Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/361

Rh taught children that they must do right for right's sake, without hope of reward or fear of punishment, leaving the consequences with the All wise Ruler of events. Among the early Abolitionists this uncompromising spirit was manifest, and to me it was the real gospel.

I remember well the strong opposition to some who advocated the election of John C. Fremont, in 1856, among whom was Frederick Douglass. He was then denounced as a compromiser asking for a half loaf. He still asks for the half loaf; but others who stood firmly then for the whole have now come down to his plane, and desire above all things to finish up the anti-slavery work and have the negro man out of the way, and so give the Sixteenth Amendment the go-by, claiming manhood suffrage because it is the order of nature that man, however ignorant, debased and brutal he may be, shall always be first, because he always has been, yielding the whole argument to physical force, leaving the negro woman wholly out of the question, giving her over to the tyranny of the husband, which is nearly, if not quite, equal to that of the master. The anti-slavery platform still carefully guards itself against the woman question, while on the Suffrage platform the Fifteenth Amendment is considered essential. Miss Couzins was the only one who put the two amendments fairly before the Convention in Boston. After presenting the issues of the two amendments she trenched lightly on another topic still more offensive. She plead for the outcast woman in a most womanly way, but it did not prove to be a popular theme; but I think she is too true, pure, and noble not to do the same again and again.

Last evening Miss Peckham, Mrs. Churchill, and Miss Couzins presented the suffrage question to a select audience in Providence. Each in her own way and from her own stand-point spoke well. I have not time to give you as elaborate a notice as I should like to of each, but will do so after the convention which the State Association propose holding next week, on Monday, the 14th, in Westerly, R. I. If you have helps to send us we shall welcome them cordially.

Yours ever truly,

22, 1869.

—Almost every question has its ludicrous side. The champions of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution present an illustration. Conceding woman's equal right to the ballot with man, they still resist her claims on the ground that this is not her hour, but man's hour. "The black man's hour." As though justice and right were determined by clocks and almanacs. And as though some sort of terrible crisis could not be urged always. Admitting even that in fitness for the franchise, the white women, especially of the North, are eminently superior to the average of Southern men, of any color, they still demand that woman's claim be postponed to their favorite Fifteenth Amendment, which presumes every man in the nation of whatever color, grade, or race, the superior of woman, however exalted by culture, by wealth, by refinement, by patriotism, or whatever virtues, gifts, or graces. An Amendment, it is called, while preparing the way to lift into lordship absolute, every man, however mean and vile, over every woman, however divine her character!

And then these "Amenders" presume to charge with "selfishness," "ignorance," "conservatism," and nobody knows what else, those who are