aving the advocates of
the measure so depressed with the result that several years elapsed
before any further attempts were made to reorganize their forces
for the agitation of the question. This has been the experience of
the friends in every State where the proposition has been
submitted to a vote of the electors--alike in Michigan, Colorado,
Nebraska and Oregon--offering so many arguments in favor of the
enfranchisement of woman by a simple act of the legislature, where
the real power of the people is primarily represented. We have so
many instances on record of the exercise of this power by the
legislatures of the several States in the regulation of the
suffrage, that there can be no doubt that the sole responsibility
in securing this right to the women of a State rests with the
legislature, or with congress in passing a sixteenth amendment that
should override all State action in protecting the rights of United
States citizens.

We are indebted to Anna C. Wait for most of the interesting facts
of this chapter. She writes:

I watched with intense interest from my home in Ohio, the
progress of the woman suffrage idea in Kansas in the campaign of
1867, and although temporary defeat was the result, yet the moral
grandeur displayed by the people in seeking to make their
constitution an embodiment of the principle of American liberty,
decided me to become a citizen of that young and beautiful State.
Gov. Harvey's message was at that time attracting much attention
and varied comments by the press. For the benefit of those who
have not studied the whole history of the cause, we give the
following extracts from his message, published February 9, 1871:

The tendency of this age is towards a civil policy wherein
political rights will not be affected by social or
ethnological distinctions; and from the moral nature of
mankind and the experience of States, we may infer that
restrictions merely arbitrary and conventional, like those
based upon color and sex, cannot last much longer than they
are desired, and cannot be removed much sooner than they
should be. This consideration should give patience to the
reformer, and resignation to the conservative.

Let us have a true republic--a "government of the people, by
the people, for the people," and we shall hear no more t