be defeated and the Democracy come into power.

Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake
themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and
promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of
that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from
the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but
that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means
by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and
hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the
political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and
thereby securing their gratitude and through it their vote to place
and hold that party in power.

Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the
Cleveland movement with all the strategy and maneuvering of its
semi-Republican managers, assented to and accepted by the women in
their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which
seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power. With Mrs.
Stanton's utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and
our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The
Revolution to the new company--we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip
from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus
leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere
politicians. All are lulled into the strictest propriety of
expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican. And unless
that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against
woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of
their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from
suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of
line with the plan and policy of the dominant party. Nothing less
atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro,
can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of
their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to
the Republican politicians associated with them.

So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages,
still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some
terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a
self-respect which will compel them t