Amendments to the state constitution must be accepted by the state legislature (consisting of the lower house and the senate),[7] and then be accepted in a referendum vote by the (male) electorate. To secure the adoption of such an amendment in a state legislature is no easy task. In the first place the presentation of a woman's suffrage bill is not received favorably; the Republicans and Democrats struggle for control of the legislature, the majority one way or the other never being large. Therefore the party leaders usually consider woman's suffrage not on the basis of party politics. Matters are decided on the basis of opportuneness. Especially is this the case in those states where the bill must be passed by two successive legislatures. In this case, between the time of the first passing of a bill and the referendum, there is a new election, and the opponents of woman's suffrage can defeat the adherents of the measure at the polls before the women themselves can exercise the right of suffrage. Changing the national Constitution through the adoption of a sixteenth amendment has difficulties equally great; the amendment must pass the House of Representatives and the Senate by a two-thirds vote and then be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or specially called conventions. To the present time only two of the Presidents of the Union have publicly expressed themselves in favor of woman's suffrage,--Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1836 Lincoln addressed an open letter to the voters in New Salem, Illinois, in which he said: "I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens"; and he was in favor of "admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms (_by no means excluding females_)." Garfield, Hayes, and Cleveland gave their attention to the question of woman's suffrage; the last two supporting motions in favor of the movement. Theodore Roosevelt, in 1899, as Assemblyman in the New York State Legislature, spoke in favor of woman's suffrage: "I call the attention of the Assembly to the advantages which a general extension of woman's right to vote must bring about." In order to attain their end,--political emancipation,--the American women use the following means of agitation: petitions, the submission of legislative bills, meetings, demonstrations, the distribution of pamphlets, deputations to the legislatures of the individual states and to the Congressional House of Representatives, the organization of workingwomen, requests to teachers and preachers to comment on patriotic memorial days on woman's worth, and to preach at least once during the year in favor of woman's suffrage.