to be specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set
herself to this gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she
appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for
suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was
obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she
temporarily directed the main energy of the suffrage movement to
trying to win individual states. With women holding the balance
of political power, she argued, the national government will be
compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She went
to the West to get it.

She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without
compromise. To those women who would yield to party expediency as
advised by men, or be diverted into support of other measures,
she made answer in a spirited letter to Lucy Stone:

"So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill
becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our'
sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with
self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon

{8}

the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as
their political equals . . . .

"If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on
this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every
party and politician not fully and unequivocally committed to
`Equal Rights for Women,' we should become at once the moral