Citizenship.)

I read these hasty citations of authority which happen to be convenient to show that there is a distinction between political power and political rights, and in further support of the distinction between citizenship, or civil rights, and political rights.

Mr. Sargent.—Will my friend allow me a moment?

Mr. Merrimon.—Yes, sir.

Mr. Sargent.—The author there is commenting on the second section of the first article of the Constitution, and I think his reasoning on that upon general principles may be correct, at any rate it is in consonance with the