There are three methods of extending suffrage to new classes.  The first is for the legislatures of the several States to submit the question to those already voters.  Before the war this was the only way thought of, and during all those years we petitioned the legislatures to submit an amendment striking the word “male” from the suffrage clause of the State constitutions.  The second method is for Congress to submit to the several legislatures a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit the States from depriving women citizens of their right to vote.  The third plan is for women to take their right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the National Constitution, which declares that all persons are citizens, and no State shall deny or abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens.

Again, there are two ways of securing the right of suffrage under the Constitution as it is, one by a declaratory act of Congress instructing the officers of election to receive the votes of women; the other by bringing suits before the courts, as women already have done, in order to secure a judicial decision on the broad interpretation of the Constitution that all persons are citizens, and all citizens voters.  The vaults in yonder Capitol hold the petitions of 100,000 women for a declaratory act, and the calendars of our courts show that many are already testing their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.  I stand here under indictment for having exercised my right as a citizen to vote at the last election; and by a fiction of the law, I am now in custody and not a free person on this platform.

Among the forcible resolutions adopted were one asserting “that States may regulate all local questions of property, taxation, etc., but the inalienable personal rights of citizenship must be declared by the Constitution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by Congress, and enforced by the arm of the Executive;” and another declaring “that the criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony by the United States, for the alleged crime of exercising the citizen’s right of suffrage, is an act of arbitrary and unconstitutional authority and a blow at the liberties of every citizen of this nation.”  Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Rev. Olympia Brown and others made ringing speeches on the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, defended the course of Miss Anthony and denounced her arrest.  This was the tenor of all the addresses.  She was unanimously elected president for the ensuing year, notwithstanding prison walls loomed up before her; and then she hastened back to prepare for her legal battle.