y good that these
things will do in Congress is to help the janitor to light the
fires. They do good to the people perhaps, but they do no good
otherwise." We might have petitioned until the crack of doom,
before Congress would have broken the chain. Why should we not
demand our right to the vote, when we reflect that one vote, cast
in the State of Indiana, was the means of electing a man whose
vote in Congress turned the scale, and enacted the "Fugitive
Slave Law"--that law which put the collar upon every bondsman's
neck, and branded him the property of every Southern master.

I admit the great responsibility of the ballot, and if we are
true women, we shall assume it with a full appreciation of that
responsibility, and a determination to do our whole duty in its
exercise. The argument that many women do not desire the ballot
reminds me of an old colored woman whom I met soon after the war.
I said to her, "Some people say they think your people are really
almost sorry that they have been made free; that they were more
comfortable as slaves." She said, "Is it possible that any person
thinks like that? Can it be that any colored person feels like
that?" I said, "I have heard people say so." "Then," said she,
"if anybody feels like that they deserve to be slaves--doubly
slaves--slaves in this world and slaves in the next." The woman
that is not willing to assume the responsibility of casting a
vote upon a question that may decide whether in her individual
neighborhood or precinct there shall be grog-shops and houses of
prostitution open, and there shall be no proper care of the poor
and needy and infirm--I say that if there is any woman who is not
willing to assume such responsibilities, it seems to me that she
must feel that it is a judgment on her, should her own husband or
son or the daughter of her heart, or all of them, become
sufferers in consequence of the evil that she might have stayed
had she been willing to uphold the exercise of that right.

We ask only for the same right that is accorded to the poorest
man landing on our shores. Is the giving of the ballot to a
foreigner who comes among us a burden so great that he should not
have it imposed upon him? And shall an American woman shrink
from her duty when there is so much power in h