An interesting feature of the centennial parlors was an immense

autograph book, in which the names of friends to the movement were

registered by the thousands, some penned on that historic day and

sent from the old world and the new, and others written on the spot

during these eventful months. From the tidings of all these

enthusiastic assemblies and immense number of letters[16] received

in Philadelphia, unitedly demanding an extension of their rights,

it was evident that the thinking women of the nation were hopefully

waiting in the dawn of the new century for greater liberties to

themselves.

From "Aunt Lottie's Centennial Letters to her Nieces and Nephews,"

we give the one describing this occasion:

MY DEARS: I suppose I had best tell you in this letter about the

Fourth of July celebration at the centennial city--at least that

portion of it that I know about, and which I would not have

missed for the exhibition itself, and which I would not have you

miss for all the rest of my letters. I cannot expect you to be as

much interested in it as was I, but it is time you were becoming

interested in the subject; and, if you live a half century from

this time (in less than that, I hope,) you will see that what I

am about to relate was, as General Hawley admitted it would be,

"the event of the occasion."

At the commencement of the exhibition, Miss Susan B. Anthony and

Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage came to Philadelphia and procured the

parlors of 1,431 Chestnut street for the accommodation of the

National Woman Suffrage Association. These rooms were open to the

friends of the association, and public receptions were held and

well attended every Tuesday and Friday evening. During these

months these two ladies--assisted the latter part of the time by

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton--were engaged in preparing a history

of the suffrage movement and a declaration of rights to be

presented at the great centennial celebration of the Fourth of

July, 1876. This document is in form like the first declaration

of a hundred years ago, handsomely engrossed by Mrs. Sara Andrews

Spencer, of Washington--a lady delegate to the Cincinnati

Republican convention, June 12.

The celebration was held in Independence Square, just back of the

old state-house where the first declaration was signed. There was

a great crowd of people collected; a poem was read by Bayard

Taylor and a speech delivered by William M. Evarts. But I knew it

was useless to go there expecting to hear any portion of either;

so I waited until twelve o'clock and then rode down in the cars

to Dr. Furness' church, corner of Broad and Locust streets, where

these ladies were to hold their meeting. The church was full, and

the exercises were opened by Mrs. Mott--the venerable and

venerated president--a Quaker lady of slight form, attired in a

plain, light-silk gown, white muslin neckerchief and cap, after

that exquisitely neat and quaint fashion. Then the Hutchinsons

sang a hymn, in which all were requested to join. Afterward Mrs.

Stanton came to the front of the pulpit, the house was hushed, to

a reverential stillness, and I never yet heard anything so solemn

and impressive as her reading of the Declaration of Rights of the

Women of the United States.

A printed copy had been given me the day before, when between the

sessions of the New England American Association in the Academy

of Music, where were Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. Antoinette

Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth K. Churchill and other pleasant-faced,

sweet-voiced ladies, I had called at the rooms on Chestnut street

and folded declarations, for half an hour with Mrs. Stanton,

which they were distributing by post and in every way all over

the land. When I read it at home that night I realized its

importance, but as the next day (the Fourth) was excessively

warm, I very nearly gave up going, and then I should have missed

the impressiveness of her reading. When she first commenced, her

voice seemed choked with emotion. She must have realized what she

was doing, as we all knew it was the grandest thing that had been

done in a hundred years. Thrill after thrill went through my

veins, and the whole scene formed a picture that will yet be the

subject of artists' pencils and poets' pens. I should have been

contented to have had the meeting closed then with that best song

of the Hutchinsons upon the progress of reform, where the young

gentleman was so much applauded for his solo, "When Women Shall

be Free." Still we were all interested in Mrs. Spencer's account

of her interview with General Hawley, and his refusal to permit

the silent handing-in of the declaration, which, after her

persistence, assuring him "it would not take three minutes," he

was obliged to confess was because he was "very well aware it

would be the event of the occasion." "Immediately," said Mrs.

Spencer, "you cannot imagine what an inspiration we all had to do

it; for," added the slight, fair-haired, fluent lady, in a

humorous manner that called forth laughter and applause, "I never

yet was forbidden by a man to do a thing, but that I resolved to

do it."

We were also pleased to hear from that earnest woman, Susan B.

Anthony, inspired by the immutable abstract truths of justice and

equity. Reports say that she has the air of a Catholic devotee.

She said that in defiance of "the powers that be" she took a

place on that platform in Independence square, and at the proper

time delivered the engrossed copy of the declaration to the Hon.

T. W. Ferry, who received it with a courteous bow; and afterward

on the steps of Independence Hall she read it to an assembled

multitude. She had done her centennial day's work for all time;

and small wonder that mind and body craved rest after such

tension. She is yet under a hundred dollars fine for voting at

Rochester, and although from her lectures the last six years she

has paid $10,000 indebtedness on _The Revolution_, she said she

never would have paid that fine had she been imprisoned till now.

Mrs. Lucretia Mott, whom the younger Hutchinson[17] assisted into

the pulpit--a beautiful sight to see cultured youth supporting

refined old age--stated that she went up there, "not because she

was higher-minded than the rest, but so that her enfeebled voice

might be better heard." The dear old soul is so much stronger

than her body, that it would seem that she must have greatly

overtasked herself; though an inspired soul has wonderful

recuperative forces at command for the temple it inhabits. A

goodly number of gentlemen were present at this meeting and that

of the day before--three or four of them making short speeches. A

Mr. Raper of England, strongly interested in the temperance and

woman suffrage cause, told us that in his country "all women

tax-payers voted for guardians of the poor, upon all educational

matters, and also upon all municipal affairs. In that respect she

was in advance of this professed republic. In England there is an

hereditary aristocracy, here, an aristocracy of sex"; or, as the

spirited Lillie Devereux Blake who was present once amusingly

termed it, of "the bifurcated garment." And now perhaps some

materially-minded person will ask, "What are you going to do

about it? You can't fight!" forgetting that we are now fighting

the greatest of all battles, and that the weapons of woman's

warfare, like her nature at its best development, are moral and

spiritual.

LEWISE OLIVER.

_Philadelphia_, July 13, 1876.

The press of the country commented extensively upon the action of

the women:

At noon to-day, in the First Unitarian church, corner Tenth and

South, the National Woman Suffrage Association will present the

Woman's Declaration of Rights. The association will hold a

convention at the same time and place, at which Lucretia Mott is

announced to preside, and several ladies to make speeches. Most

of the ladies are known as women of ability and earnest apostles

of the creed they have espoused for the political enfranchisement

of women. Their declaration of rights, we do not doubt, will be

strongly enforced. These ladies, or some of them, have been

assigned places upon the platform at the grand celebration

ceremonies to take place in Independence Square to-day; and they

have requested leave to present their declaration of rights in

form on that occasion. They do not ask to have it read, we

believe, but simply that the statement of their case shall go on

file with the general archives of the day, so that the women of

1976 may see that their predecessors of 1876 did not let the

centennial year of independence pass without

protest.--[Philadelphia _Ledger_, July 4.

There was yet another incident of the Fourth, in Independence

Square. Immediately after the Declaration of Independence had

been read by Richard Henry Lee, and while the strains of the

"Greeting from Brazil" were rising upon the air, two ladies

pushed their way vigorously through the crowd and appeared upon

the speaker's platform. They were Susan B. Anthony and Matilda

Joslyn Gage. Hustling generals aside, elbowing governors, and

almost upsetting Dom Pedro in their charge, they reached

Vice-President Ferry, and handed him a scroll about three feet

long, tied with ribbons of various colors. He was seen to bow and

look bewildered; but they had retreated in the same vigorous

manner before the explanation was whispered about. It appears

that they demanded a change of programme for the sake of reading

their address; but if so, this was probably a mere form intended

for future effect. More than six months ago some of the advocates

of female suffrage began in this city their crusade against

celebrating the centennial anniversary of a nation wherein women

are not permitted to vote. The demand of Miss Anthony and Mrs.

Gage to be allowed to take part in a commemoration which many of

their associates discouraged and denounced, would have been a

cool proceeding had it been made in advance. Made, as it was,

through a very discourteous interruption, it pre-figures new

forms of violence and disregard of order which may accompany the

participation of women in active partisan politics.--[New York

_Tribune_.

The letter of a correspondent, printed in another column,

describing the presentation of a woman's bill of rights, in

Independence Square on the Fourth of July, will interest all

readers, whether or not they think with the correspondent, that

this little affair was the most important of the day's

proceedings. We have not a doubt that the persons who were

concerned in the affair enjoyed it heartily. Those of them who

made speeches naturally regarded their eloquence as a thing to

stir the nation. All persons who make speeches do. The day was a

warm one, and imagination, like the fire-cracker, was on fire. In

the heat of the occasion, of course, the women who want to vote

and who desire the protection of the writ of _habeas corpus_

against the tyranny of actual or possible husbands, felt that

they were making great folios of history; but the sagacity of the

press agents and reporters was not at fault. The gatherers of

news know very well what they are about; and when they decided to

omit this part of the proceedings from their reports, they simply

obeyed that instinct upon which their livelihood depends--the

instinct, namely, to write only of matters in which the public is

interested.

The good women who wrote and published this declaration, fancying

that they were throwing a bombshell into the gathered crowds of

American (male) citizens, are very much in earnest, doubtless,

and are entitled--we have platform authority for saying it--to

"respectful consideration"; but their movement scarcely rises, as

yet at least, to the dignity of a great historical event. There

is a prevailing indifference to their cause which is against it.

The public is not aroused to a fever heat of indignation over the

wrongs which women are everywhere suffering at the hands of the

tyrants called husbands. The popular mind is not yet awake to the

fact that men usually imprison their wives in back parlors and

maltreat them shamefully. The witnesses, wives to wit, refuse to

bear testimony to this effect, and the public placidly accepts

appearance for reality and believes that the gentlewomen who ride

about in their carriages or haunt the shops of our cities in gay

apparel are reasonably well contented with their lot in life. In

a word, it is not hostility so much as calm indifference with

which the advocates of woman suffrage have to contend, and

unluckily for them the indifference is very largely

feminine.--[New York _Evening Post_.

There is something awful in the thought that should the woman

suffragists be continually refused a voice in the affairs of the

nation they might at last in a fit of desperation, do what our

fathers did, and frame a declaration of independence, No, 2. Just

think of an army of crinolines willing to take arms against the

tyrant man, and sacrifice their lives, if need be, to carry out

their principles! It is easier to ridicule the woman suffrage

movement than to answer the arguments advanced by some of the

leading advocates of that question. It is only the innate

mildness of the position of women in general that has prevented a

revolution on this same subject long ago. One hundred thousand

such fire-eaters as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton in

the land, could raise a rumpus which would cause the late

unpleasantness to pale into insignificance. Armed and equipped,

what a sight would be presented by an army of strong-minded

women! There would be no considering the question of whether the

cavalry should ride side-saddle, or _a la_ clothes-pin. Such

detail would be of too small importance to receive the slightest

attention; the more vital questions would be, "How can we

slaughter the most men?" "How can we soonest convince the demons

that we have rights which must be respected?" The fact is, that

if these down-trodden women would take a firm stand in any thing

like respectable numbers, and assert their claims to suffrage at

the point of the bayonet, they would be allowed everything they

asked for. There is not a man in the land who would dare to take

up arms against a woman. Such a dernier resort on the part of the

women would be truly laughable, but the matter would cease to be

a joke, if General Susan B. Anthony, in command of a bloomer

regiment, should march into the halls of congress, armed

_cap-a-pie_, and demand the passage of a law in behalf of woman

suffrage, or the alternative of the general cleaning out of the

whole body. There is no immediate prospect of such an event, but

"hell hath no furies like a woman scorned." Long and loud have

been the appeals of the fair sex for recognition at the

ballot-box. With that faithful zeal so truly characteristic of

her sex, she has each time, for many years in the history of this

country, presented herself before the curious gaze of our

national conventions, asking, with no little stress of argument,

for a woman's plank in the platforms. If she has been heard at

all in the framed resolutions of the parties, the feeling

prevailing in the conventions has been rather to pacify and put

her off, than to grant her request through motives of political

policy. If perseverance is to be awarded, the agitators of the

woman question will yet carry off the prize they seek. Death

alone can silence such women as Susan B. Anthony and Cady

Stanton, and their teachings will live after them and unite

others of their sex into strong bands of sisterhood in a common

cause. It is safe to say, if events march on in the same

direction they have since the calling of the first National

Woman's Convention, another centennial will see woman in the

halls of legislation throughout the land, and so far as we are

concerned we have no objection, so long as she behaves

herself.--[St. Louis _Dispatch_, July 13.

It is a curious anomaly that the movement for national woman

suffrage in our country is most obstructed by women, and that

even where the men have doubts, their natural admiration for the

gentler sex almost converts them into champions. Certain it is

that the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States

that the National Woman Suffrage Association presented to the

vice-president, Mr. Ferry, while he was surrounded by foreign

princes and potentates and by the governors of most of the States

of the union, faced at the same time by a countless mass of

American and foreign visitors--certain it is, we repeat, that

when this altogether unique paper was presented by Miss Susan B.

Anthony and her sisters, it became a record in the minds and

memory of all who witnessed the strange proceeding. And it is a

very well written statement, and no doubt one hundred years hence

it will be read with an interest not less ecstatic than the

enthusiasm of its present pioneers; for, in the interval, these

advanced women may have won for their withholding sisters the

entire list of male prerogatives. What adds to the force of the

present woman suffrage party is the dignity, intelligence and

purity of its participants. The venerable Lucretia Mott; the

honest, straightforward Susan B. Anthony; the cultivated Ellen

Clark Sargent (wife of the California senator); the beloved

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and indeed all the names attached to the

declaration command our respect. Whatever we may think of the

points of the declaration itself, with all our sincere admiration

of these gentlewomen, increased by the knowledge everywhere that

they are ardent republicans, we fear that their weakness, to

employ a paradox, consists in their strength, or, in other words,

that it is difficult to induce even the most benevolent and

sympathetic observer to believe that they are really as much

persecuted and oppressed as they claim to be. When the colored

man demanded his rights they were given to him because these

rights in republican constitutions were regarded as inherent, and

also because he had reciprocal duties to discharge, and heavy

burdens to carry, and when the Southern confederate demanded

restitution of his rights, he rested his claim upon the double

basis that he had earned forgiveness by his bravery, and that

political disfranchisement did not belong to a republican

example. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is very different with

the ladies; and so when they come forward insisting upon rights

heretofore accorded to men alone, they must encounter all the

differences created by the delicacy of their own sisters and the

reverence and love of the men, and the hard fact that these two

influences have made it heretofore impossible for women to

descend to the arena of politics. Having said this much, we

present a few of the cardinal points of the woman's declaration

of rights laid before the august memorial centennial celebration

last Tuesday, July 4, 1876.--[Philadelphia _Press_, July 15.

On July 19, the Citizens' Suffrage Association, of Philadelphia,

joined with the National Association in commemorating the first

woman's rights convention called by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth

Cady Stanton, at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848--thus

celebrating the twenty-eighth anniversary of that historic event.

The meeting was presided over by Edward M. Davis, president of the

association, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and one of the most

untiring workers in the cause. The venerable Lucretia Mott

addressed the meeting, and Miss Anthony read letters from several

of the earliest and most valued pioneers of the movement:

TENAFLY, New Jersey, July 19, 1876.

LUCRETIA MOTT--_Esteemed Friend_: It is twenty-eight years ago

to-day since the first woman's rights convention ever held

assembled in the Wesleyan chapel at Seneca Falls, N. Y. Could we

have foreseen, when we called that convention, the ridicule,

persecution, and misrepresentation that the demand for woman's

political, religious and social equality would involve; the long,

weary years of waiting and hoping without success; I fear we

should not have had the courage and conscience to begin such a

protracted struggle, nor the faith and hope to continue the work.

Fortunately for all reforms, the leaders, not seeing the

obstacles which block the way, start with the hope of a speedy

success. Our demands at the first seemed so rational that I

thought the mere statement of woman's wrongs would bring

immediate redress. I thought an appeal to the reason and

conscience of men against the unjust and unequal laws for women

that disgraced our statute books, must settle the question. But I

soon found, while no attempt was made to answer our arguments,

that an opposition, bitter, malignant, and persevering, rooted in

custom and prejudice, grew stronger with every new demand made,

with every new privilege granted.

How well I remember that July day when the leading ladies and

gentlemen of the busy town crowded into the little church;

lawyers loaded with books, to expound to us the laws; ladies with

their essays, and we who had called the convention, with our

declaration of rights, speeches, and resolutions. With what

dignity James Mott, your sainted husband, tall and stately, in

Quaker costume, presided over our novel proceedings. And your

noble sister, Martha C. Wright, was there. Her wit and wisdom

contributed much to the interest of our proceedings, and her

counsel in a large measure to what success we claimed for our

first convention. While so many of those early friends fell off

through indifference, fear of ridicule and growing conservatism,

she remained through these long years of trial steadfast to the

close of a brave, true life. She has been present at nearly every

convention, with her encouraging words and generous

contributions, and being well versed in Cushing's Manual, has

been one of our chief presiding officers. And my heart is filled

with gratitude, even at this late day, as I recall the

earnestness and eloquence with which Frederick Douglass advocated

our cause, though at that time he had no rights himself that any

white man was bound to respect. I marvel now, that in our

inexperience the interest was so well sustained through two

entire days, and that when the meeting adjourned everybody signed

the declaration and went home feeling that a new era had dawned

for woman. What had been done and said seemed so preeminently

wise and proper that none of us thought of being ridiculed,

ostracised, or suspected of evil. But what was our surprise and

chagrin to find ourselves, in a few days, the target for the

press of the nation; the New York _Tribune_ being our only strong

arm of defense.

Looking over these twenty-eight years, I feel that what we have

achieved, as yet, bears no proportion to what we have suffered in

the daily humiliation of spirit from the cruel distinctions based

on sex. Though our State laws have been essentially changed, and

positions in the schools, professions, and world of work secured

to woman, unthought of thirty years ago, yet the undercurrent of

popular thought, as seen in our social habits, theological

dogmas, and political theories, still reflects the same customs,

creeds, and codes that degrade women in the effete civilizations

of the old world. Educated in the best schools to logical

reasoning, trained to liberal thought in politics, religion and

social ethics under republican institutions, American women

cannot brook the discriminations in regard to sex that were

patiently accepted by the ignorant in barbarous ages as divine

law. And yet subjects of emperors in the old world, with their

narrow ideas of individual rights, their contempt of all

womankind, come here to teach the mothers of this republic their

true work and sphere. Such men as Carl Schurz, breathing for the

first time the free air of our free land, object to what we

consider the higher education of women, fitting them for the

trades and professions, for the sciences and arts, and

self-complacently point Lucretia Mott, Maria Mitchell, Harriet

Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, to their appropriate sphere, as

housekeepers with a string of keys, like Madam Bismark, dangling

around their waists.

The Rev. J. G. Holland, the Tupper of our American literature,

thanks his Creator that woman has no specialty. She was called

into being for man's happiness and interest--his helpmeet--to

wait and watch his movements, to second his endeavors, to fight

the hard battle of life behind him whose brain may be dizzy with

excess, whose limbs may be paralyzed, or if sound in body, may be

without aim or ambition, without plans or projects, destitute of

executive ability or good judgment in the business affairs of

life. And such sentimentalists, after demoralizing women with

their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by

pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are

indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are;

have not the masses of all oppressed classes been apathetic and

indifferent until partial success crowned the enthusiasm of the

few? Carl Schurz would not have been exiled from his native land

could he have roused the majority of his countrymen to the same

love of liberty which burned in his own soul. Were his dreams of

freedom less real because the stolid masses were not awake to

their significance? Shall a soul that accepts martyrdom for a

principle be told he is sacrificing himself to a shadow because

the multitude can neither see nor appreciate the idea?

I do not feel like rejoicing over any privileges already granted

to my sex, until all our rights are conceded and secured and the

principle of equality recognized and proclaimed, for every step

that brings us to a more equal plane with man but makes us more

keenly feel the loss of those rights we are still denied--more

susceptible to the insults of his assumptions and usurpations of

power. As I sum up the indignities toward women, as illustrated

by recent judicial decisions--denied the right to vote, denied

the right to practice in the Supreme Court, denied jury trial--I

feel the degradation of sex more bitterly than I did on that July

19, 1848, and never more than in listening to your speech in

Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, our nation's centennial

birthday, remembering that neither years nor wisdom, brave words

nor noble deeds, could secure political honor or call forth

national homage for women. Let it be remembered by our daughters

in future generations that Lucretia Mott, in the eighty-fourth

year of her age, asked permission, as the representative woman of

this great movement for the enfranchisement of her sex, to

present at the centennial celebration of our national liberties,

Woman's Declaration of Rights, and was refused! This was the

"respectful consideration" vouchsafed American women at the close

of the first century of our national life.

May we now safely prophesy justice, liberty, equality for our

daughters ere another centennial birthday shall dawn upon us!

Sincerely yours, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

DETROIT, July 17, 1876.

_To Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Ann McClintock

and daughters, Amy Post, and all associated with them and myself

in the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, N.

Y., July 19, 1848, as well as to our later and present

associates, Greeting:_

Not able to be with you in your celebration of the nineteenth, I

will yet give evidence that I prize your remembrance of our first

assemblage and of our earliest work. That is, and will ever be as

the present is a memorable year; and may this be memorable too

for the same reason, a brave step in advance for human freedom. I

would that it could be a conclusive step in legislation for the

political freedom of the women of the nation. For it is only in

harmony with reason and experience to predict that the men as

well as the women of the near future will rejoice if this

centennial year is thus marked and glorified by so grand a deed.

We may well congratulate each other and have satisfaction in

knowing that we have changed the public sentiment and the laws of

many States by our advocacy and labors. We also know that while

helping the growth of our own souls, we have set many women

thinking and reading on this vital question, who in turn have

discussed it in private and public, and thus inspired others. So

that at this present time few who have examined can deny our

claim. But we are grateful to remember many women who needed no

arguments, whose clear insight and reason, pronounced in the

outset that a woman's soul was as well worth saving as a man's;

that her independence and free choice are as necessary and as

valuable to the public virtue and welfare; who saw and still see

in both, equal children of a Father who loves and protects all.

Men do not need to be convinced of the righteousness of entire

freedom for us; they have long been convinced of its justice;

they confess that it is only expediency which makes them withhold

that which they profess is precious to them. We await only an

awakened conscience and an enlarged statesmanship.

I bid you and the women of the republic God-speed, and close in

the language of one who went before us, Mary Wollstonecraft, who

did so much in a thoughtless age to bring both men and women back

to virtue and religion. She says: "Contending for the rights of

woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that

if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of

man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for

truth must be common to all or it will be inefficacious with

respect to its influence in general practice. And how can woman

be expected to cooeperate unless she know why she ought to be

virtuous; unless freedom strengthen her reason till she

comprehends her duty and sees in what manner it is connected with

her real good? If children are to be educated to understand the

true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and

the love of mankind from which an orderly train of virtues

spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil

interests of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at

present, shuts her out from such investigations."

With the greatest possible interest in your celebration and

deliberations, and assuring you that I shall be with you in

thought and spirit, I am most earnestly and cordially yours,

CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.

ROCHESTER, N. Y., June 27, 1876.

MY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY: I thank thee most deeply for the assurance

of a welcome to your deliberative councils in our country's

centennial year, to reannounce our oft-repeated protest against

bondage to tyrant law. Most holy cause! Woman's equality, why so

long denied?... I was ready at the first tap of the drum that

sounded from that hub of our country, Seneca Falls, in 1848,

calling for an assembly of men and women to set forth and

remonstrate against the legal usurpation of our rights.... I

cannot think of anything that would give me as much pleasure as

to be able to meet with you at this time. I am exceedingly glad

that you appreciate the blessings of frequent visits and wise

counsel from our beloved and venerated pioneer, Lucretia Mott. I

hope her health and strength will enable her to see and enjoy the

triumphant victory of this work, and I wish you all the blessings

of happiness that belong to all good workers, and my love to them

all as if named.

AMY POST.

POMO, Mendocino Co., California, June 26, 1876.

July 4, 1776, our revolutionary fathers--in convention

assembled--declared their independence of the mother country;

solemnly asserted the divine right of self-government and its

relation to constituted authority. With liberty their shibboleth,

the colonies triumphed in their long and fierce struggle with the

mother country, and established an independent government. They

adopted a "bill of rights" embodying their ideal of a free

government.

With singular inconsistency almost their first act, while it

secured to one-half the people of the body politic the right to

tax and govern themselves, subjected the other half to the very

oppression which had culminated in the rebellion of the colonies,

"taxation without representation," and the inflictions of an

authority to which they had not given their consent. The

constitutional provision which enfranchised the male population

of the new State and secured to it self-governing rights,

disfranchised its women, and eventuated in a tyrannical use of

power, which, exercised by husbands, fathers, and brothers, is

infinitely more intolerable than the despotic acts of a foreign

ruler.

As if left ignobly to illustrate the truths of their noble

declarations, no sooner did the enfranchised class enter upon the

exercise of their usurped powers than they proceeded to alienate

from the mothers of humanity rights declared to be inseparable

from humanity itself! Had they thrust the British yoke from the

necks of their wives and daughters as indignantly as they thrust

it from their own, the legal subjection of the women of to-day

would not stand out as it now does--the reproach of our

republican government. As if sons did not follow the condition of

the mothers--as if daughters had no claim to the birthright of

the fathers--they established for disfranchised woman a "dead

line," by retaining the English common law of marriage, which,

unlike that of less liberal European governments, converts the

marriage altar into an executioner's block and recognizes woman

as a wife only when so denuded of personal rights that in legal

phrase she is said to be--"dead in law"!

More considerate in the matter of forms than the highwayman who

kills that he may rob the unresisting dead, our gallant fathers

executed women who must need cross the line of human

happiness--legally; and administered their estate; and decreed

the disposition of their defunct personalities in legislative

halls; only omitting to provide for the matrimonial crypt the

fitting epitaph: "Here lies the relict of American freedom--taxed

to pauperism, loved to death!"

With all the modification of the last quarter, of a century, our

English law of marriage still invests the husband with a

sovereignty almost despotic over his wife. It secures to him her

personal service and savings, and the control and custody of her

person as against herself. Having thus reduced the wife to a dead

pauper owing service to her husband, our shrewd forefathers, to

secure the bond, confiscated her natural obligations as a child

and a mother. Whether married or single, only inability excuses a

son from the legal support of indigent and infirm parents. The

married daughter, in the discharge of her wifely duties, may

tenderly care and toil for her husband's infirm parents, or his

children and grandchildren by a prior marriage, while her own

parents, or children by a prior marriage--legally divested of any

claim on her or the husband who absorbs her personal services and

earnings--are sent to the poor-house, or pine in bitter

privation; except with consent of her husband, she can give

neither her personal care nor the avails of her industry, for

their benefit. So, to be a wife, woman ceases, in law, to be

anything else--yields up the ghost of a legal existence! That she

escapes the extreme penalty of her legal bonds in any case is

due to the fact that the majority of men, married or single, are

notably better than their laws.

Our fathers taught the quality and initiated the form of free

government. But it was left to their posterity to learn from the

discipline of experience, that truths, old as the eternities, are

forever revealing new phases to render possible more perfect

interpretations; and to accumulate unanswerable reasons for their

extended application. That the sorest trials and most appreciable

failures of the government our fathers bequeathed, to us, have

been the direct and inevitable results of their departures from

the principles they enunciated, is so patent to all Christendom,

that free government itself has won from our mistakes material to

revolutionize the world--lessons that compel depotisms to change

their base and constitutional monarchies to make broader the

phylacteries of popular rights.

Is it not meet then, that on this one-hundredth anniversary of

American independence the daughters of revolutionary sires should

appeal to the sons to fulfill what the fathers promised but

failed to perform--should appeal to them as the constituted

executors of the father's will, to give full practical effect to

the self-evident truths, that "taxation without representation is

tyranny"--that "governments derive their just powers from the

consent of the governed"? With an evident common interest in all

the affairs of which government properly or improperly takes

cognizance, we claim enfranchisement on the broad ground of human

right, having proved the justice of our claim by the injustice

which has resulted to us and ours through our disfranchisement.

We ask enfranchisement in the abiding faith that with our

cooeperative efforts free government would attain to higher

averages of intelligence and virtue; with an innate conviction,

that the sequestration of rights in the homes of the republic

makes them baneful nurseries of the monopolies, rings, and

fraudulent practices that are threatening the national integrity;

and that so long as the fathers sequester the rights of the

mothers and train their sons to exercise, and the daughters to

submit to the exactions of usurped powers, our government offices

will be dens of thieves and the national honor trail in the dust;

and honest men come out from the fiery ordeals of faithful

service, denuded of the confidence and respect justly their due.

Give us liberty! We are mothers, wives, and daughters of freemen.

C. I. H. NICHOLS.

LONDON, Eng., July 4, 1876.

MY DEAR SUSAN: I sincerely thank you for your kind letter. Many

times I have thought of writing to you, but I knew your time was

too much taken up with the good cause to have any to spare for

private correspondence. Occasionally I am pleased to see a good

account of you and your doings in the Boston _Investigator_. Oh,

how I wish I could be with you on this more than ordinarily

interesting and important occasion; or that I could at least send

my sentiments and views on human rights, which I have advocated

for over forty years, to the convention.

This being the centenary day of the proclamation of American

independence, I must write a few lines, if but to let the friends

know that though absent in body I am with you in the cause for

which, in common with you, I have labored so long, and I hope not

labored in vain.

The glorious day upon which human equality was first proclaimed

ought to be commemorated, not only every hundred years, or every

year, but it ought to be constantly held before the public mind

until its grand principles are carried into practice. The

declaration that "All men [which means all human beings

irrespective of sex] have an equal right to life, liberty, and

the pursuit of happiness," is enough for woman as for man. We

need no other; but we must reassert in 1876 what 1776 so

gloriously proclaimed, and call upon the law-makers and the

law-breakers to carry that declaration to its logical consistency

by giving woman the right of representation in the government

which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is

governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow,

the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other

declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same

foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal

justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of man are

claimed, moral consistency points to the equal rights of woman.

I hope these few lines will fill a little space in the convention

at Philadelphia, where my voice has so often been raised in

behalf of the principles of humanity. I am glad to see my name

among the vice-presidents of the National Association. Keep a

warm place for me with the American people. I hope some day to be

there yet. Give my love to Mrs. Mott and Sarah Pugh. With kind

regards from Mr. Rose,

Yours affectionately, ERNESTINE L. ROSE.

A new paper, _The Ballot-Box_, was started in the centennial year

at Toledo, Ohio, owned and published by Mrs. Sarah Langdon

Williams. The following editorial on the natal day of the republic

is from her pen:

THE RETROSPECT.--Since our last issue the great centennial

anniversary of American independence has come and gone; it has

been greeted with rejoicing throughout the land; its events have

passed into history. The day in which the great principles

embodied in the Declaration of Independence were announced by the

revolutionary fathers to the world has been celebrated through

all this vast heritage, with pomp and popular glorification, and

the nation's finest orators have signalized the event in

"thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Everywhere has the

country been arrayed in its holiday attire--the gay insignia

which, old as the century, puts on fresh youth and brilliancy

each time its colors are unfurled. The successes which the

country has achieved have been portrayed with glowing eloquence,

the people's sovereignty has been the theme of congratulation and

the glorious principles of freedom and equal rights have been

enthusiastically proclaimed. In the magnificent oration of Mr.

Evarts delivered in Independence Square, the spot made sacred by

the signing of the Declaration of Independence which announced

that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of

the governed," these words occur:

The chief concern in this regard, to us and the rest of the

world is, whether the proud trust, the profound radicalism,

the wide benevolence which spoke in the declaration and were

infused into the constitution at the first, have been in

good-faith adhered to by the people, and whether now the

living principles supply the living forces which sustain and

direct government and society. He who doubts needs but to

look around to find all things full of the original spirit

and testifying to its wisdom and strength.

Yet that very day in that very city was a large assemblage of

women convened to protest against the gross wrongs of their

sex--the representatives of twenty millions of citizens of the

United States, composing one-half of the population being

governed without their consent by the other half, who, by virtue

of their superior strength, held the reins of power and

tyrannically denied them all representation. At that very meeting

at which that polished falsehood was uttered had the women, but

shortly before, been denied the privilege of silently presenting

their declaration of rights. More forcibly is this mortifying

disregard of the claims of women thrust in their faces from the

fact that, amid all this magnificent triumph with which the

growth of the century was commemorated, amid the protestations of

platforms all over the country of the grand success of the

principle of equal rights for all, the possibility of the future

according equal rights to women as well as to men was, with the

exception of one or two praiseworthy instances, as far as reports

have reached us, utterly ignored. The women have no

country--their rights are disregarded, their appeals ignored,

their protests scorned, they are treated as children who do not

comprehend their own wants, and as slaves whose crowning duty is

obedience.

Whether, on this great day of national triumph and national

aspiration, the possibilities of a better future for women were

forgotten; whether, from carelessness, willfulness, or

wickedness, their grand services and weary struggles in the past

and hopes and aspirations for the future were left entirely out

of the account, certain it is that our orators were too much

absorbed in the good done by men and for men, to once recur to

the valuable aid, self-denying patriotism and lofty virtues of

the nation's unrepresented women. There were a few exceptions:

Col. Wm. M. Ferry, of Ottawa county, Michigan, in his historical

address delivered in that county, July Fourth, took pains to make

favorable mention of the daughter of one of the pioneers, as

follows:

Louisa Constant, or "Lisette," as she was called, became her

father's clerk when twelve years old, and was as well known

for wonderful faculties for business as she was for her

personal attractions. In 1828, when Lisette was seventeen

years old, her father died. She closed up his business with

the British Company, engaged with the American Fur Company,

at Mackinaw, receiving from them a large supply of

merchandise, and for six years conducted the most successful

trading establishment in the northwest.

Think of it, ye who disparage the ability of woman! This little

tribute we record with gratification. Colonel Ferry remembered

woman. Henry Ward Beecher, in his oration, delivered at

Peekskill, is reported, to have said:

And now there is but one step more--there is but one step

more. We permit the lame, the halt and the blind to go to

the ballot-box; we permit the foreigner and the black man,

the slave and the freeman, to partake of the suffrage; there

is but one thing left out, and that is the mother that

taught us, and the wife that is thought worthy to walk side

by side with us. It is woman that is put lower than the

slave, lower than the ignorant foreigner. She is put among

the paupers whom the law won't allow to vote; among the

insane whom the law won't allow to vote. But the days are

numbered in which this can take place, and she too will

vote.

But these words are followed by others somewhat problematical, at

least in the respect rendered to women:

As in a hundred years suffrage has extended its bounds till

it now includes the whole population, in another hundred

years everything will vote, unless it be the power of the

loom, and the locomotive, and the watch, and I sometimes

think, looking at these machines and their performances,

that they too ought to vote.

But Mr. Evarts approached the close of his oration with these

words--and may they not be prophetic--may not the orator have

spoken with a deeper meaning than he knew?

With these proud possessions of the past, with powers

matured, with principles settled, with habits formed, the

nation passes as it were from preparatory growth to

responsible development of character and the steady

performance of duty. What labors await it, what trials shall

attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory for

itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century,

we may not assume to foretell.

Whether the wise (?) legislators see it or not--whether the

undercurrent that is beating to the shore speaks with an

utterance that is comprehensible to their heavy apprehensions or

not, the coming century has in preparation for the country a

truer humanity, a better justice of which the protest and

declaration of the fathers pouring its vital current down through

the departed century, and surging on into the future, is, to the

seeing eye, the sure forerunner, the seed-time, of which the

approaching harvest will bring a better fruition for women--and

they who scoff now will be compelled to rejoice hereafter. But as

Mr. Evarts remarked in his allusions to future centennials:

By the mere circumstance of this periodicity our generation

will be in the minds, in the hearts, on the lips of our

countrymen at the next centennial commemoration in

comparison with their own character and condition and with

the great founders of the nation. What shall they say of us?

How shall they estimate the part we bear in the unbroken

line of the nation's progress? And so on, in the long reach

of time, forever and forever, our place in the secular roll

of the ages must always bring us into observation and

criticism.

Shall it then be recorded of us that the demand and the protest

of the women were not made in vain? Shall it be told to future

generations that the cry for justice, the effort to sunder the

shackles with which woman has been oppressed from the dim ages of

the past, was heeded? Or, shall it be told of us, in the

beginning of this second centennial, that justice has been

ignored, that only liberty to men entered at this stage of

progress, into the American idea of self-government? Freedom to

men and women alike is but a question of time--is America now

equal to the great occasion? Has her development expanded to that

degree where her legislators can say in very truth, as of the

colored man, "Let the oppressed go free"?

The woman's pavilion upon the centennial grounds was an

after-thought, as theologians claim woman herself to have been.[18]

The women of the country after having contributed nearly $100,000

to the centennial stock, found there had been no provision made for

the separate exhibition of their work. The centennial board, Mrs.

Gillespie, president, then decided to raise funds for the erection

of a separate building to be known as the Woman's Pavilion. It

covered an acre of ground and was erected at an expense of $30,000,

a small sum in comparison with the money which had been raised by

women and expended on the other buildings, not to speak of State

and national appropriations which the taxes levied on them had

largely helped to swell.

The pavilion was no true exhibit of woman's work. First, few women

are as yet owners of business which their industry largely makes

remunerative. Cotton factories in which thousands of women work,

are owned by men. The shoe business, in some branches of which

women are doing more than half, is under the ownership of men. Rich

embroideries from India, rugs of downy softness from Turkey, the

muslin of Dacca, anciently known as "The Woven Wind," the pottery

and majolica ware of P. Pipsen's widow, the cartridges and

envelopes of Uncle Sam, Waltham watches whose finest mechanical

work is done by women, and ten thousand other industries found no

place in the pavilion. Said United States Commissioner Meeker,[19]

of Colorado, "Woman's work comprises three-fourths of the

exposition; it is scattered through every building; take it away

and there would be no exposition."

But this pavilion rendered one good service to woman in showing her

capabilities as an engineer. The boiler which furnished the force

for running its work was under the management of a young Canadian

girl, Miss Alison, who from a child loved machinery, spending much

time in the large saw and grist mills of her father, run by engines

of two- and three-hundred horse-power, which she sometimes managed

for amusement. When her name was proposed for running the pavilion

machinery it brought much opposition. It was said the committee

would some day find the pavilion blown to atoms; that the woman

engineer would spend her time reading novels, instead of watching

the steam gauge; that the idea was impracticable and should not be

thought of. But Miss Alison soon proved her own capabilities and

the falseness of these prophecies by taking her place in the

engine-room and managing its workings with the ease that a child

spins a top. Six power looms on which women wove carpets, webbing,

silks, etc., were run by this engine. At a later period the

printing of _The New Century for Women_, a paper published by the

centennial commission in the woman's building, was also done by its

means. Miss Alison declared the work to be more cleanly, more

pleasant, and infinitely less fatiguing than cooking over a kitchen

stove. "Since I have been compelled to earn my own livelihood," she

said, "I have never been engaged in work I liked so well. Teaching

school is much harder, and one is not paid as well." She expressed

confidence in her ability to manage the engine of an ocean steamer,

and said there were thousands of small engines in use in various

parts of the country, and no reason existed why women should not be

employed to manage them--following the profession of engineer as a

regular business--an engine requiring far less attention than is

given by a nurse-maid or mother to a child.

But to have made the woman's pavilion grandly historic, upon its

walls should have been hung the yearly protest of Harriet K. Hunt

against taxation without representation; the legal papers served

upon the Smith sisters when their Alderny cows were seized and sold

for their refusal to pay taxes while unrepresented; the papers held

by the city of Worcester for the forced sale of the house and lands

of Abby Kelly Foster, the veteran abolitionist, because she refused

to pay taxes, giving the same reason our ancestors gave when they

resisted taxation; a model of Bunker Hill monument, its foundation

laid by Lafayette in 1825, but which remained unfinished nearly

twenty years until the famous French _danseuse_ Fanny Ellsler, gave

the proceeds of an exhibition for that purpose. With these should

have been exhibited framed copies of all the laws bearing unjustly

upon woman--those which rob her of her name, her earnings, her

property, her children, her person; also, the legal papers in the

case of Susan B. Anthony, who was tried and fined for seeking to

give consent to the laws which governed her; and the decision of

Mr. Justice Miller (Chief-Justice Chase dissenting) in the case of

Myra Bradwell, denying national protection for woman's civil

rights; and the later decision of Chief-Justice Waite of the

Supreme Court against Virginia L. Minor, denying to women national

protection for their political rights, decisions in favor of

state-rights which imperil the liberties not only of all women, but

of every white man in the nation.

Woman's most fitting contributions to the centennial exposition

would have been these protests, laws and decisions which show her

political slavery. But all this was left for rooms outside of the

centennial grounds, upon Chestnut street, where the National Woman

Suffrage Association hoisted its flag, made its protests, and wrote

the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States.

To many thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for

women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such

universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly

happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority

is the result of their unfortunate individual idiosyncrasies, and

not of adverse influences in their established conditions.

But the history of the world shows that the vast majority in every

generation passively accept the conditions into which they are

born, while those who demand larger liberties are ever a small,

ostracised minority whose claims are ridiculed and ignored. From

our stand-point we honor the Chinese women who claim the right to

their feet and powers of locomotion, the Hindoo widows who refuse

to ascend the funeral pyre of their husbands, the Turkish women who

throw off their masks and veils and leave the harem, the Mormon

women who abjure their faith and demand monogamic relations; why

not equally honor the intelligent minority of American women who

protest against the artificial disabilities by which their freedom

is limited and their development arrested? That only a few under

any circumstances protest against the injustice of long established

laws and customs does not disprove the fact of the oppressions,

while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their

apathy and deeper degradation. That a majority of the women of the

United States accept without protest the disabilities that grow out

of their disfranchisement, is simply an evidence of their ignorance

and cowardice, while the minority who demand a higher political

status clearly prove their superior intelligence and wisdom.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Some suggested that the women in their various towns and

cities, draped in black, should march in solemn procession, bells

slowly tolling, bearing banners with the inscriptions: "Taxation

without representation is tyranny," "No just government can be

formed without the consent of the governed," "They who have no

voice in the laws and rulers are in a condition of slavery."

Others suggested that instead of women wearing crape during the

centennial glorification, the men should sit down in sackcloth and

ashes, in humiliation of spirit, as those who repented in olden

times were wont to do. The best centennial celebration, said they,

for the men of the United States, the one to cover them with glory,

would be to extend to the women of the nation all the rights,

privileges and immunities that they themselves enjoy.

Others proposed that women should monopolize the day, have their

own celebrations, read their own declarations and protests

demanding justice, liberty and equality. The latter suggestion was

extensively adopted, and the Fourth of July, 1876, was remarkable

for the large number of women who were "the orators of the day" in

their respective localities.

[2] Letters were read from the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, of

Georgia; William J. Fowler, of Rochester, N. Y.; Isabella Beecher

Hooker, of Connecticut, and Susan B. Anthony.

[3] News of the cannonade of Boston had been received the day

previous.

[4] Though thus discourteously refused to an association to secure

equality of rights for women, it was subsequently rented to "The

International Peace Association."

[5] _President_--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Tenafly, New Jersey.

_Vice-Presidents_--Lucretia Mott, Pa.; Ernestine L. Rose, England;

Paulina Wright Davis, R. I.; Clarina I. H. Nichols, Cal.; Amelia

Bloomer, Iowa; Mathilde Franceska Anneke, Wis.; Virginia L. Minor,

Mo.; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Mich.; Julia and Abby Smith, Conn.;

Abby P. Ela, N. H.; Mrs. W. H. H. Murray, Mass.; Ann T. Greely,

Me.; Eliza D. Stewart, Ohio; Mary Hamilton Williams, Ind.;

Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Ill.; Sarah Burger Stearns, Minn.; Ada

W. Lucas, Neb.; Helen E. Starrett, Kan.; Ann L. Quinby, Ky.;

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Tenn.; Mrs. L. C. Locke, Texas; Emily

P. Collins, La.; Mary J. Spaulding, Ga.; Mrs. P. Holmes, Drake,

Ala.; Flora M. Wright, Fla.; Frances Annie Pillsbury, S. C.;

Cynthia Anthony, N. C.; Carrie F. Putnam, Va.; Anna Ella Carroll,

Md.; Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon; Hannah H. Clapp, Nevada; Dr.

Alida C. Avery, Col.; Mary Olney Brown, Wash. Ter.; Esther A.

Morris, Wyoming Ter.; Annie Godbe, Utah.

_Advisory Committee_--Sarah Pugh, Pa.; Isabella Beecher Hooker,

Conn.; Charlotte B. Wilbour, N. Y.; Mary J. Channing, R. I.;

Elizabeth B. Schenck, Cal.; Judith Ellen Foster, Iowa; Lavinia

Goodell, Wis.; Annie R. Irvine, Mo.; Marian Bliss, Mich.; Mary B.

Moses, N. H.; Sarah A. Vibbart, Mass.; Lucy A. Snowe, Me.; Marilla

M. Ricker, N. H.; Mary Madden, Ohio; Emma Molloy, Ind.; Cynthia A.

Leonard, Ill.; Mrs. Dr. Stewart, Minn.; Julia Brown Bemis, Neb.;

Mrs. N. H. Cramer, Tenn.; Mrs. W. V. Tunstall, Tex.; Mrs. A.

Millspaugh, La.; Hannah M. Rogers, Fla.; Sally Holly, Va.; Sallie

W. Hardcastle, Md.; Mary P. Sautelle, Oregon; Mary F. Shields,

Col.; Amelia Giddings, Wash. Ter.; Amalia B. Post, Wyoming Ter.

_Corresponding Secretaries_--Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.;

Laura Curtis Bullard, New York; Jane Graham Jones, Chicago, Ill.

_Recording Secretary_--Lillie Devereux Blake, New York.

_Treasurer_--Ellen Clark Sargent, Washington, D. C.

_Executive Committee_--Matilda Joslyn Gage, Fayetteville, N. Y.;

Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., Elizabeth B. Phelps, Mathilde F. Wendt,

Phebe H. Jones, New York; Rev. Olympia Brown, Connecticut; Sarah R.

L. Williams, Ohio; M. Adeline Thomson, Pennsylvania; Henrietta

Payne Westbrook, Pennsylvania; Nancy R. Allen, Iowa.

[6] _1876 Campaign Committee_--Susan B. Anthony, N. Y.; Matilda

Joslyn Gage, N. Y.; Phoebe W. Couzins, Mo.; Rev. Olympia Brown,

Conn.; Jane Graham Jones, Ill.; Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon;

Laura De Force Gordon, Cal.; Annie C. Savery, Iowa.

[7] _Resident Congressional Committee_--Sara Andrews Spencer, Ellen

Clark Sargent, Ruth Carr Denison, Belva A. Lockwood, Mrs. E. D. E.

N. Southworth.

[8] Among those who took part in the discussions were Dr. Clemence

Lozier, Susan B. Anthony, Helen M. Slocum, Sarah Goodyear, Helen M.

Cook, Abby and Julia Smith, Sara Andrews Spencer, Miss Charlotte

Ray, Lillie Devereux Blake and Matilda Joslyn Gage.

[9] Letters were written to these conventions from different

States. Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, New Orleans, La.; Elizabeth A.

Meriwether, Memphis, Tenn.; Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, Cincinnati,

O., all making eloquent appeals for some consideration of the

political rights of women.

[10] Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Spencer.

[11] On the receipt of these letters a prolonged council was held

by the officers of the association at their headquarters, as to

what action they should take on the Fourth of July. Mrs. Mott and

Mrs. Stanton decided for themselves that after these rebuffs they

would not even sit on the platform, but at the appointed time go to

the church they had engaged for a meeting, and open their

convention. Others more brave and determined insisted that women

had an equal right to the glory of the day and the freedom of the

platform, and decided to take the risk of a public insult in order

to present the woman's declaration and thus make it an historic

document.--[E.C.S.

[12] During the reading of the declaration to an immense concourse

of people, Mrs. Gage stood beside Miss Anthony, and held an

umbrella over her head, to shelter her friend from the intense heat

of the noonday sun; and thus in the same hour, on opposite sides of

old Independence Hall, did the men and women express their opinions

on the great principles proclaimed on the natal day of the

republic. The declaration was handsomely framed and now hangs in

the vice-president's room in the capitol at Washington.

[13] This document was signed by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady

Stanton, Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H.

Nichols, Mary Ann McClintock, Mathilde Franceska Anneke, Sarah

Pugh, Amy Post, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda

Joslyn Gage, Clemence S. Lozier, Olympia Brown, Mathilde F. Wendt,

Adleline Thomson, Ellen Clark Sargent, Virginia L. Minor, Catherine

V. Waite, Elizabeth B. Schenck, Phoebe W. Couzins, Elizabeth

Boynton Harbert, Laura De Force Gordon, Sara Andrews Spencer,

Lillie Devereux Blake, Jane Graham Jones, Abigail Scott Duniway,

Belva A. Lockwood, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Sarah L. Williams, Abby

P. Ela.

[14]

One hundred years hence, what a change will be made,

In politics, morals, religion and trade,

In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence,

These things will be altered _a hundred years hence_.

Our laws then will be uncompulsory rules,

Our prisons converted to national schools.

The pleasure of sinning 'tis all a pretense,

And the people will find it so, _a hundred years hence_.

Lying, cheating and fraud will be laid on the shelf,

Men will neither get drunk, nor be bound up in self,

But all live together, good neighbors and friends,

Just as _Christian folks_ ought to, _a hundred years hence_.

Then woman, man's partner, man's equal shall stand,

While beauty and harmony govern the land,

To think for oneself will be no offense,

The world will be thinking _a hundred years hence_.

Oppression and war will be heard of no more,

Nor the blood of a slave leave his print on our shore,

Conventions will then be a useless expense,

For we'll all go _free-suffrage a hundred years hence_.

Instead of speech-making to satisfy wrong,

All will join the glad chorus to sing Freedom's song;

And if the Millenium is not a pretense,

We'll all be good brothers _a hundred years hence_.

This song was written in 1852, at Cleveland, Ohio, by Frances Dana

Gage, expressly for John W. Hutchinson. Several of the friends were

staying with Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, on their way to the Akron

convention, where it was first sung.

[15] Protests and declarations were read by Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton

Harbert, in Evanston, Ill.; Sarah L. Knox, California; Mrs. Rosa L.

Segur, Toledo, Ohio; Mrs. Mary Olney Brown, Olympia, Washington

territory; Mrs. Henrietta Paine Westbrook, New York city. In

Maquoketa, Iowa; Mrs. Nancy R. Allen read the declaration at the

regular county celebration. Madam Anneke, Wis.; Elizabeth Avery

Meriwether, Tenn.; Lucinda B. Chandler, N. J.; Jane E. Telker,

Iowa; S. P. Abeel, D. C.; Mrs. J. A. Johns, Oregon; Elizabeth Lisle

Saxon, La.; Mrs. Elsie Stewart, Kan.; and many others impossible to

name, sent in protests and declarations.

[16] See Appendix.

[17] Henry Hutchinson, the son of John.

[18] A German legend says, God first made a mouse, but seeing he

had made a mistake he made the cat as an afterthought, therefore if

woman is God's afterthought, man must be a mistake.

[19] Afterwards killed by the Indians in Colorado.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, HEARINGS AND REPORTS.

1877-1878-1879.

Renewed Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment--Mrs. Gage Petitions for

Removal of Political Disabilities--Ninth Washington Convention,

1877--Jane Grey Swisshelm--Letters, Robert Purvis, Wendell

Phillips, Francis E. Abbott--10,000 Petitions Referred to the

Committee on Privileges and Elections by Special Request of the

Chairman, Hon. O. P. Morton, of Indiana--May Anniversary in New

York--Tenth Washington Convention, 1878--Frances E. Willard and

30,000 Temperance Women Petition Congress--40,000 Petition for a

Sixteenth Amendment--Hearing before the Committee on Privileges

and Elections--Madam Dahlgren's Protest--Mrs. Hooker's Hearing on

Washington's Birthday--Mary Clemmer's Letter to Senator

Wadleigh--His Adverse Report--Favorable Minority Report by

Senator Hoar--Thirtieth Anniversary, Unitarian Church, Rochester,

N. Y., July 19, 1878--The Last Convention Attended by Lucretia

Mott--Letters, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips--Church

Resolution Criticised by Rev. Dr. Strong--International Women's

Congress in Paris--Washington Convention, 1879--U.S. Supreme

Court Opened to Women--May Anniversary at St. Louis--Address of

Welcome by Phoebe Couzins--Women in Council Alone--Letter from

Josephine Butler, of England--Mrs. Stanton's Letter to _The

National Citizen and Ballot-Box_.

With the close of the centennial year the new departure under the

fourteenth amendment ended. Though defeated at the polls, in the

courts, in the national celebration, in securing a plank in the

platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, and in our own

conventions--so far as the few were able to rouse the many to

simultaneous action--nevertheless a wide-spread agitation had been

secured by the presentation of this phase of the question.

Although the unanswerable arguments of statesmen and lawyers in the

halls of congress and the Supreme Court of the United States, had

alike proved unavailing in establishing the civil and political

rights of women on a national basis, their efforts had not been in

vain. The trials had brought the question before a new order of

minds, and secured able constitutional arguments which were

reviewed in many law journals. The equally able congressional

debates, reported verbatim, read by a large constituency in every

State of the Union, did an educational work on the question of

woman's enfranchisement that cannot be overestimated.

But when the final decision of the Supreme Court in the case of

Virginia L. Minor made all agitation in that direction hopeless,

the National Association returned to its former policy, demanding a

sixteenth amendment. The women generally came to the conclusion

that if in truth there was no protection for them in the original

constitution nor the late amendments, the time had come for some

clearly-defined recognition of their citizenship by a sixteenth

amendment.

The following appeal and petition were extensively circulated:

_To the Women of the United States:_

Having celebrated our centennial birthday with a national

jubilee, let us now dedicate the dawn of the second century to

securing justice to women. For this purpose we ask you to

circulate a petition to congress, just issued by the National

Association, asking an amendment to the United States

Constitution, that shall prohibit the several States from

disfranchising citizens on account of sex. We have already sent

this petition throughout the country for the signatures of those

men and women who believe in the citizen's right to vote.

To see how large a petition each State rolls up, and to do the

work as expeditiously as possible, it is necessary that some

person in each county should take the matter in charge, urging

upon all, thoroughness and haste. * * * The petitions should be

returned before January 16, 17, 1877, when we shall hold our

Eighth Annual Convention at the capital, and ask a hearing before

congress.

Having petitioned our law-makers, State and national, for years,

many from weariness have vowed to appeal no more; for our

petitions, say they, by the tens of thousands, are piled up in

the national archives, unheeded and ignored. Yet it is possible

to roll up such a mammoth petition, borne into congress on the

shoulders of stalwart men, that we can no longer be neglected or

forgotten. Statesmen and politicians alike are conquered by

majorities. We urge the women of this country to make now the

same united effort for their own rights that they did for the

slaves at the South when the thirteenth amendment was pending.

Then a petition of over 300,000 was rolled up by the leaders of

the suffrage movement, and presented in the Senate by the Hon.

Charles Sumner. But the statesmen who welcomed woman's untiring

efforts to secure the black man's freedom, frowned down the same

demands when made for herself. Is not liberty as sweet to her as

to him? Are not the political disabilities of sex as grievous as

those of color? Is not a civil-rights bill that shall open to

woman the college doors, the trades and professions--that shall

secure her personal and property rights, as necessary for her

protection as for that of the colored man? And yet the highest

judicial authorities have decided that the spirit and letter of

our national constitution are not broad enough to protect woman

in her political rights; and for the redress of her wrongs they

remand her to the State. If our _Magna Charta_ of human rights

can be thus narrowed by judicial interpretations in favor of

class legislation, then must we demand an amendment that, in

clear, unmistakable language, shall declare the equality of all

citizens before the law.

Women are citizens, first of the United States, and second of the

State wherein they reside; hence, if robbed by State authorities

of any right founded in nature or secured by law, they have the

same right to national protection against the State, as against

the infringements of any foreign power. If the United States

government can punish a woman for voting in one State, why has it

not the same power to protect her in the exercise of that right

in every State? The constitution declares it the duty of congress

to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, to

every citizen, equality of rights. This is not done in States

where women, thoroughly qualified, are denied admission into

colleges which their property is taxed to build and endow; where

they are denied the right to practice law and are thus debarred

from one of the most lucrative professions; where they are denied

a voice in the government, and thus, while suffering all the ills

that grow out of the giant evils of intemperance, prostitution,

war, heavy taxation and political corruption, stand powerless to

effect any reform. Prayers, tears, psalm-singing and

expostulation are light in the balance compared with that power

at the ballot-box that coins opinions into law. If women who are

laboring for peace, temperance, social purity and the rights of

labor, would take the speediest way to accomplish what they

propose, let them demand the ballot in their own hands, that they

may have a direct power in the government. Thus only can they

improve the conditions of the outside world and purify the home.

As political equality is the door to civil, religious and social

liberty, here must our work begin.

Constituting, as we do, one-half the people, bearing the burdens

of one-half the national debt, equally responsible with man for

the education, religion and morals of the rising generation, let

us with united voice send forth a protest against the present

political status of woman, that shall echo and reecho through the

land. In view of the numbers and character of those making the

demand, this should be the largest petition ever yet rolled up in

the old world or the new; a petition that shall settle forever

the popular objection that "women do not want to vote."

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President._

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee._

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary._

_Tenafly, N. J._, November 10, 1876.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress

assembled:_

The undersigned citizens of the United States, residents of

the State of ----, earnestly pray your honorable bodies to

adopt measures for so amending the constitution as to

prohibit the several States from disfranchising United

States citizens on account of sex.

In addition to the general petition asking for a sixteenth

amendment, Matilda Joslyn Gage, this year (1877) sent an individual

petition, similar in form to those offered by disfranchised male

citizens, asking to be relieved from her political disabilities.

This petition was presented by Hon. Elias W. Leavenworth, of the

House of Representatives, member from the thirty-third New York

congressional district. It read as follows:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States

in Congress assembled:_

Matilda Joslyn Gage, a native born citizen of the United States,

and of the State of New York, wherein she resides, most earnestly

petitions your honorable body for the removal of her political

disabilities and that she may be declared invested with full

power to exercise her right of self government at the ballot-box,

all State constitutions, or statute laws to the contrary

notwithstanding.

The above petition was presented January 24, and the following bill

introduced February 5:

AN ACT _to relieve the political disabilities of Matilda Joslyn

Gage_:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the

United States of America in congress assembled, that all

political disabilities heretofore existing in reference to

Matilda Joslyn Gage, of Fayetteville, Onondaga county, State of

New York, be removed and she be declared a citizen of the United

States, clothed with all the political rights and powers of

citizenship, namely: the right to vote and to hold office to the

same extent and in the same degree that male citizens enjoy these

rights. This act to take effect immediately.

The following year a large number of similar petitions were sent

from different parts of the country, the National Association

distributing printed forms to its members in the various States.

The power of congress to thus enfranchise women upon their

individual petitions is as undoubted as the power to grant

individual amnesty, to remove the political disabilities of men

disfranchised for crime against United States laws, or to clothe

foreigners, honorably discharged from the army, with the ballot.

The first convention[20] after the all-engrossing events of the

centennial celebration assembled in Lincoln Hall, Washington,

January 16, with a good array of speakers, Mrs. Stanton presiding.

After an inspiring song by the Hutchinsons and reports from the

various States, Sara Andrews Spencer, chairman of the congressional

committee, gave some encouraging facts in regard to the large

number of petitions being presented to congress daily, and read

many interesting letters from those who had been active in their

circulation. Over 10,000 were presented during this last session of

the forty-fourth congress. At the special request of the chairman,

Senator Morton of Indiana, they were referred to the Committee on

Privileges and Elections; heretofore they had always been placed in

the hands of the Judiciary Committee in both Senate and House. A

list of committees[21] was reported by Mrs. Gage which was adopted.

Mrs. Swisshelm of Pennsylvania, was introduced. She said:

In 1846 she inherited an estate from her parents, and then she

learned the injustice of the husband holding the wife's property.

In 1848, however, she got a law passed giving equal rights to

both men and women, and everybody decried her for the injury she

had done to all homes by thus throwing the apple of discord into

families. So in Pennsylvania women now hold property absolutely,

and can sell without the consent of the husband. But actually no

woman is free. As in the days of slavery the master owned the

services, not the body of his slaves, so it is with the wife. The

husband owns the services and all that can be earned by his wife.

It is quite possible, as things now stand, to legislate a woman

out of her home, and yet she cooks, and bakes, and works, and

saves, but it all belongs to the man, and if she dies the second

wife gets it all, for she always manages him. The extravagance of

dress is due alone to-day to the fact that from what woman saves

in her own expenses and those of her house she gets no benefit at

all, nor do her children, for it goes to the second wife, who,

perhaps, turns the children out of doors.

The resolutions called out a prolonged discussion, especially the

one on compulsory education, and that finally passed with a few

dissenting voices:

WHEREAS one-half of the citizens of the republic being

disfranchised are everywhere subjects of legislative caprice, and

may be anywhere robbed of their most sacred rights; therefore,

_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the Congress of the United

States to submit a proposition for a sixteenth amendment to the

national constitution prohibiting the several States from

disfranchising citizens on account of sex.

WHEREAS a monarchial government lives only through the ignorance

of the masses, and a republican government can live only through

the intelligence of the people; therefore,

_Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress to submit to the

State legislatures propositions to so amend the Constitution of

the United States as to make education compulsory, and to make

intelligence a qualification for citizenship and suffrage in the

United States; said amendments to take effect January 1, 1880,

when all citizens of legal age, without distinction of sex, who

can read and write the English language, may be admitted to

citizenship.

WHEREAS a century of experience has proven that the safety and

stability of free institutions and the protection of all United

States citizens in the exercise of their inalienable rights and

the proper expression of the will of the whole people, are not

guaranteed by the present form of the Constitution of the United

States; therefore,

_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the several States to call a

national convention to revise the Constitution of the United

States, which, notwithstanding its fifteen amendments, does not

establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the

general welfare, nor secure the blessings of liberty to us and to

our posterity.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the women of this nation are due

to the Rev. Isaac M. See, of the Presbytery of Newark, for his

noble stand in behalf of woman's right to preach.

_Resolved_, That the action of the Presbytery of Newark in

condemning the Rev. I. M. See for his liberal course is an

indication of the tyranny of the clergy over the consciences of

women, and a determination to fetter the spirit of freedom.

Among the many letters to the convention we give the following:

BOSTON, 16th January, 1877.

DEAR FRIEND: These lines will not reach you in time to be of use.

I am sorry. But absence and cares must apologize for me. I think

you are on the right track--the best method to agitate the

question; and I am with you. I mean always to help everywhere and

every one.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Miss ANTHONY.

MANCHESTER, Eng., January 3, 1877.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY: It is with great pleasure that I write a

word of sympathy and encouragement, on the occasion of your Ninth

Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Beyond wishing you a successful gathering, I will say nothing

about the movement in the United States. Women of either country

can do nothing directly in promoting the movement in the other;

and if they attempt to do so, there is danger that they may

hinder and embarrass those who are bearing the burden and heat of

the day. The only way in which mutual help can be given is

through the women of each nation working to gain ground in their

own country. Then, every step so gained, every actual advance of

the boundaries of civil and political rights for women is a gain,

not only to the country which has secured it, but to the cause of

human freedom all over the world.

This year marks the decennial of the movement in the United

Kingdom. In the current number of our journal, there is a sketch

of the political history of the movement here, which I commend to

the attention of your convention, and which I need not repeat.

The record will be seen to be one of great and rapid advance in

the political rights of women, but there has been an equally

marked change in other directions; women's interests in

education, and women's questions generally, are treated now with

much more respectful consideration than they were ten years ago.

We are gratified in believing that much of this consideration is

due to the attention roused by our energetic and persistent

demand for the suffrage, and in believing that infinitely greater

benefits of the same kind will accrue when women shall be in

possession of the franchise. Beyond the material gains in

legislation, we find a general improvement in the tone of feeling

and thought toward women--an approach, indeed, to the sentiment

recently expressed by Victor Hugo, that as man was the problem of

the eighteenth century, woman is the problem of the nineteenth

century. May our efforts to solve this problem lead to a happy

issue.

Yours truly,

LYDIA E. BECKER.

BOSTON, Mass., January 10, 1877.

DEAR MRS. STANTON: It is with some little pain, I confess, that I

accept your very courteous invitation to write a letter for your

Washington convention on the 19th instant; for what I must say,

if I say anything at all, is what I know will be very

unacceptable--I fear very displeasing--to the majority of those

to whom you will read it. If you conclude that my letter will

obstruct, and not facilitate the advancement of the cause you

have so faithfully labored for these many years, you have my most

cheerful consent to deliver it over to that general asylum of

profitless productions--the waste-basket.

Running this risk, however, I have this brief message to send to

those who now meet on behalf of woman's full recognition as

politically the equal of man, namely: that every woman suffragist

who upholds Christianity, tears down with one hand what she seeks

to build up with the other--that the Bible sanctions the slavery

principle itself, and applies it to woman as the divinely

ordained subordinate of man--and that by making herself the great

support and mainstay of instituted Christianity, woman rivets the

chain of superstition on her own soul and on man's soul alike,

and justifies him in obeying this religion by keeping her in

subjection to himself. If Christianity and the Bible are true,

woman is man's servant, and ought to be. The Bible gave to

negro-slavery its most terrible power--that of summoning the

consciences of the Christians to its defense; and the Bible gives

to woman-slavery the same terrible power. So plain is this to me

that I take it as a mere matter of course, when all the eloquence

of the woman-suffrage platform fails to arouse the Christian

women of this country to a proper assertion of their rights. What

else could one expect? Women will remain contented subjects and

subordinates just so long as they remain devoted believers in

Christianity; and no amount of argument, or appeal, or agitation

can change this fact. If you cannot educate women as a whole out

of Christianity, you cannot educate them as a whole into the

demand for equal rights.

The reason of this is short: Christianity teaches the rights of

God, not the rights of man or woman. You may search the Bible

from Genesis to Revelations, and not find one clear, strong, bold

affirmation of _human rights as such_; yet it is on human rights

as such--on the equality of all individuals, man or woman, with

respect to natural rights--that the demand for woman suffrage

must ultimately rest. I know I stand nearly alone in this, but I

believe from my soul that the woman movement is fundamentally

_anti-Christian_, and can find no deep justification but in the

ideas, the spirit, and the faith of free religion. Until women

come to see this too, and to give their united influence to this

latter faith, political power in their hands would destroy even

that measure of liberty which free-thinkers of both sexes have

painfully established by the sacrifices of many generations. Yet

I should vote for woman suffrage all the same, because it is

woman's right.

Yours very cordially,

FRANCIS E. ABBOT.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 16, 1877.

MY DEAR FRIENDS: I thank you for your generous recognition of me

as an humble co-worker in the cause of equal rights, and regret

deeply my inability to be present at this anniversary of your

association. I tender to you, however, my hearty congratulations

on the marked progress of our cause. Wherever I have been, and

with whomsoever I have talked, making equal rights invariably the

subject, I find no opposing feeling to the simple and just

demands we make for our cause. The chief difficulty in the way is

the indifference of the people; they need an awakening. Some

Stephen S. Foster or Anna Dickinson should come forward, and with

their thunder and lightning, arouse the people from their deadly

apathy. I am glad to know that you are to have with you our

valued friend, E. M. Davis, of Philadelphia. We are indebted to

him more than all besides for whatever of life is found in the

movement in Pennsylvania. He has spared neither time, money, nor

personal efforts. Hoping you will have abundant success, I am,

dear friends, with you and the cause for which you have so nobly

labored, a humble and sincere worker.

ROBERT PURVIS.

OAKLAND, Cal., January 9, 1877.

_To the National Suffrage Convention, Washington, D. C.:_

Our incorporated State society has deputed Mrs. Ellen Clark

Sargent, the wife of Hon. A. A. Sargent, our fearless champion in

the United States Senate, to represent the women of California in

your National Convention, and with one so faithful and earnest,

we know our cause will be well represented; but there are many

among us who would gladly have journeyed to Washington to

participate in your councils. Many and radical changes have taken

place in the past year favorable to our sex, not the least of

which was the nomination and election of several women to the

office of county superintendent of common schools, by both the

Democratic and Republican parties, in which, however, the

Democrats led. Important changes in the civil code favorable to

the control of property by married women, have been made by the

legislatures during the last four years, through the untiring

efforts of Mrs. Sarah Wallis, Mrs. Knox and Mrs. Watson, of Santa

Clara county. In our schools and colleges, in every avenue of

industry, and in the general liberalization of public opinion

there has been marked improvement.

Yours very truly,

LAURA DEFORCE GORDON,

_Pres. California W. S. S._ (Incorporated).

Mrs. Stanton's letter to _The Ballot-Box_ briefly sums up the

proceedings of the convention:

TENAFLY, N. J., January 24, 1877.

DEAR EDITOR: If the little _Ballot-Box_ is not already stuffed to

repletion with reports from Washington, I crave a little space to

tell your readers that the convention was in all points

successful. Lincoln Hall, which seats about fifteen hundred

people, was crowded every session. The speaking was good, order

reigned, no heart-burnings behind the scenes, and the press

vouchsafed "respectful consideration."

The resolutions you will find more interesting and suggestive

than that kind of literature usually is, and I ask especial

attention to the one for a national convention to revise the

constitution, which, with all its amendments, is like a kite with

a tail of infinite length still to be lengthened. It is evident a

century of experience has so liberalized the minds of the

American people, that they have outgrown the constitution adapted

to the men of 1776. It is a monarchial document with republican

ideas engrafted in it, full of compromises between antagonistic

principles. An American statesman remarked that "The civil war

was fought to expound the constitution on the question of

slavery." Expensive expounding! Instead of further amending and

expounding, the real work at the dawn of our second century is to

make a new one. Again, I ask the attention of our women to the

educational resolution. After much thought it seems to me we

should have education compulsory in every State of the Union, and

make it the basis of suffrage, a national law, requiring that

those who vote after 1880 must be able to read and write the

English language. This would prevent ignorant foreigners voting

in six months after landing on our shores, and stimulate our

native population to higher intelligence. It would dignify and

purify the ballot-box and add safety and stability to our free

institutions. Mrs. Jane Grey Swisshelm, who had just returned

from Europe, attended the convention, and spoke on this subject.

Belva A. Lockwood, who had recently been denied admission to the

Supreme Court of the United States, although a lawyer in good

practice for three years in the Supreme Court of the District,

made a very scathing speech, reviewing the decision of the Court.

It may seem to your disfranchised readers quite presumptuous for

one of their number to make those nine wise men on the bench,

constituting the highest judicial authority in the United States,

subjects for ridicule before an audience of the sovereign people;

but, when they learn the decision in Mrs. Lockwood's case, they

will be reassured as to woman's capacity to cope with their

wisdom. "To arrive at the same conclusion, with these judges, it

is not necessary," said Mrs. Lockwood, "to understand

constitutional law, nor the history of English jurisprudence, nor

the inductive or deductive modes of reasoning, as no such

profound learning or processes of thought were involved in that

decision, which was simply this: 'There is no precedent for

admitting a woman to practice in the Supreme Court of the United

States, hence Mrs. Lockwood's application cannot be considered.'"

On this point Mrs. Lockwood showed that it was the glory of each

generation to make its own precedents. As there was none for Eve

in the garden of Eden, she argued there need be none for her

daughters on entering the college, the church, or the courts.

Blackstone--of whose works she inferred the judges were

ignorant--gives several precedents for women in the English

courts. As Mrs. Lockwood--tall, well-proportioned, with dark hair

and eyes, regular features, in velvet dress and train, with

becoming indignation at such injustice--marched up and down the

platform and rounded out her glowing periods, she might have

fairly represented the Italian Portia at the bar of Venice. No

more effective speech was ever made on our platform.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose speeches are always replete with

historical research, reviewed the action of the Republican party

toward woman from the introduction of the word "male" into the

fourteenth amendment of the constitution down to the celebration

of our national birthday in Philadelphia, when the declaration of

the mothers was received in contemptuous silence, while Dom Pedro

and other foreign dignitaries looked calmly on. Mrs. Gage makes

as dark a chapter for the Republicans as Mrs. Lockwood for the

judiciary, or Mrs. Blake for the church. Mrs. B. had been an

attentive listener during the trial of the Rev. Isaac See before

the presbytery of Newark, N. J., hence she felt moved to give the

convention a chapter of ecclesiastical history, showing the

struggles through which the church was passing with the

irrepressible woman in the pulpit. Mrs. Blake's biblical

interpretations and expositions proved conclusively that Scott's

and Clark's commentaries would at no distant day be superceded by

standard works from woman's standpoint. It is not to be supposed

that women ever can have fair play as long as men only write and

interpret the Scriptures and make and expound the laws. Why would

it not be a good idea for women to leave these conservative

gentlemen alone in the churches? How sombre they would look with

the flowers, feathers, bright ribbons and shawls all gone--black

coats only kneeling and standing--and with the deep-toned organ

swelling up, the solemn bass voice heard only in awful solitude;

not one soprano note to rise above the low, dull wail to fill the

arched roof with triumphant melody! One such experiment from

Maine to California would bring these bigoted presbyteries to

their senses.

Miss Phoebe Couzins, too, was at the convention, and gave her new

lecture, "A Woman without a Country," in which she shows all that

woman has done--from fitting out ships for Columbus, to sharing

the toils of the great exposition--without a place of honor in

the republic for the living, or a statue to the memory of the

dead. Hon. A. G. Riddle and Francis Miller spoke ably and

eloquently as usual; the former on the sixteenth amendment and

the presidential aspect, modestly suggesting that if twenty

million women had voted, they might have been able to find out

for whom the majority had cast their ballots. Mr. Miller

recommended State action, advising us to concentrate our forces

in Colorado as a shorter way to success than constitutional

amendments.

His speech aroused Susan B. Anthony to the boiling point; for, if

there is anything that exasperates her, it is to be remanded, as

she says, to John Morrissey's constituency for her rights. She

contends that if the United States authority could punish her for

voting in the State of New York, it has the same power to protect

her there in the exercise of that right. Moreover, she said, we

have two wings to our movement. The American Association is

trying the popular-vote method. The National Association is

trying the constitutional method, which has emancipated and

enfranchised the African and secured to that race all their civil

rights. To-day by this method they are in the courts, the

colleges, and the halls of legislation in every State in the

Union, while we have puttered with State rights for thirty years

without a foothold anywhere, except in the territories, and it is

now proposed to rob the women of their rights in those

localities. As the two methods do not conflict, and what is done

in the several States tells on the nation, and what is done by

congress reacts again on the States, it must be a good thing to

keep up both kinds of agitation.

In the middle of November the National Association sent out

thousands of petitions and appeals for the sixteenth amendment,

which were published and commented on extensively by the press in

every State in the Union. Early in January they began to pour

into Washington at the rate of a thousand a day, coming from

twenty-six different States. It does not require much wisdom to

see that when these petitions were placed in the hands of the

representatives of their States, a great educational work was

accomplished at Washington, and public sentiment there has its

legitimate effect throughout the country, as well as that already

accomplished in the rural districts by the slower process of

circulating and signing the petitions. The present uncertain

position of men and parties, has made politicians more ready to

listen to the demands of their constituents, and never has woman

suffrage been treated with more courtesy in Washington.

To Sara Andrews Spencer we are indebted, for the great labor of

receiving, assorting, counting, rolling-up and planning the

presentation of the petitions. It was by a well considered _coup

d'etat_ that, with her brave coadjutors, she appeared on the

floor of the House at the moment of adjournment, and there,

without circumlocution, gave each member a petition from his own

State. Even Miss Anthony, always calm in the hour of danger, on

finding herself suddenly whisked into those sacred enclosures,

amid a crowd of stalwart men, spittoons, and scrap-baskets, when

brought _vis-a-vis_ with our champion, Mr. Hoar, hastily

apologized for the intrusion, to which the honorable gentleman

promptly replied, "I hope, Madam, yet to see you on this floor,

in your own right, and in business hours too." Then and there the

work of the next day was agreed on, the members gladly accepting

the petitions. As you have already seen, Mr. Hoar made the motion

for the special order, which was carried and the petitions

presented. Your readers will be glad to know, that Mr. Hoar has

just been chosen, by Massachusetts, as her next senator--that

gives us another champion in the Senate. As there are many

petitions still in circulation, urge your readers to keep sending

them until the close of the session, as we want to know how many

women are in earnest on this question. It is constantly said,

"Women do not want to vote." Ten thousand told our

representatives at Washington in a single day that they did! What

answer?

Yours sincerely, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

The press commented as follows:

SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT.--The woman suffragists, who had a benefit in

the House of Representatives, on Friday, when their petitions

were presented, transferred their affections to the Senate on

Saturday to witness the presentation of a large number of

petitions in that body. It is impossible to tell whether the

results desired by the women will follow this concerted action,

but it is certain that they have their forces better organized

this year than they ever had before, and they have gone to work

on a more systematic plan.--[_National Republican._

SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT IN THE SENATE--THE TEN THOUSAND PETITIONERS

ROYALLY TREATED.--That women will, by voting, lose nothing of

man's courteous, chivalric attention and respect is admirably

proven by the manner in which both houses of congress, in the

midst of the most anxious and perplexing presidential conflict in

our history, received their appeals from twenty-three States for

a sixteenth amendment protecting the rights of women.

In both houses, by unanimous consent, the petitions were

presented and read in open session. The speaker of the House

gallantly prepared the way yesterday, and the most prominent

senators to-day improved the occasion by impressing upon the

Senate the importance of the question. Mr. Sargent reminded the

senators that there were forty thousand more votes for woman

suffrage in Michigan than for the new State constitution, and Mr.

Dawes said, upon presenting the petition from Massachusetts, that

the question was attracting the attention of both political

parties in that State, and he commended it to the early and

earnest consideration of the Senate. Mr. Cockrell of Missouri,

merrily declared that his petitioners were the most beautiful and

accomplished daughters of the State, which of course he felt

compelled to do when Miss Couzins' bright eyes were watching the

proceedings from the gallery. Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania,

suggested that it would have been better to put them all together

and not consume the time of the Senate with so many

presentations.

The officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association held a

caucus after the adjournment of the Senate, and decided to thank

Mr. Cameron for his suggestion, and while they had no anxiety

lest senators should consume too much time attending to the

interests of women whom they claim to represent, and might

reasonably anticipate that ten millions of disfranchised citizens

would trouble them considerably with petitions while this

injustice continued, yet they would promptly adopt the senator's

counsel and roll up such a mammoth petition as the Senate had not

yet seen from the thousands of women who had no opportunity to

sign these. Accordingly they immediately prepared the

announcement for the friends of woman suffrage to send on their

names to the chairman of the congressional committee. They

naturally feel greatly encouraged by the evident interest of both

parties in the proposed sixteenth amendment, and will work with

renewed strength to secure the cooeperation of the women of the

country.--[_Washington Star._

The time has evidently arrived when demands for a recognition of

the personal, civil and political rights of

one-half--unquestionably the better half--of the people cannot be

laughed down or sneered down, and recent indications are that

they cannot much longer be voted down. It was quite clear on

Friday and Saturday, when petitions from the best citizens of

twenty-three States were presented in House and Senate, that the

leaders of the two political parties vied with each other in

doing honor to the grave subject proposed for their

consideration. The speaker of the House set a commendable example

of courtesy to women by proposing that the petitions be delivered

in open House, to which there was no objection. The early

advocates of equal rights for women--Hoar, Kelley, Banks, Kasson,

Lawrence, and Lapham--were, if possible, surpassed in courtesy by

those who are not committed, but are beginning to see that a

finer element in the body politic would clear the vision, purify

the atmosphere and help to settle many vexed questions on the

basis of exact and equal justice.

In the Senate the unprecedented courtesy was extended to women of

half an hour's time on the floor for the presentation of

petitions, exactly alike in form, from twenty-one States, and

while this kind of business this session has usually been

transacted with an attendance of from seven to ten senators, it

was observed that only two out of twenty-three senators who had

sixteenth amendment petitions to present were out of their seats.

Senator Sargent said the presence of women at the polls would

purify elections and give us a better class of public officials,

and the State would thus be greatly benefited. The subject was

receiving serious consideration in this country and in England.

Senator Dawes, in presenting the petition from Massachusetts,

said the subject was commanding the attention of both political

parties in his own State.

The officers of the National Association, who had been able to

give only a few days' time to securing the cooeperation of the

women of the several States in their present effort, held a

caucus after the adjournment of the Senate, and decided to

immediately issue a new appeal for a mammoth petition, which

would even more decidedly impress the two houses with the

importance of protecting the rights of women by a constitutional

amendment. Considering the many long days and weeks consumed in

both houses in discussing the political rights of the colored

male citizens, there is an obvious propriety in giving full and

fair consideration to the protection of the rights of wives,

mothers and daughters.--[_The National Republican_, January 22,

1877.

The National Association held its anniversary in Masonic Temple,

New York, May 24, 1877. Isabella Beecher Hooker, vice-president for

Connecticut, called the meeting to order and invited Rev. Olympia

Brown to lead in prayer. Mrs. Gage made the annual report of the

executive committee. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier of New York was elected

president for the coming year. Pledges were made to roll up

petitions with renewed energy; and resolutions were duly

discussed[22] and adopted:

WHEREAS, Such minor matters as declaring peace and war, the

coining of money, the imposition of tariff, and the control of

the postal service, are forbidden the respective States; and

whereas, upon the framing of the constitution, it was wisely

held that these property rights would be unsafe under the

control of thirteen varying deliberative bodies; and whereas, by

a curious anomaly, power over suffrage, the basis and

corner-stone of the nation, is held to be under control of the

respective States; and

WHEREAS, the experience of a century has shown that the personal

right of self-government inhering in each individual, is wholly

insecure under the control of thirty-eight varying deliberative

bodies; and

WHEREAS, the right of self-government by the use of the ballot

inheres in the citizen of the United States; therefore,

_Resolved_, That it is the immediate and most important duty of

the government to secure this right on a national basis to all

citizens, independent of sex.

_Resolved_, That the right of suffrage underlies all other

rights, and that in working to secure it women are doing the best

temperance, moral reform, educational, and religious work of the

age.

_Resolved_, That we solemnly protest against the recent memorial

to congress, from Utah, asking the disfranchisement of the women

of that territory, and that we ask of congress that this request,

made in violation of the spirit of our institutions, be not

granted.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the National Woman Suffrage

Association are hereby tendered to the late speaker of the House

of Representatives, Hon. Samuel J. Randall, Pa.; and to

Representatives Banks, Mass.; Blair, N. H.: Bland, Mo.; Brown,

Kan.; Cox, N. Y.; Eames, R. I.; Fenn, Col.; Hale, Me.; Hamilton,

N. J.; Hendee, Vt.; Hoar, Mass.; Holman, Ind.; Jones, N. H.;

Kasson, Iowa; Kelley, Pa. Knott, Ky.; Lane, Oregon; Lapham, N.

Y.; Lawrence, O.; Luttrel, Cal.; Lynde, Wis.; McCrary, Iowa;

Morgan, Mo.; O'Neill, Pa.; Springer, Ill.; Strait, Minn.;

Waldron, Mich.; Warren, Conn.; Wm. B. Williams, Mich.; and

Senators Allison, Iowa; Bogy, Mo.; Burnside, R. I. (for Conn. and

R. I.); Cameron, Pa.; Cameron, Wis.; Chaffee, Col.; Christiancy,

Mich.; Cockrell, Mo.; Conkling, N. Y.; Cragin, N. H.; Dawes,

Mass.; Dorsey, Ark. (a petition from Me.); Edmunds, Vt.;

Frelinghuysen, N. J.; Hamlin, Me.; Kernan, N. Y.; McCreery, Ky.;

Mitchell, Oregon; Morrill, Vt.; Morton, Ind.; Oglesby, Ill.;

Sargent, Cal.; Sherman, Ohio; Spencer, Ala. (a petition from the

District); Thurman, Ohio (a petition from Kansas); Wadleigh, N.

H.; Wallace, Pa.; Windom, Minn.; Wright, Iowa, for representing

the women of the United States in the presentation of the

sixteenth amendment petitions from ten thousand citizens, in open

House and Senate, at the last session of congress.

_Resolved_, That while we recognize with gratitude the opening of

many new avenues of labor and usefulness to women, and the

amelioration of their condition before the law in many States, we

still declare there can be no fair play for women in the world of

business until they stand on the same plane of citizenship with

their masculine competitors.

_Resolved_, That in entering the professions and other

departments of business heretofore occupied largely by men, the

women of to-day should desire to accept the same conditions and

tests of excellence with their brothers, and should demand the

same standard for men and women in business, art, education, and

morals.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of this association are hereby

tendered to the Hon. Geo. F. Hoar of Massachusetts, for rising in

his place in the Cincinnati presidential convention, and asking

in behalf of the disfranchised women of the United States that

the convention grant a hearing to Mrs. Spencer, of Washington,

the accredited delegate of the National Woman Suffrage

Association.

Great unanimity was reached in these sentiments and the enthusiasm

manifested gave promise of earnest labor and more hopeful results.

It was felt that there was reason to thank God and take courage.

The day before the opening of the Tenth Washington Convention a

caucus was held in the ladies' reception-room[23] in the Senate

wing of the capitol. A roll-call of the delegates developed the

fact that every State in the Union would be represented by women

now here and _en route_, or by letter. Mrs. Spencer said she had

made a request in the proper quarter, that the delegates should be

allowed to go on the floor when the Senate was actually in session,

and present their case to the senators. She had been met with the

statement that such a proceeding was without precedent. Mrs. Hooker

suggested that inasmuch as there was a precedent for such a course

in the House, the delegates should meet the following Thursday to

canvass for votes in the House of Representatives. Another delegate

recalled the fact that Mrs. General Sherman and Mrs. Admiral

Dahlgren had been admitted upon the floor of the Senate while it

was in session, to canvass for votes against woman suffrage.

This agitation resulted in a resolution introduced by Hon. A. A.

Sargent, January 10:

WHEREAS, Thousands of women of the United States have

petitioned congress for an amendment to the constitution

allowing women the right of suffrage; and whereas, many of

the representative women of the country favoring such

amendment are present in the city and have requested to be

heard before the Senate in advocacy of said amendment,

_Resolved_, That at a session of the Senate, to be held on

----, said representative women, or such of them as may be

designated for that purpose, may be heard before the Senate;

but for one hour only.

Mr. EDMUNDS demanded the regular order.

Mr. SARGENT advocated the resolution, and urged immediate action,

as delay would detain the women in the city at considerable

expense to them. He thought the question not so intricate that

senators require time for consideration whether or not the women

should be heard.

Mr. EDMUNDS said there was a rule of long standing that forbids

any person appearing before the Senate. There was much to be said

in favor of the petitions, but it was against the logic of the

resolution that the petitioners required more than was accorded

any others. He, therefore, insisted on his demand for the regular

order.

Mr. SARGENT gave notice that he would call up his resolution

to-morrow, and reminded the senators that no rule was so sacred

that it could not be set aside by unanimous consent.

On the next day there was a lively discussion, Senators Edmunds,

Thurman and Conkling insisting there was no precedent; Mr. Sargent,

assisted by Senators Burnside, Anthony and Dawes, reminding them

of several occasions when the Senate had extended similar

courtesies. The resolution was voted down--31 to 13.[24]

Hon. Wm. D. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, performed like service in the

House:

Mr. KELLY asked leave to offer a resolution, reciting that

petitions were about to be presented to the House of

Representatives from citizens of thirty-five States of the Union,

asking for the adoption of an amendment to the constitution to

prohibit the disfranchisement of any citizen of any State; and

that there be a session of the House on Saturday, January 12, at

which time the advocates of the constitutional amendment may be

heard at the bar. These petitions ask the House to originate a

movement which it cannot consumate, but which it can only submit

to the States for their action. The resolution only asks that the

House will hear a limited number of the advocates of this

amendment, who are now in the city, and on a day when there is

not likely to be a session for business. They only ask the

privilege of stating the grounds of their belief why the

constitution should be amended in the direction they indicate.

Many of these ladies who petition are tax-payers, and they

believe their rights have been infringed upon.

Mr. CRITTENDEN of Missouri, objected, and the resolution was not

entertained.

This refusal to women pleading for their own freedom was the more

noticeable, as not only had Mesdames Sherman and Dahlgren been

heard upon the floor of the Senate in opposition, but the floor of

the House was shortly after granted to Charles Stewart Parnell, M.

P., that he might plead the cause of oppressed Ireland. The

Washington _Union_ of January 11, 1878, largely sustained by

federal patronage, commented as follows:

To allow the advocates of woman suffrage to plead their cause on

the floor of the Senate, as proposed yesterday by Mr. Sargent,

would be a decided innovation upon the established usages of

parliamentary bodies. If the privilege were granted in this case

it would next be claimed by the friends and the enemies of the

silver bill, by the supporters and opponents of resumption, by

hard money men and soft money men, by protectionists and

free-traders, by labor-reformers, prohibitionists and the Lord

knows whom besides. In fact, the admission of the ladies to speak

on the floor of the Senate would be the beginning of lively times

in that body.

The convention was held in Lincoln Hall, January, 8, 9, 1878. The

house was filled to overflowing at the first session. A large

number of representative women occupied the platform.[25] In

opening the meeting the president, Dr. Clemence Lozier, gave a

resume of the progress of the cause. Mrs. Stanton made an argument

on "National Protection for National Citizens."[26] Mrs. Lockwood

presented the following resolutions, which called out an amusing

debate on the "man idea"--that he can best represent the home, the

church, the State, the industries, etc., etc.:

_Resolved_, That the president of this convention appoint a

committee to select three intelligent women who shall be paid

commissioners to the Paris exposition; and also six other women

who shall be volunteer commissioners to said exposition to

represent the industries of American women.

_Resolved_, That to further this object the committee be

instructed to confer with the President, the Secretary of State,

and Commissioner McCormick.

A committee was appointed[27] and at once repaired to the

white-house, where they were pleasantly received by President

Hayes. After learning the object of their visit, the president

named the different classes of industries for which no

commissioners had been appointed, asked the ladies to nominate

their candidates, and assured them he would favor a representation

by women.

Miss JULIA SMITH of Glastonbury, Conn., the veteran defender of

the maxim of our fathers, "no taxation without representation,"

narrated the experience of herself and her sister Abby with the

tax-gatherers. They attended the town-meeting and protested

against unjust taxation, but finally their cows went into the

treasury to satisfy the tax-collector.

ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT of the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_, spoke on

the temperance work being done in Chicago, in connection with the

advocacy of the sixteenth amendment.

LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE reviewed the work in New York in getting

the bill through the legislature to appoint women on school

boards, which was finally vetoed by Governor Robinson.

Dr. MARY THOMPSON of Oregon, and Mrs. CROMWELL of Arkansas, gave

interesting reports from their States, relating many laughable

encounters with the opposition.

ROBERT PURVIS of Philadelphia, read a letter from the suffragists

of Pennsylvania, in which congratulations were extended to the

convention.

MARY A. S. CAREY, a worthy representative of the District of

Columbia, the first colored woman that ever edited a newspaper in

the United States, and who had been a worker in the cause for

twenty years, expressed her views on the question, and said the

colored women would support whatever party would allow them their

rights, be it Republican or Democratic.

Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN believed that a proper interpretation of the

fourteenth and fifteenth amendments did confer suffrage on women.

But men don't so understand it, and as a consequence when Mahomet

would not come to the mountain the mountain must go to Mahomet.

She said the day was coming, and rapidly, too, when women would

be given suffrage. There were very few now who did not

acknowledge the justice of it.

ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER gave her idea on "A Reconstructed

Police," showing how she would rule a police force if in her

control. Commencing with the location of the office, she

proceeded with her list of feminine and masculine officers, the

chief being herself. She would have a superintendent as aid, with

cooerdinate powers, and, besides the police force proper, which

she would form of men and women in equal proportions; she would

have matrons in charge of all station-houses. Her treatment of

vagrants would be to wash, feed, and clothe them, make them

stitch, wash and iron, take their history down for future

reference, and finally turn them out as skilled laborers. The

care of vagrant children would form an item in her system.

Mrs. LAWRENCE of Massachusetts, said the country is in danger,

and like other republics, unless taken care of, will perish by

its own vices. She said twelve hundred thousand men and women of

this country now stand with nothing to do, because their

legislators of wealth were working not for the many, but the few,

drunkenness and vice being superinduced by such a state of

things. She insisted that women were to blame for much of the

evil of the world--for bringing into life children who grow up in

vice from their inborn tendencies.

Dr. CAROLINE B. WINSLOW of Washington, referred to the speech of

Mrs. Lawrence, saying she hoped God would bless her for having

the courage to speak as she did. There is no greater reform than

for man and woman to be true to the marital relations.

BELVA A. LOCKWOOD said the only way for women to get their rights

is to take them. If necessary let there be a domestic

insurrection. Let young women refuse to marry, and married women

refuse to sew on buttons, cook, and rock the cradle until their

liege-lords acknowledge the rights they are entitled to. There

were more ways than one to conquer a man; and women, like the

strikers in the railroad riots, should carry their demands all

along the line. She dwelt at length upon the refusal of the

courts in allowing Lavinia Dundore to become a constable, and

asked why she should not be appointed.

The Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN said that if they wanted wisdom and

prosperity in the nation, health and happiness in the home, they

must give woman the power to purify her surroundings; the right

to make the outside world fit for her children to live in. Who

are more interested than mothers in the sanitary condition of our

schools and streets, and in the moral atmosphere of our towns and

cities?

Marshal FREDERICK DOUGLASS said his reluctance to come forward

was not due to any lack of interest in the subject under

discussion. For thirty years he had believed in human rights to

all men and women. Nothing that has ever been proposed involved

such vital interests as the subject which now invites attention.

When the negro was freed the question was asked if he was capable

of voting intelligently. It was answered in this way: that if a

sober negro knows as much as a drunken white man he is capable of

exercising the elective franchise.

LAVINIA C. DUNDORE, introduced as the lady who had made

application for an appointment as a constable and been refused,

made a pithy address, in which she alluded to her recent

disappointment.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE spoke of the influence of the church on

woman's liberties, and then referred to a large number of law

books--ancient and modern, ecclesiastical and lay--in which the

liberties of woman were more or less abridged; the equality of

sexes which obtained in Rome before the Christian era, and the

gradual discrimination in favor of men which crept in with the

growth of the church.

Mrs. DEVEREUX BLAKE said there is no aspect of this question that

strikes us so forcibly as the total ignoring of women by public

men. However polite they may be in private life, when they come

to public affairs they seem to forget that women exist. The men

who framed the last amendment to the constitution seemed to have

wholly forgotten that women existed or had rights.... Huxley said

in reply to an inquiry as to woman suffrage, "Of course I'm in

favor of it. Does it become us to lay additional burdens on those

who are already overweighted?" It is always the little men who

oppose us; the big-hearted men help us along. All in this

audience are of the broad-shouldered type, and I hope all will go

out prepared to advocate our principles. In reply to the

objection that women do not need the right to vote because men

represent them so well, she asked if any man in the audience ever

asked his wife how he should vote, and told him to stand up if

there was such a one. [Here a young man in the back part of the

hall stood up amidst loud applause.]

The various resolutions were discussed at great length and adopted,

though much difference of opinion was expressed on the last, which

demands that intelligence shall be made the basis of suffrage:

_Resolved_, That the National Constitution should be so amended

as to secure to United States citizens at home the same

protection for their individual rights against State tyranny, as

is now guaranteed everywhere against foreign aggressions.

_Resolved_, That the civil and political rights of the educated

tax-paying women of this nation should take precedence of all

propositions and debates in the present congress as to the future

status of the Chinese and Indians under the flag of the United

States.

WHEREAS, The essential elements of justice are already recognized

in the constitution; and, whereas, our fathers proposed to

establish a purely secular government in which all forms of

religion should be equally protected, therefore,

_Resolved_, That it is preeminently unjust to tax the property of

widows and spinsters to its full value, while the clergy are made

a privileged class by exempting from taxation $1,500 of their

property in some States, while in all States parsonages and other

church property, amounting to millions of dollars, are exempted,

which, if fairly taxed, would greatly lighten the national debt,

and thereby the burdens of the laboring masses.

_Resolved_, That thus to exempt one class of citizens, one kind

of property, from taxation, at the expense of all others, is a

great national evil, in a moral as well as a financial point of

view. It is an assumption that the church is a more important

institution than the family; that the influence of the clergy is

of more vital consequence in the progress of civilization than

that of the women of this republic; from which we emphatically

dissent.