blic strife
and turmoil, but I feel it a duty to enter my protest with yours
against the Fifteenth Amendment. Last winter, in Boston, I could
only give my vote against it, for no Sixteenth had been proposed.
It seemed almost a childish, selfish thing to do, when all the
eloquence of a Boston platform was arrayed on the other side, and
other women rose and said they were ready to step aside and let
the colored man have his rights first. Not one said we will step
aside and let the negro woman (whom I affirm, as I ever have, is
better fitted for self-government than the negro man) have her
rights before we press our claim, I could not but think it an
easy thing for them to do, never having had the right they
demanded. But if they truly believe that it will do for humanity
what is claimed for it, I do not see why it should be called
magnanimous for a woman to say, I yield to man just what he has
always asserted as his, the right to rule. You have taken a bold
stand, and I thank God for it. Though still in the minority,
there is hope; for with a radical truth one shall chase a
thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight; and ere very long,
before another convention, I trust many more will see with us
that the Fifteenth Amendment, without the Sixteenth, is a
compromise worse by far for the nation than any other ever
passed. They could be repealed, this can not. Once settled, the
waves of corruption will swamp our little bark freighted with all
humanity, the women of all shades of color, and subject to every
variety of tyranny and oppression, from the cramped feet of the
Chinese to the cramped brains and waists of our own higher order
of civilization.

It seems specially strange to those of us who so well remember
the motto of the old Abolitionists, "Immediate and unconditional
emancipation," now to hear a half measure advocated. It was that
stern principle of justice which attracted and held me in the old
organization when those dearest to me went into the Liberty
party. I had been trained in that school which taught children
that they must do right for right's sake, without hope of reward
or fear of punishment, leaving the consequences with the All wise
Ruler of events. Among the early Abolitionists this
uncompromising spirit was manifest, a