| Summary: | In the letter, the women criticize the "literature from anti-suffrage sources" which attempts to discredit the movement "by defaming the national suffrage leaders as 'abolitionists,' 'feminists,' betrayers of home, family and society, etc." They defend leaders such as Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, and they stress that sectional differences should not hinder the cause: "Finally, we insisted that the suffrage movement is southern as well as northern. Southern women lead in suffrage councils as well as Northern women. Southern women are officials and directors of the National suffrage association. Southern women are imbued with the ideal of self-government, the same as Northern women, the same as French and British and Scandinavian women. The suffrage movement is a world movement. It is with the desire that the South shall be allowed to take its rightful place in the front ranks of that movement unswayed by these notoriously false appeals to prejudice that we address you this letter."
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