Up to this time the word "male" never had appeared in the Federal Constitution. In 1865, when the leaders among women were beginning to gather up their scattered forces, and the Fourteenth Amendment was under discussion, they saw to their amazement and indignation that it was proposed to incorporate in that instrument this discriminating word. Miss Anthony was the first to sound the alarm, and Mrs. Stanton quickly came to her aid in the attempt to prevent this desecration of the people's Bill of Rights. The thrilling account of their efforts to thwart this highhanded act, their abandonment in consequence by nearly all of their co-workers before and during the war, their anger and humiliation at seeing the former slaves, whom they had helped to free, made their political superiors and endowed with a personal representation in Government which women had been pilloried for asking--all this is graphically told in Vol. II of the History of Woman Suffrage, Chaps. XVII and XXI. The story with many personal touches is also related in the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Chaps. XV and XVI. The Fourteenth Amendment was declared adopted July 28, 1868,[4] and the women felt that the ground had been swept from beneath their feet, as now the barriers opposed to their enfranchisement by all the State constitutions had been doubly and trebly strengthened by sanction of the National Constitution. The first ray of encouragement came in October, 1869, when, at a State woman suffrage convention held in St. Louis, Mo., Francis Minor, a leading attorney of that city, declared that this very Fourteenth Amendment in enfranchising colored men had performed a like service for all women. His argument was embodied concisely in the following resolutions, which were adopted by that convention with great enthusiasm, and by the National Association at its annual convention in Washington, D. C., the next January: WHEREAS, All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside; therefore be it _Resolved_, 1. That the immunities and privileges of American citizenship, however defined, are national in character and paramount to all State authority. 2. That while the Constitution of the United States leaves the qualification of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right to _deprive_ any citizen of the elective franchise which is possessed by any other citizen--to _regulate_ not including the right to _prohibit_.