Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE said: My dear friends—Sometimes, when I begin to speak at conventions for the advocacy of woman suffrage, I feel self-dismayed in thinking that I ought to educate my audience all over from beginning to end. But this would require so much time that no one convention would ever get through with it; so I content myself with saying, as simply and as strongly as I can, what happens to be in my mind. That particular thought which is now uppermost is the great pleasure of our meeting to-day. We come together here, trusting to see in your kind faces the reflection of our great hope; and to find in your ears the echo of that great promise which some of us expected to hear a long while ago, and which all of us now see growing and strengthening until its harmony seems to us to fill the world.

We don't come together here to ignore oppositions, but to reconcile them. Oppositions are divinely appointed. I do believe that their distance can not be increased with safety to the economy of the world. But love is the tropical equator. His fiery currents are able to quicken and vivify the whole globe. They circulate equally at the arctic and antarctic extremities. The work that we are doing in common is not unfavorably affected by oppositions. The poles are God's anointed and stand firm; but opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows which very prematurely, I do assure you, begin to fall upon the heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than my efforts are able to get outside of it. At every new meeting I find the speech of the last meeting much too small. Whether the question grows or the speech shrinks I do not know, but I am inclined to think the former. I never knew any member of my nursery to require so much letting out, expanding, as this question. From all of this I am inclined to think that we have set our hands to a great work, to a long and hard labor, to a reform of human society; to a reduplication of human power and well-being.....

MRS. SARA J. LIPPINCOTT, more widely known as "Grace Greenwood," stated that she had believed in woman suffrage since she was old enough to believe in anything that was right and to denounce anything that was wrong. She was not counted among the extremists. Indeed, she claimed the right only for three classes of persons, namely, single women who have property of their own, married women, and all such other women as may desire it. I am willing that a property qualification should be exacted. Require, if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch, and keep it wound and up to time—a clothes wringer and a sewing machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a button, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house and support a husband respectably....

The PRESIDENT read the reply which he had prepared to the letter of Mr. Tilton as follows:

NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.

To Theodore Tilton, President of the Woman Suffrage Society Meeting in Apollo Hall: Dear Sir: Your letter of congratulation was received with great pleasure by the mass Convention assembled in Steinway Hall, under the auspices of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and I am instructed by their unanimous vote to express their gratification, and to reciprocate your sentiments of cordial good-will. In this great work upon which you have entered—the enfranchisement of woman—we have a common aim and interest, and we shall rejoice at any success which is achieved by your zeal and fidelity.

I am, very truly, yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, read a report from the executive committee of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association.

Col. T. W. HIGGINSON spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen—I was thinking during the brilliant speech of Mrs. Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman was upon the Government of the country in which we live—that she should reside in sight of the Capitol of Washington and never get nearer the interior of that building than the reporter's desk. Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked to us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress whenever she sets her foot as Senator or Representative within those halls, and the rest of the women come after her. If she was there, she might perhaps be met by the old objection, that, whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady talk, and when you compare what you have heard with the debates in Congress, it does not seem to me that even intellect was the main consideration.

I believe that no man ever made use of that hackneyed argument, that women couldn't vote because they couldn't discharge military duty, unless there was in that man something that needed the teaching of womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that there is something amiss in that man's lungs, or his liver, or at any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who comes back from military service finds the way to the polls blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft, suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses; men who wanted to see if there wasn't some wound or trouble by which they could be relieved from the obvious necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively—a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and save it from the flames. To finish up she dragged out a great roll of carpet. Had anybody sat down on that roll of carpet they would have heard the ready scream of her brave but suffering husband. If that man was like multitudes of men, if he were a man like Horace Greeley in his opinions, the moment the carpet was unrolled, the carpet knight would step out, and his first remark to his wife would probably be, "My dear, you can now return to the kitchen. I will do the voting, because I have the physical strength to stand by the Government."

Woman, in time of war, has her mission, as man has his. It is idle to talk about her "sphere"—as her sphere is generally interpreted. Even in the most disastrous war, the mission of woman is plainly to be discerned in deeds of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Women have worked themselves literally to death through the toils and exposures of war. Of all the semblances of argument that can be brought against the right of woman to the suffrage—of all the figments of the brain that men devise, there is nothing idler than to object to this right on the ground that suffrage and bearing arms should go together. In times of war the women of our country did aid and comfort and bless our suffering armies, and hundreds of returned soldiers owe their restoration to health and life to the ministering labors and devotedness of some woman. Such men will not use the argument that woman should not have the suffrage because she can not bear arms.

The ballot of woman is needed to render our civilization more complete and harmonious. I knew a lady who rode with the first party of ladies over the mountains into a mining town of California. The whole population turned out to see the novel spectacle. What did they say when the women came among them? Did they say, "Go away from here; this is no place for women; you will unsex yourself?" Oh, no! The first sound heard from that silent and expectant throng of miners was a rough voice calling out, "Three cheers for the ladies who have come to make us better!" It is this coming of the new influence—not a purer influence merely, for doubtless a great part of what is called the purity of woman is but the purity of ignorance, that rough contact with the world would seem to endanger—it is not merely the greater purity, but it is because she is the other part of the human race; it is because without her we have fathers in the State, but no mothers; it is because without her in our legislative halls, we have laws that take from the mother the right to every child she bears; it is because without her in our courts, lawyers use foul words that shame the purity of woman. Until woman takes a place with man in the legislation of the world, and in the administration of justice, she will suffer, and man through her will suffer; also, it is not because woman is so far above man that we claim her rights in this matter. It is because she is the other half of man and society is imperfect, and will remain so until she takes her proper place in the labors of the world. If a pair of scissors be broken in two, and you have it riveted together, it is not because you concede angelic superiority to either half, but simply because it takes two halves to make a whole.

Mrs. CUTLER was the first speaker of the evening session. Ladies and Gentlemen:—When the cloud of slavery agitation arose—a cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, but which at length became a great tempest, overshadowing all the land, and when the thunders rolled, and the lightnings flashed, and when we felt that almost the doom of our nation had come, then we women read, as one of our number has so grandly expressed it—we read by the light of a hundred thousand lamps, the judgment of the Almighty against the institution of slavery. That institution was wrong because it took away human rights. But what were the rights? The right to live was not among them—for the slave lived. The right to bread was not among them—for he was fed and clothed. The rights that were taken away were the rights inherent in all human beings to the results of their own labor, to the freedom of the body and the mind. And when the country once became aroused to the full significance of this slavery question, the heart of every mother in the land throbbed in sympathy with the enslaved. At last War said to us, "These people have not been remembered in their bonds, and our sons and brothers are now called from us, and we must offer them upon the altar of sacrifice!" And, wondering, we read anew the Declaration of Independence, and swore fealty to its precepts, now to be written with a pen of iron dipped in the hearts' blood of our sons. It is past, and all men are free and equal in America.

But there is one thing yet to be done in order that our country may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired expression of our forefathers, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives. We have been making our work known for years, but it has been to no purpose, and we have come to the conclusion that the only way to remedy the evil is to get the ballot.... There is nothing to be asked for now but the ballot. I shall never ask for anything less than that while I live.

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER, the President, then addressed the Convention. Ladies and Gentlemen:—We expect that every great movement in the community will, from various reasons, meet with ridicule and depreciation, as well as plain, honest resistance. Nor are we indisposed to take our share in the merriment that is made. We are, however, indisposed to have it said that this is a complaining movement on the part of women. For, although there may be occasions of single outbursts of this kind, this movement has no such parentage, and it is progressing under no such motives. It has long been in the hearts of many that women should be raised to an equality in civil affairs with men, but that great discussion which aroused and instructed the conscience of the nation, and, above all, that issue of war which brought men down to the very foundations of their belief, has been fruitful in raising a multitude of questions which are advancing now and which are to be consummated. Among these is the question, "Are women equal with men?" You might as well ask, "Are all men equal to each other?" For you adjudicate no questions in this country on the ground of superiority or inferiority of classes among men. It makes no difference, therefore, in regard to this question, whether women be superior or inferior. The question is simply this: have they not, before the law, the same rights that men have, and ought they not to have, in the administration of public interests, precisely the same power that men have? Now, in arguing this question—in urging it upon the community, I find a fear first, lest woman's nature should deteriorate. Kings were always afraid that if their nobles got power it would make them dissolute and reckless and grasping, and the nobles were always afraid of the burgher class, that if they should get political honor, it would only puff them up and make them unmanageable, and the burgher class, when they have obtained their political privileges, were afraid to extend a share in these privileges to the yeomanry, the peasantry. You never saw one upper class who held a prerogative that could ever be made to see any reason why the inferior class should have a share of it. It is the universal law of the superior class to keep the privileges to themselves, and the privileges have usually had to be wrested from them.

In the first place, what has been the effect upon woman of enlarging the sphere of her influence? There can be no question that from generation to generation since the introduction of Christianity the sphere of woman has been enlarging. She has been growing up in the scale of power; has she been going down in the scale of moral character? You know as well as I do that they are better, and that, instead of deteriorating their character, it has improved them and augmented the volume of their being, and they are women still.

But it is said that "in politics it is different." In what way is it different? Do you hesitate to say, "Jane, on your way to school please take these letters and drop them into the letter-box at the corner," and your daughter does it. There is much more trouble in doing that than to drop a ballot in the ballot-box. Nobody thinks anything of it, although there are men there, too. Is a woman demeaned by dropping her ballot into the box? Does the act injure her? "Oh, no; it is not the act—it is the scenes that she would have to meet. Go to the polls, and see what voting means." Yes; go and see what bachelor voting means. It is exactly the thing that we want to improve. Did you ever see a crowd of men, the rudest in the world, who, when a lady walked among them, did not open spontaneously and let her pass through as if she was an angel? It is asked sometimes, "Would you like to have your wife or daughter go to the polls and vote?" Yes—on my arm; yes. I venture to say that there is not a precinct in the city where well-bred ladies will not only be allowed to vote themselves, but would carry peace in the exercise of the right to others. "Would you have a woman participate in the scenes preliminary to an election?" I will tell you that the moment that women begin to vote there will be no scenes "preliminary" in which women may not appear. It is this very jointure of the family influence that we look to as a part of the influence that should bring reformation into our politics; for if our politics are to be masculine forever I despair of the republic. No! whatever thing on God's earth a woman's conscience tells her to do, she can do it, though she stood in the gates of hell, and be every particle a woman just as much. Is there anything in this world that has so great a reputation for lawlessness as a camp? And yet, when our armies went into this conflict, how many hundreds of women went, not as companions, but to minister to the boys. They went down into the camps, and through the whole war consorted with the rudest of men, and not one single syllable did they ever hear from the lips of those men that a pure ear should not hear. They ate the soldiers' fare—they performed the most menial services; but it was love that inspired and sustained them in their toils. And will any man say that after these four years had passed, and these ministers of mercy came back again, that because they had been mixed up with this rabble crew, they were the less women? Were they not the more women? These are sisters of charity—these are heroines without a record in any human literature. Have they been injured by mixing with the rude affairs of war in camps and among soldiers? When women take upon themselves such necessary duties they take vulgarity from vulgarity, and coarseness becomes refined, for it is the heart of woman that brings life among men, and restores Paradise.

But it is said that it would do women no good to have the vote, because they would vote as their husbands would. Well, I am very glad to hear that you are all so happily mated. I have a pretty large flock, and my observation has been that there was not such perfect unanimity. The tidings brought to me are that there are women who have minds of their own, and I don't think a woman would make up her mind to vote with her husband unless she conscientiously believed that he voted the right way. It is said again that it would introduce division into the family, and that a division about politics is the most bitter thing in the world. No; there is one thing in which a difference is more bitter than politics. What? Religion. There is no such diverging influence in this world as a difference in religion. Yet when I look into these matters I find that families all through the community are divided on the subject of religion. I have known scores and scores of families in which there were Baptists and persons of other denominations, and they found no trouble in getting along. You will always find where husband and wife can not agree, they will peaceably differ. There is no danger of their ever disturbing the family relations by that.

We are still holding, it seems, the old barbaric notion of the inferiority of woman. Every higher class preaches, preaches, preaches—about the inferiority of everything and everybody below it. All the world believes that the nation in which the man is born is the highest nation in the world. Why, we believe that we Americans are the biggest people in the world, the Englishman believes the English people to be the highest in the world. There is not the least doubt in the mind of a Frenchman that he was God Almighty's first favorite, and so on, nation by nation. So it is with classes. So, also, it seems to be with man. All the men in the world join hands together and agree that whatever may be the classification as between man and man, all men are infinitely superior to woman. Now I hold that in some things woman is inferior to man, and in some things greatly superior to man, and that in the general average she is fully his equal. A woman is God's chief engineer in the home. She ought to have a clear eye and a deep heart and a wide understanding. You can't make a woman too broad, too strong, too high, too deep in all generous enthusiasm for the purposes of the family, for it takes strong women to bring up strong men and strong women. In regard to this matter I wonder that people should attempt to separate so much by guess. Hear people say, "What will be the effect?" As if this thing was not already demonstrated—as if history was not already a picture of what the result will be. Will you be good enough to tell me which woman you think to-day is the superior? There is the problem: the Asiatic woman is the woman we hear tell about; just look at her—a do-nothing, a know-nothing woman! The European woman is the woman that has been cultured. Which is the superior to-day? which commands most respect?

Delicacy in woman is sentiment, not appearance, not enamel, not languishing airs. But it is asked, why make this disturbance? Why not let a woman, if it is desired that she should be a student, inquire of her husband? Suppose she hasn't got one. Young gentlemen that are so fond of talking about the matter say, let the women stay at home and take care of their families. Let me ask you if you will agree to give every woman a family that hasn't got one? If you will not, then hold your tongue. But even taking the question in the way they put it, how would these young men like their fathers to say, "Tom, Bill, you are both Republicans. You have gone away from my notions; I am a good, stanch, old-fashioned Democrat; and my advice to you, boys, is that you stay at home and read, and think these matters over, and I will go and vote for you,"—how would the boys like that? Everybody is willing to be above everybody else, and this thing of one man assuming that he is the superior of another, and asking that other to knuckle down to him, is not popular. You don't like it. And women don't like it any better than you do—and they ought not to like it, either. Women can have all the benefit of holding an opinion, but they shall not have the power of expressing it. They go through all the labor and trouble of loading, but can't fire off. Now, I affirm, that it is wrong to give women the responsibilities of public life without giving them the safety of public life, too.

But what practical use will the ballot be to women? Tell me what practical use the ballot will be to men; then I will tell you of what use it will be to women. A man that denies the right of woman to the ballot must deny it to any body and all bodies. I affirm another thing. I affirm that the ballot is a natural right. To say that voting is an artificial thing is merely an evasion. If there is any such thing as natural rights in the world, it is the right of every person to have a voice in the government that he shall live under, and in the electing of the magistrate who shall make the laws by which he is to be governed. But they say women don't want to vote. Well, I didn't want to learn my letters, but I had to, and, on the whole, I am not sorry for it. If men say women don't want the ballot, my reply is, they need it, at any rate. In behalf of the poor and needy, I plead for suffrage. They are the persons who are in just that place where the hail of misfortune plays pitilessly upon them. I plead for suffrage for women, not because the rich and refined need it—they have already more than their heart could wish—but for the great sisterhood of common women.

But, it is said, is it not subverting the order of the Bible; is it not subverting those sound Christian maxims in respect to the subordination of woman to man? Well, if you think it is, let the husband vote first and the wife vote after; that settles that point. I have looked through the Ten Commandments, and although I find a great many things that you shall not do, I don't find anywhere it says that you shall not vote; and I don't think that there is a place in the Bible where it says that a woman shall not vote; nor, since it pleased God to make thousands and thousands of women that are superior to men, I don't believe that he ever wrote a line to say that a woman who was superior should be inferior. My friends, the true rendering of Scripture is this: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. In the kingdom of love there is neither high nor low. Love knows no distinctions. It is all equal in the kingdom of God; and wherever the human family are supremely possessed by that one supreme, beneficent feeling of love, there never can arise these disturbing elements.

* * * * *

Mrs. LIVERMORE said: Ladies and Gentlemen—Mr. Beecher very pertinently said that women are allowed to know, but not to say; they may make all the preparations necessary to intelligent voting, but that they shall not vote. That is exactly what is doing a vast deal of mischief the world over. If they are not allowed to vote, and express their opinions upon the laws by which they are to be governed, and if they are not to have opened to them all proper fields of labor, they will turn their attention to dressmaking, and to millinery, and to all the other hot-beds of our fast modern life. It is doing great harm; and that is one reason I earnestly plead in their behalf for the ballot. Men say women shall not have the ballot. They must petition and beg for it. Have not petitions been already made? Have not 200,000 names been sent in to Congress already? Then they say you must "organize;" and when that is done, and they find the country rocked as by a traveling volcano, they then say, "All women do not want to vote; all the women in the country should ask for it, and beg for it, and petition for it."

Let me relate an incident that occurred in Boston at the office of Chief Justice Chapman, four or five weeks ago. A man, a guardian, came there with a writ of habeas corpus, which placed in his charge two children in no wise related to him, and he asked that he might have the control of the children, in opposition to the claim of their mother, who desired to keep them. The facts were briefly these: the woman had been happily married; her husband died and left her a widow with two young children. By the laws of the State of Massachusetts at that time, she was not allowed to be their guardian, nor the guardian of any body else's children. So the Judge of Probate appointed a guardian for the children, who magnanimously allowed them to remain in their mother's care. After two or three years she committed the unpardonable crime of marrying again, a thing that no man was ever guilty of. The marriage was perfectly acceptable to her former husband's relatives, but the guardian was so displeased with it, that he got out a writ of habeas corpus, and demanded of Chief Justice Chapman that the children be remanded to his custody. We are apt to boast of Massachusetts and its laws, but here was a case in which the Chief Justice, after hearing the case, actually remanded these children to the possession of that man. The court-room was crowded; the excitement was intense; the poor mother sank down in a deadly faint. I say such laws are an outrage upon womanhood, and they arise simply and solely from a deep contempt for womanhood. This contempt is palpable throughout all the entire code of laws.

Another argument that is frequently made against the extension of the suffrage to woman is this: "If women go to the polls it is going to take them away from their homes and families." These arguments are urged with as much pertinacity as if the polls were open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours each day, and that all that people did was to lie around the polls and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote.

Another statement is, that it is because women have been kept out of politics that they are pure and good. Well, now, it is a poor rule that won't work both ways, and if disfranchisement has made such angels of women, suppose you try it a little on men. I have a firm belief that the men need, infinitely more than the women do, the influence that woman will bring with her to the ballot; not because woman is better, but because she is the other half of humanity. It reminds me of the account of the battle of Gettysburg, given by a colonel of a Western regiment. His regiment was placed among the reserves, on an eminence, where they could see the battle as it went on. "There we stood," said the colonel; "our brave men trying to serve their country; able to do it, and anxious to do it. Yet we were kept the whole of the first day watching the fight go on. On the second day another regiment, which had been much associated with ours, was called into action. We saw them marching, their guns aslant, as if there was no battle being carried on, or deeds of death and destruction—and all the while, as they marched, the grape, and the canister, and the shot, and the shell, tore their ranks terribly; and men fell dead in all directions; and still those who yet remained carried their guns in the same position, and kept time, and closed up, and closed up, until my agitation became so unendurable that I forgot all else, and cried out, 'Oh, God! why don't they call the reserves into action? We could help them.'"

Gentlemen, very few of us are very young women. We have forty, fifty, some of us seventy years of life behind us. We have stood on this eminence where you in your mistaken kindness and gallantry placed us, and we have been all this time looking down upon the battle-field of life where you have been engaged, single-handed and alone. Those of us who have had half a century have seen the ranks of men who started out in life with us shortened one half as they have gone. Here is a husband, there a brother or a father, men as dear to us as drops of our own heart's blood. We have seen them steadily sacrificed by means more appalling than those of Gettysburg, men literally slaughtered by licentiousness and drunkenness, and all the while we have looked on and been able to do nothing, and our agony has become so great that we exclaim, "Oh, God! why don't these brothers of ours call us, the reserves, into action? We could help them."

When I look back to the days of our great war, I remember that women sprang up every day all over the country—women of whom it was not before believed there was any patriotic blood in their veins. We all came together by one common instinct—saying, "What shall we do?" I could tell you of women who have died from exposure and suffering in the war. Hundreds of the very best women of the Northwest went down voluntarily as nurses, and in other capacities, and assisted suffering and dying men, until they themselves were almost at death's door. "When women do military duty, they shall vote!" We did do military duty. We did not cease our labors till all the soldiers had come home, wearied with their services. We have earned recognition at the hands of this government, and we ought to have it. Knowing, then, the qualities of woman and her courage and bravery under trials, I can never cease to demand that she shall have just as large a sphere as man has. All we want is, that you shall leave us free to act.

Mrs. LIVERMORE then spoke of the attempts of men to define the sphere of women. Let the sphere of woman be tested by the aspiration and ability of their own minds, and let it be limited only by what we are able to do. Don't fear that women will not marry and make good wives if allowed legal equality with men. They even now make as good wives as men do husbands. Trust God. This talk of woman getting out of her sphere is sheer lack of faith in God. He has given us our natures. The gentlest woman is transformed into a tigress when you go between her and her baby. There's no sense, therefore, in the fear that the paltry lures of politicians will draw women from the home circle. There is no necessity to enact laws to keep women women. Woman's sphere is that which she can fill, whether it be sea-captain, merchant, school-teacher, or wife and mother.

Only two millions of women are among the producers of the country—five millions are wives and mothers, and eight millions are rusting out in idleness and frivolity. Take eight millions of men from the world of commerce and productive work; the deficit will be immediately felt. Add to the producers of the world eight millions of skilled women, and the quickening would be felt everywhere. Mrs. Livermore also urged the admission of women to political life from considerations drawn from the increase of the foreign element. East and West is a huge, ignorant, semi-barbarous mass, brought hither from European and Asiatic shores, needing the enlightenment and the quickening that would come from the addition of educated women to the polls.

The Thursday morning session was called to order by the PRESIDENT, Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, the Secretary, read, on behalf of the Business Committee, the resolutions.[187]

Mr. BLACKWELL moved their acceptance, and, in support of his motion, said: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: We have so often heard of the great step that was taken in the war of the Revolution—when our connection with Great Britain was severed—that I fear we have lost sight of the fact that there have been two great revolutions since that day—revolutions which, to my mind, are immeasurably more important than the first. For, when the war of the Revolution ended, a republic in the present sense of the term did not exist in these United States. In almost every State there was a property qualification for voting. It was a government like the government of Great Britain to-day—like the government of other countries—it was an aristocracy of wealth, the privilege of voting being based upon a property qualification. But hardly had the guns of the Revolution ceased action, before the Democratic party of that day, under the lead of Mr. Jefferson, demanded suffrage for poor men as a natural right. The Federal party opposed the change. The Democratic party were a unit in its favor. They advocated suffrage for poor men on the same ground that the Republicans have advocated it more recently for the negro—on the same ground upon which Mr. Beecher advocated it last night for women—as a natural right. They said, "All men have equal natural rights to life, liberty, and property; if so, they have a natural right of self-defense in the enjoyment of these rights. Now, in a state of nature, self-defense takes the form of individual violence—of the pistol or the club; but in a state of civilization men appeal to the law, and government is nothing but an organized system of self-defense for the benefit of the individual citizen." The old Democratic party said, "Poor men have rights of life, liberty, and property, poor men have a natural right of self-defense; therefore, in a state of society they have a right to the ballot which is the organized weapon of self-defense for the individual citizen." What was the result? The Democratic party swept the Union on that platform. They obtained a majority in the government of the States and in the Federal Government. For more than a generation they ruled this country as the poor man's party. That result followed inevitably from their principles, because parties, like individuals, are sure to obtain their deserts in the long run. When any party appeals to that fine sense of justice which is in the heart of every human being, sooner or later its success is certain. The Democratic party obtained the control of the Government for two generations because it appealed to that sense of justice? But what was the result to the country? America became known all over the world as the country of the poor man. In America alone the masses had the ballot. That was what brought from the shores of Europe this great influx of foreign labor which has felled our forests, and fenced our prairies, and built up the waste places of our continent. There are to-day in Russia hundreds of thousands of acres of land as good as any in the world, which have never been cultivated, and yet Europeans, by thousands, turn their backs on Russia, coming to America and going far into the interior to make their homes, not because our land is better, or our climate more genial, but because our Government is established upon the basis of equal rights for every human being. The child of the poor man becomes educated, he acquires property, he becomes a member of the commonwealth, he does his own thinking, and, thank God, his own voting, too.

But the Democratic party has lost power. To-day the Republicans control three-fourths of the States of this Union. There was a reason for these reverses. Before the abolition of slavery, a certain race was denied the advantages of the Democratic principle. It was a "white man's government." In the course of time the inevitable collision came. Slavery was abolished, and the Republican party attempted a new application of the Jeffersonian principle. It demanded suffrage for the negro and the Chinese. The principles of justice again prevailed. The sentiment of liberty came to the support of the Republican party; manhood suffrage is forever fixed in the Constitution of the country, and to-day every man, whether learned or ignorant, rich or poor, white, yellow, or black, whether he can read the English language or not, is by the Constitution of the United States forever made a voter. Now, ladies and gentlemen, every argument through which an extension of the suffrage has been already accomplished, applies with still greater force in the case of women. The extension of the suffrage to woman, will be the last crowning step in political progress, the final application of the principles of Christianity and human brotherhood to the political structure.

We do not advocate a new principle. We only desire to make a wider application of our admitted American principles. That application is sure to be made. I do not know what party is going to accomplish it, but this widening of the political basis is as certain as the rising of the sun or the flowing of the tide. Woe be to the party that works against it! I know not whether the Republicans or the Democrats, or the good men of both parties, or an altogether new party, will take it up; but this I do know, that the political party which takes up woman suffrage, and unfolds its banner to the breeze, holds in its hand the key to political success on this continent.

I appeal to every man and woman in this audience to go to work for the great object we have at heart. Let Republicans go to their primary meetings, and offer woman suffrage resolutions there. Let Democrats go and do likewise. Let every woman take tracts bearing on the subject and give her influence and labor to the work. Let us all stand up as faithful representatives of a great idea. Sooner or later, we shall see a noble reform party in this country—I care not what its name—which will sweep away forever the dens of immorality and drunkenness by which we are surrounded, which will build up a Christian commonwealth—and rule over it—not because it is powerful in numbers, but because it is based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, of universal justice and of impartial liberty.

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: I heartily concur with every word spoken by Mr. Blackwell, and while on this point I wish to call your attention to an argument used as against woman suffrage, by men who perhaps might otherwise be with us. They argue that universal suffrage is itself not a good but an evil, and that to add to the evil is not to correct it. "It is bad," say they, "that every white man shall vote," and it had to be pledged, for political reasons, to give the ballot to 800,000 ignorant blacks; but two bad things are not to be made right by now extending the vote to women, a great majority of whom are in the lower walks of life, and are not supposed to be competent to inform themselves. This is a most plausible argument to those who are under the unconscious influence of Pharisaism, to those who think that wisdom lives and dies with them. It is a strong argument, too; I don't know that you can put any stronger; but I am bold to make the statement that, low and bad as human nature may be in some of its phases, there is nothing in this world that is so safe to trust or to believe in. And though governments may grow, and gain experience here and there with perpetually shifting dynasties and times, yet after all it is human nature that keeps governments up and gives to the world its laws. The great underlying force is genuine human nature with all its mistakes. We have recently had a great illustration of this. I wish to call your attention to one fact. If there was anything in this world that the mass of the Northern people were unprepared for it was to take up arms for the purpose of going to war with the South. Yet when the time came, and it was flashed over the country that an attack was made at the life of the Government, take notice that while the South grew weaker and weaker in furnishing material for the army, the North grew stronger and stronger, and had only got to its full strength at the close of the war. Now during that time, by the votes of the people, with a great party to back up the opposition, with all the old predilections in favor of the South, and the natural unwillingness of men to burden themselves with taxation, this country, in which there was substantially a universal manhood suffrage, voted to burden itself until three thousand millions of debt was rolled up. There is an instance of what men will do with universal suffrage. Yes, and that among the common people; for the large copperhead element was to be found among capitalists, not among the masses. "Well, but," it may be said, "sober second thought will come; wait until the people come to pay the debt, when currency depreciates and greenbacks become scarce!" Now as they had gone to the war for a sentiment, a patriotic sentiment, not because they had received material damage or expected any pecuniary damage from the South, but purely from the glorious sentiment of a united country, as they fought through four years of the war backed up by votes at home, so when the question came up, "Will you sustain the honor of the Government? Will you pay the debt that has been incurred?" look at the answer. Never did trap of dishonesty, so concealed in its interior structure, present so tempting a bit of cheese to humanity. Yet when the question came, after full discussion and trial in all the States of the North successively, by majorities that no man will choose now to gainsay or resist, by overwhelming majorities, they said, "The debt shall be paid, every penny of it!" The North so voted. It was the common people that voted it; men that live on wages. By that experiment two things were shown; one that when the whole people are appealed to, they do stand up to the interests of the States better than educated classes do; and the other, that when it comes to the question of sentiment or National integrity, the common people are to be trusted; and it is not the day, in the face of the magnificent disclosures of that trying time, to say that it is unsafe to trust the welfare of a country in the hands of such people. I say there is no man that comes to years of discretion who is not fit for the responsibilities of citizenship. Women will also improve when we welcome them to the open air of liberty.

The sum of all these remarks is simply this, "Amen" to Brother Blackwell.

LUCY STONE came forward and reminded the audience that a bill is now before Congress which provides that the employees in the Government departments at Washington and in both Houses of Congress shall be equally paid irrespective of sex, and that petitions should be sent to Congress advocating the passage of the bill; that blanks for the purpose would be found in the hall, and she hoped the friends of the cause would sign them. She read a letter from Mr. Giles B. Stebbins regretting his inability to be present, and expressing confidence in the ultimate triumphant success of the cause.

Mr. POWELL, of the Anti-Slavery Standard, was introduced: Ladies and gentlemen—My first feeling this morning was one of congratulation in view of the encouraging auspices under which we meet here to advocate the enfranchisement of women. I regard this movement to-day as just entering upon its earliest efficient practical work. The era of curiosity and novelty is past. There is no longer in the public mind that feeling which has hitherto manifested itself in connection with the discussion of the proposition that women should vote. We have now to contend with the more difficult and solid portion of the problem. The right of woman to speak has been argued and settled; the right of woman to the ballot has been quite generally admitted—indeed, almost universally so—as it must be by any one who observes carefully the arguments used to justify the extension of the ballot to men. By the ratification of the XV. Amendment the question has been finally settled in regard to all men, excepting perhaps the Indians and Chinese, who may, however, be interpreted by and by as having citizenship under this amendment. Logically and inevitably, therefore, we come at this time to the consideration of Mr. Julian's XVI. Amendment, as something which, if we were not arguing for it, somebody else would be. It is the logical sequence of what has gone before in the way of the experiment of republican government in this country. There is no one—either American or foreign-born—who has observed the workings of our institutions and the progress of our country, who will say that we must stand still. We must either go forward in our work of extending suffrage until we finally reach universal suffrage, or go back to a one-man power. The victims of the slave power are to-day standing erect in the possession of equal citizenship on the basis of absolute legal equality with the white men of the country. Therefore, with slavery abolished, with our free-school system, with newspapers scattered all over like snow-flakes throughout the country, with free thought and free education, there is not such a thing probable or possible as our going backward to the system of one-man power. The question now to be decided is the enfranchisement of women. And this question is at last fairly before the world—not in newspapers alone, but in State Legislatures, and even in Congress. Propositions are pending in Washington for the enfranchisement of the women of the District of Columbia, and for the enfranchisement by Congressional authority of the women of the Territories. There is also a Constitutional amendment proposed, which, if successful, will abolish all political proscription on account of sex everywhere throughout the country. My advice would be to concentrate directly our chief energy on the larger part of the problem. I believe in State action. I think it would be well to go to Albany and to the Massachusetts Legislature and to the Ohio Legislature, and to the Legislatures of all the States, and to urge that the States take the initiative and enfranchise their women. But I do not expect that any one State, whatever may be the political opinion of that State, will go much in advance of the nation at large. It seems to me that no political party existing in any one State can establish the precedent of woman's enfranchisement much in advance of the National Government. I think it therefore the part of wisdom to concentrate directly upon the National Legislature. I believe that one object of this Convention to-day should be to concentrate its voice in an emphatic resolution, asking that Mr. Julian's amendment be not allowed to slumber into the hot weather of July, and then be passed over entirely. I think we should make the voice of this Association felt as a power for immediate effective work in the direction I have indicated; and, if we speak earnestly, we shall be felt and heard. Let us concentrate first upon the XVI. Amendment and the proposition to enfranchise the women of the District of Columbia. I hold that that District should be the first battle-ground for the women of America to a national precedent, as it was in the prior struggle for the abolition of slavery. The District is immediately under the supervision of your Representatives and mine, and members of Congress are to be held personally responsible for the government which prevails there. Let us then demand of Congress—demand, I say, because that is the language of earnest reform—that it give us forthwith, before the adjournment of the present session, a law of equal suffrage for the women of the District of Columbia. In the light of the recent action of the British Parliament, is this asking too much? Should not we Americans be up to the level of a test vote on this question—which has never yet been reached either in the Senate or House of Representatives?

The President introduced GRACE GREENWOOD, who said: "I rise to a personal explanation," as we say in Washington. When Colonel Higginson yesterday overwhelmed me with his compliment, by the proposition that I should belong to the Congress of the United States, I wanted to say—had I not been so overwhelmed—in order to set myself "right before the country," that there had been no previous understanding between Colonel Higginson and myself; and that as I didn't want to encourage any false hopes, and in fact didn't want to go, I should decline the nomination. I prefer the position he referred to—absolutely prefer my place in the reporters' gallery. I know that a white reporter is as good as a colored Senator, if he or she behaves himself or herself. I like to look down upon that scene of legislation and feel that I am out of it; though sometimes I feel like echoing Coldstream's opinion in looking into Vesuvius, "There is nothing in it." I like to sit in the gallery of the House and watch our few true men. When women sit there, there will be justice done to them; and, while I have the honor of reporting for the Tribune, there will be justice done to women when any question concerning her interests comes up in Washington. And here I would like to refer, as others who have spoken have already referred, to the work to be done in the Church. I think that many of our earnest, eloquent, high-minded, religious women should make for the pulpit. I have always felt that there was great point in the doctrine of the orthodox Church on the birth of Christ. We have a greater share in Him than men can have, as He received His humanity—His sweet, tender, suffering humanity—wholly from woman. And yet we have been made to keep silence in the house of our Father even on such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving. How would it seem if on these occasions the sons only were allowed to thank our heavenly Father for His care and love, and the daughters were allowed to sit quiet? But woman's piety, you know, is a very good thing for home consumption, and is supposed to consist in her quietly sitting at home and praying for her husband and sons. Goodness knows, she always has enough to pray for! There is an anecdote told of a loving son who once spoke of the inestimable blessing of a fine mother. He was a preacher in Illinois, and he said to his congregation, "Oh, my friends, I have such a mother. I remember when I was a little lad, standing by my mother's side on a Sabbath afternoon, as she sat with her Bible open before her, how she turned from the blessed Word to lay her hand upon my sunny head, and pray that I might grow up to be a minister of the Gospel and a great man; and, brethren and sisters, I stand before you to-day a living example of the efficacy of that prayer." While Mrs. Livermore was speaking so gloriously last night out of her mother's heart, of mothers robbed by the law of their little ones, what mother's heart didn't stir within her? My little one—she is about my height now—but I never have been able to get rid of the sweet weight of that baby head on my breast! My arms always have the feel of the baby in them yet; and I can not express to you the horror—the almost rage—with which I hear every story of such outrages on the maternal heart. It was this feature of mother-robbery in the system of slavery that always enraged me most against it. It was just at that point that the system dipped deepest into hell. Though slavery is gone, however, there are many evils yet remaining in the laws which should be remedied, and not the least of them is that which gives the father the entire control of the children instead of the mother. Some fathers, however, are quite willing to relinquish that control. I remember a colored woman in Washington, in whose kitchen I once happened to be for a moment, and, seeing several dark olive branches around, I said to her, "Are these your children?" She said, "Yes." "How many have you?" She said, "Seven, and all to support." I said to her, "Have you no husband?" "Oh, yes," she said, "I have a husband; I was married by a Methodist minister down South." "Well," said I, "why don't he support the children?" "Oh," she said, "he's done gone away." "Why has he left you?" "Oh, he was a very bright man," she said (meaning that he was light in color), "and he thought that I was too black." "But," I said, "didn't he know how black you were before he married you?" "That is just what old Missus said—she said, 'Why, you know'd she was black when you married her,' and he said, 'Yes, but den she didn't have so many relations about her.'" "What relations?" "Children!" Her children, of course, and his, too. "He doesn't want so many of my relations about, so he's done gone off." When a man doesn't want to go, the children are his "property"; when he wants to desert his wife, they are her "relations." I would be willing to have the strictest morality enjoined as a qualification for the ballot. But, as it is a poor rule that would not work both ways, if that test were applied to the male voters, what a frightful disfranchisement would take place. The Democratic party would be well-nigh annihilated, and the Republican party would be in a fit state to condole with it. I think, however, that all these things will adjust themselves when they come. All bugbears seem much more terrible at a distance than when they are close enough to be grappled with.

Mr. OLIVER JOHNSON was then introduced. He said that the true germ of the present woman suffrage agitation was to be found in the foundation of the Anti-slavery Society. At the time that Society was founded, the question arose as to whether women were persons, in the sense in which that word was used in the constitution of that Society. The question gave rise to much discussion, and it was finally decided by a majority of the members that the word "person" did include women; and it was therefore determined that, in the Society, women should have all the rights that men had. And when thirty years ago the anniversary of the Society was held, it became the duty of the presiding officer on that occasion to appoint a business committee, and, in announcing the names of that committee, he included that of Abby Kelly—more lately known as that of Abby Kelly Foster—a Quaker woman of excellent character, and a devoted friend of the anti-slavery cause. The announcement of her name was the signal for much tumult, and the withdrawal for the time being of not less than one hundred and fifty clergymen, who, led by an eminent citizen, left that meeting and went down into the basement of the church and formed a new anti-slavery society, solely because a woman was permitted to serve on a committee. Mr. Johnson said that he had always had a profound belief in the triumph of the anti-slavery cause. So also did he believe in the success of the woman suffrage movement.

Mrs. Hazlett, of Michigan, was the next speaker. God, she said, says to America to-day, take now the next step in the path of national progress; then come and take thy place as the highest nation of the earth. Will America obey heaven's voice, or does republicanism exist only in name? Men of America! let the stars and stripes wave over a land true to its principles. It is not because we want to usurp power that we want the ballot. We want justice, for the sake of liberty. But, above all, gentlemen, we hold the welfare of this country our birthright as well as yours. We wish the vote because it is our right and our duty to have it. We have duties in life, in society, in the church—duties to ourselves and to our families which can not be discharged without the ballot.

When the Convention re-assembled, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, in the absence of the President, took the chair.

Miss CATHERINE E. BEECHER, who was now introduced, requested the Secretary, Mr. Blackwell, to read a paper which she had written, containing her objections to woman suffrage, to which objections Mrs. Cutler, of Ohio, would reply. Mr. Blackwell read the following:

I will first state to what I am not opposed. And, first, I am not opposed to women speaking in public to any who are willing to hear, nor do I object to women's preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle—as one of the millennial results. It is true that no women were appointed among the first twelve, or the seventy disciples sent out by the Lord, nor were women appointed to be apostles or bishops or elders. But they were not forbidden to teach or preach, except in places where it violated a custom that made a woman appear as one of a base and degraded class if she thus violated custom.

Nor am I opposed to a woman earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her which are now closed.

Nor am I opposed to the agitation and organization of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to govern both boys and men—they always have done it, and always will. The most absolute and cruel tyrants I have ever known were selfish, obstinate, unreasonable women to whom were chained men of delicacy, honor, and piety, whose only alternatives were helpless submission, or ceaseless and disgraceful broils.

Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred, superior rights that God and good men accord to the weak and defenseless, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the woman suffrage organizations is mainly this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object.

The "right object" sought is to remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great multitudes of our sex. The "wrong mode" is that which aims to enforce by law instead of by love. It is one which assumes that man is the author and abetter of all these wrongs, and that he must be restrained and regulated by constitutions and laws, as the chief and most trustworthy method.

In opposition to this, I hold that the fault is as much, or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as that we have all the power we need to remedy all wrongs and sufferings complained of, and yet we do not use it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of our country, are not only willing, but anxious to provide for the best good of our sex, and that they will gladly bestow all that is just, reasonable, and kind, whenever we unite in asking in the proper spirit and manner. It is because we do not ask, or "because we ask amiss," that we do not receive all we need both from God and men. Let me illustrate my meaning by a brief narrative of my own experience. To begin with my earliest: I can not remember a time when I did not find a father's heart so tender that it was always easier for him to give anything I asked than to deny me. Of my seven brothers, I know not one who would not take as much or more care of my interests than I should myself. The brother who presides is here because it is so hard for him to say "No" to any woman seeking his aid.

It is half a century this very spring since I began to work for the education and relief of my sex, and I have succeeded so largely by first convincing intelligent and benevolent women that what I aimed at was right and desirable, and then securing their influence with their fathers, brothers, and husbands; and always with success. American women have only to unite in asking for whatever is just and reasonable, in a proper spirit and manner, in order to secure all that they need.

Here, then, I urge my greatest objections to the plan of female suffrage; for my countrywomen are seeking it only as an instrument for redressing wrongs and relieving wants by laws and civil influences. Now, I ask, why not take a shorter course, and ask to have the men do for us what we might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Suppose we point out to our State Legislatures and to Congress the evils that it is supposed the ballot would remedy, and draw up petitions for these remedial measures, would not these petitions be granted much sooner and with far less irritation and conflict than must ensue before we gain the ballot? And in such petitions thousands of women would unite who now deem that female suffrage would prove a curse rather than a benefit.

And here I will close with my final objection to woman suffrage, and that is that it will prove a measure of injustice and oppression to the women who oppose it. Most of such women believe that the greatest cause of the evils suffered by our sex is that the true profession of woman, in many of its most important departments, is not respected; that women are not trained either to the science or the practice of domestic duties as they need to be, and that, as the consequence, the chief labors of the family state pass to ignorant foreigners, and by cultivated women are avoided as disgraceful.

They believe the true remedy is to make woman's work honorable and remunerative, and that the suffrage agitation does not tend to this, but rather to drain off the higher classes of cultivated women from those more important duties to take charge of political and civil affairs that are more suitable for men.

Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to vote, and also to qualify themselves for this duty. But already women have more than they can do well in all that appropriately belongs to women, and to add the civil and political duties of men would be deemed a measure of injustice and oppression.

Mrs. H. M. T. CUTLER, of Ohio, then rose to reply. She said: I account myself happy to be allowed to stand here to reply to the objections of my friend, Miss Beecher. There is one point where I feel that her argument is not as strong as most of her arguments are. We enjoy things of privilege, if privileges are granted; but we enjoy things of right, because they are right—not otherwise. All that she says of good men, and of what good men will do for women, only goes to show what everybody has already known, that she had for a father one of the first Christian gentlemen in the United States or in the world; and for brothers seven men of princely virtue, and highest and noblest Christian attainments. If the world was made up of all such people, there would be no need of laws. Miss Beecher may well speak for such men as they, and they may well speak for such women as she. If I make a petition for something, and that petition does not clearly express a right that is due me, but instead, asks for something that may be withheld without moral guilt, that is a privilege; but when I come and demand that which is a right, the condition is altogether changed. I claim the right because it is God-given. We have in the advanced age of Christianity, those who do not believe in the use of physical force on any account whatever. They are non-resistants; but it will not be said that the vicious can be controlled by moral suasion. Society is not yet sufficiently Christianized for men not to demand of each other guarantees for the safety of each other's rights. Shall we who are in some sense the weaker sex have no guarantee for our rights?

Miss Beecher makes the point that men will give, if we ask them properly. The first asking of American women was not for themselves—not for their own account. They forgot themselves in their anxiety for poor oppressed slaves. They didn't know what they had lost through long ages, from not having exerted their own powers, and established their own responsibilities. But when they came to do that, they then asked themselves, "Where are our good right hands?" I sent petitions to Congress again and again, which I had gathered from my neighbors, in regard to the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the territories; and I have sent numbers of them in regard to this question of woman suffrage. I sent many of them to Horace Greeley, and he sent me back word, "The only good that these things will do in Congress is to help the janitor to light the fires. They do good to the people perhaps, but they do no good otherwise." We might have petitioned until the crack of doom, before Congress would have broken the chain. Why should we not demand our right to the vote, when we reflect that one vote, cast in the State of Indiana, was the means of electing a man whose vote in Congress turned the scale, and enacted the "Fugitive Slave Law"—that law which put the collar upon every bondsman's neck, and branded him the property of every Southern master.

I admit the great responsibility of the ballot, and if we are true women, we shall assume it with a full appreciation of that responsibility, and a determination to do our whole duty in its exercise. The argument that many women do not desire the ballot reminds me of an old colored woman whom I met soon after the war. I said to her, "Some people say they think your people are really almost sorry that they have been made free; that they were more comfortable as slaves." She said, "Is it possible that any person thinks like that? Can it be that any colored person feels like that?" I said, "I have heard people say so." "Then," said she, "if anybody feels like that they deserve to be slaves—doubly slaves—slaves in this world and slaves in the next." The woman that is not willing to assume the responsibility of casting a vote upon a question that may decide whether in her individual neighborhood or precinct there shall be grog-shops and houses of prostitution open, and there shall be no proper care of the poor and needy and infirm—I say that if there is any woman who is not willing to assume such responsibilities, it seems to me that she must feel that it is a judgment on her, should her own husband or son or the daughter of her heart, or all of them, become sufferers in consequence of the evil that she might have stayed had she been willing to uphold the exercise of that right.

We ask only for the same right that is accorded to the poorest man landing on our shores. Is the giving of the ballot to a foreigner who comes among us a burden so great that he should not have it imposed upon him? And shall an American woman shrink from her duty when there is so much power in her hands for good? I know that a great many women have not been educated up to a condition that would teach them fully how to act. Like the slave, they have had too much thinking and acting done for them, until now they feel incompetent to discharge these duties for themselves. Our great duty, then, which we who know better should consider imposed upon us, is that of educating women up to the proper standard. Shall we be beggars for that which is, of right, ours? Shall there not be one law for the brothers and the daughters throughout this entire country? As Mr. Beecher has well said, women have borne their full share of martyrdom; and it strikes me that it is now about time for her redemption from the evils of her position. If she has to suffer from the evils of a defective or vicious system of laws, put in her hands the power to protect herself, to mitigate the sufferings of her sex, to preserve and defend the right and to suppress the wrong.

Mrs. MIRIAM M. COLE spoke at some length. The spirit of '76, she said, influenced Mrs. John Adams to write to her husband to inquire if it were generous in American men to keep their wives in thraldom, when they were emancipating the whole earth. Had the spirit of that letter animated the wife of Mr. Lincoln when his emancipation proclamation was issued, how pertinently could she have made the same inquiry! The laws regarding women were written down so plain that those may run who read, and they who read had better run.

Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH said: Several references have been made to the work of women in the church. I am glad to be able to introduce to you now the pastor of one of the most popular churches of New Haven, and whose church, I am happy to say, is crowded every Sunday—Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford.

Mrs. HANAFORD said: Speaking with Horace Greeley a few weeks ago, he replied to my query why he was not in favor of woman suffrage, by saying that he did not think women would gain the opportunity of suffrage or improve the opportunity if they had it, until they should come to consider suffrage a duty, and he declared that he had never known any one to advocate woman suffrage on the ground of duty.

I was amazed at his assertion in the face of all the speeches and lectures which such women as Lucretia Mott and her conscientious co-laborers had made and delivered during the last twenty years. The very next night, I heard Anna Dickinson in the largest hall in New Haven, and before nearly 3,000 people, urge the women present to consider their duty to this vast Republic in which we dwell, and whose starry banner is as dear to women as to men. The keynote of her bugle-call to the rescue was the idea of duty, and that is the idea which inspires the women on this platform to-day, while thousands of hearts throughout our Union respond, with the same sentiment, to their appeals from the platform, the pulpit, and the press.

Leading reformers of the world are telling us in clarion notes, and in thunder tones, with the voice of warning or of appeal, that woman owes service to the State, and that it is her duty to strive earnestly that she may have that ballot in her own hand which shall be at once her educator and protector, her sceptre and her sword. But I have heard the Master's voice, speaking through Lucy Stone and her co-workers, and speaking in my own soul also, declaring that I, in common with every other woman in this grand Republic, have a duty to the State that must not be ignored. In the home, and in the church, most women acknowledge they have duties—but as to the State they hesitate. Oh, if they would but "gather into the stillness," as the Friends say, and listen reverently to the voice within, I think they would often hear the solemn utterance, "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." Every woman who has tried to do her whole duty in the family, tried faithfully to make home a foretaste of heaven, with its abounding peace and love, tried with a mother's prayers, a mother's tears, a mother's unselfish, self-denying love, to train her darlings for the skies—every such woman deserves the gratitude of humanity, and that sweetest of rewards to a mother's heart, viz; that "her children shall rise up, and call her blessed;" while every woman who superadds to this unselfish devotion to home and children, a lifelong fidelity to the church in which she was reared, or has adopted; every woman who has worshiped devoutly at the shrine her own soul has accepted, following meekly in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good—every such woman deserves the wreath of immortal amaranths which angel hands are weaving for her brow—but more than all, she who crowns her home work and her religious endeavors with a service to the State, which of necessity touches the great questions of reform, and aids in the settling of vast problems wherein the weal or woe of a nation is concerned—that woman, from the centre of her individual responsibility, reaches out to the circumference of her individual influence, and desires to receive from the lips of the dear Lord himself, the "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"—the joy of a completed mission. The recording angel will write such a woman's name with that of Abou Ben Adhem, who loved his fellows, and in serving humanity served God.

The single point which I wish to present to the women before me at this hour and in these brief remarks is this, then; that it is your solemn, sacred duty, as you love God and the truth, and human welfare, to seek the ballot, and, having obtained it, to use it in purifying our statute-books and making them read more like the oracles of God—the eleven Commandments, and the Golden Rule.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, observed that in a court room of New York, a lawyer—she understood—recently stated that according to law the husband of a woman has such control over her as to "own" her; that man was made for God and woman for man! She asked if those present accepted that law [A voice, No!] Do you, said she, own your own persons, according to the law of God, or do you not? Our brothers tell us that women would be contaminated by going into the court rooms and sitting on juries; that women must be kept from these places because it would impair their delicacy. Well, if women were wholly excluded from our court rooms the case would be different. But when in the mornings we take up the daily papers, how frequently do we read of some poor young creature who has been arrested and taken to the court room, to be tried by a jury of men; and carried perhaps from there to a place of imprisonment, with no pitying woman's eye or heart or hand to give her a ray of comfort. And these poor, forlorn creatures shall be deprived of our sympathy and left to perish because we are too "delicate" to come to their assistance! These may be daughters of good people, and may once have been good and pure as any. They might be your daughters or mine. Brothers, they might be your sisters or your daughters! Oh! change the laws that bear so hard on women. Give us such laws as will allow your wives and mothers—those in whom you have confidence and whom you love—to come, with a mother's heart, and help rescue these deserted and fallen and miserable ones.

LUCY STONE here read a letter of regret from William Lloyd Garrison, in which he stated that he was ill and confined to his bed, and therefore unable to be present. She read, also, a letter from Mrs. Haskell, of California, expressing earnest and hearty sympathy in all that is done at the East for woman suffrage, and the assurance that on the Pacific slope the good work is becoming daily stronger and more hopeful.

Mrs. TAPPAN gave an interesting account of some of the Indian tribes in Mexico and California, who, she thought, had in one sense a higher idea of the capacity of woman than their more civilized brethren. The Navajos, on one occasion, when a United States Commission composed of General Sherman, General Terry, and other officers of the army, went to them to treat with them on behalf of the Government, refused to enter the officer's quarters for the purpose of discussion or decision of their difficulties, unless their squaws were permitted to participate in the deliberations, and the officers were obliged to allow the women to come in.

The evening session of the convention was called to order by LUCY STONE. Steinway Hall was filled with an earnest and interested assembly, numbering about a thousand persons.

Mrs. CHURCHILL, of Providence, R. I., was the first speaker. She spoke at some length, and asserted the undoubted right of women to the suffrage. She referred to the fear which men entertained, or pretended to entertain, of women neglecting every other duty attaching to them simply because they should get suffrage. Men do not find voting so exceedingly incompatible with the other duties of life that they should have such fear of woman suffrage. Women are not asking for bon-bons in this matter. They are demanding that which belongs to them. They are not children, nor idiots, and they ought to have the same right of action as is accorded to sane men.

The address of Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE was as follows: This mighty edifice of the ideal society has many mansions, whose doors open one after the other in the ruins of the ages. When Providence has removed the mysterious seal from one of these doors those who know the signs of the times gladly enter. And soon the halt and the lame and the blind hear of the new refuge, the new benefaction, and make haste to crowd its halls and parlors. America itself was at first such a refuge. The derided Puritans rode there nobly across the highway of the ocean. By and by it leaked out that civil and religious liberty had made a good thing of it, and then the Old World began to sneak over into the spacious domain of the New. And now it comes with such a tide that we can scarcely build cities and railroads fast enough for its accommodation. America is to the nations a house of God—a divinely appointed city of refuge. Poorly have we administered that house of God, because we ourselves were undivine. But we have improved a little—we have learned some lessons—we have opened some doors. And every lesson that we have learned has shown us more and more of the grand but terrible labor which lies before us. What one should be, and know, and intend, in order to come up to the standard of an American, that is something which as yet puts most of us to the blush, not for being so much, but so little children of the New World; for this may the Old World deride us.



I can not see this New World as it ought to be, in my remotest vision, without many changes in what it is. Looking towards this great aim of building a Christian state, I see the position of woman as wrong and harmful. Wrong to herself since she is pushed one remove further from the divine than man—she, born of the same humanity and divinity with himself. Wrong to society since she, with special gifts and powers for its aid and advancement, is forcibly restrained to the functions which man deigns to allow her; her attitude to law, labor and life being determined by him through the old principle of barbarism, the predominance of physical force.

Which shall I treat first, the wrong done to the individual or that done to society? I will start with the individual. And from the start I will say that the very instinct of secondariness, so often postulated as a reason for the social subjection of women, is, on the part of those who urge it, either an invention or an error. The instinct, as I understand it, is all the other way. The little girl does not know in herself any inferiority to the boy. He can perhaps beat her, but while he may consider this a mark of superiority, she is too wise to accept it as such. In their lessons she flies where he walks. She cries for his floggings oftener than he can laugh at her failures. She needs less machinery than he to arrive at the same mental and moral results. Nature has given him a mental hammer, but it has given her a mental needle, and she has embroidered the rainbow before he has forged the thunder. How does he overtake her swift steps? How tame and bind her fiery soul?

Now I confess that he has an accomplice greater than himself. The girl, coming upon the full consciousness of womanhood, comes also upon that of its opposite. The primal divine unity of the race makes itself felt in her dreamy bosom. She is but half of the ideal—the perfect human being—the other half is not yet hers; she must seek diligently till she find it. Do not laugh. The pilgrimage of Psyche is performed by every maiden soul; but love, the supreme god, in the little child is not always found. So far, so good. The woman often finds a mate; sometimes has quite a selection of mates offered her. If she finds the complement of her incomplete being, what more can she want? What wrong is done her? This simply. If her single life was incomplete, that of her partner without her was no less so. The need of marriage was equal with both. Nay, but for the aid of vices to which the male part of society give system and culture, the need of marriage on his part will be more imperative than on hers. Its natural burdens fall with fivefold force on her. She must bear the children. She must give the flower of her life to services full of weariness and of anguish. Now, however the matter may stand between man and woman, the State's need of marriage is imperative. And as the State commands marriage, and as the woman contracts marriage as an obligation to the State, the State is bound by every sacred obligation of justice to render the contract an equal one. And here comes up again the barbaric element—the predominance of physical force. "Shall this softer, gentler, more fragile creature be the equal of the ruder, stouter man?" "Yes," says your Christianity, "She is a divine institution, as you are; she desires the same culture, the same respect, the same authority." "No," says your barbarism, "I can oppress her, and I will. We won't call it oppression, if you please. We'll call it protection. I'll keep her money, and her children, and her body, and her soul. I'll keep them all for her. She can ask me for what she wants. I shall always know whether it is best for her to have it or no."

Now, here it is true physical ascendency of the man which renders the assumption of this position possible. Great as this power is, he has taken pains to increase it by an immense array of aids and appliances. He has kept the woman ignorant of all the technologies of the world. Fatal renewal of the Hebrew myth, he has eaten of the tree of knowledge, has kept the fruit for himself. Society can not be governed without law and logic. The use of these the man has monopolized, encouraging in the woman the natural gifts and accomplishments which give him most delight—dress and dance, and the sweet voice and graceful manner, and, above all the ready acquiescence in his sovereign pleasure. But let her ask him for the methods by which she may analyze his actions and his intuitions, and he says, "No." No college door shall open for her, no nursery of law, medicine or theology. Philosophy, the science of sciences—which Dictrina taught to Socrates, who teaches it to the world to-day—that would give her the key to all the rest. She may get it, if she can.

We have brought our theoretical woman up to the period of marriage and maternity. Here the intensity of personal feeling and interest monopolize her. Her nursery is full of pains and pleasures, but its delights predominate, and though she will need more than ever the help of outside culture and sympathy, she is yet tied by her affections even more than by her duties to a centre of feeling too intense to generate a wide circle. Here, too, the enforced inequality of institutions pursues her. The children, born at such cost of suffering, are not hers in the eye of the law. The right to them which nature puts primarily in the mother, society has long vested almost absolutely in the father. In case of any difference between them he will say, "I am the father—my will must be obeyed." And what he will say in private the law will say in public. Mrs. Stone records a piteous case in which an unborn child was willed by its dying father to relatives in a foreign country in which the widowed mother suffered the pains of childbirth, that other hearts than hers might be gladdened by her dearly-bought treasure. This young woman was described as in a maze of bewilderment at the presence on the statute-book of a law so miraculously wicked. We all hope that in such laws there comes a great deal of dead letter, but the dead letter itself stinks and is corrupt. The book of justice should be purged of such unhallowed corpses.

In the nursery the mother is called upon to set forward the same injustice which presided over her own education. "Preaching down a daughter's heart," the beautiful phrase of Tennyson, becomes the duty of every woman who finds in her daughter saliency of intellect and individuality of will. Mediocrity is the standard! "Seek not, my child, to go beyond it. Thou hast thy little allotments. The French must be thy classics, the house accounts thy mathematics. Patchwork, cooking, and sweeping thy mechanics; dress and embroidery thy fine arts. See how small the spheres. Do not venture outside of it, nor teach thy daughters, when thou shalt have such to do so."

And so we women, from generation to generation, are drilled to be the apes of an artificial standard, made for us and imposed upon us by an outsider; a being who, in this attitude, becomes our natural enemy.

Mrs. LUCY STONE said: There have always been good and able men ready to second us, and to say their best words for our cause. Among the first of these is Mr. George William Curtis, whom I have now the pleasure to introduce.

Ladies and Gentlemen:—It is pleasant to see this large assembly, and this generous spirit, for it is by precisely such meetings as this that public opinion is first awakened, and public action is at last secured. Our question is essentially an American question. It is a demand for equal rights, and will therefore be heard. Whenever a free and intelligent people asks any question involving human rights or liberty or development, it will ask louder and louder until it is answered. The conscience of this nation sits in the way like a sphinx, proposing its riddle of true democracy. Presidents and parties, conventions, caucuses, and candidates, failing to guess it, are remorselessly consumed. Forty years ago that conscience asked, "Do men have fair play in this country?" A burst of contemptuous laughter was the reply. Louder and louder grew that question, until it was one great thunderburst, absorbing all other questions; and then the country saw that its very life was bound up in the answer; and, springing to its feet, alive in every nerve, with one hand it snapped the slave's chain, and with the other welded the Union into a Nation—the pledge of equal liberty.

That same conscience sits in the way to-day. It asks another question, "Do women have fair play in this country?" As before, a sneer or a smile of derision may ripple from one end of the land to the other; but that question will swell louder and louder, until it is answered by the ballot in the hands of every citizen, and by the perfect vindication of the fundamental principle, that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." By its very nature, however, the progress of this reform will differ from every other political movement. Behind every demand for the enlargement of the suffrage, hitherto there was always a threat. It involved possible anarchy and blood. But this reform hides no menace. It lies wholly in the sphere of reason. It is a demand for justice, as the best political policy; an appeal for equality of rights among citizens as the best security of the common welfare. It is a plea for the introduction of all the mental and moral forces of society into the work of government. It is an assertion that in the regulation of society, no class and no interest can be safely spared from a direct responsibility. It encounters, indeed, the most ancient traditions, the most subtle sophistry of men's passions and prejudices. But there was never any great wrong righted that was not intrenched in sophistry—that did not plead an immemorial antiquity, and what it called the universal consent and "instinct" of mankind.

I say that the movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit which says to any human being, or to any class of human beings, "You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject to our pleasure!"

Edward Lear, the artist, traveling in Greece, says that "he was one day jogging along with an Albanian peasant, who said to him, 'Women are really better than donkeys for carrying burdens, but not so good as mules.'" This was the honest opinion of barbarism—the honest feeling of Greece to-day.

You say that the peasant was uncivilized. Very well. Go back to the age of Pericles; it is the high noon of Greek civilization. It is Athens—"the eye of Greece—the mother of art." There stands the great orator—himself incarnate Greece—speaking the oration over the Peloponnesian dead. "The greatest glory of woman," he said, "is to be the least talked of among men;" so said Pericles, when he lived. Had Pericles lived to-day he would have agreed that to be talked of among men as Miss Martineau and Florence Nightingale are, as Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitchell are, is as great a glory as to be the mother of the Gracchi. Women in Greece, the mothers of Greece, were an inferior and degraded class. And Grote sums up their whole condition when he says, "Every thing which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined for them by male relatives, and they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and refinement."

These were the old Greeks. Will you have Rome? The chief monument of Roman civilization is its law—which underlies our own; and Buckle quotes the great commentator on that law as saying that it was the distinction of the Roman law that it treated women not as persons, but as things. Or go to the most ancient civilization; to China, which was old when Greece and Rome were young. The famous French Jesuit missionary, Abbe Huc, mentions one of the most tragical facts recorded—that there is in China a class of women who hold that if they are only true to certain bonds during this life, they shall, as a reward, change their form after death and return to earth as men. This distinguished traveler also says that he was one day talking with a certain Master Ting, a very shrewd Chinaman, whom he was endeavoring to convert. "But," said Ting, "what is the special object of your preaching Christianity?" "Why, to convert you, and save your soul," said the Abbe. "Well, then, why do you try to convert the women?" asked Master Ting. "To save their souls," said the missionary. "But women have no souls," said Master Ting; "you can't expect to make Christians of women,"—and he was so delighted with the idea that he went out shouting, "Hi! hi! now I shall go home and tell my wife she has a soul, and I guess she will laugh as loudly as I do!"

Such were the three old civilizations. Do you think we can disembarrass ourselves of history? Our civilization grows upon roots that spring from the remotest past; and our life, proud as we are of it, is bound up with that of Greece and Rome. Do you think the spirit of our society is wholly different? Let us see. It was my good fortune, only a few weeks ago, to be invited to address the students of Vassar College at Poughkeepsie; which you will remember is devoted exclusively to the higher education of women. As I stood in those ample halls, and thought of that studious household, of the observatory and its occupants, it seemed to me that, like the German naturalist, who, wandering in the valley of the Amazon, came suddenly upon the Victoria Regia, so there, in the valley of the Hudson, I had come upon one of the finest flowers of our civilization. But in the midst of my enthusiasm I was told by the President that this was the first fully endowed college for women in the world; and from that moment I was alarmed. From behind every door, every tree, I expected to see good Master Ting springing out with his "Hi! hi! you laugh at us Chinese barbarians; you call yourselves in America the head of civilization; you claim that the glory of your civilization is your estimate of women; you sneer at us Chinese for belittling women's souls and squeezing their feet. Who belittle their capacities? Who squeeze their minds?" We must confess it. The old theory of the subservience of women still taints our civilization.

You open your morning paper and read that on the previous evening there was a meeting of intelligent and experienced women, with some that were not so, which is true of all general meetings of men and women; and these persons demanded the same liberty of choice, and an equal opportunity with all other members of society. But the report of the meeting is received with a shout of derisive laughter that echoes through the press and through private conversation. Gulliver did not take the Lilliputians on his hands and look at them with more utter contempt than the political class of this country, to which the men in this hall belong, take up these women and look at them with infinite, amused disdain. But in the very next column of the same morning paper we find another report, describing a public dinner, at which men only were present. And we read that after the great orators had made their great speeches, in the course of which they complimented woman so prettily, to the delight of the few privileged ladies who stood behind the screens, or looked over the balcony, or peeped in through the cracks of the windows and doors; and when the great orators had retired with the President, amid universal applause, the first Vice-President took the head of the table and punch was brought in. And well toward morning, when the "army" and "navy" and the "press" and the "Common Council" had been toasted and drank, with three times three, and Richard Swiveller, Esq., had sung his celebrated song, "Queen of my soul!" the last regular toast was proposed—"Woman—heaven's last, best gift to man," which was received with tumultuous enthusiasm, the whole company rising and cheering, the band playing "Will ye come to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O?" and in response to a unanimous call, some gallant and chivalric editor replied in a strain of pathetic and humorous eloquence, during which many of the company were observed to shed tears or laugh, or embrace their neighbors; after which those of the company who were able rose from the table, and hallooing, "We won't go home till morning!" they hiccoughed their way home. This report is not read with great derision or laughter. It is not felt that by this performance women have been insulted and degraded.

Here, at this moment, in this audience, I have no doubt there is many a man who is exclaiming with fervor—"Home, the heaven-appointed sphere of woman." Very well. I don't deny it, but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect liberty of development. I look into history and the society around me, and I see that the position of women which is most agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the "heaven-appointed sphere" of woman. It may or may not be so; all that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. A gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the grocer's shall be half ground rice. These philosophers might as wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his gridiron.

Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and singing to the sun in the spring? But how should we ever know it, if he were prisoned in a cage with wires of gold never so delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft? Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I know my sphere as a man, but by repelling everything that would arbitrarily restrict my choice? How can you know yours as women, but by obedience to the same law?

It is not the business of either sex to theorize about the sphere of the other. It is the duty of each to secure the liberty of both. Give women, for instance, every opportunity of education that men have. If there are some branches of knowledge improper for them to acquire—some which are in their nature unwomanly—they will know it a thousandfold better than men. And if, having opened the college, there be some woman in whom the love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may be the laboratory, the library, the observatory; it may be the platform or the Senate. And if it be either of these, shall we say that education has unsphered and unsexed her? On the contrary, it has enabled that woman to ascertain so far exactly what God meant her to do.