Democrats, talk and resolve against him for political effect, merely to cater to the ignorant voters of their party. They say he can not be naturalized on account of some stipulation in the old treaty with China, when they know or ought to know that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have as effectually blotted the word "white" out of all United States treaties and naturalization laws, as out of all the State and Territorial constitutions and statutes. Their pretence that the Chinaman may not become a citizen of the United States, precisely the same as an African, German or Irishman, is matched only by their denial of citizenship to the women of the entire nation. Under the old regime it was the negro with whom we had to make common cause in our demand for the practical recognition of our right to representation. In snatching the black man from our side, the Republicans, out of pure sympathy doubtless, lest we should be without any "male" compeer in our degradation, leave the innocent Chinaman to comfort and console us. Are we not most unreasonable in our dissatisfaction with the company our fathers and brothers constitutionally rank with us—idiots, lunatics, convicts, Chinamen?
While sailing up the Columbia, Mrs. Duniway wrote Mrs. Stan ton: "Miss Anthony has been holding large meetings in Portland, Salem and Oregon City, and has conquered the press and brought the whole fraternity to terms. She has also succeeded in holding important and successful meetings at The Dalles, and is now returning with me from a series of lectures in Walla Walla. We find the people everywhere enthusiastic and delighted. Her fund of logic, fact and fun seems inexhaustible. She speaks three and four consecutive evenings in one place, and each time increases the interest. We are all justly proud of her."
At Walla Walla the church doors were closed to her but she spoke in the schoolhouse. At Salem all the judges of the supreme court were in her audience and afterward called on her. She had good houses everywhere but money was hard to get, and she speaks in her letters of being almost frantic lest she may not be able to meet her notes on January first, "the one cherished dream of this year's work."
In a letter from Olympia describing the journey she said: "Here I am, October 22, at the head of Puget Sound. This was my route—Portland, down the Willamette river twelve miles to the Columbia; then down that river one hundred miles to the mouth of the Cowlitz, Monticello; then ninety miles stage-ride, full sixty of it over the roughest kind of corduroy. Twenty-five miles to Pumphrey's Hotel, arriving at 6 p.m.; supper and bed; called up at 2 o'clock, and off again at 2:30—perfectly dark—lantern on each side of coach—fourteen miles to breakfast at 7, horses walked every step of the way; eighteen more, walk and corduroy, to dinner; then thirty miles of splendid road, and arrival here at 5:30 p.m." At Seattle, November 4, she wrote home:
For the first time I have seen the glory of the sunrise upon the entire Coast Range. The whole western horizon was one fiery glow on mountain tops, all cragged and jagged from two miles in height down to the line of perpetual snow. It has been very tantalizing to be on this wonderful Puget Sound these ten days, and never see the clouds and fogs lift themselves long enough to give a vision of the majestic mountains on either side. My one hope now is that they may rise on both sides at the same time; but the rainy season has fairly set in. It has rained part of every twenty-four hours since we reached Olympia ten days ago. The grass and shrubbery are as green and delightful as with us in June, and roses and other flowers are blooming all fragrant and fresh. The forests are evergreen—mainly firs and cedars—and on the streets here are maple and other deciduous trees. The feeling of the air is like that during the September equinoctial storm. The sound, from twenty to forty miles wide, with inlets and harbors extending full two or three miles into the land, is the most beautiful sheet of water I ever have seen.
I go to Port Madison this afternoon, and on Monday to Port Gamble; back to Olympia for the Territorial Convention Wednesday; then down to Portland and thence southward. I have traveled 1,800 miles in fifty-six days, spoken forty-two nights and many days, and I am tired, tired. Lots of good missionary work, but not a great deal of money.
The last letter from Portland, November 16, said:
The mortal agony of speaking again in Portland is over, but the hurt of it stings yet. I never was dragged before an audience so utterly without thought or word as last night and, had there been any way of escape, would have taken wings or, what I felt more like, have sunk through the floor. It was the strangest and most unaccountable condition, but nothing save bare, bald points stared me in the face. Must stop; here is card of Herald reporter.
Before the reporter left, some ladies called, among them Mrs. Harriet W. Williams, at whose house we all used to stop in Buffalo, in the olden days of temperance work. She is like a mother to me. Mrs. Eliot, wife of the Unitarian minister, also came. They formed a suffrage society here Tuesday with some of the best women as officers. What is more and most of all I received a letter from a gentleman, enclosing testimonials from half a dozen of the prominent men of the city, asking an interview looking to marriage! I also received a serenade from a millionaire at Olympia. If any of the girls want a rich widower or an equally rich bachelor, here is decidedly the place to get an offer of one. But tell brother Aaron I expect to survive them all and reach home before the New Year, as single-handed and penniless as usual.3
Miss Anthony was invited to address the legislature while at Olympia. Notwithstanding her extreme need of money she donated the proceeds of one lecture to the sufferers by the Chicago fire. Usually she had good audiences but occasionally would fall into the hands of persons obnoxious to the community and the meeting would be a failure. She writes in her diary, "It seems impossible to escape being sacrificed by somebody." The press of Washington was for the most part very favorable. The Olympia Standard said: "We had formed a high opinion of the ability of the lady and her remarkable talent as a public speaker, and our expectations have been more than realized. She presents her arguments in graceful and elegant language, her illustrations are ample and well chosen, and the hearer is irresistibly drawn to her conclusions.... There is no gainsaying the sound logic of her arguments. They appeal to a sense of right and justice which ought not longer be denied." There was sometimes, however, a discordant note, as may be shown by the following from the Territorial Despatch, of Seattle, edited by Beriah Brown:
It is a mistake to call Miss Anthony a reformer, or the movement in which she is engaged a reform; she is a revolutionist, aiming at nothing less than the breaking up of the very foundations of society, and the overthrow of every social institution organized for the protection of the sanctity of the altar, the family circle and the legitimacy of our offspring, recognizing no religion but self-worship, no God but human reason, no motive to human action but lust. Many, undoubtedly, will object that we state the case too strongly; but if they will dispassionately examine the facts and compare them with the character of the leaders and the inevitable tendency of their teachings, they must be convinced that the apparently innocent measure of woman suffrage as a remedy for woman's wrongs in over-crowded populations, is but a pretext or entering wedge by which to open Pandora's box and let loose upon society a pestilential brood to destroy all that is pure and beautiful in human nature, and all that has been achieved by organized associations in religion, morality and refinement; that the whole plan is coarse, sensual and agrarian, the worst phase of French infidelity and communism....
She did not directly and positively broach the licentious social theories which she is known to entertain, because she well knew that they would shock the sensibilities of her audience, but confined her discourse to the one subject of woman suffrage as a means to attain equality of competitive labor. This portion of her lecture we have not time to discuss. Our sole purpose now is to enter our protest against the inculcation of doctrines which we believe are calculated to degrade and debauch society by demolishing the dividing lines between virtue and vice. It is true that Miss Anthony did not openly advocate "free love" and a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage relation, but she did worse—under the guise of defending women against manifest wrongs, she attempts to instil into their minds an utter disregard for all that is right and conservative in the present order of society.
Apparently Mr. Brown did not approve of woman suffrage. According to his
