fundamental law of the land against the multitude of American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a whole sex.  To this injustice we object totally!  Such an amendment is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted on the most tender and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics.  If the present Congress is not called to legislate for the rights of women, let it not legislate against them.  Americans now live who shall not go down into the grave till they have left behind them a republican government; and no republic is republican that denies to half its citizens those rights which the Declaration of Independence and a true Christian democracy make equal to all.  Meanwhile, let us break the legs of the spider-crab.

[Footnote 34:  See Appendix for full speech.]

[Footnote 35:  As the question of suffrage is now agitating the public mind, it is the hour for woman to make her demand.  Propositions already have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as to exclude women from a voice in the government.  As this would be to turn the wheels of legislation backward, let the women of the nation now unitedly protest against such a desecration of the Constitution, and petition for that right which is at the foundation of all government, the right of representation.  Send your petition when signed to your representative in Congress, at your earliest convenience.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, LUCY STONE.]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEGRO’S HOUR.

1866.

The reconstruction period of our government was no less trying a time than the four years of warfare which preceded it.  The Union had been preserved but the disorganization of the Southern States was complete.  Lincoln, whose cool judgment, restraining wisdom and remarkable genius for understanding and persuading men never had been more needed, was dead by the hand of an assassin.  In his place was a man, rash, headlong, aggressive, stubborn, distrusted by the party which had placed him in power.  This chief executive had to deal not only with the great, perplexing questions which always follow upon the close of a war, but with these rendered still more difficult by the great mass of bewildered and helpless negroes, ignorant of how to care for themselves, with no further claims upon their former owners, and yet destined to live among them.  The immense Republican majority in Congress found itself opposed by a President, southern in birth and sympathy and an uncompromising believer in State Rights.