_To the President and Members of the National Republican Convention, Cincinnati, O., June 14, 1876._ GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage Association asks you to place in your platform the following plank: _Resolved_, That the right to the use of the ballot inheres in every citizen of the United States; and we pledge ourselves to secure the exercise of this right to all citizens, irrespective of sex. In asking the insertion of this plank, we propose no change of fundamental principles. Our question is as old as the nation. Our government was framed on the political basis of the consent of the governed. And from July 4, 1776, until the present year, 1876, the nation has constantly advanced toward a fuller practice of our fundamental theory, that the governed are the source of all power. Your nominating convention, occurring in this centennial year of the republic, presents a good opportunity for the complete recognition of these first principles. Our government has not yet answered the end for which it was framed, while one-half the people of the United States are deprived of the right of self-government. Before the Revolution, Great Britain claimed the right to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever; the men of this nation now as unjustly claim the right to legislate for women in all cases whatsoever. The call for your nominating convention invites the cooeperation of "all voters who desire to inaugurate and enforce the rights of every citizen, including the full and free exercise of the right of suffrage." Women are citizens; declared to be by the highest legislative and judicial authorities; but they are citizens deprived of "the full and free exercise of the right of suffrage." Your platform of 1872 declared "the Republican party mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of the nation for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom." Devotion to freedom is no new thing for the women of this nation. From the earliest history of our country, woman has shown herself as patriotic as man in every great emergency in the nation's life. From the Revolution to the present hour, woman has stood by the side of father, husband, son and brother in defense of liberty. The heroic and self-sacrificing deeds of the women of this republic, both in peace and war, must not be forgotten. Together men and women have made this country what it is. And to-day, in this one-hundredth year of our existence, the women--as members of the nation--as citizens of the United States--ask national recognition of their right of suffrage.