nition of the
rights of their sex. So may it be.

During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate the following autumn, a
California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman's
suffrage, and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge.
Mr. Sargent took no notice of it until a week or two later, when a
suffrage convention met in San Francisco; he then went before that
body and delivered a radical speech in favor of woman's rights, taking
the most advanced grounds. When he was through he remarked to a
friend, "They have my views now, and can make the most of them. I
would not conceal them to be Senator." This bold stand ended the
objection to him on the ground of his favor to woman's rights. He
opened the political campaign in 1874 before an immense audience in
Platt's Hall, San Francisco, by saying, as reported in the papers of
the day:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW-CITIZENS: I trust the time is near
at hand when the phrase "fellow-citizens" will not need the
explanatory remark, "Ladies and gentlemen." I trust we are
nearing the day when our wives and daughters will share with us
in the duties and privileges of citizenship, and give expression
to their principles and views, not only indirectly by personal
influence, but at the ballot-box. I am in favor of this great
reform, and hail the day when it shall purify politics by the
influence of women exerted directly and legitimately at
elections.

The National Woman's Suffrage Association met in Apollo Hall, New
York, Anniversary Week, May 11, 1871. The audiences were large and the
speakers earnest.[142] Mrs. Griffing, the Corresponding Secretary of
the Association, thus summed up the closing events of the past year:

It now appears that under the Federal Constitution and its
Amendments, woman is entitled to equal rights of citizenship with
man; and as voting is a fundamental right of the citizen in a
free government, woman not only may, but should vote. The last
Woman Suffrage Convention, held in Washington, January, 1871,
called by Paulina W. Davis, J. S. Griffing, and I. B. Hooker, in
behalf of the women of the country, contemplated no new issue,
proposed only to discuss the XVI. Amendment, and a more thorough
system of education for the women of the country, through the
issue of a monthly series of tracts. With slight exception, this
program