History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 22

 

CHAPTER XXII.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.^[1]

1884. — The American Woman Suffrage Association which was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, in November, 1869, held its sixteenth annual meeting, November 19, 20, at Hershey Hall, Chicago. Lucy Stone in the Woman's Journal said:

Beginning with a good-sized audience, it went on increasing in numbers until the gallery, the stairs and the side aisles were literally packed with people.

Reports of the work done by auxiliary and other societies came in from Maine to Oregon and all the way between, showing in some cases very little and in others a great deal of good work. But each one was helpful in its measure to the final success, just as streams of all sizes flow to make great rivers and the seas. There were present some of the oldest workers — Dr. Mary F. Thomas of Indiana and Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler of Illinois — who, having put their hands to the plow in the beginning of the movement, have never looked back. To supplement and continue the work there were noble and earnest younger women, who came down from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan and up from Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Illinois, women who can speak well for the cause and whose reports show that they know how to work well for it, too. It was a joy and a comfort to meet them. ....

Not the least pleasant feature was the cordial friendliness that seemed all-pervasive. Troops of women we had never seen came to shake hands. .... A bevy of bright girls stood below the platform on the last evening and, looking up, they said: "We are school-girls now, but we are bound to help." The collections more than paid the expenses, and two hundred memberships were taken.

All the local arrangements had been admirably made by a committee of influential Chicago women,^[2] The city papers gave friendly reports, those of the Inter-Ocean being especially full.

The convention was not expected to open till Wednesday ing, but so large a number of delegates and friends met in the hall in the afternoon that an informal meeting was held in advance. Mrs. Cutler called the assembly to order, and the Rev. Florence Kollock offered prayer. A telegram was read from Chief-Justice Roger S. Greene, of Washington Territory, saying: "Be assured that woman suffrage has worked well, done good, and been generally exercised by women at our State election." Brief addresses were made by Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert. Dr. Mary F. Thomas, in the name of the Indiana W. S. A., the oldest State association in the country, organized in 1851, presented the association with a bouquet of never fading chrysanthemums.

On Wednesday evening Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett gave the address of welcome. In referring to the influence of the woman suffrage movement upon the legal status of women, she said that Kansas entered the Union as a State with women's personal and property rights legally recognized as never before. This was largely because a delegate to the Kansas constitutional convention which met in Leavenworth, (Mr. Sam Wood), wrote to Lucy Stone at her home in Orange, N. J., asking her to draft a legal form, which she did, with her baby on her knee, and its suggestions were afterwards incorporated in the organic law of that State.^[3] As one result of School Suffrage in the hands of women, Kansas had the best schools in the United States while the people still lived in cabins.

Mrs. Mary B. Clay, of Kentucky, president of the association, made a special plea for work in the South, saying in part:

Alabama has given married women equal property rights with their husbands. This monied equality I regard as one of the most essential steps to our freedom, for as long as women are dependent upon men for bread their whole moral nature is necessarily warped. There never was a truer thought than that of Alexander Hamilton, when he said, "He who controls my means of daily subsistence con trols my whole moral being." I therefore recommend to the Southern women particularly the petitioning for property rights, because

pecuniary independence is one of the most potent weapons for freedom, and because that claim has less prejudice to overcome.

Mississippi also has made equal property laws for women; and Arkansas allows married women to hold their own property, and all women to vote on the licensing of saloons within three miles of a church or school-house. A lady writing from there says: "The welcome accorded the law by the women of the State refutes all adverse theories, and establishes the fact that woman's nature possesses an inherent strength and courage which no surroundings can extinguish, and which only need the light of hope and the voice of duty to call them into action." I would recommend that whenever it is possible, we hold our conventions and send our speakers through the South. ....

Henry B. Blackwell said: "This is not an anti-man society. Suffrage is demanded as much for the sake of men as for the sake of women. What is good for one is good for both;" and Mrs. Livermore said, "Women should have a share in the government because the whole is better than the half."

In the annual report of Mrs. Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee, she said in part: "During the past year, the chief effort of the society has been directed to aid the work in Oregon, where a constitutional amendment had been submitted to the voters. One thousand dollars were raised for this purpose by our auxiliary societies, and forwarded to the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association.^[4] The society has also printed and circulated at cost more than 100,000 tracts and leaflets."

Officers for the next year were elected, as follows: President, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, State Senator of Indiana; vice-presidents-at-large, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, the Hon. George William Curtis, N. Y.; the Hon. George F. Hoar, Mass.; Mrs. Mary B. Willard, Mrs. H. M. T. Cutler, Ill.; Mrs. D. G. King, Neb.; Mrs. R. A. S. Janney, O.; Mrs. J. P. Fuller, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, Mo.; Mrs. Martha A. Dorsett, Minn.; Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, Ia.; Mrs. Mary B. Clay, Ky.; foreign corresponding secretary, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe; corresponding secretary, Henry B. Blackwell; recording secretary, Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell; treasurer, Mrs. Abbie T. Codman; chairman executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone.^[5]

Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, reported resolutions which were adopted with a few changes as follows:

Resolved, In the words of Abraham Lincoln, That "we go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women;" that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, must be a government of men and women, by men and women, for men and women; and that any other form of government is unreasonable, unjust and inconsistent with American principles.

Resolved, That we rejoice in the triumph of woman suffrage in Washington Territory; in the continued success of woman suffrage in Wyoming; in the exercise of School Suffrage by the women of twelve States; in the establishment of Municipal Woman Suffrage by Nova Scotia and Ontario, and in the steady growth of woman suffrage during the past year as shown by more than 21,000 petitioners for it in Massachusetts, by increased activity in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oregon, by the recent formation of an active State association in Vermont, and by the presence with us today of sixty-six delegates from organized societies in fifteen States.

Resolved, That the American Association is non-partisan; that success will be promoted by refusing to connect woman suffrage with any political party, or to take sides as suffragists in any party conflict; but that we will question candidates of all parties for State Legislatures, and use every honorable effort to secure the election of suffragists as legislators irrespective of party lines, provided they be men of integrity.

Resolved, That this association expresses its appreciation of the services rendered by the co-workers who since our last meeting have been gathered with the honored dead: Mrs. Frances D. Gage, who from the beginning of our movement until the last week of her life never ceased to do what she could for its success; Wendell

Phillips, who as early as 1850 attended a woman's rights convention at Worcester, Mass., and made an argument which covered the whole ground of statement and defense, and with serene faith advised: "Take your part with the perfect and abstract right and trust God to see that it shall prove the expedient." Besides these we record the names of Kate Newell Doggett, Laura Giddings Julian, Bishop Matthew Simpson, Mrs. L. B. Barrett, Emily J. Leonard and Jane Gray Swisshelm.

Speaking to the memorial resolution Mrs. Cutler said: "Some years ago I paid a visit to an old and valued friend who had long been an invalid, though never so absorbed in her own suffering as to forget the great needs of her human brothers and sisters. Said she, 'If you outlive me, I hope you will say for me that I tried honestly and earnestly to do my duty.' The promise then given I now attempt to fulfil in behalf of Mrs. Frances Dana Gage, our beloved 'Aunt Fanny,' who entered upon her rest Nov. 10, 1884." Mrs. Cutler gave a full and appreciative review of Mrs. Gage's life. Dr. Mary F. Thomas spoke feelingly of her, of Mrs. Julian and Mr. Phillips; and Mrs. Livermore paid a warm tribute to Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Doggett.

The plan of work adopted was in part as follows:

1. That the officers of this association memorialize Congress in behalf of a sixteenth constitutional amendment prohibiting all political distinctions on account of sex.

2. That while we do not undervalue any form of agitation, State or national, we hold that practical woman suffrage can at present be best promoted by urging legislative as well as constitutional changes, and by appealing to State as well as national authority; therefore we urge the establishment of active State societies, with their working centers in the State capitals and their corresponding committees in every representative district.

3. That in every State, at each session of its Legislature, petitions should be presented by its own citizens asking for woman suffrage by statute in all elections and for all officers not expressly limited by the word "male" in the State constitution.

4. That School Suffrage having been secured for women by statute in twelve States, our next demand should be for Municipal Suffrage by statute; also for Presidential Suffrage by statute, under Article 2, Section I, par. 2, of the United States Constitution.

5. And, whereas, in three Territories, viz.. Wyoming, Utah and Washington, our cause is already won by statutes, therefore a special effort should be made to secure similar statutory action in the remaining Territories, viz.: Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico.

Addresses were made by the Rev. S. S. Hunting, Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell of Iowa and Dr. Thomas. Mr. Foulke, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart of Indiana, Mrs. Livermore and Lucy Stone addressed the evening meeting, and the singing of the Doxology closed a memorable convention.

1885.—The Seventeenth annual meeting was held in Minneapolis, October 13-15, in the Church of the Redeemer (Universalist), the finest. in the city, which was given without charge. Here, as the daily papers said, "the most brilliant audiences that ever assembled in Minneapolis" gathered evening after evening until the last when crowds of people went away unable to find even standing room. The pulpit steps were occupied, extra seats were brought in, the aisles were crowded, and as far as one could see over the throng that filled the doorway, was another assembly eager to hear what it could. The earnest, interested, assenting faces of the vast audience and their hearty applause attested their sympathy with the ideas and principles expressed.

Every evening several of the speakers addressed large audiences in St. Paul, thus carrying on two series of meetings contemporaneously. The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke occupied the chair. Mayor George A. Pillsbury, of Minneapolis, gave the address of welcome, which he closed by saying: "Our citizens may not all agree with you, yet we recognize the fact that some of the greatest and best minds in the country are engaged in this work. I have never identified myself with your organization but wish you Godspeed, and hope to see the time when the women shall stand with the men at the polls."

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in responding said: "We are glad to be welcomed for ourselves; we are still more gratified by the welcome extended to our cause. We do not live altogether in our magnificent cities and houses; we all live in houses not made with hands. We have with us some who have devoted their lives to this noble work. They have been building up, stone by stone, a mighty structure, and it is to lay a few more stones that we have gathered here."

It had been persistently asserted that Mrs. Howe and Louisa M. Alcott had renounced their belief in equal suffrage. Mrs. Howe was present to speak for herself. Miss Alcott wrote from Concord, Mass.:

I should think it was hardly necessary for me to say that it is impossible for me ever to "go back" on woman suffrage. I earnestly desire to go forward on that line as far and as fast as the prejudices, selfishness and blindness of the world will let us, and it is a great cross to me that ill-health and home duties prevent my devoting heart, pen and time to this most vital question of the age. After a fifty years' acquaintance with the noble men and women of the anti-slavery cause and the sight of the glorious end to their faithful work, I should be a traitor to all I most love, honor and desire to imitate if I did not covet a place among those who are giving their lives to the emancipation of the white slaves of America.

If I can do no more, let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.

Most heartily yours for woman suffrage and all other reforms.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps wrote: "With all my head and with all my heart I believe in womanhood suffrage; can I say more for your convention?" and from the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, "Every word spoken for or against our cause helps it forward. I feel that there is a current of conviction sweeping us On toward the day when there shall be neither male nor female, in Church or State, but equal rights for all, and the tools to those who can use them."

Chief-Justice Greene, of Washington Territory, sent a careful statistical computation in regard to the women's votes, and said: "My sober judgment, from the best light I have succeeded in getting, is that at our last general election the women cast as full or a fuller vote than the men in proportion to their numbers." Mrs. Livermore wrote:

Whatever may be the apparent direction of the ripples on the surface, facts which accumulate daily show us that the cause of woman's enfranchisement progresses with a deep and steady undercurrent. The long, weary, faithful work of the past, covering almost half a century, has resulted in a radical change of public opinion. It has opened to woman the doors of colleges, universities and professional schools; it has increased her opportunities for self-support till the United States census enumerates nearly 300 employments in which women are working and earning livelihoods; it has repealed many of the unjust laws which discriminate against woman; it has given her partial suffrage in twelve States and full suffrage in three Territories. Courage, then, for the end draws near! A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will be recognized as the legal equals of men; for the goal towards which we toil is the enfranchisement of women, since the ballot is the only symbol of legal equality that is known in a republic.

Chancellor Wm. G. Eliot, of Washington University, St. Louis, wrote:

Considered as a right, suffrage belongs equally to man and woman. They are equally citizens and taxpayers. They share equally in the advantages of good government and suffer equally from bad legislation. They equally need the right of self-protection which the ballot alone can give. In average good, practical sense, wherever fair opportunity is permitted women are equal to men. In moral perception and practice women are at least equal—generally the superiors, if such comparison must be made. There is, therefore, no justification in saying that the right of suffrage, on whatever founded, belongs to man rather than to woman.

Considered as a privilege, little needs to be said on either side. .... Every citizen is under moral obligation to take part in the social interests and welfare of the community, whether national or municipal. Woman equally with man is under that moral law. In a republic she can not rightly be deprived of the Opportunity to do her full share as a citizen in all that concerns good government.

This seems to be the whole story. I have read with astonishment the arguments (so called) of Francis Parkman, the Rev. Brooke Herford and Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells. They scarcely touch the real merits of the case.

Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Indiana, wrote:

As I see pictured before me all of you gathered from different parts of this great sisterhood of States to discuss the grand principle of human freedom, I can but compare this assembly with one con: vened in Philadelphia over a hundred years ago with this difference —they declared for the civil and political freedom of all men; you ask to-day that all human beings of sound mind shall enjoy the civil and political rights which they are entitled to by virtue of their humanity. As the judicious. management of the family circle requires the combined wisdom and judgment of father and mother, so this great political family, whose interests are identical, can only be consistently managed by the complete representation and concurrence of each individual governed by its laws.

It is not necessary for me to show argument for this statement, as your meeting to-day, composed of men and women thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great truth contained in the Declaration of Independence, will supply words glowing with fervor that can not be written, that comes with a full conviction of the magnitude of this great question, involving even the perpetuity of our government. .... But without other reasons than that it is right, let the united voice of your meeting demand full recognition of the political rights of the women of the nation, so that it may stand before the world exemplifying the meaning of a true republic. After near half a century of earnest, continued pleading we see light breaking in different parts of the political horizon. If it takes half a century more, nay, even longer than that, to establish this truth let us never falter. For we know our cause is just and, as God is just, the eternal principles of right must succeed.

Among the speakers were Mr. Foulke, Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Alice Pickler of Dakota, Mrs. Cutler, Miss Bessie Isaacs of Washington Territory, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles of Massachusetts, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, editor of the New Northwest, Oregon, and from Minneapolis Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, C. H. Du Bois, editor of the Spectator, Dr. Martha G. Ripley, the Rev. Dr. J. H. Tuttle, pastor of the Church of the Redeemer, the Rev. Kristofer Jansen, of the Swedish Unitarian Church, the Rev. Mr. Williams of the City Mission, the Rev. Mr. Tabor of the Friends' Church, the Rev. Mr. Harrington, a visiting Universalist minister, and Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve, of the Bethany Home, who spoke of herself and her associates as "the ambulance corps, to pick up and care for the fallen and wounded of their sex."

Judge Norton H. Hemiup of Minneapolis, read a humorous play in several acts, dramatically representing the venerable widows of ex-presidents and wives of living ones going to the polls in their respective precincts and offering their votes in vain, while those of the late slaves and of men half-drunk and wholly ignorant were received without a question.

Major J. A. Pickler, the chivalrous legislator of Dakota, who championed the suffrage bill which passed both Houses and was defeated by the veto of Gov. Gilbert F. Pierce, was invited to tell the history of the bill and did so in a vigorous speech. He said its passage was materially aided by the efforts of Eastern remonstrants to defeat it, and added: "There are peculiar reasons why our women should have their rights, as they own fully one-fourth of the land and are veritable heroines." During the convention the men and women present from Dakota organized an association to carry on the battle for equal rights in that Territory.

Mrs. Howe said in her address:

While a great deal needs to be said to both men and women on the subject of woman suffrage, I am one who thinks that most needs to be said to women. This is quite natural both because of their timidity in putting themselves forward and because of their frequent ignorance of the principles upon which reform is based. No one could be more opposed to woman suffrage than I was twenty years ago. Everything I had read and heard seemed to point in exactly the opposite direction. But at the first meeting I attended I heard Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other pioneers of the cause, found nothing but reasonableness in their speech and their arguments and so was speedily converted.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic was then sung by Prof. James G. Clark, the well-known singer of anti-slavery days, the audience rising and joining in the chorus.

Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell of Iowa, who was introduced by Lucy Stone with a history of her many years of devoted work for the cause, said in part: "Good men who mean well often say that women are as fit to vote as the ignorant foreigners just landed at Castle Garden or the freedmen who can not read or write. Don't say that any more; you don't know how it hurts. Say instead, 'You are as fit to vote as we are.' The names of those who emancipated the slave will be written in letters of gold, but the names of those who have helped to emancipate the women of this nation will be written in letters of living light."

The closing address was made by Mrs. Stone. "Her feeling and womanly appeals," said the Minneapolis papers, "were such as to move any masculine heart not thoroughly indurated." She said in part:

If the question of the right of women to a voice in making the laws they are to obey could be treated in the same common-sense way that other practical questions are treated it would have been settled long ago. If the question were to be asked in any community about to establish a government, "Shall the whole people who are of mature age and. sound mind have a right to help make the laws they are required to obey?" the natural answer would be that they should have that right. But the fact is that only the men exercise it. If the question were asked, "Shall the whole people who are of mature age and sound mind and not convicted of crime have a right to elect the men who will have the spending of the money they pay for taxes?" the common-sense answer would be that they should have that right. But the fact is that only men are allowed to exercise it. So of the special interests of women, their right to settle the laws which regulate their relation to their children, their right to earn and own, to buy and sell, to will and deed, the application of the simple principles of fair play, would have given women equal voice with men in these questions of personal and common interest. But as it is men control it all, whether it is the child we bear, the dollar we earn or the will we wish to make. One would suppose that under a government whose fundamental principle affirms that "the consent of the governed" is the just basis, the consent of the governed women would have been asked for. The only form of consent is a vote and that is denied to women. As a result they are at a disadvantage everywhere. The stigma of disfranchisement cheapens the respect due to their opinions, diminishes their earnings and makes them subjects in the home as they are in the State. The woman suffrage movement means equal rights for women. It proposes to secure fair play and justice.

At this convention valuable reports were presented from twenty-six States. Of especial interest was that from Texas, where Mrs. Mariana T. Folsom had done seven months' work under the auspices of the American W. S. A., giving nearly 200 public addresses in advocacy of equal rights. Texas was virgin soil on this subject, and Mrs. Folsom's description of the conditions she found there was both entertaining and instructive.

The old officers were re-elected with but few changes. Among the resolutions adopted were the following:

The American Woman Suffrage Association, at its seventeenth annual meeting, in this beautiful city of the new Northwest, reaffirms the American principle of free representative government, and demands its application to women. 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and women are governed; "taxation without representation is tyranny," and women are taxed; "all political power inheres in the people," and one-half of the people are women.

Resolved, That women, as sisters, wives and mothers of men, have special rights to protect and special wrongs to remedy; that their votes will represent in a special sense the interests of the home; that equal co-operation of the sexes is essential alike to a happy home, a refined society, a Christian church and a republican State.

Whereas, Under the Federal Constitution, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens thereof, and of the States in which they reside;" and, by the decision of the United States courts, "Women are citizens, and may be made voters by appropriate State legislation;" therefore,

Resolved, That this association regards with satisfaction the acceptance of the claim of Anna Ella Carroll by the United States Court of Claims, by which the remarkable services of Miss Carroll in urging the campaign of Tennessee, which broke the force of the rebellion and gave success to our armies, will have at last, after more than a score of years, their late reward.^[6]

Resolved, That the association send a deputation to Washington in behalf of its memorial to Congress to frame a statute prohibiting the disfranchisement of women in the Territories, and to co-operate with the National Woman Suffrage Association (at its January meeting) for a Sixteenth Amendment forbidding political distinctions on account of sex.

The great success of this convention was due in large measure to the excellent arrangements made by the friends in Minneapolis, especially Dr. Ripley and Mrs. Martha A. Dorsett.

The association sent two delegates, Henry B. Blackwell and the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, to Washington, to urge upon the House Committee the duty of Congress to establish equal suffrage in the Territories. They were given a respectful hearing.

1886.—The Eighteenth annual meeting was held in Topeka, Kan., October 26-28. The morning and afternoon sessions were held in Music Hall. Above the platform hung the beautiful banner of the Minnesota W. S. A., sent by Dr. Martha G. Ripley, and at its side was a package of 7,000 leaflets for distribution contributed by Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey of New Jersey, which were gladly taken for use in different States. The evening meetings assembled in the Hall of the House of Representatives, seating 1,200 persons; the floor and both galleries were crowded with the best citizens of Topeka; all the desks were taken out, making room for more chairs, and even then hundreds of people were turned away. Both halls were given free.

All the preparations had been admirably made by Mrs. Juliet N. Martin, Miss Olive P. Bray, Mrs. S. A. Thurston and other Topeka women, who had a collation spread in Music Hall for the delegates on their arrival. The press gave full and cordial reports. Lucy Stone wrote in the Woman's Journal:

We found the editors of the four daily papers all suffragists. Among these was Major J. K. Hudson, who took his first lessons in equal rights on the Anti-Slavery Bugle in Ohio and, reared among "Friends," was ready to continue the good service he has all along rendered. Here, too, we found our old co-worker, William P. Tomlinson, who at one time published the Anti-Slavery Standard for Wendell Phillips and the American Anti-Slavery Society, and who a little later, in his young prime, devoted his time, his money and his strength to the publication of the Woman's Advocate in New York, of which he was proprietor and editor. He is now editor of the Topeka Daily Democrat. Mr. B. P. Baker, now editor and proprietor of the Commonwealth, did good service to the woman suffrage cause in 1867 in the Topeka Record. Mr. McLennan, of the Journal, is also with us.

The whole convention was interspersed with ringing reminiscences of the heroic early history of Kansas. Mrs. S. N. Wood, who in the Border Ruffian days went through the enemy's lines and at great personal peril brought into beleaguered Lawrence the ammunition which enabled it to defend itself, came to the platform to add her good word for equal suffrage. It was a great pleasure to the officers of the association to meet her and the other early Kansas workers, many of whom, like Mrs. J. H. Slocum, of Emporia, were old personal friends.

Mrs. Anna C. Wait, president of the Kansas W. S. A. and editor of the Lincoln Beacon, gave the address of welcome in behalf of the suffragists. Referring to the first campaign for a woman suffrage amendment in 1867, when Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell spoke in forty-two counties of Kansas, Mrs. Wait said: "Nineteen years ago when you came to Kansas you found no suffrage societies and even seven years ago you would have found none. To-day, in behalf of the State W. S. A. and its many flourishing auxiliaries, I welcome these dear friends who come to us from the rock-ribbed shores of the Atlantic, from the coast of the Pacific, from the lakes of the North and from the sunny South, a veritable gathering of the clans of freedom."

Major Hudson, in his address of welcome in behalf of the city, reviewed the history of woman suffrage in Kansas, paid a tribute to the work of the pioneer suffragists, and said:

We welcome you to Kansas, because it has been good battleground for the right. .... We place the ballot in the hands of the foreigner who can not read or speak our language, and who knows nothing of our government; we enfranchised a slave race, most of whom can not read; and yet we deny to the women of America the ballot, which in their hands would be the strongest protection of this republic against the ignorance and vice of the great centers of our population. Give to woman the ballot, and you give her equal pay with men for the same work; you break down prejudice and open to her every vocation in which she is competent to engage; you do more—you give her an individuality, and equal right in life.

The president, the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, in his response to the welcome of the suffrage association said: "It gives us great pleasure to visit your beautiful city and fertile State. It gives us pleasure not because your State is fertile and your city beautiful but because it is in these Western States that there is most hope of the growth of the woman suffrage movement. The older States are what old age is in the human frame, something that is difficult to change; but where there is young blood there is hope and the progress of a new idea is more rapid."

Mrs. Howe, responding to the welcome of the citizens, said some one had spoken of woman suffrage as a hobby; she questioned whether the opposition to suffrage was not the hobby and suffrage the horse. The discussion of these great questions was doing much to make the women of the country one in feeling, and to do away with sectional prejudices. A most cordial hearing was given to the Woman's Congress lately held at Louisville, Ky., and especially to the woman suffrage symposium which occupied one evening. Mrs. Howe spoke of the wonderful, providential history of Kansas, and the way in which a new and unexpected chapter of the country's history opened out from the experience of the young Territory. She remembered when the name of Kansas was the word which set men's blood at the East tingling. She continued:

You men of Kansas, you who have been bought with a price, noble men have worked and suffered and died that you might be free. For you Charles Sumner fell in the Senate of the United States. He fell to rise again, but others fell for whom there was no rising. Having received this great gift of freedom, pray you go on to make it perfect. You may think that you have a free State, well founded and stable, and that it will stand; but remember that the State, like the Church, is not a structure to be built and set up but a living organism to grow and move. Its life is progress and freedom. Do not think that you can stay this great tide of progress by saying, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." No such limitation is possible. That tide will oversweep every obstacle set in its way. Why, men of Kansas, having been so nobly endowed at the beginning, have you let the younger children in the nursery of our dear mother country learn lessons that you have not learned? Are the women of Wyoming and Washington better than your women, and do the men of those Territories love their women better than you love yours? You will say "no," with indignation; but remember that love is shown in deeds far more than in words. Until you make your women free I must hold that you do not love them as well as those do who have given their mothers and sisters the gift of political enfranchisement. This place is the temple of your liberties; here, if anywhere, should be spoken the words of wisdom and be enacted just and equal laws. However grand the words may be which have been spoken here, may they become grander and better and deeper, until to all your other glories shall be added that of having set the crown of freedom upon the heads of the women of your State!

Only a few gleanings from the many speeches can be given. Professor W. H. Carruth, of the Kansas State University, said in part:

We are likely to meet some good-natured person who will say: "Why, yes, I am in favor of woman suffrage, but I don't see that there is any need of it here in Kansas. If I were in Rhode Island or Connecticut, where there are so many laws unjust to women, I would petition and work for it; but I don't see that it is worth while to make a fuss about it here." Now, what can be said to such a person? Weapons are both defensive and aggressive. The ballot has both uses. What would a herdsman say if you told him his sheepfold was all that was needed, and refused to give him a gun? What would the farmer say if you gave him a cultivator but no plough? What would Christianity be if it had only the Ten Commandments and not the Golden Rule?

He who thinks the ballot is given simply as a means of protection—protection in a limited sense, against fraud and violence—has but a limited conception of the duties of American citizenship. The old let-alone theory of government has been found a failure, and instead of it people are coming to think that government is good to do anything that it can do best—just as they have already learned that it is proper for woman to do anything that she can do well. Ina word, as Mrs. Howe said the other evening, the ballot is a means of getting things done which we want done.

When your good friend with a kind and prosperous husband, a pleasant home and nothing lacking which better laws could secure for her, says she thinks women are already pretty well treated and she doesn't know that she would care for the ballot, ask her how she would feel if she were a teacher and were expected to work beside a man, equal work and equal time, he to get $60 and she $40 a month? Ask her whether she would not want to have a vote then? Isn't this a case, kind mistress of a home, where you should remember those in bonds as bound with them? I very much fear there never will be a time when all the good people in this world can dispense with any effective weapon against wrong.

And, beyond this, there are all the offensive, aggressive uses of the ballot. We want a sewer here, a bridge there, a lamp-post or a hydrant yonder. A woman's nose will scent a defective drain where ten men pass it by, but votes get these things looked after. We want a new schoolhouse, or more brains or more fresh air in an old one. Don't you know that women will attend to such needs sooner than men?

Mr. Foulke said in part:

It is said that woman suffragists are dreamers. There was a time within our memory when human flesh in this our free America was sold at auction. In those days a few earnest men dreamed of a time when our flag should no longer unfurl itself over a slave. Inspired by this great vision they bore the persecution and contumely of their fellows. In season and out of season they preached their glorious gospel of immediate and unconditional emancipation. Wild visionaries they, incendiaries whose very writings, like the heresies of old, must be consigned to the flames; impracticable enthusiasts, seditious citizens. But lo! the flame of war passed over us and their dream is true; and in the clearer light which. shines upon us to-day, we can hardly realize that this great blot upon our civilization could have existed, the time seems so far away. And we of America, we who have reached the summit of the prophecies of centuries past, we dream of new and loftier mountains in the distance. We who have realized in our political institutions a universal equality of men before the law, find that we have only reached the foothills of the greater range beyond. There are men in our midst who are dreaming to-day of a time when mere political equality shall be based upon that broader social and economic equality which is so necessary to maintain it. They dream of a time when each man's reward shall be proportioned to his own exertions and his own desert, and nothing at all shall be due to the accident of birth; dream of a time when bitter, grinding poverty, save as a punishment for idleness, shall no longer exist in a world so full of the bounty of heaven. Is it wilder than the dream of him who, under the despotism of the Bourbons, could dream of a great people whose birth should be heralded by the cry that all men are created equal? Is it wilder than the dream of him who, oppressed by the tyranny of Alva, could dream of a day of perfect religious toleration? Men talk with contemptuous pity of the dreamer. But he rather is the object of pity who bars the windows and draws the curtains of his soul to shut out the light of heaven that would smile in upon him. Let us rather pity the man who fears to utter the divine thought which fills him. Let us pity rather that man or that nation which lives in the complacent consciousness of its own virtue and blessedness, and dreams of no higher good than it possesses. He that has a dream of something better than he sees around him, let him tell it though the world smile. He that has a prophecy to utter, let him speak, though men account it his folly as much as they will. God bless the dreamers of all just and perfect dreams! The great wheel of the ages with ever-increasing motion is sure to roll out their accomplishment.

The Rev. Louis A. Banks, lately of Washington Territory, spoke of woman suffrage there. He said:

The firm fact proved by experience is that women do vote. Before the law was enacted, the old objection used to meet us on every hand, "The women do not want to vote"—as though that, if true, were a valid reason. They ought to want to. It is my business to urge men to repent, and I have never supposed it a reason to cease preaching to them because they did not want to repent; they ought to want to. But our experience has proved that women do want to vote. It was universally conceded that in our first general Territorial election fully as many women voted in proportion to their numbers as men. ....

Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers! ....

You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic struggle? When John Adams went courting Abigail Smith,-her proud father said to her: "Who is this young Adams? Where did he come from?" Abigail answered: "I do not know where he came from and I do not care, but I know where he is going and I am going with him." Ladies and gentlemen, you know where we are going; we invite your company for the journey.

State Senator R. W. Blue said: "One of the greatest questions of the day is how to counteract the influence of the vicious vote cast every year in the large cities. I believe the only way to do that is to enfranchise the women." He added that he had worked for the Municipal Suffrage Bill in the preceding Legislature, and should do so in the next. President Foulke complimented him on his bold and outspoken remarks, and said he thought a man in politics never lost anything by telling the people exactly where he stood on vital issues.^[7]

James G. Clark, associate editor of the Minneapolis Spectator, was a delegate, and delighted the audience with his equal rights songs. A letter was received from Dr. Mary F. Thomas and, by a rising vote of the convention, it was decided to send her a telegram of greeting and congratulations on her seventieth birthday.

Letters were read from Chief-Justice Greene of Washington Territory, and from Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas of England, sister of John and Jacob Bright; also telegrams from the Minnesota W. S. A., from Major and Mrs. Pickler of South Dakota, and from others, and reports from the different State societies.

Chancellor J. A. Lippincott, of the State University, invited the association to visit that institution, and Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Stone to address the students. Mrs. Stone wrote in the Woman's Journal: "It was worth the journey to receive the warm welcome which greeted us on every hand, and still more to see the progress the cause has made in the nineteen years that have passed since the first suffrage campaign in Kansas. It would not be surprising if Municipal Suffrage should be secured in this State at the next session of the Legislature.^[8] The very air was full of suffrage, even in the midst of the political contest."

1887.—The Nineteenth annual meeting was held in Association Hall, Philadelphia, October 31, November i, 2. The platform had been beautifully decorated with tropical plants and foliage by Miss Elizabeth B. Justice and other Pennsylvania friends. The weather was fine, the audience sympathetic and the speaking excellent.

State Senator A. D. Harlan gave the address of welcome in behalf of the Pennsylvania W. S. A. President Wm. Dudley Foulke in responding paid a tribute to the Senator's good service in the Legislature in behalf of a constitutional amendment for equal suffrage. A letter of welcome was read from the venerable and beloved president of the association, Miss Mary Grew, who was kept away by illness. Col. T. W. Higginson said:

I have the sensations of a Revolutionary veteran, almost, in coming back to Philadelphia and remembering our early suffrage meetings here in that time of storm, in contrasting the audiences of to-day with the audiences of that day, and in thinking what are the difficulties that come before us now as compared with those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the atmosphere of the community has changed; nothing but the cause remains the same, and that remains because it is a part of the necessary evolution of democratic society and is an immortal thing.

I recall those early audiences; the rows of quiet faces in Quaker bonnets in the foreground; the rows of exceedingly unquiet figures of Southern medical students, with their hats on, in the background. I recall the visible purpose of those energetic young gentlemen to hear nobody but the women, and the calm determination with which their bootheels contributed to put the male speakers down. I recall also their too-assiduous attentions in the streets outside when the meeting broke up. ....

Woman suffrage should be urged, in my opinion, not from any predictions of what women will do with their votes after they get them, but on the ground that by all the traditions of our government, by all the precepts of its early founders, by all the axioms which lie at the foundation of our political principles, woman needs the ballot for self-respect and self-protection.

The woman of old times who did not read books of political economy or attend public meetings, could retain her self-respect; but the woman of modern times, with every step she takes in the higher education, finds it harder to retain that self-respect while she is in a republican government and yet not a member of it. She can study all the books that I saw collected this morning in the political economy alcove of the Bryn Mawr College; she can master them all; she can know more about them perhaps than any man of her acquaintance; and yet to put one thing she has learned there in practice by the simple process of dropping a piece of paper into a ballot-box—she can no more do that than she could put out her slender finger and stop the planet in its course. That is what I mean by woman's needing the suffrage for self-respect.

Then as to self-protection. We know there have been great improvements in the laws in regard to women. What brought about those improvements? The steady labor of women like these on this platform, going before Legislatures year by year and asking for something they were not willing to give, the ballot; but, as a result of it, to keep the poor creatures quiet, some law was passed removing a restriction. The old English writer Pepys, according to his diary, after spending a good deal of money for himself finds a little left and buys his wife a new gown, because, he says, "It is fit that the poor wretch should have something to content her." I have seen many laws passed for the advantage of women and they were generally passed on that principle.

I remember going before the Rhode Island Legislature once with Lucy Stone and she unrolled with her peculiar persuasive power the wrong laws which existed in that commonwealth in regard to women. After the hearing was over the chairman of that committee, a judge who had served on it for years, said to her: "Mrs. Stone, all that you have stated this morning is true, and I am ashamed to think that I, who have been chairman for years of this judiciary committee, should have known in my secret heart that it,

was all true and should have done nothing to set these wrongs right until I was reminded of them by a woman." Again and again I have seen that experience. Women with bleeding feet, women with exhausted voices, women with worn-out lives, have lavished their strength to secure ordinary justice in the form of laws which a single woman inside the State House, armed with the position of member of the Legislature and representing a sex who had votes, could have had righted within two years. Every man knows the weakness of a disfranchised class of men. The whole race of women is disfranchised, and they suffer in the same way.

Among the other speakers were the Rev. Charles G. Ames, Henry B. Blackwell, the Rev. Antoinette 'Brown Blackwell, Dr. Thomas, Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, Mrs. Frances E. W. Harper, the Rev. S. S. Hunting, Miss Cora Scott Pond, the Rev. Ada C. Bowles and Mrs. Adelaide A. Claflin.

The chairman of the executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone, in her annual report, reviewed the year's activities and continued:

But the chief work of the American Woman Suffrage Association during the past year has been to obtain wide access to the public through the newspapers. Early in the year correspondence was opened with most of the papers in the United States. The editors were asked whether they would publish suffrage literature if it were sent them every week without charge. More than a thousand answered that they would use what we sent, in whole or in part. Accepting this the association has, for the last eight months, furnished 1,000 weekly papers with a suffrage column. The cost of it consumes nearly the whole interest of the Eddy Fund, besides much time and strength gratuitously given. But as these papers come to us week by week containing the suffrage items and articles which through their columns reach millions of readers, we feel that no better use could be made of money or time.

The Revs. Anna H. Shaw and Ada C. Bowles were chosen national lecturers. Among the resolutions were the following:

We congratulate the Legislature of Kansas upon its honorable record in extending Municipal Suffrage last February to the women of that State, and the 26,000 women of Kansas by whose aid, last April, reformed city governments were elected in every municipality; we hail the National W. C. T. U. as an efficient ally of the woman suffrage movement; we recognize the woman suffrage resolutions of the Knights of Labor, the Land and Labor organizations, the Third Party Prohibitionists and other political parties, as evidence of a growing public sentiment in favor of the equal rights of women; we rejoice that two-thirds of the Northern Senators in the Congress of the United States voted last winter for a Sixteenth Constitutional Amendment prohibiting political distinctions on account of sex; we observe an increasing friendliness in the attitude oi press and pulpit and the fact that 1,000 newspapers now publish a weekly column in the interests of woman suffrage; we are encouraged by more general discussions and more favorable votes of State Legislatures than ever before—all indicating a sure and steady progress toward the complete enfranchisement of women.

Whereas, The woman suffragists of the United States were all united until 1868 in the American Equal Rights Association; and

Whereas, The causes of the subsequent separation into the National and the American Woman Suffrage Societies have since been largely removed by the adoption of common principles and methods, therefore,

Resolved, That Mrs. Lucy Stone be appointed a committee of one from the American W. S. A. to confer with Miss Susan B. Anthony, of the National W. S. A., and if on conference it seems desirable, that she be authorized and empowered to appoint a committee of this association to meet a similar committee appointed by the National W. S. A., to consider a satisfactory basis of union, and refer it back to the executive committees of both associations for final action.

A pleasant incident of the convention was the presentation to the audience of Mrs. E. R. Hunter, of Wichita, Kan., a real voter. Letters of greeting were read from Miss Matilda Hindman of Pennsylvania, Senator M. B. Castle of Illinois, Mrs. Mary fi B. Clay of Kentucky, and Judge Stanton J. Peelle of Indiana. . Mrs. Stone, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Mrs. . Mary A. Livermore were elected delegates to the International Council of Women to be held in Washington, D. C., in 1888, i with Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Miss Mary Grew and Mrs. Hannah it M. Tracy Cutler as alternates.

After Mrs. Howe's address on the last evening, The Battle Hymn of the Republic was sung standing, the great assembly joining in the chorus. The officers had the pleasure of visiting; Bryn Mawr College, by invitation of Dean M. Carey Thomas, during the convention.

In December of this year, a Suffrage Bazar was held in Boston for the joint benefit of the American W. S. A. and of the State suffrage associations that participated,^[9] which was a success both socially and financially. The Woman's Journal of December 17 said:

Music Hall is a wonderful sight; the green and gold banner of Kansas occupies the place of honor in the middle of the platform, flanked on the left by the great crimson banner of Michigan with its motto "Neither delay nor rest," and on the right by the blue flag of Maine, decorated with a pine branch and cones. The bronze statue of Beethoven which has looked calmly down upon so many different assemblages in Music Hall, gazes meditatively at the Kansas table, with a large yellow sunflower which surmounts the Kansas banner blazing like a great star at his very feet. Next comes the banner of Vermont, rich and beautiful, though smaller than the rest, in two shades of blue, with the seal of the State in the center surrounded by wild roses and bearing the motto "Freedom and Unity." At the extreme right of the platform hangs the banner of Pennsylvania, yellow, with heavy crimson fringe and the motto "Taxation with Representation." On the other side of Michigan is a large portrait of Wendell Phillips, sent by friends in Minnesota. At the left are the Woman's Journal exhibit, press headquarters and a display of exquisite blankets made at the Lamoille mills and contributed to the Vermont exhibit by the manufacturer, Mrs. M. G. Minot. All down the hall on both sides and across the middle hang the many banners of the Massachusetts local leagues, of all sizes and colors and with every variety of motto and device. At the extreme end hangs.the white banner of the State Association.

This handsome banner, bearing the motto, "Male and female created He them, and gave them dominion," was presented to the association by Miss Cora Scott Pond and the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, to whose energetic work the success of the bazar was largely due.

Mrs. Livermore, the president of the bazar, made the opening address on the first evening. Floor and gallery were filled and scores of yellow-ribboned delegates threaded their way through the smiling crowd. Mrs. Howe followed, saying in part:

Addresses this evening are something like grace before meat; they are expected to be short and sweet. The grace is a good thing because it reminds us that we do not live by bread alone but by all the divine words with which the Creator has filled the universe. The most divine word of all is justice, and in that sacred name we are met to-night. In her name we set up our tents and spread our banners. .... In the suspense i in which we have so long waited for suffrage, I sometimes feel as if we were in a dim twilight through which at last a single star sheds its way to show us there is light yet, and then another and another star follow. Wyoming was the first, the evening star—we may call her our Venus; then came Washington Territory, and then Kansas. What sort of a star shall we call Boston? She might aptly be compared to sleepy old Saturn, surrounded by a triple ring of prejudice. Dr. Channing was asked once if he did not despair of Harvard College. He replied: "No, I never quite despair of anything." Therefore, following his good example, I never quite despair of Boston. We want our flag to be full of such stars as those I have mentioned.

Mrs. Lucy Stone closed a brief address by saying: "To-morrow will be election day and the papers urge all citizens to go and vote; but there are 60,000 women in Boston who have the same interest in the city government that men have, and yet can have no voice in the matter. Make this bazar a success and so enable us to take Massachusetts by its four corners and shake it till it gives suffrage to women."

1888.—The twentieth annual meeting was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 20-22, with large crowds in attendance and much interest shown. The Enquirer said: "The audiences may be said to have chestnutized the time-honored assertion that advocates of the ballot for the fair sex are unable to win even womankind to their way of thinking. New faces of ladies of the highest standing in society are seen at every succeeding session. The Scottish Rite Cathedral has rarely or never held as large a number of ladies, and equally rarely has there been present at a meeting of woman suffragists so large a proportion of men." And the Commercial Gazette: "The Scottish Rite Cathedral never held a finer-looking company, composed as it was of a large number of the oldest and best citizens."

The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke presided.^[10] Addresses of welcome were made by the Hon. Alphonso Taft and Mrs. McClellan Brown, president of the Wesleyan Woman's College. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe responded.

In a letter the Hon. George William Curtis said: "Every change in the restrictive laws regarding women is an acknowledgment of the justice of the demand for equal suffrage. The case was conceded when women became property holders and taxpayers in their own right. In every way their interest in society is the same as that of men, and the reason for their voting in school meetings is conclusive for their voting upon the appropriation of other taxes which they pay."

U. S. Senator George F. Hoar wrote: "My belief in the wisdom and justice of the demand that women shall be admitted to the ballot grows stronger every year." Ina letter to Lucy Stone, Clara Barton wrote:

It gives me pain to be compelled to decline your generous invitation to attend your annual meeting, but there is a deep pleasure in the thought that you remembered and desired me to be with you. Nowhere would I so gladly speak my little word for woman, her rights, her needs, her privileges delayed and debarred—yet blessed with the grand advance of the last thirty years, the budding and blossoming of the seed sown in darkness, doubt and humiliation, scattered by the winds of conscious superiority and power and the whirlwinds of opposing wrath—as on the green, native soil, the home of the early labors of its sainted citizen, Frances D. Gage. Dear, noble, precious Aunt Fanny, with the soul so pure and white, the heart so warm, the sympathies so quick and ready, the sensitive, shrinking modesty of self, the courage that scoffed at fear when the needs of others were plead; the friend of the bondman and oppressed, who knew no sect, sex, race or color, but toiled on for freedom and humanity till the glorious summons came! If only five minutes of her clarion voice could ring out in that meeting— McGregor on his native heath—" 'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs—the grandest of them all—whose sleeping dust is an honor to Ohio. It is nothing that I am not there; it is much that you will be, who carry back the memories of your girlhood, your school-life, your earliest labors, to lay them on this freely-proffered altar, in a spot where then there was no room for the tired foot, nor scarce safety for the head. The occasion points with unerring finger to the hands on the dial of thirty years in the future. We need not to see it then, for it is given us to foresee it now. God's blessing on this work and on the meeting, and on all who may compose it!^[11]

Henry B. Blackwell said in his address:

In equal suffrage lies our only hope of a representative government. Women are one-half of our citizens with rights to protect and wrongs to remedy. They are a distinct class in society, differing from men in character, position and interest. Every class that votes makes itself felt in the government. Women will change the quality of government when they vote. They are more peaceable, temperate, chaste, economical and law-abiding than men; less controlled by physical appetite and passion; more influenced by humane and religious considerations. They will superadd to the more harsh and aggressive masculine qualities those feminine qualities in which they are superior to men. And these qualities are precisely what our government lacks. Women will always be wives and mothers. They will represent the home as men represent the business interests, and both are needed. 'This is a reform higher, broader, deeper than any and all others. Let good men and. women of all sects, parties and opinions unite in establishing a government of and by and for the people—men and women.

Lucy Stone, describing the convention in the Woman's Journal of December 1, wrote:

The local arrangements had been carefully made by Dr. Juliet M. Thorpe, Mrs. Ellen B. Dietrick and Miss Annie McLean Marsh. The spirit and temper of the meeting were of the best. Telegrams of greeting were received from various States, and from far and near came letters from those who were already friends of the cause, and others who wished to learn. One old lady with snow-white locks had come alone forty miles. She was not a delegate and she had no speech to make, but her heart was in the work and she found opportunity to speak words of cheer to those who were in the thick of the fight. One young woman, a busy teacher, came from Knoxville, Tenn. She wanted to know how to work for suffrage in that State, and said she thought it "the best way to come where the suffrage was." A large supply of leaflets, copies of the Woman's Journal and of the Woman's Column, were given her, with such advice and instruction as the time permitted. Two ladies were there from Virginia. This was their first suffrage meeting, but they listened eagerly, subscribed for our periodicals and gladly accepted leaflets. It was a comfort to see by these new recruits how widely the idea of equal rights for women is taking root. At these annual meetings the workers who come from far distant States and Territories strengthen each other. The sight of their faces and the warm grasp of their hands serve to renew the strength of those who never have flinched, and who never will! flinch till women are secure in possession of equal rights.

A number of ladies who came over from Kentucky took the opportunity to organize a Kentucky Equal Suffrage Association.

It is always a matter of regret that the excellent speeches made at these meetings can not be phonographically reported, but it must suffice to say that they covered all the ground, from the principles on which representative government rests, to the teaching of the Bible, which Miss Laura Clay, in an able speech, warmly claimed was on the side of equal rights for women. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, that noble mother in Israel, agreed with her, though from a different point of view, while Frederick Douglass claimed that the "Eternal Right exists independent of all books."

The Cincinnati press gave noticeably friendly and fair reports. Hospitality to delegates was abundant. The sunny side of many of the best people of the Queen City was evidently turned toward this meeting. A distinguished member of the Hamilton County bar, who had not been thoroughly converted before, said: "When you come again, let me make the address of welcome!"

The annual report of the chairman of the executive committee stated that the association had continued to supply with suffrage matter all editors who would use it; and that to save postage this weekly bulletin had been put into the form of a small newspaper, the Woman's Column:

Its woman suffrage arguments come back to us in papers scattered from Maine to California, and reach hundreds of thousands of readers who would not take a paper devoted specifically to this reform. .... Twenty thousand suffrage leaflets were given to the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, national lecturer for the American W. S. A., whose position as national superintendent of franchise for the W. C. T. U. enables her to use them with great effect; 7,700 were made a gift to the Ohio Centennial Exposition at Cincinnati with hundreds of copies of the Woman's Journal and Woman's Column; also many to the exposition at Columbus; 1,000 leaflets were sent to the meeting of the Wisconsin W. S. A. at Milwaukee, and 500 to its recent meeting at Stevens Point; many were sent to the fair at Ottumwa, Ia.; a large number were distributed at the annual meeting of the National W. C. T. U. in New York, and smaller quantities have been supplied for local use in almost all the States and Territories. Several friends have made donations of money for this purpose, and there is no way in which money goes further or does more good. In August, the association began the publication of a series of tracts under the title of the Woman Suffrage Leaflet. The association has given $50 for work in Montana, $50 in Vermont, $25 in Wisconsin and $15 in New York.

Memorial resolutions were adopted for Louisa M. Alcott, Dr. Mary F. Thomas and James Freeman Clarke, D. D.

The following committee was chosen to continue the negotiations for union with the National Woman Suffrage Association, which had been entered upon in pursuance of the resolution adopted at Philadelphia: the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Indiana; the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Michigan; Miss Laura Clay, Kentucky; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell, Iowa; Prof. W. H. Carruth, Kansas; Miss Mary Grew, Pennsylvania; the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Mrs. Sarah C. Schrader, Ohio; Mrs. Catherine V. Waite, Illinois; Mrs. May S. Knaggs, Michigan; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Massachusetts.

1889.—In January these delegates met with those from the National Association at the convention of the latter in Washington, D. C., and arrangements for the union of the two societies for the following year were practically completed.^[12]

In the summer an appeal was addressed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Mary A. Livermore to the constitutional conventions which were preparing for Statehood in Dakota, Washington, Montana and Idaho. It said in part:

The undersigned, officers of the American Woman Suffrage Association, though not properly entitled to address your convention, nevertheless ask its courtesy on account of the great interest they feel in the question of the status you will give to women.

You, gentlemen, felt keenly the disadvantage you were under when you had only Territorial rights. If you will consider how much greater are the disadvantages of a class that is wholly without political rights, you will, we feel sure, pardon our entreaty that in building your new constitution you will secure for women equal political rights with men.

The men of the older States inherited their constitutions, with the odious features which the common law imposes upon women. But you are making constitutions. You have the golden opportunity to save your women from all these evils. by securing their right to vote in the organic law of the new State. By doing this, over and above the satisfaction which comes from having done a just deed, you will win the gratitude of women for all time, as our fathers won the gratitude of the race when they announced the principle which we ask you to apply. You will also secure the historic credit of being the first men to take the next great step in civilization—a step sure to be taken at no distant day. ....

Edward Everett once said, illustrating the effect of small things on character: "The Mississippi and the St. Lawrence Rivers have their rise near each other. A very small difference in the elevation of the land sends one to the ocean amid tropical heat, while the other empties into the frozen waters of the north." So, it may seem a small matter whether you admit or shut out women from an equal share in the government. But if you exclude them you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly, law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good women.

Henry B. Blackwell, secretary of the association, visited North Dakota, Montana and Washington, and personally labored with the members of the three constitutional conventions. He carried with him letters written expressly for these conventions by Governor Francis E. Warren and U. S. Delegate Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming; Governor Lyman U. Humphrey, Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg, Chief Justice Albert H. Horton and all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Kansas; U. S. Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, U. S. Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, Governor Oliver Ames, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, William Lloyd Garrison and others of Massachusetts, commending his mission and expressing the hope that the new States would incorporate equal suffrage in their constitutions. Copies of these letters were placed in the hands of every delegate. Mr. Blackwell devoted over a month to the journey and the work in these Territories, paying his own expenses and giving them and his services to the American Suffrage Association. [Detailed accounts of these efforts will be found in chapters on these three States.]

1890.—In February the American and the National Societies held a convention in Washington under the name of the National-American Association and this body has continued its annual meetings as one organization.

 

1. The History is indebted for this chapter to Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, editor of The Woman's Journal, Boston, Mass. For early accounts of this organization see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Chap. XXVI. [Editors of History.
2. Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett, principal of Highland Park Academy; Miss Ada C. Sweet, head of the Pension Office in Illinois; Mrs. Mary B. Willard, of the Union Signal; Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of the Inter-Ocean; Dr. Julia Holmes Smith, Helen K. Pierce. Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Fuller, Mrs. George Harding, Mrs. Catherine V. Waite, Mrs. Elizabeth Loomis and the Rev. Florence Kollock composed the entertainment committee.
3. Mr. Wood, in many public addresses made during the first Kansas amendment campaign in 1867, attributed this action of the Kansas Constitutional Convention to Mrs. Stone; but it is certain that other influences contributed to it. [For a further account of these, see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1, p. 185. Eds.]
4. Massachusetts gave to this fund $472; Pennsylvania, $201.50; Indiana, $146; New Jersey, $80; Connecticut, $50; New Hampshire, $25; Ohio, $10; Delaware, $5; New Brunswick, Canada, $10.
5. Vice-presidents, ex-officio: Mrs, E. N. Bacon, Me.; Mrs. Armenia S. White, N. H.; Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden, Vt.; William I. Bowditch, Mass.; Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace, R. I.; Mrs. Emily P. Collins, Conn.; Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman, N. Y.; Kate A. Browning, N. J.; Miss Mary Grew, Penn.; Mrs. Mary A. Heald, Del.; Mrs. Frances M. Casement, O.; Mary F. Thomas, M. D., Ind.; Miss Ada C. Sweet, Ill.; Lucy C. Stansell, Mich.; Sylvia Goddard, Ky.; Mrs. A. E. Dickinson, Mo.; Lizzie D. Fyler, Ark.; Jennie Beauchamp, Tex.; Emma C. Bascom, Wis.; Narcissa T. Bemis, Ia.; Gertrude M. McDowell, Neb.; the Hon. Charles Robinson, Kan.; Gen. Theodore F. Brown, Col.; Jennie Carr, Cal.; Abigail Scott Duniway, Ore.; Martha G. Ripley, M. D., Minn.; the Hon. J. W. Hoyt, Wy. Ty.; Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, Tenn.; Mrs. Cadwallader White, Ga.; the Hon. Roger S. Greene, Wash. Ty.; Mary J. Ireland, Md.; Caroline E. Merrick, La.   Executive Committee: Lucy Stone, chairman; Mrs. C. A. Quinby, Me.; Dr. J. H. Gallinger, N. H.; Laura Moore, Vt.; Mrs. Judith W. Smith, Mass.; Mrs. S. E. H. Doyle, R. J.; the Hon. John Sheldon, Conn.; Anna C. Field, N. Y.; Cornelia C. Hussey, N. J.; John K. Wildman, Penn.; Dr. John Cameron, Del.; Jennie F. Holmes, Neb.; Prof. W. H. Carruth, Kan.; Mary F. Shields, Col.; Sarah Knox Goodrich, Cal.; Mrs. N. Coe Stewart, O.; Mary E. Haggart, Ind.; Helen E. Starrett, Il.; Mrs. Geary, Va.; Jennie A. Crane, W. Va.; Mrs. L. S. Ellis, Mich.; Laura Clay, Ky.; Charlotte A. Cleveland, Mo.; Rhoda Munger, Ark.; Mrs. H. Buckner, Tex.; Helen R. Olin, Wis.; Mary A. Work, Ia.; Laura Howe Carpenter, Minn.; Mrs. A. S. Duniway, Ore.; the Hon. J. W. Kingman, Wy. Ty.; Mrs. Smith of Seattle, Wash. Ty.
6. Congress never could be persuaded to take any action and Miss Carroll died in poverty and need. ([Eds.
7. Among the other speakers were Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, of Massachusetts; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell and the Rev. S. S. Hunting, of Iowa; Mrs. Mary E. Haggart, of Indiana; the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, of Michigan; Mrs. Laura M. Johns, Mrs. Hammer, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Annie L. Diggs, Miss Sarah A. Brown, Mrs. Brown of Abilene, William P. Tomlinson, of the Topeka Democrat; the Revs. C. H. Lovejoy, H. W. George and Dr. McCabe, Dr. Fisher, Judge W. A. Peffer, Mrs. M. E. De Geer Call, Mrs. Martia L. Berry, Col. A. B. Jetmore, J. C. Hebbard and Hon. C. S. Gleed.
8. This was done.
9. The American W. S. A. afterwards voted to give to each State the entire amount of its gross sales.
10. Mr. Foulke served as president from 1884 to 1890. During this time but few changes were made in the official board. In 1885 Mrs. Mary E. Haggart (Ind.) was added to the vice-presidents-at-large; in 1886 Dr. Mary F. Thomas (Ind.), J. K. Hudson (Kas.), the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw (Mass.); 1887, Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs (Mich.); 1888, Miss Clara Barton (D. C.), Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.), Mrs. Phebe C. McKell (Ohio). In 1887 Mrs. Martha C. Callanan (Iowa) was elected recording secretary. The various State auxiliaries made numerous changes in vice-presidents ex-officio and members of the executive committee.
11. Among speakers not elsewhere mentioned were the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Sarah C. Schrader, Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell, Mrs. Martha C. Callanan, Dr. Caroline M. Dodson, Madame Calliope Kachiya (a Greek friend of Mrs. Howe's), and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell. Mrs. Wessendorf read a poem, and there were songs by the Blaine Glee Club and by Miss Annie McLean Marsh and her little niece, and violin music by Miss Lucille du Pre.
12. The American Woman Suffrage Association was indebted for State reports during the past years to the following: Arkansas, Lizzie Dorman Fyler; California, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Elizabeth A. Kingsbury, Sarah M. Severance, Fannie Wood; Connecticut, Emily P. Collins, Abby B. Sheldon; Dakota, Major J. A. Pickler, Alice M. Pickler; Delaware, Dr. John Cameron; Illinois, Mary E. Holmes, Catherine G. Waugh (McCulloch); Indiana, Florence M. Adkinson, Mary S. Armstrong, Sarah E. Franklin, Adelia R. Hornbrook, Mary D. Naylor; Iowa, Mary J. Coggeshall, Eliza H. Hunter, Mary A. Work, Narcissa T. Bemis; Kansas, Prof. W. H. Carruth, Mrs. M. E. De Geer, Bertha H. Ellsworth; Kentucky, Mary B. Clay, Laura Clay; Maine, the Rev. Henry Blanchard, Mrs. C. S. Quinby; Massachusetts, Henry B. Blackwell, Lucy Stone; Missouri, Rebecca N. Hazard, Amanda E. Dickenson; Minnesota, Martha Angle Dorsett, Ella M. S. Marble, Dr. Martha G. Ripley; Michigan, Mrs. E. L. Briggs, Mary L. Doe, Emily B. Ketcham, Mrs. H. L. Udell, Mrs. Ellis; New Hampshire, Armenia S. White, Mrs. M. H. Ela; New Jersey, Cornelia C. Hussey, Therese M. Seabrook; New York, Lillie Devereaux Blake, Mariana W. Chapman, Mrs. E. O. Putnam Heaton, Anna Holyoke Howard, Hamilton Willcox; Nebraska, Erasmus M. Correll, Deborah G. King, Lucinda Russell, Clara Albertson Young; Ohio, Lou J. Bates, Frances M. Casement, Orpha D. Baldwin, S. S. Bissell, Mary J. Cravens, Mrs. (Dr.) Henderson, Mrs. M. B. Haven, Martha M. Paine, Mary P. Spargo, Rosa L. Segur, Cornelia C. Swezey; Oregon, Abigail Scott Duniway, W. S. Duniway; Pennsylvania, Florence A. Burleigh, Mary Grew, Matilda Hindman; Rhode Island, Elizabeth B. Chace, Marilla M. Brewster, Sarah W. Ladd, Mary C. Peckham, Louise M. Tyler; Tennessee, Lida A. Meriwether, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon; Texas, Mariana T. Folsom; Vermont, Laura Moore; Virginia, Orra Langhorne; Washington Territory, Bessie J. Isaacs; Wisconsin, Mary W. Bentley, Alura Collins; Wyoming, Dr. Kate Kelsey.