Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/967

Rh tion, and come out unscathed. Our laws require that a majority of all the legal voters in the district must vote to issue bonds to build a school-house, before bonds can be issued. As women were legal voters, to stay at home was to vote against bonds. The election had to be conducted exactly as other elections. It was a busy time; none of our men liked to leave their work to spend the day ut the polls, so three women were chosen and qualified to act as judges. No guardians of the ballot-box ever acted with more ability or behaved with more propriety and dignity than they. There was not the least rudeness among the men; no brawling or swearing. Not a woman there lost a particle of refinement, or became a grain coarser, or neglected her family. Not one of the misguided women whose bad influences Mr. Reynolds, of the Journal, so much dreads, came to the polls. That kind of women, I judge, are literally opposed to women demoralizing themselves by voting. But if she lived in our district, and had offered to vote, I trust their votes would have been received and counted just the same as the votes of the men who support and encourage them in their wicked career. I never knew what men meant when talking about bonds, until I learned that I must vote on the subject. I wanted to vote intelligently; sought the requisite information; and I went to the polls feeling stronger and safer for that little knowledge gained. When I came home my little ones hailed me as lovingly as ever, and the same mother-love guided my hands for their comfort.

"In 1858, a 'woman's rights' man, in Kansas, believing that there should be a perfect equality as to property rights between men and women, wrote to Gerrit Smith, Wm. Goodell, Lucy Stone, and other advocates of woman's rights, asking them to send him a form of a law that would secure that object. Among others he received the framework of a law written by Lucy Stone. He wrote it over according to her pattern, and Lyman Allen introduced it into the Legislature. It became a law in February, 1859. The original in Lucy Stone's handwriting is yet in existence. The law is virtually the one that, today, on our statute book testifies to the honest sense of justice that their conflict with tyranny nurtured in our men {n the early days of Kansas. It testifies to Lucy Stone's zeal in behalf of her sex."

The following address to the Southern people was largely circulated in Kansas during the spring campaign, by Mr. Blackwell. .


 * —I write to you as the intellectual lenders of the Southern people—men who should be able and willing to transcend the prejudices of section—to suggest the only ground of settlement between North and South which, in my judgment, can be successfully adopted.

Let me state the political situation. The radical principles of the North are immovably fixed upon negro suffrage as a condition of Southern State reconstruction. The proposed Constitutional Amendment is not regarded as a finality. It satisfies nobody, not even its authors. In the minds of the Northern people the negroes are now associated with the idea of loyalty to the Union. They are considered citizens. They are respected as "our allies." It is believed in the North that a majority of the white people of the South are at heart the enemies of the Union. The advocates of negro suffrage daily grow stronger and more numerous.

On the other hand, a majority of the Southern white population are inflexibly opposed to negro suffrage in any form, universal or qualified, and are prepared to resist its introduction by every means in their power. In alliance with the President and the Northern Democracy, they protest against any and all terms of reconstruction, demand unconditional readmission, and await in gloomy silence the Republican initiative.

This absolute and growing antagonism can only end, if continued, in one of two results, either in a renewal of civil war, or in a concession by the South of political equality to the negro. But in case of war, the South can not possibly succeed, The North is to-day far stronger in men and money, in farms and factories, than she was in 1860, She is now trained to war, conscious of overwhelming strength, flushed with victory, and respected, as never before, by the nations of Europe. Moreover, she is munch more united in political sentiment. Do not again deceive yourselves. If you should resort to arms, the