I have just read your letter, and it would have been a wet blanket to Susan and me were we not sure that we are right.  With three bills before Congress to exclude us from all hope of representation in the future, I thank God that two women of the nation felt the insult and decided to rouse the rest to use the only right we have in the government—­the right of petition.  If the petition goes with our names alone, ours be the glory, and the disgrace to all the rest!  We have sent out 1,000 franked by Representative James Brooks, of the New York Express, and if they come back to us empty, Susan and I will sign all of them, that every Democratic member may have one to shame those hypocritical Republicans.  When your granddaughters hear that against such insults you made no protest, they will blush for their ancestry.

This letter from Lucretia Mott shows that some men remained true to the woman’s cause:  “My husband and myself cordially hail this movement.  The negro’s hour came with his emancipation from cruel bondage.  He now has advocates not a few for his right to the ballot.  Intelligent as these are, they must see that this right can not be consistently withheld from women.  We pledge $50 toward the necessary funds.”  At this time Miss Anthony in a strong and earnest letter showed the injustice of the Standard’s behavior: 

How I do wish the good old Standard would preach the whole gospel of the whole loaf of republicanism; but I am sorry to say the present indications are that it will extend even less favor to us than ever before.  I gather this from Mr. Powell’s announcement to me last week that henceforth, if I were not going to give my personal efforts to the Standard, he should not publish notices of our meetings except at “full advertising rates.”  I was not a little startled but answered:  “Of course I shall say the Standard is the truest and best paper for negro suffrage; but I can not say that it is so for woman suffrage.”  He said he saw this and hereafter we must pay for all notices.

[Illustration:  Lucretia Mott]

Now, I do complain of this and with just cause, so long as $2,000 of the sainted Hovey’s money are sunk annually in the struggle to keep the Standard afloat, while Mr. Hovey’s will expressly says:  “In case chattel slavery should be abolished before the expenditure of the full amount, the residue shall be applied toward securing woman’s rights,” etc.  Mr. Pillsbury told the Hovey Committee last winter, after abolition was proclaimed, that he could not in conscience accept his salary from them as editor of the Standard for another year unless it should advocate woman’s claims equally with those of the negro.

In her diary she writes:  “Even Charles Sumner bends to the spirit of compromise and presents a constitutional amendment which concedes the right to disfranchise law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.”  Robert Purvis again expressed his cordial sympathy: