which have barred its way? Lucretia Mott at first thought Mrs.
Stanton had injured the cause of all woman's other rights by
insisting upon the demand for suffrage, but she had sense enough
not to bring in a resolution against it. In 1860 when Mrs. Stanton
made a speech before the New York Legislature in favor of a bill
making drunkenness a ground for divorce, there was a general cry
among the friends that she had killed the woman's cause. I shall be
pained beyond expression if the delegates here are so narrow and
illiberal as to adopt this resolution. You would better not begin
resolving against individual action or you will find no limit. This
year it is Mrs. Stanton; next year it may be I or one of
yourselves, who will be the victim.

If we do not inspire in women a broad and catholic spirit, they
will fail, when enfranchised, to constitute that power for better
government which we have always claimed for them. Ten women
educated into the practice of liberal principles would be a
stronger force than 10,000 organized on a platform of intolerance
and bigotry. I pray you vote for religious liberty, without
censorship or inquisition. This resolution adopted will be a vote
of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in intellectual and
statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a century the
acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in regard to
all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of women.

Rev. Anna Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, Henry B. and Alice Stone Blackwell,
Laura M. Johns, Annie L. Diggs, Rachel Foster Avery, Laura Clay, Mariana
W. Chapman, Elizabeth Upham Yates, and others spoke in favor of the
resolution; Lillie Devereux Blake, Clara B. Colby, Mary S. Anthony,
Emily Rowland, Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Caroline Hallowell Miller
were among those who opposed it. The vote resulted, 53 ayes, 41 nays;
and the resolution was adopted. The situation was felicitously expressed
in a single sentence by Mrs. Caroline McCullough Everhard, president of
the Ohio Suffrage Association: "If women were governed more by principle
and less by prejudice, how strong they would be!"

Miss Anthony's feelings could not be put into words. At first she
seriously contemplated resigning her office, but from all parts of the
country came letters from the pioneer workers--the women who had stood
by her