by our own highest ideal. While I deplore the necessity of war, yet I know in our Army many of the noblest types of manhood, whose acquaintance I prize most highly. I enjoy all games, too, from chess down to dominoes. There is so much that is sad and stern in life that we need sometimes to lay down its burdens and indulge in innocent amusements. Thus, you see, what is wise from my standpoint is unwise from yours. I am sorry that you repudiate all amusements, as they contribute to the health of body and soul. You are sorry that I do not think as you do and regulate my life accordingly. You are sure that you are right. I am equally sure that I am. Hence there is nothing to be done in either case but to let each other alone, and wait for the slow process of evolution to give to each of us a higher standard." Just then one of the officers asked me if I was ready for a game of whist, and I excused myself from further discussion. I met many of those dolorous saints in my travels, who spent so much thought on eternity and saving their souls that they lost all the joys of time, as well as those sweet virtues of courtesy and charity that might best fit them for good works on earth and happiness in heaven.
In the spring I went to Nebraska, and Miss Anthony and I again made a Western tour, sometimes together and sometimes by different routes. A constitutional convention was in session in Lincoln, and it was proposed to submit an amendment to strike the word "male" from the Constitution. Nebraska became a State in March, 1867, and took "Equality before the law" as her motto. Her Territorial legislature had discussed, many times, proposed liberal legislation for women, and her State legislature had twice considered propositions for woman's enfranchisement. I had a valise with me containing Hon. Benjamin F. Butler's minority reports as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, in favor of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. As we were crossing the Platte River, in transferring the baggage to the boat, my valise fell into the river. My heart stood still at the thought of such a fate for all those able arguments. After the great General had been in hot water all his life, it was grievous to think of any of his lucubrations perishing in cold water at last. Fortunately they were rescued. On reaching Lincoln I was escorted to the home of the Governor, where I spread the documents in the sunshine, and they were soon ready to be distributed among the members of the constitutional convention.
After I had addressed the convention, some of the members called on me to discuss the points of my speech. All the gentlemen were serious and respectful with one exception. A man with an unusually small head, diminutive form, and crooked legs tried, at my expense, to be witty and facetious. During a brief pause in the conversation he brought his chair directly before me and said, in a mocking tone, "Don't you think that the best thing a woman can do is to perform well her part in the role of wife and mother? My wife has presented me with eight beautiful children; is not this a better life-work than that of exercising the right of suffrage?"
I had had my eye on this man during the whole interview, and saw that the other members were annoyed at his behavior. I decided, when the opportune moment arrived, to give him an answer not soon to be forgotten; so I promptly replied to his question, as I slowly viewed him from head to foot, "I have met few men, in my life, worth repeating eight times." The members burst into a roar of laughter, and one of them, clapping him on the shoulder, said: "There, sonny, you have read and spelled; you better go." This scene was heralded in all the Nebraska papers, and, wherever the little man went, he was asked why Mrs. Stanton thought he was not worth repeating eight times.
During my stay in Lincoln there was a celebration of the opening of some railroad. An immense crowd from miles about assembled on this occasion. The collation was spread and speeches were made in the open air. The men congratulated each other on the wonderful progress the State had made since it became an organized Territory in 1854. There was not the slightest reference, at first, to the women. One speaker said: "This State was settled by three brothers, John, James, and Joseph, and from them have sprung the great concourse of people that greet us here to-day." I turned, and asked the Governor if all these people had sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of John, James, and Joseph. He urged me to put that question to the speaker; so, in one of his eloquent pauses, I propounded the query, which was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers, to the evident satisfaction of the women present. The next speaker took good care to give the due meed of praise to Ann, Jane, and Mary, and to every mention of the mothers of Nebraska the crowd heartily responded.
In toasting "the women of Nebraska," at the collation, I said: "Here's to the mothers, who came hither by long, tedious journeys, closely packed with restless children in emigrant wagons, cooking the meals by day, and nursing the babies by night, while the men slept. Leaving comfortable homes in the East, they endured all the hardships of pioneer life, suffered, with the men, the attacks of the Dakota Indians and the constant apprehension of savage raids, of prairie fires, and the devastating locusts. Man's trials, his fears, his losses, all fell on woman with double force; yet history is silent concerning the part woman performed in the frontier life of the early settlers. Men make no mention of her heroism and divine patience; they take no thought of the mental or physical agonies women endure in the perils of maternity, ofttimes without nurse or physician in the supreme hour of their need, going, as every mother does, to the very gates of death in giving life to an immortal being!"
Traveling all over these Western States in the early days, seeing the privations women suffered, and listening to the tales of sorrow at the fireside, I wondered that men could ever forget the debt of gratitude they owed to their mothers, or fail to commemorate their part in the growth of a great people. Yet the men of Nebraska have twice defeated the woman suffrage amendment.
In 1874 Michigan was the point of interest to all those who had taken part in the woman-suffrage movement. The legislature, by a very large majority, submitted to a vote of the electors an amendment of the Constitution, in favor of striking out the word "male" and thus securing civil and political rights to the women of the State. It was a very active campaign. Crowded meetings were held in all the chief towns and cities. Professor Moses Coit Tyler, and a large number of ministers preached, every Sunday, on the subject of woman's position. The Methodist conference passed a resolution in favor of the amendment by a unanimous vote. I was in the State during the intense heat of May and June, speaking every evening to large audiences; in the afternoon to women alone, and preaching every Sunday in some pulpit. The Methodists, Universalists, Unitarians, and Quakers all threw open their churches to the apostles of the new gospel of equality for women. We spoke in jails, prisons, asylums, depots, and the open air. Wherever there were ears to hear, we lifted up our voices, and, on the wings of the wind, the glad tidings were carried to the remote corners of the State, and the votes of forty thousand men, on election day, in favor of the amendment were so many testimonials to the value of the educational work accomplished.
I made many valuable acquaintances, on that trip, with whom I have maintained lifelong friendships. One pleasant day I passed in the home of Governor Bagley and his wife, with a group of pretty children. I found the Governor deeply interested in prison reform. He had been instrumental in passing a law giving prisoners lights in their cells and pleasant reading matter until nine o'clock. His ideas of what prisons should be, as unfolded that day, have since been fully realized in the grand experiment now being successfully tried at Elmira, New York.
I visited the State prison at Jackson, and addressed seven hundred men and boys, ranging from seventy down to seventeen years of age. Seated on the dais with the chaplain, I saw them file in to dinner, and, while they were eating, I had an opportunity to study the sad, despairing faces before me. I shall never forget the hopeless expression of one young man, who had just been sentenced for twenty years, nor how ashamed I felt that one of my own sex, trifling with two lovers, had fanned the jealousy of one against the other, until the tragedy ended in the death of one and the almost lifelong imprisonment of the other. If girls should be truthful and transparent in any relations in life, surely it is in those of love, involving the strongest passions of which human nature is capable. As the chaplain told me the sad story, and I noticed the prisoner's refined face and well-shaped head, I felt that the young man was not under the right influences to learn the lesson he needed. Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change
