t
twenty-five years of my short life I have pleaded for those
rights which you plead for to-night. The woman question is no
American question, no national question; it is a question for the
whole world, and the best men of every country and of every age
have held one view upon it, and the worst men have naturally held
the other view. It is not a question of mere taxation; it is a
question of thorough humanity; a question not of mere
geographical limitation, not of America, not of England, not of
France, not of Italy, not of Spain; but, were it a question in
any of these countries, a woman would stand up to show you that
woman can do woman's work of making man truer and purer; and
there is no age of the world in which you can not find some woman
who has shone out in the darkness of night to show you that,
though other stars were obscured, she could still shine; and
whenever woman suffrage is debated, my voice is at their service,
for the grander woman is made, the purer will man be.

At the next session the report of the Executive Committee was
made by the Chairman, Mrs. Lucy Stone. After which letters were
read from Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. H. M. Tracy Cutler, Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps, Hon. H. A. Voris, and Miss Lavinia Goodell. The
Committee on Resolutions[199] reported a long list of stirring
appeals to those who have the real interests of humanity at
heart. Their adoption was urged in an able speech by Mr.
Blackwell. The following session was principally devoted to the
hearing of the reports from the auxiliary societies. The
delegates, 159 in number, represented twelve States.

Rev. CHARLES G. AMES, of Pennsylvania, in reply to Mrs. Stone,
said he thought it both impolitic and unreasonable to come into
collision with the awakening spirit of the country in the matter
of the Centennial. The American Revolution did great things for
us all, woman included; and although it did not give her a
political status, yet it established organic principles which
make woman suffrage possible, logical and ultimately certain. No
event has yet brought suffrage to woman; shall she therefore
regard all history up to date as a failure, as if there were
nothing in it worth celebrating? Rather may we rejoice that all
the past is a series of steps leading up t