how the word white had been forced into the State constitutions, and advocated that it should be stricken out, it being the last relic of the "slave power."
2d. That the negro needed the ballot for his protection and elevation.
3d. That he deserved the ballot. He fought with our fathers side by side in the war of the revolution. He did the same thing in the war of 1812, and in the war of the rebellion. He fought for us because he was loyal and loved the old flag. If any class of men had ever earned the enjoyment of franchise the negro had.
4th. The Republican party owed it to him.
5th. The enfranchisement of the negro was indispensable to reconstruction of the late rebellious States upon a basis that should secure to the loyal men of the South the control of the government in those States. Congress had declared it was necessary, and the most eminent men of the nation had failed to discover any other means by which the South could be restored to the Union, that should secure safety, prosperity, and happiness. There was not loyalty enough in the South among the whites to elect a loyal man to an inferior office.
Upon each one of these points the Judge elaborated at length, and made really a fine speech, but his evident disconcertion showed that he knew what was to follow. It was expected that when Miss Brown was introduced many would leave, owing to the strange feeling against Female Suffrage in and about Oscaloosa; but not one left, the crowd grew more dense. A more eloquent speech never was uttered in this town than Miss Brown delivered: for an hour and three-quarters the audience was spell-bound as she advanced from point to point. She had been longing for such an opportunity, and had become weary of striking off into open air; and she proved how thoroughly acquainted she was with her subject as she took up each point advanced by her opponent, not denying their truth, but showing by unanswerable logic that if it were good under certain reasons for the negro to vote, it was ten times better for the same reasons for the women to vote.
The argument that the right to vote is not a natural right, but acquired as corporate bodies acquire their rights, and that the ballot meant "protection," was answered and explained fully. She said the ballot meant protection; it meant much more; it means education, progress, advancement, elevation for the oppressed classes, drawing a glowing comparison between the working classes of England and those of the United States. She scorned t;he idea of an aristocracy based upon two accidents of the body. She paid an eloquent tribute to Kansas, the pioneer in all reforms, and said that it would be the best advertisement that Kansas could have to give the ballot to women, for thousands now waiting and uncertain, would flock to our State, and a vast tide of emigration would continually roll toward Kansas until her broad and fertile prairies would be peopled. It is useless to attempt to report her address, as she could hardly find a place to stop. When she had done, her opponent had nothing to say, he had been beaten on his own ground, and retired with his feathers drooping. After Miss Brown had closed, some one in the audience called for a vote on the female proposition. The vote was put, and nearly every man and woman in the house rose simultaneously, men that had fought the proposition from the first arose, even