her. There is one point where I
feel that her argument is not as strong as most of her arguments
are. We enjoy things of privilege, if privileges are granted; but
we enjoy things of right, because they are right--not otherwise.
All that she says of good men, and of what good men will do for
women, only goes to show what everybody has already known, that
she had for a father one of the first Christian gentlemen in the
United States or in the world; and for brothers seven men of
princely virtue, and highest and noblest Christian attainments.
If the world was made up of all such people, there would be no
need of laws. Miss Beecher may well speak for such men as they,
and they may well speak for such women as she. If I make a
petition for something, and that petition does not clearly
express a right that is due me, but instead, asks for something
that may be withheld without moral guilt, that is a privilege;
but when I come and demand that which is a right, the condition
is altogether changed. I claim the right because it is God-given.
We have in the advanced age of Christianity, those who do not
believe in the use of physical force on any account whatever.
They are non-resistants; but it will not be said that the vicious
can be controlled by moral suasion. Society is not yet
sufficiently Christianized for men not to demand of each other
guarantees for the safety of each other's rights. Shall we who
are in some sense the weaker sex have no guarantee for our
rights?

Miss Beecher makes the point that men will give, if we ask them
properly. The first asking of American women was not for
themselves--not for their own account. They forgot themselves in
their anxiety for poor oppressed slaves. They didn't know what
they had lost through long ages, from not having exerted their
own powers, and established their own responsibilities. But when
they came to do that, they then asked themselves, "Where are our
good right hands?" I sent petitions to Congress again and again,
which I had gathered from my neighbors, in regard to the
abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the
territories; and I have sent numbers of them in regard to this
question of woman suffrage. I sent many of them to Horace
Greeley, and he sent me back word, "The onl