, 1866, came the discussion in
the Senate on the proposition to strike the word "male" from the
District of Columbia Suffrage Bill and nine voted in favor. From
that day we have gone forward pressing our claims on Congress.
Denied in the construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments we have been trying for a Sixteenth Amendment. We have
gained so much as a special committee, who hear our arguments and
have four times reported in our favor; Senator Hoar, chairman in
1879, Senator Lapham in 1882, Senator Palmer in 1884, and Senator
Blair in 1886. This is the bill which is pending now. We are not
asking Congress to enfranchise us, because it does not possess
that power. We are asking it to submit a proposition to be voted
on by the Legislatures.

Mrs. Stanton's letter said in part:

For half a century we have tried appeals, petitions, arguments,
with thrilling quotations from our greatest jurists and
statesmen, and lo! in the year of our Lord, 1887, the best answer
we can wring from Senators Brown and Cockrell, in the shape of a
minority report, is a "chimney corner letter" written by a woman
ignorant of the first principles of republican government, which,
they say, gives a better statement of the whole question than
they are capable of producing. Verily this is a new departure in
congressional proceedings! Though a woman has not sufficient
capacity to vote, yet she has superior capacity to her
representatives in drawing up a minority report....

But if Senators Cockrell and Brown hope to dispose of the
question by remanding us to "the chimney corner" we trust their
constituents will send them to keep us company, that they may
enliven our retirement and make us satisfied 'in the sphere where
the Creator intended we should be' by daily intoning for us their
inspired minority report.

The one pleasant feature in this original document is the harmony
between the views of these gentlemen and their Creator. The only
drawback to our faith in their knowledge of what exists in the
Divine mind, is in the fact that they can not tell us when, where
and how they interviewed Jehovah. I have always found that when
men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on "the
intentions of the Creator." But their platitudes have ceased to