[433] The Suffrage Association has held one meeting in Pembroke Hall, however, which was presided over by its acting president and at which the daughter of Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall, spoke upon "The Political Position of Women in England," and the use of Sayles Hall of Brown University was freely granted for a series of meetings under the auspices of the W. S. A. devoted to a presentation of "Woman's Contribution to the Progress of the World." These were addressed by Abba Goold Woolson, Mary A. Livermore, Lillie Devereux Blake, Lillie Chace Wyman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Mary F. Eastman, Prof. Katherine Hanscom and the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer.
In October, 1901, Miss Susan B. Anthony addressed the students and was enthusiastically received.
CHAPTER LXIII.
SOUTH CAROLINA.[434]
In 1890 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young being on a visit to Mrs. Adelaide Viola Neblett at Greenville, these two did so inspire each other that then and there they held a suffrage conference with Mrs. S. Odie Sirrene, Mrs. Mary Putnam Gridley and others, and pledged themselves to work for woman's enfranchisement in South Carolina.
Mrs. Young made a suffrage address to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Beaufort in 1891, and later spoke on the subject by invitation at Lexington and in the Baptist church at Marion. She eventually succeeded in forming a State association of 250 men and women who believed in equal rights, and interested themselves in circulating literature on this question. Its officers for 1900 are Mrs. Young, president; Mrs. Mary P. Prentiss, vice-president; Miss Harriet B. Manville, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Gridley, treasurer.
In 1895 Miss Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Association, Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake of New York, and Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick of Massachusetts, made addresses at various places, on their way home from the national convention in Atlanta. In April of this year Miss Laura Clay of Kentucky, Miss Helen Morris Lewis of North Carolina, and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, with Mrs. Young and Mrs. Neblett, began a suffrage campaign at Greenville. They went thence to Spartanburg, Columbia and Charleston. Here the party divided, Miss Clay and Mrs. Young going to Georgetown, Florence, Marion, Latta, Darlington, Timmonsville and Sumter. Later Mrs. Neblett, Miss Clay and Mrs. Young spoke at Allendale, Barnwell, Hampton and Beaufort.
Miss Clay, auditor of the National Association, worked four months in South Carolina this year at her own expense. Half of the time was spent in Columbia, assisting Mrs. Young and others in the effort to have an amendment giving suffrage to taxpaying women incorporated in the new constitution then being framed. They had hearings before two committees in September, and presented their arguments to the entire Constitutional Convention in the State House, with a large number of citizens present. The amendment failed by a vote of 26 yeas, 121 nays.