elections (i.e., for president, senators, representatives) the
encroachment is more apparent than real. As has already been pointed
out, this is essentially a national question, and the Constitution
adopted the suffrage qualifications prescribed by state law, not as a
matter of principle, but for reasons of expediency and convenience.

In so far, however, as the amendment imposes woman suffrage on the
states in elections of state and local officials the situation is
entirely different. That staunch advocate of national power, Alexander
Hamilton, said in the _Federalist_:[1]

Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution,
empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the
particular states, would any man have hesitated to condemn it,
both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a
premeditated engine for the destruction of the state
governments?

[Footnote 1: _Federalist_ LIX.]

What Hamilton scouted as impossible has been accomplished in the
Nineteenth Amendment. It in effect strikes out the word "male" from the
suffrage provisions of state constitutions. It overrides state policy
and interferes with the right of states to manage their own affairs.
From the theoretical standpoint a more serious inroad on state
prerogatives would be hard to find. Control of the suffrage is one of
the fundamental rights of a free state. It belonged to the North
American states before their union, and was not surrendered to the
National Government when the union was effected. Moreover, the
encroachment has a very practical side. To confer the suffrage on the