tenance of woman's right to vote. This woman's meeting was well conducted, and met with success in every way.....
Frances D. Gage, in a letter to the National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 26, 1866, speaking of her attendance of the anniversary meetings in New York, said: "If the Anti-Slavery work has fallen somewhat behind our hope, that of the Woman's Rights movement has far outstripped our most sanguine expectations. When the war-cry was heard in 1861, the advance-guard of the Woman's Rights party cried 'halt!' And for five years we have stood waiting while the grand drama of the Rebellion was passing. Not as idle spectators, but as the busiest and most unwearied actors on the boards. We have, as our manly men assert, fought half the battle, and helped to win the victory.
"Wendell Phillips said, 'Women made this war!' By the same process of reasoning women may claim that 'they made the peace,' that 'they broke the chains of the slave, and redeemed the land from its most direful curse.' Be this true or otherwise, one fact is patent to every mind—woman to-day is an acknowledged power! And when we met at the Church of the Puritans last week, we found Woman's Rights filling its halls and galleries as never before; with a Beecher and a Tilton to defend our cause, but not one sneerer or opposer to open his or her lips. Who now will dare call us 'infidels,' since Bishop Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, and Dr. Tyng champion our cause, and proclaim it 'woman's duty to vote for the good of humanity'? Who will now dare sneer while the leading minds of Europe—among them Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, Mazzini, Victor Hugo—must share the odium with those hitherto called 'strong-minded?'
"It was with pain that I heard Wendell Phillips say on our platform, 'Albany can not help you; your throne is the world of fashion!'—meaning women. If we are given over to fashion, frivolity, and vice, does it follow that rights and privileges, duties and responsibilities will not help us? If just governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, and taxation without representation is tyranny, then Albany can help us in just so much as a good and just government will help the people who live under its rules and laws. No one would at this day, if a friend to the negro, say to him, 'A vote can not help you!' Then why say it to women?
"Our Woman's Rights Convention has now taken the broad platform of 'Equal Rights,' and upon that will work in time to come. And our meeting in New York seemed proof—if proof was wanting—that all we need now is to ask and receive. Our worst enemy, our greatest hindrance, is woman herself; and her indifference is the legitimate result of long-denied privileges and responsibilities of which she has not learned the necessity. If, as Mr. Beecher asserted, 'to vote is a duty,' then it is the duty of every man and woman to work to secure that right to every human being of adult years.
"Since our meeting, the House of Representatives at Washington has passed, by more than three to one, the amendment of the Reconstruction Committee. If the Senate concurs, then, to save the four million negroes of the South, or rather to save the Republican party (the people