elf would not today exchange his
sex and color with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Mr. Douglass--"Will you allow me a question?"

Miss Anthony--"Yes, anything for a fight today."

Mr. Douglass--"I want to inquire whether granting to woman the right of
suffrage will change anything in respect to the nature of our sexes."

Miss Anthony--"It will change the nature of one thing very much, and
that is the dependent condition of woman. It will place her where she
can earn her own bread, so that she may go out into the world an equal
competitor in the struggle for life; so that she shall not be compelled
to take such positions as men choose to accord and then accept such pay
as men please to give.... It is not a question of precedence between
women and black men; the business of this association is to demand for
every man, black or white, and every woman, black or white, that they
shall be enfranchised and admitted into the body politic with equal
rights and privileges."

As everybody in the hall was allowed to vote there was no difficulty in
securing the desired endorsement of an amendment to enfranchise negro
men and make them the political superiors of all women. There never had
been a convention so dominated by men. Although the audience refused to
listen to most of them and drowned their voices by expressions of
disapproval and calls for the women speakers, they practically wrested
the control of the meeting from the hands of the women and managed it
to suit themselves.

This was Mrs. Livermore's first appearance at one of these
anniversaries and she created a commotion by introducing this
resolution: "While we recognize the disabilities which legal marriage
imposes upon woman as wife and mother, and while we pledge ourselves to
seek their removal by putting her on equal terms with man, we
abhorrently repudiate 'free loveism' as horrible and mischievous to
society, and disown any sympathy with it." It was the first time the
subject had been brought before a woman's rights convention and its
introduction was indignantly resented by the "old guard." Lucy Stone
exclaimed: "I feel it is a mortal shame to give any foundation for the
implication that we favor 'free loveism.' I am ashamed that the
question should be raised here. There should be nothing at all said
about it. Do not let us, for the sake of our own self-respect, allow it
to be hinted that we helped to forge a shadow of a chain which comes in
the name of 'free