Mrs. M. V. Longley: Dear Madam—I cannot sign your call for a woman suffrage convention, for I do not feel a serious interest in the subject. That there are woman's wrongs that the law-makers should right, I believe. For instance, I think married women should hold property independently; that they should be able to save and enjoy the fruits of their own industry; and that they should not be absolutely in the power of lazy, dissipated or worthless husbands. But I cannot see clearly how the possession of the ballot would help women in the reform indicated. If, however, a majority of the women of Ohio should signify by means proving their active interest in the subject that they wanted to acquire the right of suffrage, I don't think I would offer opposition.
Mrs. Livermore and Miss Anthony made some amusing strictures on Mr. Halstead's letter, which called out laughter and cheers from the audience. April 27 and 28, 1870, a mass-meeting was held in Dayton. Describing the occasion, Miss Sallie Joy, in a letter to a Boston paper, says:
The west is evidently wide awake on the suffrage question. The people are working with zeal almost unknown in the East, except to the more immediately interested, who are making a life-labor of the cause. The two days' convention at Dayton was freighted with interest. Earnest women were there from all parts of the State. They of the west do not think much of distances, and consequently nearly every town of note was represented. Cleveland sent her women from the borders of the lake; Cincinnati sent hers from the banks of the Ohio; Columbus, Springfield, Toledo and Sydney were represented. Not merely the leaders were there, but those who were comparatively new to the cause; all in earnest,—young girls in the first flush of youth, a new light dawning on their lives and shining through their eyes, waiting, reaching longing hands for this new gift to womanhood,—mothers on the down-hill side of life, quietly but gladly expectant of the good that was coming so surely to crown all these human lives. Most of the speakers were western women—Mrs. Cutler, Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Stewart, of Ohio, and Miss Boynton, of Indiana. The East sent our own Susan B. Anthony, and Mrs. Livermore of Boston. Like every other convention, it grew more interesting the longer it continued, and just when the speakers were so tired that they were glad the work for the time was done, the listeners, like a whole army of Oliver Twists, were crying for more. They are likely to have more—a great deal more—before the work is done completely, for it is evident the leaders don't intend to let the thing rest where it is, but to push it forward to final success. From the list of resolutions considered and adopted, I send the following:
Resolved, That as the Democratic party has long since abolished the political aristocracy of wealth; and the Republican party has now abolished the aristocracy of race; so the true spirit of Republican Democracy of the present, demands the abolition of the political aristocracy of sex.
Resolved, That as the government of the United States has, by the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, admitted the theory that one man cannot define the rights and duties of another man, so we demand the adoption of a sixteenth amendment on the same principle, that one sex cannot define the rights and duties of another sex.
Resolved, That we rejoice in the noble action of the men of Wyoming, by which the right of suffrage has been granted to the women of that territory.
Resolved, That we feel justly proud of the action of those representatives of the General Assembly of Ohio, who have endeavored to secure an amendment to the State constitution, striking out the word "male" from that instrument.
It is rather remarkable that in a State which so early established two colleges admitting women—Oberlin in 1834, and Antioch in 1853—any intelligent women should have been found at so late a date as April 15, 1870, to protest against the right of
