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 historic credit of being the first men to take the next great step in civilization—a step sure to be taken at no distant day.

Edward Everett once said, illustrating the effect of small things on character: "The Mississippi and the St. Lawrence Rivers have their rise near each other. A very small difference in the elevation of the land sends one to the ocean amid tropical heat, while the other empties into the frozen waters of the north." So, it may seem a small matter whether you admit or shut out women from an equal share in the government. But if you exclude them you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly, law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good women.

Henry B. Blackwell, secretary of the association, visited North Dakota, Montana and Washington, and personally labored with the members of the three constitutional conventions. He carried with him letters written expressly for these conventions by Governor Francis E. Warren and U. S. Delegate Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming; Governor Lyman U. Humphrey, Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg, Chief Justice Albert H. Horton and all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Kansas; U. S. Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, U. S. Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, Governor Oliver Ames, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, William Lloyd Garrison and others of Massachusetts, commending his mission and expressing the hope that the new States would incorporate equal suffrage in their constitutions. Copies of these letters were placed in the hands of every delegate. Mr. Blackwell devoted over a month to the journey and the work in these Territories, paying his own expenses and giving them and his services to the American Suffrage Association. [Detailed accounts of these efforts will be found in chapters on these three States.]

1890.—In February the American and the National Societies held a convention in Washington under the name of the National-American Association and this body has continued its annual meetings as one organization.