“Resolved, That the women of the Revolution were not wanting in heroism and self-sacrifice, and we, their daughters, are ready, in this War, to pledge our time, our means, our talents, and our lives, if need be, to secure the final and complete consecration of America to freedom.”

It was agreed that the practical work to be done to secure freedom for the slaves was to circulate petitions through all the Northern States.  For months these petitions were circulated diligently everywhere, as the signatures show—­some signed on fence posts, plows, the anvil, the shoemaker’s bench—­by women of fashion and those in the industries, alike in the parlor and the kitchen; by statesmen, professors in colleges, editors, bishops; by sailors, and soldiers, and the hard-handed children of toil, building railroads and bridges, and digging canals, and in mines in the bowels of the earth.  Petitions, signed by three hundred thousand persons, can now be seen in the national archives in the Capitol at Washington.  Three of my sons spent weeks in our office in Cooper Institute, rolling up the petitions from each State separately, and inscribing on the outside the number of names of men and women contained therein.  We sent appeals to the President the House of Representatives, and the Senate, from time to time, urging emancipation and the passage of the proposed Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution.  During these eventful months we received many letters from Senator Sumner, saying, “Send on the petitions as fast as received; they give me opportunities for speech.”

Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the Freedman’s Commission, was most enthusiastic in the work of the Loyal League, and came to our rooms frequently to suggest new modes of agitation and to give us an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes in Washington.  Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement suspended their conventions during the war, and gave their time and thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour.  Seeing the political significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as the sure, quick way of cutting the Gordian knot of the Rebellion.  To this end they organized a national league, and rolled up a mammoth petition, urging Congress so to amend the Constitution as to prohibit the existence of slavery in the United States.  From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York city, they sent out the appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large; tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas.  Meetings were held every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely discussed, and approved or condemned.