By August, 1864, the signatures to the petitions had reached almost 400,000.  Again and again Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson had written Miss Anthony that these petitions formed the bulwark of their demand for congressional action to abolish slavery.  Public sentiment on this point had now become emphatic, the Senate had passed the bill for the prohibition of slavery, and the intention of the House of Representatives was so apparent that it did not seem necessary to continue the petitions.  The headquarters in Cooper Institute were closed, and the magnificent work, which from this center had radiated throughout the country, found its reward in the proposition by Congress, on February 1, 1865, for Amendment XIII to the Federal Constitution: 

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The faithful, untiring, persistent chief of this Women’s National Loyal League was Susan B. Anthony, whose only material reminder of that great achievement for the freedom of the slave is the arm-chair in which, for the past thirty-five years, she has sat and conducted her vast correspondence in the interest of liberty for the half of humanity still in bondage; yet in the blessed thought that her efforts were an important factor in securing freedom for millions of her fellow-creatures, she has been rewarded a thousandfold.  But what words can express her sense of humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully still held her unworthy a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation, the negro men just emerged from slavery and not only totally illiterate but also densely ignorant of every public question?

[Autograph:  Elizabeth Blackwell]

There never can be an adequate portrayal of the services rendered by the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and self-sacrificing as were the men.  A comparison of values is impossible, but women’s labors supplemented those of men, and together they wrought out the freedom of the slave and the salvation of the Union.  Among the great body of women, a few stand out in immortal light.  The plan of the vital campaign of the Tennessee, one of the great strategic movements of history, was made by Anna Ella Carroll.  The work of Dorothea Dix, government superintendent of women nurses, with its onerous and important duties, needs no eulogy.  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, fresh from England and an intimacy with Florence Nightingale, originated the Sanitary Commission.  No name is held in more profound reverence than that of Clara Barton, for her matchless services upon the battlefield among the dead and dying.  To Josephine S. Griffing belongs the full credit of