.

Some of you have been mustered out of service; many more are soon to
return to your homes. All hail to you! Honor and gratitude for what
you have done and suffered! Enough _if_ you have only been fighting
for the Union as it _was_. But is it enough, if the work for which the
war is _now_ prosecuted is not accomplished? Your country needs your
power of soldierly endurance and accomplishment, your hard-earned
experience, your varied tact and trained skill, your practiced eye and
hand--in a word, all that makes you veterans, ripe in discipline and
educated power. Raw recruits _can not_ fill your places. Brave men!
your mission, though far advanced, is _not_ accomplished. You will
not, can not, abide at home, while your brethren in arms carry victory
and liberty down to the Gulf.

With joy and admiration we greet you on your homeward way, while your
loved ones await your coming with mingled delight and pride. When,
after a brief sojourn, you go back again, convoyed by the grateful
acclaim and God-speed of millions, to consummate at Freedom's call her
holy work, the mightiest of all time, and now so near its end, with
exultant shouts your brothers in the field will hail your coming to
share with them the glory of the final victory. It will be the victory
of free government, sacred rights, justice, liberty, and law, over the
perfidies, perjuries, lying pretenses, and frantic revelries in
innocent blood, of the foulest national crime that ever reeked to
heaven--the overthrow of the most atrocious yet the meanest despotism
that ever tortured the groaning earth.

In behalf of the Women's National Loyal League.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary._ E. CADY STANTON, _President._

Mrs. STANTON: I suppose it is known to all present that Angelina
Grimke Weld is the representative from South Carolina. Contrast her
eloquent pleadings for freedom, throughout the sittings of our
Convention, with the voice of South Carolina, when, at the framing of
the Constitution, slavery, with its cruel creeds and codes, was
fastened on the Republic just struggling into life. Here, for the
first time in our history, have the women of the nation assembled to
discuss the political questions of the day, and to decide where and
how to throw the weight of their influence. I am proud to feel that
from this meeting goes forth a united demand for freedom to all, for a
TRUE REPUBLIC, in which the rights of every citizen shall be
recognized and pr