Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/856

Rh and help." The work for equal rights made favorable headway in the legislature of Oregon that year through the influence of a convention held at Salem under the able leadership of Mrs. H. A. Loughary and Dr. Mary A. Thompson.

In June, 1878, a convention met in Walla Walla, Washington territory, for the purpose of forming a constitution for the proposed new State of Washington, and in compliance with the invitation of many prominent women of the territory I visited the convention and was permitted to present a memorial in person, praying that the word "male" be omitted from the fundamental law of the incubating State. But my plea (like that of Abigail Adams a century before) failed of success, through a close vote however—it stood 8 to 7—and men went on as before, saying, as they did in the beginning: 'Women do not wish to vote. If they desire the ballot let them ask for it." In September of that year I was again at my post in the Oregon legislature circulating the New Northwest among the law-makers, and doing what else I could to keep the cause before them in a manner to enlist their confidence and command their respect. An opportunity was given me at this session to make an extended argument upon constitutional liberty before a joint convention of the two Houses, which occupied an hour in delivery and was accorded profound attention. I was much opposed to the growing desire of the legislature to shirk its responsibility upon the voters at large by submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to them when the constitution nowhere prohibits women from voting, and I labored to show that all we need is a declaratory act extending to us the franchise under the existing fundamental law. Dr. Mary A. Thompson followed in a brief speech and was courteously received. The Married Woman's Property bill, passed in 1874, received some necessary amendments at this session, and an act entitling women to vote upon school questions and making them eligible to school offices, was passed by a triumphant majority.

I went to Southern Oregon in 1879, and while sojourning in Jacksonville was assailed with a shower of eggs (since known in that section as "Jacksonville arguments") and was also burned in effigy on a principal street after the sun went down. Jacksonville is an old mining town, beautifully situated in the heart of the Southern Oregon mountains, and has no connection with the outside world except through the daily stagecoaches' Its would-be leading men are old miners or refugees from the bushwhacking district whence they were driven by the civil war. The taint of slavery is yet upon them and the methods of border-ruffians are their hearts' delight. It is true that there are many good people among them, but they are often over-awed by the lawless crowd whose very instincts lead them to oppose a republican form of government, But that raid of the outlaws proved a good thing for the woman suffrage movement. It aroused the better classes, and finally shamed the border ruffians by its own redaction. When I returned to Portland a perfect ovation awaited me. Hundreds of men and women who had not before allied themselves with the movement made haste to do so. The newspapers were filled with severe denunciations of the mob, and "Jackson-villains,"