Miss Eastman read the following letter:
Mrs. Lucy Stone, Chairman of the Executive Committee:—Your favor of the 12th inst. is received. I wish I could be with you at your meeting in Detroit next month, but I am so crowded with engagements here that I do not think I can get away. We have just had another election, and at no time have we had so full a vote. Our women have taken a lively interest, and have voted quite as universally as the men. Their influence has been felt more than ever and generally on the side of the best men. Several candidates have been defeated on account of their want of good characters, who expected success on party grounds. It is the general sentiment with us now that it will not do to nominate men for whom the women will not vote. Is not this a great step in advance? When candidates for office must come with a character that will stand the criticism of the women or be sure of defeat, we shall have a higher tone of political morals.
I hear it urged abroad that woman suffrage is not popular in Wyoming, but I hear nothing of the kind here. All parties now favor it. Those who once opposed it oppose it no longer, while its friends are more and more attached to it, as they see its practical benefits and feel its capacity for good. No one that I hear of wishes it abolished, and no one would dare propose its repeal. The women are beginning to feel their power and influence, and are growing up to a wider and stronger exertion of it. I think I can see a conscious appreciation of this in a higher dignity and a better self-respect among them. They talk and think of graver subjects and of responsibilities which ennoble them. A woman will not consent to be a butterfly when she can of her own choice become an eagle! Let her enjoy the ambitions of life; let her be able to secure its honors, its riches, its high places, and she will not consent to be its toy or its simple ornament.
Miss Eastman said that this letter presented just the evidence on the result and experience of woman suffrage that was wanted. She said that women were very inconsiderate and indifferent to this question. Women, until they are brought to think upon the matter, generally say they do not want to vote. She spoke of the laws of some States which allow the taking away from a mother of her children, by a person who had been appointed as their guardian, in place of her dead husband, and of the laws severe in other respects which States have made in relation to women. She wished all persons had the question put to them conscientiously whether woman had all the power she wanted. We do want, she said, every legitimate power, and we shall never be content with a tithe less than we can command.
Gen. A. C. Voris, of Ohio, read letters from the following persons, regretting their inability to attend the Convention: Bishop Gilbert Haven, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church; from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Judge