Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/77

61 convention. There are ladies here who have come hundreds of miles to attend a business meeting of the Loyal Women of the North; and good as anti-slavery conventions are, and anti-slavery speeches are, in their way, I think that here we should attend to our own business.


 * My speech shall be as brief as possible and I ask for an excuse for my broken language. Our field is very small, and God has given us character and abilities to follow it out. We do not need to stand at the ballot-boxes and cast our votes, neither to stand and plead as lawyers; but in our homes we have a great office. I consider women a great deal superior to men. (Laughter and applause). Men are physically strong, but women are morally better. I speak of pure women, good women. It is woman who keeps the world in the balance.

I am from Germany, where my brothers all fought against the Government and tried to make us free, but were unsuccessful. My only son, seventeen years old, is in our great and noble army of the Union. He has fought in many of the battles here, and I only came from California to see him once more. I have not seen him yet; though I was down in the camp, I could not get any pass. But I am willing to lay down all this sacrifice for the cause of liberty. We foreigners know the preciousness of that great, noble gift a great deal better than you, because you never were in slavery, but we are born in it. Germany pines for freedom. In Germany we sacrificed our wealth and ornaments for it, and the women in this country ought to do the same. We can not fight in the battles, but we can do this, and it is all we can do. The speaker, before me, remarked that Abraham Lincoln was two years before he emancipated slaves. She thought it wrong. It took eighteen hundred years in Europe to emancipate the Jews, and they are not emancipated now. Among great and intelligent peoples like Germany and France, until 1814 no Jew had the right to go on the pavement; they had to go in the middle of the street, where the horses walked! It took more than two years to emancipate the people of the North from the idea that the negro was not a human being, and that he had the right to be a free man. A great many will find fault in the resolution that the negro shall be free and equal, because our equal not every human being can be; but free every human being has a right to be. He can only be equal in his rights. (Applause).

Mrs. Rose called for the reading of the resolutions, which after a spirited discussion, all except the fifth, were unanimously adopted.

Mrs., of Wisconsin, said: Mrs. President—I object to the passage of the fifth resolution, not because I object to the sentiment expressed; but I do not think it is the time to bring before this meeting, assembled for the purpose of devising the best ways and means by which women may properly assist the Government in its struggle against treason, anything which could in the least prejudice the interest in this cause which is so dear to us all. We all know that Woman's Rights as an ism has not been received with entire favor by the women of the country, and I know that there are thousands of earnest, loyal, and able women who will not go into any movement of this kind, if this idea is made