Mrs. M. M. COLE read the following letter:
VINELAND, N. J., May 10, 1870.
MY DEAR FRIENDS: I once had a neighbor who was for years entirely crippled with rheumatism, and she, when asked, "How are you to-day?" invariably answered, "Better, I thank you, to-day than I was yesterday. Hope I shall be right smart to-morrow." So, friends, I could say, unasked, I am better this year than I was last, and I hope to keep on in this line until 1876, and be able then to stand with you once more upon the platform of equal rights, and shout "Hallelujahs" over the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment; over the crowning of my labors of twenty-five years, during which time I have not failed to ask for the right of suffrage for all citizens of this Republic, of sane mind and adult years, without regard to race, color, or s.e.x.
"The good time coming is almost here."
Yours in faith,
FRANCES D. GAGE.
The President read a letter just received from Mr. Tilton:
NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.
_Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, President of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation_: Honored Sir: I am commissioned by the unanimous voice of the Union Woman Suffrage Society, now a.s.sembled in Apollo Hall, to present to yourself, and through you to the a.s.sociation over which you are presiding in Steinway Hall, our friendly salutations, our hearty good will, and our sincere wishes for mutual co-operation in the cause of woman"s enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
Fraternally yours, THEODORE TILTON, President of the Union Woman Suffrage Society.
At his own desire the President was unanimously requested to make reply on the behalf of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.
Mr. Beecher remarked, "If there are two general a.s.sociations for the same purpose, it is because we mean, in this great work, to do twice as much labor as one society could possibly do."
Rev. OSCAR CLUTE said: Every favored movement of civilization has been simply a recognition of the rights and privileges that inhere in humanity. Take for instance the idea of the divine right of kings--which has been so thoroughly scouted by our republicanism. The abandonment of that idea upon the part of our fathers was a great stride in the path of civilization. And at this time in almost all parts of the world something is being done toward giving the ma.s.ses a clearer idea of those rights which inhere in them.
In our own country, the object of the woman suffrage reformers is, not to overturn anything already established that is good and pure and n.o.ble, but to extend to women those rights which inhere in them as human beings. It is not claimed for women that they shall have any advantage over men, but simply that they shall have the right to labor and receive their earnings. That they shall have such facilities of education as men enjoy. Give woman equal opportunities. Her sphere is, undoubtedly, to engage in such labor, to get such culture, and do such good work as she finds ready to her hands, and to help on in the cause of humanity. The ballot is the key that opens to woman all the avenues of labor and of culture. If all the avenues of education and labor were open to women, we should find them growing up with higher and n.o.bler ambition than the girls of to-day. The laws at present in force are detrimental to the interests of women not only in regard to property, but to marriage itself. Some provision is necessary by which women themselves can bring their efforts to bear upon these laws, and the ballot is the only effective measure for the purpose.
Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE said: My dear friends--Sometimes, when I begin to speak at conventions for the advocacy of woman suffrage, I feel self-dismayed in thinking that I ought to educate my audience all over from beginning to end. But this would require so much time that no one convention would ever get through with it; so I content myself with saying, as simply and as strongly as I can, what happens to be in my mind. That particular thought which is now uppermost is the great pleasure of our meeting to-day. We come together here, trusting to see in your kind faces the reflection of our great hope; and to find in your ears the echo of that great promise which some of us expected to hear a long while ago, and which all of us now see growing and strengthening until its harmony seems to us to fill the world.
We don"t come together here to ignore oppositions, but to reconcile them. Oppositions are divinely appointed. I do believe that their distance can not be increased with safety to the economy of the world. But love is the tropical equator. His fiery currents are able to quicken and vivify the whole globe. They circulate equally at the arctic and antarctic extremities. The work that we are doing in common is not unfavorably affected by oppositions. The poles are G.o.d"s anointed and stand firm; but opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows which very prematurely, I do a.s.sure you, begin to fall upon the heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than my efforts are able to get outside of it. At every new meeting I find the speech of the last meeting much too small. Whether the question grows or the speech shrinks I do not know, but I am inclined to think the former. I never knew any member of my nursery to require so much letting out, expanding, as this question. From all of this I am inclined to think that we have set our hands to a great work, to a long and hard labor, to a reform of human society; to a reduplication of human power and well-being.....
MRS. SARA J. LIPPINCOTT, more widely known as "Grace Greenwood,"
stated that she had believed in woman suffrage since she was old enough to believe in anything that was right and to denounce anything that was wrong. She was not counted among the extremists. Indeed, she claimed the right only for three cla.s.ses of persons, namely, single women who have property of their own, married women, and all such other women as may desire it. I am willing that a property qualification should be exacted. Require, if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch, and keep it wound and up to time--a clothes wringer and a sewing machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a b.u.t.ton, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house and support a husband respectably....
The PRESIDENT read the reply which he had prepared to the letter of Mr. Tilton as follows:
NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.
_To Theodore Tilton, President of the Woman Suffrage Society Meeting in Apollo Hall_: Dear Sir: Your letter of congratulation was received with great pleasure by the ma.s.s Convention a.s.sembled in Steinway Hall, under the auspices of the American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, and I am instructed by their unanimous vote to express their gratification, and to reciprocate your sentiments of cordial good-will. In this great work upon which you have entered--the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman--we have a common aim and interest, and we shall rejoice at any success which is achieved by your zeal and fidelity.
I am, very truly, yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.
Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, read a report from the executive committee of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.
Col. T. W. HIGGINSON spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen--I was thinking during the brilliant speech of Mrs.
Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman was upon the Government of the country in which we live--that she should reside in sight of the Capitol of Washington and never get nearer the interior of that building than the reporter"s desk.
Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked to us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress whenever she sets her foot as Senator or Representative within those halls, and the rest of the women come after her. If she was there, she might perhaps be met by the old objection, that, whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady talk, and when you compare what you have heard with the debates in Congress, it does not seem to me that even intellect was the main consideration.
I believe that no man ever made use of that hackneyed argument, that women couldn"t vote because they couldn"t discharge military duty, unless there was in that man something that needed the teaching of womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that there is something amiss in that man"s lungs, or his liver, or at any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who comes back from military service finds the way to the polls blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft, suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses; men who wanted to see if there wasn"t some wound or trouble by which they could be relieved from the obvious necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively--a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and save it from the flames. To finish up she dragged out a great roll of carpet. Had anybody sat down on that roll of carpet they would have heard the ready scream of her brave but suffering husband. If that man was like mult.i.tudes of men, if he were a man like Horace Greeley in his opinions, the moment the carpet was unrolled, the carpet knight would step out, and his first remark to his wife would probably be, "My dear, you can now return to the kitchen. I will do the voting, because I have the physical strength to stand by the Government."
Woman, in time of war, has her mission, as man has his. It is idle to talk about her "sphere"--as her sphere is generally interpreted. Even in the most disastrous war, the mission of woman is plainly to be discerned in deeds of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Women have worked themselves literally to death through the toils and exposures of war. Of all the semblances of argument that can be brought against the right of woman to the suffrage--of all the figments of the brain that men devise, there is nothing idler than to object to this right on the ground that suffrage and bearing arms should go together. In times of war the women of our country did aid and comfort and bless our suffering armies, and hundreds of returned soldiers owe their restoration to health and life to the ministering labors and devotedness of some woman. Such men will not use the argument that woman should not have the suffrage because she can not bear arms.
The ballot of woman is needed to render our civilization more complete and harmonious. I knew a lady who rode with the first party of ladies over the mountains into a mining town of California. The whole population turned out to see the novel spectacle. What did they say when the women came among them? Did they say, "Go away from here; this is no place for women; you will uns.e.x yourself?" Oh, no! The first sound heard from that silent and expectant throng of miners was a rough voice calling out, "Three cheers for the ladies who have come to make us better!" It is this coming of the new influence--not a purer influence merely, for doubtless a great part of what is called the purity of woman is but the purity of ignorance, that rough contact with the world would seem to endanger--it is not merely the greater purity, but it is because she is the other part of the human race; it is because without her we have fathers in the State, but no mothers; it is because without her in our legislative halls, we have laws that take from the mother the right to every child she bears; it is because without her in our courts, lawyers use foul words that shame the purity of woman.
Until woman takes a place with man in the legislation of the world, and in the administration of justice, she will suffer, and man through her will suffer; also, it is not because woman is so far above man that we claim her rights in this matter. It is because she is the other half of man and society is imperfect, and will remain so until she takes her proper place in the labors of the world. If a pair of scissors be broken in two, and you have it riveted together, it is not because you concede angelic superiority to either half, but simply because it takes two halves to make a whole.
Mrs. CUTLER was the first speaker of the evening session. Ladies and Gentlemen:--When the cloud of slavery agitation arose--a cloud at first no bigger than a man"s hand, but which at length became a great tempest, overshadowing all the land, and when the thunders rolled, and the lightnings flashed, and when we felt that almost the doom of our nation had come, then we women read, as one of our number has so grandly expressed it--we read by the light of a hundred thousand lamps, the judgment of the Almighty against the inst.i.tution of slavery. That inst.i.tution was wrong because it took away human rights. But what were the rights? The right to live was not among them--for the slave lived. The right to bread was not among them--for he was fed and clothed. The rights that were taken away were the rights inherent in all human beings to the results of their own labor, to the freedom of the body and the mind. And when the country once became aroused to the full significance of this slavery question, the heart of every mother in the land throbbed in sympathy with the enslaved.
At last War said to us, "These people have not been remembered in their bonds, and our sons and brothers are now called from us, and we must offer them upon the altar of sacrifice!" And, wondering, we read anew the Declaration of Independence, and swore fealty to its precepts, now to be written with a pen of iron dipped in the hearts" blood of our sons. It is past, and all men are free and equal in America.
But there is one thing yet to be done in order that our country may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired expression of our forefathers, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women of America pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives.
We have been making our work known for years, but it has been to no purpose, and we have come to the conclusion that the only way to remedy the evil is to get the ballot.... There is nothing to be asked for now but the ballot. I shall never ask for anything less than that while I live.
Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER, the President, then addressed the Convention. Ladies and Gentlemen:--We expect that every great movement in the community will, from various reasons, meet with ridicule and depreciation, as well as plain, honest resistance.
Nor are we indisposed to take our share in the merriment that is made. We are, however, indisposed to have it said that this is a complaining movement on the part of women. For, although there may be occasions of single outbursts of this kind, this movement has no such parentage, and it is progressing under no such motives. It has long been in the hearts of many that women should be raised to an equality in civil affairs with men, but that great discussion which aroused and instructed the conscience of the nation, and, above all, that issue of war which brought men down to the very foundations of their belief, has been fruitful in raising a mult.i.tude of questions which are advancing now and which are to be consummated. Among these is the question, "Are women equal with men?" You might as well ask, "Are all men equal to each other?" For you adjudicate no questions in this country on the ground of superiority or inferiority of cla.s.ses among men.
It makes no difference, therefore, in regard to this question, whether women be superior or inferior. The question is simply this: have they not, before the law, the same rights that men have, and ought they not to have, in the administration of public interests, precisely the same power that men have? Now, in arguing this question--in urging it upon the community, I find a fear first, lest woman"s nature should deteriorate. Kings were always afraid that if their n.o.bles got power it would make them dissolute and reckless and grasping, and the n.o.bles were always afraid of the burgher cla.s.s, that if they should get political honor, it would only puff them up and make them unmanageable, and the burgher cla.s.s, when they have obtained their political privileges, were afraid to extend a share in these privileges to the yeomanry, the peasantry. You never saw one upper cla.s.s who held a prerogative that could ever be made to see any reason why the inferior cla.s.s should have a share of it. It is the universal law of the superior cla.s.s to keep the privileges to themselves, and the privileges have usually had to be wrested from them.
In the first place, what has been the effect upon woman of enlarging the sphere of her influence? There can be no question that from generation to generation since the introduction of Christianity the sphere of woman has been enlarging. She has been growing up in the scale of power; has she been going down in the scale of moral character? You know as well as I do that they are better, and that, instead of deteriorating their character, it has improved them and augmented the volume of their being, and they are women still.
But it is said that "in politics it is different." In what way is it different? Do you hesitate to say, "Jane, on your way to school please take these letters and drop them into the letter-box at the corner," and your daughter does it. There is much more trouble in doing that than to drop a ballot in the ballot-box. n.o.body thinks anything of it, although there are men there, too. Is a woman demeaned by dropping her ballot into the box? Does the act injure her? "Oh, no; it is not the act--it is the scenes that she would have to meet. Go to the polls, and see what voting means." Yes; go and see what bachelor voting means.
It is exactly the thing that we want to improve. Did you ever see a crowd of men, the rudest in the world, who, when a lady walked among them, did not open spontaneously and let her pa.s.s through as if she was an angel? It is asked sometimes, "Would you like to have your wife or daughter go to the polls and vote?" Yes--on my arm; yes. I venture to say that there is not a precinct in the city where well-bred ladies will not only be allowed to vote themselves, but would carry peace in the exercise of the right to others. "Would you have a woman partic.i.p.ate in the scenes preliminary to an election?" I will tell you that the moment that women begin to vote there will be no scenes "preliminary" in which women may not appear. It is this very jointure of the family influence that we look to as a part of the influence that should bring reformation into our politics; for if our politics are to be masculine forever I despair of the republic. No!
whatever thing on G.o.d"s earth a woman"s conscience tells her to do, she can do it, though she stood in the gates of h.e.l.l, and be every particle a woman just as much. Is there anything in this world that has so great a reputation for lawlessness as a camp?
And yet, when our armies went into this conflict, how many hundreds of women went, not as companions, but to minister to the boys. They went down into the camps, and through the whole war consorted with the rudest of men, and not one single syllable did they ever hear from the lips of those men that a pure ear should not hear. They ate the soldiers" fare--they performed the most menial services; but it was love that inspired and sustained them in their toils. And will any man say that after these four years had pa.s.sed, and these ministers of mercy came back again, that because they had been mixed up with this rabble crew, they were the less women? Were they not the more women? These are sisters of charity--these are heroines without a record in any human literature. Have they been injured by mixing with the rude affairs of war in camps and among soldiers? When women take upon themselves such necessary duties they take vulgarity from vulgarity, and coa.r.s.eness becomes refined, for it is the heart of woman that brings life among men, and restores Paradise.
But it is said that it would do women no good to have the vote, because they would vote as their husbands would. Well, I am very glad to hear that you are all so happily mated. I have a pretty large flock, and my observation has been that there was not such perfect unanimity. The tidings brought to me are that there are women who have minds of their own, and I don"t think a woman would make up her mind to vote with her husband unless she conscientiously believed that he voted the right way. It is said again that it would introduce division into the family, and that a division about politics is the most bitter thing in the world.
No; there is one thing in which a difference is more bitter than politics. What? Religion. There is no such diverging influence in this world as a difference in religion. Yet when I look into these matters I find that families all through the community are divided on the subject of religion. I have known scores and scores of families in which there were Baptists and persons of other denominations, and they found no trouble in getting along.
You will always find where husband and wife can not agree, they will peaceably differ. There is no danger of their ever disturbing the family relations by that.
We are still holding, it seems, the old barbaric notion of the inferiority of woman. Every higher cla.s.s preaches, preaches, preaches--about the inferiority of everything and everybody below it. All the world believes that the nation in which the man is born is the highest nation in the world. Why, we believe that we Americans are the biggest people in the world, the Englishman believes the English people to be the highest in the world. There is not the least doubt in the mind of a Frenchman that he was G.o.d Almighty"s first favorite, and so on, nation by nation. So it is with cla.s.ses. So, also, it seems to be with man. All the men in the world join hands together and agree that whatever may be the cla.s.sification as between man and man, all men are infinitely superior to woman. Now I hold that in some things woman is inferior to man, and in some things greatly superior to man, and that in the general average she is fully his equal. A woman is G.o.d"s chief engineer in the home. She ought to have a clear eye and a deep heart and a wide understanding. You can"t make a woman too broad, too strong, too high, too deep in all generous enthusiasm for the purposes of the family, for it takes strong women to bring up strong men and strong women. In regard to this matter I wonder that people should attempt to separate so much by guess. Hear people say, "What will be the effect?" As if this thing was not already demonstrated--as if history was not already a picture of what the result will be. Will you be good enough to tell me which woman you think to-day is the superior? There is the problem: the Asiatic woman is the woman we hear tell about; just look at her--a do-nothing, a know-nothing woman! The European woman is the woman that has been cultured. Which is the superior to-day? which commands most respect?
Delicacy in woman is sentiment, not appearance, not enamel, not languishing airs. But it is asked, why make this disturbance? Why not let a woman, if it is desired that she should be a student, inquire of her husband? Suppose she hasn"t got one. Young gentlemen that are so fond of talking about the matter say, let the women stay at home and take care of their families. Let me ask you if you will agree to give every woman a family that hasn"t got one? If you will not, then hold your tongue. But even taking the question in the way they put it, how would these young men like their fathers to say, "Tom, Bill, you are both Republicans. You have gone away from my notions; I am a good, stanch, old-fashioned Democrat; and my advice to you, boys, is that you stay at home and read, and think these matters over, and I will go and vote for you,"--how would the boys like that?
Everybody is willing to be above everybody else, and this thing of one man a.s.suming that he is the superior of another, and asking that other to knuckle down to him, is not popular. You don"t like it. And women don"t like it any better than you do--and they ought not to like it, either. Women can have all the benefit of holding an opinion, but they shall not have the power of expressing it. They go through all the labor and trouble of loading, but can"t fire off. Now, I affirm, that it is wrong to give women the responsibilities of public life without giving them the safety of public life, too.
But what practical use will the ballot be to women? Tell me what practical use the ballot will be to men; then I will tell you of what use it will be to women. A man that denies the right of woman to the ballot must deny it to any body and all bodies. I affirm another thing. I affirm that the ballot is a natural right. To say that voting is an artificial thing is merely an evasion. If there is any such thing as natural rights in the world, it is the right of every person to have a voice in the government that he shall live under, and in the electing of the magistrate who shall make the laws by which he is to be governed.
But they say women don"t want to vote. Well, I didn"t want to learn my letters, but I had to, and, on the whole, I am not sorry for it. If men say women don"t want the ballot, my reply is, they need it, at any rate. In behalf of the poor and needy, I plead for suffrage. They are the persons who are in just that place where the hail of misfortune plays pitilessly upon them. I plead for suffrage for women, not because the rich and refined need it--they have already more than their heart could wish--but for the great sisterhood of common women.
But, it is said, is it not subverting the order of the Bible; is it not subverting those sound Christian maxims in respect to the subordination of woman to man? Well, if you think it is, let the husband vote first and the wife vote after; that settles that point. I have looked through the Ten Commandments, and although I find a great many things that you shall not do, I don"t find anywhere it says that you shall not vote; and I don"t think that there is a place in the Bible where it says that a woman shall not vote; nor, since it pleased G.o.d to make thousands and thousands of women that are superior to men, I don"t believe that he ever wrote a line to say that a woman who was superior should be inferior. My friends, the true rendering of Scripture is this: Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. In the kingdom of love there is neither high nor low. Love knows no distinctions. It is all equal in the kingdom of G.o.d; and wherever the human family are supremely possessed by that one supreme, beneficent feeling of love, there never can arise these disturbing elements.
Mrs. LIVERMORE said: _Ladies and Gentlemen_--Mr. Beecher very pertinently said that women are allowed to _know_, but not to _say_; they may make all the preparations necessary to intelligent voting, but that they shall not vote. That is exactly what is doing a vast deal of mischief the world over. If they are not allowed to vote, and express their opinions upon the laws by which they are to be governed, and if they are not to have opened to them all proper fields of labor, they will turn their attention to dressmaking, and to millinery, and to all the other hot-beds of our fast modern life. It is doing great harm; and that is one reason I earnestly plead in their behalf for the ballot. Men say women shall not have the ballot. They must pet.i.tion and beg for it. Have not pet.i.tions been already made?
Have not 200,000 names been sent in to Congress already? Then they say you must "organize;" and when that is done, and they find the country rocked as by a traveling volcano, they then say, "All women do not want to vote; all the women in the country should ask for it, and beg for it, and pet.i.tion for it."
Let me relate an incident that occurred in Boston at the office of Chief Justice Chapman, four or five weeks ago. A man, a guardian, came there with a writ of _habeas corpus_, which placed in his charge two children in no wise related to him, and he asked that he might have the control of the children, in opposition to the claim of their mother, who desired to keep them. The facts were briefly these: the woman had been happily married; her husband died and left her a widow with two young children. By the laws of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts at that time, she was not allowed to be their guardian, nor the guardian of any body else"s children. So the Judge of Probate appointed a guardian for the children, who magnanimously allowed them to remain in their mother"s care. After two or three years she committed the unpardonable crime of marrying again, a thing that no man was ever guilty of. The marriage was perfectly acceptable to her former husband"s relatives, but the guardian was so displeased with it, that he got out a writ of _habeas corpus_, and demanded of Chief Justice Chapman that the children be remanded to his custody. We are apt to boast of Ma.s.sachusetts and its laws, but here was a case in which the Chief Justice, after hearing the case, actually remanded these children to the possession of that man. The court-room was crowded; the excitement was intense; the poor mother sank down in a deadly faint. I say such laws are an outrage upon womanhood, and they arise simply and solely from a deep contempt for womanhood. This contempt is palpable throughout all the entire code of laws.
Another argument that is frequently made against the extension of the suffrage to woman is this: "If women go to the polls it is going to take them away from their homes and families." These arguments are urged with as much pertinacity as if the polls were open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours each day, and that all that people did was to lie around the polls and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote.
Another statement is, that it is because women have been kept out of politics that they are pure and good. Well, now, it is a poor rule that won"t work both ways, and if disfranchis.e.m.e.nt has made such angels of women, suppose you try it a little on men. I have a firm belief that the men need, infinitely more than the women do, the influence that woman will bring with her to the ballot; not because woman is better, but because she is the other half of humanity. It reminds me of the account of the battle of Gettysburg, given by a colonel of a Western regiment. His regiment was placed among the reserves, on an eminence, where they could see the battle as it went on. "There we stood," said the colonel; "our brave men trying to serve their country; able to do it, and anxious to do it. Yet we were kept the whole of the first day watching the fight go on. On the second day another regiment, which had been much a.s.sociated with ours, was called into action. We saw them marching, their guns aslant, as if there was no battle being carried on, or deeds of death and destruction--and all the while, as they marched, the grape, and the canister, and the shot, and the sh.e.l.l, tore their ranks terribly; and men fell dead in all directions; and still those who yet remained carried their guns in the same position, and kept time, and closed up, and closed up, until my agitation became so unendurable that I forgot all else, and cried out, "Oh, G.o.d! why don"t they call the reserves into action? We could help them.""
Gentlemen, very few of us are very young women. We have forty, fifty, some of us seventy years of life behind us. We have stood on this eminence where you in your mistaken kindness and gallantry placed us, and we have been all this time looking down upon the battle-field of life where you have been engaged, single-handed and alone. Those of us who have had half a century have seen the ranks of men who started out in life with us shortened one half as they have gone. Here is a husband, there a brother or a father, men as dear to us as drops of our own heart"s blood. We have seen them steadily sacrificed by means more appalling than those of Gettysburg, men literally slaughtered by licentiousness and drunkenness, and all the while we have looked on and been able to do nothing, and our agony has become so great that we exclaim, "Oh, G.o.d! why don"t these brothers of ours call us, the reserves, into action? We could help them."