If you are ready to go forth into this canvass saying that you endorse the party on any other point or for any other cause than that of its recognition of woman’s claim to vote, I am not and I shall not thus go.  To the contrary, I shall work for the Republican party and call on all women to join me, precisely as we thanked the Democrats of Wyoming and Kansas, and Hon. James Brooks and Senator Cowan, viz:  for what that party has done and promises to do for woman, nothing more, nothing less.

Then again, I shall not join with the Republicans in hounding Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the Democracy.  Greeley and all the Liberals are just as good and true Republicans as ever; and the fact that old pro-slavery men propose to vote for him no more makes him pro-slavery than the drunkards’ or rum-sellers’ vote for him makes him a friend and advocate of the liquor traffic.  My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the Harpers’ cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the Republican press.  It is not fair for us to join in the cry that everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a Democrat or an apostate.

I shall try to be “careful and not captious,” as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers.  And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform to aid mere Republican partisanship.

Miss Anthony never has abandoned this position and the leading advocates of woman suffrage stand with her squarely upon the ground that no party, whatever its principles, shall have their sanction and advocacy until it shall make an unequivocal declaration in favor of the enfranchisement of women and support this by means of the party press and platform.

There was a desire on the part of many women to test the right to vote which they claimed was conferred on them by the Fourteenth Amendment, and in 1872 a number in different places attempted to cast their ballots at the November election.  A few were accepted by the inspectors, but most of them were refused.  On Friday morning, November 1, Miss Anthony read, at the head of the editorial columns of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the following strong plea: 

Now register!  Today and tomorrow are the only remaining opportunities.  If you were not permitted to vote, you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it.  You have it now at the cost of five minutes’ time to be spent in seeking your place of registration and having your name entered.  And yet, on election day, less than a week hence, hundreds of you are likely to lose your votes because you have not thought it worth while to give the five minutes.  Today and tomorrow are your only opportunities.  Register now!