The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.

481

privileges of the government," said Abraham Lincoln,
" who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding
women."
I had been reared and had lived all my life among the
best and noblest men, my estimate of men in general was
a lofty one; and my faith in them was so strong, that I
firmly believed it was only necessary to present to them the
wrongs and injustice done to women, to obtain prompt and
complete redress. A hundred times in those early and verdant days I said with the greatest confidence, "Men are
in every way so excellent that you may be sure when we
carry to them our grievances, they will hasten to do us
justice; when we lay before them our need of enfranchisement, they will be prompt to confer on us the ballot; we
have only to compel their attention, and our cause is won."
Alas! experience -has taught me a very different lesson.
In the present composition of political and legislative
bodies, no cause, whose claims are based only on eternal
right and justice, need appeal to politicians, legislatures, or
congresses, with expectations of success.
I began immediately to promulgate my Woman Suffrage
views through the columns of my husband's paper, and also
through the daily press of Chicago which was open to me.
My first invitation to lecture on the subject of "Woman's
Rights and Wrongs," came from a Baptist clergyman of the
city, whose standing was of the highest, and who put
his church at my service, and became in part my advertiser,
for he wished to raise money from the lecture. The audience was large, filling the lofty auditorium completely,
among whom were many men and women who, for years,
had held the same views as those which I advocated, but had
not expressed them.
At their suggestion, I soon arranged for a Suffrage Con