Report to the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the memorial of Victoria C. Woodhull...
The Committee On The Judiciary Denies
A Petition For Women’s Suffrage
Woodhull, Victoria C. Report...[to the] Committee on the Judiciary... [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Gov’t Printing Office, circa 1871].
8vo.; one leaf; printed on all sides; lightly used, edges darkened.
First edition of the response by the Committee on the Judiciary denying Woodhull’s request for the “enactment of a law by Congress which shall secure to citizens of the United States in the several States the right to vote ‘without regard to sex’” (p.1). A terse opinion which states, in part:
The clause of the fourteenth amendment, ‘No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ does not, in the opinion of the committee, refer to privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States other than those privileges and immunities embraced in the original text of the Constitution, article 4, section 2...It may be further added that the second section of the fourteenth amendment, by the provision that ‘when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors of the President and Vice-President...is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, a citizen of the United States...’, implies that the several States may restrict the elective franchise as to other than male citizens....We are of the opinion, therefore, that it is not competent for the Congress of the United States to establish by law the right to vote without regard to sex....; such legislation would be, in our judgment, a violation of the Constitution of the United States... (pp.1-3)
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