our Civil War--that woman is excluded. To-day women constitute the only
class of sane people excluded from the franchise, the only class deprived
of political representation, except the tribal Indians and the Chinese."
To the same effect the editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "The
superiority of man does not enter into the demand for suffrage; for in
this country all men vote; and as the lower orders, of men are not
superior to the higher orders of women, they must hold and exercise the
right of self-government on some other ground than superiority to woman."
Here it would seem that Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had been thinking,
but they never followed their own thought to its inevitable conclusion.
Universal manhood suffrage does relieve the men of this country from the
unjust aspersion the women of the Suffrage movement put upon them, that
they excluded women on account of inferiority.

No native American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to
support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen
who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do
anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles
and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement of
domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defence, security in the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," cannot be perfected
or maintained without the present exercise and the reserve power of
manhood strength. This Government laid aside all "attribute of education,
or glamour of wealth, or prestige of birth," and committed its life to the
keeping of its defenders. In this land, the vote is the "insignia of
actual power," but it is only the insignia; the power to defend themselves
and those who make country and home worth defending, lies with the
individual defenders. To attempt to put it into the hands of those who are
not physically fitted to maintain the obligations that may result from any
vote or any legislative act, is to render law a farce, and to betray the