behind the scenes at the
time, sent copies of the various bills to the officers of the Loyal
League in New York, and related to them some of the amusing
discussions. One of the Committee proposed "persons" instead of
"males." "That will never do," said another, "it would enfranchise all
the Southern wenches." "Suffrage for black men will be all the strain
the Republican party can stand," said another. Charles Sumner said,
years afterward, that he wrote over nineteen pages of foolscap to get
rid of the word "male" and yet keep "negro suffrage" as a party
measure intact; but it could not be done.

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, ever on the watch-tower for legislation
affecting women, were the first to see the full significance of the
word "male" in the 14th Amendment, and at once sounded the alarm, and
sent out petitions[48] for a constitutional amendment to "prohibit
the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of
sex."[49]

Miss Anthony, who had spent the year in Kansas, started for New York
the moment she saw the propositions before Congress to put the word
"male" into the National Constitution, and made haste to rouse the
women in the East to the fact that the time had come to begin vigorous
work again for woman's enfranchisement.[50] Mr. Tilton (December 27,
1865) proposed the formation of a National Equal Rights Society,
demanding suffrage for black men and women alike, of which Wendell
Phillips should be President, and the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_
its organ. Mr. Beecher promised to give a lecture (January 30th) for
the benefit of this universal suffrage movement. The _New York
Independent_ (Theodore Tilton, editor) gave the following timely and
just rebuke of the proposed retrogressive legislation:

A LAW AGAINST WOMEN.

The spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing this creature's mossy
legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington are seeking to fix
these upon the Federal Constitution, to make that instrument walk
backward in like style. For instance, the Constitution has never
laid any legal disabilities upon woman. Whatever denials of
rights it formerly made to our slaves, it denied nothing to our
wives and daughters. The legal rights of an American woman--for
instance, her right to her own property, as against a squandering
husband; or her right to her own children, as against a malicious
father--have grown, year by year, into a