Minor, Mo.; Adeline Thomson, Penn,; Mrs. M.B. Longley, Ohio;
Mrs. J.P. Root, Kan.; Lilie Peckham, Wis.]

CHAPTER XX.

FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY--END OF EQUAL RIGHTS SOCIETY.

1870.

Conventions and conventions for fifty years, without a break, planned
and managed by one woman--was there ever a similar record? The year
1870 opened with the Second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in
Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 19. It had been advertised for
two days, but the interest was so great that it was continued through
the third day and evening. Mrs. Stanton was in the chair and the papers
united in praising the beauty, dignity and elegant attire of the women
on the platform. A long table at the Arlington Hotel was reserved for
them, and Miss Anthony relates that as they were all going into the
dining-room one day, Jessie Benton Fremont beckoned to her and when she
went over to the table where the general and she were sitting, she said
in her bright, pretty way: "Now tell me, did you hunt the country over
and pick out a score of the most beautiful women you could find to melt
the hearts of our congressmen?"

Letters of warm approval were read from John Stuart Mill and Helen
Taylor, of England; Professor Homer B. Sprague, of Cornell University;
Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist church; Senator Matthew H. Carpenter,
and many other distinguished persons. A number of senators and
representatives addressed the meetings, as did also Hon. A.G. Riddle,
of the District of Columbia, Rev. Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour,
Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the usual corps of well-known suffrage
speakers. Jennie Collins, the Lowell factory girl, electrified the
audience by discussing the great question from the standpoint of the
workingwomen. All the New York dailies sent women reporters, a
comparatively new feature at conventions.

A hearing was arranged before the joint committees for the District of
Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton
based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the
St. Louis convention a few months before, the first assertion of
woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony
said:

We are here for the express purpose of urging you to present in
your respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the
District of Columbia Suffrage Act and thereby enfranchise the women
of the District. We ask that the e