and fully appreciating all their benefits, in the name of security, of education, of responsibility, of self-respect, of liberty, of prosperity and independence we demand the franchise for woman.
Please present this hastily-written contribution to your Convention with best wishes.
William Lloyd Garrison writes: Unable to attend the Convention, I can only send you my warm approval of it, and the object it is designed to promote. It is boastingly claimed in behalf of the Government of the United States that it is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Yet reckoning the whole number at thirty-eight millions, no less than one-half—that is, nineteen millions—are political ciphers. A single male voter, on election day, outweighs them all!
Aaron M. Powell writes: I have no doubt that if a fair and honest vote can be had upon the question, submitted upon its own merits, in the Senate and House of Representatives, both the friends and opponents of the measure here, as in Great Britain when John Stuart Mill's proposition was first voted upon in Parliament, will be surprised at the revelation of its real strength.
Mrs. Caroline H. Dall writes: It mitigates my regret in declining your invitation to remember that these are not the dark days of the cause.
Senator Fowler, of Tenn., writes: It is not possible that the people who have so enlarged the boundaries of the political rights of another race just emerged from slavery, will fail to recognize the claims of the women of the United States to equal rights in all the relations of life.
Wm. H. Sylvis says: I am in favor of universal suffrage, universal amnesty, and universal liberty.
Abby Hopper Gibbons says: My father, Isaac T. Hopper, was an advocate for woman and her work, he believed in her thoroughly. His life long he was associated with many of the best women of his day. With the help of good men, we shall ere long stand side by side with ballot in hand.
Paulina Wright Davis: If women are the only unrecognized class as a part of the people, then woe to the nation! for there will be no noble mothers; frivolity, folly, and madness will seize them, for all inverted action of the faculties becomes intense in just the ratio of its earnestness.
Harriet Beecher Stowe writes: I am deeply interested in the work, and hopeful that a broader sphere is opening for woman, that as a class they may be trained in early life more as men are in education and business.
Gen. Oliver O. Howard answers: Please express to the Committee my thanks for the invitation. I should be pleased to accept, but a lecture engagement in the West will compel me to be absent from the city.
James M. Scovill, of New Jersey, says: I deeply desire to come. Go on in your great work. The Convention tells on the public mind.
Gerrit Smith replies: I thank you for your invitation, though it is not in my power to attend the Convention. God hasten the day when the civil and political rights of woman shall be admitted to be equal to those of man.
Simeon Corley, M.C., of South Carolina, writes: Having been an advocate of woman suffrage for a quarter of a century, I had the pleasure yesterday of enrolling my name and that of my wife on your list of delegates. To-day