Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/526

498 tion, he agreed to lay the subject before the committee, and it was finally agreed that a hearing should be given on Friday morning, January 10th, at 11 o’clock.

To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States Congress assembled :

The undersigned, citizens of the United States, believing that under the present Federal Constitution all women who are citizens of the United States have the right to vote, pray your honorable body to enact a law during the present session that shall assist and protect them in the exercise of that right.

And they pray further that they may be permitted, in person, and in behalf of the thousands of other women who are petitioning Congress to the same effect, to be heard upon this memorial before the Senate and House at an early day in the present session. We ask your honorable body to bear in mind that while men are represented on the floor of Congress, and so may be said to be heard there, women who are allowed no vote, and therefore no representation, can not truly be heard except as Congress shall open its doors to us in person.

January 10, 1872.

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the memorial of yourself and others, asking to be heard before the Senate in behalf of the constitutional right of women to vote, and modified by your letter of this morning, so as to ask that the committee hold a public meeting in the Senate Chamber for that purpose, have concluded that it would not be consistent with the usage and rules of the Senate to admit memorialists to appear and advocate their claims before the Senate, nor for the committee to ask the use of the Senate Chamber for public discussion before them.

The committee would, however, be happy to receive any communication you and the other memorialists may think proper to make, or, if the memorialists prefer to present their views in person, the committee will hear them in its committee-room at 11 o'clock A.M., next Friday morning.

Very respectfully,

Mrs.

Accordingly the hearing being granted, at the appointed hour the whole convention adjourned to the Capitol, crowding not only the committee room but the corridors, thousands of eager, expectant women struggling to gain admission. The committee, seated round