Robert Dale Owen being at Washington, and behind the scenes at the time, sent copies of the various bills to the officers of the Loyal League, in New York, and related to us some of the amusing discussions. One of the committee proposed "persons" instead of "males." "That will never do," said another, "it would enfranchise wenches." "Suffrage for black men will be all the strain the Republican party can stand," said another. Charles Sumner said, years afterward, that he wrote over nineteen pages of foolscap to get rid of the word "male" and yet keep "negro suffrage" as a party measure intact; but it could not be done.
Miss Anthony and I were the first to see the full significance of the word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, and we at once sounded the alarm, and sent out petitions for a constitutional amendment to "prohibit the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of ***."
Miss Anthony, who had spent the year in Kansas, started for New York the moment she saw the proposition before Congress to put the word "male" into the national Constitution, and made haste to rouse the women in the East to the fact that the time had come to begin vigorous work again for woman's enfranchisement.
Leaving Rochester, October 11, she called on Martha Wright at Auburn; Phebe Jones and Lydia Mott at Albany; Mmes. Rose, Gibbons, Davis, at New York city; Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell in New Jersey; Stephen and Abby Foster at Worcester; Mmes. Severance, Dall, Nowell, Dr. Harriet K. Hunt, Dr. M.. Zackesewska, and Messrs. Phillips and Garrison in Boston, urging them to join in sending protests to Washington against the pending legislation. Mr. Phillips at once consented to devote five hundred dollars from the "Jackson Fund" to commence the work. Miss Anthony and I spent all our Christmas holidays in writing letters and addressing appeals and petitions to every part of the country, and, before the close of the session of 1865-66, petitions with ten thousand signatures were poured into Congress.
One of my letters was as follows:
" To the Editor of the Standard:
"SIR: Mr. Broomall of Pennsylvania, Mr. Schenck of Ohio, Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania, have each a resolution before Congress to amend the Constitution.
"Article First, Section Second, reads thus: 'Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers.'
"Mr. Broomall proposes to amend by saying, 'male electors'; Mr. Schenck, 'male citizens'; Mr. Jenckes, 'male citizens'; Mr. Stevens, 'male voters,' as, in process of time, women may be made 'legal voters' in the several States and would then meet that requirement of the Constitution. But those urged by the other gentlemen, neither time, effort, nor State Constitutions could enable us to meet, unless, by a liberal interpretation of the amendment, a coat of mail to be worn at the polls might be judged all-sufficient.
Mr. Jenckes and Mr. Schenck, in their bills, have the grace not to say a word about taxes, remembering, perhaps, that 'taxation without representation is tyranny.' But Mr. Broomall, though unwilling that we should share in the honors of government, would fain secure us a place in its burdens; for, while he apportions representatives to "male electors" only, he admits "all the inhabitants" into the rights, privileges, and immunities of taxation.
Magnanimous M.C.!
"I would call the attention of the women of the nation to the fact that, under the Federal Constitution, as it now exists, there is not one word that limits the right of suffrage to any privileged class. This attempt to turn the wheels of civilization backward, on the part of Republicans claiming to be the liberal party, should rouse every woman in the nation to a prompt exercise of the only right she has in the Government, the right of petition. To this end a committee in New York have sent out thousands of petitions, which should be circulated in every district and sent to its representative at Washington as soon as possible. "ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
"NEW YORK, January 2, 1866."
