nciple
which we ask you to apply. You will also secure the historic
credit of being the first men to take the next great step in
civilization--a step sure to be taken at no distant day....

Edward Everett once said, illustrating the effect of small things
on character: "The Mississippi and the St. Lawrence Rivers have
their rise near each other. A very small difference in the
elevation of the land sends one to the ocean amid tropical heat,
while the other empties into the frozen waters of the north." So,
it may seem a small matter whether you admit or shut out women
from an equal share in the government. But if you exclude them
you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly,
law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the
welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same
time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided
they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their
impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the
moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most
sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom
you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good
women.

Henry B. Blackwell, secretary of the association, visited North
Dakota, Montana and Washington, and personally labored with the
members of the three constitutional conventions. He carried with him
letters written expressly for these conventions by Governor Francis E.
Warren and U. S. Delegate Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming; Governor Lyman
U. Humphrey, Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg, Chief Justice Albert H.
Horton and all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Kansas; U. S.
Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, U. S. Senator Cushman K. Davis of
Minnesota, Governor Oliver Ames, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, William
Lloyd Garrison and others of Massachusetts, commending his mission and
expressing the hope that the new States would incorporate equal
suffrage in their constitutions. Copies of these letters were placed
in the hands of every delegate. Mr. Blackwell devoted over a month to
the journey and the work in these Territories, paying his own expenses
and giving them and his services to the American Suffrage Association.
[Detailed accounts of these efforts will be found in chapters on these
three States.]

_1890._--In February the American and the