ntire State of Kansas in your first woman suffrage
campaign. During the last decade I have made a speaking tour of your
congressional districts over and over again. Now I come once more to
appeal to you for justice to the women of your State.

To preface, I want to say that when the rebellion broke out in this
country, we of the woman suffrage movement postponed our meetings, and
organized ourselves into a great National Women's Loyal League with
headquarters in the city of New York. We sent out thousands of petitions
praying Congress to abolish slavery, as a war measure, and to these
petitions we obtained 365,000 signatures. They were presented by Charles
Sumner, that noblest Republican of them all, and it took two stalwart
negroes to carry them into the Senate chamber. We did our work
faithfully all those years. Other women scraped lint, made jellies,
ministered to sick and suffering soldiers and in every way worked for
the help of the government in putting down that rebellion. No man, no
Republican leader, worked more faithfully or loyally than did the women
of this nation in every city and county of the North to aid the
government.

In 1865 I made my first visit to Kansas and, on the 2d of July, went by
stage from Leavenworth to Topeka. O, how I remember those first acres
and miles of cornfields I ever had seen; how I remember that ride to
Topeka and from there in an open mail wagon to Ottumwa, where I was one
of the speakers at the Fourth of July celebration. Those were the days,
as you recollect, just after the murder of Lincoln and the accession to
the presidential chair of Andrew Johnson, who had issued his
proclamation for the reconstruction of Mississippi. So the question of
the negro's enfranchisement was uppermost in the minds of leading
Republicans, though no one save Charles Sumner had dared to speak it
aloud. In that speech, I clearly stated that the government never would
be reconstructed, that peace never would reign and justice never be
uppermost until not only the black men were enfranchised but also the
women of the entire nation. The men congratulated me upon my speech, the
first part of it, every word I said about negro suffrage, but declared
that I should not have mentioned woman suffrage at so critical an hour.

A little later the Associated Press dispatch came that motions had been
made on the floor of the House of Representatives at Washington to
insert the word "male" in the second clause of