Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/215

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At the Prohibition Convention.
183

perverted the Constitution of the United States by the introduction of the word "male" three times, thereby limiting the application of its guarantees to a special class. It should be your pride and your duty to restore the constitution to its original basis by the adoption of a sixteenth amendment, securing to women the right of suffrage; and thus establish the equality of all United States citizens before the law.

Not for the first time do we make of you these demands. At your nominating convention in New York, in 1868, Susan B. Anthony appeared before you, asking recognition of woman's inherent natural rights. At your convention of 1872, in Baltimore, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Susan B. Anthony made a similar appeal. In 1876, at St. Louis, Phœbe W. Couzins and Virginia L. Minor presented our claims. Now, in 1880, our delegates are present here from the Middle States, from the West and from the South. The women of the South are rapidly uniting in their demand for political recognition, as they have been the most deeply humiliated by a recognition of the political rights of their former slaves.

To secure to 20,000,000 of women the rights of citizenship is to base your party on the eternal principles of justice; it is to make yourselves the party of the future; it is to do away with a more extended slavery than that of 4,000,000 of blacks; it is to secure political freedom to half the nation; it is to establish on this continent the democratic theory of the equal rights of the people.

In furtherance of this demand we ask you to adopt the following resolution:

Whereas, Believing in the self-evident truth that all persons are created with certain inalienable rights, and that for the protection of these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; therefore, Resolved, That the Democratic party pledges itself to use all its powers to secure to the women of the nation protection in the exercise of their right of suffrage.

On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Chairman Executive Committee.

That the women however, in the campaign of 1880, received the best treatment at the hands of the National Prohibition party is shown by the following invitation received at the Bloomington convention:

To the National Woman Suffrage Association of the United States:

The woman suffragists are respectfully invited to meet with and participate in the proceedings of the National Prohibition Convention to be held at Cleveland, Ohio, June, 1880. James Black, Chairman of National Committee.

Per J. W. Haggard.

A letter was received from Mr. Black urging the acceptance of the invitation. Accordingly Miss Phœbe Couzins was sent as a delegate from the association. The Prohibition party in its eleventh plank said: