Col. Higginson signed the first call, in 1850, for a national convention of the friends of woman’s suffrage, which was held in Worcester. One of the leaders of that movement since, his fifteen-years’ defence of it in the columns of _The Woman’s Journal_ shows the faithfulness of his devotion. His connection with the Free Religious Association proves that he has been true to the faith of his youth, and to his refusal to connect himself with any sect in entering the pulpit. When that association lost its pristine glow and devotion, with the passing of the transcendental period, he still remained faithful to his early idea, that all religious truth comes by intuition. His addresses before it on “The Sympathy of Religions” and on “The Word Philanthropy” indicate the direction of his faith in humanity and in its development into ever better social, moral, and spiritual conditions. Whatever the value of the independent movement in politics, which has given us a change in the political administration of the country for the first time in a quarter of a century, it doubtless owes its inception and strength largely to those men, like Curtis, Higginson, and Julian, who were enlisted heart and soul in the anti-slavery agitation, and who got there a training which has made them impatient of party manipulation and wrong-doing. Had these men not been trained to believe in man more than in party, there would have been no independent organization and no revolution in our politics. In 1880, Colonel Higginson was on the committee of one hundred for the organization of a new party in case Grant was nominated for a third term; and four years previously he placed himself in line with the Independents. In 1884, he was the mover of the resolution in the Boston Reform Club for the calling of a convention, out of which grew the independent movement of that year. The resolutions reported by him were taken up in the New York convention and the spirit of them carried to successful issue. He was a leading speaker for the Independents during the campaign, giving nearly thirty addresses in the States of Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. The chairman of the Massachusetts committee wrote him after the campaign of the great value of his services, and thanked him in the most flattering terms in behalf of the Independents of the State.