[Footnote 87:  When this work finally was issued at $15 per set, every one of these pledges was carefully fulfilled, necessarily at a great pecuniary loss.]

[Footnote 88:  For full text of this magnificent document see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.  III, p. 31.]

[Footnote 89:  The little teapot and the cup and saucer which she used now stand upon Miss Anthony’s sideboard.]

[Footnote 90:  To this work, which these women expected to accomplish in four months, they gave every day that could be spared from other duties for the next ten years!]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

COLORADO CAMPAIGN—­POLITICAL ATTITUDE.

1877-1878.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Virginia L. Minor rendered useless any further efforts to obtain suffrage under the National Constitution until it should be amended for this special purpose.  The agitation of the last eight years, however, had not been without its value.  The student of history will observe that the ablest constitutional arguments ever made in favor of the practical application of the great underlying principles of our government, were those of Benjamin F. Butler, A.G.  Riddle, Henry R. Selden, William Loughridge, Francis Minor, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage on the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.  These were reviewed by the newspapers and law journals and widely discussed by the people, while the congressional debates, published in the Record, became a part of history.

Although from the standpoint of justice these arguments were unanswerable, they did not succeed in establishing the political rights of women, and the advocates therefore were compelled to return to their former policy of demanding a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which should protect them as the Fifteenth protected the negroes.  To this end, in November, 1876, an earnest appeal was sent out by Mrs. Stanton, president; Miss Anthony, secretary; and Mrs. Gage, chairman of the executive committee of the National Association, asking the women to secure petitions for the amendment and send them to the annual meeting.  Two letters received by Miss Anthony in January, 1877, illustrate the wide difference of opinion which prevailed.  Wm. Lloyd Garrison wrote: 

You desire me to send you a letter, to be read at the Washington convention, in favor of a petition to Congress, asking that body to submit to the several States a Sixteenth Amendment securing suffrage for all, irrespective of sex.  On fully considering the subject, I must decline doing so, because such a petition I deem to be quite premature.  If its request were complied with by the present Congress—­a supposition simply preposterous—­the proposed amendment would be rejected by every State in the Union, and in nearly every instance by such an overwhelming