publican party to
strike the word "white" from the Constitution and thus extend the
right of suffrage to all classes of male citizens, placing the men of
the State, black and white, foreign and native, ignorant and educated,
vicious and virtuous, all alike, above woman's head, gave her a keener
sense of her abasement than she had ever felt before. But having
neither press nor pulpit to advocate her cause, and fully believing
this amendment would pass as a party measure, she used every means
within her power to arouse and strengthen the agitation, in the face
of the most determined opposition of friends and foes. Meetings were
held in all the chief towns and cities in the State, and appeals and
petitions scattered in every school district; these were so many
reminders to the women everywhere that they too had some interest in
the Constitution under which they lived, some duties to perform in
deciding the future policy of the Government.

This campaign cost us the friendship of Horace Greeley and the support
of the _New York Tribune_, heretofore our most powerful and faithful
allies. In an earnest conversation with Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony, Mr. Greeley said: "This is a critical period for the
Republican party and the life of the Nation. The word "white" in our
Constitution at this hour has a significance which "male" has not. It
would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just
and imperative, I grant, in abeyance until the negro is safe beyond
peradventure, and your turn will come next. I conjure you to remember
that this is "the negro's hour," and your first duty now is to go
through the State and plead his claims." "Suppose," we replied,
"Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond and James Gordon Bennett were
disfranchised; what would be thought of them, if before audiences and
in leading editorials they pressed the claims of Sambo, Patrick, Hans
and Yung Fung to the ballot, to be lifted above their own heads? With
their intelligence, education, knowledge of the science of government,
and keen appreciation of the dangers of the hour, would it not be
treasonable, rather than magnanimous, for them, leaders of the
metropolitan press, to give the ignorant and unskilled a power in
government they did not possess themselves? To do this would be to
place on board the ship of State officers and crew who knew nothing of
chart or compass, of the safe pathway across the sea, and bid those
who understand the laws