y, while holding sound and liberal principles on trade and
commerce, have ever in their political affiliations maintained
the idea of class and caste among men--an idea wholly at variance
with the genius of our free institutions and fatal to high
civilization. One party fails at one point and one at another.

In asking your suffrages--believing alike in free men and free
trade--I could not represent either party as now constituted.
Nevertheless, as an Independent Candidate, I desire an election
at this time, as a rebuke to the dominant party for its
retrogressive legislation in so amending the National
Constitution as to make invidious distinctions on the ground of
sex. That instrument recognizes as persons all citizens who obey
the laws and support the State, and if the Constitutions of the
several States were brought into harmony with the broad
principles of the Federal Constitution, the women of the Nation
would no longer be taxed without representation, or governed
without their consent. Not one word should be added to that great
charter of rights to the insult or injury of the humblest of our
citizens. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth
Congress to demand _universal_ suffrage, that thus a republican
form of government might be secured to every State in the Union.

If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for "Negro
Suffrage" in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and
because the highest good of the State demands that the republican
idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the
women of the nation be ignored. In view of the fact that the
Freedmen of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding
our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education,
nor civilization, are all in the progress of events to be
enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we
outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance, and degradation,
with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the
republic. On the high ground of safety to the Nation, and justice
to citizens, I ask your support in the coming election.

New York, _Oct. 10, 1866_. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

The New York _Herald_, though, of course, with no sincerity,
since that journal is never si