Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/218

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
200
History of Woman Suffrage.

ing the position of Matron in the Home for Colored Orphans, which had been opened in the second year of the rebellion, by the help of the Government and the untiring energy of a few noble women intent on saving the helpless waifs of slavery cast by thousands upon the bare sands of military freedom.

In the autumn of 1867, the Legislature of Kansas having submitted to the voters of the State a woman suffrage amendment to its Constitution, I gave some four weeks to the canvass, which was engaged in by some of the ablest friends of the cause from other States, among them Lucy Stone, Rev. Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. In our own State, among others, Governor Robinson, John Ritchie, and S. N. Wood of the old Free State Guard, rallied to the work. With the canvass of Atchison and Jefferson Counties, and a few lectures in Douglass, Shawnee, and Osage Counties, I retired from a field overlaid with happy reminders of past trials merged in present blessings. The work was in competent hands, but the time was ill-chosen on account of the political complications with negro suffrage, and failure was the result.

Since December, 1871, my home has been in California, where family cares and the infirmities of age limit my efforts for a freer and a nobler humanity to the pen. Trusting that love of God and man will ever point it with truth and justice, I close this exposé of my public life.