e printed report of this Convention should be
placed in the hands of every woman in the United States capable
of reading it and understanding its high import. And, my friends,
if this could be done, our labors would be well nigh ended, and
those women who so desire might approach the polls unmolested,
leaving their sisters "who have all the rights they want" in the
comfortable security of homes made twice secure in that they are
guarded by the watchful care of the mothers as well as by the
courage of the fathers of the republic. That these noble women,
so intensely in earnest to secure the blessings of liberty to all
their posterity, and so deeply conscious of the heavy
responsibilities of such a trust, should have suspended their
claims during the season of our civil war, and have thrown
themselves into the contest for the rights of enslaved black men,
is only new proof, where none was wanting, of the unselfishness
of their nature, and the purity of their motive. But the war
being over, and a new million of black males being added to the
many million white males as rulers of the land, what do we find
to-day? Susan B. Anthony, the Garrison of the woman's rights
movement, not dragged by a rope round her neck, through the
streets of Rochester, precisely, but indicted for the crime of
attempting to vote for her rulers, she being an honest citizen of
the United States, and a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen of the
State of New York! Nevertheless, permit me, dear friend, to
congratulate you upon the immense progress in our work which this
indicates. It is but a little time since you and your illustrious
compeers were counted only worthy of jests and sneers or
contemptuous neglect. That you are called to-day to answer for
the crime of loving liberty too well, declares to us who are
watching your career, that the beginning of the end is close at
hand, that slavery is soon to cease, and reconstruction to begin
under the auspices of noble women not a few, and of the noble men
who have acted as a body-guard through all these years of
struggle.

I have heard that with your accustomed indomitableness you have
been attempting to instruct your possible jurors of the county
upon the just principles of personal liberty and a republican
form of government