[Autograph:  B.F.  Wade]

[Autograph:  With the respects of B. Gratz Brown]

The Republican press was equally hostile to the proposition to enfranchise women.  Mr. Greeley, who in times past had been so staunch a supporter of woman’s rights, now said in the New York Tribune: 

A CRY FROM THE FEMALES,—....  Our heart warms with pity towards these unfortunate creatures.  We fancy that we can see them, deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of cotton-padding.  Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her eye!  There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern monarch, that his wife was sovereign of the empire, because she ruled his little ones and his little ones ruled him.  The sure panacea for such ills as the Massachusetts petitioners complain of, is a wicker-work cradle and a dimple-cheeked baby.

The New York Post, which under Mr. Bryant’s editorship had favored the enfranchisement of women, also took ground against it now, and this was the attitude of Republican papers in all parts of the country.  The Democratic press was opposed, except when it could make capital against the Republicans by espousing it.

In November Miss Anthony went to a great anti-slavery meeting in Philadelphia.  Between the two sessions, Lucretia Mott invited about twenty of the leading men and women to lunch with her.  At her request Miss Anthony acted as spokesman and, in behalf of the women, begged Mr. Phillips to reconsider his position and make the woman’s and the negro’s cause identical, but here, in the presence of the women who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in all his hard-fought battles of the last twenty years, he again refused, declaring that their time had not yet come.  Miss Anthony sent the most impassioned appeals to the Joint Committee of Fifteen, with Thaddeus Stevens as chairman, which had charge of the congressional policy on reconstruction, urging that if they could not report favorably on the petitions, at least they would not interpose any new barrier against woman’s right to the ballot; but, although Mr. Stevens had ever been friendly to the claims of women, he refused to recognize them now.  Everywhere they were met by the cry, “This is the negro’s hour!”

It was a long time before the women could believe that the Republicans and Abolitionists, who had advocated their cause for years, would forsake them at this critical moment.  The letters written during this period showed the agony of spirit they endured as they beheld one after another repudiating their demands and setting them aside in favor of the negro.  Not only did the men thus abandon the cause of equal rights but, by their specious arguments, they persuaded many of the women that it was their duty to sacrifice their own claims and devote themselves to securing suffrage for the colored men.  This indignant letter from Mrs. Stanton to one of the “old guard,” who at first declined to circulate petitions, will serve as an example of many which were sent to the women: