Rachel Townsend, the Quakeress, takes the platform, and scores the factory girl for her effective speech of the evening before. She says she has a good word to say for Congress; a good word for President Grant, who has taken the colored man by the hand and raised him to a place he never occupied before. He had placed the despised Quakers over the Indians and the Quakers had done what powder and bullets had failed to do. Quaker women were amongst the Indians, Christianizing them as much as the other sex.
Mrs. Jocelyn Gage was then introduced by a handsome preamble, in Mrs. Stanton’s own style. She said Mrs. Gage was author of a pamphlet upon “Woman as an Inventor,” and that the pamphlet went to prove that women originated the cotton-gin. Mrs. Gage, however, did not tell the audience any new facts about woman suffrage.
The majestic, most queenly Pauline Davis criticised Senator Wilson because he had spoken of the black men and said nothing about the black women.
Miss Anthony then offered a resolution on the sixteenth amendment, and made just such a speech as only Susan can. She demanded that Congress submit the amendment. She commanded the Judiciary Committee of the District to present the bill before the House, and that it be done quickly. She wanted something practical to work on. She said there were black men so ignorant that when they went to the polls they expected to have a mule given them at the same time. “Do you suppose such women as Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Wright, and others—I’ll say myself; yes, I’ll say we—have suffered hooting, degradation, persecution, everything for all these years, and not accomplish what we have to do!” Vesuvius could be painted more easily than Susan at this supreme moment. What is this invisible force? Heads were bowed until the whirlwind swept by. Susan went up like a rocket but came down like a stick, but it did not hurt her. She said she was tired of harping on one string. She looked so weary. Oh! that Susan had a place softer than a pillow on which to lay that tired head.
There is no time to tell all the strong words this woman said, because it must be told that Mrs. Beecher Hooker tried to speak and failed. Alas! for the Beechers. She said that Christ had come to deliver woman. She had entered into this movement because undefiled, pure religion was to be found there, I assure you. Few of us know the burden which Christianity brings. Let us take hold and work together. At this moment she said so many earnest faces gazing at her made it impossible to go on, and she withdrew her beautiful face, suffused with the pure Beecher blood, the sweetest picture the family has had the honor to present for many days.
Miss Olympia Brown came to the rescue. It was like shifting a panorama; Olympia is beyond criticism in some respects. Her face glows with enthusiasm; she talks because she is in earnest, and not for effect. She was followed by Miss Couzins, who could not be compared with Olympia, and yet the former won the applause. But men’s boots were heard in the uproar. Phœbe is pretty, and the rest followed. The hall was crowded with the best and strongest audience that ever greeted the woman suffrage movement in Washington.
Olivia.