Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/932

894 "We, the undersigned, women of the United States, agree to become members of the 'Women's Loyal National League,' hereby pledging our most earnest influence in support of the Government in its prosecution of the war for freedom and for the restoration of the national unity."

The office of the League is Room No. 20, Cooper Institute. Let all loyal women, friendly to Emancipation, join their ranks, and devote what spare time they may have to this noble work.

The New York Times published the following:

To the Editor of the New York Times:

Until the advent of the present struggle, the word loyalty was hardly known among us, and though we often spoke of the Union, we seldom used the term national unity. With new phases of society new terms come into vogue. We have now, springing up everywhere, Loyal National Leagues, and great good they are doing. They have, so far, been chiefly set on foot by men, but women are now bestirring themselves in the same direction. Quite recently, a Woman's Loyal National League has been organized in this city. . . ..

The prudence of the members of this League is to be commended, first, in selecting a single object on which to concentrate their exertions, and secondly, in selecting as that object the of procuring an act of Congress declaring general emancipation, than which nothing is more needed at the present time, not only as an endorsement of the President's Proclamation, but also as a remedy for the utter confusion produced by the present state of affairs, under which it would puzzle the shrewdest lawyer to determine who, among the fugitives that are daily flocking to us across the lines, is free, and who still a Slave. As a permanent arrangement, no one believes that a few counties in one State, and a few parishes in another, can remain slave, while all around them emancipation has been accomplished; nor that slavery can endure, except for a brief season, along a narrow border-strip, bounded North and South by freedom.

Whether these ladies will succeed in the task of procuring one million of names to their petition, depends chiefly on their business talent in organizing the machinery of so great an undertaking.

R

The New York Evening Post says:

It has sometimes been made a reproach to the women of the Northern States, that while their sisters of the South are the very life of the rebellion, exceeding the men in zeal and devotion and self-sacrifice, they, with a noble cause against a base one, show less zeal, less earnestness, do less to animate and inspire the combatants; in short, are less active in maintaining the Union than the ladies of the Slave States in working to destroy it.

If, however, the members of the '* Women's Loyal National League," an association recently commenced in this city, succced in what they have just undertaken, it will go far to show that there is neither lukewarmness nor lack of energy in the women of the North; and that, in practical industry exerted in aid of the war and the Government, they are not to be outmatched by the zeal of the fair mischief-makers who oppose

We learn that the League has already obtained several thousand names and addresses of persons and societies throughout the Northern and Border States who are favorable to emancipation, to whom they propose to address their circulars; and that they are organizing, after a business fashion, the machinery necessary to effect their object in the six months still intervening before the meeting of Congress. It is a great undertaking, this obtaining of one million signatures, such an undertaking as has seldom if ever been carried out before. If it succeeds it will obtain record in the history of the time as an enterprise most honorable to the sex which conceived and completed it.

The pledge of the League is well worded and judicious. . . ..

Such Leagues ought to be, and we trust will be, organized all over the country, in aid of the mammoth petition. Without having made any accurate calculation, we doubt