After an earnest discussion by the Senate the petition was referred to the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, whose chairman was Thomas D. Eliot, of Massachusetts. Immediately afterwards several thousand more blank petitions were sent out, accompanied by a second appeal which closed: "Shall we not all join in one loud, earnest, effectual prayer to Congress, which will swell on its ear like the voice of many waters, that this bloody, desolating war shall be arrested and ended by the immediate and final removal by statute law and amended Constitution, of that crime and curse which alone has brought it upon us?"
Charles Sumner
In answer to an invitation to be present at the first anniversary of the Women's National Loyal League, Senator Sumner wrote:
I can not be with you for my post of duty is here. I am grateful to your association for what you have done to arouse the country to insist on the extinction of slavery. Now is the time to strike and no effort should be spared. The good work must be finished, and to my mind nothing seems to be done, while anything remains to be done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of property in man, which is the corner-stone of the rebel pretension and the constant assumption of the partisans of slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the most execrable feature of slavery itself.
As Miss Anthony herself had asked so many favors of Wendell Phillips, she thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Stanton invite him to make an address at this anniversary; but he was not in the least deceived, as his reply shows:
DEAR MRS. STANTON: Your S.B.A. thinks she is very cunning. As if I did not see a huge pussy under that meal! She has been so modest, humble, ashamed, reluctant, apologetic, contrite, self-accusing whenever the last ten years she has asked me to do anything, go anywhere, speak on any topic! Now she makes you pull the chestnuts out of the fire and thinks I do not see her waiting behind. Ah, the hand is the hand of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob, wicked, sly, skulking, mystifying Jacob. Why don't "secretaries" write the official letters? How much they leave the "president" to do! Naughty idlers, those secretaries! Well, let me thank Miss Secretary Anthony for her gentle consideration; then let me say I'll try to speak, as you say, fifteen minutes.... Remember me defiantly to S.B.A.
In the midst of all this correspondence came a letter from a sweetheart of her girlhood, now a prominent officeholder in Ohio, stating that he was a widower but would not long remain one if his old friend would take pity upon him. It is sincerely to be hoped that the secretary of the Loyal League found time at least to have one of her clerks answer this epistle.
The meeting was held in the Church of the Puritans, May 12, 1864, and soul-stirring speeches were made by Phillips, Mrs. Rose, Lucretia Mott, George Thompson, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. The report of the executive committee showed that a debt of $5,000, including $1,000 for postage alone, had been paid; that 25,000 blank petitions had been sent out; that the league now numbered 5,000 members, and that branch Loyal Leagues had been formed in many cities. Strong resolutions were adopted demanding not only emancipation but enfranchisement for the negroes. The entire proceedings of the convention illustrated how thoroughly the leading women of the country understood the political situation, how broad and comprehensive was their grasp of public affairs, and with what a patriotic and self-sacrificing spirit they performed their part of the duties imposed by the great Civil War.
By August, 1864, the signatures to the petitions had reached almost 400,000. Again and again Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson had written Miss Anthony that these petitions formed the bulwark of their demand for congressional action to abolish slavery. Public sentiment on this point had now become emphatic, the Senate had passed the bill for the prohibition of slavery, and the intention of the House of Representatives was so apparent that it did not seem necessary to continue the petitions. The headquarters in Cooper Institute were closed, and the magnificent work, which from this center had radiated throughout the country, found its reward in the proposition by Congress, on February 1, 1865, for Amendment XIII to the Federal Constitution: