Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/854

Rh A resolution was passed, after a long and stormy debate, declaring it the duty of the legislature to empower women to vote on ail questions connected with the liquor traffic; and I, as its author, was chosen a committee to present the same for consideration at the coming legislative session. Woman suffrage gained a new impetus all over the Northwest through this victory. Everybody congratulated its advocates, and the good minister who had unwittingly caused the commotion seized the first opportunity to explain that he had always been an advocate of the cause. I was by this time so thoroughly advertised by the abuse of the press that I had no difficulty in securing large audiences in all parts of the Pacific Northwest.

I was chosen in April, 1872, as delegate to the annual meeting of the National Association, held in New York the following month. Horace Greeley received the nomination for the presidency at the Cincinnati Liberal Republican Convention while I was on the way; and when I reached New York I at first threw what influence I had in the Association in favor of the great editor. But Miss Anthony, who knew Mr. Greeley better than I did, caused me to be appointed chairman of a committee to interview the reputed statesman and officially report the result at the evening session. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Jane Graham Jones of Chicago were the other members of this committee. We obtained the desired interview, of which it only needs to be said that it became my humiliating duty to ask pardon in the evening for the speech in advocacy of the illustrious candidate which in my ignorance I had made in the morning. That Mr. Greeley owed his defeat in part to the opposition of women in that memorable campaign, I have never doubted. But he builded better than he knew in earlier years, for he planted many a tree of liberty that shall live through the ages to come, overshadowing in a measure his failure to recognize the divine right of political equality for woman in his later days.

The first annual convention of the Oregon State Association met in Portland, February 9, 1873. Many ladies and several gentlemen of more or less local prominence assisted at this convention, but we were able to prevail upon but one gentleman, Col. C. A. Reed of Salem, to occupy the platform with us. This convention received favorable notice from the respectable press of the State, and was largely attended by the best elements of the city and country. Delegates were chosen to attend the forthcoming State Temperance Alliance which held its second annual meeting February 20, and to which a dozen of us went bearing credentials. It was evident from the first that trouble was brewing. The enemy had had a whole year to prepare an ambuscade of which our party had no suspicion. A Committee on Credentials was appointed with instructions to rule the woman suffrage delegation out of the Alliance as a "disturbing element." Hon J. Quinn Thornton was chairman of that