As everybody in the hall was allowed to vote there was no difficulty in securing the desired endorsement of an amendment to enfranchise negro men and make them the political superiors of all women.  There never had been a convention so dominated by men.  Although the audience refused to listen to most of them and drowned their voices by expressions of disapproval and calls for the women speakers, they practically wrested the control of the meeting from the hands of the women and managed it to suit themselves.

This was Mrs. Livermore’s first appearance at one of these anniversaries and she created a commotion by introducing this resolution:  “While we recognize the disabilities which legal marriage imposes upon woman as wife and mother, and while we pledge ourselves to seek their removal by putting her on equal terms with man, we abhorrently repudiate ‘free loveism’ as horrible and mischievous to society, and disown any sympathy with it.”  It was the first time the subject had been brought before a woman’s rights convention and its introduction was indignantly resented by the “old guard.”  Lucy Stone exclaimed:  “I feel it is a mortal shame to give any foundation for the implication that we favor ‘free loveism.’  I am ashamed that the question should be raised here.  There should be nothing at all said about it.  Do not let us, for the sake of our own self-respect, allow it to be hinted that we helped to forge a shadow of a chain which comes in the name of ‘free love.’  I am unwilling that it should be suggested that this great, sacred cause of ours means anything but what we have said it does.  If any one says to us, ’Oh, I know what you mean, you mean free love by this agitation,’ let the lie stick in his throat.”

Mrs. Rose followed with a strong protest, saying:  “I think it strange that the question of ‘free love’ should have been brought upon this platform.  I object to Mrs. Livermore’s resolution, not on account of its principles, but on account of its pleading guilty.  When a man tries to convince me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers.  If we pass this resolution that we are not ‘free lovers,’ people will say, ‘It is true that you are, for you try to hide it.’  Lucretia Mott’s name has been mentioned as a friend of ‘free love,’ but I hurl back the lie into the faces of those who uttered it.  We have been thirty years in this city before the public, and it is an insult to all the women who have labored in this cause; it is an insult to the thousands and tens of thousands of men and women who have listened to us in our conventions, to say at this late hour, ‘We are not free lovers.’”

The charge of “free love” was vigorously repudiated by Miss Anthony also, who closed the discussion by asserting:  “This howl comes from the men who know that when women get their rights they will be able to live honestly and not be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in or out of marriage.  There are very few women in the world who would enter into this relationship with drunkards and libertines provided they could get their subsistence in any other way.  We can not be frightened from our purpose, the public mind can not long be prejudiced by this ‘free love’ cry of our enemies.”  Olive Logan poured oil upon the troubled waters in a graceful speech, and the subject was dropped.