save the country from peril, especially to save the national life,
there is no power in the ample arsenal of self-defense which
Congress may not grasp; for to Congress under the Constitution,
belongs the prerogative of the Roman Dictator to see that the
republic receives no detriment. Therefore to Congress these
petitioners now appeal.

After an earnest discussion by the Senate the petition was referred to
the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, whose chairman was Thomas
D. Eliot, of Massachusetts. Immediately afterwards several thousand
more blank petitions were sent out, accompanied by a second appeal
which closed: "Shall we not all join in one loud, earnest, effectual
prayer to Congress, which will swell on its ear like the voice of many
waters, that this bloody, desolating war shall be arrested and ended by
the immediate and final removal by statute law and amended
Constitution, of that crime and curse which alone has brought it upon
us?"

[Autograph: Charles Sumner]

In answer to an invitation to be present at the first anniversary of
the Women's National Loyal League, Senator Sumner wrote:

I can not be with you for my post of duty is here. I am grateful to
your association for what you have done to arouse the country to
insist on the extinction of slavery. Now is the time to strike and
no effort should be spared. The good work must be finished, and to
my mind nothing seems to be done, while anything remains to be
done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No
effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of
_property in man_, which is the corner-stone of the rebel
pretension and the constant assumption of the partisans of slavery,
or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and
there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no
such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the
most execrable feature of slavery itself.

As Miss Anthony herself had asked so many favors of Wendell Phillips,
she thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Stanton invite him to
make an address at this anniversary; but he was not in the least
deceived, as his reply shows:

DEAR MRS. STANTON: Your S.B.A. thinks she is very cunning. As if I
did not see a huge pussy under that meal! She has been so modest,
humble, ashamed, reluctant, apologetic, contrite, self-a