liticians made the women believe if they would not
insist on the party's placing itself on record and thus losing the
support of the elements opposed to woman suffrage, all of them would
vote for the amendment. Should the women of Kansas ever become
politically free, the publication of these letters would be fatal to
some aspiring male candidates, but so long as the men still have it in
their power to grant to women or to withhold the full franchise, it is
the part of wisdom to leave them on their files. There were many Kansas
women, however, who refused to be deceived and sustained Miss Anthony's
position. In April she wrote to one of the Republican leaders:

If the Republicans had two grains of political sense, they would
see that for them to espouse the amendment and gain the glory, as
they surely would, of lifting the women of the State into full
suffrage, would give them new life, prestige and power greater and
grander than they ever possessed; and they would not be halting
and belittling themselves with such idiotic stuff and nonsense as
their advice to let the amendment go to the electors of the State
"on its own merits." But however politicians may waver, our
suffrage women must not have a doubt, but must persist in the
demand for full recognition in both platforms. We must exact
justice and if they do not give it, the curse be on their heads,
not ours.

The same month she wrote Mrs. Johns:

I can not tell you how more and more it is borne in upon me that
our one chance lies in securing the Republican pledge to carry us
to victory, for that will mean a Populist pledge, and both planks
will mean a clean-cut battle between the different elements of the
grand old party combined as one on this question--and the Democracy
of the State. Even with so solid an alliance of the two branches,
we shall have a hard enough fight of it. Every woman who listens to
the siren tongues of political wire-pullers and office-seekers not
to demand a plank, will thereby help to sell Kansas back into the
hands of the whiskey power. Behind every anti-plank man's word,
written or spoken, is his willingness to let Kansas return to
saloon rule. Sugar coat it as they may, that is the unsavory pill
in the motive of every one of them.

Sincerely and hopefully yours, trusting in good and keeping our
powder dr