Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/161

Whereas, The proposed legislation for the Chinese women on the Pacific slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the opinion of the press that no respectable woman should be seen in the streets after dark, are all based upon the presumption that woman's freedom must be forever sacrificed to man's licence; therefore, Resolved, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom that belongs to her by day and by night.

At the close of the convention it was decided at a meeting of the executive committee to present an address to the president and both houses of congress, and that a printed copy of the resolutions should be laid on the desk of every member. The president having granted a hearing,^[1]the following address was presented:

To his Excellency, the President of the United States:

Whereas, Representatives of associations of women waited upon your excellency before the delivery of your first and second annual messages, asking that in those documents you would remember the disfranchised millions of citizens of the United States; and,

Whereas, Upon careful examination of those messages, we find therein specifically enumerated, the interests, great and small, of all classes of men, and recommendations of needful legislation to protect their civil and political rights, but find no mention made of any need of legislation to protect the political, civil, or social rights of one-half of the people of this republic, and,

Whereas, There is pending in the Senate a constitutional amendment to prohibit the several States from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex, and a similar amendment is pending upon a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee; and as petitions to so amend the constitution have been presented to both houses of congress from more than 40,000 well-known citizens of thirty-five States and five territories,

Therefore, we respectfully ask your excellency, in your next annual message, to make mention of the disfranchised millions of wives, mothers and daughters of this republic, and to recommend to congress that women equally with men be protected in the exercise of their civil and political rights.

On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, Corresponding Secretary.
Susan B. Anthony, Chairman Executive Committee.

The delegates from the territory of Utah were also received by the president. They called his attention to the effect of the enforcement of the law of 1862 upon 50,000 Mormon women, to render them outcasts and their children nameless, asking the chief executive of the nation to give some time to the consideration

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1. The president invited the ladies into the library, that they might be secure from interruption, and gave them throughout a most respectful and courteous hearing, asking questions and showing evident interest in the subject, and at the close promising sincere consideration of the question.