Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/969

Rh cease. North and South, no longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past. School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the law of nature toward the tropics. The memory and spirit of Washington would be cherished; and every deed of genuine gallantry and humanity would be treasured as the common glory of the republic.

Do you say that Northern Republicans would not accept such a proposition? They can not avoid it. The matter is in your own hands.

In New Jersey (then a slave State) from 1776 to 1807, a period of thirty-one years, women and negroes voted on precisely the same footing as white men. No catastrophe, social or political, ensued. The following is an extract from the New Jersey election law of 1797:

" 9. Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her ballot, which shall be a single written ticket containing the names of the person, or persons, for whom he or she votes," etc.

Your Southern Legislatures can extend suffrage on equal terms to "all inhabitants," as the New Jersey State Convention did in 1776. Then let the Republicans in Congress refuse to admit your Senators and Representatives, if they dare. If so, they will go under. Upon that issue fairly made up, the men of positive convictions would rally round the new and consistent Democratic party. The very element which has destroyed slavery would side with the victorious South, and "out of the nettle danger you would pluck the flower safety."

Respectfully yours,.

January 15, 1867.

The Republican State Central Committee met last week in Leavenworth. The Leavenworth papers published or pretended to publish the proceedings of the Committee, bot suppressed an important portion. Fortunately, Mr. Taylor, the honest and able editor of the Wyandotte Gazette, is a member of the Committee, and was present at the meeting. From his paper we get the following that was for some cause or other suppressed:

"Mr. Taylor offered the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the Republican State Central Committee do not indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas, or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the propriety of enfranchising the women of the State,

"Whiting moved to lay the resolution on the table.

"Ayes—Whiting, Eskridge—2.

"Noes—Taylor—1,

"Taylor moved to strike the name of I. S. Kalloch from the list of speakers in. the Republican State Caucus.

"Ayes—Taylor—1.

"Noes—Whiting, Eskridge—2,

"The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee of Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had so far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. Kalloch, C. V. Eskridge, and P. B. Plumb, on the list of speakers to canvass the State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they have within the last few weeks, in public addresses, published articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the women of Kansas, or to women now engaged in canvassing the State In favor of impartial suffrage.

"

" Sept. 18, 1867.