We come Democrats, Republicans, and Greenbackers, and I expect if there were a half dozen other political parties some of us would belong to them.  We ask this beneficent action upon your part because we believe that the intelligence and the justice of the hour is demanding it.  We do not want a political party action.  We want you to keep this question out of the canvass.  We ask you in the name of justice and humanity alone, and not on the part of party.

I hold in my hand a petition sent from one district in the State of Illinois with the request that I bear it to you.  Out of three hundred electors the names of two hundred stand in this petition that I shall leave in your hands.  In this list stand not the wife-whippers, not the drunkards, not the dissolute, but every minister in that town, every editor in that town, every professional man in that town, every banker, and every prominent business man in that town of three hundred electors.  I believe that petitions could be rolled up in this way in every town in the Northern and in many of the Southern States.  I leave this petition with you for your consideration.

Upon no question whatever has such a large number of petitions been sent as upon this demand for woman suffrage.  You have the petitions in your hands, and I ask you in the name of justice and humanity not to let this Congress adjourn without action.

You ask us if we are impatient.  Yes; we are impatient.  Some of us may die, and I want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B. Anthony, whose name will go down to history beside that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Wendell Phillips—­I want that woman to go to heaven a free angel from this Republic.  The power lies in your hands to make us all free.  May the blessing of God be upon the hearts of every one of you, gentlemen; may the scales of prejudice fall from your eyes, and may you, representing the Senate of the United States, have the grand honor of telegraphing to us, to the millions of waiting women from one end of this country to the other, that the sixteenth amendment has been submitted to the ratification of the several legislatures of our States striking the word “male” out of the constitutions; and that this shall be, as we promise it to be, a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

    REMARKS BY MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.

Miss Anthony.  I now, gentlemen of the committee, introduce to you Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, from the extreme Northwest; and before she speaks I wish to say that she has been the one canvasser in the great State of Oregon and Washington Territory, and that it is to Mrs. Duniway that the women of Washington Territory are more indebted than to all other influences for their enfranchisement.

Mrs. Duniway.  Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible that an agitation like this can go on and on forever without a victory?