the Republicans hope to save their
lives by our enfranchisement, let them live.

Mrs. Hooker wrote from Washington: "Everything conspires to bring about
the early confirmation of our hopes. Republicans are discovering that
without this new, live issue, they are dead, and once more party
necessity is to be God's opportunity. Let us, who know so many good men
and true who are in this party, be thankful that through it, rather
than through the Democratic, deliverance is to come, for to owe
gratitude to a pro-slavery party would nearly choke my thanksgiving."

To this Mrs. Stanton replied: "That is not the point, but which party,
as a party, has the best record on our question. For four years I have
chafed under the Republican maneuvering to keep us still. Let me call
your attention to my speech on the Fifteenth Amendment, in which I said
'this is a new stab at womanhood, to result in deeper degradation to
her than she has ever known before.'... Sometimes I exclaim in agony,
'Can nothing raise the self-respect of women?' I despise the Republican
party for the political serfdom we suffer today, under the heel of
every foreign lord and lackey who treads our soil. If all of you have
turned to such idols, I will go alone to Jerusalem."

When the judiciary committee made its adverse report[57] which was
merely that Congress had not the power to act, most of the friends were
not discouraged but believed another committee would decide
differently. Mrs. Hooker, however, was at the boiling point of
indignation over the report and reversed her decision in regard to the
Republican party, writing: "Thank God! that party is dead; every one
here knows it, feels it, and is waiting to see what will take its
place. A great labor and woman suffrage party is ready to spring into
life, and a hundred aristocratic Democrats are pledged to the work. You
can have no conception of the new conditions unless you are here in the
midst of things and read the telegrams from all parts of the country.
Early next winter we shall be declared voting citizens." She then
quotes a number of prominent Democratic politicians whom she has
interviewed and who have given her reason for having faith in that
party. But many of the women were fooled then by both political
parties, just as they have continued to be up to the present time.

A letter from Phoebe Couzins expressed the sentiment of numbers which
were received this spring: "We made a grand mistake in