Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/267

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Appeal Came too Late.
247
of women, to reconstruct the country and save the nation. (Cheers.)-Tomorrow our amendment will pass with a startling majority. The other two will be lost. (Applause.) The negro can wait and go to school. And as all are now loyal, the war over, and no rebels exist, no American in this land must be marked by the stain of attainder or impeachment. (Cheers.) No so-called rebel must be disfranchised. I represent the people, and they speak to-morrow in Kansas, emancipating woman, (loud cheers), and declaring that no Hungary, no Poland, no Venice, no Ireland—crushed and disheartened—shall exist in New America. (Loud cheers.)

But Kansas being republican by a large majority, there was no chance of victory. For although the women were supported by some of the best men in the State, such as Gov. Crawford, Ex-Gov. Robinson, United States Senators Pomeroy and Ross, and a few of the ablest editors, the opposition was too strong to be conquered. With both parties, the press, the pulpit and faithless liberals as opponents, the hopes of the advocates-of woman suffrage began to falter before the election.

The action of the Michigan Commission, in refusing to submit a similar amendment to her people, and the adverse report of Mr. Greeley in the Constitutional Convention of New York, had also their depressing influence. Nevertheless, when election day came, the vote was nearly equal for both propositions. With all the enginery of the controlling party negro suffrage had a little over 10,000 votes, while woman suffrage without press or party, friends or politicians, had 9,000 and some over. And this vote for woman's enfranchisement represented the best elements in the State, men of character and conscience, who believed in social order and good government.

When Eastern Republicans learned that the action of their party in Kansas was doing more damage than the question of woman to the negro, since the pioneers, who knew how bravely the women had stood by their side amid all dangers, were saying, "if our women can not vote, the negro shall not;" they began to take in the situation, and a month before the election issued the following appeal, signed by some of the most influential men of the nation. It was published in the New York Tribune October 1st, and copied by most of the papers throughout the State of Kansas:

To the Voters of the United States: In this hour of national reconstruction we appeal to good men of all parties, to Conventions for amending State Constitutions, to the Legislature of every State, and to the Congress of the United States, to apply the principles of the Declaration of Independence to women; Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The only form of consent