Marshal Frederick Douglass said his reluctance to come forward was not due to any lack of interest in the subject under discussion. For thirty years he had believed in human rights to all men and women. Nothing that has ever been proposed involved such vital interests as the subject which now invites attention. When the negro was freed the question was asked if he was capable of voting intelligently. It was answered in this way: that if a sober negro knows as much as a drunken white man he is capable of exercising the elective franchise.
Lavinia C. Dundore, introduced as the lady who had made application for an appointment as a constable and been refused, made a pithy address, in which she alluded to her recent disappointment.
Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke of the influence of the church on woman's liberties, and then referred to a large number of law books—ancient and modern, ecclesiastical and lay—in which the liberties of woman were more or less abridged; the equality of sexes which obtained in Rome before the Christian era, and the gradual discrimination in favor of men which crept in with the growth of the church.
Mrs. Devereux Blake said there is no aspect of this question that strikes us so forcibly as the total ignoring of women by public men. However polite they may be in private life, when they come to public affairs they seem to forget that women exist. The men who framed the last amendment to the constitution seemed to have wholly forgotten that women existed or had rights.... Huxley said in reply to an inquiry as to woman suffrage, "Of course I'm in favor of it. Does it become us to lay additional burdens on those who are already overweighted?" It is always the little men who oppose us; the big-hearted men help us along. All in this audience are of the broad-shouldered type, and I hope all will go out prepared to advocate our principles. In reply to the objection that women do not need the right to vote because men represent them so well, she asked if any man in the audience ever asked his wife how he should vote, and told him to stand up if there was such a one. [Here a young man in the back part of the hall stood up amidst loud applause.]The various resolutions were discussed at great length and adopted, though much difference of opinion was expressed on the last, which demands that intelligence shall be made the basis of suffrage:
Resolved, That the National Constitution should be so amended as to secure to United States citizens at home the same protection for their individual rights against State tyranny, as is now guaranteed everywhere against foreign aggressions.
Resolved, That the civil and political rights of the educated tax-paying women of this nation should take precedence of all propositions and debates in the present congress as to the future status of the Chinese and Indians under the flag of the United States.
Whereas, The essential elements of justice are already recognized in the constitution; and, whereas, our fathers proposed to establish a purely secular government in which all forms of religion should be equally protected, therefore,
Resolved, That it is preëminently unjust to tax the property of widows and spinsters to its full value, while the clergy are made a privileged class by exempting from taxa-