Chapter XXX · (continued 2)

At the close of the hearing Mrs. Robinson presented each member of the committee with her little volume, "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement."

January 23 the House Committee on Rules[87] gave a hearing to Mrs. Jane Graham Jones of Chicago, Mrs. May Wright Sewall and Miss Anthony. During this congress the question of admitting the territory of Dakota as a State was discussed in the Senate. Our committee stood ready to oppose it unless the word "male" were stricken from the proposed constitution.

Immediately after this most of the speakers went[88] to Philadelphia where Rachel Foster had made arrangements for a two-days convention. Rev. Charles G. Ames gave the address of welcome.

He told of his conversion to woman suffrage from the time when he believed women and men were ordained to be unequal, just as in nature the mountain is different from the valley—he looking down at her, she gazing up at him—until the time when he began to see that women are not of necessity the valleys, nor men of necessity the mountains; and so on, until now he believes women entitled to stand on an equal plane with men, socially and politically.

The President, Mrs. Stanton, responded. Hannah Whitehall Smith of Germantown, prominent in the temperance movement, spoke of the hardship of farmers' wives, and asked:

If that condition was not one of slavery which obliged a woman to rise early and cook the family breakfast while her husband lay in bed; to work all day long, and then in the evening, while he smoked his pipe or enjoyed himself at the corner grocery, to mend and patch his old clothes. But she thought the position of woman was changing for the better. Even among the Indians a better feeling is beginning to prevail. It is Indian etiquette for the man to kill the deer or bear, and leave it on the spot where it is struck down for the woman to carry home. She must drag it over the ground or carry it on her back as best she may, while he quietly awaits her coming in the family wigwam. A certain Indian, after observing that white folks did differently by their women, once resolved to follow their example. But such was the force of public opinion that, when it was discovered that he brought home his own game, both he and his wife were murdered. This shows what fearful results prejudice may bring about; and the only difference between the prejudice which ruled his tribe in regard to woman and that which rules white American men to-day, is a difference in degree, dependent upon the difference in enlightenment. The principle is the same. The result would be the same were each equally ignorant.

The familiar faces of Edward M. Davis, Mary Grew, Adeline Thompson, Sarah Pugh, Anna McDowell and two of Lucretia Mott's noble daughters, gladdened many a heart during the various sessions of the convention. Beautiful tributes were paid to Mrs. Mott by several of the speakers. The Philadelphia convention was supplemented by a most delightful social gathering, without mention of which a report of the occasion would be incomplete:

Like many historical events, this was entirely unpremeditated, no one who participated in its pleasures had any forewarning, aside from an informal invitation to lunch with Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith and her generous husband, both earnest friends of temperance and important allies of the woman suffrage movement. Mrs. Smith met the guests at the station in Philadelphia, tickets in hand, marshaling them to their respective seats in the cars as if born to command, and on arriving at Germantown, transferred them to carriages in waiting, with the promptness of a railroad official. Without noise or confusion one and all crossed the threshold of her well-ordered mansion, and with other invited guests were soon seated in the spacious parlor, talking in groups here and there. "Ah!" said Mrs. Smith on entering, "this will never do, think of all the good things that will be lost in these side talks. My plan is to have a general conversation, a kind of love-feast, each telling her experience. It would be pleasant to know how each has reached the same platform, through the tangled labyrinths of human life." Soon all was silence and one after another related the special incidents in childhood, girlhood and mature years that had turned her thoughts to the consideration of woman's position. The stories were as varied as they were pathetic and amusing, and were listened to amidst smiles and tears with the deepest interest. And when all[89] had finished the tender revelations of the hopes and fears, the struggles and triumphs through which each soul had passed, these sacred memories seemed to bind us anew together in a friendship that we hope may never end. A sumptuous lunch followed, and amid much gaiety and laughter the guests dispersed, giving the hospitable host and hostess a warm farewell—a day to be remembered by all of us.

Our Senate committee, through its chairman, Hon. Elbridge G. Lapham, very soon reported in favor of the submission of a sixteenth amendment. We had had a favorable minority report in the House in 1871 and in the Senate in 1879—but this was the first favorable majority report we had ever had in either house:

In the Senate, Monday, June 5, 1882.

Mr. Lapham: I am instructed by the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, to whom was referred the joint resolution (S. R. No. 60) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to report it with a favorable recommendation, without amendment, for the consideration of the Senate. This is a majority report, and the minority desire the opportunity to present their report also, and have printed the reasons which they give for dissenting. As this is a question of more than ordinary importance, I should like to have 1,000 extra copies of the report printed for the use of the committee.

Mr. George: I present the views of the minority of the committee, consisting of the senator from Tennessee [Mr. Jackson], the senator from Nevada [Mr. Fair], and myself.

The President pro tempore: It is moved that 1,000 extra copies of the report be printed for the use of the Senate.

Mr. Anthony: The motion should go by the statute to the Committee on Printing.

Mr. Lapham: I will present it in the form of a resolution for reference to the Committee on Printing.

The resolution was referred to the Committee on Printing, as follows:

Resolved, That 1,000 additional copies of the report and views of the minority on Senate Joint Resolution No. 60 be printed for the use of the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage.

In the Senate of the United States, June 5, 1882, Mr. Lapham, from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted the following report:

The Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, to whom was referred Senate Resolution No. 60, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to secure the right of suffrage to all citizens without regard to sex, having considered the same, respectfully report:

The gravity and importance of the proposed amendment must be obvious to all who have given the subject the consideration it demands.

A very brief history of the origin of this movement in the United States and of the progress made in the cause of female suffrage will not be out of place at this time. A World's Anti-slavery Convention was held in London on June 12, 1840, to which delegates from all the organized societies were invited. Several of the American societies sent women as delegates. Their credentials were presented, and an able and exhaustive discussion was had by many of the leading men of America and Great Britain upon the question of their being admitted to seats in the convention. They were allowed no part in the discussion. They were denied seats as delegates, and, by reason of that denial, it was determined to hold conventions after their return to the United States, for the purpose of asserting and advocating their rights as citizens, and especially the right of suffrage. Prior to this, and as early as the year 1836, a proposal had been made in the legislature of the State of New York to confer upon married women their separate rights of property. The subject was under consideration and agitation during the eventful period which preceded the constitutional convention of New York in the year 1846, and the radical changes made in the fundamental law in that year. In 1848 the first act "For the More Effectual Protection of the Property of Married Women" was passed by the legislature of New York and became a law. It passed by a vote of 93 to 9 in the Assembly and 23 to 1 in the Senate. It was subsequently amended so as to authorize women to engage in business on their own account and to receive their own earnings. This legislation was the outgrowth of a bill prepared several years before under the direction of the Hon. John Savage, chief-justice of the Supreme Court, and of the Hon. John C. Spencer, one of the ablest lawyers in the State, one of the revisers of the statutes of New York, and afterward a cabinet officer. Laws granting separate rights of property and the right to transact business, similar to those adopted in New York, have been enacted in many, if not in most of the States, and may now be regarded as the settled policy of American legislation on the subject.

After the enactment of the first law in New York, as before stated, and in the month of July, 1848, the first convention demanding suffrage for women was held at Seneca Falls in said State. The same persons who had been excluded from the World's Convention in London were prominent and instrumental in calling the meeting and in framing the declaration of sentiments adopted by it, which, after reciting the unjust limitations and wrongs to which women are subjected, closed in these words:

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half of the people of this country and their social and religious degradation; in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States. In entering upon the great work before us we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this convention will be followed by a series of conventions embracing every part of the country.

The meeting also adopted a series of resolutions, one of which was in the following words:

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

This declaration was signed by seventy of the women of Western New York, among whom was one or more of those who addressed your committee on the subject of the pending amendment, and there were present, participating in and approving of the movement, a large number of prominent men, among whom were Elisha Foote, a lawyer of distinction, and since that time Commissioner of Patents, and the Hon. Jacob Chamberlain, who afterwards represented his district in the other House. From the movement thus inaugurated, conventions have been held from that time to the present in the principal villages, cities and capitals of the various States, as well as the capital of the nation.

The First National Convention upon the subject was held at Worcester, Mass., in October, 1850, and had the support and encouragement of many leading men of the republic, among whom we name the following: Gerrit Smith, Joshua R. Giddings, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John G. Whittier, A. Bronson Alcott, Samuel J. May, Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Elizur Wright, William J. Elder, Stephen S. Foster, Horace Greeley, Oliver Johnson, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Mann. The Fourth National Convention was held at the city of Cleveland, Ohio, October, 1853. The Rev. Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin College, and Hon. Joshua R. Giddings were there. Horace Greeley and William Henry Channing addressed letters to the convention. The letter of Mr. Channing stated the proposition to be that—

The right of suffrage be granted to the people, universally, without distinction of sex; and that the age for attaining legal and political majority be made the same for women as for men.

In 1857, Hon. Salmon P. Chase, chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, then governor of Ohio, recommended to the legislature a constitutional amendment on the subject, and a select committee of the Senate made an elaborate report, concluding with a resolution in the following words:

Resolved, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report to the Senate a bill to submit to the qualified electors, at the next general election for senators and representatives, an amendment to the constitution, whereby the elective franchise shall be extended to the citizens of Ohio without distinction of sex.

During the same year a similar report was made in the legislature of Wisconsin. From the report on the subject we quote the following:

We believe that political equality, by leading the thoughts and purposes of men and women into the same channel, will more completely carry out the designs of nature. Woman will be possessed of a positive power, and hollow compliments will be exchanged for well-grounded respect when we see her nobly discharging her part in the great intellectual and moral struggles of the age that wait their solution by a direct appeal to the ballot-box. Woman's power is at present poetical and unsubstantial; let it be practical and real. There is no reality in any power that cannot be coined in votes.

The effect of these discussions and efforts has been the gradual advancement of public sentiment towards conceding the right of suffrage without distinction of sex. In the territories of Wyoming and Utah, full suffrage has already been given. In regard to the exercise of the right in the territory of Wyoming, the present governor of that territory, Hon. John W. Hoyt, in an address delivered in Philadelphia, April 3, 1882, in answer to a question as to the operation of the law, said:

First of all, the experience of Wyoming has shown that the only actual trial of woman suffrage hitherto made—a trial made in a new country where the conditions were not exceptionably favorable—has produced none but the most desirable results. And surely none will deny that in such a matter a single ounce of experience is worth a ton of conjecture. But since it may be claimed that the sole experiment of Wyoming does not afford a sufficient guaranty of general expediency, let us see whether reason will not furnish a like answer. The great majority of women in this country already possess sufficient intelligence to enable them to vote judiciously on nearly all questions of a local nature. I think this will be conceded. Secondly, with their superior quickness of perception, it is fair to assume that when stimulated by a demand for a knowledge of political principles—such a demand as a sense of the responsibility of the voter would create—they would not be slow in rising to at least the rather low level at present occupied by the average masculine voter. So that, viewing the subject from an intellectual stand-point merely, such fears as at first spring up, drop away, one by one, and disappear. But it must not be forgotten that a very large proportion of questions to be settled by the ballot, both those of principle and such as refer to candidates, have in them a moral element which is vital. And here we are safer with the ballot in the hands of woman; for her keener insight and truer moral sense will more certainly guide her aright—and not her alone, but also, by reflex action, all whose minds are open to the influence of her example. The weight of this answer can hardly be overestimated. In my judgment, this moral consideration far more than offsets all the objections that can be based on any assumed lack of an intellectual appreciation of the few questions almost wholly commercial and economical. Last of all, a majority of questions to be voted on touch the interests of woman as they do those of man. It is upon her finer sensibilities, her purer instincts, and her maternal nature that the results of immorality and vice in every form fall with more crushing weight.

A criticism has been made upon the exercise of this right by the women of Utah that the plural wives in that territory are under the control of their polygamous husbands. Be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact that there is probably no city of equal size on this continent where there is less disturbance of the peace, or where the citizen is more secure in his person or property, either by day or night, than in the city of Salt Lake. A qualified right of suffrage has also been given to women in Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky, and New York. Of the operation of the law in the last-named State, Governor Cornell in a message to the legislature on May 12, said:

The recent law, 1882, making women eligible as school trustees, has produced admirable results, not only in securing the election of many of them as trustees of schools, but especially in elevating the qualifications of men proposed as candidates for school-boards, and also in stimulating greater interest in the management of schools generally. The effect of these new experiences is to widen the influence and usefulness of women.

So well satisfied are the representatives in the legislature of that State with these results that the assembly, by a large majority, recently passed to a third reading an act giving the full right of suffrage to women, the passage of which has been arrested in the Senate by an opinion of the attorney-general that a constitutional amendment is necessary to accomplish the object. In England women are allowed to vote at all municipal elections, and hold the office of guardian of the poor. In four States, Nebraska, Indiana, Oregon, and Iowa, propositions have passed their legislatures and are now pending, conferring the right of suffrage upon women.

Notwithstanding all these efforts, it is the opinion of the best informed men and women, who have devoted more than a third of a century to the consideration and discussion of the subject, that an amendment to the federal constitution, analogous to the fifteenth amendment of that instrument, is the most safe, direct, and expeditious mode of settling the question. It is the question of the enfranchisement of half the race now denied the right, and that, too, the most favored half in the estimation of those who deny the right. Petitions, from time to time, signed by many thousands, have been presented to congress, and there are now upon our files seventy-five petitions representing eighteen different States. Two years ago treble the number of petitions, representing over twenty-five States, were presented.

If congress should adopt the pending resolution, the question would go before the intelligent bodies who are chosen to represent the people in the legislatures of the various States, and would receive a more enlightened and careful consideration than if submitted to the masses of the male population, with all their prejudices, in the form of an amendment to the constitutions of the several States. Besides, such an amendment, if adopted, would secure that uniformity in the exercise of the right which could not be expected by action from the several States. We think the time has arrived for the submission of such an amendment to the legislatures of the States. We know the prejudices which the movement for suffrage to all without regard to sex, had to encounter from the very outset, prejudices which still exist in the minds of many. The period for employing the weapons of ridicule and enmity has not yet passed. Now, as in the beginning, we hear appeals to prejudice and the baser passions of men. The anathema, "woe betide the hand that plucks the wizard beard of hoary error," is yet employed to deter men from acting upon their convictions as to what ought to be done with reference to this great question. To those who are inclined to cast ridicule upon the movement, we quote the answer made while one of the early conventions was in session in the State of New York:

A collection of women arguing for political rights and for the privileges usually conceded only to the other sex is one of the easiest things in the world to make fun of. There is no end to the smart speeches and the witty remarks that may be made on the subject. But when we seriously attempt to show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman whose property and liberty and person are controlled by the laws should have no voice in framing those laws, it is not so easy. If women are fit to rule in a monarchy, it is difficult to say why they are not qualified to vote in a republic; nor can there be greater indelicacy in a woman going to the ballot-box than there is in a woman opening a legislature or issuing orders to an army.

To all who are more serious in their opposition to the movement, we would remind them of the words of a few distinguished men:—

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women.—[Abraham Lincoln.

I believe that the vices in our large cities will never be conquered until the ballot is put into the hands of women.—[Bishop Simpson.

I do not think our politics will be what it ought to be till women are legislators and voters.—[Rev. James Freeman Clarke.

Women have quite as much interest in good government as men, and I have never heard or read of any satisfactory reason for excluding them from the ballot-box; I have no more doubt of their ameliorating influence upon politics than I have of the influence they exert everywhere else.—[George William Curtis.

In view of the terrible corruption of our politics, people ask, can we maintain universal suffrage? I say no, not without women. The only bear-gardens in our community are the town-meeting and the caucus. Why is this? Because these are the only places at which women are not present.—[Bishop Gilbert Haven.

I repeat my conviction of the right of woman suffrage. Because suffrage is a right and not a grace, it should be extended to women who bear their share of the public cost, and who have the same interest that I have in the selection of officials and the making of laws which affect their lives, their property, and their happiness.—[Governor Long of Massachusetts.

However much the giving of political power to woman may disagree with our notions of propriety, we conclude that, being required by that first prerequisite to greater happiness, the law of equal freedom, such a concession is unquestionably right and good.—[Herbert Spencer.

In the administration of a State neither a woman as a woman, nor a man as a man has any special functions, but the gifts are equally diffused in both sexes. The same opportunity for self-development which makes man a good guardian will make woman a good guardian, for their original nature is the same.—[Plato.

It has become a custom, almost universal, to invite and to welcome the presence of women at political assemblages, to listen to discussions upon the topics involved in the canvass. Their presence has done much toward the elevation, refinement, and freedom from insincerity and hypocrisy, of such discussions. Why would not the same results be wrought out by their presence at the ballot-box? Wherever the right has been exercised by law, both in England and this country, such has been its effect in the conduct of elections.

The framers of our system of government embodied in the Declaration of Independence the statement that to secure the rights which are therein declared to be inalienable and in respect to which all men are created equal, "governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The system of representative government they inaugurated can only be maintained and perpetuated by allowing all citizens to give that consent through the medium of the ballot-box—the only mode in which the "consent of the governed" can be obtained. To deny to one-half of the citizens of the republic all participation in framing the laws by which they are to be governed, simply on account of their sex, is political despotism to those who are excluded, and "taxation without representation" to such of them as have property liable to taxation. Their investiture with separate estates leads, logically and necessarily, to their right to the ballot as the only means afforded them for the protection of their property, as it is the only means of their full protection in the enjoyment of the immeasurably greater right to life and liberty. To be governed without such consent is clear denial of a right declared to be inalienable.

It is said that the majority of women do not desire and would not exercise the right, if acknowledged. The assertion rests in conjecture. In ordinary elections multitudes of men do not exercise the right. It is only in extraordinary cases, and when their interests and patriotism are appealed to, that male voters are with unanimity found at the polls. It would doubtless be the same with women. In the exceptional instances in which the exercise of the right has been permitted, they have engaged with zeal in every important canvass. Even if the statement were founded in fact, it furnishes no argument in favor of excluding women from the exercise of the franchise. It is the denial of the right of which they complain. There are multitudes of men whose vote can be purchased at an election for the smallest and most trifling consideration. Yet all such would spurn with scorn and unutterable contempt a proposition to purchase their right to vote, and no consideration would be deemed an equivalent for such a surrender. Women are more sensitive upon this question than men, and so long as this right, deemed by them to be sacred, is denied, so long the agitation which has marked the progress of this contest thus far will be continued.

Entertaining these views, your committee report back the proposed resolution without amendment for the consideration of the Senate, and recommend its passage.

E. G. Lapham, T. M. Ferry, H. W. Blair.

The constitution is wisely conservative in the provision for its own amendment. It is eminently proper that whenever a large number of the people have indicated a desire for an amendment, the judgment of the amending power should be consulted. In view of the extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and the numerous and respectable petitions that have been presented to congress in its support, I unite with the committee in recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted to the States.

H. B. Anthony.

June 5, 1882, Mr. George, from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted the following views of the minority:

The undersigned are unable to concur in the report of the majority recommending the adoption of the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for reasons which they will now proceed to state.

We do not base our dissent upon any ground having relation to the expediency or inexpediency of vesting in women the right to vote. Hence we shall not discuss the very grave and important social and political questions which have arisen from the agitation to admit to equal political rights the women of our country, and to impose on them the burden of discharging, equally with men, political and public duties. Whether so radical a change in our political and social system would advance the happiness and welfare of the American people, considered as a whole, without distinction of sex, is a question on which there is a marked disagreement among the most enlightened and thoughtful of both sexes. Its solution involves considerations so intimately pertaining to all the relations of social and private life—the family circle—the status of women as wives, mothers, daughters, and companions, to the functions in private and public life which they ought to perform, and their ability and willingness to perform them—the harmony and stability of marriage, and the division of the labors and cares of that union—that we are convinced that the proper and safe discussion and weighing of them would be best secured by deliberations in the separate communities which have so deep an interest in the rightful solution of this grave question. Great organic changes in government, especially when they involve, as this proposed change does, a revolution in the modes of life, long-standing habits, and the most sacred domestic relations of the people, should result only upon the demand of the people, who are to be affected by them. Such changes should originate with, and be molded and guided in their operation and extent by, the people themselves. They should neither precede their demand for them, nor be delayed in opposition to their clearly expressed wishes. Their happiness, their welfare, their advancement, are the sole objects of the institution of government; of these they are not only the best, but they are the exclusive judges. They have commissioned us to exercise for their good the great powers which they have intrusted to us by their letter of attorney, the constitution; not to assume to ourselves a superior wisdom, or usurp a guardianship over them, dictating reforms not demanded by them, and attempting to grasp power not granted.

The organization of our political institutions is such that the great mass of the powers of government, the proper exercise of which so deeply concerns the welfare of the people, is left to the States. In that depository the will of the people is most certainly ascertained, and the exercise of power is more directly under their guidance. Our free institutions have had their great development and owe their stability more to causes connected with the direct exercise of the power of the people in local self-government than to all other causes combined. Recent events, though tending strongly to centralization, have not destroyed in the public mind the inestimable value of local self-government. Among the powers which have hitherto been esteemed as most essential to the public welfare is the power of the States to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way; and among those institutions none has been preserved by the States with greater jealousy than their absolute control over marriage and the relation between the sexes.

Another power of the States, deemed by the people when they assented to the Constitution of the United States most essential to the public welfare, was the right of each State to determine the qualifications of electors. Wherever the federal constitution speaks of elections for a federal office, it adopts the qualifications for electors prescribed by the State in which the election is to be held.

Nor has this fundamental rule been departed from in the fifteenth amendment. That impairs it only to the extent that race, color, or previous condition of servitude shall not be made a ground of exclusion from the right of suffrage. In all else that pertains to the qualifications of electors the absolute will of the State prevails. This amendment was inserted from considerations which pertain to no other part of the question of suffrage. The negro race had been recently emancipated; it was supposed that the antagonism between them and their old masters and the prejudice of race would be such as to obstruct the equal enjoyment of the rights of freedom conferred by the national forces, and would prevent the white race of the South from admitting the negro race, however deserving it might be, to equal political privileges. And, moreover, it was deemed by the North a point of honor that, having conferred freedom on the negro, he should be provided with the right of suffrage.

None of these considerations applies in the present case. It is not pretended that any such antagonism or prejudice exists between the sexes. It is not pretended that women have been redeemed from an intolerable slavery by the power of the government. It is not pretended that the sex in whose hands is the political power of the States is unwilling, from any cause, to do full justice to the other; for it is conceded that if the proposed amendment should be adopted, its incorporation into the constitution must result from the voluntary action of that sex in which is vested this political power. No good reason has been given why the congress of the United States should force or even hasten the States into such action, and no such reason can be given without a reversal of the theories on which our free institutions are based.

The history given by the majority, of the legislation of the several States in relation to the rights of persons and property of married women showing as it does a steady advance in the abolition of their common-law disabilities, conclusively demonstrates that this question may be safely left for solution where it now is and has always hitherto belonged. The public mind is now being agitated in many of the States as to the rights of women, not only as to suffrage, but as to their engaging in the various employments from which they have hitherto been excluded. This exclusion from certain employments has not been the result of municipal but of social laws—the strongest of all human regulations. As these social laws have been modified, so the sphere of woman's activities and usefulness has been enlarged. These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of which they are qualified, it cannot be doubted that they will give way. If, on the contrary, neither of these shall be discovered, it will happen that the exclusion of suffrage will not be considered as a denial of a right, but as an exemption granted to women from cares and burdens which a tender and affectionate regard for womanhood refuses to cast on them.

We are convinced, therefore, that the best mode of disposing of the question is to leave its solution to that power most amenable to the influences and usages of society in which women have so large and so potential a share, confident that at no distant day a right result will be reached in each State which will be satisfactory to both sexes and perfectly consistent with the welfare and happiness of the people. Certainly this must be so if the people themselves, the source and foundation of all power, are capable of self-government.

At two of its meetings the committee listened with great pleasure to several eminent ladies who appeared before it as advocates of the proposed amendment. At none of the meetings of the committee, including that at which the members voted on the proposed amendment, was there any discussion of this important subject; none was asked for or desired by any member of the committee, and the vote was taken. The reports of the majority and of the minority of the committee are therefore to be construed only as the individual opinions of the members who respectively concur in them. They are in no sense to be treated as the judgment of a deliberative body charged with the examination of this important subject.

The foregoing leads us to but one recommendation: that the committee should be discharged from the further consideration of the subject, that the resolution raising it be rescinded, and that the proposed amendment be rejected.

J. Z. George, Howell E. Jackson, James G. Fair.

In a letter from Miss Caroline Biggs to the president of the National Association the following congratulations came from the friends of suffrage in England:

Central Committee of the National Society for } Woman Suffrage, 64 Berners Street, London, W. }

At a meeting of the Executive Committee, on May 18, 1882, the following resolution was proposed by Mrs. Lucas, seconded by Miss Jane Cobden, and passed unanimously:

Resolved, That the Executive Committee of the National Society for Woman Suffrage have heard with hearty satisfaction that a select committee of the United States Senate in Washington has passed by a majority of votes the recommendation to adopt a constitutional amendment in favor of women's suffrage. They feel that the cause of woman is one in all countries, and they offer their most cordial congratulations to the women of America on the important step which has just been gained, and their warmest good-wishes for a speedy success in obtaining a measure which will guarantee justice and equal rights to half the population of a sister country.

Nebraska now became the center of interest, as a constitutional amendment to secure the right of suffrage to woman was submitted to be voted upon in the November election. As the submission of such a proposition makes an important crisis in the history of a State, as well as in the suffrage movement, the notes of preparation were as varied as multitudinous throughout the nation, rousing all to renewed earnestness in the work. Both the American and National associations decided to hold their annual conventions in Omaha, the chief city of the State, and to support as many speakers[90] as possible through the campaign, that meetings might be held and tracts distributed in every county of the State, an Herculean undertaking, as Nebraska comprises 230,000 inhabitants scattered over an area of 76,000 square miles, divided into sixty-six counties; and yet this is what the friends of the measure proposed to do. The American Association[91] held its convention September 12, 13, 14. The National[92] continued three days, September 27, 28, 29.

The Opera House, in which the National Association held its meeting, was completely filled during all the sessions. The address of welcome was given by Hon. A. J. Poppleton, one of the most distinguished lawyers in that State. He said:

I deem it no light compliment that, in the face of an explicit declaration that I am not in favor of woman suffrage, I have been asked to make, on behalf of the people of Omaha and the State, an address of welcome to the many distinguished men and women whom this occasion has brought together. Doubtless the consideration shown me is a recognition of the fact that I have been a life-long advocate of the advancement of women through the agencies of equality in education, equality in employment, equality in wages, equality in property-rights and personal liberty, in short, a fair, open, equal field in the struggle for life. That I cannot go beyond this and embrace equal suffrage, is due rather to long adherence to the political philosophy of Edmund Burke than any lack of conviction of the absolute equality of men and women in natural rights.

In the winter of 1852-3, when a student at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., while the spot on which we now stand was Indian country as yet untouched by the formative power of national legislation, I listened to Miss Susan B. Anthony, Miss Antoinette Brown and others in the advocacy of the rights of women. It seems a strange fortune that brings now, nearly thirty years after, one of those speakers, crowned with a national reputation, into a State carved out of that Indian country and containing 60,000 people, in advocacy of equal suffrage for her sex. This single fact proclaims in thunder tones the bravery, the fidelity, the devotion of these pioneers of reform, and challenges for them the sympathy, respect, esteem and admiration of every good man and woman in America.

The thirty years commencing about 1850 have been prolific of momentous changes. It is the era of the sewing machine, of the domestication of steam and electricity, the overthrow of the great rebellion, the destruction of slavery, the consolidation of the German empire, the fall of the second Napoleon, the birth of the French republic, the incorporation of India into the British empire, and the revolution of commerce by the Pacific railways and the Suez canal. Great changes have likewise taken place in the structure of our own State and national legislation, the most conspicuous and pronounced result being the centralization of power in the federal government. It has been preëminently a period of amelioration, a long stride in the direction of tolerance of opinion, belief, speech and creed. Hospitals, asylums, schools, colleges and the manifold agencies of an advanced Christian civilization for alleviating the average lot of humanity, have grown and multiplied beyond the experience of former times, and men like Matthew Vassar, George Peabody and John Hopkins have hastened to consecrate the abundant fruits of honorable lives to the exaltation and advancement of the race.

But in no direction have greater changes occurred in this country than in the condition of woman in respect to employment, wages, personal and property rights. In all heathen countries at this hour the mass of women are slaves or worse, wholly deprived of civil rights. In most Christian countries their legal status is one of absolute subordination in person and property to men. In this republic alone have we attained an altitude where some small measure of justice is meted out to women by the laws. In 1850 a fair measure of her rights was the grim edict of the common law holding her in guardianship prior to marriage, and upon marriage making her and all her possessions practically the property of her husband, while a cruel, unreasonable and vicious public opinion excluded her from all except menial and ill-paid service. One by one and year by year these barriers have given way, until in many States her property and personal rights enjoy the complete shelter of the law. Now more than half the occupations and employments of this age of industrial activity and progress are thronged with the faithful, efficient and contented labor of women.

The law has broken forever the thraldom of an odious and hopeless marriage by reasonable laws for divorce for just cause, given her the custody of her children, vested her with the absolute power of disposition and control over her property, inherited or acquired, freed it from the claims of her husband's creditors, and clothed her with ample legal remedies even against her husband. Perhaps Nebraska alone of all the States, by its court of last resort, has upheld the power of the wife to make contracts with her husband and enforce them against him in her own name by the appropriate legal remedies. This surely is progress. Beyond this there lies but one field to win or fortress to reduce. Then surely the worn soldier in the long campaign crowned with the garlands of victory may rest from the battle.

Not many years ago, coming from Wisconsin, I think, a girl presented herself in the Illinois courts for admission to the bar, and after a rigid and unsparing examination she was admitted with public compliment. She took an office in the great city of Chicago and in the short remnant of an uncertain life so wrought in her profession as to attain an average professional income, and win the undivided respect and esteem of her professional associates. And when from a far country, whither she had gone in hope to escape a fell disease, her lifeless corpse was brought back for sepulture, many of the foremost lawyers of Chicago gathered about her bier and bore emphatic testimony to her virtues as a woman and her attainments as a lawyer. To me no greater work has been done by any American woman. When Alta Hulett unobtrusively, silently but indomitably pressed her way to the front of the legal profession, and established herself there, she vindicated the right of her sex to contend for the highest prizes of life, and left her countrywomen a legacy which will ultimately blazon her name imperishably in the history of the advancement of women; and every American woman who, like her, goes to the front of any honorable occupation, employment or profession, and stays there, becomes her coädjutor in work and a sharer in her reward.

Laden with the trophies of thirty years of conflict, of progress, of measurable success, the vice-president of the National Woman Suffrage Association and her associates present themselves to Nebraska and ask a hearing upon the final issue, "Shall this work be crowned by granting to women in this State the highest privilege of the citizen—suffrage?" On behalf of the people of a State whose legislature has granted everything else to women—whose devotion to free speech, untrammeled discussion and an independent press has been conspicuous in its constitutional and legislative history—I welcome them to this city and State, and bespeak for them a patient, candid, respectful, appreciative hearing.

Miss Anthony replied briefly to Mr. Poppleton's eloquent address and returned the thanks of the convention for the courtesy with which its members had been received by the citizens of Omaha.[93] She then read a letter from the president of the convention:

Toulouse, France, September 1, 1882.

To the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention assembled:

Dear Friends: People never appreciate the magnitude and importance on any step in progress, at the time it is taken, nor the full moral worth of the characters who inspire it, hence it will be in line with the whole history of reform from the beginning if woman's enfranchisement in Nebraska should in many minds seem puerile and premature, and its advocates fanatical and unreasonable. Nevertheless the proposition speaks for itself. A constitutional amendment to crown one-half of the people of a great State with all their civil and political rights, is the most vital question the citizens of Nebraska have ever been called on to consider; and the fact cannot be gainsaid that some of the purest and ablest women America can boast, are now in the State advocating the measure.

For the last two months I have been assisting my son in the compilation of a work soon to be published in America, under the title, "The Woman Question in Europe," to which distinguished women in different nations have each contributed a sketch of the progress made in their condition. One interesting and significant fact as shown in this work, is, that in the very years we began to agitate the question of equal rights, there was a simultaneous movement by women for various privileges, industrial, social, educational, civil and political, throughout the civilized world. And this without the slightest concert of action, or knowledge of each other's existence, showing that the time had come in the natural evolution of the species, in the order of human development, for woman to assert her rights, and to demand the recognition of the feminine element in all the vital interests of life.

To battle against a palpable fact in philosophy and the accumulated facts in achievement that can be seen on all sides in woman's work for the last forty years, from slavery to equality, is as vain as to fight against the law of gravitation. We shall as surely reach the goal we purposed when we started, as that the rich prairies of Nebraska will ere long feed and educate millions of brave men and women, gathered from every nation on the globe. Every consideration for the improvement of your home life, for the morality of your towns and cities, for the elevation of your schools and colleges, and the loftiest motives of patriotism should move you, men of Nebraska, to vote for this amendment. Galton in his great work on Heredity says:

We are in crying want of a greater fund of ability in all stations of life, for neither the classes of statesmen, philosophers, artisans nor laborers, are up to the modern complexity of their several professions. An extended civilization like ours comprises more interests than the ordinary statesmen or philosophers of our race are capable of dealing with, and it exacts more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans and laborers, are capable of performing. Our race is overweighted, and appears likely to be dragged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers. If its average ability were raised a grade or two, a new class of statesmen would conduct our complex affairs at home and abroad, as easily as our best business men now do their own private trades and professions. The needs of centralization, communication, and culture, call for more brains and mental stamina, than the average of our race possesses.

Does it need a prophet to tell us where to begin this work? Does not the physical and intellectual condition of the women of a nation decide the capacity and power of its men? If we would give our sons the help and inspiration of woman's thought and interest in the complex questions of our present civilization, we must first give her the power that political responsibility secures. With the ballot in her own right hand, she would feel a new sense of dignity, and command among men a respect they have never felt before.

Nebraska has now the opportunity of making this grand experiment of securing justice, liberty, equality, for the first time in the world's history, to woman, through her education and enfranchisement, of lifting man to that higher plane of thought where he may be able wisely to meet all the emergencies of the period in which he is called on to act. Let every man in Nebraska now so do his duty, that, when the sun goes down on the eighth of November, the glad news may be sent round the world that at last one State in the American republic has fully accorded the sacred right of self-government to all her citizens, black and white, men and women. With sincere hope for this victory,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Cordially yours,

Many interesting letters were received from friends at home and abroad, of which we give a few. The following is from our Minister Plenipotentiary at the German Court:

Berlin, September 9, 1882.

Miss Anthony: Esteemed Friend: At this great distance I can only sympathize with the earnest effort to be made this fall to secure political recognition for women in Nebraska. I am glad that the prospect is so good and that Nebraska, which gave a name, with Kansas, to the first successful resistance to the encroachments of slavery, is the arena where the battle is to be fought under such promise of a just result. By recognizing the right of its women to an equal share in all the duties and responsibilities of life, Nebraska will honor itself while securing for all time wholesome laws and administration.

I believe society would more benefit itself than grant a favor to women by extending the suffrage to them. All the interests of women are promoted by a government that shall guard the family circle, restrain excess, promote education, shield the young from temptation. While the true interests of men lie in the same direction, women more generally appreciate these facts and illustrate in their lives a desire for their attainment. Could we bring to the ballot-box the great fund of virtue, intelligence and good intention stored up in the minds and hearts of our wives and sisters, how great the reinforcement would be for all that is noble, patriotic and pure in public life! Who should fear the result who desires the public welfare? From the stand-point of better principles applied to the direction of public affairs and the best individuals in office, the argument seems impregnable.

It is getting late to resist this measure on the ground that the character of women themselves would be lowered by contact with politics. That objection is identical with the motive which causes the Turk to shut up his women in a harem and closely veil them in public. He fears their delicacy will be tarnished if they speak to any man but their proprietor. So prejudice feared woman would be unsexed if she had equal education with man. The professions were closed to women for the same consideration. Women have vindicated their ability to endure the education and engage in the dreaded pursuits, yet society is not dissolved, and these fearful imaginings have proved idle dreams. As every advance made by woman since the days when it was a mooted law-point how large could be the stick with which her husband could punish her, down to the day when congress opened to her the bar of the United States Supreme Court, has been accompanied by constantly refuted assertions that she and society were about to be ruined. I think we can safely trust to her good sense, virtue and delicacy to preserve for us the loved and venerated object we have always known, even if society shall yield the still further measure of complete enfranchisement, and thus add to her social dignity, duties and responsibilities.

No class has ever been degraded by the ballot. All have rather been elevated by it. We cannot rationally anticipate less desirable personal consequences to those whose tendencies are naturally good, than to those on whom the ballot has been conferred belonging to a lower plane of being. But these considerations go only to show the policy of granting suffrage to women. From the stand-point of justice the argument is more pressing. If woman asks for the ballot shall man deny it? By what right? Certainly not by the right of a majority; for women are at least as numerous. Certainly not by any right derived from nature; for our common mother has set no brand on woman. If one woman shall ask for a voice in the regulation of society of which she is at least one-half, who shall say her nay? If any woman shall ask it, who shall deny it because another woman does not ask it? There are many men who do not value their citizenship; shall other men therefore be deprived of the ballot? Suppose many women would not avail themselves of such a function, are those with higher, or other views, to be therefore kept in tutelage?

I trust you may succeed in this work in Nebraska. It is of supreme importance to the cause. The example of Nebraska would soon be followed by other States. The current of such a reform knows no retiring ebb. The suffrage once acquired will never be relinquished; first, because it will recommend itself, as it has in Wyoming, by its results; second, because the women will jealously guard their rights, and defend them with their ballots. Wishing I could do more than send you good wishes for the cause,[94] I am, respectfully yours,

A. A. Sargent.

The following letter is from a daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (a graduate of Vassar College, and classmate of Miss Elizabeth Poppleton), who two years before, on the eve of her departure for Europe, gave her eloquent address on Edmund Burke in that city:

Toulouse, France, September 3, 1882.

To the Voters of my Generation in Nebraska:

It is not my desire to present to you any argument, but only to give you an episode in my own life. I desire to lay before you a fact, not a fiction; a reality, not a supposition; an experience not a theory.

I was born in a free republic and in my veins runs very rebellious blood. An ancestor of my father was one of those intrepid men who left the shores of old England and sailed forth to establish on a distant continent the grandest republic that has ever yet been known. That, you see, is not good blood to submit to injustice. And on my mother's side we find a sturdy old Puritan from whom our stock is traced, fleeing from England because of the faith that was in him, and joining his rebellious life to one of that honest Holland nation which had defied so nobly the oppressions of the Catholic church and Spanish inquisition. As if this were not sufficiently independent blood to pass on to other generations, my own father became an abolitionist, and step by step fought his belief to victory, and my mother early gave her efforts to the elevation of woman. It is all this, together with my living in the freëst land on the globe and in a century rife with discussions of all principles of government, that has made me in every fiber a believer in republican institutions.

Having been reared in a large family of boys where we enjoyed equal freedom, and having received the same collegiate education as my brothers, it is not until lately that I have felt the crime of my womanhood. I have dwelt thus upon the antecedents and influences of my life in order to ask you one question: Do you not think I can appreciate the real meaning, the true sacredness of a republic? Do you not believe I feel the duties it demands of its citizens? But I want you to hold your reply in abeyance, till I give you one bit more of history.

A ship at sea crossing on the Atlantic between Europe and America. Of two persons on this vessel I wish to speak to you. Of one I have already told you much; I need but add that my two years spent in Europe,[95] previous to my return to America for a few months last winter, had not made me less American, less a lover of republicanism. And now this ship, baffling the February storm, was sweeping nearer the land where the people reign. My heart beat high as I thought it was in my native country where women were free, more honored than in any nation in the world. As I stood on the deck, the strong sea-wind blowing wildly about me, and the ocean bearing on its heart-wave mountains, visions of the grandeur of the nation lying off beyond the western horizon, rose before me. And it was a proud heart that cried—"My Country!"

And the other person I want to speak of? It is a man, a German, coming to the United States to escape military service in Prussia. He came in the steerage; was poor and ignorant. He could speak no English, not one word of your language and mine. His fellows were all Irish, so I offered to be an interpreter for him. I visited the steerage quarters, and returned with a heavy heart. Such brutal faces as I saw! Ignorance, cruelty, subserviency, were everywhere depicted. Herds of human beings that I feared, they looked so dull and brutal. The full meaning of a terrible truth rushed upon me. Soon these men would be my sovereigns—I their subject!

I had just spent a year in that German's native land, and I remembered that I had seen their women doing the work of men in the fields, husbands returning from their day's labor empty-handed, and their wives toiling on behind bent under heavy burdens, and as I thought on this, our ship bore him and me towards the land that glories in having given birth to Lucretia Mott. In the country where he had been reared, I had seen women harnessed with beasts of burden, dragging laden wagons, and yet our vessel carried him and me at each moment towards a safe harbor, in a land that pays homage to the memory of Margaret Fuller. Our ship sailed on, taking him from a land where he had been taught to worship royalty, whatever its worth or crime; where he had paid cringing submission to an arbitrary rule of police; where he had been surrounded by the degrading effects of the mightiest military system on the globe. The ship plowed on and on through the waves, bringing him to a republic, not one principle of which he comprehended.

And now we sail up New York bay. The day is bright, and a softening haze hangs over all. Surely this is some vision-land. Yes, it is indeed a vision-land, for it has never known the presence of a royal line; against its oppressors it fought in no mean rebellious spirit, but rose in revolution with its motto, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," written on its brow to be known of all men. And I think as we slowly sail up the bay on our vessel, Does that deadened soul respond to what lies before him? Does there in his heart rise the prayer, Oh, God! make me true to the duties about to be laid upon me; make me worthy of being free? Yes, then, for the first time I felt the full depth of the indignity offered to my womanhood. I felt my enthusiasm for America wavering—love of country dead. My country!—I have no country.

Young men of Nebraska, I ask you to free your minds from prejudice, to be just towards the demands of another human soul, to be frank, to be wholly truthful, and answer my demand: Why should I not be a citizen of this republic? In replying, read between the lines of my tedious story and bear in mind the words of Voltaire: "Who would dare change a law that time has consecrated? Is there anything more respectable than an ancient abuse! Reason is more ancient, replied Zadig."

Harriot Stanton.

Respectfully,

Manchester National Society for Woman Suffrage, } Manchester, England, September 5, 1882. }

Dear Miss Anthony: Will you accept a word of cheer and God-speed from your sisters in England in your crusade for the emancipation of woman in Nebraska? You carry with you the hopes and sympathetic wishes of all on this side of the water. If you win, as I trust you may, your victory will have a distinct influence on the future of our parliamentary campaign, which we hope to begin in early spring in England. In the name of English women I would appeal to the men of Nebraska to assent to the great act of justice to women which is proposed to them by their elected representatives, and by so doing to aid in the enfranchisement of women all over the world.

Lydia E. Becker.

Yours faithfully,

London, September 1, 1882.

Dear Miss Anthony: Having heard that the next convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association will meet at Omaha this month, I cannot refrain from sending a few lines to assure our friends who are working so steadfastly in America for the same sacred cause as our own, of our loving sympathy and good-wishes for success in the coming struggle. The eyes and hearts of hundreds of women are, like my own, turned to Nebraska, where so momentous an issue is to be decided two months hence. The news of their vote, if rightly given, will "echo round the world" like the first shot fired at Concord. It will be the expression of their determination to establish their freedom by giving freedom to others, and their example will be followed by Indiana and Oregon, and soon by the other States of the Union and by England. Everything points with us to a speedy triumph of the principle of equal justice for woman. Next November, about the time when Nebraska will be voting for equal suffrage, the women in Scotland will be voting for the first time in their municipal elections. The session of 1882 will be memorable in future for having passed the act which gives a married woman the right to hold her own property, make contracts, sue and be sued, in the same manner as if she were a single woman. It is nearly thirty years since we first began our efforts in this matter, and each succeeding step has been won very slowly and with great difficulty through the efforts of those who are working to obtain the suffrage. Mr. Gladstone still expresses the hope that next session will place the franchise on a "fair" basis, meaning thereby the same right of voting for counties as for boroughs. We maintain that the franchise can never be said to be on a fair basis while women are debarred from the right of voting. Our progress and your progress will keep even pace together, for if women are free in America no long time can elapse before they are free here. We can but offer you our sympathy and we beg this favor of you, that as soon as you have the returns of the vote ascertained, you will telegraph the news to us, that our English societies may keep the day of rejoicing heart in heart with the American National Association.

With cordial sympathy in all your efforts, I am, faithfully yours,

Carolyn Ashurst Biggs.

To the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Convention assembled, at Omaha, Nebraska, September 26, 27, 28:

Dear Friends: The most pressing work before the National Woman Suffrage Convention, is bringing all its forces to bear upon congress for the submission of a sixteenth amendment to the national constitution, which shall prohibit States from disfranchising citizens of the United States, on the ground of sex, or for any cause not equally applicable to all citizens. While we of the National are glad to see an amendment to a State constitution proposed, securing suffrage to woman, as is the case in Nebraska this fall, we must not be led by it to forget or neglect our legitimate work, an amendment to the national constitution, which will secure suffrage at one and the same moment to the women of each State. While all action of any kind and everywhere is good because it is educational, the only real, legitimate work of the National Woman Suffrage Association, is upon congress. Never have our prospects been brighter than to-day. A select committee on woman suffrage having been appointed in both houses during the last session of congress, and a resolution introduced in the Senate, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to secure the right of suffrage to all citizens irrespective of sex, having been referred to this select committee and receiving a favorable majority report thereon, we have every reason to expect the submission of such an amendment at the next session of congress.

The work then, most necessary, is with each representative and senator; and the legislatures of the several States should be induced to pass resolutions requesting the senators and representatives from each State to give voice and vote in favor of the submission of such an amendment. This work is vitally important for the coming winter, and none the less so, even should Nebraska vote aye November 7, upon the woman suffrage amendment to its own constitution. In view of the probability of the submission of a sixteenth amendment at the coming session of congress, I offer the following resolution, which I consider one of the most important of the series I have been asked to prepare for adoption by the convention:

Resolved, That it is the duty of every woman to work with the legislature of her own State, to secure from it the passage of a joint resolution requesting its senators and representatives in congress to use voice and vote in favor of the submission of an amendment to the national constitution which shall prohibit States from disfranchising citizens on the ground of sex.

I hope the above resolution will be unanimously adopted, and that each woman will strive to carry its provisions into effect as a religious duty. With my best wishes for a grand and successful convention, and the hope that Nebraska will set itself right before the world by the adoption of the woman suffrage amendment this fall, I am,

Matilda Joslyn Gage.[96]

Very truly yours,

The Republican in describing the closing scenes of the convention, said:

Fully 2,500 people assembled last evening to listen to the closing proceedings of the convention. The stage, which was beautifully furnished and upholstered, was completely occupied by the ladies of the Association; and as they all were in full dress, in preparation for the reception at the Paxton Hotel, the sight was a brilliant one. As respects the audience, not only the seats, but the lobbies were crowded, and hundreds upon hundreds were turned away. Manager Boyd remarked as we passed in, "You will see to-night the most magnificent gathering that has ever been in the Opera House," and such truly it was—the intellect, fashion and refinement of the city. Addresses were given by M'me Neyman, whose earnest and eloquent words were breathlessly heard; Mrs. Minor of St. Louis, whose utterances were serious and weighty; and Miss Phœbe Couzins, who touched the springs of sentiment, sympathy, pathos and humor by turns. After answering two or three objections that had not been fully touched upon, Miss Couzins fairly carried away the house, when she said in conclusion, "Miss Anthony and myself, and another who has addressed you are the only spinsters in the movement. We, indeed, expect to marry, but we don't want our husbands to marry slaves [great merriment]; we are waiting for our enfranchisement. And now, if you want Miss Anthony and myself to move into your State—" this hit, with all it implied, set the audience into a convulsion of cheers and laughter which was quite prolonged; and after the merriment had subsided, Miss Couzins completed her sentence by saying, "We are under sailing orders to receive proposals!" whereupon the applause broke out afresh. "However," she added, seeing Miss Anthony shake her head, "it takes a very superior woman to be an old maid, and on this principle I think Miss Anthony will stick to her colors." Miss Couzins quoted Hawthorne as speaking through "Zenobia":

"It is my belief, yea, my prophecy, that when my sex shall have attained its freedom there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man," and instanced this convention as an illustration of what might be expected.

Miss Couzins was followed by Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Neyman and Miss Hindman. The resolutions,[97] which were presented by Mrs. Sewall, among their personal commendations expressed the appreciation of the Association for the services rendered by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, in making preparations for the convention. Mrs. Colby in making her acknowledgments said:

There was another to whom the Association owed much for the work done which has made possible the brilliant success of the convention—one to whom, while across the water their thoughts and hearts had often turned; and she was sure that all present would gladly join in extending a welcome to the late president, and now chairman of the executive committee of the State association, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks.

Mrs. Brooks came forward amid applause, and said:

That at this late hour while a speech might be silvern, silence was golden; and she would say no more than, on behalf of all the members and officers of the State association, and the friends of the cause in Omaha, to tender their most grateful thanks to the National Association for "the feast of reason and the flow of soul" with which they have been favored during the last three days.

At the close of the convention the spacious parlors of the Paxton House were crowded. Over a thousand ladies and gentlemen passed through, shaking hands with the delegates and congratulating them on the great success of the convention.

Another enthusiastic meeting was held at Lincoln, the capital of the State, and radiating from this point in all directions these missionaries of the new gospel of woman's equality traversed the entire State, scattering tracts and holding meetings in churches, school-houses and the open air, and thus the agitation was kept up until the day of election. As it was the season for agricultural fairs, the people were more easily drawn together, and the ladies readily availed themselves, as they had opportunity, of these great gatherings. Two notable debates were held in Omaha in answer to the many challenges sent by the opposition. Miss Couzins, the first to enter the arena, was obliged to help her antagonist in his scriptural quotations, while Miss Anthony was compelled to supply hers with well-known statistics. It was evident that neither of the gentlemen had sharpened his weapons for the encounter.

To look over the list of counties visited and the immense distances traveled in public and private conveyances, enables one in a measure to appreciate the physical fatigue these ladies endured. In reading of their earnest speeches, debates, conversations at every fireside and dinner-table, in every car and carriage as they journeyed by the way or waited at the station, their untiring perseverance must command the unqualified admiration of those who know what a political campaign involves. During those six weeks of intense excitement they were alike hopeful and anxious as to the result. At last the day dawned when the momentous question of the enfranchisement of 75,000 women was to be decided. Every train brought some of the speakers to their headquarters in Omaha, with cheering news from the different localities they had canvassed. And now one last effort must be made, they must see what can be done at the polls. Some of the ladies went in carriages to each of the polling booths and made earnest appeals to those who were to vote for or against the woman's amendment. Others stood dispensing refreshments and the tickets they wished to see voted, all day long. And while the men sipped their coffee and ate their viands with evident relish, the women appealed to their sense of justice, to their love of liberty and republican institutions. Vain would be the attempt to describe the patient waiting, the fond hopes, the bright visions of coming freedom, that had nerved these brave women to these untiring labors, or to shadow in colors dark enough the fears, the anxieties, the disappointments, all centered in that November election. A fitting subject for an historical picture was that group of intensely earnest women gathered there, as the last rays of the setting sun warned them that whether for weal or for woe the decisive hour had come; no word of theirs could turn defeat to victory.

The hours of anxious waiting were not long, the verdict soon came flashing on every wire, from the north, the south, the west: "No!" "No!" "No!" The mothers, wives and daughters of Nebraska must still wear the yoke of slavery; they who endured with man the hardships of the early days and bravely met the dangers of a pioneer life, they who have reared two generations of boys and taught them the elements of all they know, who have stood foremost in all good works of charity and reform, who appreciate the genius of free institutions, native-born American citizens, are still to be governed by the ignorant, vicious classes from the old world. What a verdict was this for one of the youngest States in the American republic in the nineteenth century!

But these heroic women did not sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the cruel verdict. Anticipating victory, they had engaged the Opera House to hold their jubilee if the women of Nebraska were enfranchised; or, if the returns brought them no cause for rejoicing, they would at least exalt the educational work that had been done in the State, and dedicate themselves anew to this struggle for liberty. They had survived three defeats, in Kansas, Michigan, Colorado, and tasted the bitterness of repeated disappointments, and another could not crush them. When the hour arrived, an immense audience welcomed them in the Opera House, and from this new baptism of sorrow they spoke more eloquently than ever before. In their calm, determined manner they seemed to say with Milton's hero:

"All is not lost: the unconquerable will is ours."

A report of the Fifteenth Annual Washington Convention, Jan. 23, 24, 25, 1883, was written by Miss Jessie Waite of Chicago, and published in the Washington Chronicle, from which we give the following extracts:

The proceedings of the Association were inaugurated at Lincoln Hall Monday evening by a novel lecture, entitled "Zekle's Wife," by Mrs. Amy Talbot Dunn of Indianapolis. The personality of Mrs. Dunn is so entirely lost in that of Zekle's wife that it is hard to realize that the old lady of so many and so varied experiences is a happy young wife. As a character sketch Mrs. Dunn's "Zekle's Wife" stands on an equality with Denman Thompson's "Joshua Whitcomb" and with Joe Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle." To sustain a conception so foreign to the natural characteristics of the actor without once allowing the interest of the audience to flag, requires originality of thought, independence of idea, and genius for action. Mrs. Dunn, herself the author of her sketch, possesses to a remarkable degree the power to impress upon her audience the feeling that the old lady from "Kaintuck" is before them, not only to say things for their amusement, but also to impress upon them those great truths which have presented themselves to her mind during the fifty years of her married life. "Zekle's Wife" is a keen, shrewd, warm-hearted, lovable old woman, without education or culture, yet with an innate sense of refinement and a touching undercurrent of desire "not to be too hard on Zekle." As she tells her story, which she informs us is a true one from real life, she engages the attention and wins the sympathy of all her hearers, and frequent bursts of applause evidence the satisfaction of the audience.

The convention proper opened on Tuesday morning with the appointment of various committees,[98] and reports[99] from the different States filled up most of the time during the day. May Wright Sewall said:

Women must learn that power gives power; that intelligence alone can appreciate or be influenced by intelligence; that justice alone is moved by appeals based on justice. More than anything in the course of suffrage labor does the Nebraska campaign justify the primary method of this National Association. We have a right to expect that each legislature will be composed of the picked men of the State. We have a right to believe that as the intelligence, wisdom and justice of the picked men of the nation are superior to the same qualities in the mass of men, so is the fitness of national and State legislators to consider the demands for the ballot.

Mrs. Mills of Washington sang, as a solo, "Barbara Fritchie," in excellent style. Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (wife of Francis Miller, esq., late assistant attorney for the District of Columbia) spoke with the greatest ease and most remarkable command of language. She is in every sense a strong woman. She said that, born and reared as she was in a Virginia town noted for its intense conservatism, where she had seen a woman stripped to the waist and brutally beaten by order of the law (her skin happened to be of a dark color) whose only crime was that of alleged impertinence, and that impertinence provoked by improper conduct on the part of a young man; that, reared in such a cradle as this, still, through the blessing of a good home, she had learned to deeply appreciate the noble efforts of women who dared to tread new paths, to break their own way through the dense forest of prejudice and ignorance. Man cannot represent woman. If woman breaks any law of man, of nature, or of God, she alone must suffer the penalty. "This fact seems to me," said Mrs. Miller, "to settle the whole question."

Miss Anthony read the following letter from Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, who, she said, had the honor of being an advocate of this cause, in addition to being governor of Massachusetts:

Washington, D. C., Jan. 23, 1883.

My Dear Miss Anthony: I received your kind note asking me to attend the National Convention of the friends of woman suffrage at Washington, for which courtesy I am obliged. My engagements, which have taken me out of the commonwealth, cover all, and more than all, of my time, and I find I am to hurry back, leaving some of them undisposed of. It will therefore be impossible for me to attend the convention.

As I have already declared my conviction that the fourteenth amendment fully covers the right of all persons to vote, and as I assume that the women of the country are persons, and very important persons to its happiness and prosperity, I never have been able to see any reason why women do not come within its provisions. I think such will be the decision of the court, perhaps quite as early as you may be able to get through congress and the legislatures of the several States another amendment. But both lines of action may well be followed, as they do not conflict with each other. This course was taken in the case of the fifteenth amendment, which was supposed to be necessary to cover the case of the negro, although many of the friends of the colored man looked coldly upon that amendment, because it seemed to be an admission that the fourteenth amendment was not sufficient. Therefore I can without inconsistency, I think, bid you "God speed" in your agitation for the sixteenth amendment. It will have the effect to enlighten the public mind as to the scope of the fourteenth amendment. I am very truly, your friend and servant,

Benj. F. Butler.

Mrs. Blake presented a series of resolutions, which were laid on the table for consideration:

Whereas, In larger numbers than ever before the women of the United States are demanding the repeal of arbitrary restrictions which now debar them from the use of the ballot; and

Whereas, The recent defeat in Nebraska of a constitutional amendment, giving the women of the State the right to vote, proves that failure is the natural result of an appeal to the masses on a question which is best understood and approved by the more intelligent citizens; therefore,

Resolved, That we call upon this congress to pass, without delay, the sixteenth amendment to the federal constitution now pending in the Senate.

Resolved, That all competitive examinations for places in the civil service of the United States should be open on equal terms to citizens of both sexes, and that any so-called civil service reform that does not correct the existing unjust discrimination against women employés, and grade all salaries on merit and not sex, is a dishonest pretense at reform.

Whereas, The Constitution of the United States declares that no State shall be admitted to the Union unless it have a republican form of government; and whereas, no true republic can exist unless all the inhabitants are given equal civil and political rights; therefore,

Resolved, That we earnestly protest against the admission of Dakota as a State, unless the right of suffrage is secured on equal terms to all her citizens.

Resolved, That the women of these United States have not deserved the infliction of this punishment of disfranchisement, and do most earnestly demand that they be relieved from the cruelties it imposes upon them.

Whereas, During the war hundreds of women throughout our land entered the service of the nation as hospital nurses; and

Whereas, Many of these women were disabled by wounds and by disease, while many were reduced to permanent invalidism by the hardships they endured; therefore,

Resolved, That these women should be placed on the pension list and rewarded for their services.

After the reading of the resolutions an animated discussion followed, Miss Anthony showing in scathing terms the injustice of the employment of women to do equal work with men at half the salaries, in the departments at Washington and elsewhere. An additional resolution was adopted declaring that paying Dr. Susan A. Edson for her services as attendant physician to President Garfield, $1,000 less than was paid for an equivalent service rendered by Dr. Boynton, a more recent graduate of the same college from which she received her diploma, is an unjust discrimination on account of sex.

Mrs. Sewall said men in the departments were given extra leave of absence each year to go home to vote, and suggested that women be given (until the time comes for them to vote) extra leave to meditate upon the ballot.

Miss Anthony said she had addressed a letter to each secretary asking that such women as desired be given permission to attend the meetings of this convention without loss of time to them. She had received but one answer, which was from Secretary Folger, who wrote: "The condition of the public business prevents us from acceding to your request."

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck of Boston said: Tired as some of the audience must be of hearing the same old argument in favor of the ballot for women repeated from year to year, they could not possibly be more tired than the friends of the cause were of hearing the same old objections repeated from year to year. While the forty-year-old objections are raised the forty-year-old rejoinders must be given. We must continue to agitate until we force people to listen. It is like the ringing of a bell. At first no one notices it; in a little while, a few will listen; finally, the perpetual ding-dong, ding-dong, will force itself to be heard by every one. The oldest of all the old arguments is that of right and justice, and the tune which my little bell shall ring is merely this: "It is right!" This cry of woman for liberty and equality increases every day, and it is a cry that must some day be heard and responded to.

Mrs. Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis was then introduced as the woman who stands to this cause in the same relation that Dred Scott had stood to the Republican party. Miss Couzins said that in introducing Mrs. Minor she wanted to say one word about the work Mrs. Minor had done for the soldiers, during the sanitary fair and all through the war. She had canned fruit, refusing the money offered in payment, returning it all to be used for the sick and wounded soldiers [applause]. Mrs. Minor spoke in a calm, deliberate manner, with perfect conviction in the truth of her statements and with a winning sweetness of expression that indicated the highest sensibilities of a refined nature. She showed that women voted in the early days of the country, and that undoubtedly it was the intention of the framers of the constitution that they should do so. This right had been taken away when the constitution was amended and the word "male" inserted. What is now desired is simply restoration of that which had been taken away. She believed that this restoration was made, unwittingly, by the addition of the fourteenth amendment, which, without doubt, makes women citizens. It is men who have abused the republican institution of suffrage; it is women who desire to restore it to its proper exercise. Miss Anthony read a letter from Mrs. Wallace, the wife of one of the former governors of Indiana:

Indianapolis, Ind., January 21, 1883.

Dear Miss Anthony: When in the call I read that for fourteen consecutive years the National Woman Suffrage Association had held a convention in Washington, I was oppressed by two thoughts: First, how hard it is to overcome prejudice and ignorance when they have been fortified by the usages and customs of ages; and secondly, the sublime faith, courage and perseverance of the advocates of woman's enfranchisement, and their confidence in the ultimate triumph of justice. After all, by what are governments organized and maintained? By brute force alone? Despotisms may be, but republics never. What are the qualifications for the ballot? The power to fight? Are they not rather intelligence, virtue, truth and patriotism? I scarce think the most obstinate and egotistical of our opponents will assert that men possess a monopoly of these virtues, or even a moiety of them. As to their fighting capacities, of which we hear so much, I think they would have cut a sorry figure in the wars which they have been compelled to wage in order to establish and maintain this government, if they had not had the sympathy and coöperation of woman. I entirely agree with you that, while agitation in the States is necessary as a means of education, a sixteenth amendment to the national constitution is the quickest, surest and least laborious way to secure the success of this great work for human liberty. Any legislature of Indiana in the last six years would have ratified such an amendment. With highest regards for yourself and the best wishes for the success of the convention, I remain,

Zerelda G. Wallace.

Yours, etc.,

After several other speakers,[100] Madame Clara Neyman of New York city, delivered what was, without question, one of the best addresses of the convention. She spoke with a slightly German accent, which only served to enhance the interest and hold the attention of the audience. Her eloquence and argument could not fail to convince all of her earnest purpose. After showing the philosophy of reform movements, and every step of progress, she said:

Woman's enfranchisement will be wrought out by peaceful means. We shall use no fire-arms, no torpedoes, no heavy guns to gain our freedom. No precious human lives will be sacrificed; no tears will be shed to establish our right. We shall capture the fortresses of prejudice and injustice by the force of our arguments; we shall send shell after shell into these strongholds until their defective reasoning gives way to victorious truth. "Inability to bear arms," says Herbert Spencer, "was the reason given in feudal times for excluding woman from succession," and to-day her position is lowest where the military spirit prevails. A sad illustration of this is my own country. Being a born German, and in feeling, kindred, and patriotism attached to the country of my birth and childhood, it is hard for me to make such a confession. But the truth must be told, even if it hurts. It has been observed by those who travel in Europe, that Germany, which has the finest and best universities, which stands highest in scholarship, nevertheless tolerates, nay, enforces the subjection of woman. The freedom of a country stands in direct relation to the position of its women. America, which has proclaimed the freedom of man, has developed pari passu a finer womanhood, and has done more for us than any other nation in existence. A new type of manhood has been reared on American soil—a type which Tennyson describes in his Princess:

At the evening session the time was divided between Lillie Devereux Blake and Phœbe W. Couzins. Mrs. Blake spoke on the question, "Is it a Crime to be a Woman?"

She showed in a clear, logical manner that wherever a woman was apprehended for crime the discrimination against her was not because of the crime she had committed, but because the crime was committed by a woman. Every woman in this country is treated by the law as if she were to blame for being a woman. In New York an honorable married woman has no right to her children. A man may beat his wife all he pleases; but if he beats another man the law immediately interferes, showing that the woman is not protected simply because she is so indiscreet as to be a woman. If it is not a crime to be a woman, why are women subjected to unequal payment with men for the same service? Why are they forced at times to don men's clothes in order to obtain employment that will keep them from starvation?

Miss Couzins said that the American-born woman was "a woman without a country"; but before she had closed she had proved that this country belonged exclusively to the women. It was a woman, Queen Isabella, that enabled a man to discover this country, and in the old flag the initials were "I" and "F," representing Isabella and Ferdinand, showing that it was acknowledged that the woman's initial was the more important in this matter and to be first considered. It was a woman, Mary Chilton, that first landed on Plymouth rock. It was a woman, Betsy Ross, that designed our beautiful flag, the original eagle on our silver dollar, and the seal of the United States without which no money is legal. All the way down in our national history woman has been hand in hand with man, has assisted, supported and encouraged him, and now there are women ready to help reform the life of the body politic, and side by side with man work to purify, refine and ennoble the world. Miss Couzins seemed Inspired by her own thoughts and carried the audience along with her in her flights of eloquence.

Being asked to make a few closing remarks, Mrs. May Wright Sewall said:

Difficult, indeed, is the task of closing a three days' convention; vain is the hope to do it with fitting words which shall not be mere repetitions of what has been said on this platform. The truth which bases this claim lies in a nut-shell, and the shell seems hard to be cracked. It is unfair, when comparing the ability of men and women, to compare the average woman to the exceptional man, but this is what man always does. If, perchance, he admits not only the equality but the superiority of woman, he tells her she must not vote because she is so nearly an angel, so much better than he is, and this, in the face of the fact that every angel represented or revealed has been shown in the form of a handsome young man. If any class then must abstain from meddling in politics on account of relation to the angels, it is the men! But she informed the gentlemen she had no fears for them on that ground, for their relationship was not near enough to cause any serious inconvenience. Speaking of the objections to women undertaking grave or deep studies, that woman lacks the logical faculty, that she has only intuition, nerve-force, etc., Mrs. Sewall said: It is true of every woman who has done the worthiest work in science, literature, or reform, from Diotima, the teacher of Socrates, to Margaret Fuller, the pupil of Channing and the peer of Emerson, that ignoring the methods of nerves and instincts, she has placed herself squarely on the basis of observation, investigation and reason. Men will admit that these women had strength and logic, but say they are exceptional women. So are Gladstone, Bismarck, Gambetta, Lincoln and Garfield exceptional men. She mentioned Miss Anthony's proposed trip to Europe, and said that she had not had a holiday for thirty years.