break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.
Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, "We are going home." "There, children," said she, "in heaven we shall rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place, and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there, too."
Charles C. Burleigh said: I consider it among the good omens with which the Society enters upon its new year of labor, that its workers have been so busy, as appears from the informal report of the Secretary this morning, that really they have not had time to let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. It shows an earnestness, a determination, a vigor, an industry, which can not co-exist with a cause of righteousness like the one before us without hopeful results. There is no narrow question here. We are not contending for Woman's Suffrage or Negro Suffrage, but for a broad principle of right applicable to the whole race. Those in opposition to us have really nothing to stand upon. While we may fairly assume that the burden of proof lies upon those who urge objections, that ours is the affirmative case, and all that we are bound to do is to answer objections; yet in this reform, as in others which have preceded it, its enemies not being willing to take the burden of proof, we have undertaken to do their work as well as our own. We are willing, therefore, for the sake of meeting every cavil, for the sake of fighting every shadow of objection, to take the laboring oar which the other side should take, and to prove the objections unfounded which they have not yet attempted to prove well-founded.
We are told sometimes that women ought not to share with men in the rights we claim for humanity, because of the difference of sex; that there