Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/96

66 periment from Maine to California would bring these bigoted presbyteries to their senses.

Miss Phoebe Couzins, too, was at the convention, and gave her new lecture, "A Woman without a Country," in which she shows all that woman has done—from fitting out ships for Columbus, to sharing the toils of the great exposition—without a place of honor in the republic for the living, or a statue to the memory of the dead. Hon. A. G. Riddle and Francis Miller spoke ably and eloquently as usual; the former on the sixteenth amendment and the presidential aspect, modestly suggesting that if twenty million women had voted, they might have been able to find out for whom the majority had cast their ballots. Mr. Miller recommended State action, advising us to concentrate our forces in Colorado as a shorter way to success than constitutional amendments.

His speech aroused Susan B. Anthony to the boiling point; for, if there is anything that exasperates her, it is to be remanded, as she says, to John Morrissey's constituency for her rights. She contends that if the United States authority could punish her for voting in the State of New York, it has the same power to protect her there in the exercise of that right. Moreover, she said, we have two wings to our movement. The American Association is trying the popular-vote method. The National Association is trying the constitutional method, which has emancipated and enfranchised the African and secured to that race all their civil rights. To-day by this method they are in the courts, the colleges, and the halls of legislation in every State in the Union, while we have puttered with State rights for thirty years without a foothold anywhere, except in the territories, and it is now proposed to rob the women of their rights in those localities. As the two methods do not conflict, and what is done in the several States tells on the nation, and what is done by congress reacts again on the States, it must be a good thing to keep up both kinds of agitation.

In the middle of November the National Association sent out thousands of petitions and appeals for the sixteenth amendment, which were published and commented on extensively by the press in every State in the Union. Early in January they began to pour into Washington at the rate of a thousand a day, coming from twenty-six different States. It does not require much wisdom to see that when these petitions were placed in the hands of the representatives of their States, a great educational work was accomplished at Washington, and public sentiment there has its legitimate effect throughout the country, as well as that already accomplished in the rural districts by the slower process of circulating and signing the petitions. The present uncertain position of men and parties, has made politicians more ready to listen to the demands of their constituents, and never has woman suffrage been treated with more courtesy in Washington.

To Sara Andrews Spencer we are indebted, for the great labor of receiving, assorting, counting, rolling-up and planning the presentation of the petitions. It was by a well considered coup d'etat that, with her brave coadjutors, she appeared on the floor of the House at the moment of ad-