Mrs. Hooker then came forward and wanted Miss Susan to tell her experience in Richmond. Miss Susan hesitated, for there was other work to be done, but she finally began by saying that she saw twenty black men in their seats on the floor of the legislature. She went there to invite all the members to attend a meeting in the evening, where she was expected to speak. Some one of the legislature moved that she might be invited to occupy the Speaker’s platform, but this could not be accomplished unless the rules were suspended in order to take a vote. A vote to suspend the rules was taken and lost—38 to 29; but amongst those who voted in her favor was every black man upon the floor. One of the white men upon the floor said if it had been Fred Douglass, instead of a white woman, he would have got the place.
Mrs. Hooker read an extremely interesting letter from Mrs. Justice Morris, late justice of Wyoming Territory. According to this letter, office-holding by a woman was a perfect success. Only one appeal was taken from her decision, and that was decided in her favor. Mrs. Morris’s family consisted of a husband and three sons, and all these were more willing to help her in official rather than in her domestic affairs. Mrs. Justice Morris was sixty years of age when she took upon herself the cares of official life.
Olivia.
[UPHOLDING THE BANNER.]
The Suffrage Convention and Its Leading Participants.
Washington, January 14, 1871.
The last evening’s session of the woman suffrage convention opened with Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, on the stage. Although this Senator has greatest faith in Catharine Beecher’s views, it would be in direct opposition to all the acts of his past life to turn a cold cheek to the appeal of loving humanity; so his broad, genial face stood out from its luminous background like the moon attended by its starry host. The first person introduced to the audience was Mrs. Cora L. V. Hatch (now Tappan), and, judging by what followed, she must have been entranced. It could not be ascertained whether or not her mental machinery had been wound up with the expectation that it would run down at the end of a given period, but at any rate she kept on ticking until Senator Wilson drew an instrument out of a side pocket, apparently for no other reason but to find out whether she was gaining or losing time. Mrs. Hooker, in the meantime, looked anxious and weary, and Susan B. Anthony, like Banquo’s ghost, stalked across the stage. This seemed to bring the “medium” to her senses, and she closed after it was known that she had been innocent of having anything to say.
As if to reward the audience for its late patience, Miss Anthony came forward to give it some food for thought. She said the object of this convention is to prevail on Congress to decide on Mrs. Woodhull’s definition of the fourteenth amendment. “If we fail in this it is our intention to apply for registration in the different districts where we belong, and if we are refused this privilege, suits will at once be commenced, and the case be followed up until it is decided by the highest court in the land. But suppose we fail to obtain justice under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, we can go back to our good old sixteenth, and work until our undertaking is crowned with success.” She then read the name of a grand central working committee, every name a well-tried, faithful servant of the cause. She said no name would be placed on that paper because she was a Mrs. Senator This or a Mrs. Rev. That. The names were then read: