Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/451

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That Noble German Patriot.
425

regard. I trust also that the convention will urge upon Congress the eminent fitness and duty of passing without delay the XVI. Amendment, and submitting the same to the Legislatures of the several States for ratification.

The world is moving to-day in the direction of the abolition of all monopolies of privilege and that of equal and exact justice and fair play to all classes. Woman now has the floor ; the hour has struck for her. Wyoming and Colorado are already setting example for the older communities. Let the preaching of this faith in effective ways, its benign and thorough working, begin at Jerusalem, at the Capitol of the nation, and may your convention urge the work to immediate undertaking, aye, and completion then, at home.

Yours truly, Chas. D. B. Mills.
Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1870.

Mrs. M. Joslyn Gage—Dear Madam : I beg you to be assured that I heartily sympathize with all well directed efforts to secure to woman equality before the law. Whatever can be done to give her a fair and equal chance with man, is due to her, and no effort of mine shall be wanting to secure so desirable a consummation.

Very Respectfully Yours,Homer B. Sprague.

Mrs. Helen Taylor, of London, after expressing the wish that she might be with us, says:

It is a great delight to hear of the numerous societies, in various countries, working well and vigorously for that Justice which for so long has been denied to women. The time can not he far distant now, when we shall attain the right of expressing our opinion by giving a vote.

Letters joining in the demand for a XVI. Amendment were received from E. H. G. Clarke, of Troy, N. Y.; S. D. Dillaye, of Syracuse; Martha B. Dickinson, Sarah Pugh, Mrs. E. K. Pugh, Abby Kimber, of Philadelphia ; Mrs. Mary J. O’Donovan-Rossa, and Hon. Jacob H. Ela. The following extracts from printed letters of Mrs. Hooker show somewhat the spirit of the occasion.

Washington, January 19, 1870.

I have just. come from a good meeting ; just such a house as we had at Hartford the mornings of our Convention. Senator Pomeroy spoke admirably, and carried every one with him. Then came Olympia Brown, and nothing could have been better than her speech and the effect of it on the audience, which, by the way, was earnest and intelligent. But Madam Anneke, the German patriot who fought with her husband and slept beside her horse in the field, carried the day over everyone else. It was fairly overwhelming to hear her English, so surcharged with feeling, yet so exact in the choice of words, and the burden of it all was that the trials of the battle-field were as naught compared to this inward struggle of her soul toward liberty for woman. Her presence, gestures, oratory, were simply magnificent.

Mrs. F., of Cincinnati, who lives here now, came to me this morning with great warmth, saying she had brought two Senators’ wives who were opposed, and they said a few more such women as Olympia Brown would convert them. She has promised to bring them to our reception at the Arlington this evening.

Jan, 20.—We have had to hold three days’ meeting, interest grew so fast. Yesterday morning Lincoln Hall jammed, even aisles full, I never heard better speaking in my life, not a disturbance in the audience, not a jar on the platform, all loving, tender, earnest. Olympia Brown is wonderful; she talked Christ and His Gospel just I should have done with ber voice and practice; can’t enlarge, but she surely is a remarkable woman. We are to have a hearing by a committee from both Houses on Saturday, and Senator Pomeroy will present a bill for suffrage in the District of Columbia next week, and would not be much surprised if it were carried at once—does not really expect that—but Senator Trumbull, Chairman of Judiciary, says he shall vote for it, and so do many others in both Houses. Mrs. Pomeroy received yesterday afternoon, and to my surprise, nearly all her callers had been at the Convention—at least three hundred young ladies were in the