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NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1887.
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indorsement of woman suffrage by the Knights of Labor in national assembly, and by the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and that we congratulate these organizations upon their recognition of the fact that the ballot in the hands of woman is necessary for their success.

Resolved, That we extend our sympathy to our beloved president, in the recent death of her husband, Henry B. Stanton; and we recall with gratitude the fact that he was one of the earliest and most consistent advocates of human liberty.

Thanks were extended to the United States Senators who voted for a Sixteenth Amendment. A committee was appointed, Mrs. Blake, chairman, to wait upon President Grover Cleveland and protest against the threatened disfranchising of the women of Washington Territory; also to secure a hearing before the proper congressional committee in reference to the Edmunds-Tucker Bill, which proposed to disfranchise both the Gentile and Mormon women of Utah. The usual large number of letters were received.[1]

The following letter was read from ex-United States Treasurer F. E. Spinner, the first official to employ women:

I am eighty-five years old, and I can no longer look forward for future earthly happiness. All my joys are now retrospective, and in the long vista of years that I constantly look back upon, there is no time that affords me more pleasure than that when I was in the Treasury of the United States. The fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of the Government, gives me more real satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life.

A committee consisting of the national board and chairman of the executive committee was appointed to arrange for a great international meeting the next year.

On the opening day of this convention a vote on woman suffrage was taken in the United States Senate as described in the preceding chapter; at its close a telegram was received that a Municipal Suffrage Bill had been passed by the Kansas Legislature; and its members separated with the consciousness that two distinctly progressive steps had been taken.

  1. Among the writers were Harriot Stanton Blatch of England, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Philadelphia; Prudence Crandall Philleo (Kan.); Mary V. Cowgill, Mary J. Coggeshall, editor Woman's Standard, (Ia.); Belva A. Lockwood (D. C.); General and Mrs. Rufus Saxton, Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.); Alice M. Pickler (Dak.); Sarah R. Langdon Williams, Sarah M. Perkins (O.); Mr. and Mrs. McClung (Tenn.); telegram signed by Emmeline B. Wells and a long list of names from Utah.