Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland.
And thus it was from time to time that this remarkable girl uttered
the highest thought in American politics in that crisis of our
nation's history. While in camp and hospital she spoke words of
tenderness and love to the sick and dying, she did not hesitate to
rebuke the incapacity and iniquity of those in high places. She was
among the first to distrust McClellan and Lincoln, and in a lecture,
entitled "My Policy," to unveil his successor, Andrew Johnson, to the
people. She saw the scepter of power grasped by the party of freedom,
and the first gun fired at Sumter in defence of slavery. She saw our
armies go forth to battle, the youth, the promise, the hope of the
nation--two millions strong--and saw them return with their ranks
thinned and broken, their flags tattered and stained, the maimed, the
halt and the blind, the weary and worn; and this, she said, is the
price of liberty. She saw the dawn of the glorious day of emancipation
when four million African slaves were set free, and that night of
gloom when the darkest page in American history was written in the
blood of its chief. Through the nation's agony was this young girl
born into a knowledge of her power; and she drew her inspiration from
the great events of her day.
THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.
MAMMOTH PETITION.
Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement,
suspended their Conventions during the war and gave their time and
thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political
significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as
the sure, quick way of cutting the gordion knot of the rebellion. To
this end they organized a National League, and rolled up a mammoth
petition, urging Congress to so amend the Constitution as to prohibit
the existence of slavery in the United States.
From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York, they sent out
their appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large;
tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were
scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings were held
every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely
discussed, approved or condemned. Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the
Freedman's Commission, then residing in New York, aided and encouraged
this movement from the beginning, frequently speaking in the public
meetings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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