revented any such result
from this injustice to women.

Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but realize
the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights now more
than twenty years, feel precisely as you would under such
circumstances. One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator
Sumner) said to me two winters ago, after our hearing before the
committee of the District: "I never realized before that you or any
woman could feel the disgrace, the degradation of disfranchisement
precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had conspired to
deprive me of my right to vote." Although I am a Quaker and take no
oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I will never
again beg my rights, but will come to Congress each year and demand
the recognition of them under the guarantees of the National
Constitution.

What we ask of the Republican party is simply to take down its own
bars. The facts in Wyoming show how it is that a Republican party
can exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a
Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the
first election sent one Republican to Congress and seven to the
Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of a Republican party
there was formed through the enfranchisement of women. The
Democrats, seeing this, are now determined to disfranchise them.
Can you Republicans so utterly stultify yourselves, can you so
entirely work against yourselves, as to refuse us a declaratory
law? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs. Hooker has said,
"favorably, if you can; adversely, if you must." We can wait no
longer.

The committee reported adversely on the question of woman's right to
vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

At the close of the convention, Miss Anthony hastened to her home in
Rochester, which she had not seen since her departure to California
eight months before. Soon after her arrival she was invited to meet a
number of her acquaintances at the home of her dear friend, Amy Post,
and give them an account of her experiences on the Pacific slope. At
its conclusion she was surprised by the presentation of a purse
containing $50, with a touching address by Mrs. Post asking her to
accept it as a testimonial of the appreciation in which her friends and
neighbors held her work for woman and humanity.