lowing letter, which she
sends me for publication:

_April 12, 1886._

C. C. HUSSEY.

Dear Madame: Your letter and circular of the 8th inst. are
received. I was a long time a correspondent of Miss C., never
having seen her, but holding a letter of introduction from
Vice-President Henry Wilson. I have no standpoint in politics of
influence now. * * * Miss Carroll's case shows the infinite
baseness of human nature--how few worship truth and justice. I am
already assailed for speaking a word in her cause, and shall have
all the old feuds against me revived; but I am not dependent upon
the American people for subsistence and am not a petitioner for
money or office, so I speak my mind.

Very truly yours,

C. M. CLAY.

Miss Katharine Mason, Miss Anna C. Waite, Miss Phoebe Couzzins, Mrs.
H. J. Boutelle, Mrs. Louisa D. Southworth, Mrs. Esther Herrman, and a
host of other prominent ladies in succession took up the cause,
publishing articles east and west, and speaking upon the subject or
contributing in some way to the cause. Petitions to Congress continued
asking attention to Miss Carroll's case, and that due recognition and
award should be accorded to her. High-principled Senators and
Representatives would take up these petitions and present them with
their own endorsement of the case. But ten righteous men count for
little among a mass of Senators and Representatives wildly pushing
their own individual and party measures. Every human being with a
ballot might be worthy of their attention, but a disfranchised class
must go to the wall. With every extension of the ballot such a class
sinks deeper and deeper in the scale, and the disregard and contempt
for women and their claims becomes inborn--for law is an educator.

In the spring of 1890 Mr. and Mrs. Root spent weeks in Washington
verifying, step by step, the incontrovertible facts of Miss Carroll's
work. The _Woman's Tribune_, of Washington, generously published a
large edition of their report, enclosed advanced sheets, with a
personal letter, to every Senator and Representative, and laid them
upon their desks, with the invariable result of continued neglect.

Mrs. Abby Gannett Wells, of a highly cultivated Boston family, took up
the cause with enthusiasm, made a tour among the army relief posts,
and created among soldiers and