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Senate to is the argument, if I may so speak, 

 of a judge or a lawyer of a construction. Now, 

 if, having last year passed one statute, this year 

 you pass another on the same subject, do you 

 not by a certain implication, at least in the 

 moral sense, raise and put forth the idea that 

 the old statute did not answer the purpose that 

 you are no w seeking for ? What my friend has 

 said in relation to the inherent and inalienable 

 rights of human nature are not to be preju- 

 diced by any thing in the Constitution. My 

 point is that, by putting something in the Con- 

 stitution, which we now propose to do, we 

 shall have raised the intellectual question, not 

 the human one, whether we are not concluded 

 by now attempting to make this amendment, 

 that the amendment we made before did not 

 reach the same end. I do not say that that is 

 a sound argument. "We may go on making 

 amendment after amendment that have the 

 same legal scope and effect, it is true : but it 

 so happens in the course of human affairs that 

 the world will not accept that idea. The 

 country will believe and the country in a 

 large degree influences judicial as well as polit- 

 ical proceedings that we are satisfied in both 

 Houses of Congress that the Constitution of 

 the United States as it now stands does not 

 contain any security of political privileges to 

 any man. I do not wish to make that con- 

 cession." 



Mr. Drake: "Will the honorable Senator 

 from Vermont allow me to inquire whether I 

 understand the scope of his argument ? " 



Mr. Edmunds: "I do not know that you 

 do." 



Mr. Drake : " That is exactly what I do not 

 know myself, and I wish to ascertain. The 

 question with me is, on which I wish to get in- 

 formation from the honorable Senator, whether 

 he considers that the first section of the four- 

 teenth article of amendment to the Constitu- 

 tion does now confer upon citizens of the United 

 States the right to vote in the States in which 

 they reside?" 



Mr. Edmunds: "Decidedly, Mr. President. 

 I congratulate my friend from Missouri, after 

 this long, sleepless night, on his having under- 

 stood my proposition perfectly." 



Mr. Drake : " Then I must be permitted to 

 say,. Mr. President, that I do not think the 

 proposition is a sound one." 



Mr. Edmunds : " That, sir, is a question of 

 opinion about which my friend from Missouri 

 will permit me to differ from him, I have no 

 doubt. This fourteenth article, if he will allow 

 me to call his attention to it, was certainly in- 

 tended to do something. I may make use of 

 the same argument that I was suggesting a 

 moment ago against the wisdom of passing this 

 one. It was intended to make it a subject in 

 addition, was it not, touching the political 

 privileges and rights of citizens of the United 

 States ? We have already in the Constitution 

 an express declaration that the privileges and 

 immunities of the citizens of the several States 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



should be guaranteed to them in whatever 

 State they might take up their residence. I 

 am not using the language but the substance 

 of the section, with which my friend is well 

 acquainted. We had that already. We had 

 the article abolishing slavery. What, then, did 

 we lack ? What was the fourteenth article de- 

 signed to secure ? What was there left in the 

 range of the rights of citizenship under the 

 Constitution as it stood before the fourteenth 

 article, except exactly that which is covered 

 and comprehended in the broadest of language 

 contained in the fourteenth article, that the 

 privileges and immunities of citizens of the 

 United States shall not be either abridged or 

 denied by the United States or by any State ; 

 defining also, what it was possible was open to 

 some question after the Dred Scott decision, 

 who were citizens of the United States." 



Mr. Howe: "Will my friend allow me to 

 ask him, if that language secures the right to 

 vote to men, does it not also to women and 

 children ? " 



Mr. Edmunds : " Not necessarily." 



Mr. Howe: "Why not?" 



Mr. Edmunds : " For a reason that my friend 

 will find better stated, in a legal point of view, 

 than I can state it, in a decision of the supreme 

 court of the State of Kentucky, pronounced 

 about twenty-five or thirty years ago. He 

 will find it there decided that, in order to be a 

 citizen, in the general and comprehensive sense 

 of the term, such as the fourteenth article de- 

 fines it to be, a person must have of necessity, 

 as an essential and indispensable ingredient in 

 citizenship, the highest political privileges that 

 belong to any class in society. Then the court 

 proceeded to say that, although that is true, 

 the highest privileges belonging to any class 

 in society are not extended to females, and 

 therefore the qualification as to females is made 

 in this general right upon the same legal prin- 

 ciple that it is made as to idiots and insane 

 persons ; not that a female is necessarily like 

 either, but, I am speaking in a mere legal sense, 

 as a court would construe it. So, therefore, 

 without at this hour in the day taxing the pa- 

 tience of those who listen to me, by going into 

 the legal and logical argument that can be 

 made and that is made by the courts to deny 

 the right to vote to females, while they assert 

 and maintain that it is an essential and indis- 

 pensable constituent of the right of manhood 

 citizenship, I refer my friend to those judicial 

 decisions to show that there is comprehended 

 in the very name of citizen in this country, 

 truly and rightly considered and adjudicated, 

 the same great and all-embracing powets that 

 in ancient times applied to a Roman citizen." 



Mr. Howe : " But I wish, if my friend will 

 allow me, to ask him if the decision of the 

 supreme court of Kentucky, to which he refers, 

 pronounced twenty-five years ago, is not re- 

 versed by this very clause of the Constitution, 

 which says that all persons, born or naturalized 

 in the United States and subject to the juris- 



