he courage they have to
brave public opinion, would make good soldiers if put in the ranks
with bayonets behind them. (Applause).

Mr. GILES B. STEBBINS, of Rochester, reported, as information, the
mistake lately made in _The New York Times_ that the $300
substitution indemnity was in the discretion of the Secretary of War.

The resolution was thereupon moved by Miss Willard, seconded by Mrs.
Stanton, and passed unanimously.

An address to the soldiers, prepared by Angelina Grimke Weld, was then
read.

_Soldiers of our Second Revolution--Brethren_:--A thousand of your
sisters, in a convention representing the Loyal Women of the Nation,
greet you with profound gratitude. Your struggles, sufferings, daring,
heroic self-devotion, and sublime achievements, we exult in them all.

To you, especially, whose terms of service have expired, or are soon
to expire, we desire to speak of the shifting scenes now acting in the
nation's tragedy. This war of slavery against freedom did not begin
with the first shot at Sumter, it did not begin when the slaveocracy
broke up the Charleston Convention, in order to secure the election of
Mr. Lincoln, and thus palm upon the Southern masses a false pretense
for rebellion. It did not begin with nullification in 1832, nor in the
Convention that framed the Federal Constitution; nor yet in that which
adopted the Articles of Confederation; but it began in 1620, when the
_Mayflower_ landed our fathers on Plymouth Rock, and the first
slave-ship landed its human cargo in Virginia. Then, for the first
time, liberty and slavery stood face to face on this continent. From
then till now, these antagonisms have struggled in incessant conflict.
Two years since, the slaveocracy, true to their instincts of violence,
after long and secret plotting, crowned their perfidy by perjury, by
piratical seizures of Government property that cost $100,000,000, and
then burst into open rebellion.

This war is not, as the South falsely pretends, a war of races, nor of
sections, nor of political parties, but a war of _Principles_; a war
upon the working-classes, whether white or black; a war against _Man_,
the world over. In this war, the black man was the first victim; the
workingman of whatever color the next; and now _all_ who contend for
the rights of labor, for free speech, free schools, free suffrage, and
a free government, securing to _all_ life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, are driven to do battle in