As Miss Anthony took the train for Chicago, a woman-thief picked her pocket but she caught her and, without any appeal to the police, compelled her to deliver up the stolen goods.  At Chicago she lectured several times, visited the Freedmen’s Commission, heard General Howard, called on General Sherman, went to the board of trade, where she was greatly shocked at the roaring of the “bulls and bears,” and had pleasant visits with relatives in the city and adjacent towns, speaking at a number of these places.  She lectured at Battle Creek and Ann Arbor, arriving at Rochester September 23.  Pausing only for a brief visit, she went on to New York to fulfill the purpose which brought her eastward.  She stopped at Auburn to counsel with Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Worden, but found both very dubious about reviving interest in woman’s rights at this critical moment.  After a night of mapping out the campaign with Mrs. Stanton, she started out bright and early the next morning on that mission which she was to follow faithfully and steadfastly, without cessation or turning aside, for the next thirty years—­to compel the Constitution of the United States to recognize the political rights of woman!  The days were spent in hunting up old friends and supporters of the years before the war and enlisting their sympathies in the great work now at hand; and the evenings were occupied with Mrs. Stanton in preparing an appeal and a form of petition praying Congress to confer the suffrage on women.[35] This was the first demand ever made for Congressional action on this question.  The Fourteenth Amendment, as proposed, contained in Section 2, to which the women objected, the word “male” three times, and read as follows: 

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.  But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

If it had been adopted without this word “male,” all women would have been virtually enfranchised, as men would have let women vote rather than have them counted out of the basis of representation.  Thaddeus Stevens made a vigorous attempt to have women included in the provisions of this amendment.

[Autograph:  Thaddeus Stevens]