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793 devotedness of some woman. Such men will not use the argument that woman should not have the suffrage because she can not bear arms.

The ballot of woman is needed to render our civilization more complete and harmonious. I knew a lady who rode with the first party of ladies over the mountains into a mining town of California. The whole population turned out to see the novel spectacle. What did they say when the women came among them? Did they say, "Go away from here; this is no place for women; you will unsex yourself?" Oh, no! The first sound heard from that silent and expectant throng of miners was a rough voice calling out, "Three cheers for the ladies who have come to make us better!" It is this coming of the new influence—not a purer influence merely, for doubtless a great part of what is called the purity of woman is but the purity of ignorance, that rough contact with the world would seem to endanger—it is not merely the greater purity, but it is because she is the other part of the human race; it is because without her we have fathers in the State, but no mothers; it is because without her in our legislative halls, we have laws that take from the mother the right to every child she bears; it is because without her in our courts, lawyers use foul words that shame the purity of woman. Until woman takes a place with man in the legislation of the world, and in the administration of justice, she will suffer, and man through her will suffer; also, it is not because woman is so far above man that we claim her rights in this matter. It is because she is the other half of man and society is imperfect, and will remain so until she takes her proper place in the labors of the world. If a pair of scissors be broken in two, and you have it riveted together, it is not because you concede angelic superiority to either half, but simply because it takes two halves to make a whole.

Mrs. Cutler was the first speaker of the evening session. Ladies and Gentlemen:—When the cloud of slavery agitation arose—a cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, but which at length became a great tempest, overshadowing all the land, and when the thunders rolled, and the lightnings flashed, and when we felt that almost the doom of our nation had come, then we women read, as one of our number has so grandly expressed it—we read by the light of a hundred thousand lamps, the judgment of the Almighty against the institution of slavery. That institution was wrong because it took away human rights. But what were the rights? The right to live was not among them—for the slave lived. The right to bread was not among them—for he was fed and clothed. The rights that were taken away were the rights inherent in all human beings to the results of their own labor, to the freedom of the body and the mind. And when the country once became aroused to the full significance of this slavery question, the heart of every mother in the land throbbed in sympathy with the enslaved. At last War said to us, "These people have not been remembered in their bonds, and our sons and brothers are now called from us, and we must offer them upon the altar of sacrifice!" And, wondering, we read anew the Declaration of Independence, and swore fealty to its precepts, now to be written with a pen of iron dipped in the hearts' blood of our sons. It is past, and all men are free and equal in America.

But there is one thing yet to be done in order that our country may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired expression of our fore-