Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/507

464 abolitionists who have thrown into this movement all the old-time fervor manifested in the slavery conflict. A worthy son of the sainted Lucretia Mott, her mantle seems to have fallen on his shoulders.

The Hon. John M. Broomall was ever ready to champion the cause of equality of rights for women, not only in the legislature and in the constitutional conventions of his own State, but on the floor of congress as well. Ina letter giving us valuable information on several points, he says:

You ask when I made my first declaration for woman suffrage. I cannot tell. I was born in 1816, and one of the earliest settled convictions I formed as a man was that no person should be discriminated against on account of sect, sex, race or color, but that all should have an equal chance in the race which the Divine Ruler has set before all; and I never missed an opportunity to give utterance to this conviction in conversation, on the stump, on the platform and in legislative bodies. My views were set out concisely in my remarks in congress, on January 30, 1869, and I cite the commencement and conclusion, as I find them in The Globe of that date:

Every person owing allegiance to the government and not under the legal control of another, should grave an equal voice in making and administering the Jaws, unless debarred for violating those laws; and in this I make no distinction of wealth, intelligence, race, family or sex. If just government is founded upon the consent of the governed, and if the established mode of consent is through the ballot-box, then those who are denied the right of suffrage can in no sense be held as consenting, and the government which withholds that right is as to those from whom it is withheld no just government. ****The measure now before the House is necessary to the complete fulfillment of what has gone before it. To hesitate now is to put in peril all we have gained. Let this, too, pass into history as an accomplished fact. Let it be followed, in due course of time, by the last crowning act of the series —an amendment to the constitution securing to all citizens of full age, without regard to sex, an equal voice in making and amending the laws under which they live, to be forfeited only for crime, Then the great mission of the party in power will be fulfilled; then will have been demonstrated the capacity of man for self-government; then a just nation, founded upon the full and free consent of its citizens will be no longer a dream of the optimist.

Mrs. Virginia Barnhurst writes:

I think you should make mention of the few men who, against the greatest opposition, stood boldly up and avowed themselves in favor of woman's cause. When I think of some of the speeches that I heard from the opposite side—expressions which sent the hot blood to my face, and which showed the low estimate law-makers put upon woman, those few men who dared to defend mothers and sisters, stand out in my mind as worthy of having their names go down in history—and especially in a history written by women. I had a good talk with Lawyer Campbell. He is one of the most ardent in the cause; he believes the ballot to be a necessity to woman, as a means of self-protection, this necessity being seen in the unequal operation of many laws relating to the guardianship