Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/893

 

 Secretary Chase — Women in the Government Departments — Myrtilla Miner — Mrs. O'Connor's Tribute — District of Columbia Suffrage Bill — The Universal Franchise Association, 1867 — Bill for a Prohibitory Law Presented by Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, 1869 — A Bill for Equal Wages for the Women in the Departments, Introduced by Hon. S. M. Arnell, 1870 — In 1871 Congress Passed the Organic Act for the District Confining the Right of Suffrage to Males — In 1875 it Withdrew all Legislative Power from the People — Women in Law, Medicine, Journalism and the Charities — Dental College Opened to Women — Mary A. Stuart — The Clay Sisters — The School of Pharmacy — Elizabeth Avery Meriwether — Judge Underwood — Mary Bayard Clarke — Dr. Susan Dimock — Governor Chamberlain — Coffee-Growing — Priscilla Holmes Drake — Alexander H. Stephens.

District covers an area of 64 square miles, and contains a population of 200,000. It was [sic]origininally a portion of Maryland, and was ceded to congress by that State for the exclusive use of the Federal government. Hon. Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury under Abraham Lincoln, seeing that most of the gifted young men had been drafted or had enlisted in the army, introduced young women as clerks in the government departments. The experiment proved successful, and now there are about six thousand women in the various departments. Mr. Chase often alluded to this afterwards as one of the most important acts of his life. The war brought many bright, earnest women to Washington, led thither by patriotism, ambition, or the necessity of finding some new employment. This new vital force, this purer element, infused into the society at the capitol, has been slowly introducing more liberal ideas into that community.

The first specific work for woman in the District of Columbia of which we find any record was that of Myrtilla Miner of New York, who opened a Normal School for colored girls, December 3, 1851. She began with six pupils in a small room in a private