all
phases of the question, given before large audiences, gradually have
created a wide-spread sentiment in favor of the enfranchisement of
women. There have been described also the hearings before committees
of Congress, at which the advocates of this measure have made pleas
for the submission to the State Legislatures of a Sixteenth Amendment
to the Federal Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on
account of sex, as the Fifteenth Amendment does on account of
color--pleas which a distinguished Senator, who reported against
granting them, said "surpassed anything he ever had heard, and whose
logic if used in favor of any other measure could not fail to carry
it" (p. 201); and of which another, who had the courage to report in
favor, declared, "The suffragists have logic, argument, everything on
their side" (p. 162).

In addition to this national work the following chapters will show
that the State work has been continued on similar lines--State and
local conventions and appeals to Legislatures to submit an amendment
to the electors to strike the word "male" from the suffrage clause of
their own State constitution. These appeals, in many instances, have
been supported by larger petitions than ever presented for any other
object.

Further efforts have been made on a still different line, viz.:
through attempts to secure from outside conventions an indorsement of
woman suffrage, not only from those of a political but also from those
of a religious, educational, professional or industrial nature. This
has been desired in order that the bills may go before Congress and
Legislatures with the all-important sanction of voters, and also
because of its favorable effect on those composing these conventions
and on public sentiment.

The idea of asking for recognition from a national political
convention was first suggested to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss
Susan B. Anthony in 1868. By their protests against the use of the
word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, as described in Chap. I of
this volume, they had angered the Republican leaders, some of whom,
even those who favored woman suffrage, sarcastically advised them to
ask the Democrats for indorsement in their national convention of this
year and see what would be the response. These two women, therefore,
did appear before that body, which dedicated the new Tammany Hall in
New York City, on July 4. An account of their insulting reception may
be found