k to fulfill the purpose which brought her
eastward. She stopped at Auburn to counsel with Mrs. Wright and Mrs.
Worden, but found both very dubious about reviving interest in woman's
rights at this critical moment. After a night of mapping out the
campaign with Mrs. Stanton, she started out bright and early the next
morning on that mission which she was to follow faithfully and
steadfastly, without cessation or turning aside, for the next thirty
years--to compel the Constitution of the United States to recognize the
political rights of woman! The days were spent in hunting up old
friends and supporters of the years before the war and enlisting their
sympathies in the great work now at hand; and the evenings were
occupied with Mrs. Stanton in preparing an appeal and a form of
petition praying Congress to confer the suffrage on women.[35] This was
the first demand ever made for Congressional action on this question.
The Fourteenth Amendment, as proposed, contained in Section 2, to which
the women objected, the word "male" three times, and read as follows:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of
persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the
right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for
president and vice-president of the United States, representatives
in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the
members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the _male_
inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the
number of such _male_ citizens shall bear to the whole number of
_male_ citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

If it had been adopted without this word "male," all women would have
been virtually enfranchised, as men would have let women vote rather
than have them counted out of the basis of representation. Thaddeus
Stevens made a vigorous attempt to have women included in the
provisions of this amendment.

[Autograph: Thaddeus Stevens]

A letter written by Mrs. Stanton to Martha Wright is a sample of
hundreds which were sent to friends in all parts of the country:

I enclose you the proof of the memoria