effected by the Republican legislatures, in the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives, mothers and widows, and by the election and appointment of women to the superintendence of education, charities and other public trusts.  The honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights, privileges and immunities should be treated with respectful consideration.”  In a letter from Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, she says, “Well, the Republicans have thickened the old sop and re-served it.”

The women were determined to obtain a recognition at the centennial celebration to be held July 4, in Independence Square.  “It is the hour, the golden hour, for woman to speak her word which shall roll down our second century as has man’s Fourth of July manifesto through the last one hundred years,” wrote Miss Anthony.  Then she and Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage put their heads together and framed a document which had all the holy fire of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and this they proposed to have made a part of the-great day’s proceedings.[88] Their efforts to this end, their repulse and their subsequent action are so delightfully described in the History of Woman Suffrage that it would be presumptuous to attempt to improve upon it.  Their utmost efforts could obtain but four seats on the platform.  Miss Anthony had a ticket as reporter for her brother’s paper.  The earnest request of Mrs. Stanton, president of the National Suffrage Association, to General Joseph R. Hawley, president of the Centennial Commission, not that the women might read but simply might present their declaration, was refused on the ground that the program could not be changed.  The report thus continues: 

As President Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting Vice-President, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was to officiate in his place and he, too, was addressed by note, and courteously requested to make time for the reception of this declaration.  As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he would render his aid.  Yet he was forgetful that in his position that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of a hundred years, and he too refused; thus the simple request of woman for a half moment’s recognition on the nation’s centennial birthday was denied by all in authority.

While the women of the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the right of public protest, lavish preparations were made for the reception and entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons of monarchial institutions.  Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a representative of that form of government against which the United States is a perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with fulsome adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of the day; Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose shoulders rests the promise