uffrage amendment.

As the time for the election drew nigh, those political leaders
who had been relied upon as friends of the cause were silent,
others were active in their opposition. The Central Committee
issued a circular for the purpose of preventing loyal Republicans
from voting for woman suffrage; not content with this, the
notorious I. S. Kalloch, and others of the same stripe, were sent
out under the auspices of the Republican party to blackguard and
abuse the advocates of woman's cause while professedly speaking
upon "manhood suffrage." And Charles Langston, the negro orator,
added his mite of bitter words to make the path a little harder
for women, who had spent years in pleading the cause of the
colored man.

And yet, with all the obstacles which the dominant party could
throw in our way; without organization, without money, without
political rewards to offer, without any of the means by which
elections are usually carried, we gained one-third of all the
votes cast! Surely it was a great triumph of principle; and had
the leading Republicans, even one or two of them, stood boldly
for the measure which they themselves had submitted, Kansas might
have indeed been a "free State"; the first to enfranchise women;
the advance guard in the great progressive movements of the time;
and her leading politicians might have gone down in history as
wise, far-seeing statesmen who loved principles better than
office, and who gained the rewards of the world because they
sought "first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." As it
was, their favorite measure, "negro suffrage," was defeated for
that time, and several of those who sold their birthright of
truth and justice for a miserable mess of pottage in the shape of
office and emoluments, lost even the poor reward for which they
had trafficked.

As for us, the advocates of suffrage who labored there in that
first woman's suffrage campaign, we have forgotten, in part, the
bitterness of disappointment and defeat; we think no more of the
long and wearisome journeys under the hot sun of southern Kansas;
the anxiety and uncertainty; the nervous tremor when night has
overtaken us wandering on the prairie, not knowing what terrible
pitfalls might lie before; the mobs which sometimes made the