NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1896.

The suffrage association held its Twenty-eighth annual convention in
the Church of Our Father, Washington, D. C., Jan. 23-28, 1896. In her
opening remarks the president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said:

The thought that brought us here twenty-eight years ago was that,
if the Federal Constitution could be invoked to protect black men
in the right to vote, the same great authority could be invoked
to protect women. The question has been urged upon every Congress
since 1869. We asked at first for a Sixteenth Amendment
enfranchising women; then for suffrage under the Fourteenth
Amendment; then, when the Supreme Court had decided that against
us, we returned to the Sixteenth Amendment and have pressed it
ever since. The same thing has been done in this Fifty-fourth
Congress which has been done in every Congress for a decade,
namely, the introducing of a bill providing for the new
amendment....

You will notice that the seats of the delegation from Utah are
marked by a large United States flag bearing three stars, a big
one and two smaller ones. The big star is for Wyoming, because it
stood alone for a quarter of a century as the only place where
_women had full suffrage_. Colorado comes next, because it is the
first State where a majority of the men voted to grant women
equal rights. Then comes Utah, because its men in convention
assembled--in spite of the bad example of Congress, which took
the right away from its women nine years ago--those men, having
seen the good effects of woman suffrage for years, voted by an
overwhelming majority to leave out the little word "male" from
the suffrage clause of their new State Constitution, and their
action was ratified by the electors. Next year, if I am here, I
hope to rejoice with you over woman suffrage in California and
Idaho.

Some one whispered to Miss Anthony that the convention had not been
opened with prayer, and she answered without the slightest confusion:
"Now, friends, you all know I am a Quaker. We give thanks in silence.
I do not think the heart of any one here has been fuller of silent
thankfulness than mine, but I should not have remembered to have the
meeting formally opened with prayer if somebody had not reminded me.
The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw will offer prayer."

Miss Shaw's report as vic