the large number and variety of
opinions entertained and expressed in the different sessions. On
the one vital point, that suffrage is the inalienable right of
every intelligent citizen who is held amenable to law, and is
taxed to support the government, there was no difference
expressed. The issue that roused the most heated debate was
whether the colored man should be kept out of the right of
suffrage until woman could also be enfranchised. One young, but
not ineffectual speaker, declared he considered the women the
bitterest enemies of the negro; and asked, with intense emotion,
shall they be permitted to prevent the colored man from obtaining
his rights? But it was not shown that women, anywhere, were
making any effort toward that result. One or two women present
declared they were unwilling that any more men should possess
the right of suffrage until women had it also. But these are well
known as most earnest advocates of universal suffrage, as well as
the long-tried and approved friends of the colored race.

The discussion between colored men on the one side and women on
the other, as to whether it was the duty of the women of the
nation to hold their claims in abeyance, until all colored men
are enfranchised, was spicy, able and affecting. When that noble
man, Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, rose, and, with the loftiest
sense of justice, with a true Roman grandeur, ignored his race
and sex, rebuked his own son for his narrow position, and
demanded for his daughter all he asked for his son or himself, he
thrilled the noblest feelings in his audience. Is has been a
great grief to the leading women in our cause that there should
be antagonism with men whom we respect, whose wrongs we pity, and
whose hopes we would fain help them to realize. When we contrast
the condition of the most fortunate women at the North, with the
living death colored men endure everywhere, there seems to be a
selfishness in our present position. But remember we speak not
for ourselves alone, but for all womankind, in poverty, ignorance
and hopeless dependence, for the women of that oppressed race
too, who, in slavery, have known a depth of misery and
degradation that no man can ever appreciate.

That there were representatives of both political parties
prese