, that fruit is not yet ripe on
my tree. I ask you, therefore, 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.

[Illustration: Autograph: "Please answer me in the frankness of personal
friendship. With kind regards, I am very truly yours. Garfield"]

Under date of September 9 Miss Anthony sent a spirited reply:

Yours of the 25th ult. has waited all these days that I might
carefully consider it.

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. 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. 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 Rhode Island the right to "abridge" the suffrage to
foreign born men; and to all the States to "deny" it to women, in
direct violation of the principle of _national supremacy_. 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 the
presidential election of 1876--Hayes can not in 1880--nor will
Garfield be able to do so in 1884--for the "scepter 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 is one vital to its very life, it seems to me would be
the grandest act imaginable. For doing that very thing, with regard
to the protection of the negroes of the South