--10,000 Petitions Referred to the
Committee on Privileges and Elections by Special Request of the
Chairman, Hon. O. P. Morton, of Indiana--May Anniversary in New
York--Tenth Washington Convention, 1878--Frances E. Willard and
30,000 Temperance Women Petition Congress--40,000 Petition for a
Sixteenth Amendment--Hearing before the Committee on Privileges
and Elections--Madam Dahlgren's Protest--Mrs. Hooker's Hearing on
Washington's Birthday--Mary Clemmer's Letter to Senator
Wadleigh--His Adverse Report--Favorable Minority Report by
Senator Hoar--Thirtieth Anniversary, Unitarian Church, Rochester,
N. Y., July 19, 1878--The Last Convention Attended by Lucretia
Mott--Letters, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips--Church
Resolution Criticised by Rev. Dr. Strong--International Women's
Congress in Paris--Washington Convention, 1879--U.S. Supreme
Court Opened to Women--May Anniversary at St. Louis--Address of
Welcome by Phoebe Couzins--Women in Council Alone--Letter from
Josephine Butler, of England--Mrs. Stanton's Letter to _The
National Citizen and Ballot-Box_.

With the close of the centennial year the new departure under the
fourteenth amendment ended. Though defeated at the polls, in the
courts, in the national celebration, in securing a plank in the
platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, and in our own
conventions--so far as the few were able to rouse the many to
simultaneous action--nevertheless a wide-spread agitation had been
secured by the presentation of this phase of the question.

Although the unanswerable arguments of statesmen and lawyers in the
halls of congress and the Supreme Court of the United States, had
alike proved unavailing in establishing the civil and political
rights of women on a national basis, their efforts had not been in
vain. The trials had brought the question before a new order of
minds, and secured able constitutional arguments which were
reviewed in many law journals. The equally able congressional
debates, reported verbatim, read by a large constituency in every
State of the Union, did an educational work on the question of
woman's enfranchisement that cannot be overestimated.

But when the final decision of the Supreme Court in the case of
Virginia L. Minor made all agitation in that direction hopeless,
the National Association returned to its former policy, demanding a
sixteenth am