ed in the city of
Rochester, with fifty members, and another at Champlin; the homes
of Mrs. Stearns and Mrs. Colburn. Petitions were again circulated
and presented to the legislature early in the session of 1870. It
had not then been demonstrated by Kansas, Michigan, Colorado,
Nebraska and Oregon, that the votes of the ignorant classes on
this question would greatly outnumber those of the intelligent.
The legislature granted the prayer of the petitioners and passed
a bill for the submission of an amendment, providing that the
women of the State, possessing the requisite qualifications,
should also be allowed to vote upon the proposition, and that
their votes should be counted as legal. The governor, Hon. Horace
Austin, vetoed the bill, saying it was not passed in good faith,
and that the submission of the question at that time would be
premature. In a private letter to Mrs. Stearns, the governor
said: "Had the bill provided for the voting of the women, simply
to get an expression of their wishes upon the question, without
requiring their votes to be counted as legal in the adoption or
rejection of it, the act would not have been vetoed,
notwithstanding my second objection that it was premature."

In 1871, petitions to congress were circulated in Minnesota,
asking a declaratory act to protect the women of the nation in
the exercise of "the citizen's right to vote" under the new
guarantees of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. During
that year the National Woman Suffrage Association appointed Mrs.
Addie Ballou its vice-president for Minnesota.

In 1872 a suffrage club was formed at Kasson. Its three
originators[434] entered into a solemn compact with each other
that while they lived in that city there should always be an
active suffrage society until the ballot for women should be
obtained. Their secretary, Mrs. H. M. White, writes:

Although our club was at first called a ladies' literary
society, the suspicion that its members wished to vote was
soon whispered about. Our working members were for some
years few in number, and our meetings far between. But our
zeal never abating, we tried in later years many plans for
making a weekly meeting interesting. The most successful
was, that every one sho