March 12 Thursday – Sam wrote from Hartford to the editor of the London Standard. In explaining the phenomenon of non-violent prayer-ins at liquor shops by respectable females in the U.S., Sam forthrightly raised the cause of women’s suffrage, reflecting an evolution in his thought from 1867, when he said, “I never want to see women voting, and gabbling about politics, and electioneering. There is something revolting in the thought.” Of course, Sam “married women’s rights” from a family of progressive thinkers. Now he wrote:

I dearly want the women to be raised to the political altitude of the negro, the imported savage, & the pardoned thief, & allowed to vote. It is our last chance, I think…Both the great parties have failed. I wish we might have a woman’s party now, & see how that would work. I feel persuaded that in extending the suffrage to women this country could lose absolutely nothing & might gain a great deal [MTL 6: 66].

The London Standard published the letter as “The Temperance Insurrection,” on Mar. 26.