the ballot in his
hand, goes where he lists, does what he pleases. He owns himself,
his earnings, his genius, his talent, his eloquence, his power,
all there is of him. All that God has given him is his, to do
with as he pleases, subject to no power but such laws as have an
equal bearing upon every other man in like circumstances, and
responsible to no power but his own conscience and his God. He
builds colleges; he lifts up humanity or he casts it down. He is
the lawgiver, the maker as it were of the nation. His single vote
may turn the destiny of the whole Republic for good or ill. There
is no link in the chain of human possibilities that can add one
single power to the "white male citizen" of America.

Now we ask that you shall put into the hands of every human being
this same power to go forward and do good works wherever it can.
The country has rung within the last few days because one colored
girl, with a little black blood in her veins, has been cast out
of the Pittsburgh Methodist College. It ought to ring until such
a thing shall be impossible. But when Cambridge and Yale and
Union and all the other institutions of the country, West Point
included, aided by national patronage, shut out every woman in
the land, who has anything to say? There is not a single college
instituted by the original government patronage of lands to
public schools and colleges, that allows a woman to set her foot
inside of its walls as a student. Is this no injustice? Is it no
wrong? When men stand upon the public platform and deliver
elaborate essays on women and their right of suffrage, they talk
about their weakness, their devotion to fashion and idleness.
What else have they given women to do? Almost every profession in
the land is filled by men; every college sends forth the men to
fill the highest places. When the law said that no married woman
should do business in her own name, sue or be sued, own property,
own herself or her earnings, what had she to do? That laid the
foundation for precisely the state of things you see to-day. But
I deny that, as a class, the women of America, black or white,
are idle. We are always busy. What have we done? Look over this
audience, go out upon your streets, go through the world where
you will, and every human soul yo