the angel of deliverance, rescuing the nation from the shifting sands of compromise, and refounding it upon the rock of justice.
Some of you have been mustered out of service; many more are soon to return to your homes, All hail to you! Honor and gratitude for what you have done and suffered! Enough if you have only been fighting for the Union as it was. But fs it enough, if the work for which the war is now prosecuted is not accomplished? Your country needs your power of soldierly endurance and accomplishment, your hard-earned experience, your varied tact and trained skill, your practiced eye and hand—in a word, all that makes you veterans, ripe in discipline and educated power. Raw recruits can not fill your places. Brave men! your mission, though far advanced, is not accomplished. You will not, can not, abide at home, while your brethren in arms carry victory and liberty down to the Gulf.
With joy and admiration we greet you on your homeward way, while your loved ones await your coming with mingled delight and pride. When, after a brief sojourn, yon go back again, convoyed by the grateful acclaim and God-speed of millions, to consummate at Freedom's call her holy work, the mightiest of all time, and now so near its end, with exultant shouts your brothers in the field will hail your coming to share with them the glory of the final victory. It will be the victory of free government, sacred rights, justice, liberty, and law, over the perfidies, perjuries, lying pretenses, and frantic revelries in innocent blood, of the foulest national crime that ever reeked to heaven—the overthrow of the most atrocious yet the meanest despotism that ever tortured the groaning earth.
In behalf of the Women's National Loyal League.
Mrs. Stanton: I suppose it is known to all present that Angelina Grimké Weld is the representative from South Carolina. Contrast her eloquent pleadings for freedom, throughout the sittings of our Convention, with the voice of South Carolina, when, at the framing of the Constitution, slavery, with its cruel creeds and codes, was fastened on the Republic just struggling into life. Here, for the first time in our history, have the women of the nation assembled to discuss the political questions of the day, and to decide where and how to throw the weight of their influence. I am proud to feel that from this meeting goes forth a united demand for freedom to all, for a true republic, in which the rights of every citizen shall be recognized and protected.
THE PLATFORM OF THE LEAGUE.
Resolved, That our work as a National League is to educate the nation into the true idea of a Christian Republic.
This is the resolve finally adopted. Considerable preliminary debate, in which many ladies joined, took place on details of form and phraseology. The resolve as it stands was constructed by Mrs. Stanton, with the exception of the word "Christian."
There was an earnest discussion on the introduction of the word Christian; some argued that a true Republic, where every human being's rights were recognized, could but be Christian. A Mrs. McFarland seemed to settle the question, by stating a fact of history, that in olden times there were Pagan Republics.
Miss Anthony said: No matter if it were a mere tautology: it required repetition to make this nation, so steeped In crime against humanity, understand, She then spoke of the awful lie of this nation, in naming itself Civilized, Republican, Christian, while it had made barter of men and women, bought and sold children of the Good Father, and paid their price to send missionaries to the Fejee Islands and the remotest corners of the earth, while it stood bound to fine and imprison any man or woman who should teach any one of four millions of its own citizens at home to read the letters that spell the word God. It would take long years to educate this nation into the idea and practice of a true, Christian Republic. It was a momentous work the women of this National Loyal League had undertaken. And she hoped one and all would take in its full import, and dedicate themselves fully and earnestly to the work.
Officers of The Women's Loyal National League.—President, Mrs. E. Cady Stanton; Vice-Presidents, Mrs. Col. A. B. Eaton, Mrs, Edward S. Bates, Mrs. Mary S.