Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/933

Rh whether less than four stout men could carry the roll comprising a million names into the House to which it is addressed.

The Philadelphia Press says :

It is a great country, this of ours. Great events occur in it. Great things are 1o be found in it. Where shall we find another Niagara? Where a cave of dimensions equal to those of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky? Since California has been added we have her gigantic pines, towering above all other trees in the world. We can not make war, but we must carry it on upon a scale unknown since the days of Xerxes. Our women, too, it would seem, catch the spirit of the country. Until now they have chiefly been known, throughout the great national struggle, m the capacity of sisters of mercy, tenders in hospitals, collectors of comforts and of little luxuries for our sick and wounded, We find them laboring now in a new field. They, called the weaker sex, and properly so called, if thews and sinews constitute strength, have undertaken to do more than to care for the sick and wounded. They seek to aid in striking at the root of the evil whence has arisen the strife which causes the sickness of the hospital and the wounds of the battlefield. They have undertaken a task beyond that which the sturdy Chartists of England performed. The Chartist Petition, if we remember aright, had seven or eight hundred thousand names —the largest number ever obtained to a petition. But our Northern women have undertaken to procure one million of names to a Petition fur Emancipation, and to complete their task in the next six months. The article from The Tribune, elsewhere, will be read with interest,

The National Anti-Slavery Standard comments :

The Women’s Loyal National League, at a meeting held at their Room in the Cooper Institute on Friday, the 29th ult., changed the form of their pledge, so that it now reads as follows ;

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.”

This, it strikes us, is a much happier wording than that of the former pledge. . . ..

The women of the League have embarked in an enterprise worthy of their energy and devotion, and we will not allow ourselves to doubt that they will meet with complete success. It will require some money and a great deal of hard work, but their courage and patience will be found adequate to the task. They will find a helper in every woman who loves justice and humanity, and realizes that there can be no permanent peace for the country until slavery is exterminated root and branch. Tho moral influence upon Congress and the nation of such a petition, signed by a of women, will be incalculable; while the agitation attending the effort will be of the greatest benefit.

Women willing to aid in circulating the petition should send their address at once to Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the League, 20 Cooper Institute, New York.

The Women’s Loyal National League, to the Women of the Republic:—We ask you to sign and circulate this petition for the entire abolition of slavery. We have now one hundred thousand signatures, but we want a million before Congress adjourns. Remember the President’s Proclamation reaches only the slaves of rebels. The jails of loyal Kentucky are to-day “‘ crammed” with Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama slaves, advertised to be sold for their jail fees "according to law," precisely as before the war! While slavery exists anywhere there can be freedom nowhere. There must be a law abolishing slavery. We have undertaken to canvass the nation for freedom. Women, you can not vote or fight for your country. Your only way to be a power in the Government is through the exercise of this, one, sacred, constitutional “right of petition” ; and we ask you to use it now to the utmost. Go to the rich, the poor, the high, the low,