The New York Evening Post says:
AN IMPORTANT UNDERTAKING.
It has sometimes been made a reproach to the women of the Northern States, that while their sisters of the South are the very life of the rebellion, exceeding the men in zeal and devotion and self-sacrifice, they, with a noble cause against a base one, show less zeal, less earnestness, do less to animate and inspire the combatants; in short, are less active in maintaining the Union than the ladies of the Slave States in working to destroy it.
If, however, the members of the "Women's Loyal National League," an association recently commenced in this city, succeed in what they have just undertaken, it will go far to show that there is neither lukewarmness nor lack of energy in the women of the North; and that, in practical industry exerted in aid of the war and the Government, they are not to be outmatched by the zeal of the fair mischief-makers who oppose both....
We learn that the League has already obtained several thousand names and addresses of persons and societies throughout the Northern and Border States who are favorable to emancipation, to whom they propose to address their circulars; and that they are organizing, after a business fashion, the machinery necessary to effect their object in the six months still intervening before the meeting of Congress. It is a great undertaking, this obtaining of one million signatures, such an undertaking as has seldom if ever been carried out before. If it succeeds it will obtain record in the history of the time as an enterprise most honorable to the sex which conceived and completed it.
The pledge of the League is well worded and judicious....
Such Leagues ought to be, and we trust will be, organized all over the country, in aid of the mammoth petition. Without having made any accurate calculation, we doubt whether less than four stout men could carry the roll comprising a million names into the House to which it is addressed.
The Philadelphia Press says:
SPIRIT OF NORTHERN WOMEN.
It is a great country, this of ours. Great events occur in it. Great things are to be found in it. Where shall we find another Niagara? Where a cave of dimensions equal to those of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky? Since California has been added we have her gigantic pines, towering above all other trees in the world. We can not make war, but we must carry it on upon a scale unknown since the days of Xerxes. Our women, too, it would seem, catch the spirit of the country. Until now they have chiefly been known, throughout the great national struggle, in the capacity of sisters of mercy, tenders in hospitals, collectors of comforts and of little luxuries for our sick and wounded. We find them laboring now in a new field. They, called the weaker sex, and properly so called, if thews and sinews constitute strength, have undertaken to do more than to care for the sick and wounded. They seek to aid in striking at the root of the evil whence has arisen the strife which causes the sickness of the hospital and the wounds of the battle-field. They have undertaken a task beyond that which the sturdy Chartists of England performed. The Chartist Petition, if we remember aright, had seven or eight hundred thousand names—the largest number ever obtained to a petition. But our Northern women have undertaken to procure one million of names to a Petition for Emancipation, and to complete their task in the next six months. The article from The Tribune, elsewhere, will be read with interest.