the African race, and have been still slower in allowing its application
to women; but it has been done by the fourteenth amendment, rightly
construed, by a definition of "citizenship," which includes women as
well as men, and in the declaration that "the privileges and immunities
of citizens shall not be abridged." If there is any privilege of the
citizen which is paramount to all others, it is the right of suffrage;
and in a constitutional provision, designed to secure the most valuable
rights of the citizen, the declaration that the privileges and
immunities of the citizen shall not be abridged, must, as I conceive, be
held to secure that right before all others. It is obvious, when the
entire language of the section is examined, not only that this
declaration was designed to secure to the citizen this _political_
right, but that such was its principal, if not its sole object, those
provisions of the section which follow it being devoted to securing the
_personal_ rights of "life, liberty, property, and the equal protection
of the laws." The clause on which we rely, to wit:--"No State shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States," might be stricken out of the section,
and the residue would secure to the citizen every right which is now
secured, excepting the political rights of voting and holding office.
_If the clause in question does not secure those political rights, it is
entirely nugatory, and might as well have been omitted._

If we go to the lexicographers and to the writers upon law, to learn
what are the privileges and immunities of the "citizen" in a republican
government, we shall find that the leading feature of citizenship is the
enjoyment of the right of suffrage.

The definition of the term "citizen" by _Bouvier_ is: "One who under the
constitution and laws of the United States, has a right to vote for