Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/353

Rh thrilled the audience by her eloquent plea for negro suffrage. Hers was the speech, not of a brilliant declaimer, but the solid logic of a statesman. When she sat down I felt that the battle was more than half won. Next after Miss Dickinson came Theodore Tilton. It was plain from the moment he took the stand that the situation suited him, and that we were to hear from him that day such words of wisdom, truth and soberness as only genius could supply. We were not disappointed. He was the full master of the subject and the occasion, I followed Mr. Tilton, and resolutions favoring what has since become the 15th Amendment were passed with very little opposition.

You will notice on page 480 of my book, that I don't forget my walk with you from the house of Mr. Joseph Southwick, where you quietly brought to my notice your arguments for womanhood suffrage. That is forty years ago. You had just returned from your European tour. From that conversation with you I have been convinced of the wisdom of woman suffrage, and have never denied the faith....

Very truly yours,

When Anna Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Tilton pressed the question of negro suffrage on the Loyalists' convention, they were met by the same arguments and appeals against it, that were urged upon those who pressed woman suffrage when the Fourteenth Amendment was pending. Douglass knew that any reconstruction without political equality for the black man was a delusion; the women saw as clearly that any reconstruction without political equality for them was a delusion also, and their determination to have some recognition under government sprung from the same love of freedom and self-respect that moved Douglass when, with equal determination, he walked in the procession, and took his seat as a delegate, as he had a right to do, though warned that he would stir up a mob, and be a firebrand in the convention. The description of this scene by Mr. Douglass himself is a suggestive study for all oppressed classes:

I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as a delegate from that city to attend this convention. The honor was a surprise and a gratification to me. It was unprecedented for a city of over 60,000 white citizens, and only about 200 colored residents, to elect a colored man to represent them in a national political convention, and the announcement of it gave a shock to the country of no inconsiderable violence. Many Republicans, with every feeling of respect for me personally, were unable to see the wisdom of such a course. They dreaded the clamor of social equality and amalgamation which would be raised against the party, in consequence of this startling innovation. They, dear fellows, found it much more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.}}

When the train on which I was going to the convention reached Harrisburgh, it met and was attached to another from the West crowded with