On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman?  I am a property-owner, the head of a household.  By what right do you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between me and a man?  Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God.  Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best and most of himself.

If American men could say, as Huxley says, “I scorn to lay a single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the beginning has so heavily burdened,” the sexes would cease to war, men and women would reign together, the equal companions, friends, helpers and lovers that nature intended they should be.  But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice?  Tyranny and servitude, that is all, brute supremacy, spiritual slavery.  By what authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political equality, if even six women citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand both?

All the women’s papers expressed indignation, and there was general rejoicing when, at the next election, Mr. Wadleigh was superseded by Hon. Henry W. Blair.

The first favorable consideration this question ever received from the Senate was the minority report of this committee, signed by Senators George F. Hoar, John H. Mitchell and Angus Cameron, an unanswerable argument for the enfranchisement of women.[95] It declared that “the people of the United States are committed to the doctrine of universal suffrage by their constitution, their history and their opinions, and by it they must stand or fall.”  One week later the bill admitting women to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate, grandly advocated by Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar.

[Autograph:  I am yrs very truly Geo F Hoar]

After the convention Miss Anthony went to Tenafly with Mrs. Stanton for a few days, to aid in disentangling the mass of material which was being prepared for the History; then started again into the lecture field, commencing at Skowhegan, Me.  She lectured through New Hampshire and Vermont, taking long sleigh-rides from point to point, through wind and sleet, but comforted by the thought that many of her audience had done likewise to receive the gospel she preached.  On her way westward she stopped at home for one short day, the first for four months, and then started on the old route through the States of the Middle West,