here, however we may differ upon minor points of expediency as to the best methods of working for the political advancement of woman. And further, it is the deep conviction of us all that the chief stumbling-block in the way of our obtaining the use of the ballot, is the apprehension among men of low degree that they will surely be limited in their base and brutal and sensual indulgencies when women are armed with equal political power.
As to my husband, to whose ancestry Mrs. Phelps so kindly alludes, permit me to say that he is not only descended from Thomas Hooker, the beloved first pastor of the old Centre Church in Hartford, and founder of the State of Connecticut, but further back his lineage takes root in one of England's most honored names, Richard Hooker, surnamed "The Judicious"; and I have been accustomed to say that, however it may be as to learning and position, the characteristic of judiciousness has not departed from the American stock. I will only add that Mr. Hooker is treasurer of our State suffrage association, and has spoken on the platform with me as president, whenever his professional duties would permit, and that he is the author of a tract on "The Bible and Woman Suffrage." Our society has printed several thousand copies of this tract, and the London National Women's Suffrage Society has reprinted it with words of high commendation for distribution in Great Britain. *** And now, dear madam, thanking you once more for this most unexpected and most grateful opportunity for correcting misapprehensions that others may have entertained as well as Mrs. Phelps in regard to the design and tendencies of our movement, may I not ask that you will kindly read and consider the papers I shall take the liberty to send you, and hand them to your co-workers at your convenience?
That we all, as women who love our country and our kind, may be led to honor each other in our personal relations, while we work each in her respective way for that higher order of manhood and womanhood that alone can exalt our nation to the ideal of the fathers and mothers of the early republic, and preserve us an honored place among the peoples of the earth, is the prayer of
Evidently left without even the name of Mrs. Sherman or the Anti-Suffrage Society to sustain her, Mrs. Dahlgren memorialized the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections against the submission of the sixteenth amendment:
Gentlemen—Allow me, in courtesy, as a petitioner, to present one or two considerations regarding a sixteenth amendment, by which it is proposed to confer the right of suffrage upon the women of the United States. I ask this favor also in the interests of the masses of silent women, whose silence does not give consent, but who, in most modest earnestness, deprecate having the political life forced upon them.
This grave question is not one of simple expediency or the reverse; it might properly be held, were this the case, as a legitimate subject for agi-