citizen's right to vote" under the new guarantees of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. During that year the National Woman Suffrage Association appointed Mrs. Addie Ballou its vice-president for Minnesota.
In 1872 a suffrage club was formed at Kasson. Its three originators[1]entered into a solemn compact with each other that while they lived in that city there should always be an active suffrage society until the ballot for women should be obtained. Their secretary, Mrs. H. M. White, writes:
Although our club was at first called a ladies' literary society, the suspicion that its members wished to vote was soon whispered about. Our working members were for some years few in number, and our meetings far between. But our zeal never abating, we tried in later years many plans for making a weekly meeting interesting. The most successful was, that every one should bring something that had come to her notice during the week, which she should read aloud, thus furnishing topics of conversation in which all could join. This never failed to make an interesting and profitable meeting. And still later we invited speakers from other States. In our various courses of lectures, Kasson audiences have enjoyed the brave utterances of Anna Dickinson, Julia Ward Howe, Susan B. Anthony, and others. The pulpit of Kasson we have found about evenly balanced for and against us; but those claiming to be friendly generally maintained a "masterly inactivity." Our editors have always shown us much kindness by gratuitously advertising our meetings and publishing our articles. Our members were all at the first meeting after school suffrage was granted to women, and one lady was elected director for a term of three years. The next year another lady was elected. While they were members of the board, a new and beautiful school house was erected, though some men said, "nothing in the line of building could be safely done until after the women's term of office had expired." Our co-workers have always treated us with great courtesy. In this respect our labors were as pleasant as in any church work.
At a temperance convention in 1874, a woman suffrage resolution was ably defended by Mrs. Julia Ballard Nelson and Mrs. Harriet A. Hobart; Mrs. Asa Hutchinson, of beloved memory, also spoke at this meeting.
As the women in several of the States voted on educational matters, the legislature of 1875 wished to confer the same privilege upon the women of Minnesota. But instead of doing so by direct legislation, as the other States had done, they passed a resolution submitting a proposition for an amendment to the constitution to the electors of the State, as follows:
An amendment to the State constitution giving the legislature power to provide by law that any woman of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, may vote at any election held for the purpose of choosing any officers of schools; or upon any measure relating to schools; and also that any such woman shall be eligible to hold any office pertaining solely to the management of schools.
No effort was made to agitate the question, lest more should be effected in rousing the opposition than in educating the masses in the few months intervening between the passage of the bill and the election in November. Mrs. Stearns, however, as the day for the decision of the question approached, wishing to make sure of the votes of the intelligent men of the State, wrote to the editor of the Pioneer Press, the leading paper of Minnesota, begging him to urge his readers to do all in their power to secure[Pg 653] the adoption of the amendment. The request was complied with, and the editor in a private letter, thanking Mrs. Stearns, said he "had quite forgotten such an amendment had been proposed."
- ↑ The three women were, Mrs. Almira W. Anthony (whose husband was a cousin of Susan B. Anthony), Mrs. Mary Powell Wheeler and Mrs. Hattie M. White.
