telligent black men, believing the sophistical statements of politicians, that their rights were imperiled by the agitation of woman suffrage, joined the opposition. Thus the campaign in Kansas was as protracted as many sided.
From April until November, the women of Kansas, and those who came to help them, worked with indomitable energy and perseverance. Besides undergoing every physical hardship, traveling night and day in carriages, open wagons, over miles and miles of the unfrequented prairies, climbing divides, and through deep ravines, speaking in depots, unfinished barns, mills, churches, school-houses, and the open air, on the very borders of civilization, where-ever two or three dozen voters could be assembled.
Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone opened the campaign in April. The following letters show how hopeful they were of success, and how enthusiastically they labored to that end. Even the New York Tribune prophesied victory.[1]
At Gov. Robinson's House, four miles north of
Lawrence, Kansas, April, 5, 1867.
Dear Mrs. Stanton:—We report good news! After half a day's earnest debate, the Convention at Topeka, by an almost unanimous vote, refused to separate "the two questions" male and white. A delegation from Lawrence came up specially to get the woman dropped. The good God upset a similar delegation from Leavenworth bent on the same object, and prevented them from reaching Topeka at all. Gov. Robinson, Gov. Root, Col. Wood, Gen. Larimer, Col. Ritchie, and "the old guard" generally were on hand. Our coming out did good. Lucy spoke with all her old force and fire. Mrs. Nichols was there—a strong list of permanent officers was nominated—and a State Impartial Suffrage Association was organized. The right men were put upon the committees, and I do not believe that the Negro Suffrage men can well bolt or back out now.
The effect is wonderful. Papers which have been ridiculing woman suffrage and sneering at "Sam Wood's Convention" are now on our side. We have made the present Gov. Crawford President of the Association, Lieut.-Gov. Green Vice-President. Have appointed a leading man in every judicial district member of the Executive Committee, and have some of the
- ↑ The New York Tribune, May 29, 1867: "Womanhood suffrage is now a progressive cause beyond fear of cavil. It has won a fair field where once it was looked upon as an airy nothing, and it has gained champions and converts without number. The young State of Kansas is fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the signs of the agitation therein hardly allow a doubt that the citizenship of women will be ere long recognized in the law of the State. Fourteen out of twenty newspapers of Kansas are in favor of making woman a voter. Governor Crawford, ex-Governors Robinson and Root, Judge Schuyler, Col. Ritchie, and Lieut.-Gov. Green, are the leaders of the wide-spread Impartial League, which has among its orators Mistresses Stanton, Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. The vitality of the Kansas movement is indisputable, and whether defeated or successful in the present contest, it will still hold strongly fortified ground." ...
