for the sake of your own question, do
you think it wise to pick my apples now? Please answer me in the
frankness of personal friendship. With kind regards, I am very
truly yours,

JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Rochester, N. Y.

ROCHESTER, N. Y., September 9, 1880.

Hon. JAMES A. GARFIELD: _Dear Sir_: Yours of the 25th ult. has
waited all these days that I might consider and carefully reply.

_First_. The Republican party did run well for a season in the
"line of liberty"; but since 1870, its congressional enactments,
majority reports, Supreme Court decisions, and now its
presidential platform, show a retrograde movement--not only for
women, but for colored men--limiting the power of the national
government in the protection of United States citizens against
the injustice of the States, until what we gained by the sword is
lost by political surrenders. And we need nothing but a
Democratic administration to demonstrate to all Israel and the
sun the fact, the sad fact, that all _is lost_ by the
_Republican_ party, and not _to be lost_ by the _Democratic_
party. I mean, of course, the one vital point of national
supremacy in the protection of United States citizens in the
enjoyment of their right to vote, and the punishment of States or
individuals thereof, for depriving citizens of the exercise of
that right. The first and fatal mistake was in ceding to the
States the right to "abridge or deny" the suffrage to
foreign-born men in Rhode Island, and all women throughout the
nation, in direct violation of the principle of national
supremacy. And from that time, inch by inch, point by point has
been surrendered, until it is only in _name_ that the Republican
party is the party of national supremacy. Grant did not protect
the negro's ballot in 1876--Hayes cannot in 1880--nor could
Garfield in 1884--for the "sceptre has departed from Judah."

_Second_. For the candidate of a party to _add_ to the
discussions of the contest an issue unauthorized or unnoted in
its platform, when that issue was one vital to its very life,
would, it seems to me, be the grandest act imaginable. And, for
doing that very thing, with regard to the protection of the
negro