of Louisiana have always been
treated before the law as civil partners of our husbands. In
every respect our rights have been protected.

It needs but one more step to make us civilly free, and this
we ask you to embody in your new constitution. Many men are
not opposed to the fact of female suffrage, but to its mode
at present; that could be corrected, and women need not be
exposed to the coarseness and strife of the polls as they
are now conducted. There is no man among you who does not
believe his wife or his daughter intelligently capable of
taking a voice in the government. If my lessees are capable
of being citizens of Louisiana, it is because for thirty
years of my life and for five generations of my ancestors we
have interested ourselves in their civilization and in their
instruction. Gentlemen, we ask nothing that would unsex
ourselves. We do not expect to do man's work; we can never
pass the limits which nature herself has set. But we ask for
justice; we ask for removal of unnatural restrictions that
are contrary to the elemental spirit of the civil law; we do
not ask for rights, but for permission to assume our natural
responsibilities.

Praying that the hearts and minds of the men of Louisiana
may be moved toward this act of justice, I am, with profound
respect, your obedient servant,

SARAH A. DORSEY.

The Webster _Tribune_, Mr. Scanland, editor, of June 25, 1879,
shows the sensation created in the remotest parishes of Louisiana
by this hearing before the convention:

The ladies, it seems, are about walking up and demanding
enlarged liberties. We were under the impression that women
generally had about as much latitude as they wanted, but if
they desire more, the _Tribune_ says, in the name of
gallantry if not justice, let them have all they wish. There
is an element throughout the Union agitating the proposition
that they are entitled to vote because they are taxed. The
Constitution of the United States provides that no one shall
be taxed without representation. Representation is based on
population, and, of course, t