The History of Woman Suffrage Volume I Part 20

WISCONSIN.

In September and October, 1853, I traveled 900 miles in Wisconsin, as agent of the Woman's State Temperance Society, speaking in forty-three towns to audiences estimated at 30,000 in the aggregate, people coming in their own conveyances from five to twenty miles. I went to Wisconsin under an engagement to labor as agent of the State Temperance League, an organization composed of both s.e.xes and officered by leading temperance men--at the earnest and repeated solicitations of its delegates whom I met at the "Whole World's Temperance Convention," held in New York City in September, and who were commissioned by the League to employ speakers to canva.s.s the State; the object being to procure the enactment of a "Maine Law" by the next Legislature. These delegates had counseled, among others, with Horace Greeley, who advised my employment, curiosity to hear a woman promising to call out larger audiences and more votes for temperance candidates in the pending election.

I, at first, declined to make the engagement, on the ground that I could not be spared from my newspaper duties; but to escape further importunity, finally consented to "ask my husband at home," and report at New York, where one of the gentlemen would await my answer, and myself, if I decided to accept their proposition. My husband's cheerful, "Go, wife, you will be doing just the work you love, and enjoying a journey which you have not means otherwise to undertake,"

and a notice from Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler, that she would join us in the trip with a view to arranging for physiological lectures at eligible points in the State, decided me to go. Mrs. F.'s company was not only a social acquisition, but a happy insurance against pot-house witlings on the alert to impale upon the world's dread laugh, any woman who, to accomplish some public good, should venture for a s.p.a.ce to cut loose from the marital "b.u.t.tons" and go out into the world alone!

In making the engagement, I had taken it for granted, that the right and propriety of woman's public advocacy of temperance was a settled question in the field to which I was invited. But arrived at Milwaukee, I found that the popular prejudice against women as public speakers, and especially the advocacy of Woman's Rights, with which I had for years been identified, had been stirred to its most disgusting depths by a reverend gentleman who had preceded us, and who had for years been a salaried "agent at large," of the New York State Temperance Society. A highly respectable minority of the Executive Committee of the League endorsed the action of their delegation, but were overruled by a numerical majority, and I found myself in the position of agent "at large," while the reverend traducer secured his engagement in my place.

This turn of affairs, embarra.s.sing at first, proved in the end providential--a timely clearance for a more congenial craft--since the women of the State had organized a Woman's State Temperance Society, and advertised a Convention to meet the following week at Delavan, the populous s.h.i.+re town of Walworth County, fifty miles distant in the interior. Thither the friendly Leaguers proposed to take us. Meantime it was arranged that Mrs. F. and I should address the citizens of Milwaukee. A capacious church was engaged for Sabbath evening, from which hundreds went away unable to get in. But neither clergyman nor layman could be found willing to commit himself by opening the services; and with "head uncovered," in a church in which it was "a shame for a woman to speak," I rested my burden with the dear Father, as only burdens are rested with Him, in conscious unity of purpose.

Mrs. F. addressed the audience on the physiological effects of alcoholic drinks. I followed, quoting from the prophecy of King Lemuel, that "his mother taught him," Proverbs x.x.xi., verses 4, 5, 8, 9, "Open thy mouth for the dumb; in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy." The spirit moved audience and speaker. We forgot ourselves; forgot everything but "the poor and needy," the drunkard's wife and children "appointed to destruction"

through license laws and alienated civil rights.

At Delavan we met a body of earnest men and women, indignant at the action of the Executive Committee of the League, to which many of them had contributed funds for the campaign, and ready to a.s.sume the responsibility of my engagement, and the expenses of Mrs. F., who in following out her original plan, generously consented to precede my lectures with a brief physiological dissertation apropos to the object of the canva.s.s. The burden of the speaking, as planned, rested with me, provided my hitherto untested physical ability proved equal, as it did, to the daily effort.

In counsel with Mrs. R. Ostrander, President of the Society, and her sister officials, women of character and intelligence, I could explain, as I could not have done to any body of equally worthy men, that in justice to ourselves, to them, and to the cause we had at heart, we must make the canva.s.s in a spirit and in conditions above reproach. "I can not come down from my work," said Miss Lyon, founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, when importuned to rebut some baseless scandal. To fight our way would be to mar the spirit and effect of our work. We must place the opposition at a disadvantage from the first; then we could afford to ignore it altogether and rise to a level with the humane issues of the campaign. It was accordingly arranged that the friends should make appointments and secure us suitable escort to neighboring towns; and to distant and less accessible points a gentleman was engaged to take us in a private carriage,--his wife, a woman of rare talent and fine culture, to accompany us. A programme which was advertised in the local papers and happily carried out.

From Delavan we returned to Milwaukee to perfect our arrangements.

From thence our next move was to Waukesha, the s.h.i.+re town of Waukesha County, twenty miles by rail, to a Temperance meeting advertised for "speaking and the transaction of business." The meeting was held in the Congregational church, the pastor acting as chairman. The real business of the meeting was soon disposed of, and then was enacted the most amusing farce it was ever my lot to witness. The chairman and his deacon led off in a long-drawn debate on sundry matters of no importance, and of less interest to the audience, members of which attempted in vain, by motions and votes, to cut it short. When it had become sufficiently apparent that the gentlemen were "talking against time" to prevent speaking, there were calls for speakers. The chairman replied that it was a "business meeting, but Rev. Mr. ----, from Illinois, would lecture in the evening." Several gentlemen rose to protest. One said he "had walked seven miles that his wife and daughters might ride, to hear the ladies speak." Another had "ridden horseback twelve miles to hear them." A storm was impending; the chairman was prepared; he declared the meeting adjourned and with his deacon left the house.

There was a hurried consultation in the ante-room, which resulted in an urgent request for "Mrs. Nichols to remain and speak in the evening." The speaker noticed for the evening, joined heartily in the request; "half an hour was all the time he wanted." But when the evening came, he insisted that I should speak first, and when I should have given way for him, a.s.sured me that he "had made arrangements to speak the next evening," and joined in the "go on, go on!" of the audience. So it was decided that I should remain over the Sabbath, and Mrs. F. return with the friends to Milwaukee.

Meantime it had transpired that in the audience were several Vermonters from a settlement of fourteen families from the vicinity of my home; among them a lady from my native town; we had been girls together. "We know all about Mrs. N.," said one. "We take the _Tribune_, and friends at home send us her paper." So the good Father had sent vouchers for His agent at large. But this was not all. I had a pleasant reserve for the evening. I had recognized in the deacon, a friend from whom I had parted twenty-one years before in Western New York. In the generous confidence of youthful enthusiasm we had enlisted in the cold-water army; together pledged ourselves to fight the liquor interest to the death. And here my old friend, whose debut on the Temperance platform I had aided and cheered, had talked a full hour to prevent me from being heard! Was I indignant? Was I grieved?

Nay! It was not a personal matter. Time's graver had made us strange to each other. His name and voice had revealed him to me; but the name I bore was not that by which he had known me. Besides, I remembered that twenty-one years before, I could not have been persuaded to hear a woman speak on any public occasion, and I had nothing to forgive,--my friend had only stood still where I had left him. Such, suppressing his name, was the story I told my audience on that evening. And with his puzzled and kindly face intently regarding me, I a.s.sured my hearers that I had not a doubt of his whole-souled and manly support in my present work. Nor was I disappointed.

Next morning, (Sabbath) I listened to a scholarly sermon on infidel issues and innovations from the chairman of the "business meeting" of the previous afternoon, he having stayed away from my lecture to prepare it. In the evening, after the temperance lecture of my Illinois friend, I improved the opportunity of a call from the audience, the Rev. Chairman being present, to meet certain points of the sermon, personal to myself and the advocates of rights for women, closing with a brief confession of my faith in Christ's rule of love and duty as impressing every human being into the service of a common humanity--the right to serve being commensurate with the obligation, as of G.o.d and not of man.

One week later, another business meeting was held in the same house, and in its published proceedings was a resolution introduced by the Rev. Chairman, endorsing Mrs. Nichols, and inviting her "to be present and speak" at a County Convention appointed for a subsequent day. Not long after he sent me, through a brother clergyman, an apology that would have disarmed resentment, had I felt any, toward a man who, having opposed me without discourtesy and retracted by a published resolution, was yet not satisfied without tendering a private apology.

I had achieved a grateful success; license to "plead the cause of the poor and needy," where, _how_ to do so, without offending old-time ideas of woman's sphere, had seemed to the women under whose direction I had taken the field, the real question at issue. In consideration of existing prejudices, they had suggested the prudence of silence on the subject of Woman's Rights. And here, on the very threshold of the campaign, I had been compelled to vindicate my right to speak for woman; as a woman, to speak for her from any stand-point of life to which nature, custom, or law had a.s.signed her. I had no choice, no hope of success, but in presenting her case as it stood before G.o.d and my own soul. To neither could I turn traitor, and do the work, or satisfy the aspirations of a true and loving woman.

For more than a quarter of a century earnest men had spoken, and failed to secure justice to the poor and needy, "appointed to destruction" by the liquor traffic. They had failed because they had denied woman's right to help them, and taken from her the means to help herself. In speaking for woman, I must be heard from a domestic level of legal pauperism disenchanted of all political prestige. In appealing to the powers that be, I must appeal from sovereigns drunk to sovereigns sober,--with eight chances in ten that the decision would be controlled by sovereigns drunk.

To impress the paramount claim of women to a no-license law, without laying bare the legal and political disabilities that make them "the greatest sufferers," the helpless victims of the liquor traffic, was impossible. It would have been stupidly unwise to withhold what with a majority of voters is the weightier consideration, that in alienating from women their earnings, governments impose upon community taxes for the support of the paupered children of drunken fathers, whose mothers would joyfully support and train them for usefulness; and who, as a rule, have done so when by the death or divorce of the husband they have regained the control of their earnings and the custody of their children. Thus proving, that man, by his disabling laws, has made woman helpless and dependent, and not G.o.d, who has endowed her with capabilities equal to the responsibilities He has imposed.

Worse than unwise would it have been to allow an unjust prejudice against Woman's Rights, to turn the edge of my appeals for a law in the interest of temperance, when by showing the connection, as of cause and effect, between men's rights and women's wrongs, between women's _no_-rights and their helplessness and dependence, I could disarm that prejudice and win an intelligent support for both temperance and equal rights. On such a showing I based my appeals to the n.o.ble men and women of Wisconsin. I a.s.sured my audiences, that I had not come to talk to them of "Woman's Rights," that indeed I did not find that women had any rights in the matter, but to "suffer and be still; to die and give no sign." But I had come to them to speak of _man's rights_ and _woman's needs_.

From the Lake Sh.o.r.e cities, from the inland villages, the s.h.i.+re towns, and the mining communities of the Mississippi, whose churches, court-houses, and halls, with two or three exceptions, could not hold the audiences, much less seat them; the responses were hearty, and when outspoken, curiously alike in language as well as sentiment on the subject of rights. "I like Mrs. Nichols' idea of talking man's rights; the result will be woman's rights," said a gentleman rising in his place in the audience at the close of one of my lectures. On another occasion, "Let Mrs. Nichols go on talking men's rights and we'll have women's rights." "Mrs. Nichols has made me ashamed of myself--ashamed of my s.e.x! I didn't know we had been so mean to the women," was the outspoken conclusion of a man who had lived honored and respected, his threescore years and ten. This reaction from the curiosity and doubt which everywhere met us in the expressive faces of the people, often reminded me of an incident in my Vermont labors for a Maine law.

In accepting an invitation to address an audience of ladies in the aristocratic old town of C----, in an adjoining county, I had suggested, that as it was votes we needed, I would prefer to address an audience of both s.e.xes. Arrived at C----, I found that the ladies of the committee, having acted upon my suggestion, were intensely anxious as to the result. "An audience," they said, "could not be collected to listen to woman's rights; the people were sensitive even to the innovation of a mixed audience for a woman, and they felt that I ought to be informed of the facts." And I felt in every nerve, that they were suffering from fear lest I should fail to vindicate the womanliness of our joint venture. But the people came, a church, full; intelligent, expectant, and curious to hear a woman. The resident clergyman, of my own faith, declined to be present and open with prayer. A resident Universalist clergyman present, declined to pray. A young Methodist licentiate in the audience, not feeling at liberty to decline, tried. His ideas stumbled; his words. .h.i.tched, and when he prayed: "Bless thy serv--a'hem--thy handmaid, and a'hem--and let all things be done decently and in order;" we in the committee pew felt as relieved as did the young Timothy when he had achieved his amen!

Utterly unnerved by the anxious faces of my committee, I turned to my audience with only the inspiration of homes devastated and families paupered, to sustain me in a desperate exhibit of the need and the "determination of women, impelled by the mother-love that shrinks neither from fire or flood, to rescue their loved ones from the fires and floods of the liquor traffic, though to do so they must make their way through every platform and pulpit in the land!" "Thank G.o.d!"

exclaimed the licentiate on my right. "Amen!" emphasized the chairman oh my left. My committee were radiant. My audience had accepted woman's rights in her wrongs; and I ---- only woman's recording angel can tell the sensations of a disfranchised woman when her "declaration of intentions" is endorsed by an Anti-Woman's Rights audience with fervent thanks to G.o.d!

Latter-day laborers can have little idea of the trials of the early worker, driven by the stress of right and duty against popular prejudices, to which her own training and early habits of thought have made her painfully sensitive. St. Paul, our patron saint, I think had just come through such a trial of his nerves when he wrote: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The memory of the beautiful scenery, the charming Indian summer skies, the restful companions.h.i.+p of our family party in the daily drive, and the generous hospitality of the people of Wisconsin, is one of the pleasantest of a life, as full of sweet memories as of trials, amid and through which they have clung to me with a saving grace.

The Temperance majority in the ensuing election, so far as influenced by canva.s.sing agents, was due to the combined efforts of all who labored for it, and of these it was my good fortune to meet a younger brother of William H. and O. C. Burleigh, who from his man's stand-point of precedents and statistics did excellent service.

The law enacted by the Legislature securing to the wives of drunkards their earnings and the custody and earnings of their minor children, I think I may claim as a result of appeals from the home stand-point of woman's sphere. As a financial measure diverting the supplies and lessening the profits of the liquor traffic, this law is a civil service reform of no mean promise for the abatement of pauper and criminal taxes. In a plea of counsel for defendant in a case of wife-beating to which I once listened, said the gentlemanly attorney: "If Patrick will let the bottle alone"--"Please, your honor," broke in the weeping wife, "if you will stop Misthur Kelly from filling it."

KANSAS.

In October, 1854, with my two eldest sons, I joined a company of two hundred and twenty-five men, women, and children, emigrants from the East to Kansas. In our pa.s.sage up the Missouri River I gave two lectures by invitation of a committee of emigrants and Captain Choteau and brother, owners of the boat. A pious M.D. was terribly shocked at the prospect, and hurried his young wife to bed, but returned to the cabin himself in good time to hear. As the position was quite central, and I wished to be heard distinctly by the crowd which occupied all the standing room around the cabin, I took my stand opposite the Doctor's berth. Next morning, poor man! his wife was an outspoken advocate of woman's rights. The next evening she punched his ribs vigorously, at every point made for suffrage, which was the subject of my second lecture.

The 1st of November, 1854--a day never to be forgotten--heaven and earth clasped hands in silent benedictions on that band of immigrants, some on foot, some on horseback, women and children, seventy-five in number, with the company's baggage, in ox-carts and wagons drawn by the fat, the broken-down, and the indifferent "hacks" of wondering, scowling Missouri, scattered all along the prairie road from Kansas City to Lawrence, the Mecca of their pilgrimage.

In advance of all these, at 11 o'clock A.M., Mrs. H---- and myself were sitting in front of the Lawrence office of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, in the covered wagon of Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, who had brought us from Kansas City, and entered the office to announce the arrival of our company; when a hilarious explosion of several voices a.s.sured us that good lungs as well as brave hearts were within.

Directly Col. P. and Dr. (Governor) Robinson came out. "Did you hear the cheering?" asked the Doctor. "I did, and was thinking when you came out, what a popular man the Colonel must be to call forth such a greeting!" "But the cheers were for Mrs. Nichols," was the reply; and the Doctor proceeded to tell us that, "the boys" had been hotly discussing women's rights, when one of their advocates who had heard her lecture, expressed a wish that his opponents could hear Antoinette Brown on the subject; a second wished they could hear Susan B.

Anthony; and a third wished they could hear Mrs. Nichols. On the heels of these wishes, the announcement of Colonel Pomeroy, that "Mrs.

Nichols was at the door," was the signal for triumphant cheering. "The boys" wanted a lecture in the evening. The Doctor said: "No; Mrs.

Nichols is tired. To-morrow the thatching of the church will be completed, and she can dedicate the building."

Thus truths sown broadcast among the stereotyped beliefs and prejudices of the old and populous communities of the East, had wrought a genial welcome for myself and the advocacy of woman's cause on the disputed soil of Kansas. But, alas! for the "stony ground." One of "the boys" didn't stay to the "dedication." He had "come to Kansas to get away from the women," and left at once for Leavenworth. I wonder if the Judge--he is that now, and a benedict--remembers? I still regret that lost opportunity for making his acquaintance.

At Lawrence, the objective point of all the Free State immigration, where I spent six weeks in a.s.sisting my sons to make a home for the winter, I mingled freely with the incoming population, and gave several lectures to audiences of from two to three hundred, the entire population coming together at the ringing of the city dinnerbell. I returned to Vermont early in January, 1855, and in April following, with two hundred and fifty emigrants (my husband and younger son accompanying me), rejoined my other sons in the vicinity of Baldwin City, where we took claims and commenced homes. I presented the whole subject of Woman's Rights on the boats in going and returning, as at first, by invitation. In the summer of 1855, delegates were elected to a Const.i.tutional Convention, which later convened at Topeka. Governor Robinson, who with six other delegates voted for the exclusion of the word "male" from qualification for elector, sent me an invitation to attend its sessions, speak before it for woman's equality, and they would vote me a secretary's or clerk's position in the Convention. My husband's fatal illness prevented me from going.

In January, 1856, I returned from Kansas to Vermont, widowed and broken in health, to attend to matters connected with my husband's estate. Prevented by the ruffian blockade of the Missouri from returning as intended, I spent some time in the summer and all of the autumn of 1856 and January, 1857, lecturing upon Kansas, the character and significance of its political involvements, its promise and importance as a free or slave State, and its claims to an efficient support in the interest of freedom. In September, being appealed to by the "Kansas National Aid Committee," at the instance of Horace Greeley, I engaged for two months in a canva.s.s of Western New York, lecturing and procuring the appointment of committees of women to collect supplies for the suffering people of Kansas; my two oldest sons, C. H. and A. O. Carpenter being among its armed defenders, the latter having been wounded in the fight between the invaders under Captain Pate and the forces under John Brown and Captain S. Sh.o.r.es, at Black Jack.

Between May, 1856, and February, 1857 (not counting my engagement with the Aid Committee), I gave some fifty Kansas lectures in the States of Vermont, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York, followed occasionally by one or two lectures on the legal and political disabilities of women; receiving more invitations on both subjects than I could possibly fill.

My experiences in these semi-political labors were often racy, never unsatisfactory. In a public conveyance one day, an honest old Pennsylvania farmer asked if I was "the lady who made an appointment to speak in his place on Kansas, and did not come?" I replied that I had filled all the appointments made for me with my knowledge; that I made a point of keeping my promises. "I believe you, ma'am," said he.

"I suspicioned then it was jest a republican trick. You see, ma'am, our folks all are dimocrats and wouldn't turn out to hear the republican speakers; so they appointed a meeting for _you_ and everybody turned out, for we'd hearn of your lectures. But instid of you, General D---- and Lawyer C---- came, and we were mad enough. I was madder, 'cause I'd opened my house, seein' as it was the largest and most convenient in the neighborhood."

Occasionally I stumbled on a loose segment of woman's sphere, even among the friends of "free Kansas." In a populous Vermont village, at a meeting called for the purpose, a committee was appointed to invite me to speak, composed of the two clergymen of the village and Judge S----. Reverend W---- excused himself from the service on the ground of "conscientious scruples as to the propriety of women speaking in public." Judge S----, a man who for a quarter of a century had, by a racy combination of wit and logic, maintained his ground against the foes of temperance and freedom, with inimitable gravity thanked the audience for the honor conferred on him; adding, "I have no conscientious scruples about getting desirable information wherever I can find it."

In Sinclairville, Chautauque County, New York, where I arrived late, in consequence of a railroad accident, I found a crowded church. A gentleman introduced to me as "Mr. Bull" was sitting at a table in the extreme front corner of the s.p.a.cious platform, recording the names and advance payments of a cla.s.s in music, which, as I had been told outside, was being organized by a gentleman who had arrived with the news of my probable detention.

During the next half hour gentlemen rose at three several times and requested Mr. B---- to "postpone the cla.s.s business till the close of the lecture: that people had come from a distance to hear the lecture, and were anxious to return home, the night being dark and rainy." "I will be through soon. I like to finish a thing when I begin."

"There'll be time enough," were the several replies, given in a tone and with an emphasis that suggested to my mind a doubt of the speaker's sympathy with my subject. When the clock pointed to eight, I quietly took my seat in the desk and was smoothing my page of notes when there fell on my astonished ear--"I was about to introduce the lady speaker, but she has suddenly disappeared." Stepping forward, I said, "Excuse me, sir; as the hour is very late I took my place to be in readiness when you should be through with your cla.s.s." "Madam, you will speak on this platform." "I noticed, sir, that I could not see my audience from the platform, also that the desk was lighted for me."

"Madam, you can't speak in that pulpit!" "This is very strange. Will you give me your reasons?" "It's none of your business!" "Indeed, sir, I do not understand it. Will you give me your authority?" "It's my pulpit, and if you speak in this house to-night you speak from this platform!" "Excuse me, sir; I mistook you for the music-teacher, who, as I was told, was organizing a cla.s.s in music." And stepping quickly to the platform to restore the equanimity of the house, I remarked, as indicating my position, that my self-respect admonished me to be the lady always, no matter how ungentlemanly the treatment I might receive; that the cause of humanity, the cause of suffering Kansas was above all personal considerations, and proceeded with my lecture.

At the close, Mr. B---- arose and said: "I owe this audience an apology for my ungentlemanly language to Mrs. Nichols. I am aware that I shall get into the public prints, and I wish to set myself right." A gentleman in the audience rose and moved, "that we excuse the Rev. R.

B---- for his ungentlemanly language to Mrs. Nichols to-night, on the score of his ignorance." The motion was seconded with emphasis by a man of venerable presence. "Friends," I appealed, "this is a personal matter; it gives me no concern. It will affect neither me nor my work.

Please name suitable women for the committee of relief which I am here to ask." Business being concluded, I turned to Mr. B----, who was shut in with me by a press of sympathizing friends, and expressed my regret, that he should have said anything to place him under the necessity of apologizing, adding, "but I hope in future you will remember the words of Solomon: 'Greater is he that controlleth his own spirit, than he that taketh a city.' Good-night, sir." I learned that a few months before he had prevented his people from inviting Antoinette Brown to speak to them on Temperance, by declaring that "he would never set his foot in a pulpit that had been occupied by a woman." When three weeks later I heard of his dismissal from his charge in S----, I could appreciate the remark of his brother clergyman in a neighboring town, to whom I related the incident, that "Brother B---- is rather given to hooking with those horns of his, but he's in hot water now."

In the winter and spring of 1856, I had, by invitation of its editor, written a series of articles on the subject of woman's legal disabilities, preparatory to a plea for political equality, for the columns of the Kansas _Herald of Freedom_, the last number of which went down with the "_form_" and press of the office to the bottom of the Kansas river, when the Border ruffians sacked Lawrence in 1856.

In March, 1857, I again returned to Kansas, and with my daughter and youngest son, made a permanent home in Wyandotte County.

The Const.i.tution was adopted in November, 1859, by popular vote. In January, 1860, Kansas having been admitted to the Union, the first State Legislature met at Topeka, the capital of the new State. I attended its sessions, as I had those of the Convention, and addressed both in behalf of justice for the women of the State, as delegate of the Kansas Woman's Rights a.s.sociation. This a.s.sociation was formed in the spring of 1859 with special reference to the Convention which had already been called to meet in the July following, in the city of Wyandotte.

The a.s.sociation--if I recollect aright--numbered some twenty-five earnest men and women of the John Brown type, living in Moneka, Linn County; John O. Wattles, President; Susan Wattles, Secretary. Wendell Phillips, treasurer of the Francis Jackson Woman's Rights Fund, guaranteed payment of expenses, and the a.s.sociation sent me, with limited hopes and unstinted blessings, to canva.s.s the princ.i.p.al settlements in the Territory, obtain names to pet.i.tions and represent them--if allowed by courtesy of the Convention--in behalf of equal civil and political rights for the women of the State to be organized.

I was appealed to as the only woman in the Territory who had experience and could take the field, which was I believe true.

We had no material for Conventions, and the population was so spa.r.s.e, distances so great, and means of conveyance and communication so slow and uncertain, that I felt sure an attempt at Conventions would be disastrous, only betraying the weakness of our reserves, for I must have done most, if not all the speaking.

It was the policy of the Republicans to "keep shady," as a party. John Wattles came to Wyandotte before I addressed the Convention, counseled with members, and reported to me that "I didn't need him, that it was better that no man appear in it."