That this League did a timely educational work is manifested by the letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in most of the Northern States, fully indorsing its action and principles.  The clearness to thinking women of the cause of the War; the true policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining the principles of freedom, are worthy of consideration.  With this League abolitionists and Republicans heartily co-operated.  A course of lectures was delivered for its benefit in Cooper Institute, by such men as Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, William D. Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E.P.  Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Theodore D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Bellows.  Many letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its measures, and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of emancipation petitions being rolled into Congress.  The Republican press, too, was highly complimentary.  The New York Tribune said:  “The women of the Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their efforts to one subject, the most important which any society can aim at in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a petition.”

The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the women of the League, and yet these were the same women who, when demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for themselves, had been uniformly denounced as “unwise,” “imprudent,” “fanatical,” and “impracticable.”  During the six years they held their own claims in abeyance to those of the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as “wise, loyal, and clear-sighted.”  But when the slaves were emancipated, and these women asked that they should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun.  And thus it ever is:  so long as woman labors to second man’s endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.

Liberty, victorious over slavery on the battlefield, had now more powerful enemies to encounter at Washington.  The slaves set free, the master conquered, the South desolate; the two races standing face to face, sharing alike the sad results of war, turned with appealing looks to the general government, as if to say, “How stand we now?” “What next?” Questions our statesmen, beset with dangers, with fears for the nation’s life, of party divisions, of personal defeat, were wholly unprepared to answer.  The reconstruction of the South involved the reconsideration of the fundamental principles of our Government and the natural rights of man.  The nation’s heart was thrilled with prolonged debates in Congress and State legislatures, in the pulpits and public journals, and at every fireside on these vital questions, which took final shape in the three historic amendments to the Constitution.