seek some redress and
have him reinstated. It was impossible. He was out, and what could
we do? I do not know that we could reach a case like that; but
such cases have stirred the women of the whole land, for the
reason that when they try to do good, or want to help in the cause
of humanity, they are combated so bitterly and persistently.

I leave it to older and abler women, who have labored in this
cause so long, to prove whether it is or is not constitutional to
give the ballot to women.

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, "These women want to
marry." I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and
brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have
cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie like rotted hulks
behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was
going to convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for
one of my children died, and took part in the suffrage movement in
Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A.
Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of Mr.
Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they
found we would be received, I went before the convention. I went
to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or
consider a petition which I wished to bring before the convention.
He read the petition. One clause of our State law is that no woman
can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the
meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to
an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and
it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not
knowing the law, believed that they were human beings, and signed
it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed
the petition on that account. I took the paper around myself.
Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present
the petition. He was elected president of the convention. I
presented my first petition, signed by the best names in the city
of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there,
leading with the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name
of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed it. I went to all the different
physicia