Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/700

700 the legislature to submit the question of woman suffrage to the electors of the State added interest to this occasion. Parker Pillsbury, in The Revolution, said:

The Wisconsin convention seems to have been quite equal in all respects to its predecessors at Chicago and other places. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were accompanied to Milwaukee by Mrs. Livermore, a new Western star of "bright particular effulgence," and the proceedings throughout were characterized by argument, eloquence and interest beyond anything of the kind ever witnessed there before. The Milwaukee papers teem with accounts of it, most of them of very friendly tone and spirit, even if opposed to the objects under consideration. The Evening Wisconsin said, if any one supposed for an instant that the call for a Woman's Suffrage convention would draw out only that class known as strong-minded, such a one was never more deceived in his or her life. At the opening of the convention, yesterday, the City Hall was crowded with as highly intelligent an audience of ladies and gentlemen as ever gathered there before.

Mrs. Stanton spoke at the evening session to an immense audience on the following resolutions:

Resolved, That a man's government is worse than a white man's government, because in proportion as you increase the rulers you make the condition of the ostracised more hopeless and degraded.

Resolved, That, as the cry of a "white man's government" created an antagonism between the Irish and the negro, culminating in the New York riots of '63, so the Republican cry of "Manhood Suffrage" creates an antagonism between the black man and all women, and will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern States.

Resolved, That by the establishment of an aristocracy of sex in the District of Columbia, by the introduction of the word "male" into the Federal Constitution in Article 14, Section 2, and by the proposition now pending to enforce manhood suffrage in all the States of the Union, the Republican party has been guilty of three excessively arbitrary acts, three retrogressive steps in legislation, alike invidious and insulting to woman, and suicidal to the nation.

Miss Anthony followed showing that every advance step in manhood suffrage added to woman's degradation. Quite a number of ladies and gentlemen of Wisconsin spoke well of the various sessions of the convention. Altogether it was a most enthusiastic meeting, and the press and the pulpit did their part to keep up the discussion for many weeks after.

These resolutions, readily passed in the Milwaukee convention, had been rejected at all others held in the West during this campaign, although Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had earnestly advocated them everywhere. They early foresaw exactly what has come to pass, and did their uttermost to rouse women to the danger of having their enfranchisement indefinitely postponed. They warned them that the debate once closed on negro suffrage, and the amendments passed, the question would not be opened again for a generation. But their warnings were unheeded. The fair promises of Republicans and Abolitionists that, the negro question settled, they would devote themselves to woman's enfranchisement,