Women's Legal Right to the Ballot, 1886 Pamphlet by Male Suffragist

Women Suffrage

Pamphlet

Women Suffrage- MINOR. Francis. Women's Legal Right to the Ballot An Argument in Support Of. Reprinted from The Forum. December, 1886. 8.5" x 6" inches. 10 pages. This pamphlet was written by lawyer and woman's rights advocate Francis Minor. Minor was married to suffragist Virginia Minor, famed for her unsuccessful but precedent-setting Supreme Court case Minor v. Happersett, where she argued that citizenship necessitated the right to vote. The Court held that while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid. The 19th Amendment, which prohibited the state from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett in 1920. Minor never backed down from this belief that citizenship conferred equal rights, and opens up this pamphlet with the statement: "in the United States, and under the Federal Constitution, suffrage, whether for men or for women, is an attribute of their federal citizenship; that it is one of the essential privileges of a citizen of the United States, inhering in the status or condition of such citizenship." Upon Minor's death in 1892, Susan B. Anthony wrote of him: "No man has contributed to the woman suffrage movement so much valuable constitutional argument and proof as Mr. Minor.” This pamphlet is in its original yellow paper wrappers and is in very good condition overall.

Item #17503

Price: $285.00