The memorial resolutions were presented by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who said: "These tributes are largely to older men and women with whom I was associated long ago and it is a pleasure to recall their noble services to humanity in times when they and their work were far more unpopular than to-day. There are twenty-five on my list, yet I think there was only one of the entire number who was not more than fifty years old, and most of them reached on toward the eighties and nineties. All were earnest advocates of equal suffrage, but there were kindred causes to which most of them were also devoted. .... Laura P. Haviland spent seventy years of her life in Michigan, the last five here in Grand Rapids. At one time she assumed the care of nine orphan children; at another, during the Civil War she was the active agent who freed from prison a large number of Union soldiers held upon false charges. She labored for every good cause and was a simple Quaker in religion and life. ....
"Parker Pillsbury of New Hampshire, who died last year, aged 88, known as a life-long worker for the oppressed before the Civil War, gave much of his energy to the cause of anti-slavery. When that noble philanthropy was split in two throughout its whole length because one-half would not let women serve on committees with men or raise their voices publicly for those who were dumb and helpless, Parker Pillsbury stood by the side of Abby Kelly and the Grimké sisters. His terse, characteristic, uncompromising language, his cheerful braving of prejudice, his sympathetic claim for justice to womanhood, made him one of the noblest of men. ....
in the House and six in the Senate, of a school suffrage law (which failed to receive the approval of the Governor); also we thank the Legislatures of Connecticut and Ohio, which have defeated bills to repeal the existing school suffrage laws of those States. We thank the legislators of Oregon who have just submitted an amendment granting suffrage to women by a vote of 48 to 6 in the House and 25 to I in the Senate, and we hope that Oregon will add a fifth star to our equal suffrage flag. This association is non-sectarian and non-partisan, and asks for the ballot not for the sake of advancing any specific measure, but as a matter of justice to the whole human family. In all the States where equal suffrage campaigns are pending we advise women and men to base their plea on the ground of clear and obvious justice, and not to indulge in predictions as to what women will do with the ballot before it is secured. We protest against women being counted in the basis of representation of State and nation so long as they are not permitted to vote for their representatives. We appreciate the friendly attitude of the American Federation of Labor, the National Grange and other public bodies of voters, as shown by their resolutions indorsing the legal, political and economic equality of women. We rejoice in the Peace Congress about to meet at The Hague, and hope it may be preliminary to the establishment of international arbitration.
