Collection of Nebraska Pioneer ReminiscencesDaughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska
History
Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences
Daughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska
Frontier and pioneer life -- Nebraska; Nebraska -- History
Some years previous to our campaign, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy
Stone on one of their lecture tours in the West were so impressed with
the enthusiasm and good work of Hon. E. M. Correll that they elected him
president of the National Suffrage Association, for one year. I also
recall Judge Ben S. Baker, now of Omaha, and C. F. Steele of Fairbury,
as staunch supporters of the measure. During the campaign, many
national workers were sent into the state, among them Susan B. Anthony,
Phoebe Couzens, Elizabeth Saxon of New Orleans, and others. They
directed and did valiant work in the cause. We failed to carry the
measure in the state, but we are glad to note that it carried in our own
town of Fairbury.
Thanks to the indomitable personality of our Nebraska women, they began
immediately to plan for another campaign. In 1914, our legislature again
submitted an amendment and it was again defeated. Since then I have been
more than ever in favor of making the amendment a national one,
President Wilson to the contrary notwithstanding--not because we think
the educational work is being entirely lost, but because so much time
and money are being wasted on account of our foreign population and
their attitude towards reform. It is a grave and a great question. One
thing we are assured of, viz: that we will never give up our belief in
the final triumph of our great cause.
It is a far cry from the first woman's suffrage convention in 1850,
brought about by the women who were excluded from acting as delegates at
the anti-slavery convention in London in 1840.
Thus a missionary work was begun then and there for the emancipation of
women in "the land of the free and the home of the brave." We can never
be grateful enough to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, and other noble, self-sacrificing women who did so much pioneer
work in order to bring about better laws for women and in order to
change the moth-eaten thought of the world.
Many felt somewhat discouraged when the election returns from New
Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York announced the defeat of the measure,
but really when we remember the long list of states that have equal
suffrage we have reason to rejoice and to take new courage. We now have
Wyoming, Kansas, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, and Illinois, besides the
countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, New Zealand,
Australia, Nova Scotia, and some parts of England.
In the future when the cobwebs have all been swept from the mind of the
world and everyone is enjoying the new atmosphere of equal rights only a
very few will realize the struggle these brave women endured in order
to bring about better conditions for the world.
_Statement by Lucy L. Correll_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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