itors of the Anti-Slavery Standard, and had
battled long and earnestly for the freedom of the slave at the cost of
her literary popularity; but now when she asked that she might receive
the rights of citizenship at least at the same time they were conferred
upon the freedman, her plea was declared "most inopportune."

The Democrats in Congress, who never had favored or assisted in any way
the so-called woman's rights doctrines, seized upon this opportunity to
harass the Republicans and defeat negro suffrage. They not only
presented the women's petitions but made long and eloquent speeches in
their favor, using with telling force against the Republicans their own
oft-repeated arguments for equal rights to all. In the midst of this
agitation, the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill being under
discussion, Edgar Cowan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, moved to strike out
the word "male," and thus precipitated a debate which occupied three
entire days in the Senate. Among the Republicans Benjamin F. Wade and
B. Gratz Brown made splendid arguments for woman suffrage and announced
their votes in favor of the measure. Senator Wilson, from
Massachusetts, declared himself ready at any and all times to vote for
a separate bill enfranchising women, but opposed to connecting it with
negro suffrage. The vote in the Senate to strike the word "male" from
the proposed bill resulted: yeas, 9; nays, 47; in the House, yeas, 49;
nays, 74--68 not voting. A number of members in both Houses who
believed in woman suffrage voted "no" because they preferred to
sacrifice the women rather than the negroes.[39]

[Autograph: B.F. Wade]

[Autograph: With the respects of B. Gratz Brown]

The Republican press was equally hostile to the proposition to
enfranchise women. Mr. Greeley, who in times past had been so staunch a
supporter of woman's rights, now said in the New York Tribune:

A CRY FROM THE FEMALES,--.... Our heart warms with pity towards
these unfortunate creatures. We fancy that we can see them,
deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted
privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives
away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art
in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of
cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an
accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her
eye! There was sound philosophy in the rema