ualification for elector, sent me an invitation to
attend its sessions, speak before it for woman's equality, and they
would vote me a secretary's or clerk's position in the Convention. My
husband's fatal illness prevented me from going.

In January, 1856, I returned from Kansas to Vermont, widowed and
broken in health, to attend to matters connected with my husband's
estate. Prevented by the ruffian blockade of the Missouri from
returning as intended, I spent some time in the summer and all of the
autumn of 1856 and January, 1857, lecturing upon Kansas, the character
and significance of its political involvements, its promise and
importance as a free or slave State, and its claims to an efficient
support in the interest of freedom. In September, being appealed to by
the "Kansas National Aid Committee," at the instance of Horace
Greeley, I engaged for two months in a canvass of Western New York,
lecturing and procuring the appointment of committees of women to
collect supplies for the suffering people of Kansas; my two oldest
sons, C. H. and A. O. Carpenter being among its armed defenders, the
latter having been wounded in the fight between the invaders under
Captain Pate and the forces under John Brown and Captain S. Shores, at
Black Jack.

Between May, 1856, and February, 1857 (not counting my engagement with
the Aid Committee), I gave some fifty Kansas lectures in the States of
Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and
New York, followed occasionally by one or two lectures on the legal
and political disabilities of women; receiving more invitations on
both subjects than I could possibly fill.

My experiences in these semi-political labors were often racy, never
unsatisfactory. In a public conveyance one day, an honest old
Pennsylvania farmer asked if I was "the lady who made an appointment
to speak in his place on Kansas, and did not come?" I replied that I
had filled all the appointments made for me with my knowledge; that I
made a point of keeping my promises. "I believe you, ma'am," said he.
"I suspicioned then it was jest a republican trick. You see, ma'am,
our folks all are dimocrats and wouldn't turn out to hear the
republican speakers; so they appointed a meeting for _you_ and
everybody turned out, for we'd hearn of your lectures. But instid of
you, General D---- and Lawyer C---- came, and we were mad enough. I
was madder, 'cause I'd opened my house, seein' as it was the largest