Resolved, That in furtherance of the above object the Executive Committee of this League be instructed to cause to be prepared and stereotyped a pamphlet, not exceeding four printed octavo pages, briefly and plainly setting forth the importance of such a movement at the present juncture—a copy of the said pamphlet to be placed in the hands of each person who may undertake to procure signatures to the above petition, and for such further distribution as may be ordered by the said Executive Committee.
The women of the League have shown practical wisdom in restricting their efforts to one object, the most important, perhaps, which any Society can aim at; and great courage in undertaking to do what, so far as we remember, has never been done in the world before, namely, to obtain one million of names to a petition. If they succeed, the moral influence on Congress ought and can not fail to be great. The passage by the next Congress of an act of general emancipation would do more than any one thing for the suppression of the rebellion. As things now stand with slaves declared free in eight States of the Union, with two more States (Virginia and Louisiana) partly free and partly slave, and with the Border States still slave, we have a state of affairs resulting in interminable confusion, and which, in the very nature of things, can not continue to exist. Congress may find a way out of such confusion by an act of Compensated Emancipation, with the consent of these States and parts of States. God speed the circulation and signatures of the Women's Petition! The pledge of the League is commendably brief and to the point, reading as follows:
"We, the undersigned, women of the United States, agree to become members of the 'Women's Loyal National League,' hereby pledging our most earnest influence in support of the Government in its prosecution of the war for freedom and for the restoration of the national unity."
The office of the League is Room No. 20, Cooper Institute. Let all loyal women, friendly to Emancipation, join their ranks, and devote what spare time they may have to this noble work.
The New York Times published the following:
A MONSTER PETITION PROPOSED.
To the Editor of the New York Times:
Until the advent of the present struggle, the word loyalty was hardly known among us, and though we often spoke of the Union, we seldom used the term national unity. With new phases of society new terms come into vogue. We have now, springing up everywhere, Loyal National Leagues, and great good they are doing. They have, so far, been chiefly set on foot by men, but women are now bestirring themselves in the same direction. Quite recently, a Woman's Loyal National League has been organized in this city....
The prudence of the members of this League is to be commended, first, in selecting a single object on which to concentrate their exertions, and secondly, in selecting as that object the of procuring an act of Congress declaring general emancipation, than which nothing is more needed at the present time, not only as an endorsement of the President's Proclamation, but also as a remedy for the utter confusion produced by the present state of affairs, under which it would puzzle the shrewdest lawyer to determine who, among the fugitives that are daily flocking to us across the lines, is free, and who still a slave. As a permanent arrangement, no one believes that a few counties in one State, and a few parishes in another, can remain slave, while all around them emancipation has been accomplished; nor that slavery can endure, except for a brief season, along a narrow border-strip, bounded North and South by freedom.
Whether these ladies will succeed in the task of procuring one million of names to their petition, depends chiefly on their business talent in organizing the machinery of so great an undertaking. R.