CHAPTER XXIII.
SUFFRAGE WORK IN POLITICAL AND OTHER CONVENTIONS.
The chapters thus far have given some idea of the endeavor to secure the ballot for women through national suffrage conventions, which bring together delegates from all parts of the country and send them back to their respective localities strengthened and fortified for the work; and which, through strong and logical arguments covering all phases of the question, given before large audiences, gradually have created a wide-spread sentiment in favor of the enfranchisement of women. There have been described also the hearings before committees of Congress, at which the advocates of this measure have made pleas for the submission to the State Legislatures of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex, as the Fifteenth Amendment does on account of color—pleas which a distinguished Senator, who reported against granting them, said "surpassed anything he ever had heard, and whose logic if used in favor of any other measure could not fail to carry it" (p. 201); and of which another, who had the courage to report in favor, declared, "The suffragists have logic, argument, everything on their side" (p. 162).
In addition to this national work the following chapters will show that the State work has been continued on similar lines—State and local conventions and appeals to Legislatures to submit an amendment to the electors to strike the word "male" from the suffrage clause of their own State constitution. These appeals, in many instances, have been supported by larger petitions than ever presented for any other object.
Further efforts have been made on a still different line, viz.: through attempts to secure from outside conventions an indorsement of woman suffrage, not only from those of a political but also from those of a religious, educational, professional or industrial nature. This has been desired in order that the bills may go before Congress and Legislatures with the all-important sanction of voters, and also because of its favorable effect on those composing these conventions and on public sentiment.
The idea of asking for recognition from a national political convention was first suggested to Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony in 1868. By their protests against the use of the word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, as described in Chap. I of this volume, they had angered the Republican leaders, some of whom, even those who favored woman suffrage, sarcastically advised them to ask the Democrats for indorsement in their national convention of this year and see what would be the response. These two women, therefore, did appear before that body, which dedicated the new Tammany Hall in New York City, on July 4. An account of their insulting reception may be found in the [History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 340], and in the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 304. They, with Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, and Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith, previously had sent an earnest letter to the National Republican Convention which had met in Chicago in June, asking in the name of the women who had rendered the party such faithful service during the Civil War, that it would recognize in its platform their right to the suffrage, but the letter received no notice whatever.
From that year until the present a committee of women has attended every national convention of all the parties, asking for an indorsement or at least a commendation of their appeal for the franchise. Sometimes they have been received with respect, sometimes with discourtesy, and occasionally they have been granted a few minutes to make their plea before the Committee on Resolutions. In but a single instance has any one of these women, the most eminent in the nation, been permitted to address a Republican convention—at Cincinnati in 1876. Twice this privilege has been extended by a Democratic—at St. Louis in 1876 and at Cincinnati in 1880. A far-off approach to a recognition of woman's claim was made by the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia in 1872, in this resolution:
The Republican party, mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America, expresses gratification that wider avenues of employment have been opened to woman, and it further declares that her demands for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration.