ember of the Constitutional Convention, who
had dwelt much on the superior prerogatives of the Anglo-Saxon race,
was saying, "You go for political equality with the negro; we
Democrats won't stand that, it would demoralize the white man." On my
way to lecture in the evening, a friend forewarned me that the
ex-Secretary, with two or three of his political stripe, had engaged a
shrewd Democratic lawyer, by getting him half drunk, to reply to me.
So when in my concluding appeal I turned as usual to the Democrats, I
narrated the above incident and bowed smilingly to the ex-Secretary,
with whom I was acquainted, and said, "Gentlemen who turn up their
'Anglo-Saxon' noses at the idea of 'political equality with the
negro,' as demoralizing to the white man, forget that in all these
years the white woman has been 'on a political equality with the
negro'; they forget, that in keeping their own mothers, wives and
daughters in the negro pew, to save them from demoralization by
political equality with the white man, they are paying themselves a
sorry compliment." The drunken lawyer was quietly hustled out by his
friends, the Democrats themselves joining the audience in expressions
of respect at the close of my lecture. But these from hundreds of
telling incidents must suffice to initiate you in the spirit of that
ever memorable campaign.

[Illustration: CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS (with autograph).]

In 1854, when I was about leaving Vermont for Kansas, an earnest
friend of our cause protested that I was "going to bury myself in
Kansas, just as I had won an influence and awakened a public sentiment
that assured the success of our demand for equal rights." I replied
that it was a thousand times more difficult to procure the repeal of
unjust laws in an old State, than the adoption of just laws in the
organization of a new State. That I could accomplish more for woman,
even the women of the old States, and with less effort, in the new
State of Kansas, than I could in conservative old Vermont, whose
prejudices were so much stronger than its convictions, that justice to
women must stand a criminal trial in every Court of the State to win,
and then pay the costs.

My husband went to Kansas for a milder climate; my sons to make homes
under conditions better suited than the old States to their tastes and
means. I went to work for a Government of "equality, liberty,
fraternity," in the State to be.

I had learned from my experience with the