Oh, no! it was never so in the past. Terrible to conservatism as

to slavery itself, was the mighty war-cry of the Abolitionists

for twenty years. "No union with slaveholders!" No compromise

with injustice for an election, or for an hour, not even for a

good ultimate purpose! Colonization proposed a double purpose,

the final extinction of slavery, and a meanwhile redemption of

Africa from the midnight gloom and horror of heathenism. "Get

thee behind me, Satan," was the thundering response and just

rebuke of it by the Abolitionists! "Let us compromise with the

South, and buy up their slaves," said Elihu Burritt and his

overgrown mushroom convention, at Cleveland. "Our curse on your

slave trade, foreign and domestic," was the answering response of

the Garrisonian Invincibles. Many of the oldest leaders and

officers of the society refused even to help an escaped

slave-mother buy her children of her old master. "Let us form a

Republican party," said foxy politicians, and fight the extension

of slavery into Kansas, or any other new territory with ballot,

bullet, and battle-axe, if need be, but leaving the damnable

system in the States with its 4,000,000 of victims and their

posterity still chained under constitutional guarantee and the

army and navy of the nation. "No union with slaveholders," rung

out the lips and lungs of the Abolitionists, in tones that shook

the land from Maine to Mexico! "Fremont and Jessie" harnessed by

constitutional compromise to the Juggernaut car of slavery, were

not to be preferred by them to Beelzebub Buchanan himself. "No

union with slave-holders," though Gabriel were candidate and

chief captain of their hosts!

Now what do we behold? Wendell Phillips has shivered the English

language all to pieces in attempts to describe the baseness and

utter worthlessness of the Republican party. The president has

sold "the poisonous porridge called his soul," to Virginia rebels

and New York and Pennsylvania aristocrats and bondholders, and

yet Mr. Phillips persists in demanding that woman lay her own

right of suffrage at the presidential and Republican party feet,

while they so mould and manipulate the black male element, as by

it, if possible, to save themselves from utter rout and

destruction. Thanks be to God, some of us learned the old

anti-slavery lesson from Wendell Phillips better. And we dare

take our appeal from the Wendell Phillips of to-day, to him of

twenty years ago. And we do "dare to look our past history in the

face." And moreover, we look with triumph, and with hearts

swelling with fervent gratitude that our anti-slavery teachers

schooled us so well. What is it but ludicrous (if mirth be

possible on such a question) for those who are thus seeking the

enfranchisement of but half of even the fragmentary colored race,

to charge with selfishness, compromise, and treachery, the

association, or any of its members, that are earnestly laboring

to extend the ballot to every American citizen, irrespective of

all distinctions of race, complexion or sex? Can such accusers

look each other in the face and not laugh? Cato wondered that

two augurs could meet with gravity. What would he do here? And

still more preposterous, if not ludicrous, is it, when woman

voluntarily stops and becomes the agent of her own degradation,

and with her own hands builds barriers against her own

advancement; piling up opposition, Pelion upon Ossa, when the

majority against her, even in New York and New England, is

already appalling? And then for us to be referred to the

teachings and experiences of the past for lessons in compromise,

cold, calculating compromise, such as Abolitionists ever blasted

with the breath of their nostrils, and scourged from their

presence with fiery indignation! The Equal Rights Association is

not to be turned aside by any seductive devices from its high and

holy purpose of enfranchisement for all American citizens,

KNOWING NO RACE, NO COLOR, NO SEX.

P. P.

OCT. 7, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--Pardon a few plain words from an earnest friend

of human suffrage.

Your course opposing the Fifteenth Amendment and Political

(combined with moral) Temperance action, seems to me absolutely

suicidal, and must and will logically leave you to the tender

mercies of negro-drivers or haters and rumsellers and their

sympathizers. How much human suffrage can hope for at their

hands, judge ye!

J. K. PHOENIX.

P. S.--To say I am utterly astonished and grieved at _The

Revolution_ therein but feebly expresses my feelings. But we

shall see what you will effect by it.

_The Revolution_ criticises, "opposes," the fifteenth amendment,

not for what it is, but for what it is not. Not because it

enfranchises black men, but because it does not enfranchise all

women, black and white. It is not the little good it proposes,

but the greater evil it perpetuates that we deprecate. It is not

that in the abstract we do not rejoice that black men are to

become the equals of white men, but that we deplore the fact that

two millions black women, hitherto the political and social

equals of the men by their side, are to become subjects, slaves

of these men. Our protest is not that all men are lifted out of

the degradation of disfranchisement, but that all women are left

in. _The Revolution_ and the National Woman's Suffrage

Association make woman's suffrage their test of loyalty, not

negro suffrage, not Maine law or prohibition. Do you believe

women should vote? is the one and only question in our catechism.

In this period of reconstruction the Woman Suffrage Associations sent

their first delegates to National political conventions. The

appointment of Susan B. Anthony to the Democratic Presidential

Convention was a new and unlooked-for sensation.

_The Revolution_, NEW YORK, July 9, 1868.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY IN TAMMANY HALL.--Our readers will remember,

some time ago, it was announced in all the daily journals that

Susan B. Anthony was appointed a delegate to the Democratic

Convention, to represent the woman's suffrage movement in this

country. She accordingly applied by letter for a hearing in the

Convention. Her letter was presented to the Convention by the

President, ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, read by the clerk in a

loud, clear voice, received a most respectful and enthusiastic

hearing, and was referred to the Committee on Resolutions.

As our readers would, no doubt, like to know what radical

doctrines the Democratic party are now sufficiently developed to

applaud, we give the letter below. Let no one say that our

devotion to the education of this party for the last four years

has been in vain:

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, 37 PARK ROW,}

ROOM 20, NEW YORK, July 4, 1868. }

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, MRS. HORACE GREELEY,} _Central Com._

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS, }

_To the President and Members of the National Democratic

Convention_:

GENTLEMEN:--I address you by letter to ask the privilege of

appearing before you during the sittings of this Convention, to

demand the enfranchisement of the women of America, the only

class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the Government, the

only class (not guilty of crime) taxed without representation,

tried without a jury of their peers, governed without their

consent. And yet in this class are found many of your most noble,

virtuous, law-abiding citizens, who possess all the requisite

qualifications of voters. Women have property and education. We

are not "idiots, lunatics, paupers, criminals, rebels," nor do we

"bet on elections." We lack, according to your constitutions, but

one qualification--that of sex--which is insurmountable, and,

therefore, equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage; in other

words, the "tyranny of taxation without representation."

We desire to lay before you this violation of the great

fundamental principle of our Government for your serious

consideration, knowing that minorities can be moved by principles

as majorities are only by votes. Hence we look to you for the

initiative step in the redress of our grievances.

The party in power have not only failed to heed our innumerable

petitions, asking the right of suffrage, poured into Congress and

State Legislatures, but they have submitted a proposition to the

several States to insert the word "male" in the Federal

Constitution, where it has never been, and thereby put up a new

barrier against the enfranchisement of woman. This fresh insult

to the women of the Republic, who so bravely shared the dangers

and sacrifices of the late war, has roused us to more earnest and

persistent efforts to secure those rights, privileges, and

immunities that belong to every citizen under Government. As you

hold the Constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy to us

and our children forever, we ask you to save it from this

desecration, which deprives one-half our citizens of the right of

representation in the Government. Over this base proposition the

nation has stood silent and indifferent. While the dominant party

has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned

them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it

has dethroned fifteen million white women--their own mothers and

sisters, their own wives and daughters--and cast them under the

heel of the lowest orders of manhood.

We appeal to you, not only because you, being in a minority, are

in a position to consider principles, but because you have been

the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the

Democratic party that fought most valiantly for the removal of

the "property qualification" from all white men, and thereby

placed the poorest ditch-digger on a political level with the

proudest millionaire. This one act of justice to workingmen has

perpetuated your power, with but few interruptions, from that

time until the war. And now you have an opportunity to confer a

similar boon on the women of the country, and thus possess

yourselves of a new talisman that will insure and perpetuate your

political power for decades to come.

While the first and highest motive we would urge on you, is the

recognition in all your action of the great principles of justice

and equality that are the foundation of a republican government,

it is not unworthy to remind you that the party that takes this

onward step will reap its just reward. It needs but little

observation to see that the tide of progress in all countries is

setting toward the enfranchisement of woman, and that this

advance step in civilization is destined to be taken in our day.

We conjure you, then, to turn from the dead questions of the past

to the vital issues of the hour. The brute form of slavery ended

with the war. The black man is a soldier and a citizen. He holds

the bullet and the ballot in his own right hand. Consider his

case settled. Those weapons of defense and self-protection can

never be wrenched from him. Yours the responsibility now to see

that no new chains be forged by bondholders and monopolists for

enslaving the labor of the country.

The late war, seemingly in the interest of slavery, was fought by

unseen hands for the larger liberties of the whole people. It was

not a war between North and South, for the principle of class and

caste knows neither latitude or longitude. It was a war of

ideas--of Aristocracy and Democracy--of Capital and Labor--the

same that has convulsed the race through the ages, and will

continue to convulse future generations, until Justice and

Equality shall reign upon the earth.

I desire, therefore, an opportunity to urge on this Convention

the wisdom of basing its platform on universal suffrage as well

as universal amnesty, from Maine to California, and thus take the

first step toward a peaceful and permanent reconstruction.

In behalf of the Woman's Suffrage Association,

Respectfully yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

The comments of the daily city press[110] on this "innovation" were

as varied as amusing. During the reading of this document, several

members of the Equal Rights Association occupied conspicuous seats in

the Convention. This was the first time in the history of that party

that any effort had been made to secure the attendance of their

mothers, wives, and daughters. But observing that women had been an

element of enthusiasm in Republican meetings all through the war and

the period of reconstruction, and seeing the improved tone and manner

their presence had given to the speeches, and the general conduct of

the proceedings, it was thought best to secure the same influence

henceforth in Democratic conventions. The attempt at this

time was quite satisfactory and successful. A large number of

handsomely-dressed ladies helped to swell the immense audience that

assembled in Tammany Hall, one of the most spacious and elegant

auditoriums in the city, to be dedicated on that day, July 4th, 1868,

to Democratic principles.

As there were strong hopes that that party was about to take some new

departure; some onward step; even to nominate for their leader so

radical a man as Salmon P. Chase, a large number of Radicals and

Liberals were present. Had the Democrats made that nomination, and put

a woman suffrage plank in their platform, they would probably have

carried the election. But they timidly clung to their old moorings,

nominated a man who had an unpopular war record, and submitted a

platform without one vital principle with which to rouse the

enthusiasm of the people.

Thus was the movement inaugurated of sending women as delegates to

both Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, giving rise

to the agitation of the suffrage question on new platforms. With what

success the example has been followed, the records from time to time

fully show.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] GOING OVER TO THE COPPERHEADS.--As we have received several

letters from radical friends, warning us that we are going over to the

copperheads, for their comfort and instruction we will state some part

of our political creed.

1. We believe that suffrage is a natural right that belongs to every

man and woman of sound mind, without any qualification of property,

education, or sex, and moreover, that no reconstruction is worthy the

name that does not secure this right to the humblest citizen under

government.

2. We believe that both the spirit and the letter of the Federal

Constitution and the Declaration of Independence give Congress the

right to secure a republican form of government in every State in the

Union, and if they had done their duty at the end of the war and

proclaimed universal suffrage and universal amnesty, North and South,

the Republican party would not have been floundering about in the fogs

and mists of statesmanship to-day, without one inspiring party cry, or

one grand motto inscribed upon their banners, to carry them through

the coming Presidential campaign.

3. We believe that behind the rights of the Federal Government and the

rights of the several States are fundamental rights more sacred than

either, namely the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and

happiness; that out of these rights all just governments flow, and

whatever hinders the growth of the individual, restricts his liberty,

and destroys his happiness, is tyranny, and it is his sacred duty to

resist it to the death, as it is that of the State to resist the

Federal Government, in order to secure larger liberty for its whole

people. Rebellion in defense of justice, mercy, and the higher law is

always in order. Inasmuch as the rights of the individual are above

all constitutions, customs, creeds, and codes, it is the duty of the

general government to protect these rights against all intermediate

authorities.

4. While we have always demanded emancipation and enfranchisement for

the African race, we have no great enthusiasm for "negro suffrage" as

a party cry, because it is too narrow and partial for the hour. In

'56, Republicans asked aid and comfort of Abolitionists, because they

were opposed to the extension of slavery, but the Abolitionists, who

demanded "immediate emancipation," scouted the proposition;

non-extension, said they, is by no means grappling with the principle;

shutting up slavery where it is, is a step in the right direction, and

will eventually strangle the whole system, but to educate the people

into an idea we need the enthusiasm of a principle. When we say

"slavery is a sin," and therefore demand "immediate emancipation," we

end the evil and its extension in the same breath. So we say, to-day,

to the Abolitionists and Republicans, we can not accept your platform,

because it is not based on the idea that suffrage is a natural right,

we admit that "negro suffrage" is a step in the right direction, but

to educate the people to this partial demand even, we need the

enthusiasm of a principle, which you do not proclaim, so long as you

ask simply the extension of suffrage to two million men, instead of

its universal application to every citizen of the republic. As the

greater includes the less, when we say universal enfranchisement, we

claim all that the most radical Abolitionists and Republicans claim

and much more. Now, if the copperheads are educated up to this point,

we are happy to give them the right hand of fellowship, and shall hope

to be one of the delegates to the Tammany Hall Convention. We have

read their platform, as set forth in four mortal columns of the

_World_, and really do not see much to choose between it and the

Chicago platform. In fact, with the two Democratic candidates, Gen.

Grant and Chief-Justice Chase, and their twin platforms, stump orators

will have a hard task to prove why the people should prefer one

candidate or party to the other. The aristocratic principle--the

government of the many by the few--has been tried six thousand years

in every latitude and longitude, and under every imaginable form, and

the nations based on this principle have all alike perished. We have

proclaimed the true democratic idea on this continent, but never lived

it. Now the work of this generation is to realize what the fathers

declared a government of equality. The ballot is the symbol of this

idea, and it is not too much to demand to-day that it be placed in the

hand of every citizen. It is not too much to ask that this idea,

baptized in the blood of two revolutions, be now made the corner-stone

of the republic, the test of loyalty to the Union, to justice, to

humanity.--E. C. S. _The Revolution_, June 11, 1868.

[109] Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Robert Purvis, Olympia Brown,

Josephine Griffing, Parker Pillsbury, Paulina Wright Davis, Matilda

Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine L.

Rose, Clarina Howard Nichols.

[110] (_New York Herald_, July 1, 1868): THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS WOMEN AND

THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION.--The Central Committee of the Woman's

Suffrage Association has prepared a woman's rights platform for the

coming National Democratic Convention. This association was given the

cold shoulder and completely ignored by the radicals at Chicago, and

the Democrats have therefore a splendid opportunity to take wind out

of the Republican sails on "womanhood suffrage" against "manhood

suffrage," and for white women especially, as better qualified for an

intelligent exercise of the suffrage than the thousands of black men

just rescued from the ignorance of negro slavery. The Democratic

Convention can turn the radical party out of doors upon this issue

alone if only bold enough to take strong ground upon it in favor of at

least the same political rights to white women that Congress has given

to Southern niggers.

(_World_, July 1, 1868): The Woman's Suffrage Central Committee have

spoken with a kindness which will be appreciated at its proper value;

they propose to anticipate and obviate the labors of the National

Democratic Convention by preparing a platform for the party in

advance. To this platform we elsewhere give the benefit of our

circulation. The document will not be amenable to censure for any lack

of explicitness or novelty, and will doubtless receive all the

attention to which its intrinsic merits entitle it, and which its

exceptional comprehensiveness will challenge. _Place aux dames!_

(_Evening Telegram_, July 2, 1868): THE WOMAN'S PLATFORM.--The Woman's

Suffrage Association present to the Tammany Hall Fourth of July

Democratic National Convention a platform of principles which contains

some good sound planks and proves at all events that an educated white

woman is more fit to be intrusted with the ballot than is the

brutalized and ignorant negro who has been invested with political

power by the radicals of Congress. The platform is the work of

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the red men of the

wigwam and their associates might do worse than indorse and adopt it

entire. Besides, this declaration of principles on the part of the

strong-minded females opens up a new feature in the campaign and may

get rid of a serious difficulty. Why should not the Democratic

Convention take the cow by the horns, nominate Elizabeth Cady Stanton

or Susan B. Anthony as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and

thus strike out at once in a bold revolutionary policy that would

entirely overshadow the radicals and their niggers' rights and sweep

the country from Maine to California? We invite the attention of

Belmont and the National Committee to the suggestion. Chase and

Stanton would be a wonderfully strong ticket and a remarkable

association of names, and so, for that matter, would be Chase and

Anthony. Besides, it might really bring about a great reform in the

character of the Senate to be presided over by a female. There would

be fewer disgraceful scenes in that body, and even Chandler, Nye, and

poor maudlin Yates would feel the influence of woman's presence, and

learn to behave themselves decently.

(_Sun_, July 2, 1868): _The Revolution_ for this week is full of

suggestive and entertaining, if not instructive, reading matter.

Whether or not women ought to vote, it is very clear that those of the

sex who are associated under the leadership of Mrs. Stanton and Miss

Anthony can write in the most saucy and piquant fashion, and,

moreover, know how to disarm by their wit and good humor the most

ill-natured of their adversaries.

(_Tribune_, July 2, 1868): WOMAN SUFFRAGE.--It is said that strong

ground will be taken against the admission of Miss Susan B. Anthony as

a delegate at large to represent the interests of American women in

the Convention; but as that lady's ticket is already "impeticosed,"

and as she has a will of her own, and a number of brawny friends who

will not see her deprived of her rights as a publisher, a woman, and

an American citizen, it may be inferred that Miss Anthony will take a

seat in due form, and will make herself heard when her turn comes.

(_World_, July 2, 1868): The ladies of the spirited woman's rights

weekly, called _The Revolution_, with Miss Susan B. Anthony at their

head, are setting their caps for the Democratic party. Availing

themselves of the privilege conferred on their charming sex by

leap-year, they are making the first advances if not a downright

"proposal." Miss Anthony greets the National Convention by hanging out

a fresh new sign in flaming red, brighter than the blushes of Aurora,

and all the way up three flights of stairs to her office, visitors

will encounter red signs to the right of them, red signs to the left

of them, like the cannon at Balaklava. A conservative stranger needs

all the courage of the immortal Light Brigade to run the gauntlet of

the blazing word "_Revolution_" staring at him on so many sides. Miss

Anthony has taken uncommon pains to make her paper this week

captivating and irresistible, as will be seen by the advertisement she

has inserted in this morning's _World_ for the benefit of members of

the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen,"

instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of

all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks,

we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious

men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably

expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's

_Revolution_--splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather

distant when gallant young democrats will not surrender to soft eyes

and modest feminine ways sooner than to a good piece of argumentation

in a female mouth. Miss Anthony will be the author of a "Revolution"

indeed, if she succeeds in persuading the well-dressed beaux to prefer

wives to whom they would go to school. The members of the Convention

are more mature, though we doubt if they are much more sensible. But

Miss Anthony is not of a temper to be discouraged by small obstacles,

and we applaud the spirit with which she attempts to "make hay while

the sun shines."

(_Evening Express_, July 2, 1868): "THE REVOLUTION" AND "THE

WOMAN."--The women--naturally enough malcontent when the inferior race

of negroes is given the ballot; when Coolies are promised the ballot,

and even Indians can not be refused equal and universal suffrage as

"men and brethren"--insist now, more and more, upon women being taken

into the Radical party. The Democracy acknowledge their right to

equality with negroes and Coolies and Comanches--not much of an

acknowledgment, by the way, but something in the way of progress, and

far ahead of the Radicals. The last number of _The Revolution_ is

irresistible in argument against the Negro Suffrage Radicals, who will

not give women equal rights with negroes.

CHAPTER XXII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1869.

First Convention in Washington--First hearing before

Congress--Delegates Invited from Every State--Senator Pomeroy, of

Kansas--Debate between Colored Men and Women--Grace Greenwood's

Graphic Description--What the Members of the Convention Saw and

Heard in Washington--Robert Purvis--A Western Trip--Conventions

in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Springfield and

Madison--Editorial Correspondence in _The

Revolution_--Anniversaries in New York and Brooklyn--Conventions

in Newport and Saratoga.

In the Autumn of 1868 a call[111] was issued for the first Woman

Suffrage Convention ever held in Washington. It was a period of

intense excitement, as many important measures of reconstruction were

under consideration. The XIV Amendment was ratified, the XV was still

pending, and several bills were before Congress on the suffrage

question. Petitions and protests against all amendments to the

Constitution regulating suffrage on the basis of sex were being sent

in by thousands in charge of the Washington Association, of which

Josephine S. Griffing was President. A large number of persons from

every part of the Union were crowding into the Capital. Many

Southerners being present to whom the demand for woman suffrage was

new, the arguments were listened to with interest, while the tracts

and documents were eagerly purchased and distributed among their

friends at home. All these things combined to make this Convention

most enthusiastic and influential, not only in its immediate effect on

those present, but from the highly complimentary reports of the press

scattered over the nation. We find a brief summing up of the

Convention in letters to _The Revolution_.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

WASHINGTON, JANUARY 22, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--The first National Woman's Suffrage Convention

ever held in Washington, closed on Wednesday night. There were

representatives from about twenty States, and the deepest

interest was manifested through all the sessions, increasing to

the end[112]. On the morning of the Convention the business

committee assembled in the ante-room of Carroll Hall, to discuss

resolutions, officers, etc. As Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, was

present, it was decided that he should open the meeting and

preside as long as his public duties would permit. This gave us

assurance of a healthy repose in the chair, which greatly helps

to take off the chill in opening a convention. After a grave

discussion of resolutions, permanent officers, etc., Mr. Pomeroy

led the way to the platform, called the meeting to order, and

made an able speech, taking the broad ground that as suffrage is

a natural, inalienable right, it must, of necessity, belong to

every citizen of the republic, black and white, male and female.

Mrs. Mott was chosen President, resolutions were reported, and

when everything was in fine working order (except the furnace)

Mr. Pomeroy slipped off to his senatorial duties, to watch the

grand Kansas swindle now on the tapis, and to protect, if

possible, the interests of the people.

Whatever elements or qualities combine to render any popular

convention every way successful, were most felicitously blended

in this gathering in Washington. In numbers, interest,

earnestness, variety and especially ability, there was surely

little left to be desired. As to numbers in attendance, from

Maine, California, and all the way between, it is sufficient to

say that although the first session was most encouragingly large,

there was a constant increase till the last evening, when the

spacious hall was crowded in every part, until entrance was

absolutely impossible, long before people ceased coming. Of the

interest in the proceedings, it may be said that it was proposed

to hold three sessions each day, with a brief recess at noon. But

twelve o'clock and all o'clock were forgotten, and the day

session continued until after four; the only regret seeming then

to be that there were not more hours, and that human nature had

not greater power of endurance.

The harmony that prevailed was all that could reasonably have

been expected (if not even desired), considering the nature of

the questions in hand, and the large number and variety of

opinions entertained and expressed in the different sessions. On

the one vital point, that suffrage is the inalienable right of

every intelligent citizen who is held amenable to law, and is

taxed to support the government, there was no difference

expressed. The issue that roused the most heated debate was

whether the colored man should be kept out of the right of

suffrage until woman could also be enfranchised. One young, but

not ineffectual speaker, declared he considered the women the

bitterest enemies of the negro; and asked, with intense emotion,

shall they be permitted to prevent the colored man from obtaining

his rights? But it was not shown that women, anywhere, were

making any effort toward that result. One or two women present

declared they were unwilling that any more men should possess

the right of suffrage until women had it also. But these are well

known as most earnest advocates of universal suffrage, as well as

the long-tried and approved friends of the colored race.

The discussion between colored men on the one side and women on

the other, as to whether it was the duty of the women of the

nation to hold their claims in abeyance, until all colored men

are enfranchised, was spicy, able and affecting. When that noble

man, Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, rose, and, with the loftiest

sense of justice, with a true Roman grandeur, ignored his race

and sex, rebuked his own son for his narrow position, and

demanded for his daughter all he asked for his son or himself, he

thrilled the noblest feelings in his audience. Is has been a

great grief to the leading women in our cause that there should

be antagonism with men whom we respect, whose wrongs we pity, and

whose hopes we would fain help them to realize. When we contrast

the condition of the most fortunate women at the North, with the

living death colored men endure everywhere, there seems to be a

selfishness in our present position. But remember we speak not

for ourselves alone, but for all womankind, in poverty, ignorance

and hopeless dependence, for the women of that oppressed race

too, who, in slavery, have known a depth of misery and

degradation that no man can ever appreciate.

That there were representatives of both political parties

present, was very apparent, and sometimes forms of expression

betrayed a little unnecessary partisan preference; but there was

not one who bore any part in the long and intensely exciting

discussions, who could be justly charged with any wish, however

remote, to hold personal prejudice or party preference above

principle and religious regard to justice and right. There was

one feature in the convention that we greatly deplore, and that

was an impatience, not only with the audience, but with some on

the platform whenever any man arose to speak. We must not forget

that men have sensibilities as well as women, and that our

strongest hold to-day on the public mind is the fact that men of

eloquence and power on both continents are pleading for our

rights. While we ask justice for ourselves, let us at least be

just to the noble men who advocate our cause. It is certainly

generous in them to come to our platforms, to help us maintain

our rights, and share the ridicule that attends every step of

progress, and it is clearly our duty to defend their rights, at

least when speaking in our behalf.

We had a brief interview with Senator Roscoe Conkling. We gave

him a petition signed by 400 ladies of Onondaga County, and urged

him to make some wise remarks on the subject of woman's suffrage

when he presented it. We find all the New York women are sending

their petitions to Senator Pomeroy. He seems to be immensely

popular just now. We think our own Senators need some education

in this direction. It would be well for the petitions of the

several States to be placed in the hands of their respective

Senators, that thus the attention of all of them might be called

to the important subject. It is plain to see that Mr. Conkling is

revolving this whole question in his mind. His greatest fear is

that coarse and ignorant women would crowd the polls and keep the

better class away.

Parker Pillsbury's speech on "The Mortality of Nations," was one

of the best efforts of his life, and as grand an argument on the

whole question of Republican government as was ever made on the

woman suffrage platform. Although he had been one of the earliest

and most enthusiastic Abolitionists, yet the enfranchisement of

woman had always in his mind seemed of equal importance to that

of the black man. In Mr. Pillsbury's philosophy on both

questions, the present was ever the time for immediate and

absolute justice.

One great charm in the convention was the presence of Lucretia

Mott, calm, dignified, clear and forcible as ever. Though she is

now seventy-six years old, she sat through all the sessions, and

noted everything that was said and done. It was a satisfaction to

us all that she was able to preside over the first National

Woman's Suffrage Convention ever held at the Capitol. Her voice

is stronger and her step lighter than many who are her juniors by

twenty years. She preached last Sunday in the Unitarian Church to

the profit and pleasure of a highly cultivated and large

audience. We were most pleased to meet ex-Governor Robinson, the

first Governor of Kansas, in the convention. He says there is a

fair prospect that an amendment to strike out the word "male"

from the Constitution will be submitted again in that State,

when, he thinks, it will pass without doubt. Mrs. Minor,

President of the Woman's Suffrage Association of Missouri, and

Mrs. Starrett of Lawrence, Kansas, gave us a pleasant surprise by

their appearance at the convention. They took an active part in

the deliberations, and spoke with great effect. Senator Wilson

was present, though he did not favor us with a speech. We urged

him to do so, but he laughingly said he had no idea of making

himself a target for our wit and sarcasm. We asked him, as he

would not speak, to tell us the "wise, systematic, and efficient

way" of pressing woman's suffrage. He replied, "You are on the

right track, go ahead." So we have decided to move "on this line"

until the inauguration of the new administration, when, under the

dynasty of the chivalrous soldier, "our ways will, no doubt, be

those of pleasantness, and all our paths be peace." New Jersey

was represented by Deborah Butler of Vineland, the only live spot

in that benighted State, and we thought her speech quite equal to

what we heard from Mr. Cattell in the Senate. During the evening

sessions, large numbers of women from the several departments

were attentive listeners. Lieutenant-Governor Root of Kansas read

the bill now before Congress demanding equal pay for women in the

several departments where they perform equal work with the men by

their side. He offered a resolution urging Congress to pass the

bill at once, that justice might be done the hundreds of women in

the District, for their faithful work under government.

Mrs. Stanton's speech the first evening of the convention gave a fair

statement of the hostile feelings of women toward the amendments; we

give the main part of it. Of all the other speeches, which were

extemporaneous, only meagre and unsatisfactory reports can be found.

Mrs. STANTON said:--A great idea of progress is near its

consummation, when statesmen in the councils of the nation

propose to frame it into statutes and constitutions; when

Reverend Fathers recognize it by a new interpretation of their

creeds and canons; when the Bar and Bench at its command set

aside the legislation of centuries, and girls of twenty put their

heels on the Cokes and Blackstones of the past.

Those who represent what is called "the Woman's Rights Movement,"

have argued their right to political equality from every

standpoint of justice, religion, and logic, for the last twenty

years. They have quoted the Constitution, the Declaration of

Independence, the Bible, the opinions of great men and women in

all ages; they have plead the theory of our government; suffrage

a natural, inalienable right; shown from the lessons of history,

that one class can not legislate for another; that disfranchised

classes must ever be neglected and degraded; and that all

privileges are but mockery to the citizen, until he has a voice

in the making and administering of law. Such arguments have been

made over and over in conventions and before the legislatures of

the several States. Judges, lawyers, priests, and politicians

have said again and again, that our logic was unanswerable, and

although much nonsense has emanated from the male tongue and pen

on this subject, no man has yet made a fair, argument on the

other side. Knowing that we hold the Gibraltar rock of reason on

this question, they resort to ridicule and petty objections.

Compelled to follow our assailants, wherever they go, and fight

them with their own weapons; when cornered with wit and sarcasm,

some cry out, you have no logic on your platform, forgetting that

we have no use for logic until they give us logicians at whom to

hurl it, and if, for the pure love of it, we now and then

rehearse the logic that is like a, b, c, to all of us, others cry

out--the same old speeches we have heard these twenty years. It

would be safe to say a hundred years, for they are the same our

fathers used when battling old King George and the British

Parliament for their right to representation, and a voice in the

laws by which they were governed. There are no new arguments to

be made on human rights, our work to-day is to apply to ourselves

those so familiar to all; to teach man that woman is not an

anomalous being, outside all laws and constitutions, but one

whose rights are to be established by the same process of reason

as that by which he demands his own.

When our Fathers made out their famous bill of impeachment

against England, they specified eighteen grievances. When the

women of this country surveyed the situation in their first

convention, they found they had precisely that number, and quite

similar in character; and reading over the old revolutionary

arguments of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Otis, and Adams, they

found they applied remarkably well to their case. The same

arguments made in this country for extending suffrage from time

to time, to white men, native born citizens, without property and

education, and to foreigners; the same used by John Bright in

England, to extend it to a million new voters, and the same used

by the great Republican party to enfranchise a million black men

in the South, all these arguments we have to-day to offer for

woman, and one, in addition, stronger than all besides, the

difference in man and woman. Because man and woman are the

complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national

affairs to make a safe and stable government.

The Republican party to-day congratulates itself on having

carried the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, thus

securing "manhood suffrage" and establishing an aristocracy of

sex on this continent. As several bills to secure Woman's

Suffrage in the District and the Territories have been already

presented in both houses of Congress, and as by Mr. Julian's

bill, the question of so amending the Constitution as to extend

suffrage to all the women of the country has been presented to

the nation for consideration, it is not only the right but the

duty of every thoughtful woman to express her opinion on a

Sixteenth Amendment. While I hail the late discussions in

Congress and the various bills presented as so many signs of

progress, I am especially gratified with those of Messrs. Julian

and Pomeroy, which forbid any State to deny the right of suffrage

to any of its citizens on account of sex or color.

This fundamental principle of our government--the equality of all

the citizens of the republic--should be incorporated in the

Federal Constitution, there to remain forever. To leave this

question to the States and partial acts of Congress, is to defer

indefinitely its settlement, for what is done by this Congress

may be repealed by the next; and politics in the several States

differ so widely, that no harmonious action on any question can

ever be secured, except as a strict party measure. Hence, we

appeal to the party now in power, everywhere, to end this

protracted debate on suffrage, and declare it the inalienable

right of every citizen who is amenable to the laws of the land,

who pays taxes and the penalty of crime. We have a splendid

theory of a genuine republic, why not realize it and make our

government homogeneous, from Maine to California. The Republican

party has the power to do this, and now is its only opportunity.

Woman's Suffrage, in 1872, may be as good a card for the

Republicans as Gen. Grant was in the last election. It is said

that the Republican party made him President, not because they

thought him the most desirable man in the nation for that office,

but they were afraid the Democrats would take him if they did

not. We would suggest, there may be the same danger of Democrats

taking up Woman Suffrage if they do not. God, in his providence,

may have purified that party in the furnace of affliction. They

have had the opportunity, safe from the turmoil of political life

and the temptations of office, to study and apply the divine

principles of justice and equality to life; for minorities are

always in a position to carry principles to their logical

results, while majorities are governed only by votes. You see my

faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next

Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirty-four new members,

hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to

woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress

that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free

institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood,

ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of

the most virtuous and humane half of the American people....

I urge a speedy adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment for the

following reasons:

1. A government, based on the principle of caste and class, can

not stand. The aristocratic idea, in any form, is opposed to the

genius of our free institutions, to our own declaration of

rights, and to the civilization of the age. All artificial

distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex,

are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally

destructive to national life and prosperity. Governments based on

every form of aristocracy, on every degree and variety of

inequality, have been tried in despotisms, monarchies, and

republics, and all alike have perished. In the panorama of the

past behold the mighty nations that have risen, one by one, but

to fall. Behold their temples, thrones, and pyramids, their

gorgeous palaces and stately monuments now crumbled all to dust.

Behold every monarch in Europe at this very hour trembling on his

throne. Behold the republics on this Western continent convulsed,

distracted, divided, the hosts scattered, the leaders fallen, the

scouts lost in the wilderness, the once inspired prophets blind

and dumb, while on all sides the cry is echoed, "Republicanism is

a failure," though that great principle of a government "by the

people, of the people, for the people," has never been tried.

Thus far, all nations have been built on caste and failed. Why,

in this hour of reconstruction, with the experience of

generations before us, make another experiment in the same

direction? If serfdom, peasantry, and slavery have shattered

kingdoms, deluged continents with blood, scattered republics like

dust before the wind, and rent our own Union asunder, what kind

of a government, think you, American statesmen, you can build,

with the mothers of the race crouching at your feet, while

iron-heeled peasants, serfs, and slaves, exalted by your hands,

tread our inalienable rights into the dust? While all men,

everywhere, are rejoicing in new-found liberties, shall woman

alone be denied the rights, privileges, and immunities of

citizenship? While in England men are coming up from the coal

mines of Cornwall, from the factories of Birmingham and

Manchester, demanding the suffrage; while in frigid Russia the

22,000,000 newly-emancipated serfs are already claiming a voice

in the government; while here, in our own land, slaves, but just

rejoicing in the proclamation of emancipation, ignorant alike of

its power and significance, have the ballot unasked, unsought,

already laid at their feet--think you the daughters of Adams,

Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, in whose veins flows the blood of

two Revolutions, will forever linger round the campfires of an

old barbarism, with no longings to join this grand army of

freedom in its onward march to roll back the golden gates of a

higher and better civilization? Of all kinds of aristocracy, that

of sex is the most odious and unnatural; invading, as it does,

our homes, desecrating our family altars, dividing those whom God

has joined together, exalting the son above the mother who bore

him, and subjugating, everywhere, moral power to brute force.

Such a government would not be worth the blood and treasure so

freely poured out in its long struggles for freedom....

2. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment, because "manhood suffrage" or a

man's government, is civil, religious, and social

disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern,

selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest,

acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike

discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood

and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery,

slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and

imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy

creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries,

while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead

alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival

thus far, it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering

the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner

qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true

manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for

it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last

century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered

by woman's thought, the hard iron rule we feel alike in the

church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the

disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when

we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being,

with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the

absolute control of all sublunary matters.

People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call

the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will

make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which

we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised we have few women in

the best sense, we have simply so many reflections, varieties,

and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural

characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in

dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please

the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold

in society woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect

his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She

must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every

inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by

the finger of God on her own soul. She must believe his theology,

though it pave the highways of hell with the skulls of new-born

infants, and make God a monster of vengeance and hypocrisy. She

must look at everything from its dollar and cent point of view,

or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and

make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the

poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums,

the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all

this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the

intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that

her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying,

cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant

nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by

direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has

used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed

the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed

repression. And now man himself stands appalled at the results of

his own excesses, and mourns in bitterness that falsehood,

selfishness and violence are the law of life. The need of this

hour is not territory, gold mines, railroads, or specie payments,

but a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue,

morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of

thought and action.

We ask woman's enfranchisement, as the first step toward the

recognition of that essential element in government that can only

secure the health, strength, and prosperity of the nation.

Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to

usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race. In

speaking of the masculine element, I do not wish to be understood

to say that all men are hard, selfish, and brutal, for many of

the most beautiful spirits the world has known have been clothed

with manhood; but I refer to those characteristics, though often

marked in woman, that distinguish what is called the stronger

sex. For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very

pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea,

the elements, the riches and forces of Nature, are powers of

destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to

sacrifice nations to ambition. Here that great conservator of

woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally

would in freedom against oppression, violence, and war, would

hold all these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the

cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would

one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain. With

violence and disturbance in the natural world, we see a constant

effort to maintain an equilibrium of forces. Nature, like a

loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and

valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves,

balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that

peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme. There is a striking

analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization

of society warns us, that in the dethronement of woman we have

let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the

power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an

extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most

virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the

whole, and protect the interests of all than could the

representation of either sex alone. But government gains no new

element of strength in admitting all men to the ballot-box, for

we have too much of the man-power there already. We see this in

every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that

unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation

is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of

China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed

force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught

our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all

they know?

3. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment because, when "manhood suffrage"

is established from Maine to California, woman has reached the

lowest depths of political degradation. So long as there is a

disfranchised class in this country, and that class its women, a

man's government is worse than a white man's government with

suffrage limited by property and educational qualifications,

because in proportion as you multiply the rulers, the condition

of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded. John

Stuart Mill, in his work on "Liberty," shows that the condition

of one disfranchised man in a nation is worse than when the whole

nation is under one man, because in the latter case, if the one

man is despotic, the nation can easily throw him off, but what

can one man do with a nation of tyrants over him? If American

women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own Saxon

fathers, the best orders of manhood, what may they not be called

to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners now crowding

our shores legislate for them and their daughters. Think of

Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the

difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read

the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book,

making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E.

Dickinson. Think of jurors and jailors drawn from these ranks to

watch and try young girls for the crime of infanticide, to decide

the moral code by which the mothers of this Republic shall be

governed? This manhood suffrage is an appalling question, and it

would be well for thinking women, who seem to consider it so

magnanimous to hold their own claims in abeyance until all men

are crowned with citizenship, to remember that the most ignorant

men are ever the most hostile to the equality of women, as they

have known them only in slavery and degradation.

Go to our courts of justice, our jails and prisons; go into the

world of work; into the trades and professions; into the temples

of science and learning, and see what is meted out everywhere to

women--to those who have no advocates in our courts, no

representatives in the councils of the nation. Shall we prolong

and perpetuate such injustice, and by increasing this power risk

worse oppressions for ourselves and daughters? It is an open,

deliberate insult to American womanhood to be cast down under the

iron-heeled peasantry of the Old World and the slaves of the New,

as we shall be in the practical working of the Fifteenth

Amendment, and the only atonement the Republican party can make

is now to complete its work, by enfranchising the women of the

nation. I have not forgotten their action four years ago, when

Article XIV., Sec. 2, was amended[113] by invidiously introducing

the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it had never

been before, thus counting out of the basis of representation all

men not permitted to vote, thereby making it the interest of

every State to enfranchise its male citizens, and virtually

declaring it no crime to disfranchise its women. As political

sagacity moved our rulers thus to guard the interests of the

negro for party purposes, common justice might have compelled

them to show like respect for their own mothers, by counting

woman too out of the basis of representation, that she might no

longer swell the numbers to legislate adversely to her interests.

And this desecration of the last will and testament of the

fathers, this retrogressive legislation for woman, was in the

face of the earnest protests of thousands of the best educated,

most refined and cultivated women of the North.

Now, when the attention of the whole world is turned to this

question of suffrage, and women themselves are throwing off the

lethargy of ages, and in England, France, Germany, Switzerland,

and Russia are holding their conventions, and their rulers are

everywhere giving them a respectful hearing, shall American

statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions

as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of

unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and

barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the

effete civilizations of the Old World? While poets and

philosophers, statesmen and men of science are all alike pointing

to woman as the new hope for the redemption of the race, shall

the freest Government on the earth be the first to establish an

aristocracy based on sex alone? to exalt ignorance above

education, vice above virtue, brutality and barbarism above

refinement and religion? Not since God first called light out of

darkness and order out of chaos, was there ever made so base a

proposition as "manhood suffrage" in this American Republic,

after all the discussions we have had on human rights in the

last century. On all the blackest pages of history there is no

record of an act like this, in any nation, where native born

citizens, having the same religion, speaking the same language,

equal to their rulers in wealth, family, and education, have been

politically ostracised by their own countrymen, outlawed with

savages, and subjected to the government of outside barbarians.

Remember the Fifteenth Amendment takes in a larger population

than the 2,000,000 black men on the Southern plantation. It takes

in all the foreigners daily landing in our eastern cities, the

Chinese crowding our western shores, the inhabitants of Alaska,

and all those western isles that will soon be ours. American

statesmen may flatter themselves that by superior intelligence

and political sagacity the higher orders of men will always

govern, but when the ignorant foreign vote already holds the

balance of power in all the large cities by sheer force of

numbers, it is simply a question of impulse or passion, bribery

or fraud, how our elections will be carried. When the highest

offices in the gift of the people are bought and sold in Wall

Street, it is a mere chance who will be our rulers. Whither is a

nation tending when brains count for less than bullion, and

clowns make laws for queens? It is a startling assertion, but

nevertheless true, that in none of the nations of modern Europe

are the higher classes of women politically so degraded as are

the women of this Republic to-day. In the Old World, where the

government is the aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of

nobility to share its offices and powers, women of rank have

certain hereditary lights which raise them above a majority of

the men, certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs and

peasants. There women are queens, hold subordinate offices, and

vote on many questions. In our Southern States even, before the

war, women were not degraded below the working population. They

were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and

waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here, in this

boasted Northern civilization, women of wealth and education, who

pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intellect are the

peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of

political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors,

idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny, and infamous

crimes.

Would those gentlemen who are on all sides telling the women of

the nation not to press their claims until the negro is safe

beyond peradventure, be willing themselves to stand aside and

trust all their interests to hands like these? The educated women

of this nation feel as much interest in republican institutions,

the preservation of the country, the good of the race, their own

elevation and success, as any man possibly can, and we have the

same distrust in man's power to legislate for us, that he has in

woman's power to legislate wisely for herself.

4. I would press a Sixteenth Amendment, because the history of

American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in

man's capacity to govern the nation alone, with justice and

mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own

observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves.

Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again,

and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the

present administration. Others have set forth, with equal

clearness, the ignorance of our rulers on the question of

finance....

The following letters were received and read in the Convention:

NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 1869.

MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING,--_Dear Madam_:--Your favor of the 6th

inst. is received. Permit me to assure you it would give me great

pleasure to be present at your important convention of the 19th,

but indisposition will not allow me that gratification.

Looking at all the circumstances; the position, the epoch, and

the efforts now being made to extend the right to the ballot,

your Convention is perhaps the most important that was ever held.

It is a true maxim, that it is easier to do justice than

injustice; to do right than wrong; and to do it at once, than by

small degrees. How much better and easier it would have been for

Congress, when they enfranchised all the men of the District of

Columbia, had they included the women also; but better late than

never. Let the National government, to which the States have a

right to look for good example, do justice to woman now, and all

the States will follow....

It was a terrible mistake and a fundamental error, based upon

ignorance and injustice, ever to have introduced the word "male"

into the Federal Constitution. The terms "male" and "female"

simply designate the physical or animal distinction between the

sexes, and ought be used only in speaking of the lower animals.

Human beings are men and women, possessed of human faculties and

understanding, which we call mind; and mind recognizes no sex,

therefore the term "male," as applied to human beings--to

citizens--ought to be expunged from the constitution and laws as

a last remnant of barbarism--when the animal, not mind, when

might, not right, governed the world. Let your Convention, then,

urge Congress to wipe out that purely animal distinction from the

national constitution. That noble instrument was destined to

govern intelligent, responsible human beings--men and women--not

sex. The childish argument that all women don't ask for the

franchise would hardly deserve notice were it not sometimes used

by men of sense. To all such I would say, examine ancient and

modern history, yes, even of your own times, and you will find

there never has been a time when all men of any country--white or

black--have ever asked for a reform. Reforms have to be claimed

and obtained by the few, who are in advance, for the benefit of

the many who lag behind. And when once obtained and almost forced

upon them, the mass of the people accept and enjoy their benefits

as a matter of course. Look at the petitions now pouring into

Congress for the franchise for women, and compare their thousands

of signatures with the few isolated names that graced our first

petitions to the Legislature of New York to secure to the married

woman the right to hold in her own name the property that

belonged to her, to secure to the poor, forsaken wife the right

to her earnings, and to the mother the right to her children.

"All" the women did not ask for those rights, but all accepted

them with joy and gladness when they were obtained; and so it

will be with the franchise. But woman's claim for the ballot does

not depend upon the numbers that demand it, or would exercise the

right; but upon precisely the same principles that man claims it

for himself. Chase, Sumner, Stevens, and many of both Houses of

Congress have, time after time, declared that the franchise means

"Security, Education, Responsibility, Self-respect, Prosperity,

and Independence." Taking all these assertions for granted and

fully appreciating all their benefits, in the name of security,

of education, of responsibility, of self-respect, of liberty, of

prosperity and independence we demand the franchise for woman.

Please present this hastily-written contribution to your

Convention with best wishes.

Yours, dear madam, very truly, ERNESTINE L. ROSE.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON writes: Unable to attend the Convention, I

can only send you my warm approval of it, and the object it is

designed to promote. It is boastingly claimed in behalf of the

Government of the United States that it is "of the people, by the

people, and for the people." Yet reckoning the whole number at

thirty-eight millions, no less than one-half--that is, nineteen

millions--are political ciphers. A single male voter, on election

day, outweighs them all!

AARON M. POWELL writes: I have no doubt that if a fair and honest

vote can be had upon the question, submitted upon its own merits,

in the Senate and House of Representatives, both the friends and

opponents of the measure here, as in Great Britain when John

Stuart Mill's proposition was first voted upon in Parliament,

will be surprised at the revelation of its real strength.

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL writes: It mitigates my regret in declining

your invitation to remember that these are not the dark days of

the cause.

Senator FOWLER, of Tenn., writes: It is not possible that the

people who have so enlarged the boundaries of the political

rights of another race just emerged from slavery, will fail to

recognize the claims of the women of the United States to equal

rights in all the relations of life.

WM. H. SYLVIS says: I am in favor of universal suffrage,

universal amnesty, and universal liberty.

ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS says: My father, Isaac T. Hopper, was an

advocate for woman and her work, he believed in her thoroughly.

His life long he was associated with many of the best women of

his day. With the help of good men, we shall ere long stand side

by side with ballot in hand.

PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS: If women are the only unrecognized class as

a part of the people, then woe to the nation! for there will be

no noble mothers; frivolity, folly, and madness will seize them,

for all inverted action of the faculties becomes intense in just

the ratio of its earnestness.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE writes: I am deeply interested in the work,

and hopeful that a broader sphere is opening for woman, that as a

class they may be trained in early life more as men are in

education and business.

Gen. OLIVER O. HOWARD answers: Please express to the Committee my

thanks for the invitation. I should be pleased to accept, but a

lecture engagement in the West will compel me to be absent from

the city.

JAMES M. SCOVILL, of New Jersey, says: I deeply desire to come.

Go on in your great work. The Convention tells on the public

mind.

GERRIT SMITH replies: I thank you for your invitation, though it

is not in my power to attend the Convention. God hasten the day

when the civil and political rights of woman shall be admitted to

be equal to those of man.

SIMEON CORLEY, M.C., of South Carolina, writes: Having been an

advocate of woman suffrage for a quarter of a century, I had the

pleasure yesterday of enrolling my name and that of my wife on

your list of delegates. To-day Hon. James H. Goss, M.C., of

South Carolina, requested me to have you insert his name. I think

you may safely count on the South Carolina delegation.

This Convention was the first public occasion when the women opposed

to the XIV Amendment, measuring their logic with Republicans,

Abolitionists, and colored men, ably maintained their position. The

division of opinion was marked and earnest, and the debate was warm

between Messrs. Douglass, Downing, Hinton, Dr. Purvis, and Edward M.

Davis on one side, and the ladies, with Robert Purvis[114] and Parker

Pillsbury on the other. Edward M. Davis, the son-in-law of Lucretia

Mott, was so hostile to the position of the women on the XIV Amendment

that he refused to enroll his name as a member of the Convention.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott in the chair, allowed him to criticise most

severely the resolutions and the position of those with whom she

stood. She answered his attacks with her usual gentleness, and

advocated the resolutions.[115] Robert Purvis, differing with his own

son and other colored men, denounced their position with severity. Yet

good feeling prevailed throughout, and the Convention adjourned in

order and harmony.

The following objective view of the Convention, of the tone of the

addresses, and the _personnel_ of the platform, from the pen of one of

our distinguished literary women--Sarah Clarke Lippincott--will serve

to show that the leaders in the suffrage movement were not the rude,

uncultured women generally represented by the opposition, but in point

of intelligence, refinement, appearance, and all the feminine virtues,

far above the ordinary standard. For the honor of this grand reform,

we record the compliments occasionally bestowed.

[From the _Philadelphia Press_].

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 1869.

The proceedings were opened with prayer by Dr. Gray, the Chaplain

of the Senate, a man of remarkably liberal spirit. This prayer,

however, did not give perfect satisfaction. Going back to the

beginning of things, the doctor unfortunately chanced to take, of

the two Mosaic accounts of the creation of man and woman, that

one which is least exalting to woman, representing her as built

on a "spare rib" of Adam. Let us hope the reverend gentleman will

"overhaul" his Genesis and "take a note."

On the platform was an imposing array of intellect, courage, and

noble character. First there was dear, revered Lucretia Mott, her

sweet, saintly face cloistered in her Quaker bonnet, her serene

and gracious presence, so dignified yet so utterly unpretending,

so self-poised yet so gentle, so peaceful yet so powerful,

sanctioning and sanctifying the meeting and the movement.

Near her sat her sister, Mrs. Wright, of Auburn, a woman of

strong, constant character and of rare intellectual culture; Mrs.

Cady Stanton, a lady of impressive and beautiful appearance, in

the rich prime of an active, generous, and healthful life; Miss

Susan B. Anthony, looking all she is, a keen, energetic,

uncompromising, unconquerable, passionately earnest woman; Clara

Barton, whose name is dear to soldiers and blessed in thousands

of homes to which the soldiers shall return no more--a brave,

benignant looking woman. But I will not indulge in personal

descriptions, though Dr. Mary Walker in her emancipated garments

and Eve-like arrangement or disarrangement of hair, is somewhat

tempting.

Senator Pomeroy, acting as temporary chairman, called the

Convention to order. Certain committees were appointed, and the

Senator spoke for some twenty or thirty minutes, very happily and

effectively, on the question of Woman's Rights under the

Constitution--both as originally written and as amended. He

argued that all born or naturalized Americans are citizens--that

neither sex nor color has anything to do with citizenship

rightfully. His reasoning seemed to us, who are interested,

cogent and logical, and his spirit fearless and broad. Mrs.

Stanton spoke on the general question with great force and

pithiness. Of all their speakers she seemed to me to have the

most weight. Her speeches are models of composition, clear,

compact, elegant, and logical. She makes her points with peculiar

sharpness and certainty, and there is no denying or dodging her

conclusions. Mrs. Mott followed Mrs. Stanton, and at a later hour

spoke again. She can not speak too often for the good of this or

any cause. Her arguments are always gently put forward, but there

is great force behind them--the force of reason and justice and

simple truth. Her wit, too, though it gleams out softly and

playfully, illuminates her subject as the keener, sharper light

of satire never could illuminate it. She is always reasonable,

gracious, and judicious. She never strives for effect, and is too

conscientious to be sensational, yet no speaker among the younger

women of this movement makes more telling points--no one knows so

well every foot of the broad field of argument. In her practiced

hand every weapon is ready on the instant, whether drawn from the

armories of Scripture, history, literature, or politics. She

reviewed the history of this movement from the beginning, paying

warm tribute to the memory of its early advocates. She proved

that for centuries the discontented, the indignant protest in the

souls of women, which has culminated in this movement, has formed

an element which has been secretly surging and seething under the

surface of society. These were no new wrongs or needs of ours,

she said; the women of the past, of all ages, had felt them; we

are only giving voice to them.

A most eloquent letter from Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose was read,

indorsing the Convention; also one from William Lloyd Garrison.

Mrs. Griffing, of Washington, spoke with remarkable earnestness

and fervor, and was followed by Mrs. Hathaway, of Boston. This

lady said: "They say the majority shall rule. Well, there are,

east of the Alleghanies, 400,000 more women than men. So the

minority rule us." Upon the whole, I was quite willing to have

this body of women orators and debaters compared with either of

the great legislative bodies who meet over in yonder great marble

temple of wisdom, eloquence, logic, and law.

Mrs. Starrett, of Kansas, a bright, ruddy, rosy woman, made a

good, practical speech on the influence of the franchise upon the

domestic life of women.

Mrs. Butler, of Vineland, N. J., made one of the most charming

and womanly speeches, or talks, of the Convention, recounting her

experience as one of the gallant band of women who, at the late

fall elections, made an imposing demonstration at the polls in

her lively and progressive town. Fearful threats had reached them

of insult and violence from rough boys and men; but they met with

absolutely nothing of the kind, though they did not approach the

polls like the Neapolitan heroine who votes for Victor Emanuel,

with pistols and daggers in their belts and war medals on their

breasts. They were made way for as respectfully as though they

had been about to enter a church door. Of course, their votes

were thrown out, but it would not always be so. They would hope

on and vote on. Touching the reforms that women intend to bring

about when they shall "come into the kingdom," she said, "we will

rule liquor out of the country;" a declaration which at the

present critical stage of affairs, and in Washington, struck me

as rather impolitic. "As to the question of woman first or the

black man first," she said, "I mean both together"; evidently

looking for a constitutional amendment gateway wide enough for

the two to dash in abreast, neck-and-neck. "Oh, woman, great is

thy faith!" This speaker related some sad stories illustrative of

woman's legal disabilities, and dwelt feelingly on the old,

palpable, intolerable grievance of inequality of wages, and on

the bars and restrictions which woman encounters at every turn,

in her struggle for an honorable livelihood.

In reply, Mrs. Mott, in her bright, sweet, deprecating way, cast

a flood of sunlight on the dark pictures, by referring to the

remodeling of the laws respecting the relation of husband and

wife, in regard to property, and the right of the mother to her

child, by the Legislatures of the various States and especially

by that of the State of New York.

Miss Anthony followed in a strain not only cheerful, but

exultant--reviewing the advance of the cause from its first

despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged,

it commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual

pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time,

and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that

while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement,

and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the "swift, keen intelligence," Miss

Anthony, alert, aggressive, and indefatigable, is its nervous

energy--its propulsive force.

Mrs. Stanton has the best arts of the politician and the training

of the jurist, added to the fiery, unresting spirit of the

reformer. She has a rare talent for affairs, management, and

mastership. Yet she is in an eminent degree womanly, having an

almost regal pride of sex. In France, in the time of the

revolution or the first empire, she would have been a Roland or a

De Stael. I will not attempt the slightest sketch of her closing

speech, which was not only a powerful plea for disfranchised

womanhood, but for motherhood. It was now impassioned, now

playful, now witty, now pathetic. It was surpassingly eloquent,

and apparently convincing, for the boldest and most radical

utterances, brought from the great audience the heartiest

applause. For _this_, I love the people. No great, brave, true

thought can be uttered before an American audience without

bringing a cordial and generous response. All are not ready, of

course, to carry into action, into life, legislation, and law the

sentiments of liberty and justice they applaud; but they feel

that somewhere, in some nameless Utopia far away, such things

might be lived out. Thank heaven that Utopia is _possible_ for

humanity--a real, practical condition of our mortal life--only a

little way before us, perhaps.

Many good, refined people turn a cold shoulder on this cause of

woman's rights because their religious sentiment, or their taste,

is shocked by the character or appearance of some of its public

advocates. They say: "If we were only to see at their conventions

that Quaker gentlewoman, Lucretia Mott, with her serene presence;

Mrs. Stanton, with her patrician air; Miss Anthony, with her

sharp, intellectual fencing; Lucy Stone, with her sweet,

persuasive argument and lucid logic--it were very well; but to

their free platform, bores, fanatics, and fools are admitted, to

elbow them and disgust us." I suppose that such annoyances, to

use a mild term, necessarily belong to a free platform, and that

freedom of speech is one of the most sacred rights--especially to

woman. Yet I think some authority there should be to exclude or

silence persons unfit to appear before an intelligent and refined

audience--some power to rule out utterly, and keep out, ignorant

or insane men and women who realize some of the worst things

falsely charged against the leaders of this movement. But to see

the three chief figures of this great movement of Woman's Rights

sitting upon a stage in joint council, like the three Parcæ or

Fates of a new dispensation--dignity and the ever-acceptable

grace of scholarly earnestness, intelligence, and beneficence

making them prominent--is assurance that the women of our

country, bereft of defenders, or injured by false ones, have

advocates equal to the great demands of their cause.

GRACE GREENWOOD.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--We hear good accounts from all quarters of the

effect of the Woman's National Suffrage Convention. From the

numbers who called upon us, the courtesy of our rulers, the

marked attentions paid us in society, and the many enthusiastic

letters we daily receive, we are led to believe that woman's

suffrage is becoming very popular. As both the editor and

proprietor of _The Revolution_ are in the sere and yellow leaf,

the many attentions and compliments showered upon us are of

course from no personal considerations, but so many tributes of

respect to the ideas we represent; as such we gratefully accept

all that come to us, and thank our hosts of friends for the words

of good cheer we received in Washington. As we have never been

cast down with scorn and ridicule, we shall never be puffed up

with praise and admiration. In the future, as the past, the motto

of the good Abbe de Lamennais shall be ours, "Let the weal and

the woe of humanity be everything to us, their praise and their

blame of no effect." In conversation with some of the members we

found them quite jealous of the attentions Mr. Pomeroy was

receiving from the women of the nation. This will never do, to be

sowing seeds of discord where fraternal love should abound, and

we hope the women of the several States will send their petitions

to their own members. As Mr. Pomeroy has enough piled up in his

committee room to keep him busy all winter, we advise him to

distribute them among all the gallant gentlemen who would feel

honored in presenting them. Then, too, there is much wisdom in

the remarks made by the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, when he presented a

woman's petition, on the danger of granting Mr. Pomeroy a

monopoly of such privileges, lest he should grow lukewarm in the

cause. True, we have looked in vain for any burst of eloquence

from the Kansas gentleman, thus far, in the Senate, but it may be

that he can not find words to express the depth of his sympathy

for oppressed womanhood, hence the silent eloquence of action

alone in behalf of the fair petitioners.

One gentleman remarked, "Why do you push Pomeroy forward in your

movement? Julian is altogether the most reliable man." We

replied, we always push those who come forward. We should have

been very glad if Boutwell or Brooks, Wade or Wilson, Harlan or

Henderson, Julian or Jenckes had had the courage to come to our

platform, but as Mr. Pomeroy was the only member of Congress who

did come, he stands before the public as our champion in

Washington. These politicians are all alike. No doubt there are

many men in both Houses as earnest on this question as Mr.

Pomeroy, who are silent on personal considerations, while he is

active for the same reason. In Kansas, woman suffrage is a

popular question, hence it is safe for Senators from that State,

looking to a re-election, to advocate it, and when the women of

the several States are as wide awake as in Kansas, the members of

Congress will vie with each other to do them honor. We chanced to

lunch one day in Downing's saloon with the Hon. Sidney Clark, of

Kansas, and Gen. McMillan, of Minnesota, both strongly opposed to

the land swindle. The former has just made an able speech on that

question. Mr. Clark is a tall, fine-looking man, and bears so

striking a resemblance to the editor of the _Independent_ that he

is often accosted for him. The subject of discussion over Mr.

Downing's fine oysters was woman suffrage. Although Mr. Clark

rather gave us the cold shoulder in the Kansas campaign, he

promises to atone for his error by renewed ardor when the

proposition is again submitted.

Miss Anthony called on Senator Harlan, Chairman of the District

Committee, who readily granted us a hearing, which was had on

Wednesday, the 26th. Mr. H. being friendly to the idea, we shall

look to him to report a bill favorable to woman suffrage in the

District. Mr. Harlan has one of the most refined, spiritual faces

in the Senate. Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, who was on the committee

for investigating the election frauds in New York, said, when he

returned, that the greatest fraud he found there was that

one-half the people were not allowed to vote at all.

Messrs. Aiken and Florence, of the _Sunday Gazette_, were deeply

interested listeners throughout our Convention. On being

introduced to Mr. Florence, we expressed the hope that he would

now sharpen his pen and do valiant service for woman and help to

atone for all the injustice and ridicule of the press in the

past. He promptly pledged himself to defend our ideas valiantly

in the future. And he has started well in writing a glowing

editorial in his last paper, and giving two columns to our speech

on "Manhood Suffrage." To Senator Trumbull, who is Chairman of

the Judiciary Committee, all our petitions, appeals, and

addresses are referred. We hope he will not sink under such a

weight of responsibility, but read everything we send him with a

holy unction to the committee, and report favorably to the

Senate.

We learned from the Southern members that the South Carolina

delegation will go solid for woman suffrage. It has been a wonder

to us that Southern white women did not see the necessity of

their speedy enfranchisement, as a foreign race is, by the edicts

of the Republican party, exalted above their heads--made their

rulers, judges, jurors, and law-givers.

Friday evening, we went to Secretary McCulloch's and Mr. Colfax's

receptions. There we saw Mrs. Colfax for the first time; tall,

handsome, vigorous. We congratulated her on having won the most

popular man in America, whereupon the Vice-President elect smiled

and bowed profoundly, and we turned to greet glorious old Ben

Wade and his noble wife. Finance seemed to be the theme on all

sides, and we have our fears that the negroes, as well as the

women, will be lost sight of, in these discussions about the

currency. But this finance is a grave question, and the more we

read and think on it, the more we are convinced that the need of

money is the root of all evil. We were introduced to Professor

Helyard and Gen. Eaton, members of a scientific society of

gentlemen which meets once a week to discuss all that is in

heaven above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the

earth, without permitting a single one of Eve's daughters to

listen to the wisdom. They have lately discussed the subject of

earthquakes, and it was stated, we understand, that after the

women began to hold conventions in this country, earthquakes

became more frequent, occurring from 1850 in California,

simultaneously with these conventions in several States, showing

that old mother earth sympathizes with the sorrows of women. The

fear of similar occurrences in the District fully accounts for

the exclusiveness of these scientific gentlemen. Professor

Helgard discoursed most eloquently on co-operative housekeeping.

As we listened to the many good reasons he gave for cooking,

washing, and ironing on a large scale, we felt the women of the

nation might be benefited ultimately by these weekly cogitations,

if not permitted to enjoy the society of the cogitators.

E. C. S.

The National Woman's Suffrage Convention held in Washington, January

18th and 19th, presented the following appeal to the District

Committee:

TO THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

HONORABLE GENTLEMEN: As the Franchise bill is now under

consideration, we would urge your committee to so amend it as to

secure the right of suffrage to all the women of the District,

and thus establish in the capital of the nation the first genuine

republic the world has ever known. It would be a work of

supererogation to warn you against the puerile proposition to

disfranchise all the people of the District, by placing their

municipal affairs under the direct control of Congress, for such

retrogressive legislation is beneath the consideration of your

honorable committee, and would never be tolerated by the

American people. The tide of public opinion is setting to-day in

the opposite direction; in all governments we see a steadily

increasing tendency toward individual responsibilities--to the

election of rulers by a direct voice of the people. In this

general awakening, woman too has been roused to a sense not only

of her own rights as a human being, but to her duties as a

citizen under government.

It is especially fitting that the grand experiment of equality

should be first tried in the District of Columbia, where such

able debates on freedom have been heard during the last century;

where slavery was first abolished by an act of Congress; and

where the black man was first recognized as a citizen of the

United States. But in removing all political disabilities from

the male citizens of the District, you have established, for the

first time in the history of nations, a government based on the

aristocracy of sex; an aristocracy of all kinds the most odious

and unnatural. While every type and shade of manhood is rejoicing

to-day in all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens

in the District, its noblest matrons are still living under the

statute laws of a dark and barbarous age, running back to the old

common law of England centuries ago, having no parallel in our

day, but in the slave codes of the Southern States. Here a

married woman has no right to the property she inherits, to the

wages she earns, or to the children of her love, and from laws

like these she has no appeal; no advocate in the courts of

justice; no representative in the councils of the nation. Such is

the result of class legislation, clearly proving that man has

ever made laws for his own mother with as little justice and

generosity as he has from time to time for different orders of

his own sex. Suffering, as woman does, under the wrongs of Saxon

men, you have added insult to injury by exalting another race

above her head: slaves, ignorant, degraded, depraved, but

yesterday crouching at your feet, outside the pale of political

consideration, are to-day, by your edicts, made her lawgivers!

Thus here in the District you have consummated this invidious

policy of the nation, placing outside barbarians above your

Pilgrim mothers, who have stood by your side from the beginning,

sharing alike your dangers and triumphs in the great struggle on

this continent for free institutions.

We urge you, therefore, to report favorably on Senator Wilson's

amendment, because woman not only needs the ballot for her

protection, but the nation needs her voice in legislation for the

safety and stability of our institutions. We simply ask you to

apply your theory of government, your declaration of rights, the

principles enunciated by the great Republican party, the

far-seeing wisdom with which step by step you have secured all

men in their inalienable rights, to our case, and you will see

that logic, justice, common sense, and constitutional law are all

alike on our side of the question. We need not detain you to

rehearse the fundamental principles of our government, your own

interpretation of the constitution, or the right of Congress to

regulate suffrage in the District, for all this has been argued

before the nation and sealed by your own acts. With the argument

all on our side, the only question that remains is, does woman

herself demand the right of suffrage at this hour? If, honorable

gentlemen, you will look abroad, and note the general uprising of

women everywhere, in foreign nations as well as our own, you will

realize that our demand is the great onward step of the century

and not, as some claim, the idiosyncrasy of a few unbalanced

minds. Man knows as little of the real feeling of the women of

their household as did the proud Southerner of the slaves on his

plantation. Woman fears man's ridicule more than the slave did

the master's lash. Yes! woman waits to-day but for man's

approval, to manifest the intense enthusiasm she feels in the no

distant future, when she, too, shall be crowned sovereign of this

great republic, where all are of the blood royal--all heirs

apparent to the throne.

We are often asked the question, "On what do you base your

assertion that the ballot can achieve so much for woman? It has

not done much for man; in this country all white men vote, yet

the masses are wretchedly fed, housed, clothed, and poorly paid

for their labor. Ignorant alike of social and political economy,

their voting is a mere form; practically they have no more to do

with the government than the masses in the old world who have no

representation whatever." These wholesale philosophers, and we

meet them every day, are incapable of any patient process of

analytical reasoning. If the moment a man is endowed with the

suffrage he does not spring up into knowledge, virtue, wealth,

and position, then the right amounts to nothing. If a generation

of ignorant, degraded men, does not vote at once with the wisdom

of statesmen, then Universal Suffrage is a failure, and the

despot and the dagger the true government. The careful reader of

history will see that with every new extension of rights a new

step in civilization has been taken, and that uniformly those

nations have been most prosperous where the greatest number of

the people have been recognized in the government. Contrast China

with Russia, England with the United States. Where the few

govern, the legislation is for the advantage of the few. Where

the many govern, the legislation will gradually become more and

more for the advantage of the many, as fast as the many know

enough to demand laws for their own benefit. This knowledge comes

from an education in politics; and a ballot in a man's hand and

the responsibility of using it, is the first step in this

education. Even if a man sells his ballot, there is power in

possessing something that a politician must have or perish. The

Southern slaves must have acquired a new dignity in the scale of

being when Judge Kelley and Senator Wilson traveled all through

the South to preach to them on political questions.

The thinking men of England, as they philosophize on the abuses

of their government, see plainly that the only way to abolish an

order of nobility, a law of primogeniture and an established

church, is to give the masses a right by their votes to pitch

this triple power into the channel; for all the bulwarks of

aristocracy will, one by one, be swept away with the education

and enfranchisement of the people. Gladstone, John Bright, and

John Stuart Mill see clearly that the privileges of the few can

be extended to the many only by the legislation of the many. All

the beneficial results of the broad principles they are

advocating to-day, may not be fully realized in a generation,

but, to the philosophical mind, they are as true now as if

already achieved. The greatest minds in this country, too, have

made most exhaustive arguments to prove the power of the ballot,

and recognized the equality of all citizens, in our Declaration

of Rights, in extending suffrage to all white men, and in the

proposition to farther extend it to all black men. The great

Republican party (in which are many of the ablest men of the

nation) declare that emancipation to the black man is a mockery,

without the suffrage. When the thinking minds on both continents

are agreed as to the power of the ballot in the hand of every

man, it is surprising to hear educated Americans ask, "What

possible value would suffrage be to woman?" When, in the British

Parliament, the suffrage was extended to a million new voters,

even Lord Derby and Disraeli, who were opposed to the measure,

said at once, now, if this class are to vote, we must establish

schools for their education, showing the increased importance of

every man who has a voice in the government, and the new interest

of the rulers in his education. Where all vote all must be

educated; our public school system is the result of this

principle in our government. When women vote, Harvard, Yale, and

Princeton will throw wide open their doors.

Woman is not an anomalous being outside all law, that one need

make any special arguments to prove that what elevates and

dignifies man will educate and dignify woman also. When she

exercises her right of suffrage, she will study the science of

government, gain new importance in the eyes of politicians, and

have a free pass in the world of work. If the masses knew their

power, they could turn the whole legislation of this country to

their own advantage, and drive poverty, rags, and ignorance into

the Pacific Ocean. If they would learn wisdom in the National

Labor Conventions and not sell their votes to political

tricksters, a system of Finance, Trade, and Commerce, and

Co-operation could soon be established that would secure the

rights of Labor and put an end to the concentration of wealth in

the hands of the few. Labor holds the ballot now, let it learn

how to use it. Educated women know how to use it now, let them

have it.

Immediately after the convention in Washington, Mrs. Stanton and Miss

Anthony made their first tour through the Western States, speaking at

various points in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio, having been

invited to attend several State Conventions. The editorial

correspondence in _The Revolution_, gives a brief summary of this

Western trip, so valuable in its results, in the organization of many

suffrage associations. These meetings aroused the women who had been

absorbed by the war to new and higher duties, showing them that

although the battles of freedom had been fought and settled by the

sword, many questions growing out of the conflict were still to be

adjusted by discussion and legislation, and that, all important as

their work had been in helping to save the life of the nation, there

were other duties to themselves as citizens on which the perpetuation

of our free institutions as fully depended.

To awaken women everywhere to a proper self-respect, was the special

mission of the suffrage movement, and it was a labor, for the very

elect were in favor of negro suffrage first, woman suffrage

afterwards, which meant the postponement of the latter question for

another generation. The few who had the prescience to see the long

years of apathy that always follow a great conflict, strained every

nerve to settle the broad question of suffrage on its true basis while

the people were awake to its importance, but the blindness of

reformers themselves in playing into the hands of the opposition, made

all efforts unavailing.

CHICAGO, Feb. 12, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--Sitting on the platform in the Chicago

Convention, we remember that the mail to-night must take a word

to you. After traveling forty hours on the railroad, sitting two

days in convention and talking in all the leisure hours outside,

our missives to you must be short, but not spicy, for we feel

like a squeezed sponge at the present writing. Our journey

hither, barring delays, was most charming. This was our first

trip on the Erie Railroad, and although we had heard much of the

majesty and beauty of the scenery through the valleys of the

Delaware and Susquehanna, and the spacious, comfortable cars, the

journey surpassed our expectations. The convention has been

crowded and most enthusiastic throughout; judges, lawyers,

clergymen, professors, all taking part in its deliberations. The

women of this nation may congratulate themselves that their cause

is near its triumph when such noble men as Edward Beecher, Rev.

Mr. Goodspeed, Robert Collyer, Prof. Haven, Judge Waite, and

Judge Bradwell come forward in public to advocate their cause.

Mr. Beecher made an able speech yesterday, showing that "manhood

suffrage" was not the demand of this hour, but suffrage for all

the citizens of the republic. He pointed out the necessity of

woman's voice in the legislation of the country, not only for her

own safety, but for the preservation of our free institutions.

The Secretary of the convention, Mrs. J. F. Willing of Rockford,

is a most accomplished woman. She understands Greek, Latin,

French, German, Italian, writes for several periodicals, and is

the author of "Through the Dark to the Light," a new book, it is

said, of much power and merit.

Library Hall has been literally packed throughout the convention;

and, from the letters we have already received urging us to go

hither and thither throughout the West, "The prairies seem to be

all on fire with woman's suffrage." While politicians are trying

to patch up the Republican party, now near its last gasp, the

people in the West are getting ready for the new national party,

to combine the best elements of both the old ones, soon to be

buried forever out of sight. Woman's suffrage, greenbacks, free

trade, homesteads for all, eight hours labor, and three per cent

the legal interest, will be some of the planks in the platforms

of the political parties of the future. Mrs. Livermore, the

President of the Convention, discharged the duties of her office

with great executive ability, grace, and patience. The women of

Chicago are fortunate in having in her so wise and judicious a

manager of their cause. She is a tall, dignified-looking woman,

has a fine voice and pleasant address. William Wells Brown and

Anna Dickinson enlivened the discussions of this afternoon. The

former helped to annihilate "us" of _The Revolution_ on the same

resolutions we discussed at Washington, and Anna left Mr. Robert

_Laird_ Collyer, who had already had a passage at arms with Mrs.

Livermore and Robert Collyer, without one logical weapon for his

defense. This gentleman and Rev. Mr. Hammond, brother-in-law of

Owen Lovejoy, not believing in woman's suffrage, were, unhappily

for themselves, though to the great amusement of the audience,

made the target for all the wit and satire of the platform. Mr.

Hammond, in his death gasp, declared "he believed his Bible,"

which did not help his case, for everyone else on the platform

affirmed the same faith, with only this difference, they did not

believe Mr. Hammond's interpretation of the good book. Mrs. Myra

Bradwell, editor of the Chicago _Legal News_, took a prominent

part in the convention. She is a woman of great force and

executive ability, and it is said her husband is indebted to her

for his success in life.

A telegram from Mrs. Minor, President of the Woman's Suffrage

Association in St. Louis, says that they have announced us to

speak there on Monday evening. What will interest you more than

all besides, is the unanimous passage of a resolution in the

convention indorsing _The Revolution_ as the national organ of

the woman's suffrage movement. The Chicago press has graciously

given many columns to reports of the convention.

E. C. S.

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 18.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--While in Chicago we attended a reception at

Mrs. William Doggett's, where we met Madame de Herricourt, a

distinguished French lady, who published an able work on woman

some years since, in which she severely criticised several French

writers, Michelet among the rest, for their sentimental nonsense

about the sex. She is a very brilliant woman, with a large head,

a bright, expressive face, and a stout figure, rather below the

medium height. We discussed several French writers, among others,

Victor Hugo, and fully agreed as to his women--that they were all

lamentable failures. It is strange that a writer who can paint

such strong men should so utterly fade out whenever he attempts a

woman, and, the strangest part of it is, that he does not see it

himself, and get some gifted woman to draw his female characters.

To make such grand men as Jean Valjean and Gilliette love such

types of womanhood as Victor Hugo creates, always did seem to us

a desecration of that sentiment. We called to see Sidney Howard

Gay, one of the editors of the Chicago _Tribune_, and found him

writing with his left hand, as, owing to a severe fall, his right

hand had forgotten its cunning. If the grand position the Chicago

_Tribune_ takes on Woman Suffrage, is the result of this

accident, we wish all our Republican editors in the East would

take a left handed tilt at our question. Sunday night we left

Chicago for St. Louis in the palace cars, where we slept as

comfortably as in our own home and breakfasted on the train in

the morning. The dining-room was exquisitely arranged and the

cooking excellent. The kitchen was a gem, and the cook, in the

neatness and order of his person and all his surroundings, was a

pink of male perfection. It really did seem like magic, to eat,

sleep, read the morning papers, and talk with one's friends in

bed-room, dining-room and parlor, dashing over the prairies at

the rate of thirty miles an hour. While men can keep house in

this charming manner, the world will not be utterly desolate when

women _do_ vote. As we consider the great versatility in the

talents of our noble countrymen, we are lost in admiration. They

seem as much at home in watching the gyrations of an egg or

oyster in hot water as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; in

making pins and buttons to unite garments that time and haste may

have put asunder as in spanning continents with railroads and

telegraphs.

As we reached the eastern bank of the Mississippi, we were met by

a delegation of ladies and gentlemen to escort us to St. Louis,

where we found pleasant apartments in the Southern Hotel, which

is extremely well kept, and where one is always sure of a

"christian" cup of coffee. The tea and coffee in all the hotels

on the route are the most miserable concoctions of hayseed and

chiccory that were ever palmed off on a long-suffering, patient

people. We had an enthusiastic meeting in St. Louis, and found

great interest manifested in the question of woman suffrage among

many of its leading citizens. The ladies were in high spirits, as

they had just returned from Jefferson, where they had been most

graciously received by their legislators. Miss Phoebe Couzins had

made an address at the capitol which was well received. She is a

young lady of great beauty and talent, both as a writer and

speaker, and is called the Anna Dickinson of the West. She is

studying law, and hopes to be admitted to the senior class in the

law school next year. Her mother, a woman of rare capacity, is a

candidate for the Post Office of St. Louis. We hope she will get

it. Tuesday evening we had a reception in the parlors of the

hotel. Among others, we were happy to meet Mrs. Tittman, a highly

cultivated German lady, sister of Professor Helyard, whom we met

in Washington. She announced that two of the German papers had

come out in favor of woman suffrage that morning and confessed

that they were converted the night before. We were surprised to

hear that the paper controlled by Carl Schurz and Emile Pretorius

had not taken that position long ago. But, from the character and

influence of the German ladies there, it is evident that the

German politicians must come to terms. Mrs. Minor, President of

the Missouri Woman Suffrage Association, invited us to drive

around and see the parks, gardens and new streets of the city.

We drove to the Polytechnic, and were received by Mr. Baily

(Librarian) and Mr. Devoll, ex-superintendent of schools. He said

that he was ready to vote for educated suffrage, without

distinction of sex.

The ladies then proposed to go to the Merchants' Exchange and see

the bulls and bears. Accordingly we drove there, ascended into

the galleries, and looked down upon a great crowd of men standing

round long lines of tables covered with tin pie-plates. At first

we thought they were lunching, but we soon perceived that the

tins contained different kinds of grains and flour, which wise

ones were carefully examining. As we stood there, laughing at the

idiosyncrasies of the sons of Adam, lo! two most polished

gentlemen approached our charmed circle, and announced that they

were a committee from the merchants on the floor to invite us to

come down and address them. We descended with Mr. John J. Roe and

Mr. Merritt and were introduced to the President of the Board,

George P. Plant, and Mr. Blow, who escorted us to a temporary

platform, and called the house to order. We made a short speech,

and then there were loud calls from all parts of the house for

Miss Couzins. She stepped forward and made a few pleasant

remarks, when we all bowed graciously to the gallant gentlemen

who conferred this great honor upon us, and retired.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb. 21.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--We have been resting here at the capital of

Illinois a few days. Of our meeting in the Opera House we will

say nothing about it, except that we had the Governor and members

of the Legislature as attentive listeners, and the

Lieut.-Governor for presiding officer, who made an admirable

speech indorsing woman's suffrage. Mrs. Livermore made an able

argument, though Robert _Laird_ Collyer says we never have any

logic on our platform, as if we had not been so logical in all

our positions for the last twenty years that the dear men had no

answer to make. Poor fellows! as they saw their outposts, one

after another taken, their fortresses riddled through and

through, their own guns turned on their defenseless heads, and

such fifty-pounders as "taxation without representation," "all

men created equal," "no just government can be formed without the

consent of the governed," hurled at them, no wonder they left

logic and took up ridicule; and now, when we meet them with their

own weapons, they say we can not reason. The drunken man always

imagines the lamp-posts dancing. Poor R. L. C., in the Chicago

Convention, really thought his platitudes logic, and our logic

sentiment.

On arriving at Springfield, we found the Chicago delegation all

ready to besiege the Legislature. Among them were Mrs. Mary A.

Livermore, Mr. Bradwell and his pretty wife Myra, who edits the

Chicago _Legal News_. We have met several members of the bar and

judges of the Supreme Court, among others Judge Lawrence and

Judge Breese. All these gentlemen of the bar are in favor of

amending the laws and constitutions. One thing is certain, unless

these Republicans wheel in and do their duty, the Democrats in

the West will take up woman's suffrage. We would advise the

Western men to come into the measure generously and gracefully,

and not be so obstinate and mulish as our Eastern lords have

been. There is no escape, and where is the use of courting

disgrace and defeat?

Sharon Tyndale, Ex-Secretary of State, escorted us to the House

and Senate, and introduced us to the heads of the departments. We

had two pleasant interviews with Gov. Palmer. He talks very

reasonably in regard to the enfranchisement of women, although he

says he does not quite indorse it yet, but as he has a very

clear, honest mind, he will soon convince himself that what the

ballot has done towards elevating man it will do for woman also.

The telegrams are flying in all directions for us to come here,

there, everywhere. Western women are wide-awake to-day. The

question of submitting an amendment to the Constitution to strike

out the word "male," is under consideration. The poor "white

male" is doomed.

E. C. S.

CHICAGO, March 1.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--From Springfield, I went to Bloomington,

lectured before the Young Men's Association to a large audience,

and met there many liberal men and women. I found that the Rev.

Mr. Harrison had just fired a gun in the town paper on the lack

of logic in the Chicago Convention and women's intuitions in

general. It amuses me to hear the nonsense these men talk. They

say God never intended woman to reason, they shut their college

doors against her so that she can not study that manly

accomplishment, and then they blame her for taking a short cut to

the same conclusion they reach in their roundabout, lumbering

processes of ratiocination. Do these gentlemen wish us to set

aside God's laws, pick up logic on the sidewalks, and go step by

step to a point we can reach with one flash of intuition? As long

as we have the gift of catching truth by the telegraph wires,

neither the sage of Bloomington nor Robert Laird Collyer of

Chicago need ask us to go jogging after it in a stage-coach,

perchance to be stuck in the mud on the highways as they are. It

is enough to make angels weep to see how the logicians, skilled

in the schools, are left floundering on every field before the

simple intuitions of American womanhood.

Finding the ladies of Bloomington somewhat scarified and nervous

under the Reverend's firing, like the good Samaritan, I tried to

pour oil and wine on their wounded spirits, by exalting

intuition, and with a pitiful and patronizing tone deploring the

slowness, the obtuseness, the materialism of most of the sons of

Adam. It had its effect. They soon dried their tears, and with

returning self-respect, told me of all the wonderful things women

were doing in that town. From the scintillations of wit, the fun

and the laughter, an outsider would never have supposed that we

were an oppressed class, and so hopelessly degraded in the

statute laws and Constitution. After the meeting we had a long

talk with the clerical assailant, and were happy to find that the

good man's pen had done his heart great injustice. He is rather

morbid on the question of logic; but the most melancholy symptom

of his disease is his hatred of _The Revolution_. He says it is a

very wicked paper, that he had felt it his duty to warn his

congregation against taking it, thus depriving us of, at least,

five hundred subscribers, though he read it himself (under

protest) regularly every week. Strange what a fascination evil

things have even for those who minister at the altar! He advised

me to strangle Train, gibbet the financial editor, snub the

proprietor, and to say no more in the paper on the questions of

political economy, until we had one and all studied the subject.

Dear _Revolution_, when I listened to those things, I had the

same sinking of the heart that I used to feel when neighbors

complained that my boys were running over their house-tops,

dropping stones down their chimneys, ringing their bells then

running away, throwing balls in their windows, and teazing the

girls on the sidewalk. Now, I do hope, dear _Revolution_, you

will not bring my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, but turn

over a new leaf and adopt some Christian means to get back these

five hundred subscribers. The reverend gentleman said one thing

that was like balm to my bruised spirit. He liked everything over

the initials P. P. and E. C. S. _Sub rosa_, P. P., we must try

and circumvent Train, and fill the paper ourselves.

I met some grand women at Bloomington, one who has been a

successful merchant in the dry-goods business. She has not only

supported her self and a family of children, but cleared $5,000

in five years. Another lady is a furniture dealer; when her

husband died she went on with the business, and although he was

so much embarrassed that every one advised her to close up and

save what she could, she has paid all the debts, saved a handsome

sum of money, and been every way more successful than her husband

before her. A lady is the head of an establishment where music

and pianos are sold. She carries on a large business, and has

been very successful. All these women with their intuitions seem

to be doing much better than many who can boast the gift of

reason. I should not be surprised if, in the progress of events,

men should come to think that woman's gift, after all, is the

more desirable.

E. C. S.

TOLEDO, March 7.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--A bright, crisp morning I found myself seated

beside Mrs. Livermore in the train for Milwaukee, whither we were

going to attend a convention. In these eventful times of woman

suffrage, having been separated a few days, on meeting, our

hearts were overflowing with good news for one another. While I

told Mrs. L. all I had seen and heard at Bloomington, and the

various conversations I had had with dissenting "white males" on

the trains, she told me her plans in regard to her new paper, the

_Agitator_. Having decided to call such a journal into being,

what its name should be was the question. Accordingly a council

was held of the wise men and willful women of Chicago over the

baptismal font of the new comer. The men, still clinging to the

pleasant illusions that everything emanating from woman should be

mild, gentle, serene, suggested "The Lily," "The Rose Bud," "The

New Era," "The Dawn of Day;" but Mrs. Livermore, always heroic

and brave, now defiant and determined, having fully awakened to

the power and dignity of the ballot, and stung to the very soul

with the proposed amendment for "manhood suffrage," declared that

none of those names, however touching and beautiful, expressed

what she intended the paper should be--nothing more or less than

the twin sister of _The Revolution_, whose mission is to turn

everything inside out, upside down, wrong side before. With such

intentions, she felt the _Agitator_ was the only name that fully

matched _The Revolution_. All the women present echoed her

sentiments, eschewing the "rose bud" dispensation and declaring

that they would rather get the word "male" out of the

constitution than to have a complete set of diamonds--rather have

a right to property, wages, and children, than the best seats in

the cars, and the tid-bits at the table. Thus, with one

simultaneous shout, the women proclaimed the _Agitator_. The men

calmly and sorrowfully resigned all hope of influence in the

matter, and, as they dispersed, it was evident they looked

mournfully into the future. Good Prof. Haven said that the mere

name of the _Agitator_ gave him an ague chill, and what life

would be to most men after this twin sister to _The Revolution_

was under full headway, no one could predict. Filled with

profound pity for our beloved countrymen in this their hour of

humiliation, we arrived in Milwaukee, where a delegation of

ladies and gentlemen awaited us, among whom were a nephew and

niece of Rufus Peckham, of New York, young law students of great

promise. We drove to the Plankington House, where a suite of

beautifully furnished apartments, with a bright fire in the

grate, was prepared for us.

The Convention was held in the City Hall, and lasted two days,

three sessions each, and was crowded throughout. Miss Chapin, the

regularly ordained pastor of the Universalist church, was the

President. Mr. and Miss Peckham, Dr. Laura J. Ross, and Madam

Anneke were the ruling spirits of the Convention. Madam Anneke, a

German lady of majestic presence and liberal culture, made an

admirable speech in her own language. The platform, besides an

array of large, well-developed women, was graced with several

reverend gentlemen--Messrs. Dudley, Allison, Eddy, and

Fellows--all of whom maintained woman's equality with eloquence

and fervor. The Bible was discussed from Genesis to Revelation,

in all its bearings on the question under consideration. By

special request I gave my Bible argument, which was published in

full in the daily papers. A Rev. Mr. Love, who took the opposite

view, maintained that the Bible was opposed to woman's equality.

He criticised some of my Hebrew translations, and scientific

expositions, but as the rest of the learned D.D.s sustained my

views, I shall rest in the belief that brother Love, with time

and thought, will come to the same conclusions. A Rev. Mr.

England also profanely claimed the Bible on the side of tyranny,

and seemed to think that "Nature intended that the male should

dominate over the female everywhere." As Mr. E. is a small, thin,

shadowy man, without much blood, muscle, or a very remarkable

cerebral development, we would advise him always to avoid the

branch of the argument he stumbled upon in the Milwaukee

Convention--"the physical superiority of man." Unfortunately for

him, the platform illustrated the opposite, and the audience

manifested, ever and anon, by suppressed laughter, that they saw

the contrast between the large, well-developed brains and muscles

of the women who sat there, and those of the speaker. Either

Madam Anneke, Mrs. Livermore, or Dr. Ross, could have taken the

reverend gentleman up in her arms and run off with him. Now, I

mean nothing invidious toward small men, for some of the greatest

men the world has known have been physically inferior, for

example, Lord Nelson, Napoleon, our own Grant and Sheridan, and

ex-Secretary Seward. All I mean to say is, that it is not politic

or in good taste for a small man to come before an audience and

claim physical superiority; that branch of the argument should be

left for the great, burly fellows six feet high and

well-proportioned, who illustrate the assertion by their

overpowering presence.

We were happy to meet Mr. Butler in Milwaukee, a good Democrat,

and one of the most distinguished lawyers in Wisconsin, and to

find in him an ardent supporter of our cause. I told him we were

looking to the Democrats to open the constitutional doors to the

women in the several States. He said he thought they were getting

ready to do so in the West. In Milwaukee, my pet resolutions that

had been voted down in Washington and Chicago passed without a

dissenting voice.

MADISON, Wisconsin.

Hearing of the great enthusiasm at Milwaukee, Madison telegraphed

for the convention to adjourn to the capitol and address the

Legislature. Accordingly, on Friday a large delegation took the

train to that city. On arriving, the first person who greeted us

was Mr. Croffet, formerly of the New York _Tribune_. He went with

us to the hotel where we were introduced to lawyers, judges,

senators, generals, editors, Republicans and Democrats, who were

alike ready to break a lance for woman. A splendid audience

greeted us in the Hall of Representatives. Governor Fairchild

presided. Mrs. Livermore, Miss Anthony and myself, all said the

best things we could think of, and with as much vim as we could

command after talking all day in the cars and every moment until

we entered the capitol, without even the inspiration that comes

from a good cup of tea or coffee. Blessed are they who draw their

inspirations from the stars, the grand and beautiful in nature,

and the glory of the human face divine, for such sources

niggardly landlords and ignorant cooks can neither muddle nor

exhaust. After the meeting we were invited into the Executive

apartments and presented to Mrs. Fairchild, a woman of rare

beauty, cultivation, and common sense. She, as well as the

Governor, expressed great interest in the question of woman's

suffrage. The Governor, with many others, subscribed for _The

Revolution_.

From Madison we returned to Chicago. At Janesville, Wis., the

Postmaster, Mr. Burgess, came on board on his way to Washington.

In the course of conversation we learned that there had been some

trouble in that town about the post office, and it was finally

decided to submit the matter to a vote of the people. The result

was that Miss Angeline King, Mr. Burgess's opponent, was chosen

by fifty majority. This was a bomb shell in the male camp, and

half a dozen men started for Washington, to show General Grant

that they had, one and all, done braver deeds during the war than

Angie possibly could have done, and that their loyalty should be

rewarded. Angie, like a wise woman, stole the march on all of

them, and reached Washington before they started. If the people

of Janesville prefer Angie, as they have shown they do by their

votes, we think it would be well for the powers that be to

confirm the choice of the people.

In Chicago, we were glad to meet again our charming friend, Anna

Dickinson. Miss Anthony spent the day with her at Mr. Doggett's

one of the liberal merchant princes of that city. The result of

that day's cogitation was one of the most cutting speeches that

the "Gentle Anna," as the _Tribune_ called her, ever made. It was

a severe, but just criticism of all the twaddle of the Western

press after the Chicago Woman's Suffrage Convention. Liberty Hall

was crowded with a most enthusiastic audience, and although the

press was not very complimentary the next day, the people who

listened were delighted. She was advertised to give "Fair Play,"

but the West is tired of the negro question, and she was besieged

on all sides to speak on woman, which she did with great effect.

E. C. S.

GALENA, March 3.