The following committee was chosen to continue the negotiations for union with the National Woman Suffrage Association, which had been entered upon in pursuance of the resolution adopted at Philadelphia: the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Indiana; the Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Michigan; Miss Laura Clay, Kentucky; Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell, Iowa; Prof. W. H. Carruth, Kansas; Miss Mary Grew, Pennsylvania; the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Mrs. Sarah C. Schrader, Ohio; Mrs. Catherine V. Waite, Illinois; Mrs. May S. Knaggs, Michigan; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Massachusetts.
1889.—In January these delegates met with those from the National Association at the convention of the latter in Washington, D. C., and arrangements for the union of the two societies for the following year were practically completed.[146]
In the summer an appeal was addressed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Mary A. Livermore to the constitutional conventions which were preparing for Statehood in Dakota, Washington, Montana and Idaho. It said in part:
The undersigned, officers of the American Woman Suffrage Association, though not properly entitled to address your convention, nevertheless ask its courtesy on account of the great interest they feel in the question of the status you will give to women.
You, gentlemen, felt keenly the disadvantage you were under when you had only Territorial rights. If you will consider how much greater are the disadvantages of a class that is wholly without political rights, you will, we feel sure, pardon our entreaty that in building your new constitution you will secure for women equal political rights with men.
The men of the older States inherited their constitutions, with the odious features which the common law imposes upon women. But you are making constitutions. You have the golden opportunity to save your women from all these evils by securing their right to vote in the organic law of the new State. By doing this, over and above the satisfaction which comes from having done a just deed, you will win the gratitude of women for all time, as our fathers won the gratitude of the race when they announced the principle which we ask you to apply. You will also secure the historic credit of being the first men to take the next great step in civilization—a step sure to be taken at no distant day....
Edward Everett once said, illustrating the effect of small things on character: "The Mississippi and the St. Lawrence Rivers have their rise near each other. A very small difference in the elevation of the land sends one to the ocean amid tropical heat, while the other empties into the frozen waters of the north." So, it may seem a small matter whether you admit or shut out women from an equal share in the government. But if you exclude them you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly, law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good women.
Henry B. Blackwell, secretary of the association, visited North Dakota, Montana and Washington, and personally labored with the members of the three constitutional conventions. He carried with him letters written expressly for these conventions by Governor Francis E. Warren and U. S. Delegate Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming; Governor Lyman U. Humphrey, Attorney-General L. B. Kellogg, Chief Justice Albert H. Horton and all the Judges of the Supreme Court of Kansas; U. S. Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, U. S. Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, Governor Oliver Ames, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, William Lloyd Garrison and others of Massachusetts, commending his mission and expressing the hope that the new States would incorporate equal suffrage in their constitutions. Copies of these letters were placed in the hands of every delegate. Mr. Blackwell devoted over a month to the journey and the work in these Territories, paying his own expenses and giving them and his services to the American Suffrage Association. [Detailed accounts of these efforts will be found in chapters on these three States.]
1890.—In February the American and the National Societies held a convention in Washington under the name of the National-American Association and this body has continued its annual meetings as one organization.
FOOTNOTES:
[135] The History is indebted for this chapter to Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, editor of The Woman's Journal, Boston, Mass. For early accounts of this organization see [ History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Chap. XXVI.] [Editors of History.
[136] Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett, principal of Highland Park Academy; Miss Ada C. Sweet, head of the Pension Office in Illinois; Mrs. Mary B. Willard, of the Union Signal; Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, of the Inter-Ocean; Dr. Julia Holmes Smith, Helen K. Pierce, Mrs. W. O. Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Fuller, Mrs. George Harding, Mrs. Catherine V. Waite, Mrs. Elizabeth Loomis and the Rev. Florence Kollock composed the entertainment committee.
[137] Mr. Wood, in many public addresses made during the first Kansas amendment campaign in 1867, attributed this action of the Kansas Constitutional Convention to Mrs. Stone; but it is certain that other influences contributed to it. [For a further account of these, see [History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. I, p. 185]. Eds.]