re to come to the last resort, that the female
Africans of the District of Columbia have more merit, more
industry, more of all that which is calculated to make them good
and virtuous members of society than the males have. Why should
you not throw them in? Why should you throw this batch of males
into the ballot-box without any countervailing element which
would be efficacious to qualify it and make it better?

To me it is perfectly plain. I have reconciled my mind to negro
suffrage, but while I reconcile myself to negro suffrage as
inevitable, I hold it to be my bounden duty to insist upon female
suffrage at the same time. I am happy to say that in this opinion
I am not alone; that while I favor universal suffrage limited by
the age of twenty-one years so far, there are others who have
been led to this same train of thought with myself. I beg,
therefore, to read a letter dated Jefferson, Ohio, November 14,
1866:

"MADAM:--Yours of the 9th instant is received, and I desire
to say in reply that I am now and ever have been the
advocate of equal and impartial suffrage of all citizens of
the United States who have arrived at the age of twenty-one
years, who are of sound mind, and who have not disqualified
themselves by the commission of any offence, without any
distinction on account of race, color, or sex. Every
argument that ever has been or ever can be adduced to prove
that males should have the right to vote, applies with equal
if not greater force to prove that females should possess
the same right; and were I a citizen of your State I should
labor with whatever of ability I possess to ingraft those
principles in its constitution. Yours, very respectfully,

B. F. WADE.

"_To_ SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
_Secretary American Equal Rights Association_."

Now, Mr. President, I ask whether this has not an orthodox
sanction at least. I should like to know who would question, who
would dare to question, the orthodoxy of the honorable Senator
from Ohio, and who dares tell me that this is such a novelty that
it is not to be introduced here as serious, as in earnest? Sir, I
say that I am perfectly in earnest, and I say that if t