life. I know that they are also feeling the need of what they call
the moral support of women in their public life, and in their
political life.

I always feel that it is not for women alone that I appeal. As men
have long represented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of
my own family always have done so justly and most chivalrously, I
feel that in my appeal for political recognition I represent them;
that I represent my husband and my brother and the interest of the
sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women
of the nation into political equality would simply place us where
we could lift you where you never yet have stood, upon a moral
equality with us. Gentlemen, that is true. You know it as well as
I. I do not speak to you as individuals; I speak to you as the
representatives of your sex, as I stand here the representative
of mine; and never until we are your equals politically will the
moral standard for men be what it now is for women, and it is
none too high. Let it grow the more elevated by our growth in
spirituality, by every aspiration which we receive from the God
whence we draw our life and whence we draw our impulses of life.
Let our standard remain where it is and be more elevated. Yours
must come up to match it, and never will it until we are your
equals politically. So it is for men, as well as for women, that I
make my appeal.

I know that there are some gentlemen upon this committee who, when
we were here two years ago, had something to say about the rights
of the States and of their disinclination to interfere with the
rights of the States in this matter. I have great sympathy with
the gentlemen from the South, who, I hope, do not forget that they