Women's Loyal National League
The Women's Loyal National League was formed on May 14, 1863, in New York City to organize support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery.
[6] The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in states that were in rebellion but not elsewhere, in some cases led abolitionists and their opponents to become involved in this movement in different ways.
Conservatives in New York State, accommodating those who believed the Emancipation Proclamation was unconstitutional, formed an organization called the Loyal League of Union Citizens with the carefully worded purpose of supporting "the government in all its constitutional efforts to suppress the rebellion.
Encouraged by their male abolitionist colleagues and relatives, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony created an organization that resembled the Loyal National League in both name and purpose but with a feminist perspective.
Other officers of the convention included well-known figures in the women's movement like Martha Coffin Wright, Amy Post, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Ernestine Rose, and Angelina Grimké Weld.
[15] Using contacts developed by Stanton and Anthony through their previous work in the abolitionist and women's movements, the League launched a massive petition drive that gathered nearly 400,000 signatures calling for the U.S. Congress to pass an amendment that would abolish slavery.
[16] The largest petition campaign in the nation's history up to that time, it gathered signatures from approximately one out every twenty-four adults in the Northern states.
[21] The League also raised money by selling pins containing the words "In Emancipation is National Unity" and the image of a slave breaking his chains.
[23] The League also employed an office clerk and two field agents, Hannah Tracy Cutler and Josephine S. Griffing, both of whom were abolitionist and women's rights activists.
[27] The Appendix of Volume II of the History of Woman Suffrage, whose editors include Stanton and Anthony, reprints a lengthy newspaper article about the League's founding convention, including the adoption of this resolution: "Resolved, That the following be the official title and the pledge of the League—the pledge to be signed by all applicants for membership: 'Women's Loyal National League, organized in the city of New York, May 14, 1863.
[36] It significantly assisted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the U.S.[37] The League contributed to the development of a new generation of women abolitionist leaders, providing experience and recognition not only for Stanton and Anthony but also for newcomers like Anna Dickinson, a gifted teenaged orator.
