of Kansas in all sorts of rude vehicles, talking in groves, school-houses, and cabins, eating and sleeping as pioneers sleep and eat, for weeks and months, making the beautiful rolling prairies, filled with fertile valleys and flowery knolls, vocal with their eloquent, earnest appeals in behalf of woman's rights and against woman's wrongs; and through the vote carried for woman's wrongs the fervid, eloquent words then uttered by woman's tongue, welling up as they did from noble hearts heated to redness in the furnace of love for human justice, left an influence which has steadily and surely increased, and will thus continue until Kansas shall give woman equal rights and privileges with man.
Sincerely yours, J. P. Root.
Racine, Wisconsin, March 16, 1882.
Dear Susan:—You ask me to write an account of my experiences in Kansas; with unquestioning obedience I attempt what you require, although many records and documents are wanting which should have been kept, had I anticipated your command. But when in Kansas, I no more thought of appearing in history, than the butterfly flitting from flower to flower thinks of being dried and put in a museum.
I have never kept a diary, have never counted the number of miles I have traveled, the meals eaten, calls made, pages written, or words spoken. I have tried to do the pressing duty of each hour, leaving the results and records to take care of themselves. You will not, therefore, be surprised that I am unable to furnish even the "round unvarnished tale," but must be content with glimpses as memory, after the lapse of fourteen years, supplies them.
I am glad to have an opportunity, through your valuable history, of paying my respects to the good people whom I met in Kansas, few of whom I shall ever see again in this life, but whose earnest words go with me every day, a constant source of encouragement and of strength. It would be but justice to record the names of all those who gave generous aid and sympathy in the woman suffrage campaign of '67; brave pioneers they were, who had learned loyalty to principle through many bitter experiences; some of them had been friends and companions of brave old John Brown, and, trained in the great Anti-Slavery struggle, filled with the love of liberty, they knew how to stand for the right. But their names are recorded on high in letters of living light, and they little need our poor faltering testimony. "Their reward is with them, and their reward is sure." To-day, looking back over the years, Kansas is to me a memory of grand, rolling prairies stretching far away; of fertile fields; of beautiful osage orange hedges; of hospitable homes; of brave and earnest women; kind and true men; and of some of the most dishonest politicians the world has ever seen.
I went to Kansas, through an arrangement made by Lucy Stone with leaders of the Republican party there, whereby they were to furnish comfortable conveyance over the State, with a lady as traveling companion, and also to arrange and preside over all the meetings; these were to be Republican meetings in which it was thought best that a woman should present the claims of the woman suffrage amendment, which had been submitted to the vote of the men of the State by a strongly Republican Legislature.
