our hands when they say smart things; but when we ask to be allowed to help them in any substantial way, by assisting them to choose the best men for our law-makers and rulers, they push us aside and tell us not to bother them.

On June 7 Miss Anthony and other prominent suffrage leaders attended the National Republican Convention, at Philadelphia, which adopted the following compromise: 

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful consideration.

At the close of this meeting, the faithful Sarah Pugh slipped $20 into Miss Anthony’s hand, telling her to go and confer with Mrs. Stanton.  She did so and they prepared a strong letter for the New York World, calling upon the Democrats at Baltimore to adopt a woman suffrage plank if they did not wish to compel the women of the country to work for the success of the Republican ticket.  Immediately after the Philadelphia convention, Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman’s Journal, wrote Miss Anthony: 

I have given my views to Mrs. Stanton as to the wisdom of concentrating the woman suffragists in support of the Republican candidates and platform.  I think if this is done earnestly, heartily and unselfishly, upon the ground of anti-slavery principle and of progressive tendencies, a strong and general reaction will set in and that, instead of “recognition,” as in 1872, we shall have endorsement and victory in 1876....  I believe you love the cause better than yourself.  I hope that you will see the wisdom of accepting the resolution in the friendly, generous spirit of the convention and, by accepting it, making it mean what we desire it should, which we can do if we will.

To this she replied on June 14: 

Your note is here.  My view of our true position is to hold ourselves as a balance of power, “to give aid and comfort,” as the Springfield Republican says, to the party which shall inscribe on its banners “Freedom to Woman.”  If I am a Republican or Liberal or Democrat per se and work for the party right or wrong, then I make of myself and my co-workers no added power for or against the one which adopts or rejects our claim for recognition.

I do not expect any man to see and act with me here, but I do not understand how any woman can do otherwise than refuse to accept any party which ignores her sex.  I will not work with a party today on the war issues or because it was true to them in the olden time; but I will work with the one which accepts the living, vital issue of today—­freedom to woman—­and I scarcely have a hope that Baltimore will step ahead of Philadelphia in her platform.  Grant’s recognition of citizens’