o longer
co-operate with them. This called forth indignant speeches from all
parts of the house, and he was soon silenced.[49]

[Autograph:

Yours very truly
O.B. Frothingham]

Frederick Douglass and several other men attempted to force the
adoption of a resolution that "we gratefully welcome' the pending
Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting disfranchisement on account of race and
earnestly solicit the State legislatures to pass it without delay."
Miss Anthony declared indignantly that she protested against this
amendment because it did not mean equal rights; it put 2,000,000
colored men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 colored women,
who until now had been at least the equals of the men at their side.
She continued:

The question of precedence has no place on an equal rights
platform. The only reason it ever forced itself here was because
certain persons insisted that woman must stand back and wait until
another class should be enfranchised. In answer we say: "If you
will not give the whole loaf of justice to the entire people, if
you are determined to extend the suffrage piece by piece, then give
it first to women, to the most intelligent and capable of them at
least. I remember a long discussion with Tilton and Phillips on
this very question, when we were about to carry our petitions to
the New York Constitutional Convention. Mr. Tilton said that we
should urge the amendment to strike out the word 'white,'" and
added: "The question of striking out the word 'male' we, as an
equal rights association, shall of course present as an
intellectual theory, but not as a practical thing to be
accomplished at this convention." Mr. Phillips also emphasized this
point; but I repudiated this downright insolence, when for fifteen
years I had canvassed the entire State, county by county, with
petition in hand asking for woman suffrage! To think that those two
men, among the most progressive of the nation, should dare look me
in the face and speak of this great principle for which I had
toiled, as a mere intellectual theory!

If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said "black men
first and white women afterwards," he would have seen that it was
only the men. When he tells us that the case of black men is so
perilous, I tell him that even outraged as they are by the hateful
prejudice against color, he hims