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spelling-books. Who is to carry them there? Who, to-day, is
teaching the Southern people;--for I am talking now in behalf of
the colored woman of the South, forgetting my own degradation.
Who have carried the spelling-book to the South? The women of the
North, gathering up their strength, have been sent down by all
these great societies to teach. The colored men of the South are
to vote, while they deny the ballot to their teacher! It is said
that women do not want to vote in this country. I tell you, it is
a libel upon womanhood. I care not who says it. I am in earnest.
They do want to vote. Fifty-two thousand pulpits in this country
have been teaching women the lesson that has been taught them for
centuries, that they must not think about voting. But when 52,000
pulpits, or 52,000 politicians, at the beginning of this war,
lifted up their voices and asked of women, "Come out and help
us," did they stand back? In every hamlet, in every village, in
every cabin, and every palace, in every home in the whole United
States, they rose up and went to work. They worked for the
Government; they worked for the nation; they worked for their
sons, their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their
friends. They worked night and day. Who found women to stand back
when this great public opinion that had been crushing them so
long and forbidding them to work, at last lifted itself up and
said, "You may work"? (Applause).

I have been traveling all winter long, with a few intervals of
rest, talking not upon Equal Rights, but upon the subject of
Temperance; and whenever I said to my crowded audiences that we
must give to woman the right to vote that she may purify the
nation of this great sin, there went up shouts and clapping of
hands of men and women. They are ready for this work. What we
want is to crystallize the public opinion of all ranks of society
in its favor. There is great fear that if woman is allowed to
vote, she will lose something of her high and excellent
character. If it is right for woman to have the suffrage, it is
not right to talk of expediency. If giving woman the ballot will
cause her to lose her prestige, it is because she ought to lose
it. If she gains physical strength and loses that effeminate
delicacy that provides for no