and those who did not make such recantation were discharged.  The speaker then referred to the power of the ballot.  No politician dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held the franchise.  Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can protect herself.

A form of petition was approved asking that women might be members of the coming Constitutional Convention and vote on the new constitution.  Respectful reports were made by the New York papers with the exception of the World, which said in a long and abusive article: 

Altogether the ablest, most dignified and best-balanced man in the body is Frederick Douglass, and there is a deep feeling for him for United States senator in spite of the drift of the convention, which is evidently in favor of Susan B. Anthony; notwithstanding which Elizabeth Cady Stanton is likewise a candidate with considerable strength, favoring as she does the Copperheads, the Democratic party and other dead and buried remains of alleged disloyalty.  Susan is lean, cadaverous and intellectual, with the proportions of a file and the voice of a hurdy-gurdy.  She is the favorite of the convention.  Mrs. Stanton is of intellectual stock, impressive in manner and disposed to henpeck the convention which of course calls out resistance and much cackling....  Susan has a controlling advantage over her in the fact that she is unencumbered with a husband.  As male members of Congress rarely have wives in Washington, so female members will be expected to be without husbands at the capital....

Parker Pillsbury, one of the notabilities of the body, is a good-looking white man naturally, but has a cowed and sneakish expression stealing over him, as though he regretted he had not been born a nigger or one of these females....  Lucy Stone, the president of the convention, is what the law terms a “spinster.”  She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or command....  Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic duties, habits and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic, dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated, oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore Tilton, make up the less than a hundred members of this caravan, called, by themselves, the American Equal Rights Association.

On December 6 and 7 a mass meeting was held in Cooper Institute, Miss Anthony presiding.  There were the usual effective speeches and large and appreciative audiences present at every session.  From New York the speakers went at once to Rochester and held a two days’ convention there.  The forces then divided and, under the management of Miss Anthony, held meetings in a large number of the towns of western and central New York, to arouse public sentiment in favor of giving women a representation at the Constitutional Convention.