Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/203

Rh assembled at the Church of the Puritans, May 9th, 1867, at 10 o'clock a.m. Elizabeth Cady Stanton called the meeting to order, and said: "In the absence of our venerable President (Lucretia Mott), Robert Purvis, one of the Vice-Presidents, will take the chair."

Mr. Purvis said: I regret the absence of Mrs. Mott. It is needless to say that no one has higher claims upon the nation's gratitude for what has been accomplished in the glorious work of Anti-Slavery, and for what is now being accomplished in the still greater, because more comprehensive work for freedom contemplated by this Society, than our honored and beloved President, Lucretia Mott. (Applause). It is with no ordinary feelings that I congratulate the friends of this Association on the healthful, hopeful, animating, inspiring signs of the times. Our simple yet imperative demand, founded upon a just conception of the true idea of our republican government, is equality of rights for all, without regard to color, sex, or race; and, inseparable from the citizen, the possession of that power, that protection, that primal element of republican freedom—the ballot.

Lucretia Mott here entered the hall, and, at the request of Mr. Purvis, took the chair, and called for the Secretary's Report.

said: It is my duty to present to you at this time a written Report of all that has been done during the past year; but those of us who have been active in this movement, have been so occupied in doing the work, that no one has found time to chronicle the progress of events. With but half a dozen live men and women, to canvass the State of New York, to besiege the Legislature and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention with tracts and petitions, to write letters and send documents to every State Legislature that has moved on this question, to urge Congress to its highest duty in the reconstruction, by both public and private appeals, has been a work that has taxed every energy and dollar at our command. Money being the vital power of all movements—the wood and water of the engine—and, as our work through the past winter has been limited only by the want of it, there is no difficulty in reporting on finance. The receipts of our Association, during the year, have amounted to $4,096.78; the expenditures, for lectures and conventions, for printing and circulating tracts and documents, to $4,714,11—leaving us in debt $617.33.

The Secretary then rapidly rehearsed the signs of progress. She spoke of the discussion in the United States Senate on the Suffrage bill, through three entire days, resulting in a vote of nine Senators in favor of