te, by such men as Horace Greeley,
George William Curtis, William D. Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E.P. Whipple,
Frederick Douglass, Theodore D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Bellows.
Many letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its
measures, and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of
emancipation petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press,
too, was highly complimentary. The New York Tribune said: "The women of
the Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their
efforts to one subject, the most important which any society can aim at
in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never has been
done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a petition."

The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and
prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the
women of the League, and yet these were the same women who, when
demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for
themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent,"
"fanatical," and "impracticable." During the six years they held their
own claims in abeyance to those of the slaves of the South, and labored
to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the
Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and
clear-sighted." But when the slaves were emancipated, and these women
asked that they should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens
of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues
vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is: so long
as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her
own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights
and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal
appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.

Liberty, victorious over slavery on the battlefield, had now more
powerful enemies to encounter at Washington. The slaves set free, the
master conquered, the South desolate; the two races standing face to
face, sharing alike the sad results of war, turned with appealing looks
to the general government, as if to say, "How stand we now?" "What
next?" Questions our statesmen, beset with dangers, with fears for the
nation's life, of party divisions, of personal defeat, were wholly
unprepared to answer. The reconstruction of the South inv