no reason so strong as the reason of the heart. Do
not all great thoughts come from the heart?

It is not for me, on presenting this petition, to assign reasons
which the army of petitioners has forborne to assign. But I may
not improperly add that, naturally and obviously, they all feel
in their hearts, what reason and knowledge confirm: not only that
slavery _as a unit_, one and indivisible, is the guilty origin of
the rebellion, but that its influence everywhere, even outside
the rebel States, has been hostile to the Union, always impairing
loyalty, and sometimes openly menacing the national government.
It requires no difficult logic to conclude that such a monster,
wherever it shows its head, is a _national enemy_, to be pursued
and destroyed as such, or at least a nuisance to the national
cause to be abated as such. The petitioners know well that
Congress is the depository of those supreme powers by which the
rebellion, alike in its root and in its distant offshoots, may be
surely crushed, and by which unity and peace may be permanently
secured. They know well that the action of Congress may be with
the co-operation of the slave-masters, or even without the
co-operation, under the overruling law of military necessity, or
the commanding precept of the Constitution "to guarantee to every
State a Republican form of government." Above all, they know well
that to save the country from peril, especially to save the
national life, there is no power, in the ample arsenal of
self-defense, which Congress may not grasp; for to Congress,
under the Constitution, belongs the prerogative of the Roman
Dictator to see that the Republic receives no detriment.
Therefore to Congress these petitioners now appeal. I ask the
reference of the petition to the Select Committee on Slavery and
Freedmen.

It was referred, after earnest discussion, as Mr. Sumner
proposed.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE LOYAL WOMEN'S NATIONAL LEAGUE.

The Anniversary of the Women's National League was held at the Church
of the Puritans, Thursday morning, May 12, 1864. The President,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, called the meeting to order, and requested the
audience to observe a few moments of silence, that each soul might
seek for itself Divine guidance through the deliberations of the
meeting. The Corresponding Secr