Mrs. Wilbour said the petition of 1,500 women of the District asking for suffrage had been presented to Congress this very winter.
Hon. Mr. Cooke said that the Committee on the District of Columbia could not get enough time allowed them by the House to transact the necessary business of the District during the short morning hour to which they were limited by the rules, and he feared they would be unable to get the action of the House on the subject.
Miss Anthony said that they must make time enough to present the bill at least; and asked if women had the right to vote, and make and unmake members, if they could not then find time to plead woman's cause?
The honorable member was obliged to answer this pertinent question in the affirmative.
Senator Hamlin said the Committee would take the matter into consideration and discuss it; that in Scripture language he could say he "was almost, if not quite, persuaded."
Altogether the hearing was serious and impressive, and it was evident that the honorable gentlemen had already given the subject a thoughtful consideration. As each member of the Congressional Committee was presented by Senator Hamlin, the ladies had abundant opportunity for learning their individual opinions. Senator Sumner never appeared more genial, and said though he had been in Congress for twenty years, and through the exciting scenes of the Nebraska Act, Emancipation, District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and Reconstruction, he had never seen a committee in which were present so many Senators and Representatives, so many spectators, and so much interest manifested in the subject under discussion.
The following description (in the Hartford Courant) is from the pen of Mrs. Fannie Howland.
The close of the Woman's Suffrage Convention in this city was marked by an event which, no matter how slowly its logical sequence is developed, must be regarded as initiative.
A committee of ladies appointed by the convention and composed in great part of those well known as leaders in the movement, was received at the Capitol by the committee of the Senate and House (on the District of Columbia) for a formal hearing. The object of that hearing was to request the honorable gentlemen to present a bill to Congress for enfranchising the women of the District, as an experiment preparatory to ultimate acknowledgment of equal rights for all the women of the United States. The ladies were received in one of the larger committee rooms, in order to accommodate a number who wished to be present at this novel interview. After taking their seats, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who certainly greeted their fair appellants with the deferential courtesy due to fellow-sovereigns, albeit unacknowledged and disguised, for the present, under the odium of disfranchisement.
The gentlemen took their seats around a long table in the middle of the