g hopes that that party was about to take some new
departure; some onward step; even to nominate for their leader so
radical a man as Salmon P. Chase, a large number of Radicals and
Liberals were present. Had the Democrats made that nomination, and put
a woman suffrage plank in their platform, they would probably have
carried the election. But they timidly clung to their old moorings,
nominated a man who had an unpopular war record, and submitted a
platform without one vital principle with which to rouse the
enthusiasm of the people.

Thus was the movement inaugurated of sending women as delegates to
both Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, giving rise
to the agitation of the suffrage question on new platforms. With what
success the example has been followed, the records from time to time
fully show.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] GOING OVER TO THE COPPERHEADS.--As we have received several
letters from radical friends, warning us that we are going over to the
copperheads, for their comfort and instruction we will state some part
of our political creed.

1. We believe that suffrage is a natural right that belongs to every
man and woman of sound mind, without any qualification of property,
education, or sex, and moreover, that no reconstruction is worthy the
name that does not secure this right to the humblest citizen under
government.

2. We believe that both the spirit and the letter of the Federal
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence give Congress the
right to secure a republican form of government in every State in the
Union, and if they had done their duty at the end of the war and
proclaimed universal suffrage and universal amnesty, North and South,
the Republican party would not have been floundering about in the fogs
and mists of statesmanship to-day, without one inspiring party cry, or
one grand motto inscribed upon their banners, to carry them through
the coming Presidential campaign.

3. We believe that behind the rights of the Federal Government and the
rights of the several States are fundamental rights more sacred than
either, namely the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and
happiness; that out of these rights all just governments flow, and
whatever hinders the growth of the individual, restricts his liberty,
and destroys his happiness, is tyranny, and it is his sacred duty to
resist it to the death, as it is that of the State to resist the
Federal Government, in order to