pon us. It will not turn backward but will go on
conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will
enjoy equal rights; pure politics and good government will be
insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the
people established."

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.) discussed The Strongholds of
Opposition, showing what they are and how they must be attacked. Woman
as a Subject was presented by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), who said
in part:

Women are, and ever will be, loyal, tender, true and devoted to
their well beloved men; for they naturally love them better than
they do themselves. It is the brave soldier submissive to
authority who deserves promotion to rank and honor; so woman,
having proved herself a good subject, is now ready for her
promotion and advancement. She is urgently asking, not to rule
over men, but to take command of herself and all her rightful
belongings....

As a self-respecting, reasonable being, she has grave
responsibilities, and from her is required an accountability
strict and severe. If she owns stock in one of your banks, she
has an influence in the management of the institution which takes
care of her money. The possession of children makes her a large
stockholder in public morality, but her self-constituted agents
act as her proxy without her authorization, as though she were of
unsound mind, or not in existence.

The great truths of liberty and equality are dear to her heart.
She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her
home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she
organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she
has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history
here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to participate by
vote in this representative government.

Gentlemen, you value the power and privilege which the right of
suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls
you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might
prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I
try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which
attend this abject condition of total disfranchisement, and how
anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list
of idiots, crimin