Читать книгу The Women of the Suffrage Movement - Jane Addams - Страница 55

Table of Contents

Washington Convention; Miss Anthony's speech on striking "male" from District of Columbia Bill; descriptions by Mrs. Fannie Howland, Hearth and Home, Mrs. Hooker, Mary Clemmer; Fiftieth Birthday celebration and comments of N.Y. Press; Phoebe Gary's poem; Miss Anthony's letter to mother; begins with Lyceum Bureau; Robert G. Ingersoll comes to her assistance; attack by Detroit Free Press; tribute of Chicago Legal News; efforts to unite the two National Suffrage organizations; Union Suffrage Society formed; end of Equal Rights Association.

Conventions and conventions for fifty years, without a break, planned and managed by one woman—was there ever a similar record? The year 1870 opened with the Second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 19. It had been advertised for two days, but the interest was so great that it was continued through the third day and evening. Mrs. Stanton was in the chair and the papers united in praising the beauty, dignity and elegant attire of the women on the platform. A long table at the Arlington Hotel was reserved for them, and Miss Anthony relates that as they were all going into the dining-room one day, Jessie Benton Fremont beckoned to her and when she went over to the table where the general and she were sitting, she said in her bright, pretty way: "Now tell me, did you hunt the country over and pick out a score of the most beautiful women you could find to melt the hearts of our congressmen?"

Letters of warm approval were read from John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor, of England; Professor Homer B. Sprague, of Cornell University; Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist church; Senator Matthew H. Carpenter, and many other distinguished persons. A number of senators and representatives addressed the meetings, as did also Hon. A.G. Riddle, of the District of Columbia, Rev. Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the usual corps of well-known suffrage speakers. Jennie Collins, the Lowell factory girl, electrified the audience by discussing the great question from the standpoint of the workingwomen. All the New York dailies sent women reporters, a comparatively new feature at conventions.

A hearing was arranged before the joint committees for the District of Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the St. Louis convention a few months before, the first assertion of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony said:

We are here for the express purpose of urging you to present in your respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the District of Columbia Suffrage Act and thereby enfranchise the women of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman suffrage shall be made here, under the eye of Congress, as was that of negro suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been the experimental ground of each step toward freedom. The auction-block was here first banished, slavery here first abolished, the freedmen here first enfranchised; and we now ask that women here shall be first admitted to the ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all over the country as to the results of negro suffrage, and you deemed it right and safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you all remember that three days' discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's proposition to strike out the word "male." Well do I recollect with what anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and how we longed that Congress might then declare for the establishment in this District of a real republic. But conscience or courage or something was wanting, and women were bidden still to wait.

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first voted, the success of that election inspired Congress with confidence to pass the proposition for the Fifteenth Amendment, and the different States to ratify it, until it has become a fixed fact that black men all over the nation not only may vote but sit in legislative assemblies and constitutional conventions. We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic yet stand. There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to make the experiment. Therefore, we most earnestly urge it, in full faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its beneficial results, they will go forward with a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit any State from disfranchising any of its citizens on account of sex.

A letter from Mrs. Fannie Howland in the Hartford Courant thus describes the hearing:

Senator Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who took their seats around a long table. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces. Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.

The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history—noble, brilliant, heroic women; but woman collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the commonwealth—not in virtue of hereditary noblesse—not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light, fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty and briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of everyday use, held the mind strictly to the actual facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and good nature.

The Hearth and Home, in Photographs of our Agitators, thus depicts Miss Anthony on this occasion:

She is the Bismarck; she plans the campaigns, provides the munitions of war, organizes the raw recruits, sets the squadrons in the field. Indeed, in presence of a timid lieutenant, she sometimes heads the charge; but she is most effective as the directing generalissimo. Miss Anthony is a quick, bright, nervous, alert woman of fifty or so—not at all inclined to embonpoint—sharp-eyed, even behind her spectacles. She presides over the treasury, she cuts the Gordian knots, and when the uncontrollables get by the ears at the conventions, she is the one who straightway drags them asunder and turns chaos to order again. In every dilemma, she is unanimously summoned. As a speaker, she is angular and rigid, but trenchant, incisive, cutting through to the heart of whatever topic she touches.

Mrs. Hooker wrote: "There were congratulations without stint; but Sumner, grandest of all, approaching us said in a deep voice, really full of emotion: 'I have been in this place, ladies, for twenty years; I have followed or led in every movement toward liberty and enfranchisement; but this meeting exceeds in interest anything I ever have witnessed.'" In her weekly letter to the Independent, Mary Clemmer wrote of this convention:

I am glad to say that it was not mongrel—in part a dramatic reading, in part a concert, and in part an organ advertisement; but wholly a convention whose leaders, in dignity and intellect, were fully the peers of the men whose councils they besieged and arraigned. There was Mrs. Stanton—smiling, serene, and motherly—just the woman whose hand laid upon a young man's arm, whose voice speaking to him, could do so much to hold him back from evil. There was Susan Anthony—anxious, earnest and importunate, sarcastic, funny and unconventional as ever. Among all the company, "Susan" is the most violently and the most unjustly abused. To be sure, she can be very provocative of such speech. She sometimes has a lawless way of talking and acting, which men think wonderfully fascinating in a belle, but utterly unforgivable in a plain, middle-aged woman. Moreover, "Susan's" utter abnegation to her cause, her passion for it, sometimes carries her on to "ways and means" not altogether tenable—in fine, she will offend your taste and mine; but this is only the outside and a very small side of Susan Anthony. A man, and more than a man—a woman who can deny herself, ignore herself, for a principle, for what she believes to be the truth, whether we believe it or not, is at least entitled to our respect.

Susan B. Anthony has a strong, earnest and loving nature; her devotion to her sex is an utterly absorbing and absolute passion. Born and nurtured a Quaker, she transgresses no prejudice, even of education, when she stands forth everywhere and in all places the unflinching, unwearied, never-to-be-put-down champion of woman. In the better age, when the woman of the future shall be man's equal in law, in education, in labor, in labor's rewards; when time shall have softened the asperities of the present, and the crudeness of the personal shall be buried forever in the grave, Susan B. Anthony will live as one of the truest friends that woman ever had.

Sarah Pugh wrote Miss Anthony to stop over in Philadelphia and visit Mrs. Mott and herself on her way home from Washington, adding, "We are true to you." In accepting the invitation, Miss Anthony said: "I pray every day to keep broad and generous towards all who scatter and divide, and hope I may hold out to the end. The movement can not be damaged, though some particular schemes may, by any ill-judged action. The wheels are secure on the iron rails, and no 'National' or 'American'—no New York or Boston—assumption or antagonism can block them. Individuals may jump on or off, yet the train is stopped thereby but for a moment."

A letter to her from the California association declares: "We will split into a thousand pieces before we will prove false to you, who have so long borne the heat and burden of the day." The heat and burden had indeed been great, and one less strong in body and less heroic in soul would have sunk under them. Although she was still weighed down by the terrible financial struggle of The Revolution, the storm of opposition which it had aroused was passing away and the old friends and many new ones were flocking around the intrepid standard bearer, whom neither fear nor favor could induce to swerve from the straight line marked out by her own convictions and conscience. Miss Anthony would soon complete a half-century, and her friends resolved to commemorate it in a worthy manner. Handsomely engraved cards were sent out, reading:

The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on Tuesday evening, February 15, 1870, to celebrate the Fiftieth Birthday of Susan B. Anthony. On this occasion her friends will be afforded an opportunity to testify their appreciation of her twenty years' service in behalf of woman. ELIZABETH B. PHELPS, ANNA B. DARLING, CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR.

There had been hard work to persuade Miss Anthony to accept this testimonial, but she was very happy that evening when the spacious parlors were crowded with the leading men and women of the day. Although her opinions and methods had been many times attacked by the newspapers, they now united in cordial congratulations. The New York World, in a long account, thus described the affair:

A large number of friends and admirers of the private virtues and public services of Miss Anthony assembled at the Woman's Bureau in Twenty-third street last evening to congratulate the lady upon this auspicious anniversary, and to wish her the customary "many happy returns of the day." The parlors were dazzling with light, the atmosphere laden with perfume, the walls covered with beautiful works of art, and the sweet sounds of women's laughter and silvery voices filled the apartments. Miss Susan B. Anthony stood at the entrance of the front parlor to receive her numerous friends. She wore a dress of rich shot silk, dark red and black, cut square in front, with a stomacher of white lace and a pretty little cameo brooch. All female vanities she rigorously discarded—no hoop, train, bustle, panier, chignon, powder, paint, rouge, patches, no nonsense of any sort. From her kindly eyes and from her gentle lips, there beamed the sweetest smiles to all those loving friends who, admiring her really admirable efforts in the cause of human freedom, her undaunted heroism amid a dark and gloomy warfare, were glad to press her hand and show their appreciation of her character and achievements.

Every daily paper in the city had some pleasant comment, while scores of loving and appreciative letters were received. Accompanying these were many beautiful gifts and also checks to the amount of $1,000.1

After the guests had assembled, Isabella Beecher Hooker announced that Anna T. Randall would read a poem written for the occasion by Phoebe Gary.2 She was followed by Mrs. Hooker, who read some delightfully humorous verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely overwhelmed and, after stammering her thanks for the unexpected ovation of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her self-control: "If this were an assembled mob opposing the rights of women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... I ask you tonight, as your best testimony to my services, on this, the twentieth anniversary of my public work, to join me in making a demand on Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and then to go with me before the several legislatures to secure its ratification; and when the Secretary of State proclaims that that amendment has been ratified by twenty-eight States, then Susan B. Anthony will stop work—but not before."

When all was over, before she slept, Miss Anthony wrote this characteristically tender little note to the one who never was absent from her mind:

MY DEAR MOTHER: It really seems tonight as if I were parting with something dear—saying good-by to somebody I loved. In the last few hours I have lived over nearly all of life's struggles, and the most painful is the memory of my mother's long and weary efforts to get her six children up into womanhood and manhood. My thought centers on your struggle especially because of the proof-reading of Alice Gary's story this week. I can see the old home—the brick-makers—the dinner-pails—the sick mother—the few years of more fear than hope in the new house, and the hard years since. And yet with it all, I know there was an undercurrent of joy and love which makes the summing-up vastly in their favor. How I wish you and Mary and Hannah and Guelma could have been here—and yet it is nothing—and yet it is much.

My constantly recurring thought and prayer now are that the coming fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed—that no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of truth and right.

Then there is the bare mention of a luncheon a few days before with Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker. What a treat would have been a résumé of the conversation of that gifted quintette of women!

Mrs. Stanton was ill and could not attend the reception, which was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure. In the diary at midnight is recorded: "Fiftieth birthday! One half-century done, one score years of it hard labor for bettering humanity—temperance—emancipation—enfranchisement—oh, such a struggle! Terribly stormy night, but a goodly company and many, many splendid tributes to my work. Really, if I had been dead and these the last words, neither press nor friends could have been more generous and appreciative."

This beautiful anniversary was a sweet oasis in the severe monotony of a life which had been filled always with hard work, criticism and misrepresentation, although it was only a public expression of the numerous and strong friendships which had been many times manifested in private. The birthday celebration served also to disprove the oft-repeated assertion that all women conceal their age, but though Miss Anthony made this frank avowal of her fifty years, there was scarcely a newspaper which did not introduce its comments with the usual silly and threadbare remarks.

After the people began to recover in a social, intellectual and financial way from the effects of the Civil War, the lyceum bureau became a marked feature in literary life. The principal bureaus were in New York, Boston and Chicago. Their managers engaged the best speakers and each season marked out a route, made the appointments, advertised extensively and sent them throughout the country. They paid excellent prices, assuming all responsibility, and engagements with them were considered very desirable. Under the management of the New York bureau, Mrs. Stanton began a tour in November, 1869. Miss Anthony at this time, while well-known from one end of the country to the other, had not gained a reputation as a platform orator. She thoroughly distrusted her own power to make a sustained speech of an entire evening, and at all conventions had placed others on the program for the principal addresses, presided herself, if necessary, and kept everything in motion.

By the winter of 1870, however, the bureau began to receive applications from all parts of the United States for lectures from her, and Mrs. Stanton being ill for a month, Miss Anthony went as her substitute. She proved so acceptable that in February, March and April she was engaged by the bureau for many places in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, and received a considerable sum for her services, besides securing a number of subscribers and some liberal donations for The Revolution. In her journal she speaks of the good audiences, the enthusiasm and the many prominent callers at most of the places. At Mattoon she had a day and a night with Anna Dickinson and wrote: "I found her the most weary and worn I had ever seen her, and desperately tired of the lecture field. Her devotion to me is marvelous. She is like my loving and loved child."

At Peoria, the editor of the Democratic paper stated that the laws of Illinois were better for women than for men. Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, whom she never had seen, was in the audience, and sent a note to the president of the meeting, asking that Miss Anthony should not answer the editor but give him that privilege. He then took up the laws, one after another, and, illustrating by cases in his own practice, showed in his eloquent manner how cruelly unjust they were to women and proved how necessary it was that women should have a voice in making them. He also offered the following resolution, which was unanimously adopted: "We pledge ourselves, irrespective of party, to use all honorable means to make the women of America the equals of men before the law."

In Detroit Rev. Justin Fulton occupied one evening in opposition to woman suffrage, and Miss Anthony replied to him the next. An audience of a thousand gathered in Young Men's Hall at each meeting. The Free Press had a most scurrilous review of the debate in which it said:

The speakeress rattled on in this strain until a late hour, saying nothing new, nothing noble, not a word that would give one maid or mother a purer or better thought. She drew no pictures of love in the household—she did not seem to think that man and wife could even stay under the same roof. She was not content that any woman should be a bashful, modest woman, but wanted them to be like her, to think as she thought.... People went there to see Susan B. Anthony, who has achieved an evanescent reputation by her strenuous endeavors to defy nature. Not one woman in a hundred cares to vote, cares aught for the ballot, would take it with the degrading influences it would surely bring.... Old, angular, sticking to black stockings, wearing spectacles, a voice highly suggestive of midnight Caudleism at poor Anthony, if he ever comes around, though he never will. If all woman's righters look like that, the theory will lose ground like a darkey going through a cornfield in a light night. If she had come out and plainly said, "See here, ladies, see me, I am the result of twenty years of constant howling at man's tyranny," there would never have been another "howl" uttered in Detroit. Or, if she had plainly said, in so many words, "I am going to lecture on bosh, for the sake of that almighty half-dollar per head—take it as bosh," people would have admired her candor, though forming the same conclusions without her assistance....

Myra Bradwell, the able editor of the Chicago Legal News, paid the following tribute: "Miss Anthony is terribly in earnest on this suffrage question. We fully agree with her that the great battle-ground in the first instance should be in Congress.... She is now fifty, and the best years of her life have been devoted solely to the cause of woman. She has never turned aside from this object but has always been in the field, defending her principles against all assaults with an ability which has not only won the admiration of her friends but the respect of her enemies."

She made many new acquaintances on this tour, and one entry in the diary is: "Quite a novel feature this—to have people quarrel as to who shall have the pleasure of entertaining me as their guest!" She returned to New York on Saturday, April 30, and on Sunday the diary says: "Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and heard Beecher preach a splendid sermon on 'Visiting the Sins of the Parents on the Children.'"

Various friends of the woman suffrage cause had decided that something must be done to unite the two national organizations. An editorial in the Independent to this effect was followed by a call for a conference to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, April 6, signed by Theodore Tilton, Phoebe Cary, Rev. John Chadwick and a number of others. The meeting was duly held, and the venerable Lucretia Mott, who now rarely left home, came all the way from Philadelphia to use her influence toward a reconciliation. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were lecturing in the West and the former telegraphed: "The entire West demands united national organization for the Sixteenth Amendment, this very congressional session, and so does Susan B. Anthony." Mrs. Stanton wrote to the conference: "I will do all I can for union. If I am a stumbling-block I will gladly resign my office. Having fought the world twenty years, I do not now wish to turn and fight those who have so long stood together through evil and good report. I should be glad to have all united, with Mr. Beecher or Lucretia Mott for our general.... I am willing to work with any and all or to get out of the way entirely, that there may be an organization which shall be respectable at home and abroad."

The representatives of the American Association insisted that they had offered the olive branch at the time of their organization and it had been refused. This olive branch had been a suggestion that the National Association should consider itself a local society and become auxiliary to the American. After a protracted but fruitless discussion of over four hours, they withdrew from the room, declining to accept or to suggest any overtures. The proposition made by the callers of the conference was that the two associations should merge into one, with a new constitution embodying the best features of both, and with a board of officers elected from the two existing organizations. Even the friendly offices of Lucretia Mott, which never before were disregarded, failed to effect a union, and the many letters from mutual friends were equally ineffective. In her regular letter to The Revolution Miss Anthony said:

There is but one feeling all through this glorious West, and that is that it is a sin to have a divided front at this auspicious moment. Since my last I have had splendid meetings in Quincy, Farmington, Elwood, Mendota, Peru, La-Salle, Batavia, Peoria and Champaign in Illinois, and in Sturgis and Jonesvine, Michigan. I can tell you with emphasis that the fields are white unto harvest—waiting, waiting only the reapers. And it is a shame—it is a crime—for any of the old or new public workers to halt by the way to pluck the motes out of their neighbors' eyes. Not one of us but has blundered; yet if only we are in earnest, each will forgive, in the faith that the others, like herself, mean right. How any one can stand in the way of a united national organization at an hour like this, is wholly inexplicable.

Just before the May Anniversary Mrs. Stanton published the following card in The Revolution: "It is a great thing for those who have been prominent in any movement to know when their special work is done, and when the posts they hold can be more ably filled by others. Having, in my own judgment, reached that time, at the present anniversary of our association I must forbid the use of my name for president or any other official position in any organization whatsoever."

The anniversary had been advertised for Irving Hall, but when it was found that colored people would not be admitted to that building, it was changed to Apollo Hall, and opened May 10 with Mrs. Stanton presiding. At the business meeting in the afternoon, with representatives present from nineteen States, the proposition of the conference committee was considered. According to the report in The Revolution there was much feeling on the part of the younger women against any organization which did not have Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton at the head, but at their earnest request, made in the interest of harmony, it was finally voted to accept the name Union Woman Suffrage Society, and Mr. Tilton for president.

On May 14, 1870, the Saturday after the suffrage convention, a number of the old Equal Rights Association came together at a called meeting in New York, which is thus described in The Revolution of May 19:

One of the most interesting as well as important events of the past week, was the transfer of the American Equal Rights Association to the new Union Woman Suffrage Society. This was done on Saturday in the spacious parlors of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester in Gramercy Place, Mrs. Stanton occupying the chair in the absence of the president, Lucretia Mott. Henry B. Blackweil presented this resolution:

"WHEREAS, The American Equal Rights Association was organized in 1866 in order to secure equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex; and, whereas, Political distinctions of race are now abolished by the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; and whereas, Arrangements have been made by the formation of woman suffrage associations for the advocacy of the legal and political rights of women as a separate question; and, whereas, An unnecessary multiplication of agencies for the accomplishment of a common object should always be avoided; therefore

"Resolved, That we hereby declare the American Equal Eights Association dissolved and adjourned sine die."

Parker Pillsbury offered the following as a substitute:

"WHEREAS, At a meeting of the executive committee held in Brooklyn, March 3, 1870, it was voted, on motion of Oliver Johnson, that 'it is inexpedient to hold any public anniversary of the American Equal Rights Association, and that in our judgment it is expedient to dissolve said body; but as we have no authority to effect such dissolution, an informal business meeting of the association be held in New York, during the coming anniversary week, to consider and act upon this subject; and on motion of Lucy Stone, it was voted that this business meeting be held on Saturday, May 14, 1870, at 10 A.M., at the home of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester;' therefore

"Resolved, That instead of terminating our existence as an association, we do hereby transfer it, together with all its books, records, reports or whatsoever appertains to it, and unite it with the Union Woman Suffrage Society, organized in New York, May 10, 1870."

A long and earnest discussion succeeded.... At last, after two hours, the vote was reached by the previous question, with this result:

For dissolution, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell—2. For transfer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Tilton, Paulina Wright Davis, Phoebe W. Couzins, Edwin A. Studwell, Mrs. Studwell, Mrs. John J. Merritt, Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, Margaret E. Winchester, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Eleanor Kirk, Jennie Collins, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Miss Chichester, Mrs. S.B. Morse—18.

Thus ended the existence of the American Equal Rights Association, formed in May, 1866, for the purpose of securing to negroes and women the rights of citizenship. These having been obtained for the negro men, women were left the only class denied equality, and the question therefore became simply one of woman's rights.

At the first anniversary of the American Woman Suffrage Association, the next November, which also was held in Cleveland, this letter was presented:

FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS: We, the undersigned, a committee appointed by the Union Woman Suffrage Society in New York, May, 1870, to confer with you on the subject of merging the two organizations into one, respectfully announce:

1st. That in our judgment no difference exists between the objects and methods of the two societies, nor any good reason for keeping them apart. 2d. That the society we represent has invested us with full power to arrange with you a union of both under a single constitution and executive. 3d. That we ask you to appoint a committee of equal number and authority with our own, to consummate if possible this happy result.

Yours, in the common cause of woman's enfranchisement, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Josephine S. Griffing, Laura Curtis Bullard, Gerrit Smith, Sarah Pugh, Frederick Douglass, Mattie Griffith Brown, James W. Stillman—Theodore Tilton, ex officio.

The acceptance of this proposition was strongly urged by Judge Bradwell, of Chicago, and the committee on resolutions recommended "the appointment of a committee of conference, of like number with the one appointed by the Union Suffrage Society with a view to the union of both organizations." After a spirited discussion, this resolution was rejected. The National Association, having exhausted all efforts for reconciliation and union, never thereafter made further overtures. Two distinct organizations were maintained, and there were no more attempts at union for twenty years.

1. For selections from newspapers and letters and the list of presents see Appendix.

2.

We touch our caps, and place to night

The victor's wreath upon her.

The woman who outranks us all

In courage and in honor.

While others in domestic broils

Have proved by word and carriage,

That one of the United States

Is not the state of marriage,

She, caring not for loss of men,

Nor for the world's confusion,

Hap carried on a civil war

And made a "Revolution."

True, other women have been brave,

When banded or hus-banded,

But she has bravely fought her way

Alone and single-handed.

And think of her unselfish life,

Her generous disposition,

Who never made a lasting prop

Out of a proposition.

She might have chose an honored name,

and none had scorned or hissed it;

Have written Mrs. Jones or Smith,

But, strange to say, she Missed it.

For fifty years to come may she

Grow rich and ripe and mellow,

Be quoted even above "par,"

"Or any other fellow;"

And spread the truth from pole to pole,

and keep her light a-burning

Before she cuts her stick to go

To where there's no returning.

Because her motto grand hath been

The rights of every human

And first and last, and right or wrong,

She takes the part of woman.

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,"

To aid, not to amuse one:

Take her for all in all, we ne'er

Shall see the match of Susan.