Yours sincerely,
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.

Evidently left without even the name of Mrs. Sherman or the
Anti-Suffrage Society to sustain her, Mrs. Dahlgren memorialized
the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections against the
submission of the sixteenth amendment:

_To the Honorable Committee on Privileges and Elections:_

GENTLEMEN--Allow me, in courtesy, as a petitioner, to present one
or two considerations regarding a sixteenth amendment, by which
it is proposed to confer the right of suffrage upon the women of
the United States. I ask this favor also in the interests of the
masses of silent women, whose silence does not give consent, but
who, in most modest earnestness, deprecate having the political
life forced upon them.

This grave question is not one of simple expediency or the
reverse; it might properly be held, were this the case, as a
legitimate subject for agitation. Our reasons of dissent to this
dangerous inroad upon all precedent, lie deeper and strike
higher. They are based upon that which in all Christian nations
must be recognized as the higher law, the fundamental law upon
which Christian society in its very construction must rest; and
that law, as defined by the Almighty, is immutable. Through it
the women of this Christian land, as mothers, wives, sisters,
daughters, have distinct duties to perform of the most complex
order, yet of the very highest and most sacred nature.

If in addition to all these responsibilities, others,
appertaining to the domain assigned to men, are allotted to us,
we shall be made the victims of an oppression not intended by a
kind and wise Providence, and from which the refining influences
of Christian civilization have emancipated us. We have but to
look at the condition of our Indian sister, upon whose bended
back the heavy pack is laid by her lord and master; who treads in
subjection the beaten pathway of equal rights, and compare her
situation with our own, to thank the God of Christian nations who
has placed us above that plane, where right is might, and might
is tyranny. We cannot without prayer and protest see our
cherished privileges endangered, and have granted us only in
exchange the so-called equal rights. We need more, and we claim,