its and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic,
dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of
opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated,
oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore Tilton, make
up the less than a hundred members of this caravan, called, by
themselves, the American Equal Rights Association.

On December 6 and 7 a mass meeting was held in Cooper Institute, Miss
Anthony presiding. There were the usual effective speeches and large
and appreciative audiences present at every session. From New York the
speakers went at once to Rochester and held a two days' convention
there. The forces then divided and, under the management of Miss
Anthony, held meetings in a large number of the towns of western and
central New York, to arouse public sentiment in favor of giving women a
representation at the Constitutional Convention.

Meanwhile the petitions asking Congress to include women in the
proposed Fourteenth Amendment were rapidly pushed, and as soon as ten
or twelve thousand names were secured they were sent at once to
Washington, as the resolution was then under discussion. And here came
the revelation which had been for some time foreshadowed--the
Republicans refused to champion this cause! From the founding of the
Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, women had been always its most loyal
supporters, bearing their share of the odium and persecution of early
days. When the Republican party was formed, the leading women of the
country had allied themselves with it and given faithful service during
the long, dark years which followed. All the Abolitionists and
prominent Republicans had upheld the principle of equal rights to all,
and now, when the test came, they refused to recognize the claims of
woman! Some of the senators and representatives declined to present the
petitions sent from their own districts; others offered them merely as
petitions for "universal suffrage," carefully omitting the word "woman"
and trusting that it would be inferred they meant suffrage for the
negro men.

Even Charles Sumner, who so many times had acknowledged his
indebtedness to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and the other women who were
now asking for their rights, presented a petition from Massachusetts,
headed by Lydia Maria Child, with the declaration that he did it under
protest and that it was "most inopportune." Mrs. Child was the first
and one of the ablest ed