beauty—then only fit to raise sons to be rulers. Justice requires your success, and I hope the age will prove itself sufficiently enlightened to mete out to you the reward of your years of toil.
Dear Miss Anthony:—What I enclose is not much for the work you have to do, but it is all I can proportion out for it just now. You are quite right in relying on my regard for you, although I can not see the subject as you do, and I was pleased to get your note saying so. I am sure you take great interest in following Mr. Gladstone's bill for the extension of suffrage in England. His speech upon it is in great contrast to the shallow nonsense talked by many Americans against our democratic form of government.
Dear Mrs. Stanton:—I have received yours of 14th inst., making eloquent and friendly appeal to me for the expression of my sympathy, written or spoken, in behalf of your forthcoming '" Woman's Rights Convention." Surely you need not my assurance that I most heartily indorse all the claims and objects of your Association; that I earnestly advocate whatever would advance or insure the rights of humanity, whether for man or woman; that I as earnestly protest against any and all prejudices, limitations, or legislations which would interfere with those rights; that I claim for woman as ample social and civil privileges as are conceded to man, whether in the exercise of the franchise, the domain of our legislatures, or in the sphere of the professions. We are no true men if we deny or would barricade the exercise or the claim of those privileges, and have just so much less of manhood as we dare to question or infringe them. I agree with you, most fully, that the woman element is greatly needed in the present crisis of our affairs for the right reconstruction of our suffering Government. We have had, and still have, not men but too many brutes making a very "bear garden" of our congressional halls, rending and tearing this poor "body politic" of ours till, like the raving demoniacs of old, it is now foaming and wandering crazily around its own pre-constructed tomb! while at the head of the Government we have only a surly, self--conceited despot in embryo! "The nation needs (as you say) at this hour the highest thought and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery of its life." There is no gainsaying your arguments on that head, for just so far, and only so far as the refining influence of that womanly element is so infused and felt in all our social and civil relations, will the consummation of our national peace and prosperity be effected.
E. C. Stanton, President Executive Committee Women's Rights Association:
My Dear Mrs. S.:—I had hoped to be present at this, our eleventh anniversary, but find it impossible. And so, at the last moment, I hasten to express my earnest conviction that now, as never before, we are called upon for vigorous, united action—that we are left no alternative but an unflinching protest against the strange legislation by which a Republican Congress, so-called, assumes to engraft upon our national Constitution, as amendments!? clauses which not only allow rebels to disfranchise loyal soldiers, who have borne the flag of 'the Republic victoriously against their treason and rebellion, but to keep the ballot from the hands of all women t
If not moved by an enlightened appreciation of the first principles of political economy and social justice in legislation touching them heretofore, we could scarcely believe that after the record made by both the proscribed classes during our late fearful struggle, our legislators could gravely stoop to brand them anew as "aliens" and outlaws! It is an act as discreditable to their hearts and their moral sense us to their statesmanship. And upon their shoulders must rest the responsibility of an agitation to which we are thus forced—an agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement, and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner