that three days’ discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan’s proposition to strike out the word “male.”  Well do I recollect with what anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and how we longed that Congress might then declare for the establishment in this District of a real republic.  But conscience or courage or something was wanting, and women were bidden still to wait.

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first voted, the success of that election inspired Congress with confidence to pass the proposition for the Fifteenth Amendment, and the different States to ratify it, until it has become a fixed fact that black men all over the nation not only may vote but sit in legislative assemblies and constitutional conventions.  We now ask Congress to do the same for women.  We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic yet stand.  There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to make the experiment.  Therefore, we most earnestly urge it, in full faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its beneficial results, they will go forward with a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit any State from disfranchising any of its citizens on account of sex.

A letter from Mrs. Fannie Howland in the Hartford Courant thus describes the hearing: 

Senator Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who took their seats around a long table.  Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified.  Behind her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces.  Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention.  So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.

The scene was impressive.  It was simple, grand, historic.  Women have often appeared in history—­noble, brilliant, heroic women; but woman collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the commonwealth—­not in virtue of hereditary noblesse—­not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as man.  There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light, fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty and briefer fealties of homage.  The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of everyday