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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20439-8.txt b/20439-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..127f0b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/20439-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14841 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Susan B. Anthony, by Alma Lutz + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Susan B. Anthony + Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian + +Author: Alma Lutz + +Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20439] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY *** + + + + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on +this publication was renewed. + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious +error is noted at the end of this ebook. + + + + +SUSAN B. ANTHONY + + +REBEL, CRUSADER, HUMANITARIAN + + +BY ALMA LUTZ + + +ZENGER PUBLISHING CO. INC. BOX 9883, WASHINGTON DC 20015 + + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony] + + +Alma Lutz was born and brought up in North Dakota, graduated from the +Emma Willard School and Vassar College, and attended the Boston +University School of Business Administration. She has written numerous +articles and pamphlets and for many years has been a contributor to +_The Christian Science Monitor_. Active in organizations working for +the political, civil, and economic rights of women, she has also been +interested in preserving the records of women's role in history and +serves on the Advisory Board of the Radcliffe Women's Archives. Miss +Lutz is the author of _Emma Willard, Daughter of Democracy_ (1929), +_Created Equal, A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton_ (1940), +_Challenging Years, The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch_, with +Harriot Stanton Blatch (1940), and the editor of _With Love Jane, +Letters from American Women on the War Fronts_ (1945). + +© 1959 by Alma Lutz +Member of the Authors League of America + +Published by arrangement with +Beacon Press +All rights reserved. + + +Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data + +Lutz, Alma. +Susan B. Anthony: rebel, crusader, humanitarian. + +Reprint of the ed. published by Beacon Press, Boston. +Bibliography: p. +Includes index. +1. Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906. +[JK1899.A6L8 1975] 324'.3'0924 [B] 75-37764 +ISBN 0-89201-017-7 + +Printed in the United States of America + + +_To the young women of today_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +To strive for liberty and for a democratic way of life has always been +a noble tradition of our country. Susan B. Anthony followed this +tradition. Convinced that the principle of equal rights for all, as +stated in the Declaration of Independence, must be expressed in the +laws of a true republic, she devoted her life to the establishment of +this ideal. + +Because she recognized in Negro slavery and in the legal bondage of +women flagrant violations of this principle, she became an active, +courageous, effective antislavery crusader and a champion of civil and +political rights for women. She saw women's struggle for freedom from +legal restrictions as an important phase in the development of +American democracy. To her this struggle was never a battle of the +sexes, but a battle such as any freedom-loving people would wage for +civil and political rights. + +While her goals for women were only partially realized in her +lifetime, she prepared the soil for the acceptance not only of her +long-hoped-for federal woman suffrage amendment but for a worldwide +recognition of human rights, now expressed in the United Nations +Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights. She looked forward to the +time when throughout the world there would be no discrimination +because of race, color, religion, or sex. + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + + +"The letters of a person ...," said Thomas Jefferson, "form the only +full and genuine journal of his life." Susan B. Anthony's letters, +hundreds of them, preserved in libraries and private collections, and +her diaries have been the basis of this biography, and I acknowledge +my indebtedness to the following libraries and their helpful +librarians: the American Antiquarian Society; the Bancroft Library of +the University of California; the Boston Public Library; the Henry E. +Huntington Library and Art Gallery; the Indiana State Library; the +Kansas Historical Society; the Library of Congress; the Susan B. +Anthony Memorial Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, which +has been transferred to the Henry E. Huntington Library; the New York +Public Library; the New York State Library; the Ohio State Library; +the Radcliffe Women's Archives; the Seneca Falls Historical Society; +the Smith College Library; the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Inc., +Rochester, New York; the University of Rochester Library; the +University of Kentucky Library; and the Vassar College Library. + +I am particularly indebted to Lucy E. Anthony, who asked me to write a +biography of her aunt, lent me her aunt's diaries, and was most +generous with her records and personal recollections. To her and to +her sister, Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon, I am very grateful for photographs +and for permission to quote from Susan B. Anthony's diaries and from +her letters and manuscripts. + +Ida Husted Harper's _Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_, written in +collaboration with Susan B. Anthony, and the _History of Woman +Suffrage_, compiled by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, +Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, have been invaluable. As +many of the letters and documents used in the preparation of these +books were destroyed, they have preserved an important record of the +work of Susan B. Anthony and of the woman's rights movement. + +I am especially grateful to Martha Taylor Howard for her unfailing +interest and for the use of the valuable Susan B. Anthony Memorial +Collection which she initiated and developed in Rochester, New York; +and to Una R. Winter for her interest and for the use of her Susan B. +Anthony Collection, most of which is now in the Henry E. Huntington +Library. + +I thank Edna M. Stantial for permission to examine and quote from the +Blackwell Papers; Anna Dann Mason for permission to read her +reminiscences and the many letters written to her by Susan B. Anthony; +Ellen Garrison for permission to quote from letters of Lucretia Mott +and Martha C. Wright; Eleanor W. Thompson for copies of Susan B. +Anthony's letters to Amelia Bloomer; Henry R. Selden II whose +grandfather was Susan B. Anthony's lawyer during her trial for voting; +Judge John Van Voorhis whose grandfather was associated with Judge +Selden in Miss Anthony's defense; William B. Brown for information +about the early history of Adams, Massachusetts, the Susan B. Anthony +birthplace, and the Friends Meeting House in Adams; Dr. James Harvey +Young for information about Anna E. Dickinson; Margaret Lutz Fogg for +help in connection with the trial of Susan B. Anthony; Dr. Blake +McKelvey, City Historian of Rochester; Clara Sayre Selden and Wheeler +Chapin Case of the Rochester Historical Society; the grand-nieces of +Susan B. Anthony, Marion and Florence Mosher; Matilda Joslyn Gage II; +Florence L. C. Kitchelt; and Rose Arnold Powell. + +I thank _The Christian Science Monitor_ for permission to use portions +of an article published on October 24, 1958. + +I am especially grateful to A. Marguerite Smith for her constructive +criticism of the manuscript and her unfailing encouragement. + + ALMA LUTZ + +_Highmeadow_ +_Berlin, New York_ + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + QUAKER HERITAGE 1 + + WIDENING HORIZONS 15 + + FREEDOM TO SPEAK 28 + + A PURSE OF HER OWN 39 + + NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS 56 + + THE TRUE WOMAN 67 + + THE ZEALOT 79 + + A WAR FOR FREEDOM 92 + + THE NEGRO'S HOUR 108 + + TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS 125 + + HE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR 138 + + WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT 149 + + THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT 159 + + A HOUSE DIVIDED 169 + + A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 180 + + TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 198 + + "IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?" 209 + + SOCIAL PURITY 217 + + A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 226 + + RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY 235 + + IMPETUS FROM THE WEST 241 + + VICTORIES IN THE WEST 252 + + LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN + SUFFRAGE 266 + + AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS 274 + + PASSING ON THE TORCH 285 + + SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD 299 + + NOTES 311 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 + + INDEX 335 + + + + +TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-five _Frontispiece_ + (From a daguerrotype, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, + New York, N.Y.) + + Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony 2 + (From _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ by + Ida Husted Harper) + + Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony 3 + (From _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ by + Ida Husted Harper) + + Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts 5 + (The Smith Studio, Adams, Massachusetts) + + Frederick Douglass 22 + + Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume" 27 + (From _The Lily_) + + Lucy Stone 29 + (From _Lucy Stone_ by Alice Stone Blackwell. Courtesy Little, + Brown and Company) + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four 31 + (Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York) + + James and Lucretia Mott 33 + (From _James and Lucretia Mott_ by Anna D. Hallowell. + Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Company) + + Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry 40 + + Ernestine Rose 42 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Parker Pillsbury 49 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison_ by His Children) + + Merritt Anthony 57 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Susan B. Anthony, 1856 68 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell 72 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + William Lloyd Garrison 86 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison and His Times_ by Oliver + Johnson) + + Susan B. Anthony 97 + + Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony 110 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Wendell Phillips 114 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison_ by His Children) + + George Francis Train 132 + (Courtesy New York Public Library) + + Anna E. Dickinson 144 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Paulina Wright Davis 165 + + Isabella Beecher Hooker 167 + + Victoria C. Woodhull 181 + + Susan B. Anthony, 1871 187 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Judge Henry R. Selden 203 + (Courtesy Henry R. Selden II) + + "The Woman Who Dared" 206 + (New York _Daily Graphic_, June 5, 1873) + + Aaron A. Sargent 229 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Clara Bewick Colby 232 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Matilda Joslyn Gage 236 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Anna Howard Shaw 248 + (From a photograph by Mary Carnel) + + Harriot Stanton Blatch 250 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + The Anthony home, Rochester, New York 255 + (Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York) + + Susan B. Anthony at her desk 257 + (Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, + Northampton, Massachusetts) + + Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton 259 + + Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 262 + and Susan B. Anthony + + Ida Husted Harper 271 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Rachel Foster Avery 275 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Harriet Taylor Upton 276 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + Carrie Chapman Catt 289 + (Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, + Northampton, Massachusetts) + + Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony 297 + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five 301 + (From a photograph by J. E. Hale) + + Susan B. Anthony, 1905 309 + (From a photograph by Ellis) + + + + + +QUAKER HERITAGE + + +"If Sally Ann knows more about weaving than Elijah," reasoned +eleven-year-old Susan with her father, "then why don't you make her +overseer?" + +"It would never do," replied Daniel Anthony as a matter of course. "It +would never do to have a woman overseer in the mill." + +This answer did not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To +enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of +entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the +nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. +Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from +Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something +wrong with the machinery, Elijah, the overseer, always called out to +Sally Ann, "I'll tend your loom, if you'll look after this." Sally Ann +never failed to locate the trouble or to untangle the yarn. Yet she +was never made overseer, and this continued to puzzle Susan.[1] + +The manufacture of cotton was a new industry, developing with great +promise in the United States, when Susan B. Anthony was born on +February 15, 1820, in the wide valley at the foot of Mt. Greylock, +near Adams, Massachusetts. Enterprising young men like her father, +Daniel Anthony, saw a potential cotton mill by the side of every +rushing brook, and young women, eager to earn the first money they +could call their own, were leaving the farms, for a few months at +least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and +the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a +few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen. + +When Susan was two years old, her father built a cotton factory of +twenty-six looms beside the brook which ran through Grandfather Read's +meadow, hauling the cotton forty miles by wagon from Troy, New York. +The millworkers, most of them young girls from Vermont, boarded, as +was the custom, in the home of the millowner; Susan's mother, Lucy +Read Anthony, although she had three small daughters to care for, +Guelma, Susan, and Hannah, boarded eleven of the millworkers with +only the help of a thirteen-year-old girl who worked for her after +school hours. Lucy Anthony cooked their meals on the hearth of the big +kitchen fireplace, and in the large brick oven beside it baked crisp +brown loaves of bread. In addition, washing, ironing, mending, and +spinning filled her days. But she was capable and strong and was doing +only what all women in this new country were expected to do. She +taught her young daughters to help her, and Susan, even before she was +six, was very useful; by the time she was ten she could cook a good +meal and pack a dinner pail. + +[Illustration: Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony] + + * * * * * + +Hard work and skill were respected as Susan grew up in the rapidly +expanding young republic which less than fifty years before had been +founded and fought for. Settlers, steadily pushing westward, had built +new states out of the wilderness, adding ten to the original thirteen. +Everywhere the leaven of democracy was working and men were putting +into practice many of the principles so boldly stated in the +Declaration of Independence, claiming for themselves equal rights and +opportunities. The new states entered the Union with none of the +traditional property and religious limitations on the franchise, but +with manhood suffrage and all voters eligible for office. The older +states soon fell into line, Massachusetts in 1820 removing property +qualifications for voters. Before long, throughout the United States, +all free white men were enfranchised, leaving only women, Negroes, and +Indians without the full rights of citizenship. + +[Illustration: Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony] + +Although women freeholders had voted in some of the colonies and in +New Jersey as late as 1807,[2] just as in England in the fifteenth +franchise had gradually found its way into the statutes, and women's +rights as citizens were ignored, in spite of the contribution they had +made to the defense and development of the new nation. However, +European travelers, among them De Tocqueville, recognized that the +survival of the New World experiment in government and the prosperity +and strength of the people were due in large measure to the +superiority of American women. A few women had urged their claims: +Abigail Adams asked her husband, a member of the Continental Congress, +"to remember the ladies" in the "new code of laws"; and Hannah Lee +Corbin of Virginia pleaded with her brother, Richard Henry Lee, to +make good the principle of "no taxation without representation" by +enfranchising widows with property.[3] + +Yet the legal bondage of women continued to be overlooked. It seemed a +less obvious threat to free institutions and democratic government +than the Negro in slavery. In fact, Negro slavery presented a problem +which demanded attention again and again, flaring up alarmingly in +1820, the year Susan B. Anthony was born, when Missouri was admitted +to the Union as a slave state.[4] + + * * * * * + +These were some of the forces at work in the minds of Americans during +Susan's childhood. Her father, a liberal Quaker, was concerned over +the extension of slavery, and she often heard him say that he tried to +avoid purchasing cotton raised by slave labor. This early impression +of the evil of slavery was never erased. + +The Quakers' respect for women's equality with men before God also +left its mark on young Susan. As soon as she was old enough she went +regularly to Meeting with her father, for all of the Anthonys were +Quakers. They had migrated to western Massachusetts from Rhode Island, +and there on the frontier had built prosperous farms, comfortable +homes, and a meeting house where they could worship God in their own +way. Susan, sitting with the women and children on the hand-hewn +benches near the big fireplace in the meeting house[5] which her +ancestors had built, found peace and consecration in the simple +unordered service, in the long reverent silence broken by both the men +and the women in the congregation as they were led to say a prayer or +give out a helpful message. Forty families now worshiped here, the +women sitting on one side and the men on the other; but women took +their places with men in positions of honor, Susan's own grandmother, +Hannah Latham Anthony, an elder, sitting in the "high seat," and her +aunt, Hannah Anthony Hoxie, preaching as the spirit moved her. With +this valuation of women accepted as a matter of course in her church +and family circle, Susan took it for granted that it existed +everywhere. + +Although her father was a devout Friend, she discovered that he had +the reputation of thinking for himself, following the "inner light" +even when its leading differed from the considered judgment of his +fellow Quakers. For this he became a hero to her, especially after she +heard the romantic story of his marriage to Lucy Read who was not a +Quaker. The Anthonys and the Reads had been neighbors for years, and +Lucy was one of the pupils at the "home school" which Grandfather +Humphrey Anthony had built for his children on the farm, under the +weeping willow at the front gate. Daniel and Lucy were schoolmates +until Daniel at nineteen was sent to Richard Mott's Friends' boarding +school at Nine Partners on the Hudson. When he returned as a teacher, +he found his old playmate still one of the pupils, but now a beautiful +tall young woman with deep blue eyes and glossy brown hair. Full of +fun, a good dancer, and always dressed in the prettiest clothes, she +was the most popular girl in the neighborhood. Promptly Daniel Anthony +fell in love with her, but an almost insurmountable obstacle stood in +the way: Quakers were not permitted to "marry out of Meeting." This, +however, did not deter Daniel. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts] + +It was harder for Lucy to make up her mind. She enjoyed parties, +dances, and music. She had a full rich voice, and as she sat at her +spinning wheel, singing and spinning, she often wished that she could +"go into a ten acre lot with the bars down"[6] and let her voice out. +If she married Daniel, she would have to give all this up, but she +decided in favor of Daniel. A few nights before the wedding, she went +to her last party and danced until four in the morning while Daniel +looked on and patiently waited until she was ready to leave. + +For his transgression of marrying out of Meeting, Daniel had to face +the elders as soon as he returned from his wedding trip. They weighed +the matter carefully, found him otherwise sincere and earnest, and +decided not to turn him out. Lucy gave up her dancing and her singing. +She gave up her pretty bright-colored dresses for plain somber +clothes, but she did not adopt the Quaker dress or use the "plain +speech." She went to meeting with Daniel but never became a Quaker, +feeling always that she could not live up to their strict standard of +righteousness.[7] + +This was Susan's heritage--Quaker discipline and austerity lightened +by her father's independent spirit and by the kindly understanding of +her mother who had not forgotten her own fun-loving girlhood; an +environment where men and women were partners in church and at home, +where hard physical work was respected, where help for the needy and +unfortunate was spontaneous, and where education was regarded as so +important that Grandfather Anthony built a school for his children and +the neighbors' in his front yard. Her childhood was close enough to +the Revolution to make Grandfather Read's part in it very real and a +source of great pride. Eagerly and often she listened to the story of +how he enlisted in the Continental army as soon as the news of the +Battle of Lexington reached Cheshire and served with outstanding +bravery under Arnold at Quebec, Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, and +Colonel Stafford at Bennington while his young wife waited anxiously +for him throughout the long years of the war. + + * * * * * + +The wide valley in the Berkshire Hills where Susan grew up made a +lasting impression on her. There was beauty all about her--the fruit +trees blooming in the spring, the meadows white with daisies, the +brook splashing over the rocks and sparkling in the summer sun, the +flaming colors of autumn, the strength and companionship of the hills +when the countryside was white with snow. She seldom failed to watch +the sun set behind Greylock. + +Her father's cotton mill flourished. Regarded as one of the most +promising, successful young men of the district, he soon attracted the +attention of Judge John McLean, a cotton manufacturer of Battenville, +New York, who, eager to enlarge his mills, saw in Daniel Anthony an +able manager. Daniel, always ready to take the next step ahead, +accepted McLean's offer, and on a sunny July day in 1826, Susan drove +with her family through the hills forty-four miles to the new world of +Battenville. + +Here in the home of Judge McLean, she saw Negroes for the first time, +Negroes working to earn their freedom. Startled by their black faces, +she was a little afraid, but when her father explained that in the +South they could be sold like cattle and torn from their families, her +fear turned to pity. + +At the district school, taught by a woman in summer and by a man in +the winter, she learned to sew, spell, read, and write, and she wanted +to study long division but the schoolmaster, unable to teach it, saw +no reason why a woman should care for such knowledge. Her father, then +realizing the need of better education for his five children, Guelma, +Susan, Hannah, Daniel, and Mary, established a school for them in the +new brick building where he had opened a store. Later on when their +new brick house was finished, he set aside a large room for the +school, and here for the first time in that district the pupils had +separate seats, stools without backs, instead of the usual benches +around the schoolroom walls. He engaged as teachers young women who +had studied a year or two in a female seminary; and because female +seminaries were rare in those days, women teachers with up-to-date +training were hard to find. Only a few visionaries believed in the +education of women. Nearby Emma Willard's recently established Troy +Female Seminary was being watched with interest and suspicion. Mary +Lyon, who had not yet founded her own seminary at Mt. Holyoke, was +teaching at Zilpha Grant's school in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and one +of her pupils, Mary Perkins, came to Battenville to teach the Anthony +children. Mary Perkins brought new methods and new studies to the +little school. She introduced a primer with small black illustrations +which fascinated Susan. She taught the children to recite poetry, +drilled them regularly in calisthenics, and longed to add music as +well, but Daniel Anthony forbade this, for Quakers believed that music +might seduce the thoughts of the young. So Susan, although she often +had a song in her heart, had to repress it and never knew the joy of +singing the songs of childhood. + +Her father, looking upon the millworkers as part of his family, +started an evening school for them, often teaching it himself or +calling in the family teacher. He organized a temperance society among +the workers, and all signed a pledge never to drink distilled liquor. +When he opened a store in the new brick building, he refused to sell +liquor, although Judge McLean warned him it would ruin his trade. +Daniel Anthony went even further. He resolved not to serve liquor when +the millworkers' houses were built and the neighbors came to the +"raising." Again Judge McLean protested, feeling certain that the men +and boys would demand their gin and their rum, but Susan and her +sisters helped their mother serve lemonade, tea, coffee, doughnuts, +and gingerbread in abundance. The men joked a bit about the lack of +strong drink which they expected with every meal, but they did not +turn away from the good substitutes which were offered and they were +on hand for the next "raising." Hearing all of this discussed at home, +Susan, again proud of her father, ardently advocated the cause of +temperance. + + * * * * * + +The mill was still of great interest to her and she watched every +operation closely in her spare time, longing to try her hand at the +work. One day when a "spooler" was ill, Susan and her sister Hannah +eagerly volunteered to take her place. Their father was ready to let +them try, pleased by their interest and curious to see what they could +do, but their mother protested that the mill was no place for +children. Finally Susan's earnest pleading won her mother's reluctant +consent, and the two girls drew lots for the job. It went to +twelve-year-old Susan on the condition that she divide her earnings +with Hannah. Every day for two weeks she went early to the mill in her +plain homespun dress, her straight hair neatly parted and smoothed +over her ears. Proudly she tended the spools. She was skillful and +quick, and received the regular wage of $1.50 a week, which she +divided with Hannah, buying with her share six pale blue coffee cups +for her mother who had allowed her this satisfying adventure. + +A few weeks before her thirteenth birthday, Susan became a member of +the Society of Friends which met in nearby Easton, New York, and +learned to search her heart and ask herself, "Art thou faithful?" +Parties, dancing, and entertainments were generally ruled out of her +life as sinful, and rarely were a temptation, but occasionally her +mother, remembering her own good times, let her and her sisters go to +parties at the homes of their Presbyterian neighbors, and for this her +father was criticized at Friends' Meeting. Condemning bright colors, +frills, and jewelry as vain and worldly, Susan accepted plain somber +clothing as a mark of righteousness, and when she deviated to the +extent of wearing the Scotch-plaid coat which her mother had bought +her, she wondered if the big rent torn in it by a dog might not be +deserved punishment for her pride in wearing it. + +That same year, the family moved into their new brick house of fifteen +rooms, with hard-finish plaster walls and light green woodwork, the +finest house in that part of the country. Here Susan's brother Merritt +was born the next April, and her two-year-old sister, Eliza, died. + +Susan, Guelma, and Hannah continued their studies longer than most +girls in the neighborhood, for Quakers not only encouraged but +demanded education for both boys and girls. As soon as Susan and her +sister Guelma were old enough, they taught the "home" school in the +summer when the younger children attended, and then went further +afield to teach in nearby villages. At fifteen Susan was teaching a +district school for $1.50 a week and board, and although it was hard +for her to be away from home, she accepted it as a Friend's duty to +provide good education for children. Now Presbyterian neighbors +criticized her father, protesting that well-to-do young ladies should +not venture into paid work. + +Daniel Anthony was now a wealthy man, his factory the largest and most +prosperous in that part of the country, and he could afford more and +better education for his daughters. He sent Guelma, the eldest, to +Deborah Moulson's Friends' Seminary near Philadelphia, where for $125 +a year "the inculcation of the principles of Humility, Morality, and +Virtue" received particular attention; and when Guelma was asked to +stay on a second year as a teacher, he suggested that Susan join her +there as a pupil. + + * * * * * + +It was a long journey from Battenville to Philadelphia in 1837, and +when Susan left her home on a snowy afternoon with her father, she +felt as if the parting would be forever. Her first glimpse of the +world beyond Battenville interested her immensely until her father +left her at the seminary, and then she confessed to her diary, "Oh +what pangs were felt. It seemed impossible for me to part with him. I +could not speak to bid him farewell."[8] She tried to comfort herself +by writing letters, and wrote so many and so much that Guelma often +exclaimed, "Susan, thee writes too much; thee should learn to be +concise." As it was a rule of the seminary that each letter must first +be written out carefully on a slate, inspected by Deborah Moulson, +then copied with care, inspected again, and finally sent out after +four or five days of preparation, all spontaneity was stifled and her +letters were stilted and overvirtuous. This censorship left its mark, +and years later she confessed, "Whenever I take my pen in hand, I +always seem to be mounted on stilts."[9] + +To her diary she could confide her real feelings--her discouragement +over her lack of improvement and her inability to understand her many +"sins," such as not dotting an _i_, too much laughter, or smiling at +her friends instead of reproving them for frivolous conduct. She +wrote, "Thought so much of my resolutions to do better in the future +that even my dreams were filled with these desires.... Although I have +been guilty of much levity and nonsensical conversation, and have also +admitted thoughts to occupy my mind which should have been far distant +from it, I do not consider myself as having committed any wilful +offense but perhaps the reason I cannot see my own defects is because +my heart is hardened."[10] + +The girls studied a variety of subjects, arithmetic, algebra, +literature, chemistry, philosophy, physiology, astronomy, and +bookkeeping. Men came to the school to conduct some of the classes, +and Deborah Moulson was also assisted by several student teachers, one +of whom, Lydia Mott, became Susan's lifelong friend. Susan worked +hard, for she was a conscientious child, but none of her efforts +seemed to satisfy Deborah Moulson, who was a hard taskmaster. Her +reproofs cut deep, and once when Susan protested that she was always +censured while Guelma was praised, Deborah Moulson sternly replied, +"Thy sister Guelma does the best she is capable of, but thou dost not. +Thou hast greater abilities and I demand of thee the best of thy +capacity."[11] + +Mail from home was a bright spot, bringing into those busy austere +days news of her friends, and when she read that one of them had +married an old widower with six children, she reflected sagely, "I +should think any female would rather live and die an old maid."[12] + +Then came word that her father's business had been so affected by the +financial depression that the family would have to give up their home +in Battenville. Sorrowfully she wrote in her diary, "O can I ever +forget that loved residence in Battenville, and no more to call it +home seems impossible."[13] It helped little to realize that countless +other families throughout the country were facing the future penniless +because banks had failed, mills were shut down, and work on canals and +railroads had ceased. In April 1838, Daniel Anthony came to the +seminary to take his daughters home. + +Susan felt keenly her father's sorrow over the failure of his business +and the loss of the home he had built for his family, and she resolved +at once to help out by teaching in Union Village, New York. In May +1838, she wrote in her diary, "On last evening ... I again left my +home to mingle with strangers which seems to be my sad lot. Separation +was rendered more trying on account of the embarrassing condition of +our business affairs, an inventory was expected to be taken today of +our furniture by assignees.... Spent this day in school, found it +small and quite disorderly. O, may my patience hold out to persevere +without intermission."[14] + +Her patience did hold out, and also her courage, as the news came from +home telling her how everything had to be sold to satisfy the +creditors, the furniture, her mother's silver spoons, their clothing +and books, the flour, tea, coffee, and sugar in the pantries. She +rejoiced to hear that Uncle Joshua Read from Palatine Bridge, New +York, had come to the rescue, had bought their most treasured and +needed possessions and turned them over to her mother. + +On a cold blustery March day in 1839, when she was nineteen, Susan +moved with her family two miles down the Battenkill to the little +settlement of Hardscrabble, later called Center Falls, where her +father owned a satinet factory and grist mill, built in more +prosperous times. These were now heavily mortgaged but he hoped to +save them. They moved into a large house which had been a tavern in +the days when lumber had been cut around Hardscrabble. It was +disappointing after their fine brick house in Battenville, but they +made it comfortable, and their love for and loyalty to each other made +them a happy family anywhere. As it had been a halfway house on the +road to Troy and travelers continued to stop there asking for a meal +or a night's lodging, they took them in, and young Daniel served them +food and nonintoxicating drinks at the old tavern bar. + +Susan, when her school term was over, put her energies into housework, +recording in her diary, "Did a large washing today.... Spent today at +the spinning wheel.... Baked 21 loaves of bread.... Wove three yards +of carpet yesterday."[15] + +The attic of the tavern had been finished off for a ballroom with +bottles laid under the floor to give a nice tone to the music of the +fiddles, and now the young people of the village wanted to hold their +dancing school there. Susan's father, true to his Quaker training, +felt obliged to refuse, but when they came the second time to tell him +that the only other place available was a disreputable tavern where +liquor was sold, he relented a little, and talked the matter over with +his wife and daughters. Lucy Anthony, recalling her love of dancing, +urged him to let the young people come. Finally he consented on the +condition that Guelma, Hannah, and Susan would not dance. They agreed. +Every two weeks all through the winter, the fiddles played in the +attic room and the boys and girls of the neighborhood danced the +Virginia reel and their rounds and squares, while the three Quaker +girls sat around the wall, watching and longing to join in the fun. + +Such frivolous entertainment in the home of a Quaker could not be +condoned, and Daniel Anthony was not only severely censured by the +Friends but read out of Meeting, "because he kept a place of amusement +in his house." But he did not regret his so-called sin any more than +he regretted marrying out of Meeting. He continued to attend Friends' +Meeting, but grew more and more liberal as the years went by. At this +time, like all Quakers, he refused to vote, not wishing in any way to +support a government that believed in war, and this influenced Susan +who for some years regarded voting as unimportant. He refused to pay +taxes for the same reason, and she often saw him put his pocketbook on +the table and then remark drily to the tax collector, "I shall not +voluntarily pay these taxes. If thee wants to rifle my pocketbook, +thee can do so."[16] + + * * * * * + +To help her father with his burden of debt was now Susan's purpose in +life, and in the spring she again left the family circle to teach at +Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary in New Rochelle, New York. There +were twenty-eight day pupils and a few boarders at the seminary, and +for long periods while Eunice Kenyon was ill, Susan took full charge. + +She wrote her family all the little details of her life, but their +letters never came often enough to satisfy her. Occasionally she +received a paper or a letter from Aaron McLean, Judge McLean's +grandson, who had been her good friend and Guelma's ever since they +had moved to Battenville. His letters almost always started an +argument which both of them continued with zest. After hearing the +Quaker preacher, Rachel Barker, she wrote him, "I guess if you would +hear her you would believe in a woman's preaching. What an absurd +notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficient +for anything but domestic concerns."[17] + +When New Rochelle welcomed President Van Buren with a parade, bands +playing, and crowds in the streets, this prim self-righteous young +woman took no part in this hero worship, but gave vent to her +disapproval in a letter to Aaron. + +Disturbed over the treatment Negroes received at Friends' Meeting in +New Rochelle, she impulsively wrote him, "The people about here are +anti-abolitionist and anti everything else that's good. The Friends +raised quite a fuss about a colored man sitting in the meeting house, +and some left on account of it.... What a lack of Christianity is +this!"[18] + +Her school term of fifteen weeks, for which she was paid $30, was over +early in September, just in time for her to be at home for Guelma's +wedding to Aaron McLean, and afterward she stayed on to teach the +village school in Center Falls. This made it possible for her to join +in the social life of the neighborhood. Often the young people drove +to nearby villages, twenty buggies in procession. On a drive to +Saratoga, her escort asked her to give up teaching to marry him. She +refused, as she did again a few years later when a Quaker elder tried +to entice her with his fine house, his many acres, and his sixty cows. +Although she had reached the age of twenty, when most girls felt they +should be married, she was still particular, and when a friend married +a man far inferior mentally, she wrote in her diary, "'Tis strange, +'tis passing strange that a girl possessed of common sense should be +willing to marry a lunatic--but so it is."[19] + +During the next few years, both she and Hannah taught school almost +continuously, for $2 to $2.50 a week. Time and time again Susan +replaced a man who had been discharged for inefficiency. Although she +made a success of the school, she discovered that she was paid only a +fourth the salary he had received, and this rankled. + +Almost everywhere except among Quakers, she encountered a false +estimate of women which she instinctively opposed. After spending +several months with relatives in Vermont, where she had the unexpected +opportunity of studying algebra, she stopped over for a visit with +Guelma and Aaron in Battenville, where Aaron was a successful +merchant. Eagerly she told them of her latest accomplishment. Aaron +was not impressed. Later at dinner when she offered him the delicious +cream biscuits which she had baked, he remarked with his most +tantalizing air of male superiority, "I'd rather see a woman make +biscuits like these than solve the knottiest problem in algebra." + +"There is no reason," she retorted, "why she should not be able to do +both."[20] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888 (Washington, +1888), p. 163. + +[2] Charles B. Waite, "Who Were the Voters in the Early History of +This Country?" _Chicago Law Times_, Oct., 1888. + +[3] Janet Whitney, _Abigail Adams_ (Boston, 1947), p. 129. In 1776, +Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, at the Continental +Congress in Philadelphia, "In the new code of laws which I suppose it +will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the +ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors! +Do not put such unlimited powers into the hands of husbands. Remember +all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and +attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a +rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we +have no voice or representation." Ethel Armes, _Stratford Hall_ +(Richmond, Va., 1936), pp. 206-209. + +[4] Under the Missouri Compromise, Maine was admitted as a free state, +Missouri as a slave state, and slavery was excluded from all of the +Louisiana Purchase, north of latitude 36°31'. + +[5] The meeting house, built in 1783, is still standing. It is owned +by the town of Adams, and cared for by the Adams Society of Friends +Descendants. Susan traced her ancestry to William Anthony of Cologne +who migrated to England and during the reign of Edward VI, was made +Chief Graver of the Royal Mint and Master of the Scales, holding this +office also during the reign of Queen Mary and part of Queen +Elizabeth's reign. In 1634, one of his descendants, John Anthony, +settled in Rhode Island, and just before the Revolution, his great +grandson, David, Susan's great grandfather, bought land near Adams, +Massachusetts, then regarded as the far West. + +[6] Ida Husted Harper, _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ +(Indianapolis, 1898), I, p. 10. + +[7] Daniel and Susannah Richardson Read gave Lucy and Daniel Anthony +land for their home, midway between the Anthony and Read farms. Here +Susan was born in a substantial two-story, frame house, built by her +father. + +[8] Ms., Diary, 1837. + +[9] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 25. + +[10] Ms., Diary, Jan. 21, Feb. 10, 1838 + +[11] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 31. + +[12] Ms., Diary, Feb. 26, 1838. + +[13] _Ibid._, Feb. 6, 1838. + +[14] _Ibid._, May 7, 1838. + +[15] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 36. + +[16] _Ibid._, p. 37. + +[17] _Ibid._, p. 40. + +[18] _Ibid._, p. 39. + +[19] _Ibid._ + +[20] _Ibid._, pp. 43-44. + + + + +WIDENING HORIZONS + + +Unable to recoup his business losses in Center Falls and losing even +the satinet factory, Susan's father had looked about in Virginia and +Michigan as well as western New York for an opportunity to make a +fresh start. A farm on the outskirts of Rochester looked promising, +and with the money which Lucy Anthony had inherited from Grandfather +Read and which had been held for her by Uncle Joshua Read, the first +payment had been made on the farm by Uncle Joshua, who held it in his +name and leased it to Daniel.[21] Had it been turned over to Susan's +mother, it would have become Daniel Anthony's property under the law +and could have been claimed by his creditors. + +Only Susan, Merritt, and Mary climbed into the stage with their +parents, early in November 1845, on the first lap of their journey to +their new home, near Rochester, New York. Guelma and Hannah[22] were +both married and settled in homes of their own, and young Daniel, +clerking in Lenox, had decided to stay behind. + +After a visit with Uncle Joshua at Palatine Bridge, they boarded a +line boat on the Erie Canal, taking with them their gray horse and +wagon; and surrounded by their household goods, they moved slowly +westward. Standing beside her father in the warm November sunshine, +Susan watched the strong horses on the towpath, plodding patiently +ahead, and heard the wash of the water against the prow and the noisy +greeting of boat horns. As they passed the snug friendly villages +along the canal and the wide fertile fields, now brown and bleak after +the harvest, she wondered what the new farm would be like and what the +future would bring; and at night when the lights twinkled in the +settlements along the shore, she thought longingly of her old home and +the sisters she had left behind. + +After a journey of several days, they reached Rochester late in the +afternoon. Her father took the horse and wagon off the boat, and in +the chill gray dusk drove them three miles over muddy roads to the +farm. It was dark when they arrived, and the house was cold, empty, +and dismal, but after the fires were lighted and her mother had cooked +a big kettle of cornmeal mush, their spirits revived. Within the next +few days they transformed it into a cheerful comfortable home. + +The house on a little hill overlooked their thirty-two acres. Back of +it was the barn, a carriage house, and a little blacksmith shop.[23] +Looking out over the flat snowy fields toward the curving Genesee +River and the church steeples in Rochester, Susan often thought +wistfully of the blue hills around Center Falls and Battenville and of +the good times she had had there. + +The winter was lonely for her in spite of the friendliness of their +Quaker neighbors, the De Garmos, and the Quaker families in Rochester +who called at once to welcome them. Her father found these neighbors +very congenial and they readily interested him in the antislavery +movement, now active in western New York. Within the next few months, +several antislavery meetings were held in the Anthony home and opened +a new world to Susan. For the first time she heard of the Underground +Railroad which secretly guided fugitive slaves to Canada and of the +Liberty party which was making a political issue of slavery. She +listened to serious, troubled discussion of the annexation of Texas, +bringing more power to the proslavery block, which even the +acquisition of free Oregon could not offset. She read antislavery +tracts and copies of William Lloyd Garrison's _Liberator_, borrowed +from Quaker friends; and on long winter evenings, as she sat by the +fire sewing, she talked over with her father the issues they raised. + +When spring came and the trees and bushes leafed out, she took more +interest in the farm, discovering its good points one by one--the +flowering quince along the driveway, the pinks bordering the walk to +the front door, the rosebushes in the yard, and cherry trees, currant +and gooseberry bushes in abundance. Her father planted peach and apple +orchards and worked the "sixpenny farm,"[24] as he called it, to the +best of his ability, but the thirty-two acres seemed very small +compared with the large Anthony and Read farms in the Berkshires, and +he soon began to look about for more satisfying work. This he found a +few years later with the New York Life Insurance Company, then +developing its business in western New York. Very successful in this +new field, he continued in it the rest of his life, but he always kept +the farm for the family home. + + * * * * * + +The first member of the family to leave the Rochester farm was Susan. +The cherry trees were in bloom when she received an offer from +Canajoharie Academy to teach the female department. As Canajoharie was +across the river from Uncle Joshua Read's home in Palatine Bridge and +he was a trustee of the academy, she read between the lines his kindly +interest in her. He was an influential citizen of that community, a +bank director and part owner of the Albany-Utica turnpike and the +stage line to Schenectady. Accepting the offer at once, she made the +long journey by canal boat to Canajoharie, and early in May 1846 was +comfortably settled in the home of Uncle Joshua's daughter, Margaret +Read Caldwell. + +She soon loved Margaret as a sister and was devoted to her children. +None of her new friends were Quakers and she enjoyed their social life +thoroughly, leaving behind her forever the somber clothing which she +had heretofore regarded as a mark of righteousness. She began her +school with twenty-five pupils and a yearly salary of approximately +$110. This was more than she had ever earned before, and for the first +time in her life she spent her money freely on herself. + +Her first quarterly examination, held before the principal, the +trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in +addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."[25] She had +dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple, +white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a +gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her +smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new +prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so +pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some +young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy +of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon +saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for +the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room +of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced. + +In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but because of +the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two +years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only +a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott. +In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents, +"Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of +building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My +room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not +pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at +least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school +of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty +compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is +wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest +and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage to +persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my +fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That +is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches, +cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in +bloom and all about the farming business."[26] + + * * * * * + +During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active +abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this +time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform +movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the +country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, +but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting +that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off +when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance +societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters +of Temperance. + +Canajoharie had its Daughters of Temperance, and Susan, long an +advocate of temperance, gladly joined the crusade, and made her first +speech when the Daughters of Temperance held a supper meeting to +interest the people of the village. Few women at this time could have +been persuaded to address an audience of both men and women, believing +this to be bold, unladylike, and contrary to the will of God; but the +young Quaker, whose grandmother and aunts had always spoken in +Meeting when the spirit moved them, was ready to say her word for +temperance, taking it for granted that it was not only woman's right +but her responsibility to speak and work for social reform. + +About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the +hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her +amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out +Susan B. Anthony. + +"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly +regard,"[27] she confided to her family. + +She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages +together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its +formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now +despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of +reform. + +"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the +social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females +possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but +we do believe that were they en masse to discontinue the use of wine +and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not +one of the opposite sex, who has any claim to the title of gentleman, +would so insult them as to come into their presence after having +quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement.... +Ladies! There is no neutral position for us to assume...."[28] + +The next day the village buzzed with talk of the meeting; only a few +criticized Susan for speaking in public, and almost all agreed that +she was the smartest woman in Canajoharie. + +While she was busy with her temperance work, there were stirrings +among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early +summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated +petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible +sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to +own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made +it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name. +Heretofore all property owned by a woman at marriage and all received +by gift or inheritance had at once become her husband's and he had had +the right to sell it or will it away without her consent and to +collect the rents or the income. The new law was welcomed in the +Anthony household, for now Lucy Anthony's inheritance, which had +bought the Rochester farm, could at last be put in her own name and +need no longer be held for her by her brother. + +In the newspapers in July, Susan read scornful, humorous, and +indignant reports of a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New +York, at which women had issued a Declaration of Sentiments, +announcing themselves men's equals. They had protested against legal, +economic, social, and educational discriminations and asked for the +franchise. A woman's rights convention in the 1840s was a startling +event. Women, if they were "ladies" did not attend public gatherings +where politics or social reforms were discussed, because such subjects +were regarded as definitely out of their sphere. Much less did they +venture to call meetings of their own and issue bold resolutions. + +Susan was not shocked by this break with tradition, but she did not +instinctively come to the defense of these rebellious women, nor +champion their cause. She was amused rather than impressed. Yet +Lucretia Mott's presence at the convention aroused her curiosity. +Among her father's Quaker friends in Rochester, she had heard only +praise of Mrs. Mott, and she herself, when a pupil at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, had been inspired by Mrs. Mott's remarks at +Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia. + +So far Susan had encountered few barriers because she was a woman. She +had had little personal contact with the hardships other women +suffered because of their inferior legal status. To be sure, it had +been puzzling to her as child that Sally Hyatt, the most skillful +weaver in her father's mill, had never been made overseer, but the +fact that her mother had not the legal right to hold property in her +own name did not at the time make an impression upon her. Brought up +as a Quaker, she had no obstacles put in the way of her education. She +had an exceptional father who was proud of his daughters' intelligence +and ability and respected their opinions and decisions. Her only real +complaint was the low salary she had been obliged to accept as a +teacher because she was a woman. She sensed a feeling of male +superiority, which she resented, in her brother-in-law, Aaron McLean, +who did not approve of women preachers and who thought it more +important for a woman to bake biscuits than to study algebra. She met +the same arrogance of sex in her Cousin Margaret's husband, but she +had not analyzed the cause, or seen the need of concerted action by +women. + +Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise +that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in +the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister +Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had +signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her +cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father +showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she +laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the +times."[29] She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with +good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so +enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's +rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her +black curls and ruddy cheeks"[30] and about Lucretia Mott "with her +Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both +"speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest +was finally aroused and she decided she would like to meet these women +and talk with them. There was no opportunity for this, however, before +she returned to Canajoharie for another year of teaching. + +It proved to be a year of great sadness because of the illness of her +cousin Margaret whom she loved dearly. In addition to her teaching, +she nursed Margaret and looked after the house and children. She saw +much to discredit the belief that men were the stronger and women the +weaker sex, and impatient with Margaret's husband, she wrote her +mother that there were some drawbacks to marriage that made a woman +quite content to remain single. In explanation she added, "Joseph had +a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one +for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine +pain, yours is sort of a natural consequence.'"[31] + +Within a few weeks Margaret died. This was heart-breaking for Susan, +and without her cousin, Canajoharie offered little attraction. +Teaching had become irksome. The new principal was uncongenial, a +severe young man from the South whose father was a slaveholder. Susan +longed for a change, and as she read of the young men leaving for the +West, lured by gold in California, she envied them their adventure and +their opportunity to explore and conquer a whole new world. + +[Illustration: Frederick Douglass] + + * * * * * + +The peaches were ripe when Susan returned to the farm. The orchard +which her father had planted, now bore abundantly. Restless and eager +for hard physical work, she discarded the stylish hoops which impeded +action, put on an old calico dress, and spent days in the warm +September sunshine picking peaches. Then while she preserved, canned, +and pickled them, there was little time to long for pioneering in the +West. + +She enjoyed the active life on the farm for she was essentially a +doer, most happy when her hands and her mind were busy. As she helped +with the housework, wove rag carpet, or made shirts by hand for her +father and brothers, she dreamed of the future, of the work she might +do to make her life count for something. Teaching, she decided, was +definitely behind her. She would not allow her sister Mary's interest +in that career to persuade her otherwise, even if teaching were the +only promising and well-thought-of occupation for women. Reading the +poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she was deeply stirred and looked +forward romantically to some great and useful life work. + +The _Liberator_, with its fearless denunciation of Negro slavery, now +came regularly to the Anthony home, and as she pored over its pages, +its message fired her soul. Eagerly she called with her father at the +home of Frederick Douglass, who had recently settled in Rochester and +was publishing his paper, the _North Star_. Not only did she want to +show friendliness to this free Negro of whose intelligence and +eloquence she had heard so much, but she wanted to hear first-hand +from him and his wife of the needs of his people. + +Almost every Sunday the antislavery Quakers met at the Anthony farm. +The Posts, the Hallowells, the De Garmos, and the Willises were sure +to be there. Sometimes they sent a wagon into the city for Frederick +Douglass and his family. Now and then famous abolitionists joined the +circle when their work brought them to western New York--William Lloyd +Garrison, looking with fatherly kindness at his friends through his +small steel-rimmed spectacles; Wendell Phillips, handsome, learned, +and impressive; black-bearded, fiery Parker Pillsbury; and the +friendly Unitarian pastor from Syracuse, the Reverend Samuel J. May. +Susan, helping her mother with dinner for fifteen or twenty, was torn +between establishing her reputation as a good cook and listening to +the interesting conversation. She heard them discuss woman's rights, +which had divided the antislavery ranks. They talked of their +antislavery campaigns and the infamous compromises made by Congress to +pacify the powerful slaveholding interests. Like William Lloyd +Garrison, all of them refused to vote, not wishing to take any part in +a government which countenanced slavery. They called the Constitution +a proslavery document, advocated "No Union with Slaveholders," and +demanded immediate and unconditional emancipation. All about them and +with their help the Underground Railroad was operating, circumventing +the Fugitive Slave Law and guiding Negro refugees to Canada and +freedom. Amy and Isaac Post's barn, Susan knew, was a station on the +Underground, and the De Garmos and Frederick Douglass almost always +had a Negro hidden away. She heard of riots and mobs in Boston and +Ohio; but in Rochester not a fugitive was retaken and there were no +street battles, although the New York _Herald_ advised the city to +throw its "nigger printing press"[32] into Lake Ontario and banish +Douglass to Canada. + +As the Society of Friends in Rochester was unfriendly to the +antislavery movement, Susan with her father and other liberal Hicksite +Quakers left it for the Unitarian church. Here for the first time they +listened to "hireling ministry" and to a formal church service with +music. This was a complete break with what they had always known as +worship, but the friendly Christian spirit expressed by both minister +and congregation made them soon feel at home. This new religious +fellowship put Susan in touch with the most advanced thought of the +day, broke down some of the rigid precepts drilled into her at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, and encouraged liberalism and tolerance. Although +there had been austerity in the outward forms of her Quaker training, +it had developed in her a very personal religion, a strong sense of +duty, and a high standard of ethics, which always remained with her. +It had fostered a love of mankind that reached out spontaneously to +help the needy, the unfortunate, and the oppressed, and this now +became the driving force of her life. It led her naturally to seek +ways and means to free the Negro from slavery and to turn to the +temperance movement to wipe out the evil of drunkenness. + +These were the days when the reformed drunkard, John B. Gough, was +lecturing throughout the country with the zeal of an evangelist, +getting thousands to sign the total-abstinence pledge. Inspired by his +example, the Daughters of Temperance were active in Rochester. They +elected Susan their president, and not only did she plan suppers and +festivals to raise money for their work but she organized new +societies in neighboring towns. Her more ambitious plans for them were +somewhat delayed by home responsibilities which developed when her +father became an agent of the New York Life Insurance Company. This +took him away from home a great deal, and as both her brothers were +busy with work of their own and Mary was teaching, it fell to Susan to +take charge of the farm. She superintended the planting, the +harvesting, and the marketing, and enjoyed it, but she did not let it +crowd out her interest in the causes which now seemed so vital. + +Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ came regularly to the farm, for +the Anthonys, like many others throughout the country, had come to +depend upon it for what they felt was a truthful report of the news. +In this day of few magazines, it met a real need, and Susan, poring +over its pages, not only kept in touch with current events, but found +inspiration in its earnest editorials which so often upheld the ideals +which she felt were important. She found thought-provoking news in the +full and favorable report of the national woman's rights convention +held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Better informed now +through her antislavery friends about this new movement for woman's +rights, she was ready to consider it seriously and she read all the +stirring speeches, noting the caliber of the men and women taking +part. Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, and Lucretia Mott were there, as +well as Lucy Stone, that appealing young woman of whose eloquence on +the antislavery platform Susan had heard so much, and Abby Kelley +Foster, whose appointment to office in the American Antislavery +Society had precipitated a split in the ranks on the "woman question." + + * * * * * + +A year later, when Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen spoke at +antislavery meetings in Rochester, Susan had her first opportunity to +meet this fearless woman. Listening to Abby's speeches and watching +the play of emotion on her eager Irish face under the Quaker bonnet, +Susan wondered if she would ever have the courage to follow her +example. Like herself, Abby had started as a schoolteacher, but after +hearing Theodore Weld speak, had devoted herself to the antislavery +cause, traveling alone through the country to say her word against +slavery and facing not only the antagonism which abolition always +provoked, but the unreasoning prejudice against public speaking by +women, which was fanned into flame by the clergy. For listening to +Abby Kelley, men and women had been excommunicated. Mobs had jeered at +her and often pelted her with rotten eggs. She had married a +fellow-abolitionist, Stephen Foster, even more unrelenting than she. + +Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make +an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them +on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's ability to hold +the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and +wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence. + +Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her +apprenticeship by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and +traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out +of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear +William Lloyd Garrison and the English abolitionist, George Thompson, +and was the guest of a temperance colleague, Amelia Bloomer, an +enterprising young woman who was editing a temperance paper for women, +_The Lily_. + +To her surprise Susan found Amelia in the bloomer costume about which +she had read in _The Lily_. Introduced in Seneca Falls by Elizabeth +Smith Miller, the costume, because of its comfort, had so intrigued +Amelia that she had advocated it in her paper and it had been dubbed +with her name. Looking at Amelia's long full trousers, showing beneath +her short skirt but modestly covering every inch of her leg, Susan was +a bit startled. Yet she could understand the usefulness of the costume +even if she had no desire to wear it herself. In fact she was more +than ever pleased with her new gray delaine dress with its long full +skirt. + +Seneca Falls, however, had an attraction for Susan far greater than +either William Lloyd Garrison or Amelia Bloomer, for it was the home +of Elizabeth Cady Stanton whom she had longed to meet ever since 1848 +when her parents had reported so enthusiastically about her and the +Rochester woman's rights convention. Walking home from the antislavery +meeting with Mrs. Bloomer, Susan met Mrs. Stanton. She liked her at +once and later called at her home. They discussed abolition, +temperance, and woman's rights, and with every word Susan's interest +grew. Mrs. Stanton's interest in woman's rights and her forthright, +clear thinking made an instant appeal. Never before had Susan had such +a satisfactory conversation with another woman, and she thought her +beautiful. Mrs. Stanton's deep blue eyes with their mischievous +twinkle, her rosy cheeks and short dark hair gave her a very youthful +appearance, and it was hard for Susan to realize she was the mother of +three lively boys. + +Susan listened enthralled while Mrs. Stanton told how deeply she had +been moved as a child by the pitiful stories of the women who came to +her father's law office, begging for relief from the unjust property +laws which turned over their inheritance and their earnings to their +husbands. For the first time, Susan heard the story of the exclusion +of women delegates from the World's antislavery convention in London, +in 1840, which Mrs. Stanton had attended with her husband and where +she became the devoted friend of Lucretia Mott. She now better +understood why these two women had called the first woman's rights +convention in 1848 at which Mrs. Stanton had made the first public +demand for woman suffrage. + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"] + +They talked about the bloomer costume which Mrs. Stanton now wore and +about dress reform which at the moment seemed to Mrs. Stanton an +important phase of the woman's rights movement, and she pointed out to +Susan the advantages of the bloomer in the life of a busy housekeeper +who ran up and down stairs carrying babies, lamps, and buckets of +water. She praised the freedom it gave from uncomfortable stays and +tight lacing, confident it would be a big factor in improving the +health of women. + +Thoroughly interested, Susan left Seneca Falls with much to think +about, but not yet converted to the bloomer costume, or even to woman +suffrage. Of one thing, however, she was certain. She wanted this +woman of vision and courage for her friend. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[21] Anthony Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New +York. + +[22] Hannah Anthony married Eugene Mosher, a merchant of Easton, New +York, on September 4, 1845. + +[23] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, New York. + +[24] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 48. + +[25] _Ibid._, p. 50. + +[26] May 28, 1848, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. + +[27] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 53. + +[28] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[29] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888, p. 327. + +[30] To Nora Blatch, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar +College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York. + +[31] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 52. + +[32] Amy H. Croughton, _Antislavery Days in Rochester_ (Rochester, +N.Y., 1936). Anyone implicated in the escape of a slave was liable to +$1000 fine, to the payment of $1000 to the owner of the fugitive, and +to a possible jail sentence of six months. + + + + +FREEDOM TO SPEAK + + +Susan was soon rejoicing at the prospect of meeting Lucy Stone and +Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_. Mrs. Stanton had +invited her to Seneca Falls to discuss with them and other influential +men and women the founding of a people's college. Unhesitatingly she +joined forces with Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone to insist that the +people's college be opened to women on the same terms as men. Lucy had +proved the practicability of this as a student at Oberlin, the first +college to admit women, and was one of the first women to receive a +college degree. However, to suggest coeducation in those days was +enough to jeopardize the founding of a college, and Horace Greeley +stood out against them, his babylike face, fringed with throat +whiskers, getting redder by the moment as he begged them not to +agitate the question. + +The people's college did not materialize, but out of this meeting grew +a friendship between Susan, Elizabeth Stanton, and Lucy Stone, which +developed the woman's rights movement in the United States. Susan +discovered at once that Lucy, like Mrs. Stanton, was an ardent +advocate of woman's rights. Brought up in a large family on a farm in +western Massachusetts where a woman's lot was an unending round of +hard work with no rights over her children or property, Lucy had seen +much to make her rebellious. Resolving to free herself from this +bondage, she had worked hard for an education, finally reaching +Oberlin College. Here she held out for equal rights in education, and +now as she went through the country, pleading for the abolition of +slavery, she was not only putting into practice woman's right to +express herself on public affairs, but was scattering woman's rights +doctrine wherever she went. Listening to this rosy-cheeked, +enthusiastic young woman with her little snub nose and soulful gray +eyes, Susan began to realize how little opposition in comparison she +herself had met because she was a woman. Not only had her father +encouraged her to become a teacher, but he had actually aroused her +interest in such causes as abolition, temperance, and woman's rights, +while both Lucy and Mrs. Stanton had met disapproval and resistance +all the way. + +[Illustration: Lucy Stone] + +She found Lucy, as well as Mrs. Stanton, in the bloomer dress, +praising its convenience. As Lucy traveled about lecturing, in all +kinds of weather, climbing on trains, into carriages, and walking on +muddy streets, she found it much more practical and comfortable than +the fashionable long full skirts. Nevertheless, there was discomfort +in being stared at on the streets and in the chagrin of her friends. +This reform was much on their minds and they discussed it pro and con, +for Mrs. Stanton was facing real persecution in Seneca Falls, with +boys screaming "breeches" at her when she appeared in the street and +with her husband's political opponents ridiculing her costume in their +campaign speeches. Both women, however, felt it their duty to bear +this cross to free women from the bondage of cumbersome clothing, +hoping always that the bloomer, because of its utility, would win +converts and finally become the fashion. Susan admired their courage, +but still could not be persuaded to put on the bloomer. + +Fired with their zeal, she began planning what she herself might do +to rouse women. The idea of a separate woman's rights movement did not +as yet enter her mind. Her thoughts turned rather to the two national +reform movements already well under way, temperance and antislavery. +While a career as an antislavery worker appealed strongly to her, she +felt unqualified when she measured herself with the courageous Grimké +sisters from South Carolina, or with Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone, +and the eloquent men in the movement. She had made a place for herself +locally in temperance societies, and she decided that her work was +there--to make women an active, important part of this reform. + +That winter, as a delegate of the Rochester Daughters of Temperance, +she went with high hopes to the state convention of the Sons of +Temperance in Albany, where she visited Lydia Mott and her sister +Abigail, who lived in a small house on Maiden Lane. Both Lydia and +Abigail, because of their independence, interested Susan greatly. They +supported themselves by "taking in" boarders from among the leading +politicians in Albany. They also kept a men's furnishings store on +Broadway and made hand-ruffled shirt bosoms and fine linen accessories +for Thurlow Weed, Horatio Seymour, and other influential citizens. +Their political contacts were many and important, and yet they were +also among the very few in that conservative city who stood for +temperance, abolition of slavery, and woman's rights. Their home was a +rallying point for reformers and a refuge for fugitive slaves. It was +to be a second home to Susan in the years to come. + +When Susan and the other women delegates entered the convention of the +Sons of Temperance, they looked forward proudly, if a bit timidly, to +taking part in the meetings, but when Susan spoke to a motion, the +chairman, astonished that a woman would be so immodest as to speak in +a public meeting, scathingly announced, "The sisters were not invited +here to speak, but to listen and to learn."[33] + +This was the first time that Susan had been publicly rebuked because +she was a woman, and she did not take it lightly. Leaving the hall +with several other indignant women delegates, amid the critical +whisperings of those who remained "to listen and to learn," she +hurried over to Lydia's shop to ask her advice on the next step to be +taken. Lydia, delighted that they had had the spirit to leave the +meeting, suggested they engage the lecture room of the Hudson Street +Presbyterian Church and hold a meeting of their own that very night. +She went with them to the office of her friend Thurlow Weed, the +editor of the _Evening Journal_, who published the whole story in his +paper. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four] + +Well in advance of the meeting, Susan was at the church, feeling very +responsible, and when she saw Samuel J. May enter, she was greatly +relieved. He had read the notice in the _Evening Journal_ and +persuaded a friend to come with him. To see his genial face in the +audience gave her confidence, for he would speak easily and well if +others should fail her. Only a few people drifted into the meeting, +for the night was snowy and cold. The room was poorly lighted, the +stove smoked, and in the middle of the speeches, the stovepipe fell +down. Yet in spite of all this, a spirit of independence and +accomplishment was born in that gathering and plans were made to call +a woman's state temperance convention in Rochester with Susan in +charge. + +All this Susan reported to her new friend, Elizabeth Stanton, who +promised to help all she could, urging that the new organization lead +the way and not follow the advice of cautious, conservative women. +Susan agreed, and as a first step in carrying out this policy, she +asked Mrs. Stanton to make the keynote speech of the convention. Soon +the Woman's State Temperance Society was a going concern with Mrs. +Stanton as president and Susan as secretary. There was no doubt about +its leading the way far ahead of the rank and file of the temperance +movement when Mrs. Stanton, with Susan's full approval, recommended +divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, declaring, "Let us petition our +State government so to modify the laws affecting marriage and the +custody of children that the drunkard shall have no claims on wife and +child."[34] + +Such independence on the part of women could not be tolerated, and +both the press and the clergy ruthlessly denounced the Woman's State +Temperance Society. Susan, however, did not take this too seriously, +familiar as she was with the persecution antislavery workers endured +when they frankly expressed their convictions. + + * * * * * + +Now recognized as the leader of women's temperance groups in New York, +Susan traveled throughout the state, organizing temperance societies, +getting subscriptions for Amelia Bloomer's temperance paper, _The +Lily_, and attending temperance conventions in spite of the fact that +she met determined opposition to the participation of women. Impressed +by the success of political action in Maine, where in 1851 the first +prohibition law in the country had been passed, she now signed her +letters, "Yours for Temperance Politics."[35] She appealed to women to +petition for a Maine law for New York and brought a group of women +before the legislature for the first time for a hearing on this +prohibition bill. Realizing then that women's indirect influence could +be of little help in political action, she saw clearly that women +needed the vote. + +However, it was the woman's rights convention in Syracuse, New York, +in September 1852, which turned her thoughts definitely in the +direction of votes for women. It was the first woman's rights +gathering she had ever attended and she was enthusiastic over the +people she met. She talked eagerly with the courageous Jewish +lecturer, Ernestine Rose; with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston, one of +the first women physicians, who was waging a battle against taxation +without representation; with Clarina Nichols of Vermont, editor of +the _Windham County Democrat_, and with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the +youngest member of the convention. All of these became valuable, loyal +friends in the years ahead. Susan renewed her acquaintance with Lucy +Stone, and met Antoinette Brown who had also studied at Oberlin +College and was now the first woman ordained as a minister. With real +pleasure she greeted Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now +Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, +the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her +long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's +sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and +Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared +at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with +loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply +intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore +ultrafashionable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights +advocates were frumps wearing the hideous bloomer, she could not +forgive them for what to her seemed bad taste. How could such women, +she asked herself, hope to represent the earnest, hard-working women +who must be the backbone of the equal rights movement? Always +forthright, when a principle was at stake, she expressed her feelings +frankly when James Mott, serving with her on the nominating committee, +proposed Elizabeth Oakes Smith for president. His reply, that they +must not expect all women to dress as plainly as the Friends, in no +way quieted her opposition. To her delight, Lucretia Mott was elected, +and her dignity and poise as president of this large convention of +2,000 won the respect even of the critical press. Susan was elected +secretary and so clearly could her voice be heard as she read the +minutes and the resolutions that the Syracuse _Standard_ commented, +"Miss Anthony has a capital voice and deserves to be clerk of the +Assembly."[36] + +[Illustration: James and Lucretia Mott] + +Not all of the newspapers were so friendly. Some labeled the gathering +"a Tomfoolery convention" of "Aunt Nancy men and brawling women"; +others called it "the farce at Syracuse,"[37] but for Susan it marked +a milestone. Never before had she heard so many earnest, intelligent +women plead so convincingly for property rights, civil rights, and the +ballot. Never before had she seen so clearly that in a republic women +as well as men should enjoy these rights. The ballot assumed a new +importance for her. Her conversion to woman suffrage was complete. + + * * * * * + +This new interest in the vote was steadily nurtured by Elizabeth +Stanton, whom Susan now saw more frequently. Whenever she could, Susan +stopped over in Seneca Falls for a visit. Here she found inspiration, +new ideas, and good advice, and always left the comfortable Stanton +home ready to battle for the rights of women. While Susan traveled +about, organizing temperance societies and attending conventions, Mrs. +Stanton, tied down at home by a family of young children, wrote +letters and resolutions for her and helped her with her speeches. +Susan was very reluctant about writing speeches or making them. The +moment she sat down to write, her thoughts refused to come and her +phrases grew stilted. She needed encouragement, and Mrs. Stanton gave +it unstintingly, for she had grown very fond of this young woman whose +mental companionship she found so stimulating. + +During one of these visits, Susan finally put on the bloomer and cut +her long thick brown hair as part of the stern task of winning +freedom for women. It was not an easy decision and she came to it only +because she was unwilling to do less for the cause than Mrs. Stanton +or Lucy Stone. Comfortable as the new dress was, it always attracted +unfavorable attention and added fuel to the fire of an unfriendly +press. This fire soon scorched her at the World's Temperance +convention in New York, where women delegates faced the determined +animosity of the clergy, who held the balance of power and quoted the +Bible to prove that women were defying the will of God when they took +part in public meetings. Obliged to withdraw, the women held meetings +of their own in the Broadway Tabernacle, over which Susan presided +with a poise and confidence undreamed of a few months before. A +success in every way, they were nevertheless described by the press as +a battle of the sexes, a free-for-all struggle in which shrill-voiced +women in the bloomer costume were supported by a few "male Betties." +The New York _Sun_ spoke of Susan's "ungainly form rigged out in the +bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to laughter and ridicule +by her very motions on the platform."[38] Untruth was piled upon +untruth until dignified ladylike Susan with her earnest pleasing +appearance was caricatured into everything a woman should not be. Less +courageous temperance women now began to wonder whether they ought to +associate with such a strong-minded woman as Susan B. Anthony. + +There were rumblings of discontent when the Woman's State Temperance +Society met in Rochester for its next annual convention in June 1853, +and Susan and Mrs. Stanton were roundly criticized because they did +not confine themselves to the subject of temperance and talked too +much about woman's rights. Not only was Mrs. Stanton defeated for the +presidency but the by-laws were amended to make men eligible as +officers. Men had been barred when the first by-laws were drafted by +Susan and Mrs. Stanton because they wished to make the society a +proving ground for women and were convinced that men holding office +would take over the management, and women, less experienced, would +yield to their wishes. + +This now proved to be the case, as the men began to do all the +talking, calling for a new name for the society and insisting that all +discussion of woman's rights be ruled out. In the face of this clear +indication of a determined new policy which few of the women wished to +resist, Susan refused re-election as secretary and both she and Mrs. +Stanton resigned. + +This was Susan's first experience with intrigue and her first rebuff +by women whom she had sincerely tried to serve. Defeated, hurt, and +uncertain, she poured out her disappointment in troubled letters to +Elizabeth Stanton, who, with the steadying touch of an older sister, +roused her with the challenge, "We have other and bigger fish to +fry."[39] + + * * * * * + +A few months later, Susan was off on a new crusade as she attended the +state teachers' convention in Rochester. Of the five hundred teachers +present, two-thirds were women, but there was not the slightest +recognition of their presence. They filled the back seats of +Corinthian Hall, forming an inert background for the vocal minority, +the men. After sitting through two days' sessions and growing more and +more impatient as not one woman raised her voice, Susan listened, as +long as she could endure it, to a lengthy debate on the question, "Why +the profession of teacher is not as much respected as that of lawyer, +doctor, or minister."[40] Then she rose to her feet and in a +low-pitched, clear voice addressed the chairman. + +At the sound of a woman's voice, an astonished rustle of excitement +swept through the audience, and when the chairman, Charles Davies, +Professor of Mathematics at West Point, had recovered from his +surprise, he patronizingly asked, "What will the lady have?" + +"I wish, sir, to speak to the subject under discussion," she bravely +replied. + +Turning to the men in the front row, Professor Davies then asked, +"What is the pleasure of the convention?" + +"I move that she be heard," shouted an unexpected champion. Another +seconded the motion. After a lengthy debate during which Susan stood +patiently waiting, the men finally voted their approval by a small +majority, and Professor Davies, a bit taken aback, announced, "The +lady may speak." + +"It seems to me, gentlemen," Susan began, "that none of you quite +comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you +not see that so long as society says woman is incompetent to be a +lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, +every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that +he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that +teaching is a less lucrative profession; as here men must compete with +the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those +who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the +salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our +future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen." + +For a moment after this bombshell, there was complete silence. Then +three men rushed down the aisle to congratulate her, telling her she +had pluck, that she had hit the nail on the head, but the women near +by glanced scornfully at her, murmuring, "Who can that creature be?" + +Susan, however, had started a few women thinking and questioning, and +the next morning, Professor Davies, resplendent in his buff vest and +blue coat with brass buttons, opened the convention with an +explanation. "I have been asked," he said, "why no provisions have +been made for female lecturers before this association and why ladies +are not appointed on committees. I will answer." Then, in flowery +metaphor, he assured them that he would not think of dragging women +from their pedestals into the dust. + +"Beautiful, beautiful," murmured the women in the back rows, but Mrs. +Northrup of Rochester offered resolutions recognizing the right of +women teachers to share in all the privileges and deliberations of the +organization and calling attention to the inadequate salaries women +teachers received. These resolutions were kept before the meeting by a +determined group and finally adopted. Susan also offered the name of +Emma Willard as a candidate for vice-president, thinking the +successful retired principal of the Troy Female Seminary, now +interested in improving the public schools, might also be willing to +lend a hand in improving the status of women in this educational +organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing +to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.[41] Susan, nevertheless, left the +convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into +Professor Davies' male stronghold, and she continued battering at +this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put +women in office and to win approval for coeducation and equal pay. + + * * * * * + +Teachers' conventions, however, were only a minor part of her new +crusade, plans for which were still simmering in her mind and +developing from day to day. Going back to many of the towns where she +had held temperance meetings, she found that most of the societies she +had organized had disbanded because women lacked the money to engage +speakers or to subscribe to temperance papers. If they were married, +they had no money of their own and no right to any interest outside +their homes, unless their husbands consented. + +Discouraged, she wrote in her diary, "As I passed from town to town I +was made to feel the great evil of woman's entire dependency upon man +for the necessary means to aid on any and every reform movement. +Though I had long admitted the wrong, I never until this time so fully +took in the grand idea of pecuniary and personal independence. It +matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity +may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses +not the power to act in accordance with these promptings. Woman must +have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the _Wife_ is +denied the right to her individual and joint earnings. Reflections +like these, caused me to see and really feel that there was no true +freedom for Woman without the possession of all her property rights, +and that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, and +so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner +would we be likely to obtain them."[42] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[33] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 65. + +[34] _The Lily_, May, 1852. + +[35] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn +Gage, _History of Woman Suffrage_ (New York, 1881), I, p. 489. + +[36] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 77. + +[37] _Ibid._, p. 78. + +[38] _Ibid._, p. 90. + +[39] Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Eds., _Elizabeth +Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences_ +(New York, 1922), II, p. 52. + +[40] Aug., 1853, Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 98-99; _History of Woman +Suffrage_, I, pp. 513-515. + +[41] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[42] Ms., Diary, 1853. + + + + +A PURSE OF HER OWN + + +The next important step in winning further property rights for women, +it seemed to Susan, was to hold a woman's rights convention in the +conservative capital city of Albany. This was definitely a challenge +and she at once turned to Elizabeth Stanton for counsel. Somehow she +must persuade Mrs. Stanton to find time in spite of her many household +cares to prepare a speech for the convention and for presentation to +the legislature. As eager as Susan to free women from unjust property +laws, Mrs. Stanton asked only that Susan get a good lawyer, and one +sympathetic to the cause, to look up New York State's very worst laws +affecting women.[43] She could think and philosophize while she was +baking and sewing, she assured Susan, but she had no time for +research. Susan produced the facts for Mrs. Stanton, and while she +worked on the speech, Susan went from door to door during the cold +blustery days of December and January 1854 to get signatures on her +petitions for married women's property rights and woman suffrage. Some +of the women signed, but more of them slammed the door in her face, +declaring indignantly that they had all the rights they wanted. Yet at +this time a father had the legal authority to apprentice or will away +a child without the mother's consent and an employer was obliged by +law to pay a wife's wages to her husband. + +In spite of the fact that the bloomer costume made it easier for her +to get about in the snowy streets, she now found it a real burden +because it always attracted unfavorable attention. Boys jeered at her +and she was continually conscious of the amused, critical glances of +the men and women she met. She longed to take it off and wear an +inconspicuous trailing skirt, but if she had been right to put it on, +it would be weakness to take it off. By this time Elizabeth Stanton +had given it up except in her own home, convinced that it harmed the +cause and that the physical freedom it gave was not worth the price. +"I hope you have let down a dress and a petticoat," she now wrote +Susan. "The cup of ridicule is greater than you can bear. It is not +wise, Susan, to use up so much energy and feeling in that way. You +can put them to better use. I speak from experience."[44] + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry] + +Lucy Stone too was wavering and was thinking of having her next dress +made long. The three women corresponded about it, and Lucy as well as +Mrs. Stanton urged Susan to give up the bloomer. With these entreaties +ringing in her ears, Susan set out for Albany in February 1854 to make +final arrangements for the convention. On the streets in Albany, in +the printing offices, and at the capitol, men stared boldly at her, +some calling out hilariously, "Here comes my bloomer." She endured it +bravely until her work was done, but at night alone in her room at +Lydia Mott's she poured out her anguish in letters to Lucy. "Here I am +known only," she wrote, "as one of the women who ape men--coarse, +brutal men! Oh, I can not, can not bear it any longer."[45] + +Even so she did not let down the hem of her skirt, but wore her +bloomer costume heroically during the entire convention, determined +that she would not be stampeded into a long skirt by the jeers of +Albany men or the ridicule of the women. However, she made up her mind +that immediately after the convention she would take off the bloomer +forever. She had worn it a little over a year. Never again could she +be lured into the path of dress reform. + +The Albany _Register_ scoffed at the "feminine propagandists of +woman's rights" exhibiting themselves in "short petticoats and +long-legged boots."[46] Nevertheless, the convention aroused such +genuine interest that evening meetings were continued for two weeks, +featuring as speakers Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown, Samuel J. May, +and William Henry Channing, the young Unitarian minister from +Rochester; and when the men appeared on the platform, the audience +called for the women. + +Susan could not have asked for anything better than Elizabeth +Stanton's moving plea for property rights for married women and the +attention it received from the large audience in the Senate Chamber. +Her heart swelled with pride as she listened to her friend, and so +important did she think the speech that she had 50,000 copies printed +for distribution. + +To back up Mrs. Stanton's words with concrete evidence of a demand for +a change in the law, Susan presented petitions with 10,000 signatures, +6,000 asking that married women be granted the right to their wages +and 4,000 venturing to be recorded for woman suffrage. + +Enthusiastic over her Albany success, she impetuously wrote Lucy +Stone, "Is this not a wonderful time, an era long to be +remembered?"[47] + +Although the legislature failed to act on the petitions, she knew that +her cause had made progress, for never before had women been listened +to with such respect and never had newspapers been so friendly. She +cherished these words of praise from Lucy, "God bless you, Susan dear, +for the brave heart that will work on even in the midst of +discouragement and lack of helpers. Everywhere I am telling people +what your state is doing, and it is worth a great deal to the cause. +The example of positive action is what we need."[48] + + * * * * * + +Susan continued her "example of positive action," this time against +the Kansas-Nebraska bill, pending in Congress, which threatened repeal +of the Missouri Compromise by admitting Kansas and Nebraska as +territories with the right to choose for themselves whether they +would be slave or free. "I feel that woman should in the very capitol +of the nation lift her voice against that abominable measure," she +wrote Lucy Stone, with whom she was corresponding more and more +frequently. "It is not enough that H. B. Stowe should write."[49] +Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had been published in 1852 +and during that year 300,000 copies were sold. + +[Illustration: Ernestine Rose] + +With Ernestine Rose, Susan now headed for Washington. These two women +had been drawn together by common interests ever since they had met in +Syracuse in 1852. Susan was not frightened, as many were, by +Ernestine's reputed atheism. She appreciated Ernestine's intelligence, +her devotion to woman's rights, and her easy eloquence. Conscious of +her own limitations as an orator, she recognized her need of Ernestine +for the many meetings she planned for the future. + +As they traveled to Washington together, she learned more about this +beautiful, impressive, black-haired Jewess from Poland, who was ten +years her senior. The daughter of a rabbi, Ernestine had found the +limitations of orthodox religion unbearable for a woman and had left +her home to see and learn more of the world in Prussia, Holland, +France, Scotland, and England. She had married an Englishman +sympathetic to her liberal views, and together they had come to New +York where she began her career as a lecturer in 1836 when speaking in +public branded women immoral. She spoke easily and well on education, +woman's rights, and the evils of slavery. Her slight foreign accent +added charm to her rich musical voice, and before long she was in +demand as far west as Ohio and Michigan. With a colleague as +experienced as Ernestine, Susan dared arrange for meetings even in the +capital of the nation. + +Washington was tense over the slavery issue when they arrived, and +Ernestine's friends warned her not to mention the subject in her +lectures. Unheeding she commented on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, but the +press took no notice and her audiences showed no signs of +dissatisfaction. In fact, two comparatively unknown women, billed to +lecture on the "Educational and Social Rights of Women" and the +"Political and Legal Rights of Women," attracted little attention in a +city accustomed to a blaze of Congressional oratory. Hoping to draw +larger audiences and to lend dignity to their meetings, Susan asked +for the use of the Capitol on Sunday, but was refused because +Ernestine was not a member of a religious society. Making an attempt +for Smithsonian Hall, Ernestine was told it could not risk its +reputation by presenting a woman speaker.[50] + +A failure financially, their Washington venture was rich in +experience. Susan took time out for sightseeing, visiting the +"President's house" and Mt. Vernon, which to her surprise she found in +a state of "delapidation and decay." "The mark of slavery o'ershadows +the whole," she wrote in her diary. "Oh the thought that it was here +that he whose name is the pride of this Nation, was the _Slave +Master_."[51] + +Again and again in the Capitol, she listened to heated debates on the +Kansas-Nebraska bill, astonished at the eloquence and fervor with +which the "institution of slavery" could be defended. Seeing slavery +first-hand, she abhorred it more than ever and observed with dismay +its degenerating influence on master as well as slave. She began to +feel that even she herself might be undermined by it almost +unwittingly and confessed to her diary, "This noon, I ate my dinner +without once asking myself are these human beings who minister to my +wants, Slaves to be bought and sold and hired out at the will of a +master?... Even I am getting _accustomed_ to _Slavery_ ... so much so +that I have ceased continually to be made to feel its blighting, +cursing influence."[52] + + * * * * * + +A few months later, Susan and Ernestine were in Philadelphia at a +national woman's rights convention, and when Ernestine was proposed +for president, Susan had her first opportunity to champion her new +friend. A foreigner and a free-thinker, Ernestine encountered a great +deal of prejudice even among liberal reformers, and Susan was +surprised at the strength of feeling against her. Impressed during +their trip to Washington by Ernestine's essentially fine qualities and +her value to the cause, Susan fought for her behind the scenes, +insisting that freedom of religion or the freedom to have no religion +be observed in woman's rights conventions, and she had the +satisfaction of seeing Ernestine elected to the office she so richly +deserved. + +Freedom of religion or freedom to have no religion had become for +Susan a principle to hold on to, as she listened at these early +woman's rights meetings to the lengthy fruitless discussions regarding +the lack of Scriptural sanction for women's new freedom. Usually a +clergyman appeared on the scene, volubly quoting the Bible to prove +that any widening of woman's sphere was contrary to the will of God. +But always ready to refute him were Antoinette Brown, now an ordained +minister, William Lloyd Garrison, and occasionally Susan herself. To +the young Quaker broadened by her Unitarian contacts and unhampered by +creed or theological dogma, such debates were worse than useless; they +deepened theological differences, stirred up needless antagonisms, +solved no problems, and wasted valuable time. + +During this convention, she was one of the twenty-four guests in +Lucretia Mott's comfortable home at 238 Arch Street. Every meal, with +its stimulating discussions, was a convention in itself. Susan's great +hero, William Lloyd Garrison, sat at Lucretia's right at the long +table in the dining room, Susan on her left, and at the end of each +meal, when the little cedar tub filled with hot soapy water was +brought in and set before Lucretia so that she could wash the silver, +glass, and fine china at the table, Susan dried them on a snowy-white +towel while the interesting conversation continued. There was talk of +woman's rights, of temperance, and of spiritualism, which was +attracting many new converts. There were thrilling stories of the +opening of the West and the building of transcontinental railways; but +most often and most earnestly the discussion turned to the progress of +the antislavery movement, to the infamous Kansas-Nebraska bill, to the +New England Emigrant Aid Company,[53] which was sending free-state +settlers to Kansas, to the weakness of the government in playing again +and again into the hands of the proslavery faction. Most of them saw +the country headed toward a vast slave empire which would embrace +Cuba, Mexico, and finally Brazil; and William Lloyd Garrison fervently +reiterated his doctrine, "No Union with Slaveholders." + +Before leaving home Susan had heard first-hand reports of the bitter +bloody antislavery contest in Kansas from her brother Daniel, who had +just returned from a trip to that frontier territory with settlers +sent out by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Now talking with +William Lloyd Garrison, she found herself torn between these two great +causes for human freedom, abolition and woman's rights, and it was +hard for her to decide which cause needed her more. + + * * * * * + +She had not, however, forgotten her unfinished business in New York +State. The refusal of the legislature to amend the property laws had +doubled her determination to continue circulating petitions until +married women's civil rights were finally recognized. It took courage +to go alone to towns where she was unknown to arrange for meetings on +the unpopular subject of woman's rights. Not knowing how she would be +received, she found it almost as difficult to return to such towns as +Canajoharie where she had been highly respected as a teacher six years +before. In Canajoharie, however, she was greeted affectionately by her +uncle Joshua Read. He and his friends let her use the Methodist church +for her lecture, and when the trustees of the academy urged her to +return there to teach, Uncle Joshua interrupted with a vehement "No!" +protesting that others could teach but it was Susan's work "to go +around and set people thinking about the laws."[54] + +Returning to the scene of her girlhood in Battenville and Easton, +visiting her sisters Guelma and Hannah, and meeting many of her old +friends, Susan realized as never before how completely she had +outgrown her old environment. In her enthusiasm for her new work, she +exposed "many of her heresies," and when her friends labeled William +Lloyd Garrison an agnostic and rabble rouser, she protested that he +was the most Christlike man she had ever known. "Thus it is belief, +not Christian benevolence," she confided to her diary in 1854, "that +is made the modern test of Christianity."[55] + +After eight strenuous months away from home, she was welcomed warmly +by a family who believed in her work. She found abolition uppermost in +everyone's mind. Her brother Merritt, fired by Daniel's tales of the +West and the antislavery struggle in Kansas, was impatient to join the +settlers there and could talk of nothing else. While he poured out the +latest news about Kansas, he and a cousin Mary Luther helped Susan +fold handbills for future woman's rights meetings. Susan listened +eagerly and approvingly as he told of the 750 free-state settlers who +during the past summer had gone out to Kansas, traveling up the +Missouri on steamboats and over lonely trails in wagons marked +"Kansas." Most of them were not abolitionists but men who wanted +Kansas a free-labor state which they could develop with their own hard +work. She heard of the ruthless treatment these "Yankee" settlers +faced from the proslavery Missourians who wanted Kansas in the slavery +bloc. There was bloodshed and there would be more. John Brown's sons +had written from Kansas, "Send us guns. We need them more than +bread."[56] Merritt was ready and eager to join John Brown. + +The Anthony farm was virtually a hotbed of insurrection with Merritt +planning resistance in Kansas and Susan reform in New York. Susan +mapped out an ambitious itinerary, hoping to canvass with her +petitions every county in the state. With her father as security, she +borrowed money to print her handbills and notices, and then wrote +Wendell Phillips asking if any money for a woman's rights campaign had +been raised by the last national convention. He replied with his own +personal check for fifty dollars. His generosity and confidence +touched her deeply, for already he had become a hero to her second +only to William Lloyd Garrison. This tall handsome intellectual, a +graduate of Harvard and an unsurpassed orator, had forfeited friends, +social position, and a promising career as a lawyer to plead for the +slave. He was also one of the very few men who sympathized with and +aided the woman's rights cause. + +Horace Greeley too proved at this time to be a good friend, writing, +"I have your letter and your programme, friend Susan. I will publish +the latter in all our editions, but return your dollars."[57] + +Her earnestness and ability made a great appeal to these men. They +marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but +wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted +and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained +impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and +intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William +Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction +to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement. +Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist from New Hampshire, +broad-shouldered, dark-bearded, with blazing eyes and almost fanatical +zeal, had become her devoted friend. He liked nothing better than to +tease her about her idleness and pretend to be in search of more work +for her to do. + + * * * * * + +So impatient was Susan to begin her New York State campaign that she +left home on Christmas Day to hold her first meeting on December 26, +1854, at Mayville in Chatauqua County. The weather was cold and damp, +but the four pounds of candles which she had bought to light the court +house flickered cheerily while the small curious audience, gathered +from several nearby towns, listened to the first woman most of them +had ever heard speak in public. She would be, they reckoned, worth +hearing at least once. + +Traveling from town to town, she held meetings every other night. +Usually the postmasters or sheriffs posted her notices in the town +square and gave them to the newspapers and to the ministers to +announce in their churches. Even in a hostile community she almost +always found a gallant fair-minded man to come to her aid, such as the +hotel proprietor who offered his dining room for her meetings when +the court house, schoolhouse, and churches were closed to her, or the +group of men who, when the ministers refused to announce her meetings, +struck off handbills which they distributed at the church doors at the +close of the services. The newspapers too were generally friendly. + +As men were the voters with power to change the laws, she aimed to +attract them to her evening meetings, and usually they came, seeking +diversion, and listened respectfully. Some of them scoffed, others +condemned her for undermining the home, but many found her reasoning +logical and by their questions put life into the meetings. A few even +encouraged their wives to enlist in the cause. + +The women, on the other hand, were timid or indifferent, although she +pointed out to them the way to win the legal right to their earnings +and their children. It was difficult to find among them a rebellious +spirit brave enough to head a woman's rights society. + +"Susan B. Anthony is in town," wrote young Caroline Cowles, a +Canandaigua school girl, in her diary at this time. "She made a +special request that all seminary girls should come to hear her as +well as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audience and +she talked very plainly about our rights and how we ought to stand up +for them and said the world would never go right until the women had +just as much right to vote and rule as the men.... When I told +Grandmother about it, she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had +forgotten that St. Paul said women should keep silence. I told her, +no, she didn't, for she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if +he had lived in these times ... he would have been as anxious to have +women at the head of the government as she was. I could not make +Grandmother agree with her at all."[58] + +Many of the towns Susan visited were not on a railroad. Often after a +long cold sleigh ride she slept in a hotel room without a fire; in the +morning she might have to break the ice in the pitcher to take the +cold sponge bath which nothing could induce her to omit since she had +begun to follow the water cure, a new therapeutic method then in +vogue. + +For a time Ernestine Rose came to her aid and it was a relief to turn +over the meetings to such an accomplished speaker. But for the most +part Susan braved it alone. Steadily adding names to her petitions +and leaving behind the leaflets which Elizabeth Stanton had written, +she aroused a glimmer of interest in a new valuation of women. + +[Illustration: Parker Pillsbury] + +On the stagecoach leaving Lake George on a particularly cold day, she +found to her surprise a wealthy Quaker, whom she had met at the Albany +convention, so solicitous of her comfort that he placed heated planks +under her feet, making the long ride much more bearable. He turned up +again, this time with his own sleigh, at the close of one of her +meetings in northern New York, and wrapped in fur robes, she drove +with him behind spirited gray horses to his sisters' home to stay over +Sunday, and then to all her meetings in the neighborhood. It was +pleasant to be looked after and to travel in comfort and she enjoyed +his company, but when he urged her to give up the hard life of a +reformer to become his wife, there was no hesitation on her part. She +had dedicated her life to freeing women and Negroes and there could be +no turning aside. If she ever married, it must be to a man who would +encourage her work for humanity, a great man like Wendell Phillips, or +a reformer like Parker Pillsbury. + +Returning home in May 1855, she took stock of her accomplishments. She +had canvassed fifty-four counties and sold 20,000 tracts. Her expenses +had been $2,291 and she had paid her way by selling tracts and by a +small admission charge for her meetings. She even had seventy dollars +over and above all expenses. She promptly repaid the fifty dollars +which Wendell Phillips had advanced, but he returned it for her next +campaign. + +However, her heart quailed at the prospect of another such winter, as +she recalled the long, bitter-cold days of travel and the indifference +of the women she was trying to help. Even the unfailing praise of her +family and of Elizabeth Stanton, even the kindness and interest of the +new friends she made paled into insignificance before the thought of +another lone crusade. She was exhausted and suffering with rheumatic +pains, and yet she would not rest, but prepared for an ambitious +convention at Saratoga Springs, then the fashionable summer resort of +the East. + +She had braved this center of fashion and frivolity the year before +with her message of woman's rights, and to her great surprise, crowds +seeking entertainment had come to her meetings, their admission fees +and their purchase of tracts making the venture a financial success. +Here was fertile ground. Susan was counting on Lucy Stone and +Antoinette Brown to help her, for Elizabeth Stanton, then expecting +her sixth baby, was out of the picture. Now, to her dismay, Lucy and +Antoinette married the Blackwell brothers, Henry and Samuel. + +Fearing that they too like Elizabeth Stanton would be tied down with +babies and household cares, Susan saw a bleak lonely road ahead for +the woman's rights movement. She did so want her best speakers and +most valuable workers to remain single until the spade work for +woman's rights was done. Almost in a panic at the prospect of being +left to carry on the Saratoga convention alone, Susan wrote Lucy +irritable letters instead of praising her for drawing up a marriage +contract and keeping her own name. Later, however, she realized what +it had meant for Lucy to keep her own name, and then she wrote her, "I +am more and more rejoiced that you have declared by actual doing that +a woman has a name and may retain it all through her life."[59] + +So persistently did she now pursue Lucy and Antoinette that they both +kept their promise to speak at the Saratoga convention, Lucy traveling +all the way from Cincinnati where she was visiting in the Blackwell +home. Lucy was loudly cheered by a large audience, eager to see this +young woman whose marriage had attracted so much notice in the press. +In fact Lucy Stone, who had kept her own name and who with her husband +had signed a marriage protest against the legal disabilities of a +married woman, was as much of a novelty in this fashionable circle as +one of Barnum's high-priced curiosities. + +Pleased at Lucy's reception, Susan surveyed the audience +hopefully--handsome men in nankeen trousers, red waistcoats, white +neckcloths, and gray swallowtail coats, sitting beside beautiful young +women wearing gowns of bombazine and watered silk with wide hoop +skirts and elaborately trimmed bonnets which set off their curls. To +her delight, they also applauded Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first +woman minister they had ever seen, and Ernestine Rose with her +appealing foreign accent. They clapped loudly when she herself asked +them to buy tracts and contribute to the work. + +Complimentary as this was, she did not flatter herself that they had +endorsed woman's rights. That they had come to her meetings in large +numbers while vacationing in Saratoga Springs, this was important. In +some a spark of understanding glowed, and this spark would light +others. They came from the South, from the West, and from the large +cities of the East. There were railroad magnates among them, rich +merchants, manufacturers, and politicians. Charles F. Hovey, the +wealthy Boston dry-goods merchant, listened attentively to every word, +and in the years that followed became a generous contributor to the +cause. + + * * * * * + +Realizing how very tired she was and that she must feel more +physically fit before continuing her work, Susan decided to take the +water cure at her cousin Seth Rogers' Hydropathic Institute in +Worcester, Massachusetts. This well-known sanitorium prescribed water +internally and externally as a remedy for all kinds of ailments, and +in an age when meals were overhearty, baths infrequent, and clothing +tight and confining, the drinking of water, tub baths, showers, and +wet packs had enthusiastic advocates. The soothing baths relaxed +Susan and the leisure to read refreshed and strengthened her. She +read, one after another, Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, George Sand's +_Consuelo_, Madame de Stael's _Corinne_, then Frances Wright's _A Few +Days in Athens_ and Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_, making +notes in her diary (1855) of passages she particularly liked. She +discussed current events with her cousin Seth on long drives in the +country, finding him a delightful companion, well-read, understanding, +and interested in people and causes. He took her to her first +political meeting, where she was the only woman present and had a seat +on the platform. It was one of the first rallies of the new Republican +party which had developed among rebellious northern Whigs, +Free-Soilers, and anti-Nebraska Democrats who opposed the extension of +slavery. After listening to the speakers, among them Charles Sumner, +she drew these conclusions: "Had the accident of birth given me place +among the aristocracy of sex, I doubt not I should be an active, +zealous advocate of Republicanism; unless perchance, I had received +that higher, holier light which would have lifted me to the sublime +height where now stand Garrison, Phillips, and all that small band +whose motto is 'No Union with Slaveholders.'"[60] + +After listening to the satisfying sermons of Thomas Wentworth +Higginson at his Free Church in Worcester, she wrote in her diary, "It +is plain to me now that it is not sitting under preaching I dislike, +but the fact that most of it is not of a stamp that my soul can +respond to."[61] + +In September she interrupted "the cure" to attend a woman's rights +meeting in Boston, and with Lucy Stone, Antoinette and Ellen Blackwell +visited in the home of the wealthy merchant, Francis Jackson, making +many new friends, among them his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, whose +unhappy marriage was to prove a blessing to the woman's rights +cause.[62] + +At tea at the Garrisons', she met many of the "distinguished" men and +women she had "worshiped" from afar. She heard Theodore Parker preach +a sermon which filled her soul, and with Mr. Garrison called on him in +his famous library. "It really seemed audacious in me to be ushered +into such a presence and on such a commonplace errand as to ask him to +come to Rochester to speak in a course of lectures I am planning," she +wrote her family, "but he received me with such kindness and +simplicity that the awe I felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then +called on Wendell Phillips in his sanctum for the same purpose. I have +invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter and all three have promised to +come. In the evening with Mr. Jackson's son James, Ellen Blackwell and +I went to see _Hamlet_. In spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy +all these worldly amusements intensely."[63] + + * * * * * + +In January 1856, Susan set out again on a woman's rights tour of New +York State to gather more signatures for her petitions. This time she +persuaded Frances D. Gage of Ohio, a temperance worker and popular +author of children's stories, to join her. An easy extemporaneous +speaker, Mrs. Gage was an attraction to offer audiences, who drove +eight or more miles to hear her; and in the cheerless hotels at night +and on the long cold sleigh rides from town to town, she was a +congenial companion. + +The winter was even colder and snowier than that of the year before. +"No trains running," Susan wrote her family, "and we had a 36-mile +ride in a sleigh.... Just emerged from a long line of snow drifts and +stopped at this little country tavern, supped, and am now roasting +over the hot stove."[64] + +Confronted almost daily with glaring examples of the injustices women +suffered under the property laws, she was more than ever convinced +that her work was worth-while. "We stopped at a little tavern where +the landlady was not yet twenty and had a baby, fifteen months old," +she reported. "Her supper dishes were not washed and her baby was +crying.... She rocked the little thing to sleep, washed the dishes and +got our supper; beautiful white bread, butter, cheese, pickles, apple +and mince pie, and excellent peach preserves. She gave us her warm +room to sleep in.... She prepared a six o'clock breakfast for us, +fried pork, mashed potatoes, mince pie, and for me at my special +request, a plate of sweet baked apples and a pitcher of rich milk.... +When we came to pay our bill, the dolt of a husband took the money and +put it in his pocket. He had not lifted a finger to lighten that +woman's burdens.... Yet the law gives him the right to every dollar +she earns, and when she needs two cents to buy a darning needle she +has to ask him and explain what she wants it for."[65] + +When after a few weeks Mrs. Gage was called home by illness in her +family, Susan appealed hopefully to Lucretia Mott's sister, Martha C. +Wright, in Auburn, New York, "You can speak so much better, so much +more wisely, so much more everything than I can." Then she added, "I +should like a particular effort made to call out the Teachers, the +Sewing Women, the Working Women generally--Can't you write something +for your papers that will make them feel that it is for them that we +work more than [for] the wives and daughters of the rich?"[66] Mrs. +Wright, however, could help only in Auburn, and Susan was obliged to +continue her scheduled meetings alone. She interrupted them only to +present her petitions to the legislature. + +The response of the legislature to her two years of hard work was a +sarcastic, wholly irrelevant report issued by the judiciary committee +some weeks later to a Senate roaring with laughter. In the Albany +_Register_ Susan read with mounting indignation portions of this +infuriating report: "The ladies always have the best places and the +choicest tidbit at the table. They have the best seats in cars, +carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in winter, the coolest in +summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie, +front or back. A lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a +gentleman; and at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one +lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman. +It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your committee, being +a majority ... that if there is any inequality or oppression in the +case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They, however, have presented +no petitions for redress, having doubtless made up their minds to +yield to an inevitable destiny."[67] + +Why, Susan wondered sadly, were woman's rights only a joke to most +men--something to be laughed at even in the face of glaring proofs of +the law's injustice. + +There was encouragement, however, in the letters which now came from +Lucy Stone in Ohio: "Hurrah Susan! Last week this State Legislature +passed a law giving wives equal property rights, and to mothers equal +baby rights with fathers. So much is gained. The petitions which I set +on foot in Wisconsin for suffrage have been presented, made a rousing +discussion, and then were tabled with three men to defend them!... In +Nebraska too, the bill for suffrage passed the House.... The world +moves!"[68] + +The world was moving in Great Britain as well, for as Susan read in +her newspaper, women there were petitioning Parliament for married +women's property rights, and among the petitioners were her +well-beloved Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. +Gaskell, and Charlotte Cushman. Better still, Harriet Taylor, inspired +by the example of woman's rights conventions in America, had written +for the _Westminster Review_ an article advocating the enfranchisement +of women. + +All this reassured Susan, even if New York legislators laughed at her +efforts. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[43] Judge William Hay of Saratoga Springs, New York. + +[44] Feb. 19, 1854, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[45] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 116. Among those who wore the bloomer +costume were Angelina and Sarah Grimké, many women in sanitoriums and +some of the Lowell, Mass. mill workers. In Ohio, the bloomer was so +popular that 60 women in Akron wore it at a ball, and in Battle Creek, +Michigan, 31 attended a Fourth of July celebration in the bloomer. +Amelia Bloomer, moving to the West wore it for eight years. Garrison, +Phillips, and William Henry Channing disapproved of the bloomer +costume, but Gerrit Smith continued to champion it and his daughter +wore it at fashionable receptions in Washington during his term in +Congress. + +[46] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 608. + +[47] 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[48] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 111-112. + +[49] March 3, 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection. + +[50] Ms., Diary, March 24, 28, 1854. + +[51] _Ibid._, March 29, 1854. + +[52] _Ibid._, March 30, 1854. + +[53] The New England Emigrant Aid Company, headed by Eli Thayer of +Worcester, was formed to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, offering +reduced fare and farm equipment. Their first settlers reached Kansas +in August, 1854, founding the town of Lawrence in honor of one of +their chief patrons, the wealthy Amos Lawrence of Massachusetts. + +[54] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 121. + +[55] Diary, April 28, 1854. + +[56] Leonard C. Ehrlich, _God's Angry Man_ (New York, 1941), p. 57. + +[57] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 122. + +[58] Caroline Cowles Richards, _Village Life in America_ (New York, +1913), p. 49. + +[59] 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[60] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 133. + +[61] _Ibid._ + +[62] Eliza J. Eddy's husband, James Eddy, took their two young +daughters away from their mother and to Europe, causing her great +anguish. This led her father, Francis Jackson, to give liberally to +the woman's rights cause. Mrs. Eddy, herself, left a bequest of +$56,000 to be divided between Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. + +[63] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 131-133. + +[64] _Ibid._, p. 138. + +[65] _Ibid._, p. 139. + +[66] Jan. 18, 1856, Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith +College. + +[67] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 140-141. + +[68] May 25, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + + + + +NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS + + +Susan's thoughts during the summer of 1856 often strayed from woman's +rights meetings toward Kansas, where her brother Merritt had settled +on a claim near Osawatomie. Well aware of his eagerness to help John +Brown, she knew that he must be in the thick of the bloody antislavery +struggle. In fact the whole Anthony family had been anxiously waiting +for news from Merritt ever since the wires had flashed word in May +1856 of the burning of Lawrence by proslavery "border ruffians" from +Missouri and of John Brown's raid in retaliation at Pottawatomie +Creek. + +Merritt had built a log cabin at Osawatomie. While Susan was at home +in September, the newspapers reported an attack by proslavery men on +Osawatomie in which thirty out of fifty settlers were killed. Was +Merritt among them? Finally letters came through from him. Susan read +and reread them, assuring herself of his safety. Although ill at the +time, he had been in the thick of the fight, but was unharmed. Weak +from the exertion he had crawled back to his cabin on his hands and +knees and had lain there ill and alone for several weeks. + +Parts of Merritt's letters were published in the Rochester _Democrat_, +and the city took sides in the conflict, some papers claiming that his +letters were fiction. Susan wrote Merritt, "How much rather would I +have you at my side tonight than to think of your daring and enduring +greater hardships even than our Revolutionary heroes. Words cannot +tell how often we think of you or how sadly we feel that the terrible +crime of this nation against humanity is being avenged on the heads of +our sons and brothers.... Father brings the _Democrat_ giving a list +of killed, wounded, and missing and the name of our Merritt is not +therein, but oh! the slain are sons, brothers, and husbands of others +as dearly loved and sadly mourned."[69] + +With difficulty, she prepared for the annual woman's rights +convention, for the country was in a state of unrest not only over +Kansas and the whole antislavery question, but also over the +presidential campaign with three candidates in the field. Even her +faithful friends Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith now failed her, +Horace Greeley writing that he could no longer publish her notices +free in the news columns of his _Tribune_, because they cast upon him +the stigma of ultraradicalism, and Gerrit Smith withholding his +hitherto generous financial support because woman's rights conventions +would not press for dress reform--comfortable clothing for women +suitable for an active life, which he believed to be the foundation +stone of women's emancipation. + +[Illustration: Merritt Anthony] + +She watched the lively bitter presidential campaign with interest and +concern. The new Republican party was in the contest, offering its +first presidential candidate, the colorful hero and explorer of the +far West, John C. Frémont. She had leanings toward this virile young +party which stood firmly against the extension of slavery in the +territories, and discussed its platform with Elizabeth and Henry B. +Stanton, both enthusiastically for "Frémont and Freedom." Yet she was +distrustful of political parties, for they eventually yielded to +expediency, no matter how high their purpose at the start. Her ideal +was the Garrisonian doctrine, "No Union with Slaveholders" and +"Immediate Unconditional Emancipation," which courageously faced the +"whole question" of slavery. There was no compromise among +Garrisonians. + +With the burning issue of slavery now uppermost in her mind, she began +seriously to reconsider the offer she had received from the American +Antislavery Society, shortly after her visit to Boston in 1855, to act +as their agent in central and western New York. Unable to accept at +that time because she was committed to her woman's rights program, she +had nevertheless felt highly honored that she had been chosen. Still +hesitating a little, she wrote Lucy Stone, wanting reassurance that no +woman's rights work demanded immediate attention. "They talk of +sending two companies of Lecturers into this state," she wrote Lucy, +"wish me to lay out the route of each one and accompany one. They seem +to think me possessed of a vast amount of executive ability. I shrink +from going into Conventions where speaking is expected of me.... I +know they want me to help about finance and that part I like and am +good for nothing else."[70] + +She also had the farm home on her mind. With her father in the +insurance business, her brothers now both in Kansas, her sister Mary +teaching in the Rochester schools and "looking matrimonially-wise," +and her mother at home all alone, Susan often wondered if it might not +be as much her duty to stay there to take care of her mother and +father as it would be to make a home comfortable for a husband. +Sometimes the quietness of such a life beckoned enticingly. But after +the disappointing November elections which put into the presidency the +conservative James Buchanan, from whom only a vacillating policy on +the slavery issue could be expected, she wrote Samuel May, Jr., the +secretary of the American Antislavery Society, "I shall be very glad +if I am able to render even the most humble service to this cause. +Heaven knows there is need of earnest, effective radical workers. The +heart sickens over the delusions of the recent campaign and turns +achingly to the unconsidered _whole question_."[71] + +His reply came promptly, "We put all New York into your control and +want your name to all letters and your hand in all arrangements." + +For $10 a week and expenses, Susan now arranged antislavery meetings, +displayed posters bearing the provocative words, "No Union with +Slaveholders," planned tours for a corps of speakers, among them +Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and two free +Negroes, Charles Remond and his sister, Sarah. + +In debt from her last woman's rights campaign, she could not afford a +new dress for these tours, but she dyed a dark green the merino which +she had worn so proudly in Canajoharie ten years before, bought cloth +to match for a basque, and made a "handsome suit." "With my Siberian +squirrel cape, I shall be very comfortable," she noted in her +diary.[72] + +She had met indifference and ridicule in her campaigns for woman's +rights. Now she faced outright hostility, for northern businessmen had +no use for abolition-mad fanatics, as they called anyone who spoke +against slavery. Abolitionists, they believed, ruined business by +stirring up trouble between the North and the South. + +Usually antislavery meetings turned into debates between speakers and +audience, often lasting until midnight, and were charged with +animosity which might flame into violence. All of the speakers lived +under a strain, and under emotional pressure. Consequently they were +not always easy to handle. Some of them were temperamental, a bit +jealous of each other, and not always satisfied with the tours Susan +mapped out for them. She expected of her colleagues what she herself +could endure, but they often complained and sometimes refused to +fulfill their engagements. + +When no one else was at hand, she took her turn at speaking, but she +was seldom satisfied with her efforts. "I spoke for an hour," she +confided to her diary, "but my heart fails me. Can it be that my +stammering tongue ever will be loosed?" + +Lucy Stone, who spoke with such ease, gave her advice and +encouragement. "You ought to cultivate your power of expression," she +wrote. "The subject is clear to you and you ought to be able to make +it so to others. It is only a few years ago that Mr. Higginson told me +he could not speak, he was so much accustomed to writing, and now he +is second only to Phillips. 'Go thou and do likewise.'"[73] + +In March 1857, the Supreme Court startled the country with the Dred +Scott decision, which not only substantiated the claim of +Garrisonians that the Constitution sanctioned slavery and protected +the slaveholder, but practically swept away the Republican platform of +no extention of slavery in the territories. The decision declared that +the Constitution did not apply to Negroes, since they were citizens of +no state when it was adopted and therefore had not the right of +citizens to sue for freedom or to claim freedom in the territories; +that the Missouri Compromise had always been void, since Congress did +not have the right to enact a law which arbitrarily deprived citizens +of their property. + +Reading the decision word for word with dismay and pondering +indignantly over the cold letter of the law, Susan found herself so +aroused and so full of the subject that she occasionally made a +spontaneous speech, and thus gradually began to free herself from +reliance on written speeches. She spoke from these notes: "Consider +the fact of 4,000,000 slaves in a Christian and republican +government.... Antislavery prayers, resolutions, and speeches avail +nothing without action.... Our mission is to deepen sympathy and +convert into right action: to show that the men and women of the North +are slaveholders, those of the South slave-owners. The guilt rests on +the North equally with the South. Therefore our work is to rouse the +sleeping consciousness of the North....[74] + +"We ask you to feel as if you, yourselves, were the slaves. The +politician talks of slavery as he does of United States banks, tariff, +or any other commercial question. We demand the abolition of slavery +because the slave is a human being and because man should not hold +property in his fellowman.... We say disobey every unjust law; the +politician says obey them and meanwhile labor constitutionally for +repeal.... We preach revolution, the politicians, reform." + +Instinctively she reaffirmed her allegiance to the doctrine, "No Union +with Slaveholders," and she gloried in the courage of Garrison, +Phillips, and Higginson, who had called a disunion convention, +demanding that the free states secede. It was good to be one of this +devoted band, for she sincerely believed that in the ages to come "the +prophecies of these noble men and women will be read with the same +wonder and veneration as those of Isaiah and Jeremiah inspire +today."[75] + +She gave herself to the work with religious fervor. Even so, she could +not make her antislavery meetings self-supporting, and at the end of +the first season, after paying her speakers, she faced a deficit of +$1,000. This troubled her greatly but the Antislavery Society, +recognizing her value, wrote her, "We cheerfully pay your expenses and +want to keep you at the head of the work." They took note of her +"business enterprise, practical sagacity, and platform ability," and +looked upon the expenditure of $1,000 for the education and +development of such an exceptional worker as a good investment. + +This new experience was a good investment for Susan as well. She made +many new friends. She won the further respect, confidence, and good +will of men like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Francis +Jackson. Her friendship with Parker Pillsbury deepened. "I can truly +say," she wrote Abby Kelley Foster, "my spirit has grown in grace and +that the experience of the past winter is worth more to me than all my +Temperance and Woman's Rights labors--though the latter were the +school necessary to bring me into the Antislavery work."[76] + +Only the crusading spirit of the "antislavery apostles"[77] and what +to them seemed the desperate state of the nation made the hard +campaigning bearable. The animosity they faced, the cold, the poor +transportation, the long hours, and wretched food taxed the physical +endurance of all of them. "O the crimes that are committed in the +kitchens of this land!"[78] wrote Susan in her diary, as she ate heavy +bread and the cake ruined with soda and drank what passed for coffee. +A good cook herself, she had little patience with those who through +ignorance or carelessness neglected that art. Equally bad were the +food fads they had to endure when they were entertained in homes of +otherwise hospitable friends of the cause. Raw-food diets found many +devotees in those days, and often after long cold rides in the +stagecoach, these tired hungry antislavery workers were obliged to sit +down to a supper of apples, nuts, and a baked mixture of coarse bran +and water. Nor did breakfast or dinner offer anything more. Facing +these diets seemed harder for the men than for Susan. Repeatedly in +such situations, they hurried away, leaving her to complete two-or +three-day engagements among the food cranks. How she welcomed a good +beefsteak and a pot of hot coffee at home after these long days of +fasting! + +A night at home now was sheer bliss, and she wrote Lucy Stone, "Here +I am once more in my own Farm Home, where my weary head rests upon my +own home pillows.... I had been gone _Four Months_, scarcely sleeping +the second night under the same roof."[79] + +It was good to be with her mother again, to talk with her father when +he came home from work and with Mary who had not married after all but +continued teaching in the Rochester schools. Guelma and her husband, +Aaron McLean, who had moved to Rochester, often came out to the farm +with their children. + +Turning for relaxation to work in the garden in the warm sun, Susan +thought over the year's experience and planned for the future. "I can +but acknowledge to myself that Antislavery has made me richer and +braver in spirit," she wrote Samuel May, Jr., "and that it is the +school of schools for the true and full development of the nobler +elements of life. I find my raspberry field looking finely--also my +strawberry bed. The prospect for peaches, cherries, plums, apples, and +pears is very promising--Indeed all nature is clothed in her most +hopeful dress. It really seems to me that the trees and the grass and +the large fields of waving grain did never look so beautifully as now. +It is more probable, however, that my soul has grown to appreciate +Nature more fully...."[80] + +Susan needed that growth of soul to face the events of the next few +years and do the work which lay ahead. The whole country was tense +over the slavery issue, which could no longer be pushed into the +background. On public platforms and at every fireside, men and women +were discussing the subject. Antislavery workers sensed the gravity of +the situation and felt the onrush of the impending conflict between +what they regarded as the forces of good and evil--freedom and +slavery. When the Republican leader, William H. Seward, spoke in +Rochester, of "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring +forces,"[81] he was expressing only what Garrisonian abolitionists, +like Susan, always had recognized. In the West, a tall awkward country +lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, debating with the suave Stephen A. Douglas, +declared with prophetic wisdom, "'A house divided against itself +cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently +half slave and half free.... It will become all one thing or all the +other.'"[82] + +So Susan believed, and she was doing her best to make it all free. +Not only was she holding antislavery meetings, making speeches, and +distributing leaflets whenever and wherever possible, but she was also +lobbying in Albany for a personal liberty bill to protect the slaves +who were escaping from the South. "Treason in the Capitol," the +Democratic press labeled efforts for a personal liberty bill, and as +Susan reported to William Lloyd Garrison,[83] even Republicans shied +away from it, many of them regarding Seward's "irrepressible conflict" +speech a sorry mistake. Such timidity and shilly-shallying were +repugnant to her. She could better understand the fervor of John Brown +although he fought with bullets. + +Yet John Brown's fervor soon ended in tragedy, sowing seeds of fear, +distrust, and bitter partisanship in all parts of the country. When, +in October 1859, the startling news reached Susan of the raid on +Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown, she sadly tried to piece +together the story of his failure. She admired and respected John +Brown, believing he had saved Kansas for freedom. That he had further +ambitious plans was common knowledge among antislavery workers, for he +had talked them over with Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the +three young militants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, and +Samuel Gridley Howe. Somehow these plans had failed, but she was sure +that his motives were good. He was imprisoned, accused of treason and +murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said, +implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing +the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so +completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end, +befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he had rescued +fugitive slaves. + +Scanning the _Liberator_ for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it +colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to +all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild, +apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by +insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added, +"Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the +right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers."[84] + +Behind closed doors and in public meetings, abolitionists pledged +their allegiance to John Brown's noble purpose. He had wanted no +bloodshed, they said, had no thought of stirring up slaves to brutal +revenge. The raid was to be merely a signal for slaves to arise, to +cast off slavery forever, to follow him to a mountain refuge, which +other slave insurrections would reinforce until all slaves were free. +To him the plan seemed logical and he was convinced it was +God-inspired. To some of his friends it seemed possible--just a step +beyond the Underground Railroad and hiding fugitive slaves. To Susan +he was a hero and a martyr. + +Southerners, increasingly fearful of slave insurrections, called John +Brown a cold-blooded murderer and accused Republicans--"black +Republicans," they classed them--of taking orders from abolitionists +and planning evil against them. To law-abiding northerners, John Brown +was a menace, stirring up lawlessness. Seward and Lincoln, speaking +for the Republicans, declared that violence, bloodshed, and treason +could not be excused even if slavery was wrong and Brown thought he +was right. All saw before them the horrible threat of civil war. + +During John Brown's trial, his friends did their utmost to save him. +The noble old giant with flowing white beard, who had always been more +or less of a legend, now to them assumed heroic proportions. His +calmness, his steadfastness in what he believed to be right captured +the imagination. + +The jury declared him guilty--guilty of treason, of conspiring with +slaves to rebel, guilty of murder in the first degree. The papers +carried the story, and it spread by word of mouth--the story of those +last tense moments in the courtroom when John Brown declared, "It is +unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interferred ... in +behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called +great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... it would have been all +right.... I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any +respecter of persons. I believe that to have interferred as I have +done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong but right. Now if +it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the +furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with +the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave +country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust +enactments, I say, let it be done...."[85] + +He was sentenced to die. + +Susan, sick at heart, talked all this over with her abolitionist +friends and began planning a meeting of protest and mourning in +Rochester if John Brown were hanged. She engaged the city's most +popular hall for this meeting, never thinking of the animosity she +might arouse, and as she went from door to door selling tickets, she +asked for contributions for John Brown's destitute family. She tried +to get speakers from among respected Republicans to widen the popular +appeal of the meeting, but her diary records, "Not one man of +prominence in religion or politics will identify himself with the John +Brown meeting."[86] Only a Free Church minister, the Rev. Abram Pryn, +and the ever-faithful Parker Pillsbury were willing to speak. + +There was still hope that John Brown might be saved and excitement ran +high. Some like Higginson, unwilling to let him die, wanted to rescue +him, but Brown forbade it. Others wanted to kidnap Governor Wise of +Virginia and hold him on the high seas, a hostage for John Brown. +Wendell Phillips was one of these. Parker Pillsbury, sending Susan the +latest news from "the seat of war" and signing his letter, "Faithfully +and fervently yours," wrote, "My voice is against any attempt at +rescue. It would inevitably, I fear, lead to bloodshed which could not +compensate nor be compensated. If the people dare murder their victim, +as they are determined to do, and in the name of the law ... the moral +effect of the execution will be without a parallel since the scenes on +Calvary eighteen hundred years ago, and the halter that day sanctified +shall be the cord to draw millions to salvation."[87] + +On Friday, December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. Through the North, +church bells tolled and prayers were said for him. Everywhere people +gathered together to mourn and honor or to condemn. In New York City, +at a big meeting which overflowed to the streets, it was resolved +"that we regard the recent outrage at Harper's Ferry as a crime, not +only against the State of Virginia, but against the Union itself...." +In Boston, however, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to a tremendous audience +of "the new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by +love of man into conflict and death ... who will make the gallows +glorious," and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recorded in his diary, "This +will be a great day in our history; the date of a new revolution." Far +away in France, Victor Hugo declared, "The eyes of Europe are fixed on +America. The hanging of John Brown will open a latent fissure that +will finally split the union asunder.... You preserve your shame, but +you kill your glory."[88] + +In Rochester, three hundred people assembled. All were friends of the +cause and there was no unfriendly disturbance to mar the proceedings. +Susan presided and Parker Pillsbury, in her opinion, made "the +grandest speech of his life," for it was the only occasion he ever +found fully wicked enough to warrant "his terrific invective."[89] + +Thus these two militant abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and Parker +Pillsbury, joined hundreds of others throughout the nation in honoring +John Brown, sensing the portent of his martyrdom and prophesying that +his soul would go marching on. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[69] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 144-145. As John Brown visited +Frederick Douglass in Rochester, it is possible that Susan B. Anthony +had met him. + +[70] Oct. 19, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[71] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 148. + +[72] _Ibid._, p. 151; also quotation following. + +[73] Alice Stone Blackwell, _Lucy Stone_ (Boston, 1930), pp. 197-198. + +[74] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[75] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 152. + +[76] April 20, 1857, Abby Kelley Foster Papers, American Antiquarian +Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. + +[77] Parker Pillsbury, _The Acts of the Antislavery Apostles_ +(Concord, N.H., 1883). + +[78] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 160. + +[79] March 22, 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[80] N.d., Alma Lutz Collection. + +[81] Charles A. and Mary B. Beard, _The Rise of American Civilization_ +(New York, 1930), II, p. 9. + +[82] A. M. Schlesinger and H. C. Hockett, _Land of the Free_ (New +York, 1944), p. 297. + +[83] March 19, 1859, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[84] Francis Jackson, William Lloyd II, and Wendell Phillips Garrison, +_William Lloyd Garrison_, 1805-1879 (New York, 1889), III, p. 486. + +[85] _Ibid._, p. 490. + +[86] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 181. + +[87] _Ibid._, p. 180. + +[88] Henrietta Buckmaster, _Let My People Go_ (New York, 1941), p. +269; Ehrlich, _God's Angry Man_, pp. 344-345, 350. + +[89] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. In 1890, after +visiting the John Brown Memorial at North Elbe, New York, Susan B. +Anthony wrote: "John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed +God commanded him to do, 'to break the yoke and let the oppressed go +free,' precisely as were the saints of old for following what they +believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by +so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those +of two thousand years ago." Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 708. + + + + +THE TRUE WOMAN + + +Susan's preoccupation with antislavery work did not lessen her +interest in women's advancement. Her own expanding courage and ability +showed her the possibilities for all women in widened horizons and +activities. These possibilities were the chief topic of conversation +when she and Elizabeth Stanton were together. With Mrs. Stanton's +young daughters, Margaret and Harriot, in mind, they were continually +planning ways and means of developing the new woman, or the "true +woman" as they liked to call her; and one of these ways was physical +exercise in the fresh air, which was almost unheard of for women +except on the frontier. + +Taking off her hoops and working in the garden in the freedom of her +long calico dress, Susan was refreshed and exhilarated. "Uncovered the +strawberry and raspberry beds ..." her diary records. "Worked with +Simon building frames for the grapevines in the peach orchards.... Set +out 18 English black currants, 22 English gooseberries and Muscatine +grape vines.... Finished setting out the apple trees & 600 blackberry +bushes...."[90] + +She knew how little this strengthening work and healing influence +touched the lives of most women. Hemmed in by the walls of their +homes, weighed down by bulky confining clothing, fed on the tradition +of weakness, women could never gain the breadth of view, courage, and +stamina needed to demand and appreciate emancipation. She thought a +great deal about this and how it could be remedied, and wrote her +friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson "The salvation of the race depends, +in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their hot-house +existence. Whether in kitchen, nursery or parlor, all alike are shut +away from God's sunshine. Why did not your Caroline Plummer of Salem, +why do not all of our wealthy women leave money for industrial and +agricultural schools for girls, instead of ever and always providing +for boys alone?"[91] + +An exceptional opportunity was now offered Susan--to speak on the +controversial subject of coeducation before the State Teachers' +Association, which only a few years before had been shocked by the +sound of a woman's voice. Deeply concerned over her ability to write +the speech, she at once appealed to Elizabeth Stanton, "Do you please +mark out a plan and give me as soon as you can...."[92] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1856] + +Busy with preparations for woman's rights meetings in popular New York +summer resorts, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Clifton Springs, and +Avon, she grew panicky at the prospect of her impending speech and +dashed off another urgent letter to Mrs. Stanton, underlining it +vigorously for emphasis: "Not a _word written_ ... and mercy only +knows when I can get a moment, and what is _worse_, as the _Lord knows +full well_, is, that if _I get all the time the world has--I can't get +up a decent document_.... It is of but small moment who writes the +Address, but of _vast moment_ that it be _well done_.... No woman but +you can write from _my standpoint_ for all would base their strongest +_argument_ on the _un_likeness of the _sexes_.... + +"Those of you who have the _talent_ to do honor to poor, oh how poor +womanhood have all given yourselves over to _baby_-making and left +poor brainless _me_ to battle alone. It is a shame. Such a lady as _I +might_ be _spared_ to _rock cradles_, but it is a crime for _you_ and +_Lucy_ and _Nette_."[93] + +On a separate page she outlined for Mrs. Stanton the points she wanted +to make. Her title was affirmative, "Why the Sexes Should be Educated +Together." "Because," she reasoned, "by such education they get true +ideas of each other.... Because the endowment of both public and +private funds is ever for those of the male sex, while all the +Seminaries and Boarding Schools for Females are left to +maintain themselves as best they may by means of their tuition +fees--consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class +professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal +privileges with the boy.... No school _requires_ and but very few +allow the _girls_ to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys. +Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is +needed is to give the sexes _like motives_ for acquirement. Very +rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge +useful, as a means of support...."[94] + +Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to +help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the +puddings."[95] Gratefully Susan hurried to Seneca Falls and together +they "loaded her gun," not only for the teachers' convention but for +all the summer meetings. + +Addressing the large teachers' meeting in Troy, Susan declared that +mental sex-differences did not exist. She called attention to the +ever-increasing variety of occupations which women were carrying on +with efficiency. There were women typesetters, editors, publishers, +authors, clerks, engravers, watchmakers, bookkeepers, sculptors, +painters, farmers, and machinists. Two hundred and fifty women were +serving as postmasters. Girls, she insisted, must be educated to earn +a living and more vocations must be opened to them as an incentive to +study. "A woman," she added, "needs no particular kind of education to +be a wife and mother anymore than a man does to be a husband and +father. A man cannot make a living out of these relations. He must +fill them with something more and so must women."[96] + +Her advanced ideas did not cause as much consternation as she had +expected and she was asked to repeat her speech at the Massachusetts +teachers' convention; but the thoughts of many in that audience were +echoed by the president when he said to her after the meeting, "Madam, +that was a splendid production and well delivered. I could not have +asked for a single thing different either in matter or manner; but I +would rather have followed my wife or daughter to Greenwood cemetery +than to have had her stand here before this promiscuous audience and +deliver that address."[97] + +It was one thing to talk about coeducation but quite another to offer +a resolution putting the New York State Teachers' Association on +record as asking all schools, colleges, and universities to open their +doors to women. This Susan did at their next convention, and while +there were enough women present to carry the resolution, most of them +voted against it, listening instead to the emotional arguments of a +group of conservative men who prophesied that coeducation would +coarsen women and undermine marriage. Nor did she forget the Negro at +these conventions, but brought much criticism upon herself by offering +resolutions protesting the exclusion of Negroes from public schools, +academies, colleges, and universities. + +Such controversial activities were of course eagerly reported in the +press, and Henry Stanton, reading his newspaper, pointed them out to +his wife, remarking drily, "Well, my dear, another notice of Susan. +You stir up Susan and she stirs up the world."[98] + + * * * * * + +The best method of arousing women and spreading new ideas, Susan +decided, was holding woman's rights conventions, for the discussions +at these conventions covered a wide field and were not limited merely +to women's legal disabilities. The feminists of that day extolled +freedom of speech, and their platform, like that of antislavery +conventions, was open to anyone who wished to express an opinion. +Always the limited educational opportunities offered to women were +pointed out, and Oberlin College and Antioch, both coeducational, were +held up as patterns for the future. Resolutions were passed, demanding +that Harvard and Yale admit women. Women's low wages and the very few +occupations open to them were considered, and whether it was fitting +for women to be doctors and ministers. At one convention Lucy Stone +made the suggestion that a prize be offered for a novel on women, +like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, to arouse the whole nation to the unjust +situation of women whose slavery, she felt, was comparable to that of +the Negro. At another, William Lloyd Garrison maintained that women +had the right to sit in the Congress and in state legislatures and +that there should be an equal number of men and women in all national +councils. Inevitably Scriptural edicts regarding woman's sphere were +thrashed out with Antoinette Brown, in her clerical capacity, setting +at rest the minds of questioning women and quashing the protests of +clergymen who thought they were speaking for God. Usually Ernestine +Rose was on hand, ready to speak when needed, injecting into the +discussions her liberal clear-cut feminist views. Nor was the +international aspect of the woman's rights movement forgotten. The +interest in Great Britain in the franchise for women of such men as +Lord Brougham and John Stuart Mill was reported as were the efforts +there among women to gain admission to the medical profession. +Distributed widely as a tract was the "admirable" article in the +_Westminster Review_, "The Enfranchisement of Women," by Harriet +Taylor, now Mrs. John Stuart Mill. + +In New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, where +state conventions were held annually, women carried back to their +homes and their friends new and stimulating ideas. National +conventions, which actually represented merely the northeastern states +and Ohio and occasionally attracted men and women from Indiana, +Missouri, and Kansas, were scheduled by Susan to meet every year in +New York, simultaneously with antislavery conventions. Thus she was +assured of a brilliant array of speakers, for the Garrisonian +abolitionists were sincere advocates of woman's rights. + +Both Elizabeth Stanton and Lucy Stone were a great help to Susan in +preparing for these national gatherings for which she raised the +money. Elizabeth wrote the calls and resolutions, while Lucy could not +only be counted upon for an eloquent speech, but through her wide +contacts brought new speakers and new converts to the meetings. +However, national woman's rights conventions would probably have +lapsed completely during the troubled years prior to the Civil War, +had it not been for Susan's persistence. She was obliged to omit the +1857 convention because all of her best speakers were either having +babies or were kept at home by family duties. Lucy's baby, Alice Stone +Blackwell, was born in September 1857, then Antoinette Brown's first +child, and Mrs. Stanton's seventh. + +[Illustration: Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell] + +Impatient to get on with the work, Susan chafed at the delay and when +Lucy wrote her, "I shall not assume the responsibility for another +convention until I have had my ten daughters,"[99] Susan was beside +herself with apprehension. When Lucy told her that it was harder to +take care of a baby day and night than to campaign for woman's rights, +she felt that Lucy regarded as unimportant her "common work" of hiring +halls, engaging speakers, and raising money. This rankled, for +although Susan realized it was work without glory, she did expect Lucy +to understand its significance. + +Mrs. Stanton sensed the makings of a rift between Susan and these +young mothers, Lucy and Antoinette, and knowing from her own +experience how torn a woman could be between rearing a family and work +for the cause, she pleaded with Susan to be patient with them. "Let +them rest a while in peace and quietness, and think great thoughts for +the future," she wrote Susan. "It is not well to be in the excitement +of public life all the time. Do not keep stirring them up or mourning +over their repose. You need rest too. Let the world alone a while. We +cannot bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year."[100] + +But Susan could not let the world alone. There was too much to be +done. In addition to her woman's rights and antislavery work, she gave +a helping hand to any good cause in Rochester, such as a protest +meeting against capital punishment, a series of Sunday evening +lectures, or establishing a Free Church like that headed by Theodore +Parker in Boston where no one doctrine would be preached and all would +be welcome. There were days when weariness and discouragement hung +heavily upon her. Then impatient that she alone seemed to be carrying +the burden of the whole woman's rights movement, she complained to +Lydia Mott, "There is not one woman left who may be relied on. All +have first to please their husbands after which there is little time +or energy left to spend in any other direction.... How soon the last +standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia) will lay down the +individual 'shovel and de hoe' and with proper zeal and spirit grasp +those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I +declare to you that I distrust the powers of any woman, even of myself +to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!"[101] + +To Elizabeth Stanton she confessed, "I have very weak moments and long +to lay my weary head somewhere and nestle my full soul to that of +another in full sympathy. I sometimes fear that _I too_ shall faint by +the wayside and drop out of the ranks of the faithful few."[102] + + * * * * * + +Susan thought a great deal about marriage at this time, about how it +interfered with the development of women's talents and their careers, +how it usually dwarfed their individuality. Nor were these thoughts +wholly impersonal, for she had attentive suitors during these years. +Her diary mentions moonlight rides and adds, "Mr.--walked home with +me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should +lack the moral spine."[103] Her standards of matrimony were high, and +she carefully recorded in her diary Lucretia Mott's wise words, "In +the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife +is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations +reciprocal."[104] + +Marriage and the differences of the sexes were often discussed at the +many meetings she attended, and when remarks were made which to her +seemed to limit in any way the free and full development of woman, she +always registered her protest. She had no patience with any +unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory +that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities +reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke +frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with +sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called +"coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs. +Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or +gross. If it is a fact, there it is."[105] + +She was reading at this time Elizabeth Barrett Browning's _Aurora +Leigh_, called by Ruskin the greatest poem in the English language, +but criticized by others as an indecent romance revolting to the +purity of many women. Susan had bought a copy of the first American +edition and she carried it with her wherever she went. After a hard +active day, she found inspiration and refreshment in its pages. No +matter how dreary the hotel room or how unfriendly the town, she no +longer felt lonely or discouraged, for Aurora Leigh was a companion +ever at hand, giving her confidence in herself, strengthening her +ambition, and helping her build a satisfying, constructive philosophy +of life. On the flyleaf of her worn copy, which in later years she +presented to the Library of Congress, she wrote, "This book was +carried in my satchel for years and read and reread. The noble words +of Elizabeth Barrett, as Wendell Phillips always called her, sunk deep +into my heart. I have always cherished it above all other books. I now +present it to the Congressional Library with the hope that women may +more and more be like Aurora Leigh." + +The beauty of its poetry enchanted her, and Elizabeth Barrett +Browning's feminism found an echo in her own. She pencil-marked the +passages she wanted to reread. When her "common work" of hiring halls +and engaging speakers seemed unimportant and even futile, she found +comfort in these lines: + + "Be sure no earnest work + Of any honest creature, howbeit weak + Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much, + It is not gathered as a grain of sand + To enlarge the sum of human action used + For carrying out God's end.... + ... let us be content in work, + To do the thing we can, and not presume + To fret because it's little."[106] + +Glorying in work, she read with satisfaction: + + "The honest earnest man must stand and work: + The woman also, otherwise she drops + At once below the dignity of man, + Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work; + Who ever fears God, fears to sit at ease." + +Could she have written poetry, these words, spoken by Aurora, might +well have been her own: + + "You misconceive the question like a man, + Who sees a woman as the complement + Of his sex merely. You forget too much + That every creature, female as the male, + Stands single in responsible act and thought, + As also in birth and death. Whoever says + To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,' + Will get fair answers, if the work and love + Being good of themselves, are good for her--the best + She was born for." + +Inspired by _Aurora Leigh_, Susan planned a new lecture, "The True +Woman," and as she wrote it out word for word, her thoughts and +theories about women, which had been developing through the years, +crystallized. In her opinion, the "true woman" could no more than +Aurora Leigh follow the traditional course and sacrifice all for the +love of one man, adjusting her life to his whims. She must, instead, +develop her own personality and talents, advancing in learning, in the +arts, in science, and in business, cherishing at the same time her +noble womanly qualities. Susan hoped that some day the full +development of woman's individuality would be compatible with +marriage, and she held up as an ideal the words which Elizabeth +Barrett Browning put into the mouth of Aurora Leigh: + + "The world waits + For help. Beloved, let us work so well, + Our work shall still be better for our love + And still our love be sweeter for our work + And both, commended, for the sake of each, + By all true workers and true lovers born." + +She expressed this hope in her own practical words to Lydia Mott: +"Institutions, among them marriage, are justly chargeable with many +social and individual ills, but after all, the whole man or woman will +rise above them. I am sure my 'true woman' will never be crushed or +dwarfed by them. Woman must take to her soul a purpose and then make +circumstances conform to this purpose, instead of forever singing the +refrain, 'if and if and if.'"[107] + + * * * * * + +Late in 1858, Susan received a letter from Wendell Phillips which put +new life into all her efforts for women. He wrote her that an +anonymous donor had given him $5,000 for the woman's rights cause and +that he, Lucy Stone, and Susan had been named trustees to spend it +wisely and effectively. + +The man who felt that the woman's rights cause was important enough to +rate a gift of that size proved to be wealthy Francis Jackson of +Boston, in whose home Susan had visited a few years before with Lucy +and Antoinette. Jubilant over the prospects, she at once began to make +plans. She wanted to use all of the fund for lectures, conventions, +tracts, and newspaper articles; Lucy thought part of the money should +be spent to prove unconstitutional the law which taxed women without +representation and Antoinette was eager for a share to establish a +church in which she could preach woman's rights with the Gospel. + +Both Wendell Phillips and Lucy Stone agreed that Susan should have +$1,500 for the intensive campaign she had planned for New York, and +for once in her life she started off without a financial worry, with +money in hand to pay her speakers. She held meetings in all of the +principal towns of the state, making them at least partially pay for +themselves. Her lecturers each received $12 a week and she kept a +like amount for herself, for planning the tour, organizing the +meetings, and delivering her new lecture, "The True Woman." + +"I am having fine audiences of thinking men and women," she wrote Mary +Hallowell. "Oh, if we could but make our meetings ring like those of +the antislavery people, wouldn't the world hear us? But to do that we +must have souls baptized into the work and consecrated to it."[108] + +Some souls were deeply stirred by the woman's rights gospel. One of +these was the wealthy Boston merchant, Charles F. Hovey, who in his +will left $50,000 in trust to Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd +Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley Foster, and others, to be +spent for the "promotion of the antislavery cause and other reforms," +among them woman's rights, and not less than $8,000 a year to be spent +to promote these reforms. With all this financial help available, +Susan expected great things to happen. + + * * * * * + +During the winter of 1860 while the legislature was in session, Susan +spent six weeks in Albany with Lydia Mott, and day after day she +climbed the long hill to the capitol to interview legislators on +amendments to the married women's property laws. When these amendments +were passed by the Senate, Assemblyman Anson Bingham urged her to +bring their mutual friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to Albany to speak +before his committee to assure passage by the Assembly. + +Once again Susan hurried to Seneca Falls, and unpacking her little +portmanteau stuffed with papers and statistics, discussed the subject +with Mrs. Stanton in front of the open fire late into the night. Then +the next morning while Mrs. Stanton shut herself up in the quietest +room in the house to write her speech, Susan gave the children their +breakfast, sent the older ones off to school, watched over the babies, +prepared the desserts, and made herself generally useful. By this time +the children regarded her affectionately as "Aunt Thusan," and they +knew they must obey her, for she was a stern disciplinarian whom even +the mischievous Stanton boys dared not defy. + +These visits of Susan's were happy, satisfying times for both these +young women. A few days' respite from travel in a well-run home with +a friend she admired did wonders for Susan, giving her perspective on +the work she had already done and courage to tackle new problems, +while for Mrs. Stanton this short period of stimulating companionship +and freedom from household cares was a godsend. "Miss Anthony" had +long ago become Susan to Elizabeth, but Susan all through her life +called her very best friend "Mrs. Stanton," playfully to be sure, but +with a remnant of that formality which it was hard for her to cast +off. + +The speech was soon finished. Mrs. Stanton's imagination, fired by her +sympathetic understanding of women's problems, had turned Susan's cold +hard facts into moving prose, while Susan, the best of critics, +detected every weak argument or faltering phrase. They both felt they +had achieved a masterpiece. + +Mrs. Stanton delivered this address before a joint session of the New +York legislature in March 1860. Susan beamed with pride as she watched +the large audience crowd even the galleries and heard the long loud +applause for the speech which she was convinced could not have been +surpassed by any man in the United States. + +The next day the Assembly passed the Married Women's Property Bill, +and when shortly it was signed by the governor, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +scored their first big victory, winning a legal revolution for the +women of New York State. This new law was a challenge to women +everywhere. Under it a married woman had the right to hold property, +real and personal, without the interference of her husband, the right +to carry on any trade or perform any service on her own account and to +collect and use her own earnings; a married woman might now buy, sell, +and make contracts, and if her husband had abandoned her or was +insane, a convict, or a habitual drunkard, his consent was +unnecessary; a married woman might sue and be sued, she was the joint +guardian with her husband of her children, and on the decease of her +husband the wife had the same rights that her husband would have at +her death. + +Susan did not then realize the full significance of what she had +accomplished--that she had unleashed a new movement for freedom which +would be the means of strengthening the democratic government of her +country. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[90] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 173-174, 198. + +[91] _Ibid._, p. 160. + +[92] May 26, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College +Library. + +[93] _Ibid._, June 5, 1856. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was often +called Nette. + +[94] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[95] 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress. + +[96] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. A notation on +this ms. reads, "Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton--Delivered by Susan +B. Anthony." + +[97] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 143. + +[98] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 71. + +[99] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 162. + +[100] June 10, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[101] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 171. + +[102] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[103] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 175. + +[104] Ms., Diary, 1855. + +[105] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[106] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, _Aurora Leigh_ (New York, 1857), p. +316; quotations following, pp. 53-54, pp. 364-365. + +[107] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 170. + +[108] _Ibid._, p. 177. Mary Hallowell, a liberal Rochester Quaker, +always interested in Susan B. Anthony and her work. + + + + +THE ZEALOT + + +With a spirit of confidence inspired by her victory in New York State, +Susan looked forward to the tenth national woman's rights convention +in New York City in May 1860. At this convention she reported progress +everywhere. Four thousand dollars from the Jackson and Hovey funds had +been spent in the successful New York campaign, and similar work was +scheduled for Ohio. In Kansas, women had won from the constitutional +convention equal rights and privileges in state-controlled schools and +in the management of the public schools, including the right to vote +for members of school boards; mothers had been granted equal rights +with fathers in the control and custody of their children, and married +women had been given property rights. In Indiana, Maine, Missouri, and +Ohio, married women could now control their own earnings. + +"Each year we hail with pleasure," she continued, "new accessions to +our faith. Brave men and true from the higher walks of literature and +art, from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, and legislative halls are +now ready to help woman wherever she claims to stand." She was +thinking of the aid given her by Andrew J. Colvin and Anson Bingham of +the New York legislature, of the young journalist, George William +Curtis, just recently speaking for women, of Samuel Longfellow at his +first woman's rights convention, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher +who, just a few months before, had delivered his great woman's rights +speech, thereby identifying himself irrevocably with the cause. She +announced with great satisfaction the news, which the papers had +carried a few days before, that Matthew Vassar of Poughkeepsie had set +aside $400,000 to found a college for women equal in all respects to +Harvard and Yale.[109] + +Progress and good feeling were in the air, and the speakers were not +heckled as in past years by the rowdies who had made it a practice to +follow abolitionists into woman's rights meetings to bait them. Into +this atmosphere of good will and rejoicing, Susan and Elizabeth +Stanton now injected a more serious note, bringing before the +convention the controversial question of marriage and divorce which +heretofore had been handled with kid gloves at all woman's rights +meetings, but which they sincerely believed demanded solution. + + * * * * * + +Divorce had been much in the news because several leading families in +America and in England were involved in lawsuits complicated by +stringent divorce laws. Invariably the wife bore the burden of censure +and hardship, for no matter how unprincipled her husband might be, he +was entitled to her children and her earnings under the property laws +of most states. + +In New York efforts were now being made to gain support for a liberal +divorce bill, patterned after the Indiana law, and a variety of +proposals were before the legislature, making drunkenness, insanity, +desertion, and cruel and abusive treatment grounds for divorce. Horace +Greeley in his _Tribune_ had been vigorously opposing a more liberal +law for New York, while Robert Dale Owen of Indiana wrote in its +defense. Everywhere people were reading the Greeley-Owen debates in +the _Tribune_. Through his widely circulated paper, Horace Greeley had +in a sense become an oracle for the people who felt he was safe and +good; while Robert Dale Owen, because of his youthful association with +the New Harmony community and Frances Wright, was branded with +radicalism which even his valuable service in the Indiana legislature +and his two terms in Congress could not blot out. + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton had no patience with Horace Greeley's smug +old-fashioned opinions on marriage and divorce. In fact these +Greeley-Owen debates in the _Tribune_ were the direct cause of their +decision to bring this subject before the convention, where they hoped +for support from their liberal friends. They counted especially on +Lucy Stone, who seemed to give her approval when she wrote, "I am glad +you will speak on the divorce question, provided you yourself are +clear on the subject. It is a great grave topic that one shudders to +grapple, but its hour is coming.... God touch your lips if you speak +on it."[110] + +Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton shuddered to grapple with any subject +which they believed needed attention. In fact, the discussion of +marriage and divorce in woman's rights conventions had been on their +minds for some time. Three years before Susan had written Lucy, "I +have thought with you until of late that the Social Question must be +kept separate from Woman's Rights, but we have always claimed that our +movement was _Human Rights_, not Woman's specially.... It seems to me +we have played on the surface of things quite long enough. Getting the +right to hold property, to vote, to wear what dress we please, etc., +are all to the good, but _Social Freedom_, after all, lies at the +bottom of all, and unless woman gets that she must continue the slave +of man in all other things."[111] + + * * * * * + +Consternation spread through the genial ranks of the convention as +Mrs. Stanton now offered resolutions calling for more liberal divorce +laws. Quick to sense the temper of an audience, Susan felt its +resistance to being jolted out of the pleasant contemplation of past +successes to the unpleasant recognition that there were still +difficult ugly problems ahead. She was conscious at once of a stir of +astonishment and disapproval when Mrs. Stanton in her clear compelling +voice read, "Resolved, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is +ever a calamity, but not ever, perhaps never a crime--and when society +or government, by its laws or customs, compels its continuance, always +to the grief of one of the parties, and the actual loss and damage of +both, it usurps an authority never delegated to man, nor exercised by +God, Himself...."[112] + +Listening to Mrs. Stanton's speech in defense of her ten bold +resolutions on marriage and divorce, Susan felt that her brave +colleague was speaking for women everywhere, for wives of the present +and the future. As the hearty applause rang out, she concluded that +even the disapproving admired her courage; but before the applause +ceased, she saw Antoinette Blackwell on her feet, waiting to be heard. +She knew that Antoinette, like Horace Greeley, preferred to think of +all marriages as made in heaven, and true to form Antoinette contended +that the marriage relation "must be lifelong" and "as permanent and +indissoluble as the relation of parent and child."[113] At once +Ernestine Rose came to the rescue in support of Mrs. Stanton. + +Then Wendell Phillips showed his displeasure by moving that Mrs. +Stanton's resolutions be laid on the table and expunged from the +record because they had no more to do with this convention than +slavery in Kansas or temperance. "This convention," he asserted, "as I +understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally upon +men and women, not those that rest equally on men and women."[114] + +Aghast at this statement, Susan was totally unprepared to have his +views supported by that other champion of liberty, William Lloyd +Garrison, who, however, did not favor expunging the resolutions from +the record. + +It was incomprehensible to Susan that neither Garrison nor Phillips +recognized woman's subservient status in marriage under prevailing +laws and traditions, and she now stated her own views with firmness: +"As to the point that this question does not belong to this +platform--from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a +one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man +gains all--woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with +him--meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her."[115] + +Warming to the subject, she continued, "By law, public sentiment, and +religion from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has +never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be +disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. And this very hour, by +our statute books, by our so-called enlightened Christian +civilization, she has no voice in saying what shall be the basis of +the relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it or not at +all...." + +When finally the vote was taken, Mrs. Stanton's resolutions were laid +on the table, but not expunged from the record, and the convention +adjourned with much to talk about and think about for some time to +come. + +The newspapers, of course, could not overlook such a piece of news as +this heated argument on divorce in a woman's rights convention, and +fanned the flames pro and con, most of them holding up Miss Anthony +and Mrs. Stanton as dangerous examples of freedom for women. The Rev. +A. D. Mayo, Unitarian clergyman of Albany, heretofore Susan's loyal +champion, now made a point of reproving her. "You are not married," he +declared with withering scorn. "You have no business to be discussing +marriage." To this she retorted, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a +slave. Suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."[116] + +Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton, amazed at the opposition and the +disapproval they had aroused, were grateful for Samuel Longfellow's +comforting words of commendation[117] and for the letters of approval +which came from women from all parts of the state. Most satisfying of +all was this reassurance from Lucretia Mott, whose judgment they so +highly valued: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense of the +resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the united +judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad they are +so vigorous in the work."[118] + +Hardest to bear was the disapproval of Wendell Phillips whom they both +admired so much. Difficult to understand and most disappointing was +Lucy Stone's failure to attend the convention or come to their +defense. Thinking over this first unfortunate difference of opinion +among the faithful crusaders for freedom to whom she had always felt +so close in spirit, Susan was sadly disillusioned, but she had no +regrets that the matter had been brought up, and she defied her +critics by speaking before a committee of the New York legislature in +support of a liberal divorce bill. Nor was she surprised when a group +of Boston women, headed by Caroline H. Dall, called a convention which +they hoped would counteract this radical outbreak in the woman's +rights movement by keeping to the safe subjects of education, +vocation, and civil position. + +Having learned by this time through the hard school of experience that +the bona-fide reformer could not play safe and go forward, Susan +thoughtfully commented, "Cautious, careful people, always casting +about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can +bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing +to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and +privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and +persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."[119] + + * * * * * + +The repercussions of the divorce debates were soon drowned out by the +noise and excitement of the presidential campaign of 1860. With four +candidates in the field, Breckenridge, Bell, Douglas, and Lincoln, +each offering his party's solution for the nation's critical problems, +there was much to think about and discuss, and Susan found woman's +rights pushed into the background. At the same time antagonism toward +abolitionists was steadily mounting for they were being blamed for the +tensions between the North and the South. + +Dedicated to the immediate and unconditional emancipation of slavery, +Susan saw no hope in the promises of any political party. Even the +Republicans' opposition to the extension of slavery in the +territories, which had won over many abolitionists, including Henry +and Elizabeth Stanton, seemed to her a mild and ineffectual answer to +the burning questions of the hour. For her to further the election of +Abraham Lincoln was unthinkable, since he favored the enforcement of +the Fugitive Slave Law and had stated he was not in favor of Negro +citizenship. + +At heart she was a nonvoting Garrisonian abolitionist and would not +support a political party which in any way sanctioned slavery. Had she +been eligible as a voter she undoubtedly would have refused to cast +her ballot until a righteous antislavery government had been +established. As she expressed it in a letter to Mrs. Stanton, she +could not, if she were a man, vote for "the least of two evils, one of +which the Nation must surely have in the presidential chair."[120] + +She saw no possibility at this time of wiping out slavery by means of +political abolition, because in spite of the fact that slavery had for +years been one of the most pressing issues before the American people, +no great political party had yet endorsed abolition, nor had a single +prominent practical statesman[121] advocated immediate unconditional +emancipation. As the Liberty party experiment had proved, an +abolitionist running for office on an antislavery platform was doomed +to defeat. Therefore the gesture made in this critical campaign by a +small group of abolitionists in nominating Gerrit Smith for president +appeared utterly futile to Susan. Abolitionists, she believed, +followed the only course consistent with their principles when they +eschewed politics, abstained from voting, and devoted their energies +with the fervor of evangelists to a militant educational campaign. + +So, whenever she could, she continued to hold antislavery meetings. +"Crowded house at Port Byron," her diary records. "I tried to say a +few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is +a terrible martyrdom for me to speak."[122] Yet so great was the need +to enlighten people on the evils of slavery that she endured this +martyrdom, stepping into the breach when no other speaker was +available. Taking as her subject, "What Is American Slavery?" she +declared, "It is the legalized, systematic robbery of the bodies and +souls of nearly four millions of men, women, and children. It is the +legalized traffic in God's image."[123] + +She asked for personal liberty laws to protect the human rights of +fugitive slaves, adding that the Dred Scott decision had been possible +only because it reflected the spirit and purpose of the American +people in the North as well as the South. She heaped blame on the +North for restricting the Negro's educational and economic +opportunities, for barring him from libraries, lectures, and theaters, +and from hotels and seats on trains and buses. + +"Let the North," she urged, "prove to the South by her acts that she +fully recognizes the humanity of the black man, that she respects his +rights in all her educational, industrial, social, and political +associations...." + +This was asking far more than the North was ready to give, but to +Susan it was justice which she must demand. No wonder free Negroes in +the North honored and loved her and expressed their gratitude whenever +they could. "A fine-looking colored man on the train presented me with +a bouquet," she wrote in her diary. "Can't tell whether he knew me or +only felt my sympathy."[124] + + * * * * * + +The threats of secession from the southern states, which followed +Lincoln's election, brought little anxiety to Susan or her +fellow-abolitionists, for they had long preached, "No Union with +Slaveholders," believing that dissolution of the Union would prevent +further expansion of slavery in the new western territories, and not +only lessen the damaging influence of slavery on northern +institutions, but relieve the North of complicity in maintaining +slavery. Garrison in his _Liberator_ had already asked, "Will the +South be so obliging as to secede from the Union?" When, in December +1860, South Carolina seceded, Horace Greeley, who only a few months +before had called the disunion abolitionists "a little coterie of +common scolds," now wrote in the _Tribune_, "If the cotton states +shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we +insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a +revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless."[125] + +[Illustration: William Lloyd Garrison] + +What abolitionists feared far more than secession was that to save the +Union some compromise would be made which would fasten slavery on the +nation. Susan agreed with Garrison when he declared in the +_Liberator_, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last +'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell' +broken--at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all +the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."[126] + +Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and +confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil +war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them +Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the +Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line, +protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the +domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for +escaped slaves, and forbid Congress to abolish slavery in the +District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland. +Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing +noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such +an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous +declarations against compromise. + +While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of +President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan +heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May, +Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she +wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to +go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its +suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that +she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ... +no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band +of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."[127] + +Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her +antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but +unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and +stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no +effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and +the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her +ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the +milling crowd. + +In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and +boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs +broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never before +shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with +Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she +opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting +and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the +speakers home through the jeering crowds. + +All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more +meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right +of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne +pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In +Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee +of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"[128] and +rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until +the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its +tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling +drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on +the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her +companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in +the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of +Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the +square. + +Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany +where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick +Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher, +was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming +opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists, +safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his +knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered +through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the +day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and +begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the +meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little +group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob +trailing behind them. + +Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of +mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so +bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans +had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or +interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the +attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they +were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address +prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or +indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states +where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have +no inclination to do so."[130] To her the future looked dark when +statesmen would save the Union at such a price. + +"No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as +well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with +Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others. +They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the +hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had +started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with +Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to +them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly +respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three +children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was +unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had +insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an +insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to +communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent +Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus, +took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children +to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced +the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law +which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and +their children. + +Well aware of how often her friends of the Underground Railroad had +defied the Fugitive Slave Law and hidden and transported fugitive +slaves, Susan decided she would do the same for this cultured +intelligent woman, a slave to her husband under the law. Without a +thought of the consequences, she took the train on Christmas Day for +New York with Mrs. Phelps and her thirteen-year-old daughter, both in +disguise, hoping that in the crowded city they could hide from Dr. +Phelps and the law. Arriving late at night, they walked through the +snow and slush to a hotel, only to be refused a room because they were +not accompanied by a gentleman. They tried another hotel, with the +same result, and then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a +divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused +them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway +wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a +Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but +Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as much to the clerk, +adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this +office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she +retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to +the station."[131] Finally he relented and gave them a room without +heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her +friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and +finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the +Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive +wife into her home. + +Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and +threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers, +because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child. +Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding +place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through +western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all. + +When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging +her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any +"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard +for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and +dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest +assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had +I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I +should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any +movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle +my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment +of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the +slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."[132] + +When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing +his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan, +"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the +entire guardianship and control of the children?" + +"Yes, I know it," she answered. "Does not the law of the United States +give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break +it every time you help a slave to Canada? Well, the law which gives +the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and +I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before you would deliver +a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child +to its father." + +Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could +not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap +his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a +divorce through the help of her friends. + +The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of +Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to +recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also +essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but +when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision +was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's +divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing +laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they +sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it, +Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to +sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or +was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like +themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have +yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."[133] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[109] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I. p. 689. Henry Ward Beecher's +speech, _The Public Function of Women_, delivered at Cooper Union, +Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract. + +[110] April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[111] June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[112] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 717. + +[113] _Ibid._, p. 725. + +[114] _Ibid._, p. 732. + +[115] _Ibid._, p. 735. + +[116] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 196. + +[117] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, _Eighty Years and More_ (New York, +1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in the +midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the convention +will sustain you." + +[118] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 195. + +[119] _Ibid._, p. 197. + +[120] Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College +Library. + +[121] Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to speak for +emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican Convention. + +[122] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198. + +[123] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[124] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198. + +[125] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 504; Beards, _The Rise of +American Civilization_, II, p. 63. + +[126] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 508. + +[127] Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[128] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 210. + +[129] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress. + +[130] Carl Sandburg, _Abraham Lincoln, The War Years_ (New York, +1939), I, p. 125. + +[131] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a more +permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet. + +[132] _Ibid._, pp. 203-204. + +[133] _Ibid._, p. 198. + + + + +A WAR FOR FREEDOM + + +Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, +Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded +early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This +breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the +minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union. +Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must +go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention +in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help +her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter +and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists +called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize +that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour. + +Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the +solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of +abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was +not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for +guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an +audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a +nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the +government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the +North"[134] a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions +and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand +by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize +Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but +to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those +abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until +it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the +front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union +with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all +violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion, +and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I +am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135] + +She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these +men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few, +among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of +them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone +remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have +insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but +one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The +Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all +the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their +peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems +most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency, +not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment +of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even +the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the +end justifies the means.'"[136] + +Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge, +traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas, +with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and +his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a +release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work. +"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary. +"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order.... +Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the +frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my +calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of +Harriet Tubman."[137] + +Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times +seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas +with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone +feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great +presences to which I have been so long accustomed." + +The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's _Tribune_ and +the Rochester _Democrat_. The news was discouraging--the tragedy of +Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union +armies. General Frémont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only +to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border +states. + +"How not to do it seems the whole study of Washington," she wrote in +her diary. "I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom +to every slave and call on every able-bodied Negro to enlist in the +Union Army.... To forever blot out slavery is the only possible +compensation for this merciless war."[138] + +To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and +events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's +_Casa Guidi Windows_, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to +our terrible struggle," then to her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, and +George Eliot's popular _Adam Bede_, recently published. More serious +reading also absorbed her, for she wanted to keep abreast of the most +advanced thought of the day. "Am reading Buckle's _History of +Civilization_ and Darwin's _Descent of Man_," she wrote in her diary. +"Have finished _Origin of the Species_. Pillsbury has just given me +Emerson's poems."[139] + +Eager to thrash out all her new ideas with Elizabeth Stanton, she went +to Seneca Falls for a few days of good talk, hoping to get Mrs. +Stanton's help in organizing a woman's rights convention in 1862; but +not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this +time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the +war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship. +Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best +women were so willing to be swept aside by the onrush of events. + +Although opposed to war, Susan was far from advocating peace at any +price, and was greatly concerned over the confusion in Washington +which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton +received from her husband, now Washington correspondent for the New +York _Tribune_. Both she and Mrs. Stanton chafed at inaction. They had +loyalty, intelligence, an understanding of national affairs, and +executive ability to offer their country, but such qualities were not +sought after among women. + + * * * * * + +In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a +new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting +the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of +discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young +eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.[140] Susan listened with pride and joy +while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the +issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth, +her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's +motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became +devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous +correspondence. + +Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence +in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she +herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she +studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet +Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble +breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and +elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of +Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal +painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by +a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other +artists."[141] + +This confidence was soon dispelled, however, when a letter came from +Lydia Mott containing the crushing news that the New York legislature +had amended the newly won Married Woman's Property Law of 1860, while +women's attention was focused on the war, and had taken away from +mothers the right to equal guardianship of their children and from +widows the control of the property left at the death of their +husbands. + +"We deserve to suffer for our confidence in 'man's sense of justice,'" +she confessed to Lydia. " ... All of our reformers seem suddenly to +have grown politic. All alike say, 'Have no conventions at this +crisis!' Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Stanton, +etc. say, 'Wait until the war excitement abates....' I am sick at +heart, but cannot carry the world against the wish and will of our +best friends...."[142] + +Unable to arouse even a glimmer of interest in woman's rights at this +time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to +make people understand that this war, so abhorrent to her, must be +fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience +to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It +is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you +allow yourself to remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of +home. It requires great will power to resurrect one's soul.[143] + +"I am speaking now extempore," she continued, "and more to my +satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not +do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely +off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by the war." + +Feeling particularly close to Lydia at this time, she gratefully +added, "What a stay, counsel, and comfort you have been to me, dear +Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance meeting in that +cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me to feel myself +competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and distrust. I can +never express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you." + +In the small towns of western New York, people were willing to listen +to Susan, for they were troubled by the defeats northern armies had +suffered and by the appalling lack of unity and patriotism in the +North. They were beginning to see that the problem of slavery had to +be faced and were discussing among themselves whether Negroes were +contraband, whether army officers should return fugitive slaves to +their masters, whether slaves of the rebels should be freed, whether +Negroes should be enlisted in the army. + +Susan had an answer for them. "It is impossible longer to hold the +African race in bondage," she declared, "or to reconstruct this +Republic on the old slaveholding basis. We can neither go back nor +stand still. With the nation as with the individual, every new +experience forces us into a new and higher life and the old self is +lost forever. Hundreds of men who never thought of emancipation a year +ago, talk it freely and are ready to vote for it and fight for it +now.[144] + +"Can the thousands of Northern soldiers," she asked, "who in their +march through Rebel States have found faithful friends and generous +allies in the slaves ever consent to hurl them back into the hell of +slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter +in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree +of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently +endure the old life of bondage with all its degradation, its +cruelties, and wrong? No, No, there can be no reconstruction on the +old basis...." Far less degrading and ruinous, she earnestly added, +would be the recognition of the independence of the southern +Confederacy. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony] + +To the question of what to do with the emancipated slaves, her quick +answer was, "Treat the Negroes just as you do the Irish, the Scotch, +and the Germans. Educate them to all the blessings of our free +institutions, to our schools and churches, to every department of +industry, trade, and art. + +"What arrogance in _us_," she continued, "to put the question, What +shall _we_ do with a race of men and women who have fed, clothed, and +supported both themselves and their oppressors for centuries...." + +Often she spoke against Lincoln's policy of gradual, compensated +emancipation, which to an eager advocate of "immediate, unconditional +emancipation" seemed like weakness and appeasement. She had to admit, +however, that there had been some progress in the right direction, for +Congress had recently forbidden the return of fugitive slaves to their +masters, had decreed immediate emancipation in the District of +Columbia, and prohibited slavery in the territories. + +President Lincoln's promise of freedom on January 1, 1863, to slaves +in all states in armed rebellion against the government, seemed wholly +inadequate to her and to her fellow-abolitionists, because it left +slavery untouched in the border states, but it did encourage them to +hope that eventually Lincoln might see the light. Horace Greeley wrote +Susan, "I still keep at work with the President in various ways and +believe you will yet hear him proclaim universal freedom. Keep this +letter and judge me by the event."[145] + +It troubled her that public opinion in the North was still far from +sympathetic to emancipation. Northern Democrats, charging Lincoln with +incompetence and autocratic control, called for "The Constitution as +it is, the Union as it was." They had the support of many northern +businessmen who faced the loss of millions of credit given to +southerners and the support of northern workmen who feared the +competition of free Negroes. They had elected Horatio Seymour governor +of New York, and had gained ground in many parts of the country. A +militant group in Ohio, headed by Congressman Vallandigham, continued +to oppose the war, asking for peace at once with no terms unfavorable +to the South. + +All these developments Susan discussed with her father, for she +frequently came home between lectures. He was a tower of strength to +her. When she was disillusioned or when criticism and opposition were +hard to bear, his sympathy and wise counsel never failed her. There +was a strong bond of understanding and affection between them. + +His sudden illness and death, late in November 1862, were a shock from +which she had to struggle desperately to recover. Her life was +suddenly empty. The farm home was desolate. She could not think of +leaving her mother and her sister Mary there all alone. Nor could she +count on help from Daniel or Merritt, both of whom were serving in the +army in the West, Daniel, as a lieutenant colonel, and Merritt as a +captain in the 7th Kansas Cavalry. For many weeks she had no heart for +anything but grief. "It seemed as if everything in the world must +stop."[146] + +Not even President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued January +1, 1863, roused her. It took a letter from Henry Stanton from +Washington to make her see that there was war work for her to do. He +wrote her, "The country is rapidly going to destruction. The Army is +almost in a state of mutiny for want of its pay and lack of a leader. +Nothing can carry through but the southern Negroes, and nobody can +marshal them into the struggle except the abolitionists.... Such men +as Lovejoy, Hale, and the like have pretty much given up the struggle +in despair. You have no idea how dark the cloud is which hangs over +us.... We must not lay the flattering unction to our souls that the +proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and have a +dissolution of the Union. Here then is work for you, Susan, put on +your armor and go forth."[147] + + * * * * * + +A month later, Susan went to New York for a visit with Elizabeth +Stanton, confident that if they counseled together, they could find a +way to serve their country in its hour of need. + +She was well aware that all through the country women were responding +magnificently in this crisis, giving not only their husbands and sons +to the war, but carrying on for them in the home, on the farm, and in +business. Many were sewing and knitting for soldiers, scraping lint +for hospitals, and organizing Ladies' Aid Societies, which, operating +through the United States Sanitary Commission, the forerunner of the +Red Cross, sent clothing and nourishing food to the inadequately +equipped and poorly fed soldiers in the field. In the large cities +women were holding highly successful "Sanitary Fairs" to raise funds +for the Sanitary Commission. In fact, through the women, civilian +relief was organized as never before in history. Individual women too, +Susan knew, were making outstanding contributions to the war. Lucy +Stone's sister-in-law, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell,[148] a friend and +admirer of Florence Nightingale, was training much-needed nurses, +while Dr. Mary Walker, putting on coat and trousers, ministered +tirelessly to the wounded on the battlefield. Dorothea Dix, the +one-time schoolteacher who had awakened the people to their barbarous +treatment of the insane, had offered her services to the +Surgeon-General and was eventually appointed Superintendent of Army +Nurses, with authority to recruit nurses and oversee hospital +housekeeping. Clara Barton, a government employee, and other women +volunteers were finding their way to the front to nurse the wounded +who so desperately needed their help; and Mother Bickerdyke, living +with the armies in the field, nursed her boys and cooked for them, +lifting their morale by her motherly, strengthening presence. Through +the influence of Anna Ella Carroll, Maryland had been saved for the +Union and she, it was said, was ably advising President Lincoln. + +Susan herself had felt no call to nurse the wounded, although she had +often skillfully nursed her own family; nor had she felt that her +qualifications as an expert housekeeper and good executive demanded +her services at the front to supervise army housekeeping. Instead she +looked for some important task to which other women would not turn in +these days when relief work absorbed all their attention. It was not +enough, she felt, for women to be angels of mercy, valuable and +well-organized as this phase of their work had become. A spirit of +awareness was lacking among them, also a patriotic fervor, and this +led her to believe that northern women needed someone to stimulate +their thinking, to force them to come to grips with the basic issues +of the war and in so doing claim their own freedom. Women, she +reasoned, must be aroused to think not only in terms of socks, shirts, +and food for soldiers or of bandages and nursing, but in terms of the +traditions of freedom upon which this republic was founded. Women must +have a part in molding public opinion and must help direct policy as +Anna Ella Carroll was proving women could do. Here was the best +possible training for prospective women voters. To all this Mrs. +Stanton heartily agreed. + +As they sat at the dining-room table with Mrs. Stanton's two +daughters, Maggie and Hattie, all busily cutting linen into small +squares and raveling them into lint for the wounded, they discussed +the state of the nation. They were troubled by the low morale of the +North and by the insidious propaganda of the Copperheads, an antiwar, +pro-Southern group, which spread discontent and disrespect for the +government. Profiteering was flagrant, and through speculation and war +contracts, large fortunes were being built up among the few, while the +majority of the people not only found their lives badly disrupted by +the war but suffered from high prices and low wages. So far no +decisive victory had encouraged confidence in ultimate triumph over +the South. In newspapers and magazines, women of the North were being +unfavorably compared with southern women and criticized because of +their lack of interest in the war. Writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_, +March, 1863, Gail Hamilton, a rising young journalist, accused +northern women of failing to come up to the level of the day. "If you +could have finished the war with your needles," she chided them, "it +would have been finished long ago, but stitching does not crush +rebellion, does not annihilate treason...." + +Thinking along these same lines, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now decided to +go a step further. They would act to bring women abreast of the issues +of the day, Susan with her flare for organizing women, Mrs. Stanton +with her pen and her eloquence. They would show women that they had an +ideal to fight for. They would show them the uselessness of this +bloody conflict unless it won freedom for all of the slaves. Freedom +for all, as a basic demand of the republic, would be their watchword. +Men were forming Union Leagues and Loyal Leagues to combat the +influence of secret antiwar societies, such as the Knights of the +Golden Circle. "Why not organize a Women's National Loyal League?" +Susan and Mrs. Stanton asked each other. + +They talked their ideas over first with the New York abolitionists, +then with Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and his dashing young +friend, Theodore Tilton, and with Robert Dale Owen, now in the city as +the recently appointed head of the Freedman's Inquiry Commission. +These men were in touch with Charles Sumner and other antislavery +members of Congress. All agreed that the Emancipation Proclamation +must be implemented by an act of Congress, by an amendment to the +Constitution, and that public opinion must be aroused to demand a +Thirteenth Amendment. If women would help, so much the better. + +Susan at once thought of petitions. If petitions had won the Woman's +Property Law in New York, they could win the Thirteenth Amendment. The +largest petition ever presented to Congress was her goal. + + * * * * * + +Carefully Susan and Mrs. Stanton worked over an _Appeal to the Women +of the Republic_, sending it out in March 1863 with a notice of a +meeting to be held in New York. It left no doubt in the minds of those +who received it that women had a responsibility to their country +beyond services of mercy to the wounded and disabled. + +From all parts of the country, women responded to their call. The +veteran antislavery and woman's rights worker, Angelina Grimké Weld, +came out of her retirement for the meeting. Ernestine Rose, the ever +faithful, was on hand. Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell were +there, and the popular Hutchinson family, famous for their stirring +abolition songs. They helped Susan and Mrs. Stanton steer the course +of the meeting into the right channels, to show the women assembled +that the war was being fought not merely to preserve the Union, but +also to preserve the American way of life, based on the principle of +equal rights and freedom for all, to save it from the encroachments of +slavery and a slaveholding aristocracy. Susan proposed a resolution +declaring that there can never be a true peace until the civil and +political rights of all citizens are established, including those of +Negroes and women. The introduction of the woman's rights issue into a +war meeting with an antislavery program was vigorously opposed by +women from Wisconsin, but the faithful feminists came to the rescue +and the controversial resolution was adopted. + +Although she always instinctively related all national issues to +woman's rights and vice versa, Susan did not allow this subject to +overshadow the main purpose of the meeting. Instead she analyzed the +issue of the war and reproached Lincoln for suppressing the fact that +slavery was the real cause of the war and for waiting two long years +before calling the four million slaves to the side of the North. +"Every hour's delay, every life sacrificed up to the proclamation that +called the slave to freedom and to arms," she declared, "was nothing +less than downright murder by the government.... I therefore hail the +day when the government shall recognize that it is a war for +freedom."[149] + +A Women's National Loyal League was organized, electing Susan +secretary and Mrs. Stanton president. They sent a long letter to +President Lincoln thanking him for the Emancipation Proclamation, +especially for the freedom it gave Negro women, and assuring him of +their loyalty and support in this war for freedom. Their own immediate +task, they decided, was to circulate petitions asking for an act of +Congress to emancipate "all persons of African descent held in +involuntary servitude." As Susan so tersely expressed it, they would +"canvass the nation for freedom." + + * * * * * + +All the oratory over, Susan now undertook the hard work of making the +Women's National Loyal League a success, assuming the initial +financial burden of printing petitions and renting an office, Room 20, +at Cooper Institute, where she was busy all day and where New York +members met to help her. To each of the petitions sent out, she +attached her battle cry, "There must be a law abolishing slavery.... +Women, you cannot vote or fight for your country. Your only way to be +a power in the government is through the exercise of this one, sacred, +constitutional 'right of petition,' and we ask you to use it now to +the utmost...." She also asked those signing the petitions to +contribute a penny to help with expenses and in this way she slowly +raised $3,000.[150] + +At first the response was slow, although both Republican and +antislavery papers were generous in their praise of this undertaking, +but when the signed petitions began to come in, she felt repaid for +all her efforts, and when the Hovey Fund trustees appropriated twelve +dollars a week for her salary, the financial burden lifted a little. +Yet it was ever present. For herself she needed little. She wrote her +mother and Mary, "I go to a little restaurant nearby for lunch every +noon. I always take strawberries with two tea rusks. Today I said, +'all this lacks is a glass of milk from my mother's cellar,' and the +girl replied, 'We have very nice Westchester milk.' So tomorrow I +shall add that to my bill of fare. My lunch costs, berries five cents, +rusks five, and tomorrow the milk will be three."[151] + +The cost of postage mounted as the petitions continued to go out to +all parts of the country. In dire need of funds, Susan decided to +appeal to Henry Ward Beecher; and wearily climbing Columbia Heights to +his home, she suddenly felt a strong hand on her shoulder and a +familiar voice asking, "Well, old girl, what do you want now?" He took +up a collection for her in Plymouth Church, raising $200. Gerrit Smith +sent her $100, when she had hoped for $1,000, and Jessie Benton +Frémont, $50. Before long, her "war of ideas" won the support of +Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Horace Greeley, George William +Curtis, and other popular lecturers who spoke for her at Cooper Union +to large audiences whose admission fees swelled her funds; and +eventually Senator Sumner, realizing how important the petitions could +be in arousing public opinion for the Thirteenth Amendment, saved her +the postage by sending them out under his frank.[152] + +She made her home with the Stantons, who had moved from Brooklyn to 75 +West 45th Street, New York, and the comfortable evenings of good +conversation and her busy days at the office helped mightily to heal +her grief for her father. In the bustling life of the city she felt +she was living more intensely, more usefully, as these critical days +of war demanded. Henry Stanton, now an editorial writer for Greeley's +_Tribune_, brought home to them the inside story of the news and of +politics. All of them were highly critical of Lincoln, impatient with +his slowness and skeptical of his plans for slaveholders and slaves in +the border states. They questioned Garrison's wisdom in trusting +Lincoln. Susan could not feel that Lincoln was honest when he +protested that he did not have the power to do all that the +abolitionists asked. "The pity is," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "that +the vast mass of people really believe the man _honest_--that he +believes he has not the power--I wish I could...."[153] + +New York seethed with unrest as time for the enforcement of the draft +drew near. Indignant that rich men could avoid the draft by buying a +substitute, workingmen were easily incited to riot, and the city was +soon overrun by mobs bent on destruction. The lives of all Negroes and +abolitionists were in danger. The Stanton home was in the thick of the +rioting, and when Susan and Henry Stanton came home during a lull, +they all decided to take refuge for the night at the home of Mrs. +Stanton's brother-in-law, Dr. Bayard. Here they also found Horace +Greeley hiding from the mob, for hoodlums were marching through the +streets shouting, "We'll hang old Horace Greeley to a sour apple +tree." + +The next morning Susan started for the office as usual, thinking the +worst was over, but as not a single horsecar or stage was running, she +took the ferry to Flushing to visit her cousins. Here too there was +rioting, but she stayed on until order was restored by the army. She +returned to the city to find casualties mounting to over a thousand +and a million dollars' worth of property destroyed. Negroes had been +shot and hung on lamp posts, Horace Greeley's _Tribune_ office had +been wrecked and the homes of abolitionist friends burned. "These are +terrible times," she wrote her family, and then went back to work, +staying devotedly at it through all the hot summer months.[154] + +By the end of the year, she had enrolled the signatures of 100,000 men +and women on her petitions, and assured by Senator Sumner that these +petitions were invaluable in creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, she raised the number of signatures in the next few months +to 400,000. + +In April 1864, the Thirteenth Amendment passed the Senate and the +prospects for it in the House were good. This phase of her work +finished, Susan disbanded the Women's National Loyal League and +returned to her family in Rochester. + + * * * * * + +In despair over the possible re-election of Abraham Lincoln, Susan had +joined Henry and Elizabeth Stanton in stirring up sentiment for John +C. Frémont. Abolitionists were sharply divided in this presidential +campaign. Garrison and Phillips disagreed on the course of action, +Garrison coming out definitely for Lincoln in the _Liberator_, while +Phillips declared himself emphatically against four more years of +Lincoln. Susan, the Stantons, and Parker Pillsbury were among those +siding with Phillips because they feared premature reconstruction +under Lincoln. They cited Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation as an example +of his leniency toward the rebels. They saw danger in leaving free +Negroes under the control of southerners embittered by war, and called +for Negro suffrage as the only protection against oppressive laws. +They opposed the readmission of Louisiana without the enfranchisement +of Negroes. Lincoln, they knew, favored the extension of suffrage only +to literate Negroes and to those who had served in the military +forces. In fact, Lincoln held back while they wanted to go ahead under +full steam and they looked to Frémont to lead them. + +Following the presidential campaign anxiously from Rochester, Susan +wrote Mrs. Stanton, "I am starving for a full talk with somebody +posted, not merely pitted for Lincoln...." The persistent cry of the +_Liberator_ and the _Antislavery Standard_ to re-elect Lincoln and not +to swap horses in midstream did not ring true to her. "We read no more +of the good old doctrine 'of two evils choose neither,'" she wrote +Anna E. Dickinson. She confessed to Anna, "It is only safe to seek and +act the truth and to profess confidence in Lincoln would be a lie in +me."[155] + +As the war dragged on through the summer without decisive victories +for the North, Lincoln's prospects looked bleak, and to her dismay, +Susan saw the chances improving for McClellan, the candidate of the +northern Democrats who wanted to end the war, leave slavery alone, and +conciliate the South. The whole picture changed, however, with the +capture of Atlanta by General Sherman in September. The people's +confidence in Lincoln revived and Frémont withdrew from the contest. +One by one the anti-Lincoln abolitionists were converted; and Susan, +anxiously waiting for word from Mrs. Stanton, was relieved to learn +that she was not one of them, nor was Wendell Phillips whose judgment +and vision both of them valued above that of any other man. With +approval she read these lines which Phillips had just written Mrs. +Stanton, "I would cut off both hands before doing anything to aid +Mac's [McClellan's] election. I would cut oft my right hand before +doing anything to aid Abraham Lincoln's election. I wholly distrust +his fitness to settle this thing and indeed his purpose."[156] + +There is nothing to indicate any change of opinion on Susan's part +regarding Lincoln's unfitness for a second term. That he was the +lesser of two evils, she of course acknowledged. For her these +pre-election days were discouraging and frustrating. She had very +definite ideas on reconstruction which she felt in justice to the +Negro must be carried out, and Lincoln did not meet her requirements. + +After Lincoln's re-election, she again looked to Wendell Phillips for +an adequate policy at this juncture, and she was not disappointed. +"Phillips has just returned from Washington," Mrs. Stanton wrote her. +"He says the radical men feel they are powerless and checkmated.... +They turn to such men as Phillips to say what politicians dare not +say.... We say now, as ever, 'Give us immediately unconditional +emancipation, and let there be no reconstruction except on the +broadest basis of justice and equality!...' Phillips and a few others +must hold up the pillars of the temple.... I cannot tell you how happy +I am to find Douglass on the same platform with us. Keep him on the +right track. Tell him in this revolution, he, Phillips, and you and I +must hold the highest ground and truly represent the best type of the +white man, the black man, and the woman."[157] + +Susan, holding "the highest ground," found it difficult to mark time +until she could find her place in the reconstruction. "The work of the +hour," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "is not alone to put down the +Rebels in arms, but to educate Thirty Millions of People into the idea +of a True Republic. Hence every influence and power that both men and +women can bring to bear will be needed in the reconstruction of the +Nation on the broad basis of justice and equality."[158] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[134] Garrisons, _Garrison_, IV, pp. 30-31. + +[135] Lydia Mott to W. L. Garrison, May 8, 1861, Boston Public +Library; Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 89. + +[136] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 215. + +[137] _Ibid._, p. 216. Harriet Tubman, a fugitive slave, was often +called the Moses of her people because she led so many of them into +the promised land of freedom. + +[138] _Ibid._ + +[139] _Ibid._, p. 198. + +[140] Anna E. Dickinson was born in Philadelphia in 1842. The death of +her father, two years later, left the family in straightened +circumstances, and Anna, after attending a Friends school, began very +early to support herself by copying in lawyers' offices and by working +at the U.S. Mint. Speaking extemporaneously at Friends and antislavery +meetings, she discovered she had a gift for oratory and was soon in +demand as a speaker. + +[141] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 219. + +[142] April, 1862. _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 748. + +[143] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 218, 222. + +[144] _Emancipation, the Duty of Government_, Ms., Lucy E. Anthony +Collection. Reading that General Grant had returned 13 slaves to their +masters, an indignant Susan B. Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton, "Such +gratuitous outrage should be met with instant death--without judge or +jury--if any offense may." Feb. 27, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton +Papers, Library of Congress. + +[145] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 221. + +[146] Jan. 24, 1904, Anna Dann Mason Collection. + +[147] Harper, _Anthony_, p. 226. + +[148] The first woman in the United States to obtain a medical degree, +1849. + +[149] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 57-58. + +[150] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 230. Members of the Women's National +Loyal League wore a silver pin showing a slave breaking his last +chains and bearing the inscription, "In emancipation is national +unity." Susan B. Anthony to Mrs. Drake, Sept. 18, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[151] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 234. + +[152] _Ibid._, To Samuel May, Jr., Sept. 21, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[153] April 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[154] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 230. + +[155] June 12, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, July 1, 1864, Anna +E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. About this time, a friend of +Susan B. Anthony's youth, now a widower living in Ohio in comfortable +circumstances, unsuccessfully urged her to marry him. + +[156] Sept. 23, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[157] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, pp. 103-104. + +[158] March 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + + + + +THE NEGRO'S HOUR + + +Susan's thoughts now turned to Kansas, as they had many times since +her brothers had settled there. Daniel and Annie, his young wife from +the East, urged her to visit them.[159] Daniel was well established in +Kansas, the publisher of his own newspaper and the mayor of +Leavenworth. He had served a little over a year in the Union army in +the First Kansas Cavalry. She longed to see him and the West that he +loved. + +Now for the first time she felt free to make the long journey, for her +mother and Mary had sold the farm on the outskirts of Rochester and +had moved into the city, buying a large red brick house shaded by +maples and a beautiful horse chestnut. It had been a wrench for Susan +to give up the farm with its memories of her father, but there were +compensations in the new home on Madison Street, for Guelma, her +husband, Aaron McLean, and their family lived with them there. Hannah +and her family had also settled in Rochester, and when they bought the +house next door, Susan had the satisfaction of living again in the +midst of her family.[160] + +She was particularly devoted to Guelma's twenty-three-year-old +daughter, Ann Eliza, whose "merry laugh" and "bright, joyous presence" +brought new life into the household. Ann Eliza was a stimulating +intelligent companion, and Susan looked forward to seeing many of her +own dreams fulfilled in her niece. Then suddenly in the fall of 1864, +Ann Eliza was taken ill, and her death within a few days left a great +void.[161] + +In the midst of this sorrow, Daniel sent Susan a ticket and a check +for a trip to Kansas. Hesitating no longer, she waited only until her +"tip-top Rochester dressmaker" made up "the new, five-dollar silk" +which she had bought in New York.[162] + +Before leaving for Kansas, in January, 1865, she pasted on the first +page of her diary a clipping of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, +"Something Left Undone," which seemed so perfectly to interpret her +own feelings: + + Labor with what zeal we will + Something still remains undone + Something uncompleted still + Waits the rising of the sun.... + + Till at length it is or seems + Greater than our strength can bear + As the burden of our dreams + Pressing on us everywhere....[163] + +With "the burden of her dreams" pressing on her, Susan traveled +westward. The future of the Negro was much on her mind, for the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had just been sent to the +states for ratification. That it would be ratified she had no doubt, +but she recognized the responsibility facing the North to provide for +the education and rehabilitation of thousands of homeless bewildered +Negroes trying to make their way in a still unfriendly world, and she +looked forward to taking part in this work. + +Beyond Chicago, where she stopped over to visit her uncle Albert +Dickinson and his family, her journey was rugged, and when she reached +Leavenworth she reveled in the comfort of Daniel's "neat, little, +snow-white cottage with green blinds." She liked Daniel's wife, Annie, +at once, admired her gaiety and the way she fearlessly drove her +beautiful black horse across the prairie. "They have a real 'Aunt +Chloe' in the kitchen," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "and a little Darkie +boy for errands and table waiter. I never saw a girl to match. The +more I see of the race, the more wonderful they are to me."[164] + +There was always good companionship in Daniel's home, for friends from +both the East and the West found it a convenient stopping place, and +there was much discussion of politics, the Negro question, and the +future of the West. Business was booming in Leavenworth, then the most +thriving town between St. Louis and San Francisco. Eight years before, +when Daniel had first settled there, it boasted a population of 4,000. +Now it had grown to 22,000, was lighted with gas, and was building its +business blocks of brick. As Susan drove through the busy streets with +Annie, she saw emigrants coming in by steamer and train to settle in +Kansas and watched for the covered wagons that almost every day +stopped in Leavenworth for supplies before moving on to the far West. +Driving over the wide prairie, sometimes a warm brown, then again +white with snow under a wider expanse of deep blue sky than she had +ever seen before, she relaxed as she had not in many a year and began +to feel the call of the West. She even thought she might like to +settle in Kansas until she was caught up by the sharp realization of +how she would miss the stimulating companionship of her friends in the +East. + +[Illustration: Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony] + +When Daniel was busy with his campaign for his second term as mayor, +she helped him edit the _Bulletin_. He warned her not to fill his +paper up with woman's rights, and in spite of his sympathy for the +Negro, forbade her to advocate Negro suffrage in his paper. + +"I wish I could talk through it the things I'd like to say to the +young martyr state ..." she wrote Mrs. Stanton. "The Legislature gave +but six votes for Negro suffrage the other day.... The idea of Kansas +refusing her loyal Negroes." + +Again and again she was shocked at the prejudice against Negroes in +Kansas, as when Daniel employed a Negro typesetter and the printers, +refusing to admit him to their union, went out on strike until he was +discharged. + +"In this city," she reported to Mrs. Stanton, "there are four thousand +ex-Missouri slaves who have sought refuge here within the three past +years." Making it her business to learn what was being done to help +them and educate them, she visited their schools, their Sunday +schools, and the Colored Home, and gave much of her time to them. To +encourage them to demand their rights, she organized an Equal Rights +League among them. This was one thing she could do, even if she could +not plead for Negro suffrage in Daniel's newspaper.[165] + +Then one breath-taking piece of news followed another--Lee's +surrender, April 9, 1865, and in less than a week, Lincoln's +assassination, his death, and Andrew Johnson's succession to the +Presidency. + +Susan looked upon Lincoln's assassination and death as an act of God. +She wrote to Mrs. Stanton, "Was there ever a more terrific command to +a Nation to 'stand still and know that I am God' since the world +began? The Old Book's terrible exhibitions of God's wrath sink into +nothingness. And this fell blow just at the very hour he was declaring +his willingness to consign those five million faithful, brave, and +loving loyal people of the South to the tender mercies of the ex-slave +lords of the lash."[166] + +She longed "to go out and do battle for the Lord once more," but when +she could have expressed her opinions at the big mass meeting held in +memory of Lincoln, she remained silent. "My soul was full," she +confessed to Mrs. Stanton, "but the flesh not equal to stemming the +awful current, to do what the people have called make an exhibition of +myself. So quenched the spirit and came home ashamed of myself." + +Then she added, "Dear-a-me--how overfull I am, and how I should like +to be nestled into some corner away from every chick and child with +you once more." + + * * * * * + +Disturbing news came from the East of dissension in the antislavery +ranks, of Garrison's desire to dissolve the American Antislavery +Society after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, and of +Phillips' insistence that it continue until freedom for the Negro was +firmly established. While Garrison maintained that northern states, +denying the ballot to the Negro, could not consistently make Negro +suffrage a requirement for readmitting rebel states to the Union, +Phillips demanded Negro suffrage as a condition of readmission. +Immediately abolitionists took sides. Parker Pillsbury, Lydia and +Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Anna E. Dickinson, the Stantons, +and others lined up with Phillips, whose vehement and scathing +criticism of reconstruction policies seemed to them the need of the +hour. Susan also took sides, praising "dear ever glorious Phillips" +and writing in her diary, "The disbanding of the American Antislavery +Society is fully as untimely as General Grant's and Sherman's granting +parole and pardon to the whole Rebel armies."[167] + +To her friends in the East, she wrote, "How can anyone hold that +Congress has no right to demand Negro suffrage in the returning Rebel +states because it is not already established in all the loyal ones? +What would have been said of Abolitionists ten or twenty years ago, +had they preached to the people that Congress had no right to vote +against admitting a new state with slavery, because it was not already +abolished in all the old States? It is perfectly astounding, this +seeming eagerness of so many of our old friends to cover up and +apologize for the glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the +manhood of the black race."[168] + +She rejoiced when word came that the American Antislavery Society +would continue under the presidency of Phillips, with Parker Pillsbury +as editor of the _Antislavery Standard_; but she was saddened by the +withdrawal of Garrison, whom she had idolized for so many years and +whose editorials in the _Liberator_ had always been her +inspiration.[169] + +As she read the weekly New York _Tribune_, which came regularly to +Daniel, she grew more and more concerned over President Johnson's +reconstruction policy and more and more convinced of the need of a +crusade for political and civil rights for the Negro. Asked to deliver +the Fourth of July oration at Ottumwa, Kansas, she decided to put into +it all her views on the controversial subject of reconstruction. + +Traveling by stage the 125 miles to Ottumwa, she found good company +en route and "great talk on politics, Negro equality, and temperance," +and thought the "grand old prairies ... perfectly splendid and the +timber-skirted creeks ... delightful."[170] + +Before a large gathering of Kansas pioneers, many of whom had driven +forty or fifty miles to hear her, she stood tall, straight, and +earnest, as she reminded them of the noble heritage of Kansas, of the +bloody years before the war when in the free-state fight, Kansas men +and women "taught the nation anew" the principles of the Declaration +of Independence. Lashing out with the vehemence of Phillips against +President Johnson's reconstruction policy, she warned, "There has been +no hour fraught with so much danger as the present.... To be foiled +now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories and to +re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of Negro disfranchisement ... +would be a disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath +to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars...."[171] + +She then cited the results of the elections in Virginia, South +Carolina, and Tennessee to prove her point that unless Negroes were +given the vote, rebels would be put in office and a new code of laws +apprenticing Negroes passed, establishing a new form of slavery. + +She urged her audience to be awake to the politicians who were using +the peoples' reverence and near idolatry of Lincoln to push through +anti-Negro legislation under the guise of carrying out his policies. +Then putting behind her the prejudice and impatience with Lincoln +which she had felt during his lifetime, she added, "If the +administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people one +lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and +proclaim, and that he as their President was bound to execute their +will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he +did four years ago, 'I wait the voice of the people.'" + +In her special pleading for the Negro, she did not forget women. +Calling attention to the fact that our nation had never been a true +republic because the ballot was exclusively in the hands of the "free +white male," she asked for a government "of the people," men and +women, white and black, with Negro suffrage and woman suffrage as +basic requirements. + +[Illustration: Wendell Phillips] + +So enthusiastic were the Republicans over her speech that they urged +her to prepare it for publication, suggesting, however, that she +delete the passage on woman suffrage. This was her first intimation +that Republicans might balk at enfranchising women. So great had been +women's contribution to the winning of the war and so indebted were +the Republicans to women for creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, that she had come to expect, along with Mrs. Stanton, that +the ballot would without question be given them as a reward. + + * * * * * + +It was soon obvious to Susan that politicians in the East as well as +in Kansas were shying away from woman suffrage. Mrs. Stanton reported +that even Wendell Phillips was backsliding, not wishing to campaign +for Negro suffrage and woman suffrage at the same time. "While I could +continue as heretofore, arguing for woman's rights, just as I do for +temperance every day," he had written, "still I would not mix the +movements.... I think such mixture would lose for the Negro far more +than we should gain for the woman. I am now engaged in abolishing +slavery in a land where the abolition of slavery means conferring or +recognizing citizenship, and where citizenship supposes the ballot for +all men."[172] + +Such reasoning filled Susan with despair, for she firmly believed that +women who had been asking for full citizenship for seventeen years +deserved precedence over the Negro. Mrs. Stanton agreed. To them, +Negro suffrage without woman suffrage was unthinkable, an unbearable +humiliation. Half of the Negroes were women, and manhood suffrage +would fasten upon them a new form of slavery. How could Wendell +Phillips, they asked each other, fail to recognize not only the +timeliness of woman suffrage, but the fact that women were better +qualified for the ballot than the majority of Negroes, who, because of +their years in slavery, were illiterate and the easy prey of +unscrupulous politicians? By all means enfranchise Negroes, they +argued with him, but enfranchise women as well, and if there must be a +limitation on suffrage, let it be on the basis of literacy, not on the +basis of sex. + +Among Republican members of Congress and abolitionists, there was +serious discussion of a Fourteenth Amendment to extend to the Negro +civil rights and the ballot. Susan, reading about this in Kansas, and +Mrs. Stanton, discussing it in New York with her husband, Wendell +Phillips, and Robert Dale Owen, saw in such a revision of the +Constitution a just and logical opportunity to extend woman's rights +at the same time. Previously committed to state action on woman +suffrage but only because it had then seemed the necessary first step, +both women welcomed the more direct road offered by an amendment to +the Constitution. Only they of all the old woman's rights workers were +awake to this opportunity. + +Throughout the United States, people were thinking about the +Constitution as Americans had not done since the Bill of Rights was +ratified in 1791. Not only were amendments to the federal Constitution +in the air, not only were rebel states being readmitted to the Union +with new constitutions, but state constitutions in the North were +being revised, and western territories sought statehood. In Susan's +opinion the time was ripe to proclaim equal rights for all. This +clearly was woman's hour. + + * * * * * + +"Come back and help," pleaded Elizabeth Stanton, who grew more and +more alarmed as she saw all interest in woman suffrage crowded out of +the minds of reformers by their zeal for the Negro. "I have argued +constantly with Phillips and the whole fraternity, but I fear one and +all will favor enfranchising the Negro without us. Woman's cause is in +deep water.... There is pressing need of our woman's rights +convention...."[173] + +Susan's spirits revived at the prospect of holding a woman's rights +convention, and plans for the future began to take shape as she read +the closing lines of Mrs. Stanton's letter: "I hope in a short time to +be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready +for you.... I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you +scold me for all my sins and shortcomings.... Oh, Susan, you are very +dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this +earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and +all my future plans are based on you as coadjutor. Yes, our work is +one, we are one in aim and sympathy and should be together. Come +home." + +Parker Pillsbury also added his plea, "Why have you deserted the field +of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost +twenty centuries?... It is not for me to decide your field of labor. +Kansas needed John Brown and may need you ... but New York is to +revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is to +make the plea for woman?" + +Reading her newspaper a few days later, she found that the politicians +had made their first move, introducing in the House of Representatives +a resolution writing the word "male" into the qualifications of voters +in the second section of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. She +started at once for the East. + + * * * * * + +On the long journey back, in the heat of August, traveling by stage +and railroad with many stops to make the necessary connections, Susan +not only visited her many relatives who had moved to the West, but +also called on antislavery and woman suffrage workers, and held +meetings to plead for free schools for Negroes and for the ballot for +Negroes and women. She found people relieved to have the war over and +busy with their own affairs, but with prejudices smoldering. Public +speaking was still an ordeal for her and she confessed to her diary, +"Made a labored talk.... Had a struggle to get through with speech," +and again, "Had a hard time. Thoughts nor words would come--Staggered +through."[174] However, she was a determined woman. The message must +be carried to the people and she would do it whether she suffered in +the process or not. + +Late in September, she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester, +but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few +weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton, deep in a serious +discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for woman suffrage +at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this +time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now +passed since the last national woman's rights convention, and the +workers were scattered; some had lost interest and others thought only +of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker +Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of +the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with +Lucy, confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with +her.[175] + +Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey Fund, she went to New England +to revive interest there and in Concord talked with the Emersons, +Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he +thought it wise to demand woman suffrage at this time, he replied, +"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide +for me in practical matters." Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with +Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise +women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same +time.[176] + +Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and woman +suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the +petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a +verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to +face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she +was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton +went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage +would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures. + +However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in +January 1866--the very first demand ever made for Congressional action +on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up +400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under +protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, +who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and +Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever +zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by +Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[177] + +By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful +Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically +friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves +wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's +influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her +only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional +recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, +not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found +James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to +present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was +regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now +advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she +herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate +as well as in the House--a few because they saw justice in the demands +of the women, others because they believed white women should have +political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw +in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the +Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000 +signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans. + +In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and +Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had +found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young +editor of the _Independent_. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and +the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his +flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had +winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had +proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights +group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would +fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell +Phillips he suggested for president, and the _Antislavery Standard_ +as the paper of the new organization. + +This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to +Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult +Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips, +however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of +amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before +any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually +oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but +when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May +1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society, +she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union +had been given to the members of the antislavery group and therefore +there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal +Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the woman's +rights convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the +Negro. To her this seemed a natural development as she had always +thought of woman's rights as part of the larger struggle for human +rights. + +"For twenty years," she declared, "we have pressed the claims of women +to the right of representation in the government.... Up to this hour +we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; +but now by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage +reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress +at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation +in a republican form of government. + +"There is, there can be, but one true basis," she continued. "Taxation +and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go +beyond woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights +platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human +rights platform."[178] + +The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their +own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical +experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton with all their hearts +wanted this experiment to succeed, and yet as they resolved their +woman's rights organization into the American Equal Rights +Association, they were apprehensive. + +They did not have to wait long for disillusionment. Meeting Wendell +Phillips and Theodore Tilton in the office of the _Antislavery +Standard_ to plan a campaign for the Equal Rights Association, they +discussed with them what should be done in New York, preparatory to +the revision of the state constitution. Emphatically Wendell Phillips +declared that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of +the constitution, but not the word "male." That could come, he added, +when the constitution was next revised, some twenty or thirty years +later. To their astonishment, Theodore Tilton heartily agreed. Then he +added, "The question of striking out the word 'male,' we as an equal +rights association shall of course present as an intellectual theory, +but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention." +Completely unprepared for such an attitude on Tilton's part, Susan +retorted with indignation, "I would sooner cut off my right hand than +ask for the ballot for the black man and not for woman." Then telling +the two men just what she thought of them for their betrayal of women, +she swept out of the office to keep another appointment.[179] + +Equally exasperated with these men, Mrs. Stanton stayed on, hoping to +heal the breach, but when Susan returned to the Stanton home that +evening, she found her highly indignant, declaring she was through +boosting the Negro over her own head. Then and there they vowed that +they would devote themselves with all their might and main to woman +suffrage and to that alone. + + * * * * * + +By this time, Congress had passed a civil rights bill over President +Johnson's veto, conferring the rights of citizenship upon freedmen, +and a Fourteenth Amendment to make these rights permanent was now +before Congress. The latest developments regarding the various drafts +of the Fourteenth Amendment were passed along to Susan and Mrs. +Stanton by Robert Dale Owen. Senator Sumner, he reported, had yielded +to party pressure and now supported the Fourteenth Amendment, although +in the past he had always maintained such an amendment wholly +unnecessary since there was already enough justice, liberty, and +equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen. Senator +Sumner opposed and defeated a clause in the amendment referring to +"race" and "color," words which had never previously been mentioned +in the Constitution, but he raised no serious objection to the +introduction of the word "male" as a qualification for suffrage, which +was also unprecedented. That he tried time and time again to avoid the +word "male" when he was redrafting the amendment or that Thaddeus +Stevens tried to substitute "legal voters" for "male citizens" was no +comfort to Susan and Mrs. Stanton, as they saw the Fourteenth +Amendment writing discrimination against women into the federal +Constitution for the first time.[180] + +As they carefully read over the first section of the Fourteenth +Amendment, which conferred citizenship on every person born or +naturalized in the United States, women's rights seemed assured: + + "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and + subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the + United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State + shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the + privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; + nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or + property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person + within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." + +Then in the controversial second section which provided the penalty of +reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes +of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by +the words, "male inhabitants" and "male citizens," used to define +legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single +word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise +arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere +abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to +women, there was no doubt. + +With determination, Susan and Mrs. Stanton fought this injustice. Were +they not "persons born ... in the United States," they asked. Were +they forever to be regarded as children or as lower than persons, +along with criminals, idiots, and the insane? Were women not counted +in the basis of representation and should they not have a voice in the +election of those representatives whose office their numbers helped to +establish? + +As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of +suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there +were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the +right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the +Fourteenth Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and +limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional, she +reasoned, when the first lines of the Constitution read, "We, the +people of the United States, in order to ... establish justice ... and +secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do +ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of +America." Of course "the people" must include women, if the English +language meant what it said. + +The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by +Congress and referred to the states for ratification in June 1866. As +never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the +unimportance of women. Once more politicians and reformers had ignored +women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's +intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman +of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the +Fourteenth Amendment's broad term of "persons." Yet according to +statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling, +both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the +possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property +of individuals from the interference of state and municipal +legislation, through the federal control extended by this amendment. +At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have +received abundant protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, along +with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.[181] + +Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage +could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it +were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was +all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but +neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They +knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South +the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and +could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured +of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be +considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would +vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted. + +Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican +party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican, +Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the +watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each +and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any +distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate +floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking +out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He +stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and +although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud +the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the +three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two +issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a +separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas +objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it +with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his +approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's +amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine +votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182] + +Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had +for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had +treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing +definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York +_Tribune_. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry +from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the +ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the +glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against +woman suffrage and the _Antislavery Standard_ avoiding the subject as +if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached +the public.[183] + +It was hard for Susan to forgive the _Antislavery Standard_ for what +she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed +allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest +Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading +men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and +Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing +to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage +at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the +Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of +political parties. + +Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the +antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one +temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was +the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own +claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. +Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha +C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John +Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the +ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not +criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure +am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the +country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to +use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has +taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the +charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he +speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect +and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove +expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point +again."[184] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's +Vineyard, in 1864. + +[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs. +Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester. +Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street +in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable +insurance business. + +[161] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 241. + +[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862. + +[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[165] _Ibid._ + +[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862. + +[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865. + +[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245. + +[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865. + +[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865. + +[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967. + +[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105. + +[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244. + +[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865. + +[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865. + +[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251. + +[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97. + +[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260. + +[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323. + +[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus +Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its +citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of +the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not +disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was +a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male." + +[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112; +Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana, +Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200. + +[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B. +Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted +for woman suffrage. + +[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to +woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came +out against it. + +[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_ +(Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H. +Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported +woman suffrage at this time. + + + + +TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS + + +Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She +carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to +the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights +Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, +many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she +hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. +She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the +amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185] + +This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's +constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for +writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an +interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was +more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this +convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the +_Tribune_ to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he +emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that +measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This +is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186] + +Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his +opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in +all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly +respected George William Curtis, now editor of _Harper's Magazine_ and +also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and +Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped +mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of +signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, +and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the +right of suffrage. + +Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's +hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness +answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading +consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually +serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable +to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot +and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two +women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan +replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the +point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she +reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought +in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and +paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187] + +Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his +oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to +vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in +Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had +complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, +should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed +he would do.[188] + +In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over +their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many +reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. +Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William +Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in +my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, +citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from +the Constitution."[189] + +Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily +took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, +looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky +voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your +committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to +women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only +male citizens.[190] + +Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter +to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom +that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the +governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and +practically all agreed in the conclusion that _the women of our state +do not choose to vote_. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the +sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in +favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The +few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the +situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to +me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto +existed...."[191] + +Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating +him in the constitutional convention or for the headlines in the +evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's +petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of +Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly +greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most +maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."[192] + + * * * * * + +While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for +help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas, where in November +1867 two amendments would be voted upon, enfranchising women and +Negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare +Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak +throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy, as trustees of the Jackson +Fund, outvoting Wendell Phillips, were able to appropriate $1,500 for +this campaign. + +Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas, where +she and her husband, Henry Blackwell, were winning many friends for +the cause. "I fully expect we shall carry the State," Lucy confidently +wrote Susan. "The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past +all expression if they don't get the right to vote.... But the Negroes +are all against us.... These men _ought not to be allowed to vote +before we do_, because they will be just so much dead weight to +lift."[193] + +One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to +withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had +sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York _Tribune_ and +the _Independent_, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word +favorable to woman suffrage, for these two papers with their influence +and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women +not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the +Republican press changed from indifference to outright animosity, +striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them "free lovers," +because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as +Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful, believing the +Democrats were ready to take them up, but she reminded Susan, "It will +be necessary to have a good force here in the fall, and you will have +to come." + +Never for a moment did the importance of this election in Kansas +escape Susan, and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart +Mill, who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas woman +suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November +give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, history will +remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been +the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over +the earth and to be looked back to ... as one of the most fertile in +beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human +affairs."[194] + +Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman suffrage just as it +had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held +back. Her first problem, however, was to raise the money to get +herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson Fund +had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan, who +most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they +returned to the East. Olympia Brown, recently graduated from Antioch +College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist church, was a +new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable, she reached every +part of Kansas during the summer, driving over the prairies with the +Singing Hutchinsons.[195] + +Olympia Brown's valiant help made waiting in New York easier for Susan +as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the +Jackson Fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision; and the +trustees of the Hovey Fund, established to further the rights of both +Negroes and women, refused to finance a woman suffrage campaign in +Kansas. + +"We are left without a dollar," she wrote State Senator Samuel N. +Wood. "Every speaker who goes to Kansas must _now pay her own_ +expenses out of her own private purse, unless money should come from +some unexpected source. I shall run the risk--as I told you--and draw +upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not +contract _debts_ under the impression that _our_ Association can pay +for them--_for it cannot_."[196] + +She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently +needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and +down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough +to pay the printer for 60,000 tracts, with the result that along with +the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore +Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went +advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and +patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to +attract the people of Kansas. + + * * * * * + +With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time +to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to +Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for +several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to +Kansas. + +On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a +congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new +experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest, +most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable +daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by +solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two +good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for +many a day. + +As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week +speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs. +Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the +meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary, +distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech +herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage +and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda +or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan +wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors" +out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197] + +Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when +they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by +Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman, +had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a +rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly. +Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough +cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and +a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.... +Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very +scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that +great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings, +and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our +railroad fare--eight cents per mile--and hotel bills. Our collections +thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully +disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas +meetings."[198] + +The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win +her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years +which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old +maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke +down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender +energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin +to that of the frontiersman. + +Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm. +The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a +brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a +queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully +curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor +built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager +to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her. + +This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She +sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small +towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular +and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State +Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In +the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the +campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine, +against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas +Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican, +the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up +as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and +woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought +women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the +liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against +votes for women. + + * * * * * + +While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the +Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage +Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in +Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he +telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own +expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy, +eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad, +Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she +herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the +women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory, +speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences. +A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily +dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers, +patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth +driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment +they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of +his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none +of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous +sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the +day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences +held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When +he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were +building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman +suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when +he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who +throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother, +his daughter, his sister, and his wife."[200] + +[Illustration: George Francis Train] + +At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling +Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and +eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in +Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make +last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support +both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a +_Tribune_ editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that +the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard +it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. +She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women +have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really +desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them +the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would +conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, +rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of +their husbands and fathers...."[201] + +These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in +Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning her back on such +fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously. +When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train +on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred +at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it +alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued +with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber +wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest +settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, +traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not +at all, unconventional though it was. + +She took charge of the meetings, opening them herself with a short +sincere plea for both the woman and Negro suffrage amendments, and +then she introduced George Francis Train, who, no matter how late they +arrived or how tiring the day, had changed his wrinkled gray traveling +suit for his resplendent platform costume. The expectant crowd never +failed to respond with a gasp of surprise, and immediately the fun +began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them, calling +for their support of woman suffrage and advocating as well some of his +own pet ideas, such as freeing Ireland from British oppression, paying +our national debt in greenbacks, establishing an eight-hour day in +industry, and even nominating himself for President. + +Amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit, Susan found +neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by +opponents of woman suffrage. As the days went by with their continued +hardships and increasing fatigue, she marveled at his unfailing +courteousness, his pluck, and good cheer, while he in turn admired her +courage, her endurance, and her zeal for her cause, and between them a +bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed +by the pressures of later years. + +During the long hours on the road, he entertained her with the story +of his life and his travels, an adventure story of a poor boy who had +made good. Building clipper ships, introducing American goods in +Australia, traveling in India, China, and Russia, promoting street +railways in England, and now building the Union Pacific, he had a +wealth of information to impart. + +Their views on the Negro differed sharply. Rating the whole race as +inferior and incapable of improvement, he naturally opposed +enfranchising Negroes before women. She, on the other hand, had always +regarded Negroes as her equals, and in campaigning with Train, she had +to make her choice between Negroes and women. She chose women, just as +her abolitionist friends in the East had chosen the Negro; and their +indifference and opposition to woman suffrage at this crucial time was +as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them. They +called him a Copperhead, remembering his southern wife and his hatred +of abolitionists, his vocal resistance to the draft, and his demands +for immediate unconditional peace. They ignored entirely his defense +of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated +with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy. They abused him in +their newspapers and he, not to be outdone, ridiculed them in his +speeches, shouting, "Where is Wendell Phillips, today? Lost caste +everywhere. Inconsistent in all things, cowardly in this. Where is +Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty? Pitching the woman +suffrage idea out of the Convention and bailing out Jeff Davis. Where +is William Lloyd Garrison? Being patted on the shoulders by his +employers, our enemies abroad, for his faithful work in trying to +destroy our nation. Where is Henry Ward Beecher? Writing a story for +Bonner's Ledger...."[202] + +They never forgave him this estimate of them, nor did they forgive +Susan for associating herself with him. + +On one of the last days of the Kansas campaign, while she was driving +over the prairie with him, he suddenly asked her why the woman +suffrage people did not have a paper of their own. "Not lack of +brains, but lack of money," she tersely replied.[203] + +They talked for a while about the good such a paper would do, about +the people who should edit and write for it, what name it should have. +Then he said simply, "I will give you the money." + +Because a woman suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so +many years, she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant +gesture soon to be forgotten; but to her amazement that very evening +she heard Train announce to his audience, "When Miss Anthony gets back +to New York, she is going to start a woman suffrage paper. Its name is +to be _The Revolution_: its motto, 'Men their rights, and nothing +more; women, their rights and nothing less.' This paper is to be a +weekly, price $2. per year; its editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and +Parker Pillsbury; its proprietor, Susan B. Anthony. Let everybody +subscribe for it!" + + * * * * * + +Election day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth, +to Daniel's home, to learn the verdict of the people of Kansas. As the +returns came in, their hope of seeing Kansas become the first woman +suffrage state quickly faded. Neither their amendment nor the Negroes' +polled enough votes for adoption. Their woman suffrage amendment, +however, received only 1,773 votes less than the Republican-sponsored +Negro amendment, and to have accomplished this in a hard-fought bitter +campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves +and in their judgment of men and events. No longer need they depend +upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance. From +now on they would chart their own course. This led, they believed, to +Washington, where they must gain support among members of Congress for +a federal woman suffrage amendment. Few, if any, Republicans would +help them, but already one Democrat had come forward. George Francis +Train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a +lecture tour on their way East. To Susan, who had to raise every penny +spent in her work, this seemed like an answer to prayer, as did his +proposal to finance a woman suffrage paper for them. + +By this time their abolitionist friends in the East were writing them +indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on George +Francis Train and warning them not to link woman suffrage with an +unbalanced charlatan. Even their devoted friends in Kansas, including +Governor Robinson, advised them against further association with +Train. + +They did not make their decision lightly, nor was it easy to go +against the judgment of respected friends, but of this they were +confident--that with or without Train, they would estrange most of +their old friends if they campaigned for woman suffrage now. Without +him, their work, limited by lack of funds, would be ineffectual. With +his financial backing, they not only had the opportunity of spreading +their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New +York, but had the promise of a paper, now so desperately needed when +other news channels were closed to them. That Train was eccentric they +agreed, and they also admitted that possibly some of his financial +theories were unsound. They believed he was ahead of his time when he +advocated the eight-hour day and the abolition of standing armies; but +at least he looked forward, not backward. Susan had found him to be a +man of high principles. She had heard him "make speeches on woman's +suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"[204] the +well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb +her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil +War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of +conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train +probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. +Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his +generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced. + +For Susan there was only one choice--to work for woman suffrage with +the financial backing of Train. Mrs. Stanton agreed, and as she +expressed it, "I have always found that when we see eye to eye, we are +sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong.... I take +my beloved Susan's judgment against the world."[205] + + * * * * * + +Traveling homeward with George Francis Train, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +spoke in Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, +Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Hartford, and other important cities where +they drew large crowds, which had never before listened to a +discussion of woman suffrage. Most of their old friends among the +suffragists and abolitionists shunned them, for they had been warned +against this folly by their colleagues in the East. The lively +meetings rated plenty of publicity, complimentary in the Democratic +papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press. Usually +"Woman Suffrage" got the headlines, but sometimes it was "Woman +Suffrage and Greenbacks" or "Train for President." Handbills, the +printing of which Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and +epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all +meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also +arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, _The +Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, with this jingle, so +uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, on its cover: + + The Garrisons, Phillipses, Greeleys, and Beechers, + False prophets, false guides, false teachers and preachers, + Left Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Brown, and Stone, + To fight the Kansas battle alone; + While your Rosses, Pomeroys, and your Clarkes + Stood on the fence, or basely fled, + While woman was saved by a Copperhead. + +Even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists were +the back-page advertisements of a new woman-suffrage paper, _The +Revolution_, and of woman's rights tracts which could be purchased +from Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the American Equal Rights +Association. That Susan would presume to line up this organization in +any way with George Francis Train aroused the indignation of Lucy +Stone, who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust. While Susan +and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward, enjoying the comfort of the best +hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences, a coalition against +them was being formed in the East. + +"All the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong," +Susan wrote in her diary, January 1, 1868. "Only time can tell, but I +believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."[206] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[185] Ms., Petition, Jan. 9, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection + +[186] Ms., note, 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[187] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 278; _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, +p. 284. + +[188] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 279. + +[189] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287. Petitions with 20,000 +signatures were presented. + +[190] _Ibid._, p. 285. + +[191] Aug. 25, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection. + +[192] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287. + +[193] _Ibid._, pp. 234-235, 239. + +[194] _Ibid._, p. 252. + +[195] A famous family of singers who enlivened woman's rights, +antislavery, and temperance meetings with their songs. + +[196] July 9, 1867, Anthony Papers, Kansas State Historical Society, +Topeka, Kansas. + +[197] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 284. + +[198] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 242. + +[199] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 287. George Francis Train on his own +initiative spoke for woman suffrage before the New York Constitutional +Convention. + +[200] George Francis Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_ +(Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867), p. 68. + +[201] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 248-249. + +[202] Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, p. 40. + +[203] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 290. + +[204] Inscription by Susan B. Anthony on copy of Train's _The Great +Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, Library of Congress. + +[205] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 293. + +[206] _Ibid._, p. 295. + + + + +THE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR + + +"If we women fail to speak the _one word_ of the hour," Susan wrote +Anna E. Dickinson, "who shall do it? No man is able, for no man sees +or feels as we do. To whom God gives the word, to him or her he says, +'Go preach it.'"[207] + +This is just what Susan aimed to do in her new paper, _The +Revolution_. It's name, she believed, expressed exactly the stirring +up of thought necessary to establish justice for all--for women, +Negroes, workingmen and-women, and all who were oppressed. Her two +editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, reliable friends +as well as vivid forceful writers, were completely in sympathy with +her own liberal ideas and could be counted on to crusade fearlessly +for every righteous cause. What did it matter if George Francis Train +wanted space in the paper to publish his views and for a financial +column, edited by David M. Melliss of the New York _World_? Brought up +on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and +where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their +opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of _The Revolution_ to +Train and to Melliss in return for financial backing. + +When on January 8, 1868, the first issue of her paper came off the +press, her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction as she turned +over its pages, read its good editorials, and under the frank of +Democratic Congressman James Brooks of New York, sent out ten thousand +copies to all parts of the country. + +_The Revolution_ promised to discuss not only subjects which were of +particular concern to her and to Elizabeth Stanton, such as "educated +suffrage, irrespective of sex or color," equal pay for women for equal +work, and practical education for girls as well as boys, but also the +eight-hour day, labor problems, and a new financial policy for +America. This new financial policy, the dream of George Francis Train, +advocated the purchase of American goods only; the encouragement of +immigration to rebuild the South and to settle the country from ocean +to ocean; the establishment of the French financing systems, the +Crédit Foncier and Crédit Mobilier, to develop our mines and +railroads; the issuing of greenbacks; and penny ocean postage "to +strengthen the brotherhood of Labor." + +All in all it was not a program with wide appeal. Dazzled by the +opportunities for making money in this new undeveloped country, people +were in no mood to analyze the social order, or to consider the needs +of women or labor or the living standards of the masses. Unfamiliar +with the New York Stock Exchange, they found little to interest them +in the paper's financial department, while speculators and promoters, +such as Jay Gould and Jim Fiske, wanted no advice from the lone eagle, +George Francis Train, and resented Melliss's columns of Wall Street +gossip which often portrayed them in an unfavorable light. Nor did a +public-affairs paper edited and published by women carry much weight. +None of this, however, mattered much to Susan, who did not aim for a +popular paper but "to make public sentiment." It was her hope that +just as the _Liberator_ under William Lloyd Garrison had been "the +pillar of light and of fire to the slave's emancipation," so _The +Revolution_ would become "the guiding star to the enfranchisement of +women."[208] + + * * * * * + +Upon Susan fell the task of building up subscriptions, soliciting +advertisements, and getting copy to the printer. As her office in the +New York _World_ building, 37 Park Row, was on the fourth floor and +the printer was several blocks away on the fifth floor of a building +without an elevator, her job proved to be a test of physical +endurance. To this was added an ever-increasing financial burden, for +Train had sailed for England when the first number was issued, had +been arrested because of his Irish sympathies, and had spent months in +a Dublin jail, from which he sent them his thoughts on every +conceivable subject but no money for the paper. He had left $600 with +Susan and had instructed Melliss to make payments as needed, but this +soon became impossible, and she had to face the alarming fact that, if +the paper were to continue, she must raise the necessary money +herself. Because the circulation was small, it was hard to get +advertisers, particularly as she was firm in her determination to +accept only advertisements of products she could recommend. Patent +medicines and any questionable products were ruled out. Subscriptions +came in encouragingly but in no sense met the deficit which piled up +unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers. + +She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally +from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed +the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman +suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got +to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up." +Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her +that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the +last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because +he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was +"sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he +nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The +first member of the House to put his name on her list was her +dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many +others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President +Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons +and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was +powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her +request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every +day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he +had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr. +Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years +have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to +women as well as to Negroes, and by means of _The Revolution_ we are +bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a +thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights." +This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and +in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say, +"Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."[209] + +She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more +readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably +small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the +articles stimulating. + +Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments +and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which he was not +in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their +ruthless intrigue and disregard of the public. During the turbulent +days when the impeachment trial was front-page news everywhere, _The +Revolution_ proclaimed it as a political maneuver of the Republicans +to confuse the people and divert their attention from more important +issues, such as corruption in government, high prices, taxation, and +the fabulous wealth being amassed by the few. This of course roused +the intense disapproval of Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, and +Horace Greeley, all of whom regarded Johnson as a traitor and shouted +for impeachment. It ran counter to the views of Susan's brother +Daniel, who telegraphed Senator Ross of Kansas demanding his vote for +impeachment. Although no supporter of President Johnson, Susan was now +completely awake to the political manipulations of the radical +Republicans and what seemed to her their readiness to sacrifice the +good of the nation for the success of their party. She repudiated them +all--all but the rugged Ben Wade, always true to woman suffrage, and +the tall handsome Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who, she believed, +stood for justice and equality. + +Both of these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the +Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the +Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked _The +Revolution_, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is +not too late, if true men and women will do their duty, to make an +honest man like Ben Wade, President. Let us save the Nation. As to the +Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of +Heaven the better."[210] Later when Chase was out of the running among +Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, _The +Revolution_ urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal +suffrage as his slogan. + +Susan demanded civil rights, suffrage, education, and farms for the +Negroes as did the Republicans, but she could not overlook the +political corruption which was flourishing under the military control +of the South, and she recognized that the Republicans' insistence on +Negro suffrage in the South did not stem solely from devotion to a +noble principle, but also from an overwhelming desire to insure +victory for their party in the coming election. These views were +reflected editorially in _The Revolution_, which, calling attention +to the fact that Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and +Pennsylvania had refused to enfranchise their Negroes, asked why Negro +suffrage should be forced on the South before it was accepted in the +North. + +The Fourteenth Amendment was having hard sledding and _The Revolution_ +repudiated it, calling instead for an amendment granting universal +suffrage, or in other words, suffrage for women and Negroes. _The +Revolution_ also discussed in editorials by Mrs. Stanton other +subjects of interest to women, such as marriage, divorce, +prostitution, and infanticide, all of which Susan agreed needed frank +thoughtful consideration, but which other papers handled with kid +gloves. + +In still another unpopular field, that of labor and capital, _The +Revolution_ also pioneered fearlessly, asking for shorter hours and +lower wages for workers, as it pointed out labor's valuable +contribution to the development of the country. It also called +attention to the vicious contrasts in large cities, where many lived +in tumbledown tenements in abject poverty while the few, with more +wealth than they knew what to do with, spent lavishly and built +themselves palaces. + +Sentiments such as these increased the indignation of Susan's critics, +but she gloried in the output of her two courageous editors just as +she had gloried in the evangelistic zeal of the antislavery crusaders. +Wisely, however, she added to her list of contributors some of the +popular women writers of the day, among them Alice and Phoebe Cary. +She ran a series of articles on women as farmers, machinists, +inventors, and dentists, secured news from foreign correspondents, +mostly from England, and published a Washington letter and woman's +rights news from the states. Believing that women should become +acquainted with the great women of the past, especially those who +fought for their freedom and advancement, she printed an article on +Frances Wright and serialized Mary Wollstonecraft's _A Vindication of +the Rights of Women_. + + * * * * * + +Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the +press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ +completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the +_Antislavery Standard_. The New York _Times_ ridiculed as usual +anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York +_Home Journal_ called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some +of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the +Congregationalist paper, _The Independent_, commented in his usual +facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor +unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "_The Revolution_ from +the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its +friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." +Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights +paper," declared the Troy (New York) _Times_, "is a realistic, +well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical +execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago +_Workingman's Advocate_ observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an +able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the +Cincinnati _Commercial_, one of the few women journalists, described +sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable _Revolution_ +office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the +determined--the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or +Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, +Susan."[211] + +While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with +Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's +harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret +and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their +senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be +associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," +George Francis Train. She published his letter in _The Revolution_ +with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often +the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had +welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed +in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of +fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and +pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for +burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With +such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her +right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did +for woman suffrage.[212] + +None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon +Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives +wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to +understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright, +who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of +_The Revolution_, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me +now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."[213] + +[Illustration: Anna E. Dickinson] + +Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson, +with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft +hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps +of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually +burst into the _Revolution_ office, showered Susan with kisses, and +carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that +the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her +stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very +becoming on her short black curls. + +Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters" +at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East +Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships +of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to such +financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely +past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was +sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign +speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in +attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen +her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign, +but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be +"the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and +civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even +now be that "evangel."[214] + + * * * * * + +By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the +officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used +the Association's office as a base for business connected with the +Train lecture tour and the establishment of _The Revolution_. She was +also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own +projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and +Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were +checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the +annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again +brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once +more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except +those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she +had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously +satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her +year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered +the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train +cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work--for no +_human_ prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I +have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell +you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the +day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and +antislavery."[215] + +What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity +directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the +assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by all the men +present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When +Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose +content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other +mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and +wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to _know_ that it is +impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who _personally +wrongs me_, if only that one will work nobly in the _cause_ in their +own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I _never_ +theirs." + +Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time +trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her +with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of +her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith +Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper +Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney +Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that +her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand +for it. This committee, with _The Revolution_ as its mouthpiece, was +soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations +throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage +Association of America. + +To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated +General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded +memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the +reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the +Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New +York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on +the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York +_Sun_ commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the +Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor +Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a +woman suffrage plank in their platform. + +This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal +Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic +resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic +convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a +plank in their platform. + +Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the +ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans +to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since +the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the +dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and +which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the +corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from +the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs. +Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was +well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was +presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his +hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B. +Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the +audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the +enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We +appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend +the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly +for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and +thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the +proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a +similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your +political power for decades to come...."[216] + +To hear these words read in a national political convention was to +Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not +allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts +and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the +Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked. + +The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity, +the _Tribune_ deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our +sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they +rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."[217] + +The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as +reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of +General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon _The +Revolution_ called for a new party, a people's party which would be +sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did +Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she +declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the +country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands +humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties +the better.... _The Revolution_ calls for construction, not +reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a +nation's salvation?"[218] + +To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned +body and soul by the _Gold Gamblers_ of the Nation--and so far as the +honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters +very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of +influence and money to move for a third party--universal suffrage and +anti-monopolist of land and gold."[219] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[207] July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[208] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12. + +[209] _Ibid._ + +[210] _Ibid._, April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392. + +[211] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; _The Revolution_, I, +Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34. + +[212] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243. + +[213] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 301. + +[214] March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they prepared to move +to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey. + +[215] Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[216] _The Revolution_, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1. + +[217] _Ibid._, July 16, 1868, p. 17. + +[218] _Ibid._, Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72. + +[219] July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + + + + +WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT + + +In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned +her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long +hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her +for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the +factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being +paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New +York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary, +pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the +economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of +slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally, +and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could +compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity +for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in +their hands.[220] + +As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New +York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and +later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A +few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled +women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the +National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose +of federating all unions. + +When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September +1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in +preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in _The +Revolution_ office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she +hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting, +the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the +newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and +clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in +publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the +Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they +feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced +they should not seek political rights until they had improved their +working conditions. She could not make them see that they were +putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form +Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the +National Labor Congress. + +Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with +the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of +them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women +were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace +collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also +represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar +industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young +girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the +morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week. + +"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan +told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome +discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better +wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and +again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary +Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress. + +With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar +Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's +Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton, +representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan +knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed +but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and +whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public +that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women. + +The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders' +Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress, +and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and +everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the +opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened +to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate +continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was +important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she +declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She +recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing +out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced +men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York +_World_. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs. +Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress +to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage." + +A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of +its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote +would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a +perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong, +well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York. +Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper +campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you +had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have +succeeded?"[223] + +"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking +bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her +that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them +and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the +next election they would need the votes of all union men for their +candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you +too would have held the balance of political power in that little city +of Troy." + +Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong +report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as +well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or +form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable +means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying +them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the +National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to +demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask +Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for +women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was +quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the +report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in +comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among +prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney +of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor +Union and its national organizer of women.[224] + +The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in _The Revolution_ +as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which +would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the +women, the Negroes," _The Revolution_ declared, "are destined to form +a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government +from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the +politicians."[225] + + * * * * * + +One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of +the New York _World_, whose reporters covered the meetings of the +Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local +interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, _The +Revolution_ carried their import farther afield, bringing to the +attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work, +and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and +trade schools for them. _The Revolution_ continually spurred women on +to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal +work if they expected equal pay. + +When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were +afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and +of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no +patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to +wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are +blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your +cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with +water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either +that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do +not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be +composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of +dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they +go into an office they would go through all that was required of them +and demand just as high wages as the men.... + +"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the +'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I +do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in +value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand +that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226] + +Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, +San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts +at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged +ideas, and news of all of them was published in _The Revolution_. The +groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly +active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in +Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a +strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice +workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living +conditions. + +Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed +a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected +president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and +practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself +picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she +talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in +all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and +baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old +shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With +friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes +stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest +brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward +to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a +committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in +tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of +Central Park. + +This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers +were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal +opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's +work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a +week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's +scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women +themselves in their own interest--the forerunner of the reports of the +Labor Department's Women's Bureau. + +Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as +the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators +Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the +profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see +them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where +wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them. +However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this +project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step +toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able, +however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the +newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women. + +She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own +union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany _Daily +Knickerbocker_, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country +by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards +standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] _The Revolution_ +encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging +all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out +how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more +Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45 +cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together +say _Equal Pay for Equal Work_."[228] + +Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were +higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for +them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women, +giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a +trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went +on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and +appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to +contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a +training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that +hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready +and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we +will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned +by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor +unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young +women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage +they could get. + +It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new +occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's +opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work +and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as +members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they +disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them, +that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men. +She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the +printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union; +and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the +lately formed Women's Typographical Union. + +Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep, +bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in +1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York +Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an +unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had +recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a +delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the +Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in +opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations +against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union +members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they +called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take +men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not +understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been +fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they +completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had +supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her _Revolution_, they +claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and +her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract +outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not +realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she +would have set up a union shop had the funds been available. + +Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they were +also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was +not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply +criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association. + +"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she +reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think +they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association +is not a _trade_ organization; and while I join heart and hand with +the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by +which they can protect themselves against the oppression of +capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is +more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general +questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the +condition of working people generally."[230] + +She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New +England delegates giving her their support. The New York _World_, very +fair in its coverage of the heated debates, declared, "Of her devotion +to the cause of workingwomen, there can be no question."[231] + + * * * * * + +The activities of the Workingwomen's Association had by this time +begun to irk employers, and some of them threatened instant dismissal +of any employee who reported her wages or hours to these meddling +women. Fear of losing their jobs now hung over many while others were +forbidden by their fathers, husbands, and brothers to have anything to +do with strong-minded Susan B. Anthony. + +To counteract this disintegrating influence and to bring all classes +of women together in their fight for equal rights, Susan persuaded the +popular lecturer, Anna E. Dickinson, to speak for the Workingwomen's +Association at Cooper Union. This, however, only added fuel to the +flames, for Anna, in an emotional speech, "A Struggle for Life," told +the tragic story of Hester Vaughn, a workingwoman who had been accused +of murdering her illegitimate child. Found in a critical condition +with her dead baby beside her, Hester Vaughn had been charged with +infanticide, tried without proper defense, and convicted by a +prejudiced court, although there was no proof that she had +deliberately killed her child. At Susan's instigation, the +Workingwomen's Association sent a woman physician, Dr. Clemence +Lozier, and the well-known author, Eleanor Kirk, to Philadelphia to +investigate the case. Both were convinced of Hester Vaughn's +innocence. + +With the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's courageous editorials in _The +Revolution_, Susan made such an issue of the conviction of Hester +Vaughn that many newspapers accused her of obstructing justice and +advocating free love, and this provided a moral weapon for her critics +to use in their fight against the growing independence of women. +Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for +Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served +to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that +poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women +like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the +need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even +suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women +so that a few of them might be able to understand their rights under +the law and bring aid to their less fortunate sisters. + + * * * * * + +Under Susan's guidance, the Workingwomen's Association continued to +hold meetings as long as she remained in New York. In its limited way, +it carried on much-needed educational work, building up self-respect +and confidence among workingwomen, stirring up "a wholesome +discontent," and preparing the way for women's unions. The public +responded. At Cooper Union, telegraphy courses were opened to women; +the New York Business School, at Susan's instigation, offered young +women scholarships in bookkeeping; and there were repeated requests +for the enrollment of women in the College of New York. + +Living in the heart of this rapidly growing, sprawling city, Susan saw +much to distress her and pondered over the disturbing social +conditions, looking for a way to relieve poverty and wipe out crime +and corruption. She saw luxury, extravagance, and success for the few, +while half of the population lived in the slums in dilapidated houses +and in damp cellars, often four or five to a room. Immigrants, +continually pouring in from Europe, overtaxed the already inadequate +housing, and unfamiliar with our language and customs, were the easy +prey of corrupt politicians. Many were homeless, sleeping in the +streets and parks until the rain or cold drove them into police +stations for warmth and shelter. Susan longed to bring order and +cleanliness, good homes and good government to this overcrowded city, +and again and again she came to the conclusion that votes for women, +which meant a voice in the government, would be the most potent factor +for reform. + +Yet she did not close her mind to other avenues of reform. Seeing +reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the +unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in +_The Revolution_ against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of +the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation +to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public +lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads. +Her active mind also sought a solution of the complicated currency +problem. In fact there was no public question which she hesitated to +approach, to think out or attempt to solve. She did not keep her +struggle for woman suffrage aloof from the pressing problems of the +day. Instead she kept it abreast of the times, keenly alive to social, +political, and economic issues, and involved in current public +affairs. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[220] Feb. 18, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[221] _The Revolution_, II, Sept. 24, 1868, p. 198. L. A. Hines of +Cincinnati, publisher of Hine's Quarterly, assisted Miss Anthony in +organizing women in the sewing trades. + +[222] _Ibid._, p. 204. + +[223] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 999-1000. + +[224] _The Revolution_, II, Oct. 1, 1868, p. 204. + +[225] _Ibid._, p. 200. + +[226] _Ibid._, Oct. 8, 1868, p. 214. A Woman's Exchange was also +initiated by the Workingwomen's Association. + +[227] _Ibid._, June 24, 1869, p. 394. + +[228] _Ibid._, March 18, 1869, p. 173. + +[229] _Ibid._, Feb. 4, 1869, p. 73. + +[230] _Ibid._, Sept. 9, 1869, p. 154. + +[231] _Ibid._, Aug. 26, 1869, p. 120. + + + + +THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July 1868, but +Republicans found it inadequate because it did not specifically +enfranchise Negroes. More than ever convinced that they needed the +Negro vote in order to continue in power, they prepared to supplement +it by a Fifteenth Amendment, which Susan hoped would be drafted to +enfranchise women as well as Negroes. Immediately through her Woman's +Suffrage Association of America, she petitioned Congress to make no +distinction between men and women in any amendment extending or +regulating suffrage. + +She and Elizabeth Stanton also persuaded their good friends, Senator +Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman Julian of Indiana, to introduce in +December 1868 resolutions providing that suffrage be based on +citizenship, be regulated by Congress, and that all citizens, native +or naturalized, enjoy this right without distinction of race, color, +or sex. Before the end of the month, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +and Congressman Julian had introduced other resolutions to enfranchise +women in the District of Columbia and in the territories. Even the New +York _Herald_ could see no reason why "the experiment" of woman +suffrage should not be tried in the District of Columbia.[232] + +To focus attention on woman suffrage at this crucial time, Susan, in +January 1869, called together the first woman suffrage convention ever +held in Washington. No only did it attract women from as far west as +Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, but Senator Pomeroy lent it importance +by his opening speech, and through the detailed and respectful +reporting of the New York _World_ and of Grace Greenwood of the +Philadelphia _Press_ it received nationwide notice. + +Congress, however, gave little heed to women's demands. "The +experiment" of woman suffrage in the District of Columbia was not +tried and nothing came of the resolutions for universal suffrage +introduced by Pomeroy, Julian, and Wilson. In spite of all Susan's +efforts to have the word "sex" added to the Fifteenth Amendment, she +soon faced the bitter disappointment of seeing a version ignoring +women submitted to the states for ratification: "The right of citizens +of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the +United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous +condition of servitude." + +The blatant omission of the word "sex" forced Susan and Mrs. Stanton +to initiate an amendment of their own, a Sixteenth Amendment, and +again Congressman Julian came to their aid, although he too regarded +Negro suffrage as more "immediately important and absorbing"[233] than +suffrage for women. On March 15, 1869, at one of the first sessions of +the newly elected Congress, he introduced an amendment to the +Constitution, providing that the right of suffrage be based on +citizenship without any distinction or discrimination because of sex. +This was the first federal woman suffrage amendment ever proposed in +Congress. + +Opportunity to campaign for this amendment was now offered Susan and +Elizabeth Stanton as they addressed a series of conventions in Ohio, +Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Press notices were good, a +Milwaukee paper describing Susan as "an earnest enthusiastic, fiery +woman--ready, apt, witty and what a politician would call sharp ... +radical in the strongest sense," making "radical everything she +touches."[234] She found woman suffrage sentiment growing by leaps and +bounds in the West and western men ready to support a federal woman +suffrage amendment. + + * * * * * + +With a lighter heart than she had had in many a day and with new +subscriptions to _The Revolution_, Susan returned to New York. She +moved the _Revolution_ office to the first floor of the Women's +Bureau, a large four-story brownstone house at 49 East Twenty-third +Street, near Fifth Avenue, which had been purchased by a wealthy New +Yorker, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps, who looked forward to establishing a +center where women's organizations could meet and where any woman +interested in the advancement of her sex would find encouragement and +inspiration. Susan's hopes were high for the Women's Bureau, and in +this most respectable, fashionable, and even elegant setting, she +expected her _Revolution_, in spite of its inflammable name, to live +down its turbulent past and win new friends and subscribers.[235] + +She made one last effort to resuscitate the American Equal Rights +Association, writing personal letters to old friends, urging that past +differences be forgotten and that all rededicate themselves to +establishing universal suffrage by means of the Sixteenth Amendment. +She was optimistic as she prepared for a convention in New York, +particularly as one obstacle to unity had been removed. George Francis +Train had voluntarily severed all connections with _The Revolution_ to +devote himself to freeing Ireland. She soon found, however, that the +misunderstandings between her and her old antislavery friends were far +deeper than George Francis Train, although he would for a long time be +blamed for them. The Fifteenth Amendment was still a bone of +contention and _The Revolution's_ continued editorials against it +widened the breach. + +The fireworks were set off in the convention of the American Equal +Rights Association by Stephen S. Foster, who objected to the +nomination of Susan and Mrs. Stanton as officers of the Association +because they had in his opinion repudiated its principles. When asked +to explain further, he replied that not only had they published a +paper advocating educated suffrage while the Association stood for +universal suffrage but they had shown themselves unfit by +collaboration with George Francis Train who ridiculed Negroes and +opposed their enfranchisement. + +Trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, Mary Livermore, the popular +new delegate from Chicago, asked whether it was quite fair to bring up +George Francis Train when he had retired from _The Revolution_. + +To this Stephen Foster sternly replied, "If _The Revolution_ which has +so often endorsed George Francis Train will repudiate him because of +his course in respect to the Negro's rights, I have nothing further to +say. But they do not repudiate him. He goes out; but they do not cast +him out."[236] + +"Of course we do not," Susan instantly protested. + +Mr. Foster then objected to the way Susan had spent the funds of the +Association, accusing her of failing to keep adequate accounts. + +This she emphatically denied, explaining that she had presented a full +accounting to the trust fund committee, that it had been audited, and +she had been voted $1,000 to repay her for the amount she had +personally advanced for the work. + +Unwilling to accept her explanation and calling it unreliable, he +continued his complaints until interrupted by Henry Blackwell who +corroborated Susan's statement, adding that she had refused the $1,000 +due her because of the dissatisfaction expressed over her management. +Declaring himself completely satisfied with the settlement and +confident of the purity of Susan's motives even if some of her +expenditures were unwise, Henry Blackwell continued, "I will agree +that many unwise things have been written in _The Revolution_ by a +gentleman who furnished part of the means by which the paper has been +carried on. But that gentleman has withdrawn, and you, who know the +real opinions of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of +Negro suffrage, do not believe that they mean to create antagonism +between the Negro and woman question...." + +To Susan's great relief Henry Blackwell's explanation satisfied the +delegates, who gave her and Mrs. Stanton a vote of confidence. Not so +easily healed, however, were the wounds left by the accusations of +mismanagement and dishonesty. + +The atmosphere was still tense, for differences of opinion on policy +remained. Most of the old reliable workers stood unequivocally for the +Fifteenth Amendment, which they regarded as the crowning achievement +of the antislavery movement, and they heartily disapproved of forcing +the issue of woman suffrage on Congress and the people at this time. +Although they had been deeply moved by the suffering of Negro women +under slavery and had used this as a telling argument for +emancipation, they now gave no thought to Negro women, who, even more +than Negro men, needed the vote to safeguard their rights. Believing +with the Republicans that one reform at a time was all they could +expect, they did not want to hear one word about woman suffrage or a +Sixteenth Amendment until male Negroes were safely enfranchised by the +Fifteenth Amendment. + +Offering a resolution endorsing the Fifteenth Amendment, Frederick +Douglass quoted Julia Ward Howe as saying, "I am willing that the +Negro shall get the ballot before me," and he added, "I cannot see how +anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot +to women as to the Negro." + +Quick as a flash, Susan was on her feet, challenging his statements, +and as the dauntless champion of women debated the question with the +dark-skinned fiery Negro, the friendship and warm affection built up +between them over the years occasionally shone through the sharp words +they spoke to each other. + +"The old antislavery school says that women must stand back," declared +Susan, "that they must wait until male Negroes are voters. But we say, +if you will not give the whole loaf of justice to an entire people, +give it to the most intelligent first." + +Here she was greeted with applause and continued, "If intelligence, +justice, and morality are to be placed in the government, then let the +question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last.... +Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro, how he is hunted +down ..., but with all the wrongs and outrages that he today suffers, +he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady +Stanton." + +"I want to know," shouted Frederick Douglass, "if granting you the +right of suffrage will change the nature of our sexes?" + +"It will change the pecuniary position of woman," Susan retorted +before the shouts of laughter had died down. "She will not be +compelled to take hold of only such employments as man chooses for +her." + +Lucy Stone, who so often in her youth had pleaded with Susan and +Frederick Douglass for both the Negro and women, now entered the +argument. She had matured, but her voice had lost none of its +conviction or its power to sway an audience. Disagreeing with +Douglass's assertion that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman +suffrage, she pointed out that white women of the North were robbed of +their children by the law just as Negro women had been by slavery. + +This was balm to Susan's soul, but with Lucy's next words she lost all +hope that her old friend would cast her lot wholeheartedly with women +at this time. "Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet," +Lucy continued, "and the Negro too has an ocean of wrongs that cannot +be fathomed. But I thank God for the Fifteenth Amendment, and hope +that it will be adopted in every state. I will be thankful in my soul +if anybody can get out of the terrible pit.... + +"I believe," she admitted, "that the national safety of the government +would be more promoted by the admission of women as an element of +restoration and harmony than the other. I believe that the influence +of woman will save the country before every other influence. I see the +signs of the times pointing to this consummation. I believe that in +some parts of the country women will vote for the President of these +United States in 1872." + +Susan grew impatient as Lucy shifted from one side to the other, +straddling the issue. Her own clear-cut approach, earning for her the +reputation of always hitting the nail on the head, made Lucy's seem +like temporizing. + +The men now took control, criticizing the amount of time given to the +discussion of woman's rights, and voted endorsement of the Fifteenth +Amendment. Nevertheless, a small group of determined women continued +their fight, Susan declaring with spirit that she protested against +the Fifteenth Amendment because it was not Equal Rights and would put +2,000,000 more men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 women who +until now had been the equals of the Negro men at their side.[237] + + * * * * * + +It was now clear to Susan and to the few women who worked closely with +her that they needed a strong organization of their own and that it +was folly to waste more time on the Equal Rights Association. Western +delegates, disappointed in the convention's lack of interest in woman +suffrage, expressed themselves freely. They had been sorely tried by +the many speeches on extraneous subjects which cluttered the meetings, +the heritage of a free-speech policy handed down by antislavery +societies. + +"That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug," exploded Mary +Livermore to Susan. "I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor +would any of us, if we had known what it was. We supposed we were +coming to a woman suffrage convention."[238] + +At a reception for all the delegates held at the Women's Bureau at the +close of the convention, this dissatisfaction culminated in a +spontaneous demand for a new organization which would concentrate on +woman suffrage and the Sixteenth Amendment. Alert to the +possibilities, Susan directed this demand into concrete action by +turning the reception temporarily into a business meeting. The result +was the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association by women +from nineteen states, with Mrs. Stanton as president and Susan as a +member of the executive committee. The younger women of the West, +trusting the judgment of Susan and Mrs. Stanton, looked to them for +leadership, as did a few of the old workers in the East--Ernestine +Rose, always in the vanguard, Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Smith +Miller, Lucretia Mott, who although holding no office in the new +organization gave it her support, Martha C. Wright, and Matilda Joslyn +Gage who never wavered in her allegiance. Lucy Stone, who would have +found it hard even to step into the _Revolution_ office, did not +attend the reception at the Women's Bureau or take part in the +formation of the new woman suffrage organization. + +[Illustration: Paulina Wright Davis] + +Aided and abetted by her new National Woman Suffrage Association, +Susan continued her opposition in _The Revolution_ to the Fifteenth +Amendment until it was ratified in 1870. + +So incensed was the Boston group by _The Revolution's_ opposition to +the Fifteenth Amendment, so displeased was Lucy Stone by the formation +of the National Woman Suffrage Association without consultation with +her, one of the oldest workers in the field, that they began to talk +of forming a national woman suffrage organization of their own. They +charged Susan with lust for power and autocratic control. Mrs. Stanton +they found equally objectionable because of her radical views on sex, +marriage, and divorce, expressed in _The Revolution_ in connection +with the Hester Vaughn case. They sincerely felt that the course of +woman suffrage would run more smoothly, arouse less antagonism, and +make more progress without these two militants who were forever +stirring things up and introducing extraneous subjects. + + * * * * * + +During these trying days of accusations, animosity, and rival +factions, Mrs. Stanton's unwavering support was a great comfort to +Susan as was the joy of having a paper to carry her message. + +In addition to all the responsibilities connected with publishing her +weekly paper, advertising, subscriptions, editorial policy, and +raising the money to pay the bills, Susan was also holding successful +conventions in Saratoga and Newport where men and women of wealth and +influence gathered for the summer; she was traveling out to St. Louis, +Chicago, and other western cities to speak on woman suffrage, making +trips to Washington to confer with Congressmen, getting petitions for +the Sixteenth Amendment circulated, and through all this, building up +the National Woman Suffrage Association. + +The _Revolution_ office became the rallying point for a +forward-looking group of women, many of whom contributed to the +hard-hitting liberal sheet. Elizabeth Tilton, the lovely dark-haired +young wife of the popular lecturer and editor of the _Independent_, +selected the poetry. Alice and Phoebe Cary gladly offered poems and a +novel; and when Susan was away, Phoebe Cary often helped Mrs. Stanton +get out the paper. Elizabeth Smith Miller gave money, encouragement, +and invaluable aid with her translations of interesting letters which +_The Revolution_ received from France and Germany. Laura Curtis +Bullard, the heir to the Dr. Winslow-Soothing-Syrup fortune, who +traveled widely in Europe, sent letters from abroad and took a lively +interest in the paper. Another new recruit was Lillie Devereux Blake, +who was gaining a reputation as a writer and who soon proved to be a +brilliant orator and an invaluable worker in the New York City +suffrage group. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, unfailingly gave her support, +and her calm assurance strengthened Susan. The wealthy Paulina Wright +Davis of Providence, Rhode Island, who followed Parker Pillsbury as +editor, when he felt obliged to resign for financial reasons, gave the +paper generous financial backing. + +[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker] + +It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry +Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the +elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's +prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by +New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a +few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in +Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a +week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of +guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she +has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are +bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. +Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of +others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her +friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, +engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most +favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than +that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in +my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great +movement."[239] + +From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New +York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national +woman suffrage organization. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[232] _The Revolution_, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385. + +[233] George W. Julian, _Political Recollections_, 1840-1872 (Chicago, +1884), pp. 324-325. + +[234] _The Revolution_, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148. + +[235] The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's Bureau +while it housed the radical _Revolution_, and as women showed so +little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a year's +trial. + +[236] _The Revolution_, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307. + +[237] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 392. + +[238] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 327-328. + +[239] _Ibid._, p. 332. + + + + +A HOUSE DIVIDED + + +"I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that +those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of +_The Revolution_ may yet have an organization with which they can work +in harmony."[240] So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during +the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands. + +"The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked +together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy +further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the +woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally +belong to it--and there will be harmonious work." + +When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old +friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be +held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot +use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."[241] + +Those feeling as she did eagerly signed the call, while others who +knew little about the controversy in the East added their names +because they were glad to take part in a convention sponsored by such +prominent men and women as Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, +Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and William Lloyd +Garrison. Still others who did not understand the insurmountable +differences in temperament and policy between the two groups hoped +that a new truly national organization would unite the two factions. +Even Mary Livermore, who had been active in the formation of the +National Woman Suffrage Association, was by this time responding to +overtures from the Boston group, writing William Lloyd Garrison, "I +have been repelled by some of the idiosyncrasies of our New York +friends, as have others. Their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, +the buffoonery of George F. Train, the loose utterances of the +_Revolution_ on the marriage and dress questions--and what is equally +potent hindrance to the cause, the fearful squandering of money at +the New York headquarters--all this has tended to keep me on my own +feet, apart from those to whom I was at first attracted.... I am glad +at the prospect of an association that will be truly national and +which promises so much of success and character."[242] + +Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton received a notice of the Cleveland +convention, but Susan, scanning a copy of the call sent her by a +solicitous friend, was deeply disturbed when she saw the signatures of +Lydia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Myra Bradwell, Gerrit Smith, and other +good friends. + +The New York _World_, at once suspecting a feud, asked, "Where are +those well-known American names, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, +and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It is clear that there is a division in +the ranks of the strong-minded and that an effort is being made to +ostracize _The Revolution_ which has so long upheld the cause of +Suffrage, through evil report and good...."[243] + +The Rochester _Democrat_, loyal to Susan, put this question, "Can it +be possible that a National Woman's Suffrage Convention is called +without Susan's knowledge or consent?... A National Woman's Suffrage +Association without speeches from Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton +will be a new order of things. The idea seems absurd."[244] + +To Susan it also seemed both absurd and unrealistic, for she +remembered how almost single-handed she had held together and built up +the woman suffrage movement during the years when her colleagues had +been busy with family duties. She was appalled at the prospect of a +division in the ranks at this time when she believed victory possible +through the action of a strong united front. + +Confident that many who signed the call were ignorant of or blind to +the animus behind it, she did her best to bring the facts before them. +She put the blame for the rift entirely upon Lucy Stone, believing +that without Lucy's continual stirring up, past differences in policy +would soon have been forgotten. The antagonism between the two burned +fiercely at this time. Susan was determined to fight to the last ditch +for control of the movement, convinced that her policies and Mrs. +Stanton's were forward-looking, unafraid, and always put women first. + +Susan now also had to face the humiliating possibility that she might +be forced to give up _The Revolution_. Not only was the operating +deficit piling up alarmingly, but there were persistent rumors of a +competitor, another woman suffrage paper to be edited by Lucy Stone +and Julia Ward Howe. + +Susan had assumed full financial responsibility for _The Revolution_ +because Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, both with families to +consider, felt unable to share this burden. Mrs. Stanton had always +contributed her services and Parker Pillsbury had been sadly +underpaid, while Susan had drawn out for her salary only the most +meager sums for bare living expenses. + +With a maximum of 3,000 subscribers, the paper could not hope to pay +its way even though she had secured a remarkably loyal group of +advertisers.[245] Reluctantly she raised the subscription price from +$2 to $3 a year. Her friends and family were generous with gifts and +loans, but these only met the pressing needs of the moment and in no +way solved the overall financial problem of the paper. + +Appealing once again to her wealthy and generous Quaker cousin, Anson +Lapham, she wrote him in desperation, "My paper must not, shall not go +down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also +in the grand work which _The Revolution_ seeks to do, and therefore +you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. +Yesterday's mail brought 43 subscribers from Illinois and 20 from +California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you +will save me from giving the world a chance to say, 'There is a +woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business!' +If only I could die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say, 'Amen,' +but to live and fail--it would be too terrible to bear."[246] He came +to her aid as he always had in the past. + +Susan's sister Mary not only lent her all her savings, but spent her +summer vacation in New York in 1869, working in _The Revolution_ +office while Susan, busy with woman suffrage conventions in Newport, +Saratoga, Chicago, and Ohio, was building up good will and +subscriptions for her paper. Concerned for her welfare, Mary +repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged her to give up. Daniel added his +entreaties to Mary's, begging Susan not to go further into debt, but +to form a stock company if she were determined to continue her paper. +She considered his advice very seriously for he was a practical +businessman and yet appreciated what she was trying to do. For a time +the formation of a stock company seemed possible, for the project +appealed to three women of means, Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella +Beecher Hooker, and Laura Curtis Bullard, but it never materialized. + + * * * * * + +With the financial problem of _The Revolution_ still unsolved, Susan +decided to make her appearance at Lucy Stone's convention in +Cleveland, Ohio, on November 24, 1869. Not only did she want to see +with her own eyes and hear with her own ears all that went on, but she +was determined to walk the second mile with Lucy and her supporters, +or even to turn the other cheek, if need be, for the sake of her +beloved cause. + +Seeing her in the audience, Judge Bradwell of Chicago moved that she +be invited to sit on the platform, but Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who +was presiding, replied that he thought this unnecessary as a special +invitation had already been extended to all desiring to identify +themselves with the movement. Judge Bradwell would not be put off, his +motion was carried, and as Susan walked up to the platform to join the +other notables, she was greeted with hearty applause. Sitting there +among her critics, she wondered what she could possibly say to +persuade them to forget their differences for the sake of the cause. +After listening to Lucy Stone plead for renewed work for woman +suffrage and for petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, she +spontaneously rose to her feet and asked permission to speak. "I +hope," she began, "that the work of this association, if it be +organized, will be to go in strong array up to the Capitol at +Washington to demand a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The +question of the admission of women to the ballot would not then be +left to the mass of voters in every State, but would be submitted by +Congress to the several legislatures of the States for ratification, +and ... be decided by the most intelligent portion of the people. If +the question is left to the vote of the rank and file, it will be put +off for years.[247] + +"So help me, Heaven!" she continued with emotion. "I care not what may +come out of this Convention, so that this great cause shall go +forward to its consummation! And though this Convention by its action +shall nullify the National Association of which I am a member, and +though it shall tread its heel upon _The Revolution_, to carry on +which I have struggled as never mortal woman or mortal man struggled +for any cause ... still, if you will do the work in Washington so that +this Amendment will be proposed, and will go with me to the several +Legislatures and _compel_ them to adopt it, I will thank God for this +Convention as long as I have the breath of life." + +Loud and continuous applause greeted these earnest words. However, +instead of pledging themselves to work for a Sixteenth Amendment, the +newly formed American Woman Suffrage Association, blind to the +exceptional opportunity at this time for Congressional action on woman +suffrage, decided to concentrate on work in the states where suffrage +bills were pending. Instead of electing an outstanding woman as +president, they chose Henry Ward Beecher, boasting that this was proof +of their genuine belief in equal rights. Lucy Stone headed the +executive committee. + +Divisions soon began developing among the suffragists in the field. +Many whose one thought previously had been the cause now spent time +weighing the differences between the two organizations and between +personalities, and antagonisms increased. + +Hardest of all for Susan to bear was the definite announcement of a +rival paper, the _Woman's Journal_, to be issued in Boston in January +1870 under the editorship of Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and Julia +Ward Howe, with Henry Blackwell as business manager. Mary Livermore, +who previously had planned to merge her paper, the _Agitator_, with +_The Revolution_ now merged it with the _Woman's Journal_. Financed by +wealthy stockholders, all influential Republicans, the _Journal_, +Susan knew, would be spared the financial struggles of _The +Revolution_, but would be obliged to conform to Republican policy in +its support of woman's rights. Had not the _Woman's Journal_ been such +an obvious affront to the heroic efforts of _The Revolution_ and a +threat to its very existence, she could have rejoiced with Lucy over +one more paper carrying the message of woman suffrage. + +More determined than ever to continue _The Revolution_, Susan +redoubled her efforts, announcing an imposing list of contributors +for 1870, including the British feminist, Lydia Becker, and as a +special attraction, a serial by Alice Cary. Through the efforts of +Mrs. Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe was persuaded to consider serving +as contributing editor provided the paper's name was changed to _The +True Republic_ or to some other name satisfactory to her.[248] + +Having struggled against the odds for so long, Susan had no intention +of being stifled now by Mrs. Stowe's more conservative views, nor +would she give her crusading sheet an innocuous name. However, the +decision was taken out of her hands by _The Revolution's_ coverage of +the sensational McFarland-Richardson murder case, which so shocked +both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe that they gave up all thought of being +associated in a publishing venture with Susan or Mrs. Stanton. + +The whole country was stirred in December 1869 by the fatal shooting +in the _Tribune_ office of the well-known journalist, Albert D. +Richardson, by Daniel McFarland, to whose divorced wife Richardson had +been attentive. When just before his death, Richardson was married to +the divorced Mrs. McFarland by Henry Ward Beecher with Horace Greeley +as a witness, the press was agog. So strong was the feeling against a +divorced woman that Henry Ward Beecher was severely condemned for +officiating at the marriage, and Mrs. Richardson was played up in the +press and in court as the villain, although her divorce had been +granted because of the brutality and instability of McFarland. + +Indignant at the sophistry of the press and the general acceptance of +a double standard of morals, _The Revolution_ not only spoke out +fearlessly in defense of Mrs. Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs. +Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the +case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over +every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the +education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of +the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and +despise each other...."[249] When the court acquitted McFarland, +giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old son, Susan called a +protest meeting which attracted an audience of two thousand. + +Such words and such activities disturbed many who sympathized with +Mrs. Richardson but saw no reason for flaunting exultant approval of +divorce in a woman suffrage paper, and they turned to the _Woman's +Journal_ as more to their taste. + +Susan, however, reading the first number of the _Woman's Journal_, +found its editorials lacking fire. She rebelled at Julia Ward Howe's +counsel, "to lay down all partisan warfare and organize a peaceful +Grand Army of the Republic of Women ... not ... as against men, but as +against all that is pernicious to men and women."[250] Susan's fight +had never been against men but against man-made laws that held women +in bondage. There had always been men willing to help her. Experience +had taught her that the struggle for woman's rights was no peaceful +academic debate, but real warfare which demanded political strategy, +self-sacrifice, and unremitting labor. She was prouder than ever of +her _Revolution_ and its liberal hard-hitting policy. + + * * * * * + +Convinced that the National Woman Suffrage Association must publicize +its existence and its value, Susan began the year 1870 with a +convention in Washington which even Senator Sumner praised as +exceeding in interest anything he had ever witnessed there. Its +striking demonstration of the vitality and intelligence of the +National Association was the best answer she could possibly have given +to the accusations and criticism aimed at her and her organization. + +Jessie Benton Frémont, watching the delegates enter the dining room of +the Arlington Hotel, called Susan over to her table and said with a +twinkle in her eyes, "Now, tell me, Miss Anthony, have you hunted the +country over and picked out and brought to Washington a score of the +most beautiful women you could find?"[251] + +They were a fine-looking and intelligent lot--Paulina Wright Davis, +Isabella Beecher Hooker, Josephine Griffin of the Freedman's Bureau, +Charlotte Wilbour, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Martha C. Wright, and Olympia +Brown; Phoebe Couzins and Virginia Minor from Missouri, Madam Annekè +from Wisconsin, and best of all to Susan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. +Their presence, their friendship and allegiance were a source of great +pride and joy. Elizabeth Stanton had come from St. Louis, interrupting +her successful lecture tour, when she much preferred to stay away from +all conventions. She had written Susan, "Of course, I stand by you to +the end. I would not see you crushed by rivals even if to prevent it +required my being cut into inch bits.... No power in heaven, hell or +earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded +together."[252] + +Also at this convention to show his support of Susan and her program, +was her faithful friend of many years, the Rev. Samuel J. May of +Syracuse. Clara Barton, ill and unable to attend, sent a letter to be +read, an appeal to her soldier friends for woman suffrage. + +Not only did the large and enthusiastic audiences show a growing +interest in votes for women, but two great victories for women in +1869, one in Great Britain and the other in the United States, brought +to the convention a feeling of confidence. Women taxpayers had been +granted the right to vote in municipal elections in England, Scotland, +and Wales, through the efforts of Jacob Bright. In the Territory of +Wyoming, during the first session of its legislature, women had been +granted the right to vote, to hold office, and serve on juries, and +married women had been given the right to their separate property and +their earnings. This progressive action by men of the West turned +Susan's thoughts hopefully to the western territories, and early in +1870 when the Territory of Utah enfranchised its women, she had +further cause for rejoicing. + +To celebrate these victories for which her twenty years' work for +women had blazed the trail, some of her friends held a reception for +her in New York at the Women's Bureau on her fiftieth birthday. She +was amazed at the friendly attention her birthday received in the +press. "Susan's Half Century," read a headline in the _Herald_. The +_World_ called her the Moses of her sex. "A Brave Old Maid," commented +the _Sun_. But it was to the _Tribune_ that she turned with special +interest, always hoping for a word of approval from Horace Greeley and +finding at last this faint ray of praise: "Careful readers of the +_Tribune_ have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not +always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. +Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said that her methods were +as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years +of disputation and struggling. Miss Anthony has thoroughly impressed +friends and enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her +purpose...."[253] + +To Anna E. Dickinson, far away lecturing, Susan confided, "Oh, Anna, I +am so glad of it all because it will teach the young girls that to be +true to principle--to live an idea, though an unpopular one--that to +live single--without any man's name--may be honorable."[254] + +A few of Susan's younger colleagues still insisted that a merger of +the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations might be +possible. Again Theodore Tilton undertook the task of mediation and +Lucretia Mott, who had retired from active participation in the +woman's rights movement, tried to help work out a reconciliation. +Susan was skeptical but gave them her blessing. Representatives of the +American Association, however, again made it plain that they were +unwilling to work with Susan and Mrs. Stanton.[255] + +By this time _The Revolution_ had become an overwhelming financial +burden. For some months Mrs. Stanton had been urging Susan to give it +up and turn to the lecture field, as she had done, to spread the +message of woman's rights. Susan hesitated, unwilling to give up _The +Revolution_ and not yet confident that she could hold the attention of +an audience for a whole evening. However, she found herself a great +success when pushed into several Lyceum lecture engagements in +Pennsylvania by Mrs. Stanton's sudden illness. "Miss Anthony evidently +lectures not for the purpose of receiving applause," commented the +Pittsburgh _Commercial_, "but for the purpose of making people +understand and be convinced. She takes her place on the stage in a +plain and unassuming manner and speaks extemporaneously and fluently, +too, reminding one of an old campaign speaker, who is accustomed to +talk simply for the purpose of converting his audience to his +political theories. She used plain English and plenty of it.... She +clearly evinced a quality that many politicians lack--sincerity."[256] + +For each of these lectures on "Work, Wages, and the Ballot," she +received a fee of $75 and was able as well to get new subscribers for +_The Revolution_. She now saw the possibilities for herself and the +cause in a Lyceum tour, and when the Lyceum Bureau, pleased with her +reception in Pennsylvania wanted to book her for lectures in the West, +she accepted, calling Parker Pillsbury back to _The_ _Revolution_ to +take charge. All through Illinois she drew large audiences and her +fees increased to $95, $125, and $150. In two months she was able to +pay $1,300 of _The Revolution's_ debt. + +When she returned to New York, she realized that she could not +continue to carry _The Revolution_ alone, in spite of increased +subscriptions. Its $10,000 debt weighed heavily upon her. Parker +Pillsbury's help could only be temporary; Mrs. Stanton's strenuous +lecture tour left her little time to give to the paper; and Susan's +own friends and family were unable to finance it further. + +Fortunately the idea of editing a paper appealed strongly to the +wealthy Laura Curtis Bullard, who had the promise of editorial help +from Theodore Tilton. Susan now turned the paper over to them +completely, receiving nothing in return but shares of stock, while she +assumed the entire indebtedness. + +Giving up the control of her beloved paper was one of the most +humiliating experiences and one of the deepest sorrows she ever faced. +_The Revolution_ had become to her the symbol of her crusade for +women. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, she confided to her diary on +the date of the transfer, "It was like signing my own death warrant," +and to a friend she wrote, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of +a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support."[257] + +She made a valiant announcement of the transfer in _The Revolution_ of +May 26, 1870, expressing her delight that the paper had at last found +financial backing and a new, enthusiastic editor. "In view of the +active demand for conventions, lectures, and discussions on Woman +Suffrage," she added, "I have concluded that so far as my own personal +efforts are concerned, I can be more useful on the platform than in a +newspaper. So, on the 1st of June next, I shall cease to be the _sole_ +proprietor of _The Revolution_, and shall be free to attend public +meetings where ever so plain and matter of fact an old worker as I am +can secure a hearing."[258] + +Financial backing, however, did not put _The Revolution_ on its feet, +although its forthright editorials and articles were replaced by spicy +and brilliant observations on pleasant topics which offended no one. +Before the year was up, Mrs. Bullard was making overtures to Susan to +take the paper back. Susan wanted desperately "to keep the Old Ship +Revolution's colors flying"[259] and to bring back Mrs. Stanton's +stinging editorials. She also feared that Mrs. Bullard on Theodore +Tilton's advice might turn the paper over to the Boston group to be +consolidated with the _Woman's Journal_. As no funds were available, +she had to turn her back on her beloved paper and hope for the best. +"I suppose there is a wise Providence in my being stripped of power to +go forward," she wrote at this time. "At any rate, I mean to try and +make good come out of it."[260] + +For one more year, _The Revolution_ struggled on under the editorship +of Mrs. Bullard and Theodore Tilton and then was taken over by the +_Christian Enquirer_. The $10,000 debt, incurred under Susan's +management, she regarded as her responsibility, although her brother +Daniel and many of her friends urged bankruptcy proceedings. "My pride +for women, to say nothing of my conscience," she insisted, "says +no."[261] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[240] Lucy Stone to Frank Sanborn, Aug. 18, 1869, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[241] Lucy Stone to Esther Pugh, Aug. 30, 1869, Ida Husted Harper +Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. + +[242] Mary Livermore to W. L. Garrison, Oct. 4, 1869, Boston Public +Library. Wendell Phillips did not sign the call or attend the +convention for "reasons that are good to him," wrote Lucy Stone to +Garrison, Sept. 27, 1869, Boston Public Library. + +[243] _The Revolution_, IV, Oct. 21, 1869, p. 265. + +[244] _Ibid._, p. 266. + +[245] The Empire Sewing Machine Co., Benedict's Watches, Madame +Demorest's dress patterns, Sapolio, insurance companies, savings +banks, the Union Pacific, offering first mortgage bonds. + +[246] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 354-355. In 1873, Anson Lapham +cancelled notes, amounting to $4000, and praised Susan for her +continued courageous work for women. + +[247] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 2, 1869, p. 343. + +[248] Harriet Beecher Stowe to Susan B. Anthony, Dec., 1869, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[249] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 23, 1869, p. 385. + +[250] _Woman's Journal_, Jan. 8, 1870. + +[251] Ms., Diary, Jan. 18, 1870. + +[252] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, pp. 124-125. + +[253] _The Revolution_, V, Feb. 24, 1870, pp. 117-118. Susan +attributed the _Tribune_ editorial to Whitelaw Reid. Susan B. Anthony +Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[254] Feb. 21, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. +Anna E. Dickinson sent Miss Anthony generous checks to help finance +_The Revolution_. Although she lectured at Cooper Union for the +National Woman Suffrage Association shortly after it was organized, +she never became a member of the organization or attended its +conventions. This was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony. + +[255] Finally, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton against their best +judgment were persuaded by younger members of the National Woman +Suffrage Association to drop the name National and replace it with +Union and then to try to negotiate further with the American +Association. Theodore Tilton was elected president of the Union Woman +Suffrage Society. This proved to be an organization in name only, and +in a short time these same younger members clamored for the return to +office of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and reestablished the National +Woman Suffrage Association. + +[256] _The Revolution_, V, March 10, 1870, p. 153. Mrs. Stanton's +Lyceum lectures were undertaken to finance the education of her 7 +children. + +[257] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 362. + +[258] _The Revolution_, V, May 26, 1870, p. 328. + +[259] Sept. 19, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[260] To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's Archives, +Cambridge, Massachusetts. + +[261] To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. Anthony +Collection + + + + +A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay +off _The Revolution's_ debt, she was pondering a new approach to the +enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a +St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor. + +Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states +the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to +prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by +the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or +enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of +citizens of the United States." + +To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great +appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis +Minor's arguments in _The Revolution_ and also his suggestion that +some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by +attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this +new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional +committee in 1870. + +With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked +forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in +Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she +reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands +of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on +Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more +ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and +women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however, +she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling +important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found +the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to +Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris +of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the +new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments on +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact +legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in +them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled before the House +judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened. + +[Illustration: Victoria C. Woodhull] + +Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan +consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's +hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a +woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer, +Albert G. Riddle,[262] to represent the 30,000 women who had +petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker +attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage. +This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement. +Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the +District of Columbia. + +Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however, +she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister, +Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press +had been full of amused comments regarding the lady bankers, and +Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here +she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview +in _The Revolution_, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin & +Co., Bankers and Brokers.[263] + +About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established +their own paper, _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, an "Organ of Social +Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed +its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her +own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore +unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance, +advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement, +spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the +nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States. + +Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan +listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her +Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated +voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat +perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest +youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary +committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment +at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright +crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella +Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. They invited Victoria and her +sister, Tennessee Claflin, to their convention, and asked her to +repeat her speech for them. + +At this convention Susan, encouraged by the favorable reception among +politicians of the Woodhull Memorial, mapped out a new and militant +campaign, based on her growing conviction that under the Fourteenth +Amendment women's rights as citizens were guaranteed. She urged women +to claim their rights as citizens and persons under the Fourteenth +Amendment, to register and prepare to vote at the next election, and +to bring suit in the courts if they were refused. + + * * * * * + +So enthusiastic had been the reception of this new approach to woman +suffrage, so favorable had been the news from those close to leading +Republicans, that Susan was unprepared for the adverse report of the +judiciary committee on the Woodhull Memorial. She now studied the +favorable minority report issued by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts +and William Loughridge of Iowa. Their arguments seemed to her +unanswerable; and hurriedly and impulsively in the midst of her +western lecture tour, she dashed off a few lines to Victoria Woodhull, +to whom she willingly gave credit for bringing out this report. +"Glorious old Ben!" she wrote. "He surely is going to pronounce the +word that will settle the woman question, just as he did the word +'contraband' that so summarily settled the Negro question.... +Everybody here chimes in with the new conclusion that we are already +free."[264] + +Far from New York where Victoria's activities were being aired by the +press, Susan thought of her at this time only in connection with the +Memorial and its impact on the judiciary committee. To be sure, she +heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the +Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox +views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, +traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan +was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself +found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to +discount attacks on the reputations of progressive women. In fact, +Victoria Woodhull provided Susan and her associates with a spectacular +opportunity to prove the sincerity of their contention that there +should not be a double standard of morals--one for men and another for +women. + +Returning to New York in May 1871, to a convention of the National +Woman Suffrage Association, Susan found that Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. +Stanton, and Mrs. Davis had invited Victoria Woodhull to address that +convention and to sit on the platform between Lucretia Mott and Mrs. +Stanton. + +Through them and others more critical, Susan was brought up to date on +the sensational story of Victoria Woodhull, who had been drawing +record crowds to her lectures and whose unconventional life +continuously provided reporters with interesting copy. Victoria's home +at 15 East Thirty-eighth Street, resplendent and ornate with gilded +furniture and bric-a-brac, housed not only her husband, Colonel Blood, +and herself but her divorced husband and their children as well, and +also all of her quarrelsome relatives. Here many radicals, social +reformers, and spiritualists gathered, among them Stephen Pearl +Andrews, who soon made use of Victoria and her _Weekly_ to publicize +his dream of a new world order, the Pantarchy, as he called it. +Victoria, herself, was an ardent spiritualist, controlled by +Demosthenes of the spirit world to whom she believed she owed her most +brilliant utterances and by whom she was guided to announce herself as +a presidential candidate in 1872. Needless to say, with such a +background, Victoria Woodhull became a very controversial figure among +the suffragists. + +In New York only a few days, it was hard for Susan to separate fact +from fiction, truth from rumor and animosity. Even Demosthenes did not +seem too ridiculous to her, for many of her most respected friends +were spiritualists. Nor did Victoria's presidential aspirations +trouble her greatly. Presidential candidates had been nothing to brag +of, and willingly would she support the right woman for President. If +Victoria lived up to the high standard of the Woodhull Memorial, then +even she might be that woman. After all, it was an era of radical +theories and Utopian dreams, of extravagances of every sort. Almost +anything could happen. + +Whatever doubts the suffragists may have had when they saw Victoria +Woodhull on the platform at the New York meeting of the National +Association, she swept them all along with her when, as one inspired, +she made her "Great Secession" speech. "If the very next Congress +refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," she +declared, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to +frame a new constitution and to erect a new government.... We mean +treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than +was that of the South. We are plotting revolution; we will overthrow +this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its +stead...."[265] + +Susan, who felt deeply her right to full citizenship, who herself had +talked revolution, and who had so often listened to the extravagant +antislavery declarations of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, +and Parker Pillsbury, was not offended by these statements. She was, +however, troubled by the attitude of the press, particularly of the +_Tribune_ which labeled this gathering the "Woodhull Convention" and +accused the suffragists of adopting Mrs. Woodhull's free-love +theories. + +Having experienced so recently the animosity stirred up by her +alliance with George Francis Train, Susan resolved to be cautious +regarding Victoria Woodhull and was beginning to wonder if Victoria +was not using the suffragists to further her own ambitions. Yet many +trusted friends, who had talked with Mrs. Woodhull far more than she +had the opportunity to do, were convinced that she was a genius and a +prophet who had risen above the sordid environment of her youth to do +a great work for women and who had the courage to handle subjects +which others feared to touch. + +Free love, for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled +indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less +stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of +marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that +Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did she actually advocate +promiscuity? + +With these questions puzzling her, she left for Rochester and the +West. Almost immediately the papers were full of Victoria Woodhull and +her family quarrels which brought her into court. This was a +disillusioning experience for the National Woman Suffrage Association +which had so recently featured Victoria Woodhull as a speaker, and +Susan began seriously to question the wisdom of further association +with this strange controversial character. Nevertheless, Victoria +still had her ardent defenders among the suffragists, particularly +Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. Even the thoughtful +judicious Martha C. Wright wrote Mrs. Hooker at this time, "It is not +always 'the wise and prudent' to whom the truth is revealed; tho' far +be it from me to imply aught derogatory to Mrs. Woodhull. No one can +be with her, see her gentle and modest bearing and her spiritual face, +without feeling sure that she is a true woman, whatever unhappy +surroundings may have compromised her. I have never met a stranger +toward whom I felt more tenderly drawn, in sympathy and love."[266] + +Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke her mind in Theodore Tilton's new paper, +_The Golden Age_: "Victoria C. Woodhull stands before us today a +grand, brave woman, radical alike in political, religious and social +principles. Her face and form indicate the complete triumph in her +nature of the spiritual over the sensuous. The processes of her +education are little to us; the grand result everything."[267] + +Victoria was in dire need of defenders, for the press was venomous, +goading her on to revenge. Susan, now traveling westward, lecturing in +one state after another, thinking of ways to interest the people in +woman suffrage, was too busy and too far away to follow Victoria +Woodhull's court battles. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Stanton met Susan in Chicago late in May 1871, to join her on a +lecture tour of the far West. Together they headed for Wyoming and +Utah, eager to set foot in the states which had been the first to +extend suffrage to women. The long leisurely days on the train gave +these two old friends, Susan now fifty-one and Mrs. Stanton, +fifty-six, ample time to talk and philosophize, to appraise their past +efforts for women, and plan their speeches for the days ahead. While +their main theme would always be votes for women, they decided that +from now on they must also arouse women to rebel against their legal +bondage under the "man marriage," as they called it, and to face +frankly the facts about sex, prostitution, and the double standard of +morals. In Utah, in the midst of polygamy fostered by the Mormon +Church, they would encounter still another sex problem. + +After an enthusiastic welcome in Denver, they moved on to Laramie, +Wyoming, where one hundred women greeted them as the train pulled in. +From this first woman suffrage state, Susan exultingly wrote, "We have +been moving over the soil, that is really the land of the free and the +home of the brave.... Women here can say, 'What a magnificent country +is ours, where every class and caste, color and sex, may find +freedom....'"[268] + +They reached Salt Lake City just after the Godbe secession by which a +group of liberal Mormons abandoned polygamy. As guests of the Godbes +for a week, they had every opportunity to become acquainted with the +Mormons, to observe women under polygamy, and to speak in long all-day +sessions to women alone. + +Susan tried to show her audiences in Utah that her point of attack +under both monogamy and polygamy was the subjection of women, and that +to remedy this the self-support of women was essential. In Utah she +found little opportunity for women to earn a living for themselves and +their children, as there was no manufacturing and there were no free +schools in need of teachers. "Women here, as everywhere," she +declared, "must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid +of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from +entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal."[269] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1871] + +Some of Susan's' critics at home felt she was again besmirching the +suffrage cause by setting foot in polygamous Utah, but this was of no +moment to her, for she saw the crying need of the right kind of +missionary work among Mormon women, "no Phariseeism, no shudders of +Puritanic horror, ... but a simple, loving fraternal clasp of hands +with these struggling women" to encourage them and point the way. + +Hearing that Susan and Mrs. Stanton were in the West en route to +California, Leland Stanford, Governor of California and president of +the recently completed Central Pacific Railway, sent them passes for +their journey. They reached San Francisco with high hopes that they +could win the support of western men for their demand for woman +suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Their welcome was warm and +the press friendly. An audience of over 1,200 listened with real +interest to Mrs. Stanton. Then the two crusaders made a misstep. Eager +to learn the woman's side of the case in the recent widely publicized +murder of the wealthy attorney, Alexander P. Crittenden, by Laura +Fair, they visited Laura Fair in prison. Immediately the newspapers +reported this move in a most critical vein, with the result that an +uneasy audience crowded into the hall where Susan was to speak on "The +Power of the Ballot." As she proceeded to prove that women needed the +ballot to protect themselves and their work and could not count on the +support and protection of men, she cited case after case of men's +betrayal of women. Then bringing home her point, she declared with +vigor, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight."[270] + +Boos and hisses from every part of the hall greeted this statement; +but Susan, trained on the antislavery platform to hold her ground +whatever the tumult, waited patiently until this protest subsided, +standing before the defiant audience, poised and unafraid. Then, in a +clear steady voice, she repeated her challenging words. This time, +above the hisses, she heard a few cheers, and for the third time she +repeated, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight." + +Now the audience, admiring her courage, roared its applause. "I +declare to you," she concluded, "that woman must not depend upon the +protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and here I +take my stand." + +Reading the newspapers the next morning, she found herself accused not +only of defending Laura Fair, but of condoning the murder of +Crittenden. This story was republished throughout the state and +eagerly picked up by New York newspapers. + +As it was now impossible for her or for Mrs. Stanton to draw a +friendly audience anywhere in California, they took refuge in the +Yosemite Valley for the next few weeks. Susan was inconsolable. These +slanders on top of the loss of _The Revolution_ and the split in the +suffrage ranks seemed more than she could bear. "Never in all my hard +experience have I been under such fire," she confided to her diary. +"The clouds are so heavy over me.... I never before was so cut +down."[271] + +Not until she had spent several days riding horseback in the Yosemite +Valley on "men's saddles" in "linen bloomers," over long perilous +exhausting trails, did the clouds begin to lift. Gradually the beauty +and grandeur of the mountains and the giant redwoods brought her peace +and refreshment, putting to flight "all the old six-days story and the +6,000 jeers." + +Bearing the brunt of the censure in California, Susan expected Mrs. +Stanton to come to her defense in letters to the newspapers. When she +did not do so, Susan was deeply hurt, for in the past she had so many +times smoothed the way for her friend. Even now, on their return to +San Francisco, where she herself did not yet dare lecture, she did her +best to build up audiences for Mrs. Stanton and to get correct +transcripts of her lectures to the papers. Disillusioned and +heartsick, she was for the first time sadly disappointed in her +dearest friend. + +Moving on to Oregon to lecture at the request of the pioneer +suffragist, Abigail Scott Duniway, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, who had +left for the East, "As I rolled on the ocean last week feeling that +the very next strain might swamp the ship, and thinking over all my +sins of omission and commission, there was nothing undone which +haunted me like the failure to speak the word at San Francisco again +and more fully. I would rather today have the satisfaction of having +said the true and needful thing on Laura Fair and the social evil, +with the hisses and hoots of San Francisco and the entire nation +around me, than all that you or I could possibly experience from their +united eulogies with that one word unsaid."[272] + + * * * * * + +So far Susan's western trip had netted her only $350. This was +disappointing in so far as she had counted upon it to reduce +substantially her _Revolution_ debt. She now hoped to build her +earnings up to $1,000 in Oregon and Washington. Everywhere in these +two states people took her to their hearts and the press with a few +exceptions was complimentary. The beauty of the rugged mountainous +country compensated her somewhat for the long tiring stage rides over +rough roads and for the cold uncomfortable lonely nights in poor +hotels. Only occasionally did she enjoy the luxury of a good cup of +coffee or a clean bed in a warm friendly home. + +At first in Oregon she was apprehensive about facing an audience +because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton, +"But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in +store for me."[273] She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's +right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to +be self-supporting, and clearly and logically she marshaled her facts +and her arguments. Occasionally she obliged with a temperance speech, +or gathered women together to talk to them about the social evil, +relieved when they responded to this delicate subject with earnestness +and gratitude. Practice soon made her an easy, extemporaneous speaker. +Yet she was only now and then satisfied with her efforts, recording in +her diary, "Was happy in a real Patrick Henry speech."[274] + +The proceeds from her lectures were disappointing, as money was scarce +in the West that winter, and she had just decided to return to the +East to spend Christmas with her mother and sisters when she was urged +to accept lecture engagements in California. Putting her own personal +longings behind her, she took the stage to California, sitting outside +with the driver so that she could better enjoy the scenery and learn +more about the people who had settled this new lonely overpowering +country. "Horrible indeed are the roads," she wrote her mother, "miles +and miles of corduroy and then twenty miles ... of black mud.... How +my thought does turn homeward, mother."[275] + +This time she was warmly received in San Francisco. The prejudice, so +vocal six months before, had disappeared. "Made my Fourteenth +Amendment argument splendidly," she wrote in her diary. "All delighted +with it and me--and it is such a comfort to have the friends feel that +I help the good work on."[276] + +She was gaining confidence in herself and wrote her family, "I miss +Mrs. Stanton. Still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people +call on me, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits +a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of +merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant +scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted magazine. +There is no alternative--whoever goes into a parlor or before an +audience with that woman does it at a cost of a fearful overshadowing, +a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, +because I felt our cause was most profited by her being seen and +heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."[277] + +Starting homeward through Wyoming and Nevada where she also had +lecture engagements, she wrote in her diary on January 1, 1872, "6 +months of constant travel, full 8000 miles, 108 lectures. The year's +work full 13,000 miles travel--170 meetings." On the train she met the +new California Senator, Aaron A. Sargent, his wife Ellen, and their +children. A warm friendship developed on this long journey during +which the train was stalled in deep snow drifts. "This is indeed a +fearful ordeal, fastened here ... midway of the continent at the top +of the Rocky mountains," she recorded. "The railroad has supplied the +passengers with soda crackers and dried fish.... Mrs. Sargent and I +have made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing +mothers."[278] The Sargents had brought their own food for the journey +and shared it with Susan. This and the good conversation lightened the +ordeal for her, especially as both Senator and Mrs. Sargent believed +heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for +the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage. + +This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was +the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These +men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the +dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice +of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country. + + * * * * * + +Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking +her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped +to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the +national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for +which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She +found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism +and dissension. + +Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention: "I have +been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?' +Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to +Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to +Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the +judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was +young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to +capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."[279] + +"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs. +Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I +did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of +Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about +Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they +make themselves." + +Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this +convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches +calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate +her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had +concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and +she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly +she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President +toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right +to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. + +This time it was Susan, not Victoria, who was granted a hearing before +the Senate judiciary committee. "At the close of the war," Susan +reminded the Senators, "Congress lifted the question of suffrage for +men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the +deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the +Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed ... we rushed to you with +petitions praying you not to insert the word 'male' in the second +clause. Our best friends ... said to us: 'The insertion of that word +puts no new barrier against women; therefore do not embarrass us but +wait until we get the Negro question settled.' So the Fourteenth +Amendment with the word 'male' was adopted.[280] + +"When the Fifteenth was presented without the word 'sex,'" she +continued, "we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends +declared that the absence of the word was no hindrance to us, and +again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war, +saying, 'After we have enfranchised the Negro, we will take up your +case.' + +"Have they done as they promised?" she asked. "When we come asking +protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men +say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in +the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void +the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word +'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon +yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the +end a bloody revolution...." + +Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for +women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse +report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent +supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the +House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and +Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the +right to vote and hold office in the territories. + + * * * * * + +Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for +woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in +Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of +the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she +realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run +do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality +who gave only part of herself to the task. + +When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly +that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new +political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We +have no element out of which to make a political party, because there +is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he +endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance +party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown +away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."[281] + +Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has +the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her +port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I +might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is +wholly owned and dominated by _men_ spirits and I spurn the whole lot +of them...." + +A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of _Woodhull & +Claflin's Weekly_, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call +to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage +Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her +name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not +to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's +presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new +political party while she was publishing _The Revolution_, she was +practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria +Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure. + +Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker +still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to +date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of +Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The +Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had +again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an +increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail +suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard, +Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to +free the National Association of her influence. + +When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into +the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association +in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a +joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they +would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a +woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her +flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she +called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of +the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope +with Victoria, should this again become necessary. + +Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance +near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention +adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with the people's +convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan +refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited +audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on +the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and +it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the +suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor +many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan +in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the +same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands +until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the +audience dispersed in the darkness. + +With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage +Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at +Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was +nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal +Rights party. + +Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan +breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her +diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle--all come of Mrs. S. +[Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's +Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with +the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by +letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull--though we rescued it--it was +as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no +condemnation of her actions in _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ but only +the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's +great work.[282] + +The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria +Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into +line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under +Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood, +campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria +Woodhull. + + * * * * * + +While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the +sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of +financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication +of her _Weekly_, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and +Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the +liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George +W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored +woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a +persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better. +Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated +Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this +coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go +the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a +plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which +Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important, +powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform. + +"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its +obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to +the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is +received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of +citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful +consideration."[283] + +Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her +Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready +to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown +around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the +two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and +work together for "the living, vital issue of today--freedom to +women." + +She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward +to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school +district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were +generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New +York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers +she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it +plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in +Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a +torrent of false accusations.[284] Only Mary Livermore of the American +Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with +Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did +not lack for effective orators. + +In an _Appeal to the Women of America_, financed by the Republicans +and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and +the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most +bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has +heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women, +while the whole power of the _Tribune_ had been used to crush our +great reform...."[285] + +Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time +friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and +defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not +join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding +Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the +Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the +Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the +Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that +everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a +Democrat or an apostate."[286] + +Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as +they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse +further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her +speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the +Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs. +Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse +the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of +woman's claim to vote, _I_ am not...."[287] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[262] A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of Senator +Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage. + +[263] _The Revolution_, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159. + +[264] Clipping from _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Susan B. Anthony +Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[265] Emanie, Sachs, _The Terrible Siren_ (New York, 1928), p. 87. +After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage meeting in +Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, 1871, "I +wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet modest and +dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely inspired for her +work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much impressed with her work +and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, +Smith College. + +[266] May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. + +[267] _The Golden Age_, Dec., 1871. + +[268] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 388. + +[269] _Ibid._, pp. 389-390. + +[270] _Ibid._, pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had been the +mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was acquitted of +his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to her pistol +shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia Cooley +Altrocchi, _The Spectacular San Franciscans_ (New York, 1949). + +[271] Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871. + +[272] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396. + +[273] _Ibid._ + +[274] Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871. + +[275] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 403. + +[276] Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871. + +[277] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396. + +[278] Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872. + +[279] _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Jan. 23, 1873. + +[280] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 410-411. + +[281] _Ibid._, p. 413. + +[282] Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872. + +[283] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 416-417. + +[284] Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the _Woman's +Journal_, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the movement to +which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their lot with the +Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would have been +better for all concerned...." + +[285] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 519. The Republicans +financed a paper, _Woman's Campaign_, edited by Helen Barnard, which +published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for a time hoped to +convert into a woman suffrage paper. + +[286] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 422. + +[287] _Ibid._ + + + + +TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign +of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the +Union. + +Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the +possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great +interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had +attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were +still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for +representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in +Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the +case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that +"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This +legal contest had been fully reported in _The Revolution_, and +disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to +establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising +among women. + +There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she +hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She +had exulted in _The Revolution_ in 1868 over the attempt of women to +vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of +women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French +had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla +Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming +this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871, +Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V. +White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California, +and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to +vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to +the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their +ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election +Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of +the United States.[289] Another test case based on the Fourteenth +Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell, +one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the +Illinois bar because she was a woman. + +With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women, +lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the +legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even +the press was friendly. + +Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth +and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the +thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she +glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these +challenging words, "Now Register!... If you were not permitted to vote +you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face +death for it...."[290] + +This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right. +She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she +intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly +to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering. +Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered. +The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that +this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she +claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but +under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines. +Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she +persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both +Republicans, finally consented to register the four women. + +This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing +to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by +the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined +the ranks of the militants. + +On election day, November 5, 1872, Susan gleefully wrote Elizabeth +Stanton, "Well, I have gone and done it!!--positively voted the +Republican ticket--Strait--this A.M. at 7 o'clock--& swore my vote in +at that.... All my three sisters voted--Rhoda deGarmo too--Amy Post +was rejected & she will immediately bring action against the +registrars.... Not a jeer not a word--not a look--disrespectful has +met a single woman.... I hope the mornings telegrams will tell of many +women all over the country trying to vote.... I hope you voted +too."[291] + + * * * * * + +Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which +Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in +Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie +Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had +courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth +Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm +about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan. + +However, the fact that Susan B. Anthony had voted won immediate +response from the press in all parts of the country. Newspapers in +general were friendly, the New York _Times_ boldly declaring, "The act +of Susan B. Anthony should have a place in history," and the Chicago +_Tribune_ venturing to suggest that she ought to hold public office. +The cartoonists, however, reveling in a new and tempting subject, +caricatured her unmercifully, the New York Graphic setting the tone. +Some Democratic papers condemned her, following the line of the +Rochester _Union and Advertiser_ which flaunted the headline, "Female +Lawlessness," and declared that Miss Anthony's lawlessness had proved +women unfit for the ballot. + +Before she voted, Susan had taken the precaution of consulting Judge +Henry R. Selden, a former judge of the Court of Appeals. After +listening with interest to her story and examining the arguments of +Benjamin Butler, Francis Minor, and Albert G. Riddle in support of the +claim that women had a right to vote under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, he was convinced that women had a good case and +consented to advise her and defend her if necessary. Judge Selden, now +retired from the bench because of ill health, was practicing law in +Rochester where he was highly respected. A Republican, he had served +as lieutenant governor, member of the Assembly, and state senator. +Susan had known him as one of the city's active abolitionists, a +friend of Frederick Douglass who had warned him to flee the country +after the raid on Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown. Such +a man she felt she could trust. + +All was quiet for about two weeks after the election and it looked as +if the episode might be forgotten in the jubilation over Grant's +election. Then, on November 18, the United States deputy marshal rang +the doorbell at 7 Madison Street and asked for Miss Susan B. Anthony. +When she greeted him, he announced with embarrassment that he had come +to arrest her. + +"Is this your usual manner of serving a warrant?" she asked in +surprise.[292] + +He then handed her papers, charging that she had voted in violation of +Section 19 of an Act of Congress, which stipulated that anyone voting +knowingly without having the lawful right to vote was guilty of a +crime, and on conviction would be punished by a fine not exceeding +$500, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years. + +This was a serious development. It had never occurred to Susan that +this law, passed in 1870 to halt the voting of southern rebels, could +actually be applicable to her. In fact, she had expected to bring suit +against election inspectors for refusing to accept the ballots of +women. Now charged with crime and arrested, she suddenly began to +sense the import of what was happening to her. + +When the marshal suggested that she report alone to the United States +Commissioner, she emphatically refused to go of her own free will and +they left the house together, she extending her wrists for the +handcuffs and he ignoring her gesture. As they got on the streetcar +and the conductor asked for her fare, she further embarrassed the +marshal by loudly announcing, "I'm traveling at the expense of the +government. This gentleman is escorting me to jail. Ask him for my +fare." When they arrived at the commissioner's office, he was not +there, but a hearing was set for November 29. + +On that day, in the office where a few years before fugitive slaves +had been returned to their masters, Susan was questioned and +cross-examined, and she felt akin to those slaves. Proudly she +admitted that she had voted, that she had conferred with Judge Selden, +that with or without his advice she would have attempted to vote to +test women's right to the franchise.[293] + +"Did you have any doubt yourself of your right to vote?" asked the +commissioner. + +"Not a particle," she replied. + +On December 23, 1872, in Rochester's common council chamber, before a +large curious audience, Susan, the other women voters, and the +election inspectors were arraigned. People expecting to see bold +notoriety-seeking women were surprised by their seriousness and +dignity. "The majority of these law-breakers," reported the press, +"were elderly, matronly-looking women with thoughtful faces, just the +sort one would like to see in charge of one's sick-room, considerate, +patient, kindly."[294] + +The United States Commissioner fixed their bail at $500 each. All +furnished bail but Susan, who through her counsel, Henry R. Selden, +applied for a writ of habeas corpus, demanding immediate release and +challenging the lawfulness of her arrest. When a writ of habeas corpus +was denied and her bail increased to $1,000 by United States District +Judge Nathan K. Hall, sitting in Albany, Susan was more than ever +determined to resist the interference of the courts in her +constitutional right as a citizen to vote. She refused to give bail, +emphatically stating that she preferred prison. + +Seeing no heroism but only disgrace in a jail term for his client and +unwilling to let her bring this ignominy upon herself. Henry Selden +chivalrously assured her that this was a time when she must be guided +by her lawyer's advice, and he paid her bail. Ignorant of the +technicalities of the law, she did not realize the far-reaching +implications of this well-intentioned act until they left the +courtroom and in the hallway met tall vigorous John Van Voorhis of +Rochester who was working on the case with Judge Selden. With the +impatience of a younger man, eager to fight to the finish, he +exclaimed, "You have lost your chance to get your case before the +Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus!"[295] + +Aghast, Susan rushed back to the courtroom, hoping to cancel the bond, +but it was too late. Bitterly disappointed, she remonstrated with +Henry Selden, but he quietly replied, "I could not see a lady I +respected in jail." She never forgave him for this, in spite of her +continued appreciation of his keen legal mind, his unfailing kindness, +and his willingness to battle for women. + +Within a few days she appeared before the Federal Grand Jury in +Albany and was indicted on the charge that she "did knowingly, +wrongfully and unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress of +the United States...."[296] Her trial was set for the term of the +United States District Court, beginning May 13, 1873, in Rochester, +New York. + +[Illustration: Judge Henry R. Selden] + +During these difficult days in Albany, Susan found comfort and +courage, as in the past, in the friendliness of Lydia Mott's home. +Here she planned the steps by which to win public approval and +financial aid for her test case. She addressed the commission which +was revising New York's constitution on woman's right to vote under +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pointing out that the law +limiting suffrage to males was nullified by this new interpretation. +Eager to spread the truth about her own legal contest, she distributed +printed copies of Judge Selden's argument. Then traveling to New York +and Washington, she personally presented copies to newspaper editors +and Congressmen. To one of these men she wrote, "It is not for +myself--but for all womanhood--yes and all manhood too--that I most +rejoice in the appeal to the legal mind of the Nation. It is no +longer whether women wish to vote, or men are willing, but it is +woman's Constitutional right."[297] + + * * * * * + +In spite of the fact that Susan was technically in the custody of the +United States Marshal, who objected to her leaving Rochester, she +managed to carry out a full schedule of lectures in Ohio, Indiana, and +Illinois, and also the usual annual Washington and New York woman +suffrage conventions at which she told the story of her voting, her +arrest, and her pending trial, and where she received enthusiastic +support. + +Because she wanted the people to understand the legal points on which +she based her right to vote, Susan spoke on "The Equal Right of All +Citizens to the Ballot" in every district in Monroe County. So +thorough and convincing was she that the district attorney asked for a +change of venue, fearing that any Monroe County jury, sitting in +Rochester, would be prejudiced in her favor. When her case was +transferred to the United States Circuit Court in Canandaigua, to be +heard a month later, she immediately descended upon Ontario County +with her speech, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to +Vote?" and Matilda Joslyn Gage joined her, speaking on "The United +States on Trial, Not Susan B. Anthony." + +On the lecture platform Susan wore a gray silk dress with a soft, +white lace collar. Her hair, now graying, was smoothed back and +twisted neatly into a tight knot. Everything about her indicated +refinement and sincerity, and most of her audiences felt this. + +"Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the +natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and vote +in making and executing the laws," she declared as she looked into the +faces of the men and women who had gathered to hear her, farmers, +storekeepers, lawyers, and housewives, rich and poor, a cross section +of America. + +Repeating to them salient passages from the Declaration of +Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, she added, "It was +we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male +citizens: but we the whole people, who formed this Union. And we +formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; +not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the +whole people--women as well as men."[298] + +She asked, "Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities +of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state +prisoners will agree with me that it is not only one of them, but the +one without which all the others are nothing."[299] + +Quoting for them the Fifteenth Amendment, she told them it had settled +forever the question of the citizen's right to vote. The Fifteenth +Amendment, she reasoned, applies to women, first because women are +citizens and secondly because of their "previous condition of +servitude." Defining a slave as a person robbed of the proceeds of his +labor and subject to the will of another, she showed how state laws +relating to married women had placed them in the position of slaves. + +As she analyzed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments +and cited authorities for her conclusions, she left little doubt in +the minds of those who heard her that women were persons and citizens +whose privileges and immunities could not be abridged. + +On this note she concluded: "We ask the juries to fail to return +verdicts of 'guilty' against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United +States citizens for offering their votes at our elections ... We ask +the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and +wherever there is room for doubt to give its benefit on the side of +liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that 'the true rule of +interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its +amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, +everything against human rights unconstitutional.' And it is on this +line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot--all +peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, +when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before +the law." + + * * * * * + +Speaking twenty-one nights in succession was arduous. "So few see or +feel any special importance in the impending trial," she jotted down +in her diary. In towns, such as Geneva, where she had old friends, +like Elizabeth Smith Miller, she was assured of a friendly welcome and +a good audience.[300] + +[Illustration: "The Woman Who Dared"] + +As the collections, taken up after her lectures, were too small to pay +her expenses, her financial problems weighed heavily. The notes she +had signed for _The Revolution_ were in the main still unpaid, and +one of her creditors was growing impatient. She had recently paid her +counsel, Judge Selden, $200 and John Van Voorhis, $75, leaving only +$3.45 in her defense fund, but as usual a few of her loyal friends +came to her aid, and both Judge Selden and John Van Voorhis, deeply +interested in her courageous fight, gave most of their time without +charge.[301] + +If this campaign was a problem financially, it was a success in the +matter of nation-wide publicity. The New York _Herald_ exulted in +hostile gibes at women suffrage and published fictitious interviews, +ridiculing Susan as a homely aggressive old maid, but the New York +_Evening Post_ prophesied that the court decision would likely be in +her favor. The Rochester _Express_ championed her warmly: "All +Rochester will assert--at least all of it worth heeding--that Miss +Anthony holds here the position of a refined and estimable woman, +thoroughly respected and beloved by the large circle of staunch +friends who swear by her common sense and loyalty, if not by her +peculiar views." In fact the consensus of opinion in Rochester was +much like that of the woman who remarked, "No, I am not converted to +what these women advocate. I am too cowardly for that; but I am +converted to Susan B. Anthony."[302] + +This, however, was far from the attitude of Lucy Stone's _Woman's +Journal_, which had ignored Susan's voting in November 1872 because it +was out of sympathy with this militant move and with her +interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Later, as +her case progressed in the courts, the _Journal_ did give it brief +notice as a news item, but in 1873 when it listed as a mark of honor +the women who had worked wisely for the cause, Susan B. Anthony's name +was not among them, and this did not pass unnoticed by Susan; nor did +the fact that she was snubbed by the Congress of Women, meeting in New +York and sponsored by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Maria +Mitchell. This drawing away of women hurt her far more than newspaper +gibes. In fact she was sadly disappointed in women's response to the +herculean effort she was making for them. + +Even more disconcerting was the adverse decision of the Supreme Court +on the Myra Bradwell case, which at once shattered the confidence of +most of her legal advisors. The court held that Illinois had violated +no provision of the federal Constitution in refusing to allow Myra +Bradwell to practice law because she was a woman and declared that the +right to practice law in state courts is not a privilege or an +immunity of a citizen of the United States, nor is the power of a +state to prescribe qualifications for admission to the bar affected by +the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, filing a +dissenting opinion, lived up to Susan's faith in him, but Benjamin +Butler wrote her, "I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that +the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as +it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to +citizens. But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that +the constitutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as +guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give force to them +there must be legislation.... Therefore, the point is for the friends +of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation."[303] + +Susan, however, never wavered in her conviction that she as a citizen +had a constitutional right to vote and that it was her duty to test +this right in the courts. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[288] Ray Strachey, _Struggle_ (New York, 1930), pp. 113-116. + +[289] The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of a lower court that +without specific legislation by Congress, the 14th Amendment could not +overrule the law of the District of Columbia which limited suffrage to +male citizens over 21. _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 587-601. + +[290] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 423. + +[291] Nov. 5, 1872, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. Miss Anthony had assured the election inspectors that she +would pay the cost of any suit which might be brought against them for +accepting women's votes. + +[292] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 426. The Anthony home was then numbered +7 Madison Street. + +[293] _An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony +on the Charge of Illegal Voting_ (Rochester, New York, 1874), p. 16. + +[294] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 428. + +[295] _Ibid._, p. 433. + +[296] _Trial_, pp. 2-3. + +[297] N.d., Susan B. Anthony Papers, New York Public Library. + +[298] _Trial_, pp. 151, 153. Judge Story, _Commentaries on the +Constitution of the United States_, Sec. 456: "The importance of +examining the preamble for the purpose of expounding the language of a +statute has long been felt and universally conceded in all juridical +discussion." _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 477. + +[299] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 978, 986-987. + +[300] Ms., Diary, May 10, June 7, 1873. + +[301] Suffrage clubs in New York, Buffalo, Chicago, and Milwaukee sent +$50 and $100 contributions. Susan's cousin, Anson Lapham, cancelled +notes for $4000 which she had signed while struggling to finance _The +Revolution_. The women of Rochester rallied behind her, forming a +Taxpayers' Association to protest taxation without representation. + +[302] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 994-995. + +[303] _Ibid._, I, p. 429. + + + + +"IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?" + + +Charged with the crime of voting illegally, Susan was brought to trial +on June 17, 1873, in the peaceful village of Canandaigua, New York. +Simply dressed and wearing her new bonnet faced with blue silk and +draped with a dotted veil,[304] she stoically climbed the court-house +steps, feeling as if on her shoulders she carried the political +destiny of American women. With her were her counsel, Henry R. Selden +and John Van Voorhis, her sister, Hannah Mosher, most of the women who +had voted with her in Rochester, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose +interest in this case was akin to her own. + +In the courtroom on the second floor, seated behind the bar, Susan +watched the curious crowd gather and fill every available seat. She +wondered, as she calmly surveyed the all-male jury, whether they could +possibly understand the humiliation of a woman who had been arrested +for exercising the rights of a citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not +promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench +through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the +undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter +opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small, +white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended. +Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of +black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth. +He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her testify on her own +behalf. + +She was completely satisfied, however, as she listened to Henry +Selden's presentation of her case. Tall and commanding, he stood +before the court with nobility and kindness in his face and eyes, +bringing to mind a handsome cultured Lincoln. So logical, so just was +his reasoning, so impressive were his citations of the law that it +seemed to her they must convince the jury and even the expressionless +judge on the bench. + +Pointing out that the only alleged ground of the illegality of Miss +Anthony's vote was that she was a woman, Henry Selden declared, "If +the same act had been done by her brother under the same +circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent and laudable, +but honorable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a +crime.... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has +been arraigned in a criminal court, merely on account of her +sex."[305] He claimed that Miss Anthony had voted in good faith, +believing that the United States Constitution gave her the right to +vote, and he clearly outlined her interpretation of the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, declaring that she stood arraigned as a criminal +simply because she took the only step possible to bring this great +constitutional question before the courts. + +After he had finished, Susan followed closely for two long hours the +arguments of the district attorney, Richard Crowley, who contended +that whatever her intentions may have been, good or bad, she had by +her voting violated a law of the United States and was therefore +guilty of crime. + +At the close of the district attorney's argument, Judge Hunt without +leaving the bench drew out a written document, and to her surprise, +read from it as he addressed the jury. "The right of voting or the +privilege of voting," he declared, "is a right or privilege arising +under the constitution of the State, not of the United States.[306] + +"The Legislature of the State of New York," he continued, "has seen +fit to say, that the franchise of voting shall be limited to the male +sex.... If the Fifteenth Amendment had contained the word 'sex,' the +argument of the defendant would have been potent.... The Fourteenth +Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting of Miss +Anthony was in violation of the law.... + +"There was no ignorance of any fact," he added, "but all the facts +being known, she undertook to settle a principle in her own person.... +To constitute a crime, it is true, that there must be a criminal +intent, but it is equally true that knowledge of the facts of the case +is always held to supply this intent...." + +Then hesitating a moment, he concluded, "Upon this evidence I suppose +there is no question for the jury and that the jury should be directed +to find a verdict of guilty." + +Immediately Henry Selden was on his feet, addressing the judge, +requesting that the jury determine whether or not the defendant was +guilty of crime. + +Judge Hunt, however, refused and firmly announced, "The question, +gentlemen of the jury, in the form it finally takes, is wholly a +question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, +in the first place, that under the Fourteenth Amendment which Miss +Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. + +"And I have decided also," he continued, "that her belief and the +advice which she took does not protect her in the act which she +committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your +part of guilty, and therefore I direct that you find a verdict of +guilty." + +Again Henry Selden was on his feet. "That is a direction," he +declared, "that no court has power to make in a criminal case." + +The courtroom was tense. Susan, watching the jury and wondering if +they would meekly submit to his will, heard the judge tersely order, +"Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk." + +"Gentlemen of the jury," intoned the clerk, "hearken to your verdict +as the Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of +the offense whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all." + +Claiming exception to the direction of the Court that the jury find a +verdict of guilty in this a criminal case. Henry Selden asked that the +jury be polled. + +To this, Judge Hunt abruptly replied, "No. Gentlemen of the jury, you +are discharged." + + * * * * * + +That night Susan recorded her estimate of Judge Hunt's verdict in her +diary in one terse sentence, "The greatest outrage History ever +witnessed."[307] + +The New York _Sun_, the Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_, and the +Canandaigua _Times_ were indignant over Judge Hunt's failure to poll +the jury. "Judge Hunt," commented the _Sun_, "allowed the jury to be +impanelled and sworn, and to hear the evidence; but when the case had +reached the point of rendering the verdict, he directed a verdict of +guilty. He thus denied a trial by jury to an accused party in his +court; and either through malice, which we do not believe, or through +ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a +judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the +Constitution of the United States.... The privilege of polling the +jury has been held to be an absolute right in this State and it is a +substantial right ..."[308] + +Claiming that the defendant had been denied her right of trial by +jury. Henry Selden the next day moved for a new trial. Judge Hunt +denied the motion, and, ordering the defendant to stand up, asked her, +"Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be +pronounced."[309] + +"Yes, your honor," Susan replied, "I have many things to say; for in +your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every +vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, +my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored...." + +Impatiently Judge Hunt protested that he could not listen to a +rehearsal of arguments which her counsel had already presented. + +"May it please your honor," she persisted, "I am not arguing the +question but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice +be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is +the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial +of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my +right to a trial by a jury of my peers ..." + +"The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on," interrupted Judge +Hunt; but Susan, ignoring his command to sit down, protested that her +prosecutors and the members of the jury were all her political +sovereigns. + +Again Judge Hunt tried to stop her, but she was not to be put off. She +was pleading for all women and her voice rang out to every corner of +the courtroom. + +"The Court must insist," declared Judge Hunt, "the prisoner has been +tried according to established forms of law." + +"Yes, your honor," admitted Susan, "but by forms of law all made by +men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and +against women...." + +"The Court orders the prisoner to sit down," shouted Judge Hunt. "It +will not allow another word." + +Unheeding, Susan continued, "When I was brought before your honor for +trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the +Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United +States citizens under its protecting aegis--that should declare +equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or +naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this +justice--failing, even, to get a trial by a jury _not_ of my peers--I +ask not leniency at your hands--but rather the full rigors of the +law." + +Once more Judge Hunt tried to stop her, and acquiescing at last, she +sat down, only to be ordered by him to stand up as he pronounced her +sentence, a fine of $100 and the costs of prosecution. + +"May it please your honor," she protested, "I shall never pay a dollar +of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 +debt, incurred by publishing my paper--_The Revolution_ ... the sole +object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have +done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of +law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them +the right of representation in the government.... I shall earnestly +and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical +recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny +is obedience to God.'" + +Pouring cold water on this blaze of oratory. Judge Hunt tersely +remarked that the Court would not require her imprisonment pending the +payment of her fine. + +This shrewd move, obviously planned in advance, made it impossible to +carry the case to the United States Supreme Court by writ of habeas +corpus. + + * * * * * + +That same afternoon, Susan was on hand for the trial of the three +election inspectors. This time Judge Hunt submitted the case to the +jury but with explicit instructions that the defendants were guilty. +The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the inspectors, denied a +new trial, were each fined $25 and costs. Two of them, Edwin F. Marsh +and William B. Hall, refused to pay their fines and were sent to jail. +Susan appealed on their behalf to Senator Sargent in Washington, who +eventually secured a pardon for them from President Grant. He also +presented a petition to the Senate, in January 1874, to remit Susan's +fine, as did William Loughridge of Iowa to the House, but the +judiciary committees reported adversely. + +Because neither of these cases had been decided on the basis of +national citizenship and the right of a citizen to vote, Susan was +heartsick. To have them relegated to the category of election fraud +was as if her high purpose had been trailed in the dust. Wishing to +spread reliable information about her trial and the legal questions +involved, she had 3,000 copies of the court proceedings printed for +distribution.[310] + +It was hard for her to concede that justice for women could not be +secured in the courts, but there seemed to be no way in the face of +the cold letter of the law to take her case to the Supreme Court of +the United States. This would have been possible on writ of habeas +corpus had Judge Hunt sentenced her to prison for failure to pay her +fine, but this he carefully avoided. + +Even that intrepid fighter, John Van Voorhis, could find no loophole, +and another of her loyal friends in the legal profession, Albert G. +Riddle, wrote her, "There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the +courts and just as little from the politicians. They will never take +up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never--till the thing +is done.... The trouble is that man can govern alone, and that, though +woman has the right, man wants to do it, and if she wait for him to +ask her, she will never vote.... Either man must be made to see and +feel ... the need of woman's help in the great field of human +government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as +she never has, and take her place."[311] + +The case of Virginia Minor of St. Louis still held out a glimmer of +hope. She had brought suit against an election inspector for his +refusal to register her as a voter in the presidential election of +1872, and the case of Minor vs. Happersett reached the United States +Supreme Court in 1874. An adverse decision, on March 29, 1875, +delivered by Chief Justice Waite, a friend of woman suffrage, was a +bitter blow to Susan and to all those who had pinned their faith on a +more liberal interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth +Amendments. + +Carefully studying the decision, Susan tried to fathom its reasoning, +so foreign to her own ideas of justice. "Sex," she read, "has never +been made of one of the elements of citizenship in the United +States.... The XIV Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women +any more than it did of men.... The direct question is, therefore, +presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters."[312] + +She read on: "The Constitution does not define the privileges and +immunities of citizens.... In this case we need not determine what +they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It +certainly is nowhere made so in express terms.... + +"When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the +several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had Constitutions +of their own.... We find in no State were all citizens permitted to +vote.... Women were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by +the express provision of their constitutions and laws ... No new State +has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of +suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered valid +objection to her admission. On the contrary ... the right of suffrage +was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey, +without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to +prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have +been reorganized under a requirement that, before their +Representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress, they must have +adopted new Constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these +Constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States +have all been restored to their original position as States in the +Union ... Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, +this is one.... + +"Our province," concluded Chief Justice Waite, "is to decide what the +law is, not to declare what it should be.... Being unanimously of the +opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the +right of suffrage upon any one, and that the Constitutions and laws of +the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are +not necessarily void, we affirm the judgment of the Court below." + +"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored +it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration +which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal +control over the rights and privileges of citizens. If the +Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage, she asked herself, +why does it define the qualifications of those voting for members of +the House of Representatives? How about the enfranchisement of Negroes +by federal amendment or the enfranchisement of foreigners? Why did +the federal government interfere in her case, instead of leaving it in +the hands of the state of New York? + +Like most abolitionists, Susan had always regarded the principles of +the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as +the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation +of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of +harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also +contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, Sir Edward +Coke, who said, "Whenever the question of liberty runs doubtful, the +decision must be given in favor of liberty."[313] + +In the face of such a ruling by the highest court in the land, she was +helpless. Women were shut out of the Constitution and denied its +protection. From here on there was only one course to follow, to press +again for a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[304] Ms., Diary, April 26, 1873. + +[305] _Trial_, p. 17. + +[306] _Ibid._, pp. 62-68. + +[307] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1873. + +[308] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1873, Library of Congress. + +[309] _Trial_, pp. 81-85. + +[310] This booklet also included the speeches of Susan B. Anthony and +Matilda Joslyn Gage, delivered prior to the trial, and a short +appraisal of the trial, _Judge Hunt and the Right of Trial by Jury_, +by John Hooker, the husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker. The Rochester +_Democrat and Chronicle_ called the booklet "the most important +contribution yet made to the discussion of woman suffrage from a legal +standpoint." The _Woman's Suffrage Journal_, IV, Aug. 1, 1873, p. 121, +published in England by Lydia Becker, said: "The American law which +makes it a criminal offense for a person to vote who is not legally +qualified appears harsh to our ideas." + +[311] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 455-456. + +[312] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 737-739, 741-742. + +[313] _Trial_, p. 191. + + + + +SOCIAL PURITY + + +Militancy among the suffragists continued to flare up here and there +in resistance to taxation without representation. Abby Kelley Foster's +home in Worcester was sold for taxes for a mere fraction of its worth, +while in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Abby and Julia Smith's cows and +personal property were seized for taxes. Both Dr. Harriot K. Hunt in +Boston and Mary Anthony in Rochester continued their tax protests. +Much as Susan admired this spirited rebellion, she recognized that +these militant gestures were but flames in the wind unless they had +behind them a well-organized, sustained campaign for a Sixteenth +Amendment, and this she could not undertake until _The Revolution_ +debt was paid. Nor was there anyone to pinch-hit for her since +Ernestine Rose had returned to England and Mrs. Stanton gave all her +time to Lyceum lectures. + +At the moment the prospect looked bleak for woman suffrage. In +Congress, there was not the slightest hope of the introduction of or +action on a Sixteenth Amendment. In the states, interest was kept +alive by woman suffrage bills before the legislatures, and year by +year, with more people recognizing the inherent justice of the demand, +the margin of defeat grew smaller. Whenever these state contests were +critical, Susan managed to be on hand, giving up profitable lecture +engagements to speak without fees; in Michigan in 1874 and in Iowa in +1875, she made new friends for the cause but was unable to stem the +tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in +Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor, +drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then +the other extreme, every narrow, selfish religious bigot."[314] + +A new militant movement swept the country in 1874, starting in small +Ohio towns among women who were so aroused over the evil influence of +liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in +front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to +reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising, +the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next +few years was organized into a powerful reform movement by a young +schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard. + +A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the +conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly +temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women. +Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who +organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she +felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to +show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. +You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which +is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil +until you have votes."[315] + +As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what +she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment, +speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the +Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a +week, which she applied to the _Revolution_ debt. + +Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their +popularity,--particularly in the West, where in the little towns +scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters, +and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met +the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and +children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons +to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card, +for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost +everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise, +discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe. +She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her +dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but +frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to +them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple +conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious +oratory of other lecturers. + +Continuous travel in all kinds of weather was difficult. Branch lines +were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by +blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel +by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits in dingy +dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy, +reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on +any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister +Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood +public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel +rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only +occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of +coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her +unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too +generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their +services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and +arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could +be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.[317] + +Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and +Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously +she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in +despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she +reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy +a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done +until the _Revolution_ debt was paid, for some of her creditors were +becoming impatient. + + * * * * * + +As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her +family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her +illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to +take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for +her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that +Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas. + +These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a +great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George +Eliot's _Middlemarch_ and Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_ of particular +interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions +which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case, +now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest +developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends. +She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in +whose home she had so often visited and toward whom she felt a warm +motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose +help and loyalty during the difficult days of _The Revolution_ she +never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose +quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he +had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same +was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to +say a good word for woman's rights. + +Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before, +Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and +Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs. +Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in +1872 had revived her _Weekly_ for a crusade on what she called "the +social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton +Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined +by merciless publicity. + +The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable +people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward +Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young +parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by +Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials +continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The +whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward +Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him. +Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote +Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike +anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"[318] + +When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a +suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the +alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news +throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published +anything and everything even remotely connected with the case. +Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the +West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding +them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force +her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry +Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she steadfastly +refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who +astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her +in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice +quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton, +who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the +New York _Graphic_ without Susan's consent published her letter to +Mrs. Hooker. + +The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher, +whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher, +whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word +carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could +not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a +sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that +the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his +side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes +influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church +real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, _Christian Union_, +and from his book the _Life of Christ_, now in preparation and for +which he had already been paid $20,000. + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular +side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own +defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her +to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew +far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or +Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press +campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman +Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their +previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as +were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in _The +Revolution_ six years before. + +Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole +doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the +husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second +marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I +consider the marriage relation."[319] + +Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or +innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to +her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding +the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an +impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have +a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul +becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain +and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more +demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie +which denies it."[320] + +Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she +could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her +reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the +New York _Sun_, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by +those who know anything of her character." The Rochester _Democrat and +Chronicle_ had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite +revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be +received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence +of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the +country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."[321] + +She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of +trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a +verdict. + + * * * * * + +Realizing that many taboos were being broken down by the lurid +nation-wide publicity on the Beecher-Tilton case and that as a result +people were more willing to consider subjects which hitherto had not +been discussed in polite society, Susan began to plan a lecture on +"Social Purity." + +She was familiar with the public protest Englishwomen under the +leadership of Josephine Butler were making against the state +regulation of vice. Following with interest and admiration their +courageous fight for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which +placed women suspected of prostitution under police power, Susan found +encouragement in the support these reformers had received from such +men as John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright. Such legislation, she +resolved, must not gain a foothold in her country, because it not only +disregarded women's right to personal liberty but showed a dangerous +callousness toward men's share of responsibility for prostitution. + +She was awake to the problems prostitution presented in cities like +New York and Washington, its prevalence, the police protection it +received, the political corruption it fostered and the reluctance of +the public to face the situation, the majority of men regarding it as +a necessity, and most women closing their eyes to its existence. + +During the winter of 1875, while the Beecher-Tilton case was being +tried in Brooklyn, she delivered her speech on "Social Purity" at the +Chicago Grand Opera House, in the Sunday dime-lecture course, facing +with trepidation the immense crowd which gathered to hear her. Even +the daring Mrs. Stanton had warned her that she would never be asked +to speak in Chicago again, and with this the manager of the Slayton +Lecture Bureau agreed. But they were wrong. The people were hungry for +the truth and for a constructive policy. In the past they had heard +the "social evil" described and denounced in vivid thunderous words by +eloquent men and by the dramatic Anna E. Dickinson. Now an earnest +woman with graying hair, one of their own kind, talked to them without +mincing matters, calmly and logically, and offered them a remedy. + +Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and +breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of +abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these +evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them +successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics, +revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a +foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence +rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously +mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against +England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for +New York and Washington and which she described as licensed +prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social +corruption. + +Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as +the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more +statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work +formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually +taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a +living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were +supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet +their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and +comfortable shelter into an immoral life. + +Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who +now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell +themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she +told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of +financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. +Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women +like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322] + +"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals. +Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees, +legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there +must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers, +doctors--that wherever women go to seek counsel--spiritual, legal, +physical--there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest +of their own sex to minister to them." + +Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a +necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will +cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the +equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions." + +She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make +the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise, +rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them, +have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges, +jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our +courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married +woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence. + +Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity +presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause +was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott, +fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling +approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott +declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, +truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323] + +She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas, +and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the +issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed +by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper +observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the +sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the +subject."[324] + + * * * * * + +Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief +turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her +message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw +justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the +East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new. +Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had +brought to lonely bleak western towns--better homes, cleanliness, +comfort, then schools, churches, law and order--and many of them were +willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to +translate that willingness into law. + +As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her +family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending +to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she +recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have +paid the last dollar of the _Revolution_ debt."[325] + +Even the press took notice, the Chicago _Daily News_ commenting, "By +working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could +earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors +of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan +B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[314] Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874. + +[315] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her stand for +woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876. + +[316] Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877. + +[317] To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection. + +[318] New York _Graphic_, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker believed her +half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, assuring him +she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." Kenneth R. +Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. Rumors that +Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated. + +[319] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 463. + +[320] _Ibid._ Only a few entries relating to the Beecher-Tilton case +remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the Library of +Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there. + +[321] _Ibid._, p. 462. + +[322] _Ibid._, II, pp. 1007-1009. + +[323] _Ibid._, I, p. 468. + +[324] _Ibid._, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing for nine +weeks to nurse her brother Daniel after he had been shot by a rival +editor in Leavenworth. + +[325] _Ibid._, p. 472. + +[326] _Ibid._, p. 473. + + + + +A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT + + +Like everyone else in the United States in 1876, Susan now turned her +attention to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which was +proclaiming to the world the progress this new country had made. Susan +pointed out, however, that one hundred years after the signing of the +Declaration of Independence, women were still deprived of basic +citizenship rights. + +As an afterthought, a Woman's Pavilion had been erected on the +exposition grounds and exhibited here she found only women's +contribution to the arts but nothing which would in any way show the +part women had played in building up the country or developing +industry. She longed to explain so that all could hear how the skilled +work of women had contributed to the prosperous textile and shoe +industries, to the manufacture of cartridges and Waltham watches, and +countless other products. Could she have had her way, she would have +made the Woman's Pavilion an eloquent appeal for equal rights, but +unable to do this, she established a center of rebellion for the +National Woman Suffrage Association at 1431 Chestnut Street, in +parlors on the first floor. Here she spent many happy hours directing +the work, often sleeping on the sofa so that she could work late and +save money for the cause. + +Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott. +Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a +comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs. +Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in +June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary, +"Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."[327] + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national +conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of +enfranchising women in this centennial year. But no woman suffrage +plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. +Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a +document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed +for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for +presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in +Independence Square. + +Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made +plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as +reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth _Times_. Mrs. +Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so +indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the +Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First +Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan +by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of +her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they +pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that +bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the +platform. + +By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting +Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony. +Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made +one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for +permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather +than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her +four friends on the platform. + +"We ... sat there waiting ..." reported Mrs. Blake. "The heat was +frightful.... Amid such a throng it was difficult to hear anything ... +We decided that our presentation should take place immediately after +Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the +Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, +and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was +exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice +was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' +and cried, 'Now is the time.' + +"We all four rose, Miss Anthony first, next Mrs. Gage, bearing our +engrossed Declaration, and Mrs. Spencer and myself following with +hundreds of printed copies in our hands. There was a stir in the +crowd just at the time, and General Hawley who had been keeping a wary +eye on us, had relaxed his vigilance for a moment, as he signed to the +band to resume playing. He did not see us advancing until we reached +the Vice President's dais. There Miss Anthony, taking the parchment +from Mrs. Gage, stepped forward and presented it to Mr. Ferry, saying, +'I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of +the United States.'"[328] + +Nonplussed, Mr. Ferry bowed low and received the Declaration without a +word. Then the four intrepid women filed out, distributing printed +copies of their declaration while General Hawley boomed out, "Order! +Order!" + +Leaving the square and mounting a platform erected for musicians in +front of Independence Hall, they waited until a curious crowd had +gathered around them. Then while Mrs. Gage held an umbrella over Susan +to shield her from the hot sun, she read the Women's Declaration in a +loud clear voice that carried far. + +"We do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of +self-government," she began. "Our faith is firm and unwavering in the +broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as +abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot +forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and +clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of +citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the +degradation of disfranchisement."[329] + +Then she enumerated women's grievances and the crowd applauded as she +drove home point after point. + +"Woman," she continued, "has shown equal devotion with man to the +cause of freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense. +Together they have made this country what it is.... We ask our rulers, +at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges.... We ask +justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights +that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us +and our daughters forever." + +Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which +eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her +four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager +audience awaited their report and hailed their courage. + +[Illustration: Aaron A. Sargent] + +The New York _Tribune_, commenting on Susan's militancy, prophesied +that it foreshadowed "the new forms of violence and disregard of order +which may accompany the participation of women in active partisan +politics."[330] + + * * * * * + +Nor was Congress impressed by Susan's centennial publicity demanding a +federal woman suffrage amendment. She had gathered petitions from +twenty-six states with 10,000 signatures which were presented to the +Senate in 1877. The majority of the Senators found these petitions +uproariously funny, and Susan in the visitors' gallery at the time of +their presentation was infuriated by the mirth and disrespect of these +men. "A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity +and without comment," reported the popular journalist, Mary Clemmer, +in her weekly Washington column, "but the majority seemed intensely +conscious of holding something unutterably funny in their hands.... +The entire Senate presented the appearance of a laughing school +practicing sidesplitting and ear-extended grins." After a few humorous +and sarcastic remarks the petitions were referred to the Committee on +Public Lands. Only one Senator, Aaron A. Sargent of California, was +"man enough and gentleman enough to lift the petitions from this +insulting proposition.... He ... demanded for the petition of more +than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be given any +other."[331] + +Although his words did not deter the Senators, Susan was proud of this +tall vigorous white-haired Californian and grateful for his +spontaneous support in this humiliating situation. He had been a +trusted friend and counselor ever since she had shared with him and +his family the long snowy journey from Nevada in 1872. She looked +forward to the time when woman suffrage would have more such advocates +in the Congress and when she would find there new faces and a more +liberal spirit. + +Disappointment only drove Susan into more intensive activity. Between +lectures she now nursed her sister Hannah who was critically ill in +Daniel's home in Leavenworth. After Hannah's death in May 1877, Susan +worked off her grief in Colorado, where the question of votes for +women was being referred to the people of the state. + +The suffragists in Colorado were headed by Dr. Alida Avery, who had +left her post as resident physician at the new woman's college, +Vassar, to practice medicine in Denver. Making Dr. Avery's home her +headquarters, Susan carried her plea for the ballot to settlements far +from the railroads, traveling by stagecoach over rough lonely roads +through magnificent scenery. Holding meetings wherever she could, she +spoke in schoolhouses, in hotel dining rooms, and even in saloons, +when no other place was available, and always she was treated with +respect and listened to with interest. Occasionally only a mere +handful gathered to hear her, but in Lake City she spoke to an +audience of a thousand or more from a dry-goods box on the court-house +steps. She was equal to anything, but the mining towns depressed her, +for they were swarming with foreigners who had been welcomed as +naturalized, enfranchised citizens and who almost to a man opposed +extending the vote to women. This precedence of foreign-born men over +American women was not only galling to her but menaced, she believed, +the growth of American democracy. + +Woman suffrage was defeated in Colorado in 1877, two to one. With the +Chinese coming into the state in great numbers to work in the mines, +the specter that stalked through this campaign was the fear of putting +the ballot into the hands of Chinese women. + +From Colorado, Susan moved on to Nebraska with a new lecture, "The +Homes of Single Women." Although she much preferred to speak on "Woman +and the Sixteenth Amendment" or "Bread and the Ballot," she realized +that, in order to be assured of return engagements, she must +occasionally vary her subjects, but she was unwilling to wander far +afield while women's needs still were so great. By means of this new +lecture she hoped to dispel the widespread, deeply ingrained fallacy +that single women were unwanted helpless creatures wholly dependent +upon some male relative for a home and support. Aware that this +mistaken estimate was slowly yielding in the face of a changing +economic order, she believed she could help lessen its hold by +presenting concrete examples of independent self-supporting single +women who had proved that marriage was not the only road to security +and a home. She told of Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose home in New York +City was a rendezvous for writers, artists, musicians, and reformers; +of Dr. Clemence Lozier, the friend of women medical students; of Mary +L. Booth, well established through her income as editor of _Harper's +Bazaar_; and of her beloved Lydia Mott, whose home had been a refuge +for fugitive slaves and reformers.[332] + +In Nebraska, she made a valuable new friend for the cause, Clara +Bewick Colby, whose zeal and earnest, intelligent face at once +attracted her. Within a few years, Mrs. Colby established in Beatrice, +Nebraska, a magazine for women, the _Woman's Tribune_, which to +Susan's joy spoke out for a federal woman suffrage amendment. + +Because Susan's contract with the Slayton Lecture Bureau allowed no +break in her engagements, she was obliged to leave the Washington +convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in the hands of +others in 1878. It was much on her mind as she traveled through +Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, and she sent a check for $100 +to help with the expenses of the convention. Particularly on her mind +was a federal woman suffrage amendment, for since 1869 when a +Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women had been introduced in +Congress and ignored, no further efforts along that line had been +made. Now good news came from Mrs. Stanton, who had attended the +convention. She had persuaded Senator Sargent to introduce in the +Senate, on January 10, 1878, a new draft of a Sixteenth Amendment, +following the wording of the Fifteenth. It read, "The right of +citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged +by the United States or by any State on account of sex."[333] + +[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby] + + * * * * * + +During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway, +although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking +the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging +as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of +several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return +Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a +newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs. +Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the +refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the +vote because it would wreck marriage and the home. + +Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure for +the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the +American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William +Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts +for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement +into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man +who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery. +Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right +track--the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you, +though between you and me, I still think the individual States must +lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State. +But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."[334] + +The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state +method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for +experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced +the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increasing number of naturalized +immigrants, who had little understanding of democratic government or +sympathy with the rights of women. A federal amendment, on the other +hand, depending for its adoption upon Congress and ratifying +legislatures, was in the hands of a far more liberal, intelligent, and +preponderantly American group. "We have puttered with State rights for +thirty years," she sputtered, "without a foothold except in the +territories."[335] + +Year by year she continued her Washington conventions, convinced that +these gatherings in the national capital could not fail to impress +Congressmen with the seriousness of their purpose. As women from many +states lobbied for the Sixteenth Amendment, reporting a growing +sentiment everywhere for woman suffrage, as they received in the press +respectful friendly publicity, Congressmen began to take notice. At +the large receptions held at the Riggs House, through the generosity +of the proprietors, Jane Spofford and her husband, Congressmen became +better acquainted with the suffragists, finding that they were not +cranks, as they had supposed, but intelligent women and socially +charming. + +Mrs. Stanton's poise as presiding officer and the warmth of her +personality made her the natural choice for president of the National +Woman Suffrage Association through the years. Her popularity, now well +established throughout the country after her ten years of lecturing +on the Lyceum circuit, lent prestige to the cause. To Susan, her +presence brought strength and the assurance that "the brave and true +word" would be spoken.[336] A new office had been created for Susan, +that of vice-president at large, and in that capacity she guided, +steadied, and prodded her flock. + +The subjects which the conventions discussed covered a wide field +going far beyond their persistent demands for a federal woman suffrage +amendment. Not only did they at this time urge an educational +qualification for voters to combat the argument that woman suffrage +would increase the ignorant vote, but they also protested the counting +of women in the basis of representation so long as they were +disfranchised. They criticized the church for barring women from the +ministry and from a share in church government. They took up the case +of Anna Ella Carroll,[337] who had been denied recognition and a +pension for her services to her country during the Civil War, and they +urged pensions for all women who had nursed soldiers during the war. +They welcomed to their conventions Mormon women from Utah who came to +Washington to protest efforts to disfranchise them as a means of +discouraging polygamy. + +Susan injected international interest into these conventions by +reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from +Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's +son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in +Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women. Occasionally +foreign-born women, now making new homes for themselves in this +country, joined the ranks of the suffragists, and a few of them, like +Madam Anneké and Clara Heyman from Germany contributed a great deal +through their eloquence and wider perspective. These contacts with the +thoughts and aspirations of men and women of other countries led Susan +to dream of an international conference of women in the not too +distant future.[338] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[327] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1876. + +[328] Katherine D. Blake and Margaret Wallace, _Champion of Women, The +Life of Lillie Devereux Blake_ (New York, 1943), pp. 124-126. + +[329] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, pp. 31, 34. The Woman's +Journal surprised Susan with a friendly editorial, "Good Use of the +Fourth of July," written by Lucy Stone, July 15, 1876. + +[330] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 43. The Philadelphia +_Press_ praised the Declaration of Rights and the women in the +suffrage movement. The report of the New York _Post_ was patronizingly +favorable, pointing out the indifference of the public to the subject. + +[331] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 485-486. + +[332] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[333] This amendment was re-introduced in the same form in every +succeeding Congress until it was finally passed in 1919 as the +Nineteenth Amendment. It was ratified by the states in 1920, 14 years +after Susan B. Anthony's death. When occasionally during her lifetime +it was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by those who wished to +honor her devotion to the cause, she protested, meticulously giving +Elizabeth Cady Stanton credit for making the first public demand for +woman suffrage in 1848. She also made it clear that although she +worked for the amendment long and hard, she did not draft it. After +her death, during the climax of the woman suffrage campaign, these +facts were overlooked by the younger workers who made a point of +featuring the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, both because they wished to +immortalize her and because they realized the publicity value of her +name. + +[334] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 484. + +[335] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 66. + +[336] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 544. + +[337] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 153; II, pp. 3-12, 863-868; +Sarah Ellen Blackwell, _A Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella Carroll +of Maryland_ (Washington, D.C., 1891), I, pp. 153-154. + +[338] "Woman Suffrage as a Means of Moral Improvement and the +Prevention of Crime" by Alexander Dumas, _History of Woman Suffrage_, +III, p. 190. Theodore Stanton, foreign correspondent for the New York +_Tribune_, now lived in Paris. + + + + +RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY + + +Recording women's history for future generations was a project that +had been in the minds of both Susan and Mrs. Stanton for a long time. +Both looked upon women's struggle for a share in government as a +potent force in strengthening democracy and one to be emphasized in +history. Men had always been the historians and had as a matter of +course extolled men's exploits, passing over women's record as +negligible. Susan intended to remedy this and she was convinced that +if women close to the facts did not record them now, they would be +forgotten or misinterpreted by future historians. Already many of the +old workers had died, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott, whom Susan had +nursed in her last illness, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison. +There was no time to be lost.[339] + +In the spring of 1880, Susan's mother died, and it was no longer +necessary for her to fit into her schedule frequent visits in +Rochester. Her sister Mary, busy with her teaching, was sharing her +home with her two widowed brothers-in-law and two nieces whose +education she was supervising.[340] Mrs. Stanton had just given up the +strenuous life of a Lyceum lecturer and welcomed work that would keep +her at home. Susan, who had managed to save $4,500 out of her lecture +fees, felt she could afford to devote at least a year to the history. + +She now shipped several boxes of letters, clippings, and documents to +the Stanton home in Tenafly, New Jersey.[341] As they planned their +book, it soon became obvious that the one volume which they had hoped +to finish in a few months would extend to two or three volumes and +take many years to write. They called in Matilda Joslyn Gage to help +them, and the three of them signed a contract to share the work and +the profits. + +The history presented a publishing problem as well as a writing +ordeal, and Susan, interviewing New York publishers, found the subject +had little appeal. Finally, however, she signed a contract with Fowler +& Wells under which the authors agreed to pay the cost of composition, +stereotyping, and engravings; and as usual she raised the necessary +funds.[342] + +[Illustration: Matilda Joslyn Gage] + +Returning to Tenafly as to a second home, Susan usually found Mrs. +Stanton beaming a welcome from the piazza and Margaret and Harriot +running to the gate to meet her. The Stanton children were fond of +Susan. It was a comfortable happy household, and Susan, thoroughly +enjoying Mrs. Stanton's companionship, attacked the history with +vigor. Sitting opposite each other at a big table in the sunny tower +room, they spent long hours at work. Susan, thin and wiry, her graying +hair neatly smoothed back over her ears, sat up very straight as she +rapidly sorted old clippings and letters and outlined chapters, while +Mrs. Stanton, stout and placid, her white curls beautifully arranged, +wrote steadily and happily, transforming masses of notes into readable +easy prose.[343] + +Having sent appeals for information to colleagues in all parts of the +country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to +decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of +them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for +data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary +or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required +dates.... You say 'I' must be referred to in the history you are +writing.... I cannot furnish a biographical sketch and trust you will +not try to make one. Yours with ceaseless regret that any 'wing' of +suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."[344] + +The greater part of the writing fell upon Mrs. Stanton, but Matilda +Joslyn Gage contributed the chapters, "Preceding Causes," "Women in +Newspapers," and "Women, Church, and State." Susan carefully selected +the material and checked the facts. She helped with the copying of the +handwritten manuscript and with the proofreading. Believing that +pictures of the early workers were almost as important for the +_History_ as the subject matter itself, she tried to provide them, but +they presented a financial problem with which it was hard to cope, for +each engraving cost $100.[345] + +When the first volume of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ came off the +press in May 1881, she proudly and lovingly scanned its 878 pages +which told the story of women's progress in the United States up to +the Civil War. + +She was well aware that the _History_ was not a literary achievement, +but the facts were there, as accurate as humanly possible; all the +eloquent, stirring speeches were there, a proof of the caliber and +high intelligence of the pioneers; and out of the otherwise dull +record of meetings, conventions, and petitions, a spirit of +independence and zeal for freedom shone forth, highlighted +occasionally by dramatic episodes. As Mrs. Stanton so aptly expressed +it, "We have furnished the bricks and mortar for some future architect +to rear a beautiful edifice."[346] + +The distribution of the book was very much on Susan's mind, for she +realized that it would not be in great demand because of its cost, +bulk, and subject matter. Nor could she at this time present it to +libraries, as she wished, for she had already spent her savings on the +illustrations. "It ought to be in every school library," she wrote +Amelia Bloomer, "where every boy and girl of the nation could see and +read and learn what women have done to secure equality of rights and +chances for girls and women...."[347] + +So much material had been collected while Volume I was in preparation +that both Susan and Mrs. Stanton felt they should immediately +undertake Volume II. After a summer of lecturing to help finance its +publication, Susan returned to Tenafly to the monotonous work of +compilation. "I am just sick to death of it," she wrote her young +friend Rachel Foster. "I had rather wash or whitewash or do any +possible hard work than sit here and go there digging into the dusty +records of the past--that is, rather _make_ history than write +it."[348] + +Yet she never entirely gave up making history, for she was always +planning for the future and Rachel Foster was now her able lieutenant, +relieving her of details, doing the spade work for the annual +Washington conventions, and arranging for an occasional lecture +engagement. Susan would not leave Tenafly for a lecture fee of less +than $50. + +She took this intelligent young girl to her heart as she had Anna E. +Dickinson in the past. Rachel, however, had none of Anna's dramatic +temperament or love of the limelight, but in her orderly businesslike +way was eager to serve Susan, whom she had admired ever since as a +child she had heard her speak for woman suffrage in her mother's +drawing room. + +While Susan was pondering the ways and means of financing another +volume of the _History_, the light broke through in a letter from +Wendell Phillips, announcing the astonishing news that she and Lucy +Stone had inherited approximately $25,000 each for "the woman's cause" +under the will of Eliza Eddy, the daughter of their former benefactor, +Francis Jackson. Although the legacy was not paid until 1885 because +of litigation, its promise lightened considerably Susan's financial +burden and she knew that Volumes II and III were assured. Her +gratitude to Eliza Eddy was unbounded, and better still, she read +between the lines the good will of Wendell Phillips who had been Eliza +Eddy's legal advisor. That he, whom she admired above all men, should +after their many differences still regard her as worthy of this trust, +meant as much to her as the legacy itself. + +In May 1882 she had the satisfaction of seeing the second volume of +the _History of Woman Suffrage_ in print, carrying women's record +through 1875. Volume III was not completed until 1885. + +Women's response to their own history was a disappointment. Only a few +realized its value for the future, among them Mary L. Booth, editor of +_Harper's Bazaar_. The majority were indifferent and some even +critical. When Mrs. Stanton offered the three volumes to the Vassar +College library, they were refused.[349] Nevertheless, every time +Susan looked at the three large volumes on her shelves, she was happy, +for now she was assured that women's struggle for citizenship and +freedom would live in print through the years. To libraries in the +United States and Europe, she presented well over a thousand copies, +grateful that the Eliza Eddy legacy now made this possible. + + * * * * * + +In 1883, Susan surprised everyone by taking a vacation in Europe. Soon +after Volume II of the _History_ had been completed, Mrs. Stanton had +left for Europe with her daughter Harriot.[350] Her letters to Susan +reported not only Harriot's marriage to an Englishman, William Henry +Blatch, but also encouraging talks with the forward-looking women of +England and France whom she hoped to interest in an international +organization. Repeatedly she urged Susan to join her, to meet these +women, and to rest for a while from her strenuous labors. The +possibility of forming an international organization of women was a +greater attraction to Susan than Europe itself, and when Rachel Foster +suggested that she make the journey with her, she readily consented. + +"She goes abroad a republican Queen," observed the Kansas City +_Journal_, "uncrowned to be sure, but none the less of the blood +royal, and we have faith that the noblest men and women of Europe will +at once recognize and welcome her as their equal."[351] + +In London, Susan met Mrs. Stanton, "her face beaming and her white +curls as lovely as ever." Then after talking with English suffragists +and her two old friends, William Henry Channing and Ernestine Rose, +now living in England, Susan traveled with Rachel through Italy, +Switzerland, Germany, and France, where a whole new world opened +before her. She thoroughly enjoyed its beauty; yet there was much that +distressed her and she found herself far more interested in the +people, their customs and living conditions than in the treasures of +art. "It is good for our young civilization," she wrote Daniel, "to +see and study that of the old world and observe the hopelessness of +lifting the masses into freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and +integrity. How any American, any lover of our free institutions, based +on equality of rights for all, can settle down and live here is more +than I can comprehend. It will only be by overturning the powers that +education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The +hope of the world is indeed our republic...." To a friend she +reported, "Amidst it all my head and heart turn to our battle for +women at home. Here in the old world, with ... its utter blotting out +of women as an equal, there is no hope, no possibility of changing her +condition; so I look to our own land of equality for men, and partial +equality for women, as the only one for hope or work."[352] + +Back in London again, she allowed herself a few luxuries, such as an +expensive India shawl and more social life than she had had in many a +year, and she longed to have Mary enjoy it all with her. She visited +suffragists in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England and +occasionally spoke at their meetings.[353] Here as in America +suffragists differed over the best way to win the vote, and even the +most radical among them were more conservative and cautious than +American women, but she admired them all and tried to understand the +very different problems they faced. Gradually she interested a few of +them in an international conference of women, and before she sailed +back to America with Mrs. Stanton in November 1883, she had their +promise of cooperation. + +The newspapers welcomed her home. "Susan B. Anthony is back from +Europe," announced the Cleveland _Leader_, "and is here for a winter's +fight on behalf of woman suffrage. She seems remarkably well, and has +gained fifteen pounds since she left last spring. She is sixty-three, +but looks just the same as twenty years ago. There is perhaps an extra +wrinkle in her face, a little more silver in her hair, but her blue +eyes are just as bright, her mouth as serious and her step as active +as when she was forty. She would attract attention in any crowd."[354] + +Susan came back to an indifferent Congress. "All would fall flat and +dead if someone were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to +us," she wrote a friend at this time, and to her diary she confided, +"It is perfectly disheartening that no member feels any especial +interest or earnest determination in pushing this question of woman +suffrage, to all men only a side issue."[355] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[339] The only such history available was the _History of the National +Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty Years_ (New York, 1871), written by +Paulina Wright Davis to commemorate the first national woman's rights +convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. This brief record, +ending with Victoria Woodhull's Memorial to Congress, was inadequate +and placed too much emphasis on Victoria Woodhull who had flashed +through the movement like a meteor, leaving behind her a trail of +discord and little that was constructive. + +[340] Aaron McLean, Eugene Mosher, his daughter Louise, Merritt's +daughter, Lucy E. Anthony from Fort Scott, Kansas, and later Lucy's +sister "Anna O." + +[341] Mrs. Stanton moved to the new home she had built in Tenafly, New +Jersey, in 1868. + +[342] Fowler & Wells furnished the paper, press work, and advertising +and paid the authors 12-1/2% commission on sales. They did not look +askance at such a controversial subject, having published the Fowler +family's phrenological books. In addition the women of the family were +suffragists. + +[343] In 1855, at the instigation of her father. Miss Anthony began to +preserve her press clippings. She now found them a valuable record, +and she hired a young girl to paste them in six large account books. +Thirty-two of her scrapbooks are now in the Library of Congress. + +[344] Aug. 30, 1876, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. The history of the American Woman Suffrage Association was +compiled for Volume II from the _Woman's Journal_ and Mary Livermore's +_The Agitator_ by Harriot Stanton. + +[345] Nov. 30, 1880, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls Historical +Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y. + +[346] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 531. The _History_ received friendly +and complimentary reviews, the New York _Tribune_ and _Sun_ giving it +two columns. + +[347] June 28, 1881, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls Historical +Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y. The cost of a cloth copy of the _History_ +was $3. + +[348] Dec. 19, 1880, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. +Rachel Foster's mother was a life-long friend of Elizabeth Cady +Stanton and sympathetic to her work for women. The widow of a wealthy +Pittsburgh newspaperman, she was now active in Pennsylvania suffrage +organizations. Her daughters, Rachel and Julia, early became +interested in the cause. + +[349] E. C. Stanton to Laura Collier, Jan. 21, 1886, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton Papers, Vassar College Library. Mary Livermore criticized the +_History_ as poorly edited. + +[350] After her marriage in 1882, to William Henry Blatch of +Basingstoke, Harriot made her home in England for the next 20 years. + +[351] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 549. + +[352] _Ibid._, pp. 553, 558, 562. Miss Anthony spent a week with her +old friends, Ellen and Aaron Sargent in Berlin where Aaron was serving +as American Minister to Germany. In Paris she visited Theodore Stanton +and his French wife. + +[353] Lydia Becker, Mrs. Jacob Bright, Helen Taylor, Priscilla Bright +McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd, and Elizabeth Pease +Nichol. A bill to enfranchise widows and spinsters was pending in +Parliament. Only a few women were courageous enough to demand votes +for married women as well. + +[354] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 582. + +[355] _Ibid._, pp. 591, 583. + + + + +IMPETUS FROM THE WEST + + +"My heart almost stands still. I hope against hope, but still I hope," +Susan wrote in her diary in 1885, as she waited for news from Oregon +Territory regarding the vote of the people on a woman suffrage +amendment.[356] Woman suffrage was defeated in Oregon; and in +Washington Territory, where in 1883 it had carried, a contest was +being waged in the courts to invalidate it. In Nebraska it had also +been defeated in 1882. Since the victories in Wyoming and Utah in 1869 +and 1870, not another state or territory had written woman suffrage +into law. + +In spite of these setbacks, Susan still saw great promise in the West +and resumed her lecturing there. She knew the rapidly growing young +western states and territories as few easterners did, and she +understood their people. Here women were making themselves +indispensable as teachers, and state universities, now open to them, +graduated over two thousand women a year. The Farmers' Alliance, the +Grange, and the Prohibition party, all distinctly western in origin, +admitted women to membership and were friendly to woman suffrage. +School suffrage had been won in twelve western states as against five +in the East, and Kansas women were now voting in municipal elections. +In a sense, woman suffrage was becoming respectable in the West, and a +woman was no longer ostracized by her friends for working with Susan +B. Anthony. + +Still critical of her own speaking, Susan was often discouraged over +her lectures, but her vitality, her naturalness, and her flashes of +wit seldom failed to win over her audiences. Her nephew, Daniel Jr., a +student at the University of Michigan, hearing her speak, wrote his +parents, "At the beginning of her lecture, Aunt Susan does not do so +well; but when she is in the midst of her argument and all her +energies brought into play, I think she is a very powerful +speaker."[357] + +On these trips through the West, she kept in close touch with her +brothers Daniel and Merritt in Kansas, frequently visiting in their +homes and taking her numerous nieces to Rochester. She valued +Daniel's judgment highly, and he, well-to-do and influential, was a +great help to her in many ways, investing her savings and furnishing +her with railroad passes which greatly reduced her ever-increasing +traveling expenses. + +Everywhere she met active zealous members of the Women's Christian +Temperance Union. Since the Civil War, temperance had become a +vigorous movement in the Middle West, doing its utmost to counteract +the influence of the many large new breweries and saloons. Through the +Prohibition party, organized on a national basis in 1872, temperance +was now a political issue in Kansas, Iowa, and the Territory of +Dakota, and through the W.C.T.U. women waged an effective +total-abstinence campaign. Brought into the suffrage movement by +Frances Willard under the slogan, "For God and Home and Country," +these women quickly sensed the value of their votes to the temperance +cause. Nor was Susan slow to recognize their importance to her and her +work, for they represented an entirely new group, churchwomen, who +heretofore had been suspicious of and hostile toward woman's rights. +Through them, she anticipated a powerful impetus for her cause. + +With admiration she had watched Frances Willard's career.[358] This +vivid consecrated young woman was a born leader, quick to understand +woman's need of the vote and eager to lead women forward. It was a +disappointment, however, when she joined the American rather than the +National Woman Suffrage Association. The reasons for this, Susan +readily understood, were Frances Willard's warm friendship with Mary +Livermore and her own preference for the American's state-by-state +method, similar to that she had so successfully followed in her +W.C.T.U. Yet Frances Willard, whenever she could, cooperated with +Susan whom she admired and loved; and through the years these two +great leaders valued and respected each other, even though they +frequently differed over policy and method. + +Susan, for example, was often troubled because women suffrage and +temperance were more and more linked together in the public mind, thus +confusing the issues and arousing the hostility of those who might +have been friendly toward woman suffrage had they not feared that +women's votes would bring in prohibition. She did her best to make it +clear to her audiences that she did not ask for the ballot in order +that women might vote against saloons and for prohibition. She +demanded only that women have the same right as men to express their +opinions at the polls. Such an attitude was hard for many temperance +women to understand and to forgive. + +Over women's support of specific political parties, Susan and Frances +Willard were never able to agree. Susan had never been willing to ally +herself with a minority party. Therefore, to Frances Willard's +disappointment, she withheld her support from the Prohibition party in +1880, although their platform acknowledged woman's need of the ballot +and directed them to use it to settle the liquor question, and in 1884 +when they recommended state suffrage for women. Finding women eager to +support the Prohibitionists in gratitude for these inadequate planks, +Susan even issued a statement urging them to support the Republicans, +who held out the most hope to them even if woman suffrage had not been +mentioned in their platform. Her experience in Washington had proved +to her the friendliness and loyalty of individual Republicans, and she +was unwilling to jeopardize their support. + +Her judgment was confirmed during the next few years when friendly +Republicans spoke for woman suffrage in the Senate, and when in 1887 +the woman suffrage amendment was debated and voted on in the Senate. +In the Senate gallery eagerly listening, Susan took notice that the +sixteen votes cast for the amendment were those of Republicans.[359] + +Still hoping to win Susan's endorsement of the Prohibition party in +1888, Frances Willard asked her to outline what kind of plank would +satisfy her. + +"Do you mean so satisfy me," Susan replied, "that I would work, and +recommend to all women to work ... for the success of the third party +ticket?... Not until a third party gets into power ... which promises +a larger per cent of representatives, on the floor of Congress, and in +the several State legislatures, who will speak and vote for women's +enfranchisement, than does the Republican, shall I work for it. You +see, as yet there is not a single Prohibitionist in Congress while +there are at least twenty Republicans on the floor of the United +States Senate, besides fully one-half of the members of the House of +Representatives who are in favor of woman suffrage.... I do not +propose to work for the defeat of the party which thus far has +furnished nearly every vote in that direction."[360] + +Nor was she lured away when, in 1888, the Prohibition party endorsed +woman suffrage and granted Frances Willard the honor of addressing its +convention and serving on the resolutions committee. + + * * * * * + +The temperance issue also cropped up in the annual Washington +conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association, preparations +for which Susan now left to Rachel Foster, May Wright Sewall, a +capable young recruit from Indiana, and Jane Spofford. However, she +still supervised these conventions, prodding and interfering, in what +she called her most Andrew Jackson-like manner. She always returned to +Washington with excitement and pleasure, and with the hope of some +outstanding victory, and the suite at the Riggs House, given her by +generous Jane Spofford, was a delight after months of hard travel in +the West. "I shall come both ragged and dirty," she wrote Mrs. +Spofford in 1887. "Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the +mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little +milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who +will patch me together so that I shall be presentable."[361] + +Open to all women irrespective of race or creed, the National Woman +Suffrage Association attracted fearless independent devoted members. +They welcomed Mormon women into the fold, and when the bill to +disfranchise Mormon women as a punishment for polygamy was before +Congress in 1887, they did their utmost to help Mormon women retain +the vote, but were defeated. + +They welcomed as well many temperance advocates. A few delegates, +however, among them Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Colby, scorned +what they called the "singing and praying" temperance group and +protested that temperance and religion were getting too strong a hold +on the organization. Abigail Duniway from Oregon contended that +suffragists should not join forces with temperance groups and blamed +the defeat of woman suffrage in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, in +1887, on men's fear that women would vote for prohibition. + +Often Susan was obliged to act as arbiter between the temperance and +nontemperance groups. She did not underestimate the momentum which the +well-organized W.C.T.U. had already given the suffrage cause, +particularly in states where the National Association had only a few +and scattered workers. She needed and wanted the help of these +temperance women and of Frances Willard's forceful and winning +personality. She also saw the importance of breaking down with Frances +Willard's aid the slow-yielding opposition of the church. + +Occasionally enthusiastic workers undertook projects which to her +seemed unwise. She told them frankly how she felt and left it at that, +but most of them had to learn by experience. When Belva Lockwood, one +of her most able colleagues in Washington, accepted the nomination for +President of the United States, offered her by the women of California +in 1884 and by the women of Iowa in 1888 through their Equal Rights +party, she did not lend her support or that of the National +Association, but followed her consistent policy of no alignment with a +minority party. Nevertheless, she heartily believed in women's right +and ability to hold the highest office in the land. + + * * * * * + +Ever since her trip to Europe in 1883, Susan had been planning for an +international gathering of women. Interest in this project was kept +alive among European women by Mrs. Stanton during her frequent visits +with her daughter Harriot in England and her son Theodore in France. +It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the +National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an +international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate +the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten +thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all +parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as +well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and +an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference +and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of +Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the +enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide +contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many +and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy +development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her _Woman's +Tribune_ in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's _Tribune_, +established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had since then met in a +measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she +welcomed its transfer to Washington.[362] + +Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House +in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which +opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted +entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the +pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national +organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England, +France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada. + +Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record +attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and +Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in +Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening +thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel +not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and +demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training +in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal +suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their +responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education +and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were +listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White +House by President and Mrs. Cleveland. + +Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress +with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine +of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore _Sun_, "daily +grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good +works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of +press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of +doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the +parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without +murmur or dissent."[363] + +A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five +years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as +president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed +as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as +vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral +reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as +Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international +movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn +by experience. + +Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women, +two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and +overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American +Woman Suffrage Associations. + +Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary +Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she assumed, was a narrow Methodist +minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman +in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience +spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm +personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a +matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan +and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled +as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met. + +Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her +indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the +hardships and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary +Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her +way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School, +from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two +Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist +Episcopal church because of her sex. Eventually she was ordained by +the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied +medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker +was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups. +Through the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she met an +inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances +Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave +the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage +movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the +Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was placed at the head +of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she +met Susan B. Anthony. + +[Illustration: Anna Howard Shaw] + +The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the +feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant +vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her, +seemed particularly well fitted to assist Susan in the arduous +campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure +take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western +tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's +promise that she would lecture for the National Association. + +One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after +meeting her at the International Council. A warm friendship quickly +developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years +they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and +planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester +through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home +and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and +devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker +nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her +tasks, though less spectacular, were important and freed both Susan +and Anna from many details. + +Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard +Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman +Suffrage Association, just so it clarified the opinions of other young +women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of +both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups +should not work together in one large strong organization, and this +seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other +countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the +personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had +caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the +difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they +press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt +themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked +forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together, +but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had +made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by +surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American Association proposed +that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union. + + * * * * * + +The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous +partisans, and in the _Woman's Journal_, the _Woman's Tribune_, and +elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the +twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the +tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the +past aroused little interest. + +The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most +difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton, +nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed +for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for +Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger +members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were +chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's +favor. Her popularity in the National Association was tremendous. +Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and +admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she +now spent so much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many +who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go +to Susan, who was always on the job. + +[Illustration: Harriot Stanton Blatch] + +Most of the American Association regarded Susan as safer and less +radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path +of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election. + +Susan did not want the presidency. She wanted it for Mrs. Stanton, who +had headed the National Association so ably for so many years. She +pleaded earnestly with the delegates of the National Association: "I +will say to every woman who is a National and who has any love for the +old Association, or for Susan B. Anthony, that I hope you will not +vote for her for president.... Don't you vote for any human being but +Mrs. Stanton.... When the division was made 22 years ago it was +because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too +radical.... And now ... if Mrs. Stanton shall be deposed ... you +virtually degrade her.... I want our platform to be kept broad enough +for the infidel, the atheist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian.... +These are the broad principles I want you to stand upon."[364] + +When the two organizations met in February 1890 to effect formal union +as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton was elected president by a majority of 41 votes, while Susan +was the almost unanimous choice for vice-president at large. With Lucy +Stone chosen chairman of the executive committee, Jane Spofford +treasurer, and Rachel Foster and Alice Stone Blackwell +secretaries,[365] the new organization was well equipped with able +leaders for the work ahead. It was dedicated to work for both state +and federal woman suffrage amendments and its official organ would be +the _Woman's Journal_. + +Susan now faced the future with gratitude that a strong unified +organization could be handed down to the younger women who would +gradually take over the work she had started, and her confidence in +these young women grew day by day. Working closely with Rachel Foster +and May Wright Sewall, she knew their caliber. Anna Howard Shaw and +Alice Stone Blackwell showed great promise, and Harriot Stanton Blatch +was living up to her expectations. In England where Harriot had made +her home since her marriage in 1882, she was active in the cause, and +on her visits to her mother in New York, she kept in touch with the +suffrage movement in the United States. She took part in the union +meeting, and in her diary, Susan recorded these words of commendation, +"Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy of her mother +and her mother's lifelong friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment +for me."[366] + +To such she could entrust her beloved cause. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[356] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 592. + +[357] _Ibid._, p. 658. + +[358] Miss Anthony first met Frances Willard in 1875 when she lectured +in Rochester. Invited to sit on the platform, by her side, she +thoughtfully refused, adding "You have a heavy enough load to carry +without me." Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 472. When Frances Willard took +her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876, Miss Anthony +wrote her, "Now you are to go forward. I wish I could see you and make +you feel my gladness." Mary Earhart, _Frances Willard_ (Chicago, +1944), p. 153. + +[359] During the debate, Frances Willard rendered valuable aid with a +petition for woman suffrage, signed by 200,000 women. This +counteracted in a measure the protests against woman suffrage by +President Eliot of Harvard and 200 New England clergymen. + +[360] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 622-623. + +[361] _Ibid._, p. 612. + +[362] So successful was Mrs. Colby's Washington venture that she +continued to publish her _Woman's Tribune_ there for the next 16 years + +[363] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 637. + +[364] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 22, 1890. + +[365] The credit for achieving union after two years of patient +negotiation goes to Rachel Foster Avery, secretary of the National +Association, and to Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, +secretary of the American Association. + +[366] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 675. + + + + +VICTORIES IN THE WEST + + +New western states were coming into the Union, North and South Dakota, +Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, and in Susan's opinion it was +highly important that they be admitted as woman suffrage states, for +she had not forgotten that disturbing line of the Supreme Court +decision in the Virginia Minor case which read, "No new State has ever +been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage +on women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her +admission."[367] Susan wanted to start a new trend. + +Opposition to Wyoming's woman suffrage provision was strong in +Congress in spite of the fact that it had the unanimous approval of +Wyoming's constitutional convention. To Susan in the gallery of the +House of Representatives, listening anxiously to the debate on the +admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in +the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wishing to +block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman +suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment +offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment, +however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming +legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of +the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman +suffrage."[368] After this, the House voted to admit Wyoming, 139 to +127, but the Senate delayed, renewing the attack on the woman suffrage +provision. Not until July 1890, while she was speaking to a large +audience in the opera house at Madison, South Dakota, did the good +news of the admission of Wyoming reach her. Jubilant as she commented +on this great victory, she spoke as one inspired, for she saw this as +the turning point in her forty long years of uphill work. + +Neither North Dakota nor South Dakota had wanted to risk their +chances of statehood by incorporating woman suffrage in their +constitutions.[369] Yet public opinion in both states was friendly, +South Dakota directing its first legislature to submit the question to +the voters. It was this that brought Susan to South Dakota in 1890. +Sentiment for woman suffrage in South Dakota had previously been +created almost entirely by the W.C.T.U., and this had linked woman +suffrage and prohibition together. Now, the liquor interests made +prohibition an issue in this woman suffrage campaign, as they rallied +their forces for the repeal of prohibition which had been adopted when +South Dakota was admitted to statehood. Through the propaganda of the +liquor interests the 30,000 foreign-born voters became formidable +opponents, and newly naturalized Russians, Scandinavians, and Poles, +given the vote before American women, wore badges carrying the slogan, +"Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."[370] Both Republicans +and Democrats cultivated these foreign-born voters, turning a cold +shoulder to the woman suffrage amendment and refusing to endorse it in +their state conventions. Even the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of +Labor, previously friendly to woman suffrage, now joined with the +Prohibitionists to form a third political party which also failed to +endorse the woman suffrage amendment. On top of all this, +anti-suffragists from Massachusetts, calling themselves Remonstrants, +flooded South Dakota with their leaflets. + +It now seemed to Susan as if every clever politician had lined up +against women. During these trying days, Anna Howard Shaw joined her, +and together they covered the state, hoping by the truth and sincerity +of their statements to quash the propaganda against woman suffrage. +Often they traveled in freight cars, as transportation was limited, or +drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat +was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything +they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately +poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress +could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these +honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an investigating +commission.[371] + +Occasionally Susan and Anna spent the night in isolated sod houses +where ingenious pioneer women cooked their scant meals over burning +chips of buffalo bones gathered on the prairie. Glorying in the +valiant spirit of these women, who in loneliness and hardship played +an important but unheralded role in the conquest of this new country, +Susan was generous with her praise. To them her words of commendation +were like a benediction, and few of them ever forgot a visit from +Susan B. Anthony. + +By this time life on the frontier was an old story to her, for she had +campaigned under similar conditions in Kansas and in the far West. +Nonetheless, the hardships were trying. Yet this plucky woman of +seventy wrote friends in the East, "Tell everybody that I am perfectly +well in body and in mind, never better, and never doing more work.... +O, the lack of modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with +it better than any of the young folks.... I shall push ahead and do my +level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... +I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of +the good people everywhere...."[372] + +Young vigorous Anna Howard Shaw proved to be a campaigner after +Susan's own heart, tireless, uncomplaining, and good-tempered, an +exceptional speaker, witty and quick to say the right word at the +right time. It was a joy to find in Anna the same devotion to the +cause that she herself felt, the same crusading fervor and +reliability. During the long drives over the prairie, she talked to +Anna of the work that must be done, of what it would mean to the women +of the future, and she fired Anna's soul "with the flame that burned +in her own."[373] + +Another young western woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, also attracted +Susan's attention at this time. She had volunteered for the South +Dakota campaign, after attending her first national woman suffrage +convention; and Susan, meeting her in Huron, South Dakota, to map out +a speaking tour for her, found a tall handsome confident young woman +ready to attack the work and see it through, in spite of the hardships +which confronted her. + +Carrie Lane, a graduate of Iowa State College, had briefly studied law +and taught school before her marriage to Lee Chapman. Now, four years +after his death, she had married George W. Catt of Seattle, a +promising young engineer and a former fellow-student at Iowa State +College. What particularly impressed Susan was that Carrie, in spite +of her marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota. +She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every +difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and +planned for the future. In Carrie's report of her work there was a +ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's +approval. Here was a young woman to watch and to keep in the work. + +[Illustration: The Anthony home, Rochester, New York] + +The visible result of six months of campaigning was defeat, with the +vote 22,972 for woman suffrage and 45,632 opposed, and as Susan +remembered the maneuvers of the politicians, the trading of votes for +the location of the state capital, and the scheming of the liquor +interests, she felt she was championing a lonely cause. + + * * * * * + +From now on Susan hoped to turn over to the younger women much of the +lecturing and organizing in the West, and she needed an anchorage, a +home of her own from which she could direct the work. Her mother had +willed 17 Madison Street to Mary, who had rented the first floor and +was living on the second where there was a room for Susan. Now that +Susan planned to spend more time at home and Mary had retired from +teaching, they decided to take over the whole house, modernize and +redecorate it, and enjoy it the rest of their lives. Mary as usual +took charge, but Susan had definite ideas about what should be done. +Mary, who had learned to be cautious and frugal, was more willing +than Susan to make old furnishings do, but their friends came to the +rescue, showering them with gifts. + +Freshly painted and papered, with new rugs on the floor, lace curtains +at the windows, easy chairs and new furniture here and there, the +house was all Susan had wished for, and everywhere were familiar +touches, such as her mother's spinning wheel by the fireplace in the +back parlor. + +She spent most of her time in her study on the second floor. Here she +hung her pictures of the reformers she admired and loved; and right +over her desk, looking down at her, was the comforting picture of her +dearest friend, Mrs. Stanton. Hour after hour, she sat at this desk, +writing letters, hurriedly dashing off one after another, writing just +as the thoughts came, as if she were talking, bothering little with +punctuation, using dashes instead, and vigorously underlining words +and phrases for emphasis. Instructions to workers in all parts of the +country, letters of friendship and sympathy, answers to the many +questions which came in every mail, these were signed and sealed one +after another, and slipped into the mail box when she took a brisk +walk before going to bed. + +She started each day with the morning newspaper, stepping out on the +front veranda to pick it up, taking a deep breath of fresh air, and +enjoying the green grass and the tall graceful chestnut trees in front +of the house. Then sitting down in the back parlor beside the big +table covered with magazines and mail, she carefully read her paper +before beginning the work at her desk, for she must keep up-to-date on +the news. + +Rochester was important to her. It was her city, and she was on hand +with her colleagues whenever there was an opportunity for women to +express interest in its government, progress, or welfare. Not only did +she encourage women to make use of their newly won right to vote in +school elections, she also urged municipal suffrage for women. +Appealing to the governor to appoint a woman to fill a vacancy on the +board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School, she herself +received the appointment which the _Democrat and Chronicle_ called "a +fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the +commonwealth."[374] + +One of her first acts as trustee was a practical one for the girls. +"Spent entire day at State Industrial School," she wrote in her diary, +"getting the laundry girls--who had always washed for the entire +institution by hand and ironed that old way--transferred to the boys' +laundry room to use its machinery--am sure it will work well--girls 12 +of them delighted."[375] She also taught the boys to patch and darn, +and later asked for coeducation. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at her desk] + + * * * * * + +Susan looked forward to welcoming Mrs. Stanton at 17 Madison Street +when she returned to this country in 1891, particularly because she +had sold her home in Tenafly after her husband's death, in 1887, and +now had no home to go to. Susan hoped that as they again worked +together she could persuade Mrs. Stanton to concentrate on more +serious writing than the chatty reminiscences she had just published +and which Susan felt were "not the greatest" of herself.[376] When she +heard that Mrs. Stanton seriously contemplated living in New York with +two of her children, she begged her to reconsider, writing, "This is +the first time since 1850 that I have anchored myself to any +particular spot, and in doing it my constant thought was that you +would come here ... and stay for as long, at least, as we must be +together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to +posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for +myself, but is for the one by the side of whom I have wrought these +forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences ... has been +the delight of my life."[377] + +Mrs. Stanton decided to make her home in New York, but first she +visited Susan who found her as stimulating as ever and brimful of +ideas. They plotted and planned as of old and managed to stir up +public opinion on the question of admitting women to the University of +Rochester. With women enrolled at the University of Michigan since +1870, and at Cornell since 1872, and with Columbia University yielding +at last to women's entreaties by establishing Barnard College in 1889, +they felt it their duty to awaken Rochester, and although their +agitation produced no immediate results, it did start other women +thinking and made news for the press. The cartoons on the subject +delighted them both.[378] + +Susan soon realized that the writing she had planned for Mrs. Stanton +would never be done, for Mrs. Stanton had already made up her mind to +write for magazines and newspapers on new and controversial subjects, +feeling this was the best contribution she could make to the cause. +Susan also found it increasingly difficult to hold her old friend to +the straight path of woman suffrage, Mrs. Stanton insisting that too +much concentration on this one subject was narrowing and left women +unprepared for the intelligent use of the ballot. Women, Mrs. Stanton +argued, needed to be stirred up to think, and this they would not do +as long as their minds were dominated by the church, which, she +believed, had for generations hampered their development by +emphasizing their inferiority and subordination. She was determined to +analyze and rebel, and Susan could in no way divert her. Completely +absorbed in trying to prove that the Bible, accurately translated and +interpreted, did not teach the inferiority or the subordination of +women, she was writing a book which she called _The Woman's Bible_, +chapters of which were already appearing in the _Woman's Tribune_. + +Susan was not unsympathetic to Mrs. Stanton's ideas, but she opposed +this excursion into religious controversy because she was sure it +would stir up futile wrangles among the suffragists and keep Mrs. +Stanton from giving her best to the cause. Her lack of interest then +and her frank disapproval as _The Woman's Bible_ progressed were a +great disappointment to Mrs. Stanton, and these two old friends began +to grow somewhat apart as they took different roads to reach their +goal, the one intent on freeing women's minds, the other determined to +establish their citizenship. Yet their friendship endured. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton] + +In 1892 Susan reluctantly consented to Mrs. Stanton's retirement as +president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. +Stanton's request that she be followed by Susan won unanimous +approval, and Anna Howard Shaw was moved up to second place, +vice-president at large. For forty years, Susan had watched Mrs. +Stanton preside with a poise, warmth, and skill which few could equal. +She knew she would miss her dynamic reassuring presence at the +conventions. Yet she was obliged to admit to herself that it was more +than fitting that she should at last head the ever-growing +organization which she had built up. This was the last convention +which Mrs. Stanton attended, and it was the last for Lucy Stone who +died the next year. Susan appreciated the eager young women who now +took their places, but she did not yet feel completely at home with +them. "Only think," she wrote an old-time colleague, "I shall not have +a white-haired woman on the platform with me, and I shall be alone +there of all the pioneer workers. Always with the 'old guard' I had +perfect confidence that the wise and right thing would be said. What a +platform ours then was of self-reliant strong women! I felt sure of +you all.... I can not feel quite certain that our younger sisters will +be equal to the emergency, yet they are each and all valiant, earnest, +and talented, and will soon be left to manage the ship without even +me."[379] + +In 1892, the year of the presidential election, Susan hopefully +attended the national political conventions. Again the Republicans +made their proverbial excuses, explaining that they not only faced a +formidable opponent in Grover Cleveland but also the threat of a new +People's party. The familiar ring of their alibis, which they had +repeated since Reconstruction days, made Susan wonder when and if ever +the Republicans would feel able to bear the strain of woman suffrage. +Their platform remembered the poor, the foreign-born, and male +Negroes, but it still ignored women. Yet hope for the future stirred +in her heart as she saw at the convention two women serving as +delegates from Wyoming. Here was the entering wedge. + +The Democrats as usual were silent on woman suffrage, but undismayed +by them or by the Prohibitionists, who this year failed to endorse +votes for women, Susan moved on to Omaha with Anna Howard Shaw for the +first national convention of the new People's party. Here she met +representatives of the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, +both friendly to woman suffrage, and men from other groups, critical +of the two major political parties for their failure to solve the +pressing economic problems confronting the nation. Susan was +sympathetic with many of the aims of the People's party, having seen +with her own eyes the plight of debt-burdened, hard-working farmers +and having crusaded in her own paper, _The Revolution_, for the rights +of labor and for the control of industrial monopoly. However, she +still viewed minor, reform parties with a highly critical eye. The +People's party gave her no woman suffrage plank and she found them +"quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as +either of the old parties...."[380] + +With the election of Grover Cleveland, whose opposition to woman +suffrage was well known, and with the Democrats in the saddle for +another four years, Congressional action on the woman suffrage +amendment was blocked. Nevertheless, the cause moved ahead in the +states; Colorado was to vote on the question in 1893 and Kansas in +1894, and New York was revising its constitution. In addition, the +World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 offered endless opportunities to bring +the subject before the people. + + * * * * * + +As soon as plans for the World's Fair were under way, Susan began to +work indirectly through prominent women in Washington and Chicago for +the appointment of women to the board of management. "Lady Managers" +were appointed, 115 strong, who proved to be very much alive under the +leadership of Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer. Susan found Mrs. Palmer +almost as determined as she to secure equality of rights for women at +the World's Fair, and nothing that she herself might have planned +could have been more effective than the series of world congresses in +which both men and women took part, or than the World's Congress of +Representative Women. + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and +Susan B. Anthony] + +Two of Susan's "girls," as she liked to call them, Rachel Foster +Avery[381] and May Wright Sewall, were appointed by Mrs. Palmer to +take charge of the World's Congress of Representative Women, and they +arranged a meeting of the International Council of Women as a part of +this Congress. + +Convening soon after the opening of the World's Fair, the Congress of +Representative Women drew record crowds at its eighty-one sessions. +Twenty-seven countries and 126 organizations were represented. Here +Susan, to her joy, heard Negroes, American Indians, and Mormons tell +of their progress and their problems, and saw them treated with as +much respect as American millionaires, English nobility, or the most +virtuous, conservative housewife. Watching these women assemble, +talking with them, and listening to their well-delivered speeches, she +felt richly rewarded for the lonely work she had undertaken forty +years before, when scarcely a woman could be coaxed to a meeting or be +persuaded to express her opinions in public. Although only one session +of the congress was devoted to the civil and political rights of +women, it was gratifying to her that women's need of the ballot was +spontaneously brought up in meeting after meeting, showing that +women, whatever their cause or whatever their organization, were +recognizing that only by means of the vote could their reforms be +achieved. + +Speaking on the subject to which she had dedicated her life, Susan +gave credit to the pioneering suffragists for the change which had +taken place in public opinion regarding the position of women. She +urged women's organizations to give suffrage their wholehearted +support and pointed out the great power of some of the newer +organizations, such as the W.C.T.U. with its membership of half a +million and the young General Federation of Women's Clubs of 40,000 +members. Confessing that her own National American Woman Suffrage +Association in comparison was poor in numbers and limited in funds, +she added, "I would philosophize on the reason why. It is because +women have been taught always to work for something else than their +own personal freedom; and the hardest thing in the world is to +organize women for the one purpose of securing their political liberty +and political equality."[382] Even so, the vital woman's rights +organizations, she concluded, drew the whole world to them in spirit +if not in person. + +Her very presence among them without her words, in fact her very +presence on the fair grounds, advertised her cause, for in the mind of +the public she personified woman suffrage. This tall dignified woman +with smooth gray hair, abundant in energy and spontaneous +friendliness, was the center of attraction at the World's Congress of +Representative Women. In her new black dress of Chinese silk, +brightened with blue, and her small black bonnet, trimmed with lace +and blue forget-me-nots, she was the perfect picture of everyone's +grandmother, and the people took her to their hearts.[383] She was the +one woman all wanted to see. Curious crowds jammed the hall and +corridors when she was scheduled to speak, and often a policeman had +to clear the way for her. At whatever meeting she appeared, the +audience at once burst into applause and started calling for her, +interrupting the speakers, and were not satisfied until she had +mounted the platform so that all could see her and she had said a few +words. Then they cheered her. After years of ridicule and +unpopularity, she hardly knew what to make of all this, but she +accepted it with happiness as a tribute to her beloved cause. Many +who had been critical and wary of her newfangled notions began to +reverse their opinions after they saw her and heard her words of good +common sense. Even those who still opposed woman suffrage left the +World's Fair with a new respect for Susan B. Anthony. + +She stayed on in Chicago for much of the summer and fall, for she was +in demand as a speaker at several of the world congresses and had five +speeches to read for Mrs. Stanton, who felt unable to brave the heat +and the crowds. She felt at home in this bustling, rapidly growing +city which for so many years had been the halfway station on her +lecture and campaign trips through the West. Here she had always found +a warm welcome, first from her cousins, the Dickinsons, then from the +ever-widening circle of friends she won for her cause. Now she was +literally swamped with hospitality.[384] She rejoiced that such great +numbers of everyday people were able to enjoy the beauty of the fair +grounds and the many interesting exhibits, and when a group of +clergymen urged Sunday closing, she took issue with them, declaring +that Sunday was the only day on which many were free to attend. Asked +by a disapproving clergyman if she would like to have a son of hers +attend Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on Sunday, she promptly and +bluntly replied, "Of course I would, and I think he would learn far +more there than from the sermons in some churches!"[385] + +Hearing of this, Buffalo Bill offered her a box at his popular Wild +West Show, and she appeared the next day with twelve of her "girls." +Dashing into the arena on his spirited horse while the band played and +the spotlight flashed on him, Buffalo Bill rode directly up to Susan's +box, reined his horse, and swept off his big western hat to salute +her. Quick to respond, she rose and bowed, and beaming with pleasure, +waved her handkerchief at him while the immense audience applauded and +cheered. + +She returned home early in November 1893, with happy memories of the +World's Fair and to good news from Colorado. "Telegram ... from +Denver--said woman suffrage carried by 5000 majority," she recorded in +her diary.[386] This laconic comment in no way expressed the joy in +her heart. + +Her diaries, written hurriedly in small fine script, year after year, +in black-covered notebooks about three inches by six, were a brief +terse record of her work and her travels. Only occasionally a line of +philosophizing shone out from the mass of routine detail, or an +illuminating comment on a friend or a difficult situation, but she +never failed to record a family anniversary, a birthday, or a death. + +The Colorado victory, referred to so casually in her diary, was +actually of great importance to her and her cause, for it carried +forward the trend initiated by the admission of Wyoming as a woman +suffrage state in 1890. Colorado also proved to her that her "girls" +could take over her work. So busy had she been winning good will for +the cause at the World's Fair that she had left Colorado in the +capable hands of the women of the state and of young efficient Carrie +Chapman Catt, to whom she now turned over the supervision of all state +campaigns. + +Encouragement also came from another part of the world, from New +Zealand, where the vote was extended to women. This confirmed her +growing conviction that equal citizenship was best understood on the +frontier and that in her own country victory would come from the West. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[367] Minor vs. Happersett, _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. +741-742. North and South Dakota, Washington and Montana were admitted +in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890. + +[368] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 999-1000. + +[369] North Dakota's constitution provided that the legislature might +in the future enfranchise women. + +[370] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 556. + +[371] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 690. + +[372] _Ibid._, p. 688. + +[373] Anna Howard Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_ (New York, 1915), p. +202. + +[374] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 731. + +[375] Ms., Diary, Feb. 28, April 18, 1893. + +[376] Published first in the _Woman's Tribune_, then as a book in 1898 +under the title, _Eighty Years and More_. + +[377] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 712. + +[378] During this visit the young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, modeled +busts of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton which later were chiseled in +marble and were exhibited with the bust of Lucretia Mott at the +World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. They are now in the Capitol in +Washington. + +[379] To Clarina Nichols. Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 544. Miss Anthony +wrote in her diary, Oct. 18, 1893, "Lucy Stone died this evening at +her home--Dorchester, Mass. aged 75--I can but wonder if the spirit +now sees things as it did 25 years ago!" The wound inflicted by Lucy's +misunderstanding of her motives had never healed. + +[380] _Ibid._, p. 727. + +[381] Rachel Foster was married in 1888 to Cyrus Miller Avery. + +[382] May Wright Sewall, Editor, _The World's Congress of +Representative Women_ (Chicago, 1894), p. 464. + +[383] Statement by Lucy E. Anthony, Una R. Winter Collection. + +[384] Miss Anthony's diary, 1893, mentions visiting "dear Mrs. +Coonley" (Lydia Avery Coonley) in her beautiful, friendly home. May +Wright Sewall, and devoted Emily Gross. Her sister Mary, Daniel, +Merritt, and their families joined her at the Fair for a few weeks. + +[385] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 205-207. + +[386] Ms., Diary, Nov. 8, 1893. + + + + +LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE + + +"I am in the midst of as severe a treadmill as I ever experienced, +traveling from fifty to one hundred miles every day and speaking five +or six nights a week,"[387] Susan wrote a friend in 1894, during the +campaign to wrest woman suffrage from the New York constitutional +convention. She was now seventy-four years old. Political machines and +financial interests were deeply intrenched in New York, and although +two governors had recommended that women be represented in the +constitutional convention and a bill had been passed making women +eligible as delegates, neither Republicans nor Democrats had the +slightest intention of allowing women to slip into men's stronghold. +It was obvious to Susan that without representation at the convention +and without power to enforce their demands, women's only hope was an +intensive educational campaign which she now directed with vigor. +Whenever she could, she conferred with Mrs. Stanton, whose judgment +she valued, and there was zest in working together as they had during +the previous constitutional convention in 1867. + +The women of New York were aroused as never before. Young able +speakers went through the state, piling up signatures on their +petitions, but they had few influential friends among the delegates. +Anti-suffragists were active, encouraged by Bishop Doane of the +Protestant Episcopal church and Mrs. Lyman Abbott, whose name carried +the prestige and influence of her husband's popular magazine, _The +Outlook_. + +With the election of Joseph Choate of New York as president of the +convention, Susan knew that woman suffrage was doomed, for Choate had +political aspirations and was not likely to let his sympathies for an +unpopular cause jeopardize his chances of becoming governor. While he +gave women every opportunity to be heard, at the same time he arranged +for the defeat of woman suffrage by appointing men to consider the +subject who were definitely opposed, and they submitted an adverse +report. Here was a situation similar to that in 1867, when her +one-time friend, Horace Greeley, had deserted women for political +expediency. + +"I am used to defeat every time and know how to pick up and push on +for another attack," she wrote as she now turned her attention to +Kansas.[388] + + * * * * * + +The Republicans in Kansas had sponsored school and municipal suffrage +for women and had passed a woman suffrage amendment to be referred to +the people in 1894. Yet they proved to be as great a disappointment to +Susan as they were in 1867, when as a last resort she had been obliged +to campaign with the Democrats and George Francis Train. + +The population of Kansas had changed with the years, as immigrants +from Europe had come into the state, and Susan was again confronted +with the powerful opposition of foreign-born voters for whose support +the political parties bargained. The liquor interests were also +active, and the Republicans, who had brought prohibition to Kansas, +now left the question discreetly alone, even making a deal with German +Democrats for their votes by promising to ignore in their platform +both prohibition and woman suffrage. Prohibition and woman suffrage +were synonymous in the minds of voters, because women had generally +voted for enforcement in municipal elections, and no matter how hard +Susan tried, she found it impossible to have woman suffrage considered +on its own merits. + +Watching the straws in the wind, she saw Republican supremacy +seriously threatened by the new Populist party. Convinced that she +could no longer count on help from Kansas Republicans, she turned to +the Populist party, ignoring the pleas of Republican women who warned +her she would hurt the cause by association with such a radical group. +The Populists were generally regarded as the party of social unrest, +of a regulated economy, and unsound money, and they were looked upon +with suspicion. To many they represented a threat to the American +free-enterprise system, and they were blamed for the labor troubles +which had flared up in the bloody Homestead strike in the steel mills +of Pennsylvania and in the Pullman strike, defying the powerful +railroads. Susan was never afraid to side with the underdog, and she +could well understand why western farmers, in the hope of relief, were +eagerly flocking into the Populist party when their corn sold for ten +cents a bushel and the products they bought were high-priced and their +mortgage interest was never lower than 10 per cent. + +To the Populist convention, she declared, "I have labored for women's +enfranchisement for forty years and I have always said that for the +party that endorsed it, whether Republican, Democratic, or Populist, I +would wave my handkerchief."[389] + +"We want more than the waving of your handkerchief, Miss Anthony," +interrupted a delegate, who then asked her, "If the People's party put +a woman suffrage plank in its platform, will you go before the voters +of this state and tell them that because the People's party has +espoused the cause of woman suffrage, it deserves the vote of every +one who is a supporter of that cause?" + +"I most certainly will," she replied, adding as the audience cheered +her wildly, "for I would surely choose to ask votes for the party +which stood for the principle of justice to women, though wrong on +financial theories, rather than for the party which was sound on +questions of money and tariff, and silent on the pending amendment to +secure political equality to half of the people." + +"I most certainly will" was the phrase which was remembered and was +flashed through the country, and as a result, the Republican press and +Susan's Republican friends harshly criticized her for taking her stand +with the radicals. + +Like all political parties, the Populists found it hard to comprehend +justice for women, but after a four-hour debate, the convention +endorsed the woman suffrage amendment, absolving, however, members who +refused to support it. The rank and file rejoiced as if each and every +one of them were heart and soul for the cause. They cheered, they +waved their canes, they threw their hats high in the air, and then +swarmed around Susan and Anna Shaw to shake their hands and welcome +them into the Populist party. + +With woman suffrage at last a political issue in Kansas, Susan left +the field to her "girls." Her homecoming brought reporters to 17 +Madison Street for the details about her alignment with the Populist +party. "I didn't go over to the Populists," she told them. "I have +been like a drowning man for a long time, waiting for someone to throw +a plank in my direction. I didn't step on the whole platform, but just +on the woman suffrage plank.... Here is a party in power which is +likely to remain in power, and if it will give its endorsement to our +movement, we want it."[390] + +This explanation, however, did not satisfy her critics, and as the +Republican press circulated false stories about her enthusiasm for the +Populist party, letters of protest poured in, among them one from +Henry Blackwell. To him, she replied, "I shall not praise the +Republicans of Kansas, or wish or work for their success, when I know +by their own confessions to me that the rights of the women of their +state have been traded by them in cold blood for the votes of the +lager beer foreigners and whisky Democrats.... I never, in my whole +forty years work, so utterly repudiated any set of politicians as I do +those Republicans of Kansas.... I never was surer of my position that +no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a +party that ignores her political rights."[391] + +The contest in Kansas was close and bitter. Kansas women carried on an +able campaign with the help of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman +Catt. When Susan returned to the state in October, she not only found +that the Democrats had entered the fight with an anti-suffrage plank +but the Populists had noticeably lost ground since the Pullman strike +riots, the court injunction against the strikers, and the arrest of +Eugene V. Debs. Again this prairie state, from which she had hoped so +much, refused to extend suffrage to women. Impulsively she recommended +a little "Patrick Henryism" to the women of Kansas, suggesting that +they fold their hands and refuse to help men run the churches, the +charities, and the reform movements.[392] + + * * * * * + +California was the next state to demand Susan's attention. A +Republican legislature had submitted a woman suffrage amendment to be +voted on by the people in 1896, and the women of California asked for +her help. She toured the state in the spring of 1895 with Anna Howard +Shaw, and everywhere she won friends. The continuous travel and +speaking, however, taxed her far more than she realized, and soon +after her return to the East, she collapsed. As this news flashed over +the wires, letters poured in from her friends, begging her to spare +herself. Two of these letters were especially precious. One in bold +vigorous script was from her good comrade, Parker Pillsbury, now +eighty-six, who had been an unfailing help during the most difficult +years of her career and whom she probably trusted more completely than +any other man. The other from her dearest friend, Elizabeth Stanton, +read, "I never realized how desolate the world would be to me without +you until I heard of your sudden illness. Let me urge you with all the +strength I have, and all the love I bear you, to stay at home and rest +and save your precious self."[393] + +She now realized that rest was imperative for a time, but it troubled +her that people thought of her as old and ill, and she wrote Clara +Colby never to mention anyone's illness in her _Woman's Tribune_, +adding, "It is so dreadful to get public thought centered on one as +ill--as I have had it the last two months."[394] + +She had no intention of retiring from the field. She knew her own +strength and that her life must be one of action. "I am able to endure +the strain of daily traveling and lecturing at over three-score and +ten," she observed, "mainly because I have always worked and loved +work.... As machinery in motion lasts longer than when lying idle, so +a body and soul in active exercise escapes the corroding rust of +physical and mental laziness, which prematurely cuts off the life of +so many women."[395] + +Yet she did slow up a little, refusing an offer from the Slayton +Lecture Bureau for a series of lectures at $100 a night, and she +engaged a capable secretary, Emma B. Sweet, to help her with her +tremendous correspondence. "Dear Rachel" had given her a typewriter, +and now instead of dashing off letters at her desk late at night, she +learned to dictate them to Mrs. Sweet at regular hours. As requests +came in from newspapers and magazines for her comments on a wide +variety of subjects, she answered those that made possible a word on +the advancement of women. + +Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it +up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers. +What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb +mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit +them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has +done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I +rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a +feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her +seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."[396] + +[Illustration: Ida Husted Harper] + + * * * * * + +Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity +and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister, +William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take +her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her +devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking +tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece +Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances +Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state, +for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the +California campaign. + +With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies +running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of +keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the +aid of a young journalist, Ida Husted Harper, whom she had met in 1878 +while lecturing in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who was in California +that winter. When the San Francisco _Examiner_, William Randolph +Hearst's powerful Democratic paper, offered Susan a column on the +editorial page if she would write it and sign it, she dictated her +thoughts to Mrs. Harper, who smoothed them out for the column, helping +her as Mrs. Stanton had in the past, for writing was still a great +hardship. Grateful to Mrs. Harper, she sang her praises: "The moment I +give the idea--the point--she formulates it into a good +sentence--while I should have to haggle over it half an hour."[397] + +California women had won suffrage planks from Republicans, Populists, +and Prohibitionists, and the prospects looked bright. Rich women came +to their aid, Mrs. Leland Stanford, with her railroad fortune, +furnishing passes for all the speakers and organizers, and Mrs. Phoebe +Hearst contributing $1,000 to their campaign. What warmed Susan's +heart, however, was the spirit of the rank and file, the seamstresses +and washerwomen, paying their two-dollar pledges in twenty-five-cent +installments, the poorly clad women bringing in fifty cents or a +dollar which they had saved by going without tea, and the women who +had worked all day at their jobs, stopping at headquarters for a +package of circulars to fold and address at night. The working women +of California made it plain that they wanted to vote. + +Susan insisted upon carrying out what she called her "wild goose +chase" over the state.[398] People crowded to hear her at farmers' +picnics in the mountains, in schoolhouses in small towns, and in +poolrooms where chalked up on the blackboard she often found "Welcome +Susan B. Anthony." She was at home everywhere and ready for anything. +The men liked her short matter-of-fact speeches and her flashes of +wit. Her hopes were high that the friendly people she met would not +fail to vote justice to women. + +She grew apprehensive, however, when the newspapers, pressured by +their advertisers, one by one began to ignore woman suffrage. The +Liquor Dealers' League had been sending letters to hotel owners, +grocers, and druggists, as well as to saloons, warning that votes for +women would mean prohibition and would threaten their livelihood. Word +was spread that if women voted not one glass of beer would be sold in +San Francisco. As in Kansas, liquor interests had persuaded +naturalized Irish, Germans, and Swedes to oppose woman suffrage, so +now in California, they appealed to the Chinese. + +On election day Susan was in San Francisco with Anna Howard Shaw and +Ellen Sargent, watching and anxiously waiting for the returns. Telling +the story of those last tense hours when women's fate hung in the +balance, Anna Howard Shaw reported, "I shall always remember the +picture of Miss Anthony and the wife of Senator Sargent wandering +around the polls arm in arm at eleven o'clock at night, their tired +faces taking on lines of deeper depression with every minute, for the +count was against us.... When the final counts came in, we found that +we had won the state from the north down to Oakland and from the south +up to San Francisco; but there was not sufficient majority to overcome +the adverse votes of San Francisco and Oakland. In San Francisco the +saloon element and the most aristocratic section ... made an equal +showing against us.... Every Chinese vote was against us."[399] + +In spite of defeat in California, Susan had the joy of marking up two +more states for woman suffrage in 1896. Utah was granted statehood +with a woman suffrage provision in its constitution and Idaho's +favorable vote, though contested in the courts, was upheld by the +State Supreme Court. Now women in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah +were voters. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[387] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 763. + +[388] To Elizabeth Smith Miller, July 25, 1894, Elizabeth Smith Miller +Papers, New York Public Library. + +[389] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 788. + +[390] _Ibid._, p. 791. + +[391] _Ibid._, p. 794. + +[392] To Clara Colby, July 22, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. +Huntington Library. + +[393] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 842. + +[394] N.d., Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[395] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 843. + +[396] _Ibid._, pp. 844, 859. + +[397] Ms., Diary, July 10, 1896. + +[398] Sept. 8, 1896, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[399] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 274-275. + + + + +AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS + + +The future of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was +much on Susan's mind. This organization which she had conceived and +nursed through its struggling infancy had grown in numbers and +prestige, and she understood, as no one else could, the importance of +leaving it in the right hands so that it could function successfully +without her. + +The young women now in the work, many of them just out of college, +were intelligent, efficient, and confident, and yet as she compared +them with the vivid consecrated women active in the early days of the +movement, she observed in her diary, "[Clarina] Nichols--Paulina +Davis--Lucy Stone--Frances D. Gage--Lucretia Mott & E. C. +Stanton--each without peer among any of our college graduates--young +women of today."[400] + +Even so, she appreciated the "young women of today" whom she +affectionately called her girls or her adopted nieces, but she still +held the reins tightly, although they often champed at the bit. +Recognizing, however, that she must choose between personal power and +progress for her cause, she characteristically chose progress. Quick +to appreciate ability and zeal when she saw it, she seldom failed to +make use of it. When Carrie Chapman Catt presented a detailed plan for +a thorough overhauling of the mechanics of the organization, she gave +her approval, remarking drily, "There never yet was a young woman who +did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the +beginning, the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just +that way when I was young."[401] + +On four of her adopted nieces, Rachel Foster Avery, Anna Howard Shaw, +Harriet Taylor Upton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan felt that the +greater part of her work would fall and be "worthily done."[402] Yet +she feared that in their enthusiasm for efficient organization they +might lose the higher concepts of freedom and justice which had been +the driving force behind her work. Not having learned the lessons of +leadership when the cause was unpopular, they lacked the discipline of +adversity, which bred in the consecrated reformer the wisdom, +tolerance, and vision so necessary for the success of her task. What +they did understand far better than the highly individualistic +pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the +National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one +person to cope with it. + +[Illustration: Rachel Foster Avery] + +Probably first in her affections was Rachel Foster Avery, who had been +like a daughter to her since their trip to Europe together in 1883. +The confidence she felt in their friendship was always a comfort. +Rachel's intelligent approach to problems made her an asset at every +meeting, and Susan relied much on her judgment. + +In Anna Howard Shaw, ten years older than Rachel, Susan had found the +hardy campaigner and orator for whom she had longed. Anna expressed a +warmth and understanding that most of the younger women lacked, and +best of all she loved the cause as Susan herself loved it. Because of +her close friendship with Susan's niece Lucy, she was regarded as one +of the family, and whenever possible between lectures she stopped over +in Rochester for a good talk with "Aunt Susan." + +Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren, Ohio, had enlisted in the ranks in +the 1880s when her father was a member of Congress. Because of her +influence in Washington and Ohio, Harriet was invaluable, and Susan +speedily brought her into the official circle of the National American +Association as treasurer, even thinking of her as a possible +president.[403] Harriet's jovial irrepressible personality readily won +friends, and Susan found her a refreshing and comfortable companion, +able to see a bit of humor in almost every situation. When differences +of opinion at meetings threatened to get out of hand, Harriet could +always be relied on to break the tension with a few witty remarks. + +[Illustration: Harriet Taylor Upton] + +Carrie Chapman Catt gave every indication of developing into an +outstanding executive. Not another one of Susan's "girls" could so +quickly or so intelligently size up a situation as Carrie, nor could +they so effectively put into action well-thought-out plans. Not as +popular a speaker as the more emotional Anna Howard Shaw, she held her +audiences by her appeal to their intelligence. Tall, handsome, and +well dressed, she never failed to leave a favorable impression. Only +her name irked Susan, and as Susan wrote Clara Colby, "If Catt it must +be then I insist, she should keep her own father's name--Lane--and +not her first husband's name--Chapman,"[404] but the three Cs +intrigued Carrie and she continued to be known as Carrie Chapman Catt. +Now living in the East because her husband's expanding business had +brought him to New York, she was easily accessible, and from her +beautiful new home at Bensonhurst, a suburb of Brooklyn, she carried +on the rapidly growing work of the organization committee until a New +York City office became imperative. In Carrie, Susan recognized +qualities demanded of a leader at this stage of the campaign when +suffragists must learn to be as keen as politicians and as well +organized. + + * * * * * + +"Spring is not heralded in Washington by the arrival of the robin," +commented a Washington newspaper, "but by the appearance of Miss +Anthony's red shawl." Susan was still the dominating figure at the +annual woman suffrage conventions. Everyone looked eagerly for the +tall lithe gray-haired woman with a red shawl on her arm or around her +shoulders. Once when Susan appeared on the platform with a new white +crepe shawl, the reporters immediately registered their displeasure by +putting down their pencils. This did not escape her, and always on +good terms with the newsmen and informal with her audiences, she +called out, "Boys, what is the matter?"[405] + +"Where is the red shawl?" one of them asked. "No red shawl, no +report." + +Enjoying this little by-play, she sent her niece Lucy back to the +hotel for the red shawl, and when Lucy brought it up to the platform +and put it about her shoulders, the audience burst into applause, for +the red shawl, like Susan herself, had become the well-loved symbol of +woman suffrage. + +Susan was convinced that the annual national convention should always +be held in Washington, where Congress could see and feel the growing +strength and influence of the movement. Her "girls," on the other +hand, wanted to take their conventions to different parts of the +country to widen their influence. Not as certain as Susan that work +for a federal amendment must come first, many of them contended that a +few more states won for woman suffrage would best help the cause at +this time. The southern women, now active, were firm believers in +states' rights and supported state work.[406] Susan's experience had +taught her the impracticability of direct appeal to the voters in the +states, now that foreign-born men in increasing numbers were arrayed +against votes for women. In spite of her arguments and her pleas, the +National American Association voted in 1894 to hold conventions in +different parts of the country in alternate years. Disappointed, but +trying her best graciously to follow the will of the majority, she +traveled to Atlanta and to Des Moines for the conventions of 1895 and +1897. + +Nor did the younger women welcome the messages which Mrs. Stanton, at +Susan's insistence, sent to every convention. Susan herself often +wished her good friend would stick more closely to woman suffrage +instead of introducing extraneous subjects, such as "Educated +Suffrage," "The Matriarchate," or "Women and the Church," but +nevertheless she proudly read her papers to successive conventions. +Insisting that the conventions were too academic, Mrs. Stanton urged +Susan to inject more vitality into them by broadening their platform. +Susan, however, had come to the conclusion that concentration on woman +suffrage was imperative in order to unite all women under one banner +and build up numbers which Congressmen were bound to respect. With +this her "girls" agreed 100 per cent. While all of them were convinced +suffragists, they were divided on other issues, and few of them were +wholehearted feminists, as were Susan and Mrs. Stanton. + + * * * * * + +With the publication of _The Woman's Bible_ in 1895, Mrs. Stanton +almost upset the applecart, stirring up heated controversy in the +National American Woman Suffrage Association. _The Woman's Bible_ was +a keen and sometimes biting commentary on passages in the Bible +relating to women. It questioned the traditional interpretation which +for centuries has fastened the stigma of inferiority upon women, and +pointed out that the female as well as the male was created in the +image of God. To those who regarded every word of the Bible as +inspired by God, _The Woman's Bible_ was heresy, and both the clergy +and the press stirred up a storm of protest against it. Suffragists +were condemned for compiling a new Bible and were obliged to explain +again and again that _The Woman's Bible_ expressed Mrs. Stanton's +personal views and not those of the movement. + +Susan regarded _The Woman's Bible_ as a futile, questionable +digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby, +who praised it in her _Woman's Tribune_, she wrote, "Of all her great +speeches, I am always proud--but of her Bible commentaries, I am not +proud--either of their spirit or letter.... I could cry a heap--every +time I read or think--if it would undo them--or do anybody or myself +or the cause or Mrs. Stanton any good--they are so entirely unlike her +former self--so flippant and superficial. But she thinks I have gone +over to the enemy--so counts my judgment worth nothing more than that +of any other narrow-souled body.... But I shall love and honor her to +the end--whether her _Bible_ please me or not. So I hope she will do +for me."[407] + +She was, however, wholly unprepared for the rebellion staged by her +"girls" at the Washington convention of 1896, when, led by Rachel +Foster Avery, they repudiated _The Woman's Bible_ and proposed a +resolution declaring that their organization had no connection with +it. This was clear proof to Susan that her "girls" lacked tolerance +and wisdom. Listening to the debate, she was heartsick. Anna Howard +Shaw and Mrs. Catt as well as Alice Stone Blackwell spoke for the +resolution. Only a few raised their voices against it, among them her +sister Mary, Clara Colby, Mrs. Blake, and a young woman new to the +ranks, Charlotte Perkins Stetson. + +Susan was presiding, and leaving the chair to express her opinions, +she firmly declared, "To pass such a resolution is to set back the +hands on the dial of reform.... We have all sorts of people in the +Association and ... a Christian has no more right on our platform than +an atheist. When this platform is too narrow for all to stand on, I +shall not be on it.... Who is to set up a line? Neither you nor I can +tell but Mrs. Stanton will come out triumphant and that this will be +the great thing done in woman's cause. Lucretia Mott at first thought +Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of woman's rights by insisting on +the demand for woman suffrage, but she had sense enough not to pass a +resolution about it....[408] + +"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she +asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when +you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create +and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman +on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance +and bigotry." + +Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted +will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in +intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a +century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in +regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of +women."[409] + +When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in +her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to +resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs. +Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both +resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women +to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this +step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely +reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them +they were setting up an inquisition. + +Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning +and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it +my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the +next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."[410] + +To a reporter who wanted her views on _The Woman's Bible_, she made it +plain that she had no part in writing the book, but added, "I think +women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to +their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to +theirs. It was written by men, and therefore its reference to women +reflects the light in which they were regarded in those days. In the +same way the history of our Revolutionary War was written, in which +very little is said of the noble deeds of women, though we know how +they stood by and helped the great work; it is so with history all +through."[411] + + * * * * * + +For some years, Susan's girls had been urging her to write her +reminiscences, spurred on by the fact that Mrs. Stanton, Mary +Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe were writing theirs. There were also +other good reasons for putting her to work at this task. Writing would +keep her safely at home and away from the strenuous work in the field +which they feared was sapping her strength. It would keep her well +occupied so that they could develop the work and the conventions in +their own way. + +Susan put off this task from month to month and from year to year, +torn between her desire to leave a true record of her work and her +longing to be always in the thick of the suffrage fight. Finally she +began looking about for a collaborator, convinced that she herself +could never write an interesting line. Ida Husted Harper, with her +newspaper experience and her interest in the cause, seemed the logical +choice, and in the spring of 1897, she came to 17 Madison Street to +work on the biography.[412] + +The attic had been remodeled for workrooms and here Susan now spent +her days with Mrs. Harper, trying to reconstruct the past. She had +definite ideas about how the book should be written, holding up as a +model the biography of William Lloyd Garrison recently written by his +children. Mrs. Harper also had high standards, and influenced by +the formalities of the day, edited Susan's vivid brusque +letters--hurriedly written and punctuated with dashes--so that they +conformed with her own easy but more formal style. To this Susan +readily consented, for she always depreciated her own writing ability. +On one point, however, she was adamant, that her story be told without +dwelling upon the disagreements among the old workers. + +The household was geared to the "bog," as they called the biography. +Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework +with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had +recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their +hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young girl, +Genevieve Hawley from Fort Scott, Kansas, was employed to help with +the endless copying, sorting of letters, and pasting of scrapbooks, +and with the current correspondence which piled up and diverted Susan +from the book.[413] Through 1897 and 1898, they worked at top speed. + +_The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, A Story of the Evolution of +the Status of Women_, in two volumes, by Ida Husted Harper, was +published by the Bowen Merrill Company of Indianapolis just before +Christmas 1898. Happy as a young girl out of school, Susan inscribed +copies for her many friends and eagerly watched for reviews, pleased +with the favorable comments in newspapers and magazines throughout +this country and Europe.[414] + + * * * * * + +By this time the Cuban rebellion was crowding all other news out of +the papers, and Susan followed it closely, for this struggle for +freedom instantly won her sympathy. She hoped that Spain under +pressure from the United States might be persuaded to give Cuba her +independence, but the blowing up of the battleship _Maine_ and the war +cries of the press and of a faction in Congress led to armed +intervention in April 1898. Always opposed to war as a means of +settling disputes, she wrote Rachel, "To think of the mothers of this +nation sitting back in silence without even the power of a legal +protest--while their sons are taken without a by-your-leave! Well all +through--it is barbarous ... and I hope you and all our young women +will rouse to work as never before--and get the women of the Republic +clothed with the power of control of conditions in peace--or when it +shall come again--which Heaven forbid--in war."[415] + +Not only did she express these sentiments in letters to her friends, +but in a public meeting, where only patriotic fervor and flag-waving +were welcome, she dared criticize the unsanitary army camps and the +greed and graft which deprived soldiers of wholesome food. "There +isn't a mother in the land," she declared, "who wouldn't know that a +shipload of typhoid stricken soldiers would need cots to lie on and +fuel to cook with, and that a swamp was not a desirable place in which +to pitch a camp.... What the government needs at such a time is not +alone bacteriologists and army officers but also women who know how to +take care of sick boys and have the common sense to surround them with +sanitary conditions."[416] At this her audience, at first hostile, +burst into applause. + +More and more disturbed by the inefficient care of the wounded and the +feeding of enlisted men, she wrote Rachel, "Every day's reports and +comments about the war only show the need of women at the front--not +as employees permitted to be there because they begged to be--but +there by right--as managers and dictators in all departments in which +women have been trained--those of feeding and caring for in health and +nursing the sick."[417] + +The war over, the problem of governing the Philippines, Puerto Rico, +and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the +enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. +She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the +world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male +oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she +wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise +your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod--or +cremated and floating in the air--I shall have to stir you and others +up. How can you not be all on fire?"[418] + +The unwillingness of her "girls" to relate woman suffrage to +contemporary public affairs such as this, repeatedly disappointed her. +Yet she was well aware that the younger generation would never see the +work through her eyes, or exactly follow her pattern. + + * * * * * + +Disappointed that her National American Woman Suffrage Association did +not attract members as did the W.C.T.U. or the General Federation of +Women's Clubs, she confessed to Clara Colby, "It is the disheartening +part of my life that so very few women will work for the emancipation +of their own half of the race."[419] Watching women flock into these +other organizations and contributing to all sorts of charities, she +was obliged to admit that "very few are capable of seeing that the +cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and +to men also, lies in the subjection of women, and therefore the +important thing is to lay the ax at the root."[420] + +She also discovered that it was one thing to build up a large +organization and another to keep women so busy with pressing work for +the cause that they did not find time to expend their energies on the +mechanics of organization. Not only did she chafe at the red tape most +of them spun, but she often felt that they were too prone to linger in +academic by-ways, listening to speeches and holding pleasant +conventions. Since the California campaign of 1896, only one state, +Washington, had been roused to vote on a woman suffrage amendment, +which was defeated and only one more state Delaware had granted women +the right to vote for members of school boards. + +Again and again she warned her "girls" that some kind of action on +woman suffrage by Congress every year was important. A hearing, a +committee report, a debate, or even an unfavorable vote would, she was +convinced, do more to stir up the whole nation than all the speakers +and organizers that could be sent through the country. + +Such thoughts as these, relative to the work which was always on her +mind, she dashed off to one after another of her young colleagues. +"Your letters sound like a trumpet blast," wrote Anna Howard Shaw, +grateful for her counsel. "They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the +Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage."[421] + +At seventy-eight, Susan realized that the time was approaching when +she must make up her mind to turn over to a younger woman the +presidency of the National American Association, and during the summer +of 1898 she announced to her executive committee that she would retire +on her eightieth birthday in 1900. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[400] Ms., Diary, Nov. 7, 1895 + +[401] Mary Gray Peck, _Carrie Chapman Catt_ (New York, 1944), p. 84. + +[402] Ms., Diary, Nov. 27, 1895. + +[403] To Mrs. Upton, Sept. 5, 1890, University of Rochester Library, +Rochester, New York. + +[404] Feb. 10, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[405] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1113. + +[406] Miss Anthony's first attempt to win Southern women to suffrage +was at the time of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. Because of her +reputation as an abolitionist, she had much resistance to overcome in +the South. + +[407] Dec. 18, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[408] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 1, 1896. + +[409] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 264. + +[410] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 855. The action of the National +American Woman Suffrage Association on the Woman's Bible was never +reversed. + +[411] _Ibid._, p. 856. + +[412] Susan thought seriously of Clara Colby as a collaborator but +concluded she was too involved with the _Woman's Tribune_. Susan +agreed to share royalties with Mrs. Harper on the biography and any +other work on which they might collaborate. On her 75th birthday +Susan's girls had presented her with an annuity of $800 a year. This +made it possible for her to give up lecturing and concentrate on her +book. + +[413] Genevieve Hawley left an interesting record of these years in +letters to her aunt, many of which are preserved in the Susan B. +Anthony Memorial Collection in Rochester, New York. + +[414] Both the New York _Herald_ and Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ gave the +book full-page reviews. A third volume was published in 1908. + +[415] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[416] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1121. + +[417] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[418] Dec. 17, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. +Clara Colby, making her headquarters in Washington, kept Susan +informed on developments and they carried on an animated, voluminous +correspondence during these years. + +[419] March 12, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[420] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 920. + +[421] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 924. + + + + +PASSING ON THE TORCH + + +The last year of Susan's presidency was particularly precious to her. +In a sense it represented her farewell to the work she had carried on +most of her life, and at the same time it was also the hopeful +beginning of the period leading to victory. Yet she had no illusion of +speedy or easy success for her "girls" and she did her best to prepare +them for the obstacles they would inevitably meet. She warned them not +to expect their cause to triumph merely because it was just. +"Governments," she told them, "never do any great good things from +mere principle, from mere love of justice.... You expect too much of +human nature when you expect that."[422] + +The movement had reached an impasse. The temper of Congress, as shown +by the admission of Hawaii as a territory without woman suffrage, was +both indifferent and hostile. That this attitude did not express the +will of the American people, she was firmly convinced. It was due, she +believed, to the political influence of powerful groups opposed to +woman suffrage--the liquor interests controlling the votes of +increasing numbers of immigrants, machine politicians fearful of +losing their power, and financial interests whose conservatism +resisted any measure which might upset the status quo. How to +undermine this opposition was now her main problem, and she saw no +other way but persistent agitation through a more active, more +effective, ever-growing woman suffrage organization, reaching a wider +cross section of the people. She herself had established a press +bureau which was feeding interesting factual articles on woman +suffrage to newspapers throughout the country, for as she wrote Mrs. +Colby, the suffrage cause "needs to picture its demands in the daily +papers where the unconverted can see them rather than in special +papers where only those already converted can see them."[423] + +Of greatest importance to her was winning the support of organized +labor. Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of +Labor, had already shown his friendliness toward equal pay and votes +for women and was putting women organizers in the field to speed the +unionization of women. Even so she was surprised at the enthusiasm +with which she was received at the American Federation of Labor +convention in 1899, when the four hundred delegates by a rising vote +adopted a strong resolution urging favorable action on a federal woman +suffrage amendment. + +So far as possible she had always established friendly relations with +labor organizations, first in 1869 with William H. Sylvis's National +Labor Union and then with the Knights of Labor and their leader, +Terrence V. Powderly.[424] When Eugene V. Debs, president of the +American Railway Union, was arrested during the Pullman strike in 1894 +for defying a court injunction, she did not rate him, as so many did, +a dangerous radical, but as an earnest reformer, crusading for an +unpopular cause. They had met years before in Terre Haute, where at +his request she had lectured on woman suffrage, and immediately they +had won each other's sympathy and respect. She did not see indications +of anarchy in the Pullman and Homestead strikes or in the Haymarket +riot, but regarded them as an unfortunate phase of an industrial +revolution which in time would improve the relations of labor and +capital. + +That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious +to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in +it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National +American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments +affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young +suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley, +had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in +her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago, +and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of +women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and +work--social service--which made a great appeal to college women and +set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and +children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as +a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking +protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but +through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of +women's right to contract for their labor on the same terms as men. +Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of +the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so +much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor +Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of +the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed +labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to +visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into +woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of +her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a +friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."[425] + + * * * * * + +Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage +and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not +keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance, +bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand, +regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself. + +The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always +of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable +epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself +freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as +indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership +to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization. +Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her +own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington +convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the +pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to +speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their +organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her +own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who +came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a +religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone +employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She +rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage +conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear +Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who had been +educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and +even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists. + + * * * * * + +Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist +movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years +old, she headed the United States delegation to the International +Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch +at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading +British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of +their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the +suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to +their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for +the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons. + +Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's +Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss +Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist +ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United +States. + +From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa, +Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the +United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and +their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which +they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man +will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the +councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the +perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the +highest development of the race."[426] + +She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at +Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International +Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and +so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was +important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she +was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the +improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her +of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the +opportunity. All that influential Englishwomen were able to arrange +was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle +to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room +without the Queen. + +[Illustration: Carrie Chapman Catt] + + * * * * * + +Returning home late in August 1899, Susan began at once to make +definite plans to turn over the presidency of the National American +Woman Suffrage Association to a younger woman. Although she well knew +that the choice of her successor was actually in the hands of the +membership, it was her intention to do what she could within the +bounds of democratic procedure to insure the best possible leadership. +To fill the office, she turned instinctively to Anna Howard Shaw whom +she loved more dearly as the years went by and whose selfless devotion +to the cause she trusted implicitly. Yet Anna, in spite of her many +qualifications, lacked a few which were exceptional in Carrie Chapman +Catt--creative executive ability, diplomacy, a talent for working with +people, directing them, and winning their devotion. With growing +admiration, Susan had been watching Mrs. Catt's indefatigable work in +the states where she had been building up active branches. Her flare +for raising money was outstanding, and Susan realized, as few others +did, the crying need of funds for the campaigns ahead. In addition +Mrs. Catt had no personal financial worries, for her husband, +successful in business, was sympathetic to her work. Anna, on the +other hand, would have to support herself by lecturing and carry as +well the burden of the presidency of a rapidly growing organization. + +Anna made the decision for Susan. She urged the candidacy of Mrs. +Catt, although her highest ambition had always been to succeed her +beloved Aunt Susan. As she later confessed to Susan, this was a +personal sacrifice which cost her many a heartache, but she "honestly +felt that Mrs. Catt was better fitted ... as well as freer to go into +an unpaid field."[427] Susan therefore approached Mrs. Catt through +Rachel and Harriet Upton, and was relieved when she consented to stand +for election. + +Rumors of Susan's retirement aroused ambitions in Lillie Devereux +Blake, who from the point of seniority and devoted work in New York +was regarded as being next in line for the presidency by Mrs. Stanton +and Mrs. Colby. Unable to visualize Mrs. Blake as the leader of this +large organization with its diverse strong personalities, Susan +nevertheless conceded her right to compete for the office. Although +she appreciated Mrs. Blake's valuable work for the cause, there never +had been understanding or sympathy between them. Temperamentally the +blunt stern New Englander with untiring drive had little in common +with the southern beauty turned reformer. + +A change in the presidency needed wise and patient handling as +personal ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstandings reared their +heads. When there were murmurings of secession among a small group if +Mrs. Catt were elected, Susan wrote Mrs. Colby that such talk was +"very immature, very despotic, very undemocratic," and she hoped she +was not one of the malcontents.[428] + +Another problem was the future of the organization committee which +under Mrs. Catt's chairmanship had carried on a large part of the +work. Its influence was considerable and could readily develop so as +to conflict with that of the officers, thus threatening the unity of +the whole organization. To dissolve the committee seemed to Susan and +her closest advisors the wisest procedure. Mary Garrett Hay, who had +worked closely with Mrs. Catt on the organization committee, opposed +this plan, but after earnest discussion the officers, including Mrs. +Catt, agreed to dissolve the organization committee. + + * * * * * + +As Susan appeared on the platform at the opening session of the +Washington convention in February 1900, there was thunderous applause +from an audience tense with emotion at the thought of losing the +leader who had guided them for so many years. The tall gray-haired +woman in black satin, with soft rich lace at her throat and the +proverbial red shawl about her shoulders, had become the symbol of +their cause. Now, as she looked down upon them with a friendly smile +and motherly tenderness, tears came to their eyes, and they wanted to +remember always just how she looked at that moment. Then she broke the +tension with a call to duty, a summons to press for the federal +amendment, and one more plea that they always hold their annual +conventions in the national capital. + +Difficult and sad as this official leave-taking was, she had made up +her mind to carry if through with good cheer. Tirelessly she presided +at three sessions daily. With the pride of a mother, she listened to +the many reports and with particular satisfaction to that of the +treasurer which showed all debts paid and pledges amounting to $10,000 +to start the new year. Susan herself had made this possible, raising +enough to pay past debts and securing pledges so that the new +administration could start its work free from financial worries. + +"I have fully determined to retire from the active presidency of the +Association," she announced when the reports and speeches were over. +"I am not retiring now because I feel unable, mentally or physically, +to do the necessary work, but because I wish to see the organization +in the hands of those who are to have its management in the future. I +want to see you all at work, while I am alive, so I can scold if you +do not do it well. Give the matter of selecting your officers serious +thought. Consider who will do the best work for the political +enfranchisement of women, and let no personal feelings enter into the +question."[429] + +Watching developments with the keen eye of a politician, she was +confident that Mrs. Catt would be elected to succeed her, although +Mrs. Blake's candidacy was still being assiduously pressed and +circulars recommending her, signed by Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Russell Sage +and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, were being widely distributed. Just before +the balloting, however, Mrs. Blake withdrew her name in the interest +of harmony. This left the field to Mrs. Catt, who received 254 votes +of the 278 cast. + +A burst of applause greeted the announcement of Mrs. Catt's election. +Then abruptly it stopped, as the realization swept over the delegates +that Aunt Susan was no longer their president. Walking to the front of +the platform, Susan took Mrs. Catt by the hand, and while the +delegates applauded, the two women stood before them, the one showing +in her kind face the experience and wisdom of years, the other young, +intelligent, and beautiful, her life still before her. There were +tears in Susan's eyes and her voice was unsteady as she said, "I am +sure you have made a wise choice.... 'New conditions bring new +duties.' These new duties, these changed conditions, demand stronger +hands, younger heads, and fresher hearts. In Mrs. Catt, you have my +ideal leader. I present to you my successor."[430] + + * * * * * + +Susan's joyous confidence in the new administration was rudely jolted +as controversy over the future of the organization committee flared up +during the last days of the convention. Under strong pressure from +Mary Garrett Hay, Mrs. Catt had counseled with Henry Blackwell, and at +one of the last sessions he had slipped in a motion authorizing the +continuance of the organization committee.[431] + +Stunned by this development and looking upon it as a threat to the +harmony of the new administration, Susan, supported by Harriet Upton +and Rachel, prepared to take action, and the next morning, at the +first post-convention executive committee meeting at which Mrs. Catt +presided, Susan proposed that the national officers, headed by Mrs. +Catt, take over the duties of the organization committee. This +precipitated a heated debate, during which Henry Blackwell and his +daughter, Alice, called such procedure unconstitutional, and Mary Hay +resigned. As the discussion became too acrimonious, Mrs. Catt put an +end to it by calling up unfinished business, and thus managed to +steer the remainder of the session into less troubled waters. The next +day, however, Susan brought the matter up again, and on her motion the +organization committee was voted out of existence with praise for its +admirable record of service. + +Here were all the makings of a factional feud which, if fanned into +flame, could well have split the National American Association. Not +only had the old organization interfered with the new, indirectly +reprimanding Mrs. Catt, but Susan, by her own personal influence and +determination, had reversed the action of the convention. As a result, +Mrs. Catt was indignant, hurt, and sorely tempted to resign, but after +sending a highly critical letter to every member of the business +committee, she took up her work with vigor. + +Disappointed and heartsick over the turn of events, Susan searched for +a way to re-establish harmony and her own faith in her successor. +Realizing that a mother's cool counsel and guiding hand were needed to +heal the misunderstandings, and convinced that unity and trust could +be restored only by frank discussion of the problem by those involved, +she asked for a meeting of the business committee at her home. "What +can we do to get back into trust in each other?" she wrote Laura Clay. +"That is the thing we must do--somehow--and it cannot be done by +letter. We must hold a meeting--and we must have you--and every single +one of our members at it."[432] + +Impatient at what to her seemed unnecessary delay, she kept prodding +Mrs. Catt to call this meeting. Fortunately both Susan and Mrs. Catt +were genuinely fond of each other and placed the welfare of the cause +above personal differences. Both were tolerant and steady and +understood the pressures put on the leader of a great organization. +Anxious and troubled as she waited for this meeting, Susan appreciated +Anna Shaw's visits as never before, marking them as red-letter days on +her calender. + +Late in August 1900, all the officers finally gathered at 17 Madison +Street, and Susan listened to their discussions with deep concern. She +was confident she could rely completely on Harriet Upton, Rachel, and +Anna and could count on Laura Clay's "level head and good common +sense."[433] She never felt sure of Alice Stone Blackwell and knew +there was great sympathy and often a working alliance between her, her +father, and Mrs. Catt. Of the latest member of the official family, +Catharine Waugh McCulloch, she had little first-hand knowledge. Mrs. +Catt, whom she longed to fathom and trust, was still an enigma. During +those hot humid August days, misunderstandings were healed, unity was +restored, and Susan was reassured that not a single one of her "girls" +desired "other than was good for the work."[434] + + * * * * * + +Susan had always been a champion of coeducation, speaking for it as +early as the 1850s at state teachers' meetings and proposing it for +Columbia University in her _Revolution_. In 1891, she and Mrs. Stanton +had agitated for the admission of women to the University of +Rochester. Seven years later the trustees consented to admit women +provided $100,000 could be raised in a year, and Susan served on the +fund-raising committee with her friend, Helen Barrett Montgomery. +Because the alumni of the University of Rochester opposed coeducation +and the city's wealthiest men were indifferent, progress was slow, but +the trustees were persuaded to extend the time and to reduce by one +half the amount to be raised. + +With so much else on her mind in 1900, including the sudden death of +her brother Merritt, she had given the fund little thought until the +committee appealed to her in desperation when only one day remained in +which to raise the last $8,000. Immediately she went into action. +Remembering that Mary had talked of willing the University $2,000 if +it became coeducational, she persuaded her to pledge that amount now. +Then setting out in a carriage on a very hot September morning, she +slowly collected pledges for all but $2,000. As the trustees were in +session and likely to adjourn any minute, she appealed to Samuel +Wilder, one of Rochester's prominent elder citizens who had already +contributed, to guarantee that amount until she could raise it. To +this he gladly agreed. Reaching the trustees' meeting with Mrs. +Montgomery just in time, with pledges assuring the payment of the full +$50,000, she was amazed at their reception. Instead of rejoicing with +them, the trustees began to quibble over Samuel Wilder's guarantee of +the last $2,000 because of the state of his health. When she offered +her life insurance as security, they still put her off, telling her +to come back in a few days. Even then they continued to quibble, but +finally admitted that the women had won. Disillusioned, she wrote in +her diary, "Not a trustee has given anything although there are +several millionaires among them."[435] Only her life insurance policy +and her dogged persistence had saved the day. + +This effort to open Rochester University to women, on top of a very +full and worrisome year, was so taxing and so disillusioning that she +became seriously ill. When she recovered sufficiently for a drive, she +asked to be taken to the university campus and afterward wrote in her +diary, "As I drove over the campus, I felt 'these are not forbidden +grounds to the girls of the city any longer.' It is good to feel that +the old doors sway on their hinges--to women! Will the vows be kept to +them--will the girls have equal chances with the boys? They promised +well--the fulfilment will be seen--whether there shall not be some +hitch from the proposed to a separate school."[436] + + * * * * * + +Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, +Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first +annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an +"entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss +Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan +was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency +that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the +proceedings.[437] + +Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well +satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume +of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ on which she and Mrs. Harper had +been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late +in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than +satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her +happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom +saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by +letter. + +In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and +planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's +eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It +is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through +every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of +women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a +century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle +to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to +know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, +with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in +public--all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These +strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and +complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a +handful...."[438] + +Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a +telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. +Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, +trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy +which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself +at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to +speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to +describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439] + +From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in +anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved +to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. +Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am +all at sea--but the Laws of Nature are still going on--with no shadow +or turning--what a wonder it is--it goes right on and on--no matter +who lives or who dies."[440] + + * * * * * + +National woman suffrage conventions were still red-letter events to +Susan and she attended them no matter how great the physical effort, +traveling to New Orleans in 1903. Of particular concern was the 1904 +convention because of Mrs. Catt's decision at the very last moment not +to stand for re-election on account of her health. Looking over the +field, Susan saw no one capable of taking her place but Anna Howard +Shaw. Not to be able to turn to Mrs. Stanton's capable daughter, +Harriot Stanton Blatch, at this time was disappointing, but Harriot's +long absence in England had made her more or less of a stranger to the +membership of the National American Association, and for some reason +she did not seem to fit in, lacking her mother's warmth and +appeal.[441] + +[Illustration: Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony] + +"I don't see anybody in the whole rank of our suffrage movement to +take her [Mrs. Catt's] place but you," Susan now wrote Anna Howard +Shaw. "If you will take it with a salary of say, $2,000, I will go +ahead and try to see what I can do. We must not let the society down +into _feeble_ hands.... Don't say _no_, for the _life_ of _you_, for +if Mrs. Catt _persists_ in going out, we shall simply _have_ to +_accept it_ and we must _tide over_ with the _best material_ that we +have, and _you are the best_, and would you have taken office _four +years ago_, you would have been elected over-whelmingly."[442] + +Anna could not refuse Aunt Susan, and when she was elected with Mrs. +Catt as vice-president, Susan breathed freely again. + +It warmed Susan's heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth +birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called +her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There +now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more +appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she +presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the success of woman +suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where +women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in +Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration +in favor of the pending franchise bill. + +For the last time, she spoke to a Senate committee on the woman +suffrage amendment. Standing before these indifferent men, a tired +warrior at the end of a long hard campaign, she reminded them that she +alone remained of those who thirty-five years before, in 1869, had +appealed to Congress for justice. "And I," she added, "shall not be +able to come much longer. + +"We have waited," she told them. "We stood aside for the Negro; we +waited for the millions of immigrants; now we must wait till the +Hawaiians, the Filipinos, and the Puerto Ricans are enfranchised; then +no doubt the Cubans will have their turn. For all these ignorant, +alien peoples, educated women have been compelled to stand aside and +wait!" Then with mounting impatience, she asked them, "How long will +this injustice, this outrage continue?"[444] + +Their answer to her was silence. They sent no report to the Senate on +the woman suffrage amendment. Yet she was able to say to a reporter of +the New York _Sun_, "I have never lost my faith, not for a moment in +fifty years."[445] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[422] Rachel Foster Avery, Ed., _National Council of Women_, 1891 +(Philadelphia, 1891), p. 229. + +[423] Dec. 1, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. +Mrs. Elnora Babcock of New York was in charge of the press bureau. + +[424] Miss Anthony was enrolled as a member of the Knights of Labor +and invited this organization to send delegates to the International +Council of Women in 1888. + +[425] To Ellen Wright Garrison, 1900, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith +College. + +[426] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1137. A few years later, militant +suffragists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, were active in London. Mrs. +Pankhurst heard Miss Anthony speak in Manchester in 1904. + +[427] Ida Husted Harper Ms., Catharine Waugh McCulloch Papers, +Radcliffe Women's Archives. + +[428] Nov. 20, 1899, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[429] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 385. Miss Anthony was "moved +up," as she expressed it, to Honorary President. + +[430] Peck, Catt, p. 107, Washington _Post_ quotation. + +[431] To Laura Clay, April 15, 1900, University of Kentucky Library, +Lexington, Kentucky. + +[432] _Ibid._, March 15, 1900. + +[433] _Ibid._ + +[434] _Ibid._, Sept. 7, 1900. + +[435] Ms., Diary, Nov. 10, 1900. + +[436] _Ibid._, Sept. 26, 1900. A separate woman's college was +established at the University of Rochester and not until 1952 were the +men's and women's colleges merged. + +[437] May 20, 1901, Note, Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, +Rochester, New York. + +[438] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, pp. 741-742. + +[439] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1263. + +[440] Oct. 28, 1902, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[441] Oct. 27, 1904, Elizabeth Smith Miller Collection, New York +Public Library. A few years later, Mrs. Blatch made a vital +contribution to the cause through the Women's Political Union which +she organized and which brought more militant methods and new life +into the woman suffrage campaign in New York State. + +[442] Jan. 27, 1904, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. Mrs. Blake who had +been a candidate in 1900 had by this time formed her own organization, +the National Legislative League. + +[443] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, p. 99. + +[444] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1308. + +[445] _Ibid._ + + + + +SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD + + +Susan was on the ocean in May 1904 with her sister Mary and a group of +good friends, headed for a meeting of the International Council of +Women in Berlin. What drew her to Berlin was the plan initiated by +Carrie Chapman Catt to form an International Woman Suffrage Alliance +prior to the meetings of the International Council. This had been +Susan's dream and Mrs. Stanton's in 1883, when they first conferred +with women of other countries regarding an international woman +suffrage organization and found only the women of England ready to +unite on such a radical program. Now that women had worked together +successfully in the International Council for sixteen years on other +less controversial matters relating to women, she and Mrs. Catt were +confident that a few of them at least were willing to unite to demand +the vote. + +Chosen as a matter of course to preside over this gathering of +suffragists in Berlin, Susan received an enthusiastic welcome. For her +it was a momentous occasion, and eager to spread news of the meeting +far and wide, she could not understand the objections of many of the +delegates to the presence of reporters who they feared might send out +sensational copy. + +"My friends, what are we here for?" she asked her more timid +colleagues. "We have come from many countries, travelled thousands of +miles to form an organization for a great international work, and do +we want to keep it a secret from the public? No; welcome all reporters +who want to come, the more, the better. Let all we say and do here be +told far and wide. Let the people everywhere know that in Berlin women +from all parts of the world have banded themselves together to demand +political freedom. I rejoice in the presence of these reporters, and +instead of excluding them from our meetings let us help them to all +the information we can and ask them to give it the widest +publicity."[446] + +This won the battle for the reporters, who gave her rousing applause, +and the news flashed over the wires was sympathetic, dignified, and +abundant. It told the world of the formation of the International +Woman Suffrage Alliance by women from the United States, Great +Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Norway, and +Denmark, "to secure the enfranchisement of women of all nations." It +praised the honorary president, Susan B. Anthony, and the American +women who took over the leadership of this international venture, +Carrie Chapman Catt, the president, and Rachel Foster Avery, +corresponding secretary. + +To celebrate the occasion, German suffragists called a public mass +meeting, and Susan, eager to rejoice with them, was surprised to find +members of the International Council disgruntled and accusing the +International Woman Suffrage Alliance of stealing their thunder and +casting the dark shadow of woman suffrage over their conference. To +placate them and restore harmony, she stayed away from this public +meeting, but she could not control the demand for her presence. + +"Where is Susan B. Anthony?" were the first words spoken as the mass +meeting opened. Then immediately the audience rose and burst into +cheers which continued without a break for ten minutes. Anna Howard +Shaw there on the platform and deeply moved by this tribute to Aunt +Susan, later described how she felt: "Every second of that time I +seemed to see Miss Anthony alone in her hotel room, longing with all +her big heart to be with us, as we longed to have her.... Afterwards, +when we burst in upon her and told her of the great demonstration, the +mere mention of her name had caused, her lips quivered and her brave +old eyes filled with tears."[447] + +The next morning her "girls" brought her the Berlin newspapers, +translating for her the report of the meeting and these heart-warming +lines, "The Americans call her 'Aunt Susan.' She is our 'Aunt Susan' +too." + +This was but a foretaste of her reception throughout her stay in +Berlin. To the International Council, she was "Susan B. Anthony of the +World," the woman of the hour, whom all wanted to meet. Every time she +entered the conference hall, the audience rose and remained standing +until she was seated. Every mention of her name brought forth cheers. +The many young women, acting as ushers, were devoted to her and eager +to serve her. They greeted her by kissing her hand. Embarrassed at +first by such homage, she soon responded by kissing them on the +cheek. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five] + +The Empress Victoria Augusta, receiving the delegates in the Royal +Palace, singled out Susan, and instead of following the custom of +kissing the Empress's hand, Susan bowed as she would to any +distinguished American, explaining that she was a Quaker and did not +understand the etiquette of the court. The Empress praised Susan's +great work, and unwilling to let such an opportunity slip by, Susan +offered the suggestion that Emperor William who had done so much to +build up his country might now wish to raise the status of German +women. To this the Empress replied with a smile, "The gentlemen are +very slow to comprehend this great movement."[448] + +When the talented Negro, Mary Church Terrell, addressing the +International Council in both German and French, received an ovation, +Susan's cup of joy was filled to the brim, for she glimpsed the bright +promise of a world without barriers of sex or race. + + * * * * * + +The newspapers welcomed her home, and in her own comfortable sitting +room she read Rochester's greeting in the _Democrat and Chronicle_, +"There are woman suffragists and anti-suffragists, but all Rochester +people, irrespective of opinion ... are Anthony men and women. We +admire and esteem one so single-minded, earnest and unselfish, who, +with eighty-four years to her credit, is still too busy and useful to +think of growing old."[449] + +Her happiness over this welcome was clouded, however, by the serious +illness of her brother Daniel, and she and Mary hurried to Kansas to +see him. Two months later he passed away. Now only she and Mary were +left of all the large Anthony family. Without Daniel, the world seemed +empty. His strength of character, independence, and sympathy with her +work had comforted and encouraged her all through her life. A fearless +editor, a successful businessman, a politician with principles, he had +played an important role in Kansas, and proud of him, she cherished +the many tributes published throughout the country. + +Courageously she now picked up the threads of her life. Her precious +National American Woman Suffrage Association was out of her hands, but +she still had the _History of Woman Suffrage_ to distribute, and it +gave her a great sense of accomplishment to hand on to future +generations this record of women's struggle for freedom.[450] + +Missing the stimulous of work with her "girls," she took more and more +pleasure in the company of William and Mary Gannett of the First +Unitarian Church, whose liberal views appealed to her strongly. She +liked to have young people about her and followed the lives of all her +nieces and nephews with the greatest interest, spurring on their +ambitions and helping finance their education. The frequent visits of +"Niece Lucy" were a great joy during these years, as was the nearness +of "Niece Anna O,"[451] who married and settled in Rochester. The +young Canadian girl, Anna Dann, had become almost indispensable to her +and to Mary, as companion, secretary, and nurse, and her marriage left +a void in the household. Anna Dann was married at 17 Madison Street by +Anna Howard Shaw with Susan beaming upon her like a proud grandmother. + + * * * * * + +Longing to see one more state won for suffrage, Susan carefully +followed the news from the field, looking hopefully to California and +urging her "girls" to keep hammering away there in spite of defeats. +Her eyes were also on the Territory of Oklahoma, where a constitution +was being drafted preparatory to statehood. "The present bill for the +new state," she wrote Anna Howard Shaw, in December 1904, "is an +insult to women of Oklahoma, such as has never been perpetrated +before. We have always known that women were in reality ranked with +idiots and criminals, but it has never been said in words that the +state should ... restrict or abridge the suffrage ... on account of +illiteracy, minority, _sex_, conviction of felony, mental condition, +etc.... We must fight this bill to the utmost...."[452] + +The brightest spot in the West was Oregon, where suffrage had been +defeated in 1900 by only 2,000 votes. In June 1905, when the National +American Association held its first far western convention in Portland +during the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Susan could not keep away, +although she had never expected to go over the mountains again. As she +traveled to Portland with Mary and a hundred or more delegates in +special cars, she recalled her many long tiring trips through the West +to carry the message of woman suffrage to the frontier. In +comparison, this was a triumphal journey, showing her, as nothing else +could, what her work had accomplished. Greeted at railroad stations +along the way by enthusiastic crowds, showered with flowers and gifts, +she stood on the back platform of the train with her "girls," shaking +hands, waving her handkerchief, and making an occasional speech. + +Presiding over the opening session of the Portland convention, +standing in a veritable garden of flowers which had been presented to +her, she remarked with a droll smile, "This is rather different from +the receptions I used to get fifty years ago.... I am thankful for +this change of spirit which has come over the American people."[453] + +On Woman's Day, she was chosen to speak at the unveiling of the statue +of Sacajawea, the Indian woman who had led Lewis and Clark through the +dangerous mountain passes to the Pacific, winning their gratitude and +their praise. In the story of Sacajawea who had been overlooked by the +government when every man in the Lewis and Clark expedition had been +rewarded with a large tract of land, Susan saw the perfect example of +man's thoughtless oversight of the valuable services of women. Looking +up at the bronze statue of the Indian woman, her papoose on her back +and her arm outstretched to the Pacific, Susan said simply, "This is +the first statue erected to a woman because of deeds of daring.... +This recognition of the assistance rendered by a woman in the +discovery of this great section of the country is but the beginning of +what is due." Then, with the sunlight playing on her hair and lighting +up her face, she appealed to the men of Oregon for the vote. "Next +year," she reminded them, "the men of this proud state, made possible +by a woman, will decide whether women shall at last have the rights in +it which have been denied them so many years. Let men remember the +part women have played in its settlement and progress and vote to give +them these rights which belong to every citizen."[454] + + * * * * * + +Reporters were at Susan's door, when she returned to Rochester, for +comments on ex-President Cleveland's tirade against clubwomen and +woman suffrage in the popular _Ladies' Home Journal_. "Pure +fol-de-rol," she told them, adding testily, "I would think that Grover +Cleveland was about the last person to talk about the sanctity of the +home and woman's sphere." This was good copy for Republican newspapers +and they made the most of it, as women throughout the country added +their protests to Susan's. A popular jingle of the day ran, "Susan B. +Anthony, she took quite a fall out of Grover C."[455] + +Susan, however, had something far more important on her mind than +fencing with Grover Cleveland--an interview with President Theodore +Roosevelt. Here was a man eager to right wrongs, to break monopolies, +to see justice done to the Negro, a man who talked of a "square deal" +for all, and yet woman suffrage aroused no response in him. + +In November 1905, she undertook a trip to Washington for the express +purpose of talking with him. The year before, at a White House +reception, he had singled her out to stand at his side in the +receiving line. She looked for the same friendliness now. Memorandum +in hand, she plied him with questions which he carefully evaded, but +she would not give up. + +"Mr. Roosevelt," she earnestly pleaded, "this is my principle request. +It is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you +leave the Presidential chair recommend to Congress to submit to the +Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, +and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great +emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without +doing this."[456] + +To this he made no response, and trying once more to wring from him +some slight indication of sympathy for her cause, she added, "Mr. +President, your influence is so great that just one word from you in +favor of woman suffrage would give our cause a tremendous impetus." + +"The public knows my attitude," he tersely replied. "I recommended it +when Governor of New York." + +"True," she acknowledged, "but that was a long time ago. Our enemies +say that was the opinion of your younger years and that since you have +been President you have never uttered one word that could be construed +as an endorsement." + +"They have no cause to think I have changed my mind," he suavely +replied as he bade her good-bye. In the months that followed he gave +her no sign that her interview had made the slightest impression. + +One of the most satisfying honors bestowed on Susan during these last +years was the invitation to be present at Bryn Mawr College in 1902 +for the unveiling of a bronze portrait medallion of herself. Bryn +Mawr, under its brilliant young president, M. Carey Thomas, herself a +pioneer in establishing the highest standards for women's education, +showed no such timidity as Vassar where neither Susan nor Elizabeth +Cady Stanton had been welcome as speakers. At Bryn Mawr, Susan talked +freely and frankly with the students, and best of all, became better +acquainted with M. Carey Thomas and her enterprising friend, Mary +Garrett of Baltimore, who was using her great wealth for the +advancement of women. She longed to channel their abilities to woman +suffrage and a few years later arranged for a national convention in +their home city, Baltimore, appealing to them to make it an +outstanding success.[457] + +Arriving in Baltimore in January 1906 for this convention, Susan was +the honored guest in Mary Garrett's luxurious home. Frail and ill, she +was unable to attend all the sessions, as in the past, but she was +present at the highlight of this very successful convention, the +College Evening arranged by M. Carey Thomas. With women's colleges +still resisting the discussion of woman suffrage and the Association +of Collegiate Alumnae refusing to support it, the College Evening +marked the first public endorsement of this controversial subject by +college women. Up to this time the only encouraging sign had been the +formation in 1900 of the College Equal Suffrage League by two young +Radcliffe alumnae, Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin. Now here, in +conservative Baltimore, college presidents and college faculty gave +woman suffrage their blessing, and Susan listened happily as +distinguished women, one after another, allied themselves to the +cause: Dr. Mary E. Woolley, who as president of Mt. Holyoke was +developing Mary Lyons' pioneer seminary into a high ranking college; +Lucy Salmon, Mary A. Jordan, and Mary W. Calkins of the faculties of +Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley; Eva Perry Moore, a trustee of Vassar and +president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, with whom she +dared differ on this subject; Maud Wood Park, representing the younger +generation in the College Equal Suffrage League; and last of all, the +president of Bryn Mawr, M. Carey Thomas. After expressing her +gratitude to the pioneers of this great movement, Miss Thomas turned +to Susan and said, "To you, Miss Anthony, belongs by right, as to no +other woman in the world's history, the love and gratitude of all +women in every country of the civilized globe. We your daughters in +spirit, rise up today and call you blessed.... Of such as you were the +lines of the poet Yeats written: + + 'They shall be remembered forever, + They shall be alive forever, + They shall be speaking forever, + The people shall hear them forever.'"[458] + +During the thundering applause, Susan came forward to respond, her +face alight, and the audience rose. "If any proof were needed of the +progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight," +she said simply. "The presence on the stage of these college women, +and in the audience of all those college girls who will someday be the +nation's greatest strength, tell their story to the world. They give +the highest joy and encouragement to me...."[459] + +During her visit at the home of Mary Garrett, Susan spoke freely with +her and with M. Carey Thomas of the needs of the National American +Association, particularly of the Standing Fund of $100,000 of which +she had dreamed and which she had started to raise. Now, like an +answer to prayer, Mary Garrett and President Thomas, fresh from their +successful money-raising campaigns for Johns Hopkins and Bryn Mawr, +offered to undertake a similar project for woman suffrage, proposing +to raise $60,000--$12,000 a year for the next five years. + +"As we sat at her feet day after day between sessions of the +convention, listening to what she wanted us to do to help women and +asking her questions," recalled M. Carey Thomas in later years, "I +realized that she was the greatest person I had ever met. She seemed +to me everything that a human being could be--a leader to die for or +to live for and follow wherever she led."[460] + +Immediately after the convention, Susan went to Washington with the +women who were scheduled to speak at the Congressional hearing on +woman suffrage. In her room at the Shoreham Hotel, a room with a view +of the Washington Monument which the manager always saved for her, she +stood at the window looking out over the city as if saying farewell. +Then turning to Anna Shaw, she said with emotion, "I think it is the +most beautiful monument in the whole world."[461] + +That evening she sat quietly through the many tributes offered to her +on her eighty-sixth birthday, longing to tell all her friends the +gratitude and hope that welled up in her heart. Finally she rose, and +standing by Anna Howard Shaw who was presiding, she impulsively put +her hand on her shoulder and praised her for her loyal support. Then +turning to the other officers, she thanked them for all they had done. +"There are others also," she added, "just as true and devoted to the +cause--I wish I could name everyone--but with such women consecrating +their lives--" She hesitated a moment, and then in her clear rich +voice, added with emphasis, "Failure is impossible."[462] + + * * * * * + +In Rochester, in the home she so dearly loved, she spent her last +weeks, thinking of the cause and the women who would carry it on. +Longing to talk with Anna Shaw, she sent for her, but Anna, feeling +she was needed, came even before a letter could reach her. With Anna +at her bedside, Susan was content. + +"I want you to give me a promise," she pleaded, reaching for Anna's +hand. "Promise me you will keep the presidency of the association as +long as you are well enough to do the work."[463] + +Deeply moved, Anna replied, "But how can I promise that? I can keep it +only as long as others wish me to keep it." + +"Promise to make them wish you to keep it," Susan urged. "Just as I +wish you to keep it...." + +After a moment, she continued, "I do not know anything about what +comes to us after this life ends, but ... if I have any conscious +knowledge of this world and of what you are doing, I shall not be far +away from you; and in times of need I will help you all I can. Who +knows? Perhaps I may be able to do more for the Cause after I am gone +than while I am here." + +A few days later, on March 13, 1906, she passed away, her hand in +Anna's. + + * * * * * + +Asked, a few years before, if she believed that all women in the +United States would ever be given the vote, she had replied with +assurance, "It will come, but I shall not see it.... It is inevitable. +We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half +our people than we could keep the Negro forever in bondage. It will +not be wrought by the same disrupting forces that freed the slave, but +come it will, and I believe within a generation."[464] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1905] + +She had so longed to see women voting throughout the United States, to +see them elected to legislatures and Congress, but for her there had +only been the promise of fulfillment in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and +Idaho, and far away in New Zealand and Australia. + +"Failure is impossible" was the rallying cry she left with her "girls" +to spur them on in the long discouraging struggle ahead, fourteen more +years of campaigning until on August 26, 1920, women were enfranchised +throughout the United States by the Nineteenth Amendment. + +Even then their work was not finished, for she had looked farther +ahead to the time when men and women everywhere, regardless of race, +religion, or sex, would enjoy equal rights. Her challenging words, +"Failure is impossible," still echo and re-echo through the years, as +the crusade for human rights goes forward and men and women together +strive to build and preserve a free world. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[446] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1325. + +[447] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, p. 210. + +[448] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1319. + +[449] _Ibid._, p. 1336. + +[450] Miss Anthony also carefully prepared her scrapbooks, her books, +and bound volumes of _The Revolution_, woman's rights and antislavery +magazines for presentation to the Library of Congress, inscribing each +with a note of explanation. + +[451] Ann Anthony Bacon. + +[452] _New York Suffrage Newsletter_, Jan., 1905. + +[453] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, p. 122. + +[454] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1365. The statue of Sacajawea, +presented to the Exposition by the clubwomen of America, was the work +of Alice Cooper of Denver. Woman suffrage was again defeated in Oregon +in 1906. + +[455] Harper, _Anthony_, III, pp. 1357, 1359. + +[456] _Ibid._, pp. 1376-1377. + +[457] The medallion, the work of Leila Usher of Boston, was +commissioned by Mary Garrett. + +[458] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1395. + +[459] _Ibid._, pp. 1395-1396. + +[460] Sept., 1935, Statement, Una R. Winter Collection. + +[461] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1409. + +[462] _Ibid._ + +[463] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 230-232. + +[464] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1259. + + + + +NOTES + +[Transcriber's Note: All footnotes for the book were located here, on +pages 311-326. They have been relocated to immediately follow the +chapter where they are referenced.] + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS + +American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts: + Abby Kelley Foster Papers. + +Lucy E. Anthony and Ann Anthony Bacon Papers: + Susan B. Anthony Diaries, Letters, and Speeches. + +Boston Public Library, Manuscript Division: + Antislavery, Garrison, and Higginson Papers. + +Matilda Joslyn Gage Collection. + +Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, +San Marino, California, Manuscript Division: + Ida Husted Harper Collection. + Anthony Collection. + +Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas: + Anthony Papers. + +Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Division: + Susan B. Anthony Papers, including Diaries. + Anna E. Dickinson Papers. + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. + +Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Rare Book Room: + Susan B. Anthony Scrapbooks. + +Alma Lutz Collection. + +Anna Dann Mason Collection. + +Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New York: + Anthony Collection. + +New York Public Library, Manuscript Division: + Susan B. 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"Who Were the Voters in the Early History of this +Country?" _Chicago Law Times_, October 1888. + +Willard, Frances. _Glimpses of Fifty Years._ Chicago, 1889. + +Willard, Frances E., and Livermore, Mary A. _A Woman of the Century._ +New York, 1893. + +Williams, Blanche Colton. _Clara Barton._ New York, 1941. + +Whitney, Janet. _Abigail Adams._ Boston, 1947. + +Woodhull, Victoria C. _The Argument for Women's Electoral Rights under +Amendments XIV and XV of the Constitution of the United States._ +London, 1887. + +Woody, Thomas. _A History of Women's Education in the United States._ +New York, 1929. + + +NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS + +Adams (Mass.) _Freeman_ +_The Agitator_ +_Antislavery Standard_ +Chicago Daily _Tribune_ +Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ +_The Golden Age_ +_Harper's Weekly_ +_The Independent_ +_Ladies' Home Journal_ +_The Liberator_ +_The Lily_ +New York _Daily Graphic_ +New York _Herald_ +New York _Post_ +New York _Suffrage News Letter_ +New York _Sun_ +New York _Times_ +New York _Tribune_ +New York _World_ +Philadelphia _Press_ +_The Revolution_ +_Rochester History_ +San Francisco _Examiner_ +_The Una_ +_Woman's Campaign_ +_Woman's Journal_ +_Woman's Tribune_ +_Woman's Suffrage Journal_ (London, England) +_Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ + + + + +INDEX + +Adams, Abigail, 3, 311 + +Addams, Jane, 286 + +Alcott, Bronson, 117, 224, 225 + +American Antislavery Society, 58, 60, 112, 118-19 + +American Equal Rights Association, 118-20, 125, 137, 145-46, 161, 164 + +American Federation of Labor, 285-86 + +American Woman Suffrage Association, 172-73, 177, 233, 247, 249-50, + 318, 322, 323 + +Anneké, Madam, 175, 234 + +Anthony, Ann O. _See_ Bacon, Ann Anthony. + +Anthony, Anna Osborne, 108-09, 315 + +Anthony, Daniel (father), 1, 4-13, 15-16, 18, 20-24, 56, 58, 93, 98, + 104, 311, 316, 322 + +Anthony, Daniel Jr. (nephew), 241 + +Anthony, Daniel Read (brother), 7, 12, 15, 22, 45-46, 56, 58, 93, + 108-12, 135, 141, 171, 179, 219, 227, 230, 239, 241-42, 302, 315, + 321, 324 + +Anthony, Eliza, 9 + +Anthony, Guelma. _See_ McLean, Guelma Anthony. + +Anthony, Hannah. _See_ Mosher, Hannah Anthony. + +Anthony, Hannah Latham, 4, 18 + +Anthony, Humphrey, 5, 6 + +Anthony, Jacob Merritt, 9, 15, 22, 46, 56, 58, 93, 98, 191, 219, 241, + 294, 302, 324 + +Anthony, Lucy E., 235, 248, 271, 275, 277, 303, 322 + +Anthony, Lucy Read, 1-2, 5-6, 8-9, 11-12, 16, 18, 20-21, 62, 98, 103, + 108, 129, 190, 219, 235, 311, 316 + +Anthony, Mary Luther, 46, 93, 108 + +Anthony, Mary S., 7, 15, 21, 24, 58, 62, 64, 98, 103, 108, 171, 190, + 199, 217, 219, 235, 240, 248, 255, 279, 281, 294, 299, 303, 316, 324 + +Anthony, Sarah Burtis, 21 + +Anthony, Susan B., birth of, 1; + ancestry of, 4, 6, 311; + her school days, 7-8, 10-11; + as teacher, 9, 11, 13-14, 17-22; + her first temperance speech, 19; + her interest in books, 52, 94; + her interest in outdoor work, 67, 93; + her opinions on marriage, 73-74, 80, 221, 224, + on women's support of political parties, 243, + on woman as president, 245; + her first appeal for Congressional action on woman suffrage, 117; + 50th birthday celebration of, 176; + arrest and trial of, 201-03, 209-13; + diaries of, 264-65; + retirement of, 283; + 84th birthday celebration of, 297; + last illness and death of, 308; + prophecy of, 310 + +Aurora Leigh, 74-76 + +Avery, Dr. Alida, 230 + +Avery, Rachel Foster, 238-39, 244-45, 251, 262, 270, 274-75, 279-80, + 282, 290, 292-93, 300, 322-23 + + +Bacon, Ann Anthony, 303, 322, 326 + +Barton, Clara, 99, 176 + +Becker, Lydia, 174, 320, 322 + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 79, 101, 103, 118, 125, 129, 134, 137, 169, + 173-74, 220-22 + +Beecher-Tilton case, 219, 220, 222-23, 321 + +Bickerdyke, Mother, 100, 130 + +Bingham, Anson, 77, 79 + +Bingham, John A., 122 + +Blackwell, Alice Stone, 72, 251, 279, 292, 294, 323 + +Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, 33, 41, 44, 50, 52, 69, 71-72, 76, 81, + 102, 314 + +Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 99 + +Blackwell, Ellen, 52, 53 + +Blackwell, Henry, 50, 125, 128, 145, 162, 250, 269, 292, 294 + +Blackwell, Samuel, 50 + +Blake, Lillie Devereux, 166, 194, 200, 227, 279, 290, 292, 326 + +Blatch, Harriot Stanton, 67, 100, 236, 239, 245, 250-51, 287-88, 296, + 322, 325 + +Blatch, William Henry, 239, 322 + +Bloomer, Amelia, 26, 170, 237, 312 + +Bloomer Costume, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 312 + +Booth, Mary L., 231, 238 + +Bradwell, Myra, 170, 199, 207-08 + +Bright, Jacob, 176, 222 + +Brown, Antoinette. _See_ Blackwell, Antoinette Brown. + +Brown, B. Gratz, 123, 196 + +Brown, John, 46, 56, 63-66, 115, 201, 313 + +Brown, Olympia, 128, 137, 175, 197 + +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 23, 55, 74-76, 94 + +Bryn Mawr College, 306-07 + +Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), 264 + +Bullard, Laura Curtis, 166, 172, 178-79, 194 + +Burnham, Carrie S., 198 + +Butler, Benjamin F., 183, 193, 200, 208 + + +Caldwell, Margaret Read, 17, 21 + +California campaign, 269, 271-73, 283, 303 + +Carroll, Ella Anna, 100, 234 + +Cary, Alice, 127, 142, 166, 174, 231 + +Cary, Phoebe, 142, 166, 231 + +Catt, Carrie Chapman, 254-55, 265, 269, 274, 276-77, 279-80, 289-94, + 295-97, 299, 300 + +Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 226-28 + +Channing, William Henry, 41, 47, 239, 312 + +Chase, Salmon P., 141, 208 + +Child, Lydia Maria, 118 + +Claflin, Tennessee, 181-82 + +Clay, Laura, 293 + +Clemmer, Mary, 229 + +Cleveland, Grover, 246, 260-61, 304-05 + +Coeducation, 37-38, 67-68, 70, 258, 294 + +Colby, Clara Bewick, 231, 244-45, 270, 276, 279, 283, 285, 290, 323-25 + +College Equal Suffrage League, 306 + +College Evening, the, Baltimore, Maryland, 307 + +Conkling, Roscoe, 122, 209 + +Conway, Moncure D., 126 + +Corbin, Hannah Lee, 4 + +Couzins, Phoebe, 175, 227 + +Cowles, Caroline. _See_ Richards, Caroline Cowles. + +Crittenden, Alexander P., 188, 319 + +Curtis, George William, 79, 103, 125-26, 129, 169 + + +Dall, Caroline H., 316 + +Dann, Anna. _See_ Mason, Anna Dann. + +Daughters of Temperance, 18, 24-25, 30 + +Davis, Paulina Wright, 33, 165, 167, 172, 182-85, 191, 195, 274 + +Debs, Eugene V., 269, 286 + +De Garmo, Rhoda, 16, 23, 199 + +Democrats, 88, 98, 106, 118, 123, 130-31, 133, 135-36, 138, 140-41, + 143, 146-48, 193, 196-97, 200, 226, 232, 253, 261, 266-69, 272 + +Demorest, Mme. Louise, 129, 318 + +Dickinson, Albert, 109, 263 + +Dickinson, Anna E., 94-95, 104, 106-07, 112, 138, 144-45, 148, 156, + 177, 196, 223, 238, 315, 318 + +Divorce, 32, 80-83, 174, 224 + +Dix, Dorothea, 99 + +Douglas, Stephen A., 62, 83 + +Douglass, Frederick, 23-24, 63, 88, 103, 106, 112, 145, 162-63, 200, + 312 + +Duniway, Abigail Scott, 189, 244 + + +Eddy, Eliza J., 52, 238-39, 313 + +Emancipation Proclamation, 98-99, 101-02 + +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 53, 65, 94, 117, 150 + + +Fair, Laura, 188-89, 319 + +Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 246 + +Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, 160-62, 164, 166, 172-73, 193, + 216-18, 226, 229, 231-34, 286, 291, 298, 305, 310, 321 + +Fifteenth Amendment, 160, 162-65, 169, 181, 192-93, 198-200, 203, + 205, 210, 214, 232 + +First National Woman's Rights convention, 1850, 25 + +First Woman's Rights convention, 1848, 20 + +Foster, Abby Kelley, 25, 30, 59, 61, 77, 217 + +Foster, Rachel. _See_ Avery, Rachel Foster. + +Foster, Stephen S., 25, 59, 87, 145, 161 + +Fourteenth Amendment, 115-16, 120-22, 125, 142, 159, 180-82, 188, + 190, 192-93, 198-200, 203, 205, 207-08, 210-11, 214, 316, 320 + +Frémont, Jessie Benton, 103, 175 + +Frémont, John C., 57, 93 + + +Gage, Frances D., 53-54, 274, 316 + +Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 33, 165, 175, 196, 200, 204, 209, 227-28, 235, + 237, 244, 320 + +Gannett, Mary Lewis, 271, 303 + +Gannett, William C., 271, 303 + +Garrett, Mary, 306-07, 326 + +Garrison, William Lloyd, 16, 23, 25-26, 44-47, 52, 60-63, 71, 77, 82, + 84-87, 89, 90-92, 95, 104-05, 111-12, 134, 137, 139, 143, 169, 184, + 233, 235, 281, 312 + +General Federation of Women's Clubs, 263, 283 + +Gibbons, Abby Hopper, 90, 146 + +Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, 279 + +Godbe, William S., 186 + +Gompers, Samuel, 285 + +Gough, John B., 24, 136 + +Grant, Ulysses S., 112, 146-47, 201, 213, 227, 315 + +Greeley, Horace, 25, 28, 47, 57, 80-81, 85, 98, 101, 103-04, 123, + 126-27, 132, 134, 137, 141-42, 174, 176, 196-97, 267 + +Greeley, Mary Cheney, 126, 146 + +Greenwood, Grace, 159 + +Grimké Sisters, 30, 102, 312 + + +Hallowell, Mary, 23, 77, 314 + +Hamilton, Gail, 101 + +Harper, Ida Husted, 271-72, 281, 295-96, 324 + +Hawley, Genevieve, 281, 325 + +Hay, Mary Garrett, 290-92 + +Hearst, Phoebe, 272 + +Hearst, William Randolph, 272 + +Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 52, 59, 60, 63, 67, 145-46, 169, 172 + +History of Woman Suffrage, 236-39, 295, 302 + +Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 167-68, 172, 174-75, 180-83, 185, 191, + 194-95, 320-21 + +Hooker, John, 221, 320 + +Hovey, Charles F., 51, 77, 79 + +Hovey Fund, 77, 79, 102, 117, 123, 128 + +Howe, Julia Ward, 162, 169, 171, 173, 175, 207, 280 + +Howe, Samuel G., 63 + +Hoxie, Hannah Anthony, 4, 19 + +Hunt, Dr. Harriot K., 32, 217 + +Hunt, Judge Ward, 209-14 + +Hutchinson Family Singers, 102, 128, 317 + + +International Council of Women, 234, 245-49, 288-89, 299-300, 302, 325 + +International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 299-300 + +Irwin, Inez Haynes, 306 + + +Jackson, Francis, 52, 53, 61, 75, 76, 79, 238, 313 + +Jackson Fund, 75, 79, 117, 127 + +Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam, 292 + +Johnson, Adelaide, 323 + +Johnson, Andrew, 111, 113, 120, 140-41 + +Julian, George W., 140, 159-60, 180, 196 + + +Kansas campaigns, 127-38, 261, 267-69 + +Kelley, Abby. _See_ Foster, Abby Kelley. + +Kelley, Florence, 286 + +Knights of Labor, 253, 261, 286, 325 + +Lane, Carrie. _See_ Catt, Carrie Chapman. + +Lapham, Anson, 171, 318, 320 + +Laughlin, Gail, 286 + +Lawrence, Margaret Stanton, 67, 100, 236, 257 + +Lewis and Clark Exposition, 303-04 + +_Liberator, The_, 16, 23, 63, 85-86, 92, 105, 112, 139 + +_Lily, The_, 26, 32 + +Lincoln, Abraham, 62, 64, 84-85, 87-88, 92-93, 97-98, 100, 102, 104-06, + 111, 113, 145, 209, 305 + +Livermore, Mary, 161, 164, 169, 173, 196, 207, 242, 247, 280, 322 + +Lockwood, Belva, 195, 245, 314 + +Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 66, 109 + +Longfellow, Samuel, 79, 83, 314 + +Lozier, Dr. Clemence, 157, 167, 231 + +Luther, Mary. _See_ Anthony, Mary Luther. + +Lyceum Lecture Tours, 177 + +Lyon, Mary, 7, 306 + + +Married Women's Property Law, 19-20, 38-39, 54, 78, 95, 101 + +Mason, Anna Dann, 281, 303 + +May, Samuel J., 23, 31, 41, 87-88, 92, 124, 176 + +May, Samuel Jr., 58, 62 + +Mayo, Rev. A. D., 82-83 + +McCulloch, Catharine Waugh, 294 + +McFarland, Daniel, 174 + +McFarland, Mrs. _See_ Richardson, Abby Sage. + +McLean, Aaron, 13-14, 20, 62, 108, 235, 316, 322 + +McLean, Ann Eliza, 108 + +McLean, Guelma Anthony, 1, 7, 9-15, 18, 46, 62, 108, 129, 190, 199, 219 + +McLean, Judge John, 7-8, 13 + +Melliss, David M., 138-39 + +Mill, Harriet Taylor, 71 + +Mill, John Stuart, 71, 128-29, 222 + +Miller, Elizabeth Smith, 26, 33, 146, 165-66, 205, 312 + +Minor, Francis, 180, 198, 200 + +Minor, Virginia, 175, 180, 200, 214, 216, 252 + +Mitchell, Maria, 207 + +Monroe County Lectures, 204-07 + +Montgomery, Helen Barrett, 294 + +Mormons, 186-87, 234, 244, 262 + +Mosher, Eugene, 235, 311, 316, 322 + +Mosher, Hannah Anthony, 1, 7-9, 12, 15, 18, 46, 108, 190, 199, 209, + 219, 230, 311, 316 + +Mosher, Louise, 235, 322 + +Mott, James, 33-34, 124 + +Mott, Lucretia, 18, 20-21, 25, 27, 33-34, 44-45, 54, 73-74, 83, 88, + 95, 112, 117, 124, 165, 170, 177, 183, 226-27, 274, 279, 319, 323 + +Mott, Lydia, 10, 18, 30, 40, 73, 76-77, 89, 93, 95-96, 112, 117, 170, + 203, 231, 235 + +Moulson, Deborah, 9-11, 18, 20, 24 + + +National American Woman Suffrage Association, 251, 260, 263, 274-78, + 283-87, 289-93, 295-97, 302-03, 307-08 + +National Council of Women, 246 + +National Labor Union Congress, 149-52, 155-56 + +National Woman Suffrage Association, 165, 173, 175, 177, 183, 185, + 191-95, 221, 226, 233, 242, 245-51, 318, 323 + +Negro slavery, 4, 7, 23, 43-46, 58, 60, 62, 71, 82, 84-86, 88-90, + 96-98, 102-03, 109, 111-13, 162, 311 + +Negro suffrage, 102, 105, 110-14, 116-18, 120-25, 127, 131-33, 135, + 140-42, 145, 148, 159-63, 165-66, 192, 215 + +New York constitutional conventions, 125-27, 266-67, 317 + +New York State Industrial School, Rochester, New York, 256 + +New York State Teachers' convention, 36-37, 67-70 + +Nichols, Clarina, 32, 274, 316 + +Nightingale, Florence, 99 + +Nineteenth Amendment, 310, 321 + + +Oberlin College, 28, 33, 70 + +Occupations, Women's, 36, 37, 69, 70-71, 247 + +Oklahoma campaign, 303 + +Oregon campaigns, 189-90, 303-04, 326 + +Owen, Robert Dale, 80, 101, 115, 120 + + +Palmer, Bertha Honoré, 261-62 + +Pankhurst, Emmeline, 325 + +Park, Maud Wood, 306 + +Parker, Theodore, 52, 73, 129 + +Phelps, Dr. Charles Abner, 89-91 + +Phelps, Mrs. Charles Abner, 89-91, 315 + +Phelps, Elizabeth, 160, 194, 318 + +Phillips, Wendell, 23, 25, 46-47, 49, 52, 59-61, 65, 76-77, 81-82, 87, + 90-92, 95, 103, 105-06, 112-17, 120, 124, 127, 134-35, 137, 141, 184, + 233, 238, 312, 318 + +Pillsbury, Parker, 23, 25, 47, 49, 59, 61, 65-66, 77, 92, 94, 105, 112, + 115, 117, 123, 135, 138, 140, 143, 167, 171, 177-78, 184, 224, 269 + +Pomeroy, Senator S. C., 123, 137, 140, 159-60 + +Post, Amy, 23, 199 + +Purvis, Robert, 124 + + +Quakers, 4-5, 8-9, 12-14, 16-18, 20-21, 23-25, 33, 44, 49, 53, 92, 171, + 311, 314-15 + + +Read, Daniel, 1, 6, 15, 311 + +Read, Joshua, 11, 15, 17, 20, 45-46 + +Read, Susannah Richardson, 6, 311 + +Republicans, 52, 60, 64, 84, 86, 88, 92, 103, 114-15, 118, 122-24, + 130-32, 135-36, 141, 143, 146-48, 159, 169, 173, 183, 193, + 196-97, 200, 215, 226, 232, 243, 253, 260, 266-69, 272, 305, 318 + +_Revolution, The_, 134, 137-46, 148-49, 152-55, 157-58, 160-62, + 165-67, 169, 171-74, 177-80, 188-89, 198, 205, 213, 217, 219, 220-21, + 225, 261, 280, 294, 318, 320, 326 + +Richards, Caroline Cowles, 48 + +Richardson, Abbie Sage, 174-75 + +Richardson, Albert D., 174 + +Ricker, Marilla, 198 + +Riddle, Albert G., 181, 200, 214 + +Robinson, Charles, 130, 135 + +Rochester, University of, 225, 258, 294-95 + +Rogers, Dr. Seth, 51-52 + +Roosevelt, Theodore, 305 + +Rose, Ernestine, 32, 41-44, 48, 51, 71, 81, 102, 124, 165, 217, 239, 246 + + +Sacajawea, 304, 326 + +Sage, Mrs. Russell, 292 + +Sanborn, Frank, 63, 117 + +Sargent, Aaron A., 191, 213, 230, 232, 322 + +Sargent, Ellen Clark, 191, 271, 273, 322 + +Selden, Judge Henry R., 200, 202-03, 207, 209-12 + +Sewall, May Wright, 244-45, 251, 262, 324 + +Seward, William H., 62-64, 87 + +Seymour, Horatio, 30, 98, 146-47 + +Shaw, Anne Howard, 247-49, 251, 253-54, 260-61, 268-69, 273-76, 279-80, + 284, 289-90, 293, 296-97, 300, 303, 308 + +Sixteenth Amendment, 160-62, 164, 166, 172-73, 193, 216-17, 231-33 + +Smith, Abby and Julia, 217 + +Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, 33-34 + +Smith, Gerrit, 33, 57, 63, 84, 88, 103, 125, 146, 170, 312 + +South Dakota campaign, 253-55 + +Spanish-American War, 282-83 + +Spencer, Sarah Andrews, 198, 227 + +Spofford, Jane, 233, 244, 251 + +Stanford, Leland, 187 + +Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 272 + +Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 21, 26-29, 31-36, 39-41, 49-50, 57, 67-74, + 77-84, 87, 94-95, 99-102, 104, 109-112, 114-30, 135-38, 140, 142-43, + 146, 150, 159-62, 165-67, 169-71, 174-77, 179-80, 183, 185-91, + 193-97, 199-200, 217, 220-21, 223, 226-27, 233-40, 244-45, 248-51, + 256-58, 260, 264, 266, 270, 279-80, 287, 290, 292, 294-96, 299, 306, + 314, 317-18, 321-23 + +Stanton, Harriot. _See_ Blatch, Harriot Stanton. + +Stanton, Henry B., 27, 57, 70, 84, 94, 98-99, 104, 112, 257 + +Stanton, Margaret. _See_ Lawrence, Margaret Stanton. + +Stanton, Theodore, 234, 245, 322 + +Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. _See_ Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson. + +Stevens, Thaddeus, 118, 121, 316 + +Stone, Lucy, 25, 28-30, 33, 40-41, 50-52, 54, 58, 62, 69-72, 76, 80-81, + 83, 99, 102, 117, 119, 124-25, 127-28, 131, 137, 144-45, 163-65, + 169-73, 196, 207, 236-38, 247, 249, 251, 274, 313, 319, 321, 323 + +Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 42, 174 + +Sumner, Charles, 52, 101, 117-18, 120, 175, 314 + +Sweet, Emma B., 270 + +Sylvis, William H., 150, 155, 286 + + +Taylor, Harriet. _See_ Mill, Harriet Taylor. + +Terrell, Mary Church, 287-88, 302 + +Thirteenth Amendment, 101, 104-05, 109, 111, 114, 118, 205, 215 + +Thomas, M. Carey, 306-07 + +Tilton, Elizabeth, 166, 219-21 + +Tilton, Theodore, 101, 118, 120, 141, 143, 166, 185, 196, 219-21 + +Train, George Francis, 131-33, 135-39, 143, 161, 169, 178, 185, 267, 317 + +Tubman, Harriet, 93, 315 + + +Unitarians, 21, 23-24, 41, 44, 227, 228, 271, 303 + +Upton, Harriet Taylor, 274-76, 280, 290, 292, 297 + + +Van Voorhis, John, 202-03, 207, 209, 214 + +Vassar College, 79, 230, 239, 306 + +Vaughn, Hester, 156-57, 165 + +Victoria, Queen, 288 + +Victoria Augusta, Empress, 302 + + +Wade, Senator Benjamin, 123, 140-41, 319 + +Wages, Women's, 37, 70, 138, 149, 150-56, 247, 285-86 + +Waite, Chief Justice, 214-15 + +Walker, Dr. Mary, 99 + +Weed, Thurlow, 30-31, 86 + +Weld, Theodore, 25 + +Whittier, John G., 124 + +Willard, Emma, 7, 37 + +Willard, Frances E., 218, 242-43, 245-47, 271, 321, 323 + +Wilson, Senator Henry, 123, 140, 159-60, 197 + +Wollstonecraft, Mary, 142 + +Woman Suffrage, in Australia, 297, 310; + in Colorado, 230-31, 261, 264, 273, 297, 310; + in Great Britain, 55, 71, 176, 198, 288, 322-23; + in Idaho, 273, 310; + in New Zealand, 265, 310; + in Utah, 176, 186, 241, 273, 310; + in Wyoming, 176, 186, 198, 241, 252, 261, 273, 310 + +Woman Suffrage Conventions, 159, 169-73, 175-76, 180-81, 183-85, 191-95, + 204, 225, 233-34, 251, 277-78, 287, 295-96, 303-04, 306-07 + +_Woman's Bible_, The, 258-60, 278-80 + +_Woman's Journal_, 173, 175, 179, 207, 249, 319, 321 + +Woman's Rights Conventions, Seneca Falls, 20; + Rochester, 21; + Syracuse, 31-32; + Albany, 39-41; + Philadelphia, 44; + Saratoga, 50-51; + New York, 70-71, 79-82 + +Woman's State Temperance Society, 32, 35-36 + +Woman's Suffrage Association of America, 146, 159 + +_Woman's Tribune_, 231, 245, 249, 258, 270, 279, 323-24 + +Women's Christian Temperance Union, 217-18, 242, 244, 247, 253, 263, + 271, 283 + +Women's National Loyal League, 101-03, 105, 315 + +Woodhull, Victoria C., 180-86, 191-95, 220-21, 319, 322 + +Woolley, Dr. Mary E., 306 + +Workingwomen's Association, 149-53, 155-57, 317 + +World's Fair, Chicago, 261-62, 288, 323-24 + +World's Temperance Convention, 35 + +Wright, Frances, 52, 80, 142 + +Wright, Martha C., 33, 54, 88, 95, 124, 144, 165, 175, 185, 235 + + +[Transcriber's Notes: + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. The transcriber made the following changes to the +text to correct obvious errors: + + 1. p. 14, Footnote #5 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "ancestory" changed to "ancestry" + 2. p. 14, Footnote #12 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "Dairy" changed to "Diary" + 3. p. 19, "responsibiity" changed to "responsibility" + 4. p. 31, "Presbysterian" changed to "Presbyterian" + 5. p. 53, "litle" changed to "little" + 6. p. 56, "Osawatamie" changed to "Osawatomie" + 7. p. 66, "marytrdom" changed to "martyrdom" + 8. p. 70, "newpaper" changed to "newspaper" + 9. p. 71, "Westminister" changed to "Westminster" +10. p. 84, "betwen" changed to "between" +11. p. 91, "fredom" changed to "freedom" +12. p. 99, "marshall" changed to "marshal" +13. p. 141, "Greley" changed to "Greeley" +14. p. 143, "Garrion" changed to "Garrison" +15. p. 154, "indepedence" changed to "independence" +16. p. 155, rat office" changed to "rat office" +17. p. 157, "Eourope" changed to "Europe" +18. p. 162, "betwen" changed to "between" +19. p. 164, at their side. (Removed ending quote) +20. p. 169, Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...." (Added ending quote) +21. p. 175, "Griffing" changed to "Griffin" +22. p. 184, "Victorial" changed to "Victoria" +23. p. 186, "senusous" changed to "sensuous" +24. p. 195, "Wodhull" changed to "Woodhull" +25. p. 203, "womanhoood" changed to "womanhood" +26. p. 209, "againt" changed to "against" +27. p. 231, "ben" changed to "been" +28. p. 234, "discused" changed to "discussed" +29. p. 235, "Josyln" changed to "Joslyn" +30. p. 236, "Cage" changed to "Gage" +31. p. 253, "politican" changed to "politician" +32. p. 265, "suffage" changed to "suffrage" +33. p. 265, Footnote #367 in Chapter "Victories in the West" + "Happerset" changed to "Happersett" +34. p. 274, "ue" changed to "use" +35. p. 298, "contine" changed to "continue" +36. p. 298, Footnote #426 in Chapter "Passing the Torch" + "yater" changed to "later" +37. p. 306, "Byrn" changed to "Bryn" +38. p. 308, "farwell" changed to "farewell" +39. p. 329, "Thoguhts" changed to "Thoughts" +40. p. 335, "phophecy" changed to "prophecy" + +All footnotes for the book were located on pages 311-326 and have been +relocated to immediately follow the chapter where they are referenced. + +End of Transcriber's Notes] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Susan B. Anthony, by Alma Lutz + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY *** + +***** This file should be named 20439-8.txt or 20439-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/4/3/20439/ + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Anthony, by Alma Lutz + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Susan B. Anthony + Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian + +Author: Alma Lutz + +Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20439] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY *** + + + + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<div class="trans-note"> +<p class="heading">Transcriber's Note:</p> + +<p>Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on +this publication was renewed.</p> + +<p>Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious +error is noted at the <a href="#END">end</a> of this ebook.</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="full" /> +<h1><a name="SUSAN_B_ANTHONY" id="SUSAN_B_ANTHONY"></a>SUSAN B. ANTHONY</h1> +<br /> + +<h3>REBEL, CRUSADER, HUMANITARIAN</h3> +<br /> + +<h2>BY ALMA LUTZ</h2> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h5>ZENGER PUBLISHING CO. INC.<br /> +BOX 9883, WASHINGTON DC 20015</h5> + +<hr /> + +<a id="Page_Frontis" name="Page_Frontis"></a> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 309px;"> +<img src="images/000-001.jpg" width="309" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<hr /> + +<p>Alma Lutz was born and brought up in North Dakota, graduated from the +Emma Willard School and Vassar College, and attended the Boston +University School of Business Administration. She has written numerous +articles and pamphlets and for many years has been a contributor to +<i>The Christian Science Monitor</i>. Active in organizations working for +the political, civil, and economic rights of women, she has also been +interested in preserving the records of women's role in history and +serves on the Advisory Board of the Radcliffe Women's Archives. Miss +Lutz is the author of <i>Emma Willard, Daughter of Democracy</i> (1929), +<i>Created Equal, A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton</i> (1940), +<i>Challenging Years, The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch</i>, with +Harriot Stanton Blatch (1940), and the editor of <i>With Love Jane, +Letters from American Women on the War Fronts</i> (1945).</p> + +<p class="center"> +© 1959 by Alma Lutz<br /> +Member of the Authors League of America<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Published by arrangement with<br /> +Beacon Press<br /> +All rights reserved.</p> + +<br /><br /> +<p>Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data +<br /> +Lutz, Alma.<br /> +Susan B. Anthony: rebel, crusader, humanitarian.<br /> +<br /> +Reprint of the ed. published by Beacon Press, Boston.<br /> +Bibliography: p.<br /> +Includes index.<br /> +1. Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906.<br /> +[JK1899.A6L8 1975] 324'.3'0924 [B] 75-37764<br /> +ISBN 0-89201-017-7</p> + +<br /> +<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America</p> +<br /> +<hr /> + +<h2><i>To the young women of today</i></h2> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>To strive for liberty and for a democratic way of life has always been +a noble tradition of our country. Susan B. Anthony followed this +tradition. Convinced that the principle of equal rights for all, as +stated in the Declaration of Independence, must be expressed in the +laws of a true republic, she devoted her life to the establishment of +this ideal.</p> + +<p>Because she recognized in Negro slavery and in the legal bondage of +women flagrant violations of this principle, she became an active, +courageous, effective antislavery crusader and a champion of civil and +political rights for women. She saw women's struggle for freedom from +legal restrictions as an important phase in the development of +American democracy. To her this struggle was never a battle of the +sexes, but a battle such as any freedom-loving people would wage for +civil and political rights.</p> + +<p>While her goals for women were only partially realized in her +lifetime, she prepared the soil for the acceptance not only of her +long-hoped-for federal woman suffrage amendment but for a worldwide +recognition of human rights, now expressed in the United Nations +Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights. She looked forward to the +time when throughout the world there would be no discrimination +because of race, color, religion, or sex.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="ACKNOWLEDGMENTS" id="ACKNOWLEDGMENTS"></a>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</h2> + + +<p>"The letters of a person ...," said Thomas Jefferson, "form the only +full and genuine journal of his life." Susan B. Anthony's letters, +hundreds of them, preserved in libraries and private collections, and +her diaries have been the basis of this biography, and I acknowledge +my indebtedness to the following libraries and their helpful +librarians: the American Antiquarian Society; the Bancroft Library of +the University of California; the Boston Public Library; the Henry E. +Huntington Library and Art Gallery; the Indiana State Library; the +Kansas Historical Society; the Library of Congress; the Susan B. +Anthony Memorial Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, which +has been transferred to the Henry E. Huntington Library; the New York +Public Library; the New York State Library; the Ohio State Library; +the Radcliffe Women's Archives; the Seneca Falls Historical Society; +the Smith College Library; the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Inc., +Rochester, New York; the University of Rochester Library; the +University of Kentucky Library; and the Vassar College Library.</p> + +<p>I am particularly indebted to Lucy E. Anthony, who asked me to write a +biography of her aunt, lent me her aunt's diaries, and was most +generous with her records and personal recollections. To her and to +her sister, Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon, I am very grateful for photographs +and for permission to quote from Susan B. Anthony's diaries and from +her letters and manuscripts.</p> + +<p>Ida Husted Harper's <i>Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony</i>, written in +collaboration with Susan B. Anthony, and the <i>History of Woman +Suffrage</i>, compiled by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, +Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, have been invaluable. As +many of the letters and documents used in the preparation of these +books were destroyed, they have preserved an important record of the +work of Susan B. Anthony and of the woman's rights movement.</p> + +<p>I am especially grateful to Martha Taylor Howard for her unfailing +interest and for the use of the valuable Susan B. Anthony Memorial +Collection which she initiated and developed in Rochester, New York; +and to Una R. Winter for her interest and for the use of her Susan B. +Anthony Collection, most of which is now in the Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p> + +<p>I thank Edna M. Stantial for permission to examine and quote from the +Blackwell Papers; Anna Dann Mason for permission to read her +reminiscences and the many letters written to her by Susan B. Anthony; +Ellen Garrison for permission to quote from letters of Lucretia Mott +and Martha C. Wright; Eleanor W. Thompson for copies of Susan B. +Anthony's letters to Amelia Bloomer; Henry R. Selden II whose +grandfather was Susan B. Anthony's lawyer during her trial for voting; +Judge John Van Voorhis whose grandfather was associated with Judge +Selden in Miss Anthony's defense; William B. Brown for information +about the early history of Adams, Massachusetts, the Susan B. Anthony +birthplace, and the Friends Meeting House in Adams; Dr. James Harvey +Young for information about Anna E. Dickinson; Margaret Lutz Fogg for +help in connection with the trial of Susan B. Anthony; Dr. Blake +McKelvey, City Historian of Rochester; Clara Sayre Selden and Wheeler +Chapin Case of the Rochester Historical Society; the grand-nieces of +Susan B. Anthony, Marion and Florence Mosher; Matilda Joslyn Gage II; +Florence L. C. Kitchelt; and Rose Arnold Powell.</p> + +<p>I thank <i>The Christian Science Monitor</i> for permission to use portions +of an article published on October 24, 1958.</p> + +<p>I am especially grateful to A. Marguerite Smith for her constructive +criticism of the manuscript and her unfailing encouragement.</p> + +<p class="author">alma lutz</p> +<p><i>Highmeadow</i><br /> +<i>Berlin, New York</i><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS"></a>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2> +<ul class="TOC lowercase sc"> +<li>QUAKER HERITAGE<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li> +<li>WIDENING HORIZONS<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></span></li> +<li>FREEDOM TO SPEAK<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></span></li> +<li>A PURSE OF HER OWN<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></span></li> +<li>NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></span></li> +<li>THE TRUE WOMAN<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></span></li> +<li>THE ZEALOT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></span></li> +<li>A WAR FOR FREEDOM<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></span></li> +<li>THE NEGRO'S HOUR<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></span></li> +<li>TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></span></li> +<li>HE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></span></li> +<li>WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></span></li> +<li>THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></span></li> +<li>A HOUSE DIVIDED<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></span></li> +<li>A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></span></li> +<li>TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></li> +<li>"IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?"<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></span></li> +<li>SOCIAL PURITY<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></span></li> +<li>A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></span></li> +<li>RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></span></li> +<li>IMPETUS FROM THE WEST<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></span></li> +<li>VICTORIES IN THE WEST<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></span></li> +<li>LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></span></li> +<li>AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></span></li> +<li>PASSING ON THE TORCH<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></span></li> +<li>SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></span></li> +<li>NOTES<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></span></li> +<li>BIBLIOGRAPHY<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></span></li> +<li>INDEX<span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></span></li> +</ul> + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="TABLE_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="TABLE_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<table summary="Illustrations"> +<tr> +<td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-five<br /> +<small>(From a daguerrotype, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y.)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_Frontis" id="toc10"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> + +<tr> +<td class="toc2">Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony<br /> +<small>(From <i>The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony</i> by Ida Husted Harper)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_2" id="toc2">2</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony<br /> +<small>(From <i>The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony</i> by Ida Husted Harper)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts<br /> +<small>(The Smith Studio, Adams, Massachusetts)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Frederick Douglass</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"<br /> +<small>(From <i>The Lily</i>)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Lucy Stone<br /> +<small>(From <i>Lucy Stone</i> by Alice Stone Blackwell. Courtesy Little, Brown and Company)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">James and Lucretia Mott<br /> +<small>(From <i>James and Lucretia Mott</i> by Anna D. Hallowell.<br /> +Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Company)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Ernestine Rose<br /> +<small>(From <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,<br /> +and Matilda Joslyn Gage)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Parker Pillsbury<br /> +<small>(From <i>William Lloyd Garrison</i> by His Children)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Merritt Anthony<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony, 1856<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">William Lloyd Garrison<br /> +<small>(From <i>William Lloyd Garrison and His Times</i> by Oliver Johnson)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Wendell Phillips<br /> +<small>(From <i>William Lloyd Garrison</i> by His Children)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">George Francis Train<br /> +<small>(Courtesy New York Public Library)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Anna E. Dickinson<br /> +<small>(From <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,<br /> +and Matilda Joslyn Gage)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Paulina Wright Davis</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Isabella Beecher Hooker</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Victoria C. Woodhull</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony, 1871<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Judge Henry R. Selden<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Henry R. Selden II)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">"The Woman Who Dared"<br /> +<small>(New York <i>Daily Graphic</i>, June 5, 1873)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Aaron A. Sargent<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Library of Congress)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Clara Bewick Colby<br /> +<small>(From <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,<br /> +and Matilda Joslyn Gage)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Matilda Joslyn Gage<br /> +<small>(From <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,<br /> +and Matilda Joslyn Gage)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Anna Howard Shaw<br /> +<small>(From a photograph by Mary Carnel)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Harriot Stanton Blatch<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">The Anthony home, Rochester, New York<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony at her desk<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Ida Husted Harper<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Library of Congress)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Rachel Foster Avery<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Library of Congress)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Harriet Taylor Upton<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Carrie Chapman Catt<br /> +<small>(Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony</td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five<br /> +<small>(From a photograph by J. E. Hale)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="toc2">Susan B. Anthony, 1905<br /> +<small>(From a photograph by Ellis)</small></td> +<td class="toc3"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td></tr> + +</table> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="QUAKER_HERITAGE" id="QUAKER_HERITAGE"></a>QUAKER HERITAGE</h2> + + +<p>"If Sally Ann knows more about weaving than Elijah," reasoned +eleven-year-old Susan with her father, "then why don't you make her +overseer?"</p> + +<p>"It would never do," replied Daniel Anthony as a matter of course. "It +would never do to have a woman overseer in the mill."</p> + +<p>This answer did not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To +enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of +entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the +nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. +Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from +Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something +wrong with the machinery, Elijah, the overseer, always called out to +Sally Ann, "I'll tend your loom, if you'll look after this." Sally Ann +never failed to locate the trouble or to untangle the yarn. Yet she +was never made overseer, and this continued to puzzle Susan.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>The manufacture of cotton was a new industry, developing with great +promise in the United States, when Susan B. Anthony was born on +February 15, 1820, in the wide valley at the foot of Mt. Greylock, +near Adams, Massachusetts. Enterprising young men like her father, +Daniel Anthony, saw a potential cotton mill by the side of every +rushing brook, and young women, eager to earn the first money they +could call their own, were leaving the farms, for a few months at +least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and +the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a +few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen.</p> + +<p>When Susan was two years old, her father built a cotton factory of +twenty-six looms beside the brook which ran through Grandfather Read's +meadow, hauling the cotton forty miles by wagon from Troy, New York. +The millworkers, most of them young girls from Vermont, boarded, as +was the custom, in the home of the millowner; Susan's mother, Lucy +Read Anthony, although she had three small daughters to care for, +Guelma, Susan, and Hannah,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> boarded eleven of the millworkers with +only the help of a thirteen-year-old girl who worked for her after +school hours. Lucy Anthony cooked their meals on the hearth of the big +kitchen fireplace, and in the large brick oven beside it baked crisp +brown loaves of bread. In addition, washing, ironing, mending, and +spinning filled her days. But she was capable and strong and was doing +only what all women in this new country were expected to do. She +taught her young daughters to help her, and Susan, even before she was +six, was very useful; by the time she was ten she could cook a good +meal and pack a dinner pail.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 289px;"> +<img src="images/002.jpg" width="289" height="450" alt="Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Hard work and skill were respected as Susan grew up in the rapidly +expanding young republic which less than fifty years before had been +founded and fought for. Settlers, steadily pushing westward, had built +new states out of the wilderness, adding ten to the original thirteen. +Everywhere the leaven of democracy was working and men were putting +into practice many of the principles so boldly stated in the +Declaration of Independence, claiming for themselves equal rights and +opportunities. The new states entered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> the Union with none of the +traditional property and religious limitations on the franchise, but +with manhood suffrage and all voters eligible for office. The older +states soon fell into line, Massachusetts in 1820 removing property +qualifications for voters. Before long, throughout the United States, +all free white men were enfranchised, leaving only women, Negroes, and +Indians without the full rights of citizenship.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 275px;"> +<img src="images/003.jpg" width="275" height="450" alt="Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>Although women freeholders had voted in some of the colonies and in +New Jersey as late as 1807,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> just as in England in the fifteenth +franchise had gradually found its way into the statutes, and women's +rights as citizens were ignored, in spite of the contribution they had +made to the defense and development of the new nation. However, +European travelers, among them De Tocqueville, recognized that the +survival of the New World experiment in government and the prosperity +and strength of the people were due in large measure to the +superiority of American women. A few women had urged their claims: +Abigail Adams asked her husband, a member of the Continental Congress, +"to remember the ladies" in the "new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> code of laws"; and Hannah Lee +Corbin of Virginia pleaded with her brother, Richard Henry Lee, to +make good the principle of "no taxation without representation" by +enfranchising widows with property.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p> + +<p>Yet the legal bondage of women continued to be overlooked. It seemed a +less obvious threat to free institutions and democratic government +than the Negro in slavery. In fact, Negro slavery presented a problem +which demanded attention again and again, flaring up alarmingly in +1820, the year Susan B. Anthony was born, when Missouri was admitted +to the Union as a slave state.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>These were some of the forces at work in the minds of Americans during +Susan's childhood. Her father, a liberal Quaker, was concerned over +the extension of slavery, and she often heard him say that he tried to +avoid purchasing cotton raised by slave labor. This early impression +of the evil of slavery was never erased.</p> + +<p>The Quakers' respect for women's equality with men before God also +left its mark on young Susan. As soon as she was old enough she went +regularly to Meeting with her father, for all of the Anthonys were +Quakers. They had migrated to western Massachusetts from Rhode Island, +and there on the frontier had built prosperous farms, comfortable +homes, and a meeting house where they could worship God in their own +way. Susan, sitting with the women and children on the hand-hewn +benches near the big fireplace in the meeting house<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> which her +ancestors had built, found peace and consecration in the simple +unordered service, in the long reverent silence broken by both the men +and the women in the congregation as they were led to say a prayer or +give out a helpful message. Forty families now worshiped here, the +women sitting on one side and the men on the other; but women took +their places with men in positions of honor, Susan's own grandmother, +Hannah Latham Anthony, an elder, sitting in the "high seat," and her +aunt, Hannah Anthony Hoxie, preaching as the spirit moved her. With +this valuation of women accepted as a matter of course in her church +and family circle, Susan took it for granted that it existed +everywhere.</p> + +<p>Although her father was a devout Friend, she discovered that he had +the reputation of thinking for himself, following the "inner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> light" +even when its leading differed from the considered judgment of his +fellow Quakers. For this he became a hero to her, especially after she +heard the romantic story of his marriage to Lucy Read who was not a +Quaker. The Anthonys and the Reads had been neighbors for years, and +Lucy was one of the pupils at the "home school" which Grandfather +Humphrey Anthony had built for his children on the farm, under the +weeping willow at the front gate. Daniel and Lucy were schoolmates +until Daniel at nineteen was sent to Richard Mott's Friends' boarding +school at Nine Partners on the Hudson. When he returned as a teacher, +he found his old playmate still one of the pupils, but now a beautiful +tall young woman with deep blue eyes and glossy brown hair. Full of +fun, a good dancer, and always dressed in the prettiest clothes, she +was the most popular girl in the neighborhood. Promptly Daniel Anthony +fell in love with her, but an almost insurmountable obstacle stood in +the way: Quakers were not permitted to "marry out of Meeting." This, +however, did not deter Daniel.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/005.jpg" width="450" height="298" alt="Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts</span> +</div> + +<p>It was harder for Lucy to make up her mind. She enjoyed parties, +dances, and music. She had a full rich voice, and as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> sat at her +spinning wheel, singing and spinning, she often wished that she could +"go into a ten acre lot with the bars down"<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and let her voice out. +If she married Daniel, she would have to give all this up, but she +decided in favor of Daniel. A few nights before the wedding, she went +to her last party and danced until four in the morning while Daniel +looked on and patiently waited until she was ready to leave.</p> + +<p>For his transgression of marrying out of Meeting, Daniel had to face +the elders as soon as he returned from his wedding trip. They weighed +the matter carefully, found him otherwise sincere and earnest, and +decided not to turn him out. Lucy gave up her dancing and her singing. +She gave up her pretty bright-colored dresses for plain somber +clothes, but she did not adopt the Quaker dress or use the "plain +speech." She went to meeting with Daniel but never became a Quaker, +feeling always that she could not live up to their strict standard of +righteousness.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> + +<p>This was Susan's heritage—Quaker discipline and austerity lightened +by her father's independent spirit and by the kindly understanding of +her mother who had not forgotten her own fun-loving girlhood; an +environment where men and women were partners in church and at home, +where hard physical work was respected, where help for the needy and +unfortunate was spontaneous, and where education was regarded as so +important that Grandfather Anthony built a school for his children and +the neighbors' in his front yard. Her childhood was close enough to +the Revolution to make Grandfather Read's part in it very real and a +source of great pride. Eagerly and often she listened to the story of +how he enlisted in the Continental army as soon as the news of the +Battle of Lexington reached Cheshire and served with outstanding +bravery under Arnold at Quebec, Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, and +Colonel Stafford at Bennington while his young wife waited anxiously +for him throughout the long years of the war.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The wide valley in the Berkshire Hills where Susan grew up made a +lasting impression on her. There was beauty all about her—the fruit +trees blooming in the spring, the meadows white with daisies, the +brook splashing over the rocks and sparkling in the summer sun, the +flaming colors of autumn, the strength and companionship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> of the hills +when the countryside was white with snow. She seldom failed to watch +the sun set behind Greylock.</p> + +<p>Her father's cotton mill flourished. Regarded as one of the most +promising, successful young men of the district, he soon attracted the +attention of Judge John McLean, a cotton manufacturer of Battenville, +New York, who, eager to enlarge his mills, saw in Daniel Anthony an +able manager. Daniel, always ready to take the next step ahead, +accepted McLean's offer, and on a sunny July day in 1826, Susan drove +with her family through the hills forty-four miles to the new world of +Battenville.</p> + +<p>Here in the home of Judge McLean, she saw Negroes for the first time, +Negroes working to earn their freedom. Startled by their black faces, +she was a little afraid, but when her father explained that in the +South they could be sold like cattle and torn from their families, her +fear turned to pity.</p> + +<p>At the district school, taught by a woman in summer and by a man in +the winter, she learned to sew, spell, read, and write, and she wanted +to study long division but the schoolmaster, unable to teach it, saw +no reason why a woman should care for such knowledge. Her father, then +realizing the need of better education for his five children, Guelma, +Susan, Hannah, Daniel, and Mary, established a school for them in the +new brick building where he had opened a store. Later on when their +new brick house was finished, he set aside a large room for the +school, and here for the first time in that district the pupils had +separate seats, stools without backs, instead of the usual benches +around the schoolroom walls. He engaged as teachers young women who +had studied a year or two in a female seminary; and because female +seminaries were rare in those days, women teachers with up-to-date +training were hard to find. Only a few visionaries believed in the +education of women. Nearby Emma Willard's recently established Troy +Female Seminary was being watched with interest and suspicion. Mary +Lyon, who had not yet founded her own seminary at Mt. Holyoke, was +teaching at Zilpha Grant's school in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and one +of her pupils, Mary Perkins, came to Battenville to teach the Anthony +children. Mary Perkins brought new methods and new studies to the +little school. She introduced a primer with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> small black illustrations +which fascinated Susan. She taught the children to recite poetry, +drilled them regularly in calisthenics, and longed to add music as +well, but Daniel Anthony forbade this, for Quakers believed that music +might seduce the thoughts of the young. So Susan, although she often +had a song in her heart, had to repress it and never knew the joy of +singing the songs of childhood.</p> + +<p>Her father, looking upon the millworkers as part of his family, +started an evening school for them, often teaching it himself or +calling in the family teacher. He organized a temperance society among +the workers, and all signed a pledge never to drink distilled liquor. +When he opened a store in the new brick building, he refused to sell +liquor, although Judge McLean warned him it would ruin his trade. +Daniel Anthony went even further. He resolved not to serve liquor when +the millworkers' houses were built and the neighbors came to the +"raising." Again Judge McLean protested, feeling certain that the men +and boys would demand their gin and their rum, but Susan and her +sisters helped their mother serve lemonade, tea, coffee, doughnuts, +and gingerbread in abundance. The men joked a bit about the lack of +strong drink which they expected with every meal, but they did not +turn away from the good substitutes which were offered and they were +on hand for the next "raising." Hearing all of this discussed at home, +Susan, again proud of her father, ardently advocated the cause of +temperance.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The mill was still of great interest to her and she watched every +operation closely in her spare time, longing to try her hand at the +work. One day when a "spooler" was ill, Susan and her sister Hannah +eagerly volunteered to take her place. Their father was ready to let +them try, pleased by their interest and curious to see what they could +do, but their mother protested that the mill was no place for +children. Finally Susan's earnest pleading won her mother's reluctant +consent, and the two girls drew lots for the job. It went to +twelve-year-old Susan on the condition that she divide her earnings +with Hannah. Every day for two weeks she went early to the mill in her +plain homespun dress, her straight hair neatly parted and smoothed +over her ears. Proudly she tended the spools. She was skillful and +quick, and received the regular wage of $1.50 a week,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> which she +divided with Hannah, buying with her share six pale blue coffee cups +for her mother who had allowed her this satisfying adventure.</p> + +<p>A few weeks before her thirteenth birthday, Susan became a member of +the Society of Friends which met in nearby Easton, New York, and +learned to search her heart and ask herself, "Art thou faithful?" +Parties, dancing, and entertainments were generally ruled out of her +life as sinful, and rarely were a temptation, but occasionally her +mother, remembering her own good times, let her and her sisters go to +parties at the homes of their Presbyterian neighbors, and for this her +father was criticized at Friends' Meeting. Condemning bright colors, +frills, and jewelry as vain and worldly, Susan accepted plain somber +clothing as a mark of righteousness, and when she deviated to the +extent of wearing the Scotch-plaid coat which her mother had bought +her, she wondered if the big rent torn in it by a dog might not be +deserved punishment for her pride in wearing it.</p> + +<p>That same year, the family moved into their new brick house of fifteen +rooms, with hard-finish plaster walls and light green woodwork, the +finest house in that part of the country. Here Susan's brother Merritt +was born the next April, and her two-year-old sister, Eliza, died.</p> + +<p>Susan, Guelma, and Hannah continued their studies longer than most +girls in the neighborhood, for Quakers not only encouraged but +demanded education for both boys and girls. As soon as Susan and her +sister Guelma were old enough, they taught the "home" school in the +summer when the younger children attended, and then went further +afield to teach in nearby villages. At fifteen Susan was teaching a +district school for $1.50 a week and board, and although it was hard +for her to be away from home, she accepted it as a Friend's duty to +provide good education for children. Now Presbyterian neighbors +criticized her father, protesting that well-to-do young ladies should +not venture into paid work.</p> + +<p>Daniel Anthony was now a wealthy man, his factory the largest and most +prosperous in that part of the country, and he could afford more and +better education for his daughters. He sent Guelma, the eldest, to +Deborah Moulson's Friends' Seminary near Philadelphia, where for $125 +a year "the inculcation of the principles of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Humility, Morality, and +Virtue" received particular attention; and when Guelma was asked to +stay on a second year as a teacher, he suggested that Susan join her +there as a pupil.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>It was a long journey from Battenville to Philadelphia in 1837, and +when Susan left her home on a snowy afternoon with her father, she +felt as if the parting would be forever. Her first glimpse of the +world beyond Battenville interested her immensely until her father +left her at the seminary, and then she confessed to her diary, "Oh +what pangs were felt. It seemed impossible for me to part with him. I +could not speak to bid him farewell."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> She tried to comfort herself +by writing letters, and wrote so many and so much that Guelma often +exclaimed, "Susan, thee writes too much; thee should learn to be +concise." As it was a rule of the seminary that each letter must first +be written out carefully on a slate, inspected by Deborah Moulson, +then copied with care, inspected again, and finally sent out after +four or five days of preparation, all spontaneity was stifled and her +letters were stilted and overvirtuous. This censorship left its mark, +and years later she confessed, "Whenever I take my pen in hand, I +always seem to be mounted on stilts."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p> + +<p>To her diary she could confide her real feelings—her discouragement +over her lack of improvement and her inability to understand her many +"sins," such as not dotting an <i>i</i>, too much laughter, or smiling at +her friends instead of reproving them for frivolous conduct. She +wrote, "Thought so much of my resolutions to do better in the future +that even my dreams were filled with these desires.... Although I have +been guilty of much levity and nonsensical conversation, and have also +admitted thoughts to occupy my mind which should have been far distant +from it, I do not consider myself as having committed any wilful +offense but perhaps the reason I cannot see my own defects is because +my heart is hardened."<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<p>The girls studied a variety of subjects, arithmetic, algebra, +literature, chemistry, philosophy, physiology, astronomy, and +bookkeeping. Men came to the school to conduct some of the classes, +and Deborah Moulson was also assisted by several student teachers, one +of whom, Lydia Mott, became Susan's lifelong friend. Susan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> worked +hard, for she was a conscientious child, but none of her efforts +seemed to satisfy Deborah Moulson, who was a hard taskmaster. Her +reproofs cut deep, and once when Susan protested that she was always +censured while Guelma was praised, Deborah Moulson sternly replied, +"Thy sister Guelma does the best she is capable of, but thou dost not. +Thou hast greater abilities and I demand of thee the best of thy +capacity."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> + +<p>Mail from home was a bright spot, bringing into those busy austere +days news of her friends, and when she read that one of them had +married an old widower with six children, she reflected sagely, "I +should think any female would rather live and die an old maid."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> + +<p>Then came word that her father's business had been so affected by the +financial depression that the family would have to give up their home +in Battenville. Sorrowfully she wrote in her diary, "O can I ever +forget that loved residence in Battenville, and no more to call it +home seems impossible."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> It helped little to realize that countless +other families throughout the country were facing the future penniless +because banks had failed, mills were shut down, and work on canals and +railroads had ceased. In April 1838, Daniel Anthony came to the +seminary to take his daughters home.</p> + +<p>Susan felt keenly her father's sorrow over the failure of his business +and the loss of the home he had built for his family, and she resolved +at once to help out by teaching in Union Village, New York. In May +1838, she wrote in her diary, "On last evening ... I again left my +home to mingle with strangers which seems to be my sad lot. Separation +was rendered more trying on account of the embarrassing condition of +our business affairs, an inventory was expected to be taken today of +our furniture by assignees.... Spent this day in school, found it +small and quite disorderly. O, may my patience hold out to persevere +without intermission."<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p> + +<p>Her patience did hold out, and also her courage, as the news came from +home telling her how everything had to be sold to satisfy the +creditors, the furniture, her mother's silver spoons, their clothing +and books, the flour, tea, coffee, and sugar in the pantries. She +rejoiced to hear that Uncle Joshua Read from Palatine Bridge, New +York, had come to the rescue, had bought their most treasured and +needed possessions and turned them over to her mother.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + +<p>On a cold blustery March day in 1839, when she was nineteen, Susan +moved with her family two miles down the Battenkill to the little +settlement of Hardscrabble, later called Center Falls, where her +father owned a satinet factory and grist mill, built in more +prosperous times. These were now heavily mortgaged but he hoped to +save them. They moved into a large house which had been a tavern in +the days when lumber had been cut around Hardscrabble. It was +disappointing after their fine brick house in Battenville, but they +made it comfortable, and their love for and loyalty to each other made +them a happy family anywhere. As it had been a halfway house on the +road to Troy and travelers continued to stop there asking for a meal +or a night's lodging, they took them in, and young Daniel served them +food and nonintoxicating drinks at the old tavern bar.</p> + +<p>Susan, when her school term was over, put her energies into housework, +recording in her diary, "Did a large washing today.... Spent today at +the spinning wheel.... Baked 21 loaves of bread.... Wove three yards +of carpet yesterday."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p> + +<p>The attic of the tavern had been finished off for a ballroom with +bottles laid under the floor to give a nice tone to the music of the +fiddles, and now the young people of the village wanted to hold their +dancing school there. Susan's father, true to his Quaker training, +felt obliged to refuse, but when they came the second time to tell him +that the only other place available was a disreputable tavern where +liquor was sold, he relented a little, and talked the matter over with +his wife and daughters. Lucy Anthony, recalling her love of dancing, +urged him to let the young people come. Finally he consented on the +condition that Guelma, Hannah, and Susan would not dance. They agreed. +Every two weeks all through the winter, the fiddles played in the +attic room and the boys and girls of the neighborhood danced the +Virginia reel and their rounds and squares, while the three Quaker +girls sat around the wall, watching and longing to join in the fun.</p> + +<p>Such frivolous entertainment in the home of a Quaker could not be +condoned, and Daniel Anthony was not only severely censured by the +Friends but read out of Meeting, "because he kept a place of amusement +in his house." But he did not regret his so-called sin any more than +he regretted marrying out of Meeting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> He continued to attend Friends' +Meeting, but grew more and more liberal as the years went by. At this +time, like all Quakers, he refused to vote, not wishing in any way to +support a government that believed in war, and this influenced Susan +who for some years regarded voting as unimportant. He refused to pay +taxes for the same reason, and she often saw him put his pocketbook on +the table and then remark drily to the tax collector, "I shall not +voluntarily pay these taxes. If thee wants to rifle my pocketbook, +thee can do so."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>To help her father with his burden of debt was now Susan's purpose in +life, and in the spring she again left the family circle to teach at +Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary in New Rochelle, New York. There +were twenty-eight day pupils and a few boarders at the seminary, and +for long periods while Eunice Kenyon was ill, Susan took full charge.</p> + +<p>She wrote her family all the little details of her life, but their +letters never came often enough to satisfy her. Occasionally she +received a paper or a letter from Aaron McLean, Judge McLean's +grandson, who had been her good friend and Guelma's ever since they +had moved to Battenville. His letters almost always started an +argument which both of them continued with zest. After hearing the +Quaker preacher, Rachel Barker, she wrote him, "I guess if you would +hear her you would believe in a woman's preaching. What an absurd +notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficient +for anything but domestic concerns."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p> + +<p>When New Rochelle welcomed President Van Buren with a parade, bands +playing, and crowds in the streets, this prim self-righteous young +woman took no part in this hero worship, but gave vent to her +disapproval in a letter to Aaron.</p> + +<p>Disturbed over the treatment Negroes received at Friends' Meeting in +New Rochelle, she impulsively wrote him, "The people about here are +anti-abolitionist and anti everything else that's good. The Friends +raised quite a fuss about a colored man sitting in the meeting house, +and some left on account of it.... What a lack of Christianity is +this!"<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p> + +<p>Her school term of fifteen weeks, for which she was paid $30, was over +early in September, just in time for her to be at home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> for Guelma's +wedding to Aaron McLean, and afterward she stayed on to teach the +village school in Center Falls. This made it possible for her to join +in the social life of the neighborhood. Often the young people drove +to nearby villages, twenty buggies in procession. On a drive to +Saratoga, her escort asked her to give up teaching to marry him. She +refused, as she did again a few years later when a Quaker elder tried +to entice her with his fine house, his many acres, and his sixty cows. +Although she had reached the age of twenty, when most girls felt they +should be married, she was still particular, and when a friend married +a man far inferior mentally, she wrote in her diary, "'Tis strange, +'tis passing strange that a girl possessed of common sense should be +willing to marry a lunatic—but so it is."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p> + +<p>During the next few years, both she and Hannah taught school almost +continuously, for $2 to $2.50 a week. Time and time again Susan +replaced a man who had been discharged for inefficiency. Although she +made a success of the school, she discovered that she was paid only a +fourth the salary he had received, and this rankled.</p> + +<p>Almost everywhere except among Quakers, she encountered a false +estimate of women which she instinctively opposed. After spending +several months with relatives in Vermont, where she had the unexpected +opportunity of studying algebra, she stopped over for a visit with +Guelma and Aaron in Battenville, where Aaron was a successful +merchant. Eagerly she told them of her latest accomplishment. Aaron +was not impressed. Later at dinner when she offered him the delicious +cream biscuits which she had baked, he remarked with his most +tantalizing air of male superiority, "I'd rather see a woman make +biscuits like these than solve the knottiest problem in algebra."</p> + +<p>"There is no reason," she retorted, "why she should not be able to do +both."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="WIDENING_HORIZONS" id="WIDENING_HORIZONS"></a>WIDENING HORIZONS</h2> + + +<p>Unable to recoup his business losses in Center Falls and losing even +the satinet factory, Susan's father had looked about in Virginia and +Michigan as well as western New York for an opportunity to make a +fresh start. A farm on the outskirts of Rochester looked promising, +and with the money which Lucy Anthony had inherited from Grandfather +Read and which had been held for her by Uncle Joshua Read, the first +payment had been made on the farm by Uncle Joshua, who held it in his +name and leased it to Daniel.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Had it been turned over to Susan's +mother, it would have become Daniel Anthony's property under the law +and could have been claimed by his creditors.</p> + +<p>Only Susan, Merritt, and Mary climbed into the stage with their +parents, early in November 1845, on the first lap of their journey to +their new home, near Rochester, New York. Guelma and Hannah<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> were +both married and settled in homes of their own, and young Daniel, +clerking in Lenox, had decided to stay behind.</p> + +<p>After a visit with Uncle Joshua at Palatine Bridge, they boarded a +line boat on the Erie Canal, taking with them their gray horse and +wagon; and surrounded by their household goods, they moved slowly +westward. Standing beside her father in the warm November sunshine, +Susan watched the strong horses on the towpath, plodding patiently +ahead, and heard the wash of the water against the prow and the noisy +greeting of boat horns. As they passed the snug friendly villages +along the canal and the wide fertile fields, now brown and bleak after +the harvest, she wondered what the new farm would be like and what the +future would bring; and at night when the lights twinkled in the +settlements along the shore, she thought longingly of her old home and +the sisters she had left behind.</p> + +<p>After a journey of several days, they reached Rochester late in the +afternoon. Her father took the horse and wagon off the boat, and in +the chill gray dusk drove them three miles over muddy roads to the +farm. It was dark when they arrived, and the house was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> cold, empty, +and dismal, but after the fires were lighted and her mother had cooked +a big kettle of cornmeal mush, their spirits revived. Within the next +few days they transformed it into a cheerful comfortable home.</p> + +<p>The house on a little hill overlooked their thirty-two acres. Back of +it was the barn, a carriage house, and a little blacksmith shop.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> +Looking out over the flat snowy fields toward the curving Genesee +River and the church steeples in Rochester, Susan often thought +wistfully of the blue hills around Center Falls and Battenville and of +the good times she had had there.</p> + +<p>The winter was lonely for her in spite of the friendliness of their +Quaker neighbors, the De Garmos, and the Quaker families in Rochester +who called at once to welcome them. Her father found these neighbors +very congenial and they readily interested him in the antislavery +movement, now active in western New York. Within the next few months, +several antislavery meetings were held in the Anthony home and opened +a new world to Susan. For the first time she heard of the Underground +Railroad which secretly guided fugitive slaves to Canada and of the +Liberty party which was making a political issue of slavery. She +listened to serious, troubled discussion of the annexation of Texas, +bringing more power to the proslavery block, which even the +acquisition of free Oregon could not offset. She read antislavery +tracts and copies of William Lloyd Garrison's <i>Liberator</i>, borrowed +from Quaker friends; and on long winter evenings, as she sat by the +fire sewing, she talked over with her father the issues they raised.</p> + +<p>When spring came and the trees and bushes leafed out, she took more +interest in the farm, discovering its good points one by one—the +flowering quince along the driveway, the pinks bordering the walk to +the front door, the rosebushes in the yard, and cherry trees, currant +and gooseberry bushes in abundance. Her father planted peach and apple +orchards and worked the "sixpenny farm,"<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> as he called it, to the +best of his ability, but the thirty-two acres seemed very small +compared with the large Anthony and Read farms in the Berkshires, and +he soon began to look about for more satisfying work. This he found a +few years later with the New York Life Insurance Company, then +developing its business in western New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> York. Very successful in this +new field, he continued in it the rest of his life, but he always kept +the farm for the family home.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The first member of the family to leave the Rochester farm was Susan. +The cherry trees were in bloom when she received an offer from +Canajoharie Academy to teach the female department. As Canajoharie was +across the river from Uncle Joshua Read's home in Palatine Bridge and +he was a trustee of the academy, she read between the lines his kindly +interest in her. He was an influential citizen of that community, a +bank director and part owner of the Albany-Utica turnpike and the +stage line to Schenectady. Accepting the offer at once, she made the +long journey by canal boat to Canajoharie, and early in May 1846 was +comfortably settled in the home of Uncle Joshua's daughter, Margaret +Read Caldwell.</p> + +<p>She soon loved Margaret as a sister and was devoted to her children. +None of her new friends were Quakers and she enjoyed their social life +thoroughly, leaving behind her forever the somber clothing which she +had heretofore regarded as a mark of righteousness. She began her +school with twenty-five pupils and a yearly salary of approximately +$110. This was more than she had ever earned before, and for the first +time in her life she spent her money freely on herself.</p> + +<p>Her first quarterly examination, held before the principal, the +trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in +addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> She had +dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple, +white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a +gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her +smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new +prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so +pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some +young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy +of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon +saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for +the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room +of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced.</p> + +<p>In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> because of +the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two +years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only +a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott. +In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents, +"Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of +building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My +room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not +pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at +least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school +of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty +compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is +wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest +and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage to +persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my +fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That +is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches, +cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in +bloom and all about the farming business."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active +abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this +time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform +movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the +country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, +but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting +that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off +when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance +societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters +of Temperance.</p> + +<p>Canajoharie had its Daughters of Temperance, and Susan, long an +advocate of temperance, gladly joined the crusade, and made her first +speech when the Daughters of Temperance held a supper meeting to +interest the people of the village. Few women at this time could have +been persuaded to address an audience of both men and women, believing +this to be bold, unladylike, and contrary to the will of God; but the +young Quaker, whose grandmother and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> aunts had always spoken in +Meeting when the spirit moved them, was ready to say her word for +temperance, taking it for granted that it was not only woman's right +but her responsibility to speak and work for social reform.</p> + +<p>About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the +hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her +amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out +Susan B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly +regard,"<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> she confided to her family.</p> + +<p>She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages +together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its +formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now +despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of +reform.</p> + +<p>"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the +social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females +possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but +we do believe that were they en masse to discontinue the use of wine +and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not +one of the opposite sex, who has any claim to the title of gentleman, +would so insult them as to come into their presence after having +quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement.... +Ladies! There is no neutral position for us to assume...."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p> + +<p>The next day the village buzzed with talk of the meeting; only a few +criticized Susan for speaking in public, and almost all agreed that +she was the smartest woman in Canajoharie.</p> + +<p>While she was busy with her temperance work, there were stirrings +among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early +summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated +petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible +sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to +own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made +it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name. +Heretofore all property owned by a woman at marriage and all received +by gift or inheritance had at once become her husband's and he had had +the right to sell it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> or will it away without her consent and to +collect the rents or the income. The new law was welcomed in the +Anthony household, for now Lucy Anthony's inheritance, which had +bought the Rochester farm, could at last be put in her own name and +need no longer be held for her by her brother.</p> + +<p>In the newspapers in July, Susan read scornful, humorous, and +indignant reports of a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New +York, at which women had issued a Declaration of Sentiments, +announcing themselves men's equals. They had protested against legal, +economic, social, and educational discriminations and asked for the +franchise. A woman's rights convention in the 1840s was a startling +event. Women, if they were "ladies" did not attend public gatherings +where politics or social reforms were discussed, because such subjects +were regarded as definitely out of their sphere. Much less did they +venture to call meetings of their own and issue bold resolutions.</p> + +<p>Susan was not shocked by this break with tradition, but she did not +instinctively come to the defense of these rebellious women, nor +champion their cause. She was amused rather than impressed. Yet +Lucretia Mott's presence at the convention aroused her curiosity. +Among her father's Quaker friends in Rochester, she had heard only +praise of Mrs. Mott, and she herself, when a pupil at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, had been inspired by Mrs. Mott's remarks at +Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia.</p> + +<p>So far Susan had encountered few barriers because she was a woman. She +had had little personal contact with the hardships other women +suffered because of their inferior legal status. To be sure, it had +been puzzling to her as child that Sally Hyatt, the most skillful +weaver in her father's mill, had never been made overseer, but the +fact that her mother had not the legal right to hold property in her +own name did not at the time make an impression upon her. Brought up +as a Quaker, she had no obstacles put in the way of her education. She +had an exceptional father who was proud of his daughters' intelligence +and ability and respected their opinions and decisions. Her only real +complaint was the low salary she had been obliged to accept as a +teacher because she was a woman. She sensed a feeling of male +superiority, which she resented, in her brother-in-law, Aaron McLean, +who did not approve of women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> preachers and who thought it more +important for a woman to bake biscuits than to study algebra. She met +the same arrogance of sex in her Cousin Margaret's husband, but she +had not analyzed the cause, or seen the need of concerted action by +women.</p> + +<p>Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise +that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in +the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister +Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had +signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her +cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father +showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she +laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the +times."<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with +good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so +enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's +rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her +black curls and ruddy cheeks"<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> and about Lucretia Mott "with her +Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both +"speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest +was finally aroused and she decided she would like to meet these women +and talk with them. There was no opportunity for this, however, before +she returned to Canajoharie for another year of teaching.</p> + +<p>It proved to be a year of great sadness because of the illness of her +cousin Margaret whom she loved dearly. In addition to her teaching, +she nursed Margaret and looked after the house and children. She saw +much to discredit the belief that men were the stronger and women the +weaker sex, and impatient with Margaret's husband, she wrote her +mother that there were some drawbacks to marriage that made a woman +quite content to remain single. In explanation she added, "Joseph had +a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one +for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine +pain, yours is sort of a natural consequence.'"<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p> + +<p>Within a few weeks Margaret died. This was heart-breaking for Susan, +and without her cousin, Canajoharie offered little attraction. +Teaching had become irksome. The new principal was uncongenial, a +severe young man from the South whose father was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> a slaveholder. Susan +longed for a change, and as she read of the young men leaving for the +West, lured by gold in California, she envied them their adventure and +their opportunity to explore and conquer a whole new world.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;"> +<img src="images/022.jpg" width="370" height="450" alt="Frederick Douglass" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The peaches were ripe when Susan returned to the farm. The orchard +which her father had planted, now bore abundantly. Restless and eager +for hard physical work, she discarded the stylish hoops which impeded +action, put on an old calico dress, and spent days in the warm +September sunshine picking peaches. Then while she preserved, canned, +and pickled them, there was little time to long for pioneering in the +West.</p> + +<p>She enjoyed the active life on the farm for she was essentially a +doer, most happy when her hands and her mind were busy. As she helped +with the housework, wove rag carpet, or made shirts by hand for her +father and brothers, she dreamed of the future, of the work she might +do to make her life count for something. Teaching, she decided, was +definitely behind her. She would not allow her sister Mary's interest +in that career to persuade her otherwise, even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> if teaching were the +only promising and well-thought-of occupation for women. Reading the +poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she was deeply stirred and looked +forward romantically to some great and useful life work.</p> + +<p>The <i>Liberator</i>, with its fearless denunciation of Negro slavery, now +came regularly to the Anthony home, and as she pored over its pages, +its message fired her soul. Eagerly she called with her father at the +home of Frederick Douglass, who had recently settled in Rochester and +was publishing his paper, the <i>North Star</i>. Not only did she want to +show friendliness to this free Negro of whose intelligence and +eloquence she had heard so much, but she wanted to hear first-hand +from him and his wife of the needs of his people.</p> + +<p>Almost every Sunday the antislavery Quakers met at the Anthony farm. +The Posts, the Hallowells, the De Garmos, and the Willises were sure +to be there. Sometimes they sent a wagon into the city for Frederick +Douglass and his family. Now and then famous abolitionists joined the +circle when their work brought them to western New York—William Lloyd +Garrison, looking with fatherly kindness at his friends through his +small steel-rimmed spectacles; Wendell Phillips, handsome, learned, +and impressive; black-bearded, fiery Parker Pillsbury; and the +friendly Unitarian pastor from Syracuse, the Reverend Samuel J. May. +Susan, helping her mother with dinner for fifteen or twenty, was torn +between establishing her reputation as a good cook and listening to +the interesting conversation. She heard them discuss woman's rights, +which had divided the antislavery ranks. They talked of their +antislavery campaigns and the infamous compromises made by Congress to +pacify the powerful slaveholding interests. Like William Lloyd +Garrison, all of them refused to vote, not wishing to take any part in +a government which countenanced slavery. They called the Constitution +a proslavery document, advocated "No Union with Slaveholders," and +demanded immediate and unconditional emancipation. All about them and +with their help the Underground Railroad was operating, circumventing +the Fugitive Slave Law and guiding Negro refugees to Canada and +freedom. Amy and Isaac Post's barn, Susan knew, was a station on the +Underground, and the De Garmos and Frederick Douglass almost always +had a Negro hidden away. She heard of riots and mobs in Boston and +Ohio; but in Rochester not a fugitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> was retaken and there were no +street battles, although the New York <i>Herald</i> advised the city to +throw its "nigger printing press"<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> into Lake Ontario and banish +Douglass to Canada.</p> + +<p>As the Society of Friends in Rochester was unfriendly to the +antislavery movement, Susan with her father and other liberal Hicksite +Quakers left it for the Unitarian church. Here for the first time they +listened to "hireling ministry" and to a formal church service with +music. This was a complete break with what they had always known as +worship, but the friendly Christian spirit expressed by both minister +and congregation made them soon feel at home. This new religious +fellowship put Susan in touch with the most advanced thought of the +day, broke down some of the rigid precepts drilled into her at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, and encouraged liberalism and tolerance. Although +there had been austerity in the outward forms of her Quaker training, +it had developed in her a very personal religion, a strong sense of +duty, and a high standard of ethics, which always remained with her. +It had fostered a love of mankind that reached out spontaneously to +help the needy, the unfortunate, and the oppressed, and this now +became the driving force of her life. It led her naturally to seek +ways and means to free the Negro from slavery and to turn to the +temperance movement to wipe out the evil of drunkenness.</p> + +<p>These were the days when the reformed drunkard, John B. Gough, was +lecturing throughout the country with the zeal of an evangelist, +getting thousands to sign the total-abstinence pledge. Inspired by his +example, the Daughters of Temperance were active in Rochester. They +elected Susan their president, and not only did she plan suppers and +festivals to raise money for their work but she organized new +societies in neighboring towns. Her more ambitious plans for them were +somewhat delayed by home responsibilities which developed when her +father became an agent of the New York Life Insurance Company. This +took him away from home a great deal, and as both her brothers were +busy with work of their own and Mary was teaching, it fell to Susan to +take charge of the farm. She superintended the planting, the +harvesting, and the marketing, and enjoyed it, but she did not let it +crowd out her interest in the causes which now seemed so vital.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>Horace Greeley's New York <i>Tribune</i> came regularly to the farm, for +the Anthonys, like many others throughout the country, had come to +depend upon it for what they felt was a truthful report of the news. +In this day of few magazines, it met a real need, and Susan, poring +over its pages, not only kept in touch with current events, but found +inspiration in its earnest editorials which so often upheld the ideals +which she felt were important. She found thought-provoking news in the +full and favorable report of the national woman's rights convention +held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Better informed now +through her antislavery friends about this new movement for woman's +rights, she was ready to consider it seriously and she read all the +stirring speeches, noting the caliber of the men and women taking +part. Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, and Lucretia Mott were there, as +well as Lucy Stone, that appealing young woman of whose eloquence on +the antislavery platform Susan had heard so much, and Abby Kelley +Foster, whose appointment to office in the American Antislavery +Society had precipitated a split in the ranks on the "woman question."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A year later, when Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen spoke at +antislavery meetings in Rochester, Susan had her first opportunity to +meet this fearless woman. Listening to Abby's speeches and watching +the play of emotion on her eager Irish face under the Quaker bonnet, +Susan wondered if she would ever have the courage to follow her +example. Like herself, Abby had started as a schoolteacher, but after +hearing Theodore Weld speak, had devoted herself to the antislavery +cause, traveling alone through the country to say her word against +slavery and facing not only the antagonism which abolition always +provoked, but the unreasoning prejudice against public speaking by +women, which was fanned into flame by the clergy. For listening to +Abby Kelley, men and women had been excommunicated. Mobs had jeered at +her and often pelted her with rotten eggs. She had married a +fellow-abolitionist, Stephen Foster, even more unrelenting than she.</p> + +<p>Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make +an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them +on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> ability to hold +the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and +wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence.</p> + +<p>Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her +apprenticeship by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and +traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out +of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear +William Lloyd Garrison and the English abolitionist, George Thompson, +and was the guest of a temperance colleague, Amelia Bloomer, an +enterprising young woman who was editing a temperance paper for women, +<i>The Lily</i>.</p> + +<p>To her surprise Susan found Amelia in the bloomer costume about which +she had read in <i>The Lily</i>. Introduced in Seneca Falls by Elizabeth +Smith Miller, the costume, because of its comfort, had so intrigued +Amelia that she had advocated it in her paper and it had been dubbed +with her name. Looking at Amelia's long full trousers, showing beneath +her short skirt but modestly covering every inch of her leg, Susan was +a bit startled. Yet she could understand the usefulness of the costume +even if she had no desire to wear it herself. In fact she was more +than ever pleased with her new gray delaine dress with its long full +skirt.</p> + +<p>Seneca Falls, however, had an attraction for Susan far greater than +either William Lloyd Garrison or Amelia Bloomer, for it was the home +of Elizabeth Cady Stanton whom she had longed to meet ever since 1848 +when her parents had reported so enthusiastically about her and the +Rochester woman's rights convention. Walking home from the antislavery +meeting with Mrs. Bloomer, Susan met Mrs. Stanton. She liked her at +once and later called at her home. They discussed abolition, +temperance, and woman's rights, and with every word Susan's interest +grew. Mrs. Stanton's interest in woman's rights and her forthright, +clear thinking made an instant appeal. Never before had Susan had such +a satisfactory conversation with another woman, and she thought her +beautiful. Mrs. Stanton's deep blue eyes with their mischievous +twinkle, her rosy cheeks and short dark hair gave her a very youthful +appearance, and it was hard for Susan to realize she was the mother of +three lively boys.</p> + +<p>Susan listened enthralled while Mrs. Stanton told how deeply she had +been moved as a child by the pitiful stories of the women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> who came to +her father's law office, begging for relief from the unjust property +laws which turned over their inheritance and their earnings to their +husbands. For the first time, Susan heard the story of the exclusion +of women delegates from the World's antislavery convention in London, +in 1840, which Mrs. Stanton had attended with her husband and where +she became the devoted friend of Lucretia Mott. She now better +understood why these two women had called the first woman's rights +convention in 1848 at which Mrs. Stanton had made the first public +demand for woman suffrage.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 232px;"> +<img src="images/027.jpg" width="232" height="350" alt="Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"</span> +</div> + +<p>They talked about the bloomer costume which Mrs. Stanton now wore and +about dress reform which at the moment seemed to Mrs. Stanton an +important phase of the woman's rights movement, and she pointed out to +Susan the advantages of the bloomer in the life of a busy housekeeper +who ran up and down stairs carrying babies, lamps, and buckets of +water. She praised the freedom it gave from uncomfortable stays and +tight lacing, confident it would be a big factor in improving the +health of women.</p> + +<p>Thoroughly interested, Susan left Seneca Falls with much to think +about, but not yet converted to the bloomer costume, or even to woman +suffrage. Of one thing, however, she was certain. She wanted this +woman of vision and courage for her friend.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="FREEDOM_TO_SPEAK" id="FREEDOM_TO_SPEAK"></a>FREEDOM TO SPEAK</h2> + + +<p>Susan was soon rejoicing at the prospect of meeting Lucy Stone and +Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York <i>Tribune</i>. Mrs. Stanton had +invited her to Seneca Falls to discuss with them and other influential +men and women the founding of a people's college. Unhesitatingly she +joined forces with Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone to insist that the +people's college be opened to women on the same terms as men. Lucy had +proved the practicability of this as a student at Oberlin, the first +college to admit women, and was one of the first women to receive a +college degree. However, to suggest coeducation in those days was +enough to jeopardize the founding of a college, and Horace Greeley +stood out against them, his babylike face, fringed with throat +whiskers, getting redder by the moment as he begged them not to +agitate the question.</p> + +<p>The people's college did not materialize, but out of this meeting grew +a friendship between Susan, Elizabeth Stanton, and Lucy Stone, which +developed the woman's rights movement in the United States. Susan +discovered at once that Lucy, like Mrs. Stanton, was an ardent +advocate of woman's rights. Brought up in a large family on a farm in +western Massachusetts where a woman's lot was an unending round of +hard work with no rights over her children or property, Lucy had seen +much to make her rebellious. Resolving to free herself from this +bondage, she had worked hard for an education, finally reaching +Oberlin College. Here she held out for equal rights in education, and +now as she went through the country, pleading for the abolition of +slavery, she was not only putting into practice woman's right to +express herself on public affairs, but was scattering woman's rights +doctrine wherever she went. Listening to this rosy-cheeked, +enthusiastic young woman with her little snub nose and soulful gray +eyes, Susan began to realize how little opposition in comparison she +herself had met because she was a woman. Not only had her father +encouraged her to become a teacher, but he had actually aroused her +interest in such causes as abolition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> temperance, and woman's rights, +while both Lucy and Mrs. Stanton had met disapproval and resistance +all the way.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;"> +<img src="images/029.jpg" width="435" height="450" alt="Lucy Stone" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Lucy Stone</span> +</div> + +<p>She found Lucy, as well as Mrs. Stanton, in the bloomer dress, +praising its convenience. As Lucy traveled about lecturing, in all +kinds of weather, climbing on trains, into carriages, and walking on +muddy streets, she found it much more practical and comfortable than +the fashionable long full skirts. Nevertheless, there was discomfort +in being stared at on the streets and in the chagrin of her friends. +This reform was much on their minds and they discussed it pro and con, +for Mrs. Stanton was facing real persecution in Seneca Falls, with +boys screaming "breeches" at her when she appeared in the street and +with her husband's political opponents ridiculing her costume in their +campaign speeches. Both women, however, felt it their duty to bear +this cross to free women from the bondage of cumbersome clothing, +hoping always that the bloomer, because of its utility, would win +converts and finally become the fashion. Susan admired their courage, +but still could not be persuaded to put on the bloomer.</p> + +<p>Fired with their zeal, she began planning what she herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> might do +to rouse women. The idea of a separate woman's rights movement did not +as yet enter her mind. Her thoughts turned rather to the two national +reform movements already well under way, temperance and antislavery. +While a career as an antislavery worker appealed strongly to her, she +felt unqualified when she measured herself with the courageous Grimké +sisters from South Carolina, or with Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone, +and the eloquent men in the movement. She had made a place for herself +locally in temperance societies, and she decided that her work was +there—to make women an active, important part of this reform.</p> + +<p>That winter, as a delegate of the Rochester Daughters of Temperance, +she went with high hopes to the state convention of the Sons of +Temperance in Albany, where she visited Lydia Mott and her sister +Abigail, who lived in a small house on Maiden Lane. Both Lydia and +Abigail, because of their independence, interested Susan greatly. They +supported themselves by "taking in" boarders from among the leading +politicians in Albany. They also kept a men's furnishings store on +Broadway and made hand-ruffled shirt bosoms and fine linen accessories +for Thurlow Weed, Horatio Seymour, and other influential citizens. +Their political contacts were many and important, and yet they were +also among the very few in that conservative city who stood for +temperance, abolition of slavery, and woman's rights. Their home was a +rallying point for reformers and a refuge for fugitive slaves. It was +to be a second home to Susan in the years to come.</p> + +<p>When Susan and the other women delegates entered the convention of the +Sons of Temperance, they looked forward proudly, if a bit timidly, to +taking part in the meetings, but when Susan spoke to a motion, the +chairman, astonished that a woman would be so immodest as to speak in +a public meeting, scathingly announced, "The sisters were not invited +here to speak, but to listen and to learn."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> + +<p>This was the first time that Susan had been publicly rebuked because +she was a woman, and she did not take it lightly. Leaving the hall +with several other indignant women delegates, amid the critical +whisperings of those who remained "to listen and to learn," she +hurried over to Lydia's shop to ask her advice on the next step to be +taken. Lydia, delighted that they had had the spirit to leave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> the +meeting, suggested they engage the lecture room of the Hudson Street +Presbyterian Church and hold a meeting of their own that very night. +She went with them to the office of her friend Thurlow Weed, the +editor of the <i>Evening Journal</i>, who published the whole story in his +paper.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 307px;"> +<img src="images/031.jpg" width="307" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four</span> +</div> + +<p>Well in advance of the meeting, Susan was at the church, feeling very +responsible, and when she saw Samuel J. May enter, she was greatly +relieved. He had read the notice in the <i>Evening Journal</i> and +persuaded a friend to come with him. To see his genial face in the +audience gave her confidence, for he would speak easily and well if +others should fail her. Only a few people drifted into the meeting, +for the night was snowy and cold. The room was poorly lighted, the +stove smoked, and in the middle of the speeches, the stovepipe fell +down. Yet in spite of all this, a spirit of independence and +accomplishment was born in that gathering and plans were made to call +a woman's state temperance convention in Rochester with Susan in +charge.</p> + +<p>All this Susan reported to her new friend, Elizabeth Stanton, who +promised to help all she could, urging that the new organization lead +the way and not follow the advice of cautious, conservative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> women. +Susan agreed, and as a first step in carrying out this policy, she +asked Mrs. Stanton to make the keynote speech of the convention. Soon +the Woman's State Temperance Society was a going concern with Mrs. +Stanton as president and Susan as secretary. There was no doubt about +its leading the way far ahead of the rank and file of the temperance +movement when Mrs. Stanton, with Susan's full approval, recommended +divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, declaring, "Let us petition our +State government so to modify the laws affecting marriage and the +custody of children that the drunkard shall have no claims on wife and +child."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p> + +<p>Such independence on the part of women could not be tolerated, and +both the press and the clergy ruthlessly denounced the Woman's State +Temperance Society. Susan, however, did not take this too seriously, +familiar as she was with the persecution antislavery workers endured +when they frankly expressed their convictions.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Now recognized as the leader of women's temperance groups in New York, +Susan traveled throughout the state, organizing temperance societies, +getting subscriptions for Amelia Bloomer's temperance paper, <i>The +Lily</i>, and attending temperance conventions in spite of the fact that +she met determined opposition to the participation of women. Impressed +by the success of political action in Maine, where in 1851 the first +prohibition law in the country had been passed, she now signed her +letters, "Yours for Temperance Politics."<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> She appealed to women to +petition for a Maine law for New York and brought a group of women +before the legislature for the first time for a hearing on this +prohibition bill. Realizing then that women's indirect influence could +be of little help in political action, she saw clearly that women +needed the vote.</p> + +<p>However, it was the woman's rights convention in Syracuse, New York, +in September 1852, which turned her thoughts definitely in the +direction of votes for women. It was the first woman's rights +gathering she had ever attended and she was enthusiastic over the +people she met. She talked eagerly with the courageous Jewish +lecturer, Ernestine Rose; with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston, one of +the first women physicians, who was waging a battle against taxation +without representation; with Clarina Nichols of Vermont,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> editor of +the <i>Windham County Democrat</i>, and with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the +youngest member of the convention. All of these became valuable, loyal +friends in the years ahead. Susan renewed her acquaintance with Lucy +Stone, and met Antoinette Brown who had also studied at Oberlin +College and was now the first woman ordained as a minister. With real +pleasure she greeted Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now +Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, +the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her +long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's +sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and +Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared +at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with +loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply +intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore +ultrafashionable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights +advocates were frumps wearing the hideous bloomer, she could not +forgive them for what to her seemed bad taste. How could such women, +she asked herself, hope to represent the earnest, hard-working<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> women +who must be the backbone of the equal rights movement? Always +forthright, when a principle was at stake, she expressed her feelings +frankly when James Mott, serving with her on the nominating committee, +proposed Elizabeth Oakes Smith for president. His reply, that they +must not expect all women to dress as plainly as the Friends, in no +way quieted her opposition. To her delight, Lucretia Mott was elected, +and her dignity and poise as president of this large convention of +2,000 won the respect even of the critical press. Susan was elected +secretary and so clearly could her voice be heard as she read the +minutes and the resolutions that the Syracuse <i>Standard</i> commented, +"Miss Anthony has a capital voice and deserves to be clerk of the +Assembly."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 341px;"> +<img src="images/033.jpg" width="341" height="450" alt="James and Lucretia Mott" title="" /> +<span class="caption">James and Lucretia Mott</span> +</div> + +<p>Not all of the newspapers were so friendly. Some labeled the gathering +"a Tomfoolery convention" of "Aunt Nancy men and brawling women"; +others called it "the farce at Syracuse,"<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> but for Susan it marked +a milestone. Never before had she heard so many earnest, intelligent +women plead so convincingly for property rights, civil rights, and the +ballot. Never before had she seen so clearly that in a republic women +as well as men should enjoy these rights. The ballot assumed a new +importance for her. Her conversion to woman suffrage was complete.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>This new interest in the vote was steadily nurtured by Elizabeth +Stanton, whom Susan now saw more frequently. Whenever she could, Susan +stopped over in Seneca Falls for a visit. Here she found inspiration, +new ideas, and good advice, and always left the comfortable Stanton +home ready to battle for the rights of women. While Susan traveled +about, organizing temperance societies and attending conventions, Mrs. +Stanton, tied down at home by a family of young children, wrote +letters and resolutions for her and helped her with her speeches. +Susan was very reluctant about writing speeches or making them. The +moment she sat down to write, her thoughts refused to come and her +phrases grew stilted. She needed encouragement, and Mrs. Stanton gave +it unstintingly, for she had grown very fond of this young woman whose +mental companionship she found so stimulating.</p> + +<p>During one of these visits, Susan finally put on the bloomer and cut +her long thick brown hair as part of the stern task of winning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +freedom for women. It was not an easy decision and she came to it only +because she was unwilling to do less for the cause than Mrs. Stanton +or Lucy Stone. Comfortable as the new dress was, it always attracted +unfavorable attention and added fuel to the fire of an unfriendly +press. This fire soon scorched her at the World's Temperance +convention in New York, where women delegates faced the determined +animosity of the clergy, who held the balance of power and quoted the +Bible to prove that women were defying the will of God when they took +part in public meetings. Obliged to withdraw, the women held meetings +of their own in the Broadway Tabernacle, over which Susan presided +with a poise and confidence undreamed of a few months before. A +success in every way, they were nevertheless described by the press as +a battle of the sexes, a free-for-all struggle in which shrill-voiced +women in the bloomer costume were supported by a few "male Betties." +The New York <i>Sun</i> spoke of Susan's "ungainly form rigged out in the +bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to laughter and ridicule +by her very motions on the platform."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> Untruth was piled upon +untruth until dignified ladylike Susan with her earnest pleasing +appearance was caricatured into everything a woman should not be. Less +courageous temperance women now began to wonder whether they ought to +associate with such a strong-minded woman as Susan B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>There were rumblings of discontent when the Woman's State Temperance +Society met in Rochester for its next annual convention in June 1853, +and Susan and Mrs. Stanton were roundly criticized because they did +not confine themselves to the subject of temperance and talked too +much about woman's rights. Not only was Mrs. Stanton defeated for the +presidency but the by-laws were amended to make men eligible as +officers. Men had been barred when the first by-laws were drafted by +Susan and Mrs. Stanton because they wished to make the society a +proving ground for women and were convinced that men holding office +would take over the management, and women, less experienced, would +yield to their wishes.</p> + +<p>This now proved to be the case, as the men began to do all the +talking, calling for a new name for the society and insisting that all +discussion of woman's rights be ruled out. In the face of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> this clear +indication of a determined new policy which few of the women wished to +resist, Susan refused re-election as secretary and both she and Mrs. +Stanton resigned.</p> + +<p>This was Susan's first experience with intrigue and her first rebuff +by women whom she had sincerely tried to serve. Defeated, hurt, and +uncertain, she poured out her disappointment in troubled letters to +Elizabeth Stanton, who, with the steadying touch of an older sister, +roused her with the challenge, "We have other and bigger fish to +fry."<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A few months later, Susan was off on a new crusade as she attended the +state teachers' convention in Rochester. Of the five hundred teachers +present, two-thirds were women, but there was not the slightest +recognition of their presence. They filled the back seats of +Corinthian Hall, forming an inert background for the vocal minority, +the men. After sitting through two days' sessions and growing more and +more impatient as not one woman raised her voice, Susan listened, as +long as she could endure it, to a lengthy debate on the question, "Why +the profession of teacher is not as much respected as that of lawyer, +doctor, or minister."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Then she rose to her feet and in a +low-pitched, clear voice addressed the chairman.</p> + +<p>At the sound of a woman's voice, an astonished rustle of excitement +swept through the audience, and when the chairman, Charles Davies, +Professor of Mathematics at West Point, had recovered from his +surprise, he patronizingly asked, "What will the lady have?"</p> + +<p>"I wish, sir, to speak to the subject under discussion," she bravely +replied.</p> + +<p>Turning to the men in the front row, Professor Davies then asked, +"What is the pleasure of the convention?"</p> + +<p>"I move that she be heard," shouted an unexpected champion. Another +seconded the motion. After a lengthy debate during which Susan stood +patiently waiting, the men finally voted their approval by a small +majority, and Professor Davies, a bit taken aback, announced, "The +lady may speak."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me, gentlemen," Susan began, "that none of you quite +comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Do you +not see that so long as society says woman is incompetent to be a +lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, +every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that +he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that +teaching is a less lucrative profession; as here men must compete with +the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those +who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the +salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our +future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."</p> + +<p>For a moment after this bombshell, there was complete silence. Then +three men rushed down the aisle to congratulate her, telling her she +had pluck, that she had hit the nail on the head, but the women near +by glanced scornfully at her, murmuring, "Who can that creature be?"</p> + +<p>Susan, however, had started a few women thinking and questioning, and +the next morning, Professor Davies, resplendent in his buff vest and +blue coat with brass buttons, opened the convention with an +explanation. "I have been asked," he said, "why no provisions have +been made for female lecturers before this association and why ladies +are not appointed on committees. I will answer." Then, in flowery +metaphor, he assured them that he would not think of dragging women +from their pedestals into the dust.</p> + +<p>"Beautiful, beautiful," murmured the women in the back rows, but Mrs. +Northrup of Rochester offered resolutions recognizing the right of +women teachers to share in all the privileges and deliberations of the +organization and calling attention to the inadequate salaries women +teachers received. These resolutions were kept before the meeting by a +determined group and finally adopted. Susan also offered the name of +Emma Willard as a candidate for vice-president, thinking the +successful retired principal of the Troy Female Seminary, now +interested in improving the public schools, might also be willing to +lend a hand in improving the status of women in this educational +organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing +to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> Susan, nevertheless, left the +convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into +Professor Davies' male stronghold,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and she continued battering at +this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put +women in office and to win approval for coeducation and equal pay.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Teachers' conventions, however, were only a minor part of her new +crusade, plans for which were still simmering in her mind and +developing from day to day. Going back to many of the towns where she +had held temperance meetings, she found that most of the societies she +had organized had disbanded because women lacked the money to engage +speakers or to subscribe to temperance papers. If they were married, +they had no money of their own and no right to any interest outside +their homes, unless their husbands consented.</p> + +<p>Discouraged, she wrote in her diary, "As I passed from town to town I +was made to feel the great evil of woman's entire dependency upon man +for the necessary means to aid on any and every reform movement. +Though I had long admitted the wrong, I never until this time so fully +took in the grand idea of pecuniary and personal independence. It +matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity +may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses +not the power to act in accordance with these promptings. Woman must +have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the <i>Wife</i> is +denied the right to her individual and joint earnings. Reflections +like these, caused me to see and really feel that there was no true +freedom for Woman without the possession of all her property rights, +and that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, and +so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner +would we be likely to obtain them."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_PURSE_OF_HER_OWN" id="A_PURSE_OF_HER_OWN"></a>A PURSE OF HER OWN</h2> + + +<p>The next important step in winning further property rights for women, +it seemed to Susan, was to hold a woman's rights convention in the +conservative capital city of Albany. This was definitely a challenge +and she at once turned to Elizabeth Stanton for counsel. Somehow she +must persuade Mrs. Stanton to find time in spite of her many household +cares to prepare a speech for the convention and for presentation to +the legislature. As eager as Susan to free women from unjust property +laws, Mrs. Stanton asked only that Susan get a good lawyer, and one +sympathetic to the cause, to look up New York State's very worst laws +affecting women.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> She could think and philosophize while she was +baking and sewing, she assured Susan, but she had no time for +research. Susan produced the facts for Mrs. Stanton, and while she +worked on the speech, Susan went from door to door during the cold +blustery days of December and January 1854 to get signatures on her +petitions for married women's property rights and woman suffrage. Some +of the women signed, but more of them slammed the door in her face, +declaring indignantly that they had all the rights they wanted. Yet at +this time a father had the legal authority to apprentice or will away +a child without the mother's consent and an employer was obliged by +law to pay a wife's wages to her husband.</p> + +<p>In spite of the fact that the bloomer costume made it easier for her +to get about in the snowy streets, she now found it a real burden +because it always attracted unfavorable attention. Boys jeered at her +and she was continually conscious of the amused, critical glances of +the men and women she met. She longed to take it off and wear an +inconspicuous trailing skirt, but if she had been right to put it on, +it would be weakness to take it off. By this time Elizabeth Stanton +had given it up except in her own home, convinced that it harmed the +cause and that the physical freedom it gave was not worth the price. +"I hope you have let down a dress and a petticoat," she now wrote +Susan. "The cup of ridicule is greater than you can bear. It is not +wise, Susan, to use up so much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> energy and feeling in that way. You +can put them to better use. I speak from experience."<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;"> +<img src="images/040.jpg" width="321" height="450" alt="Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry</span> +</div> + +<p>Lucy Stone too was wavering and was thinking of having her next dress +made long. The three women corresponded about it, and Lucy as well as +Mrs. Stanton urged Susan to give up the bloomer. With these entreaties +ringing in her ears, Susan set out for Albany in February 1854 to make +final arrangements for the convention. On the streets in Albany, in +the printing offices, and at the capitol, men stared boldly at her, +some calling out hilariously, "Here comes my bloomer." She endured it +bravely until her work was done, but at night alone in her room at +Lydia Mott's she poured out her anguish in letters to Lucy. "Here I am +known only," she wrote, "as one of the women who ape men—coarse, +brutal men! Oh, I can not, can not bear it any longer."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p> + +<p>Even so she did not let down the hem of her skirt, but wore her +bloomer costume heroically during the entire convention, determined +that she would not be stampeded into a long skirt by the jeers of +Albany men or the ridicule of the women. However, she made up her mind +that immediately after the convention she would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> take off the bloomer +forever. She had worn it a little over a year. Never again could she +be lured into the path of dress reform.</p> + +<p>The Albany <i>Register</i> scoffed at the "feminine propagandists of +woman's rights" exhibiting themselves in "short petticoats and +long-legged boots."<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Nevertheless, the convention aroused such +genuine interest that evening meetings were continued for two weeks, +featuring as speakers Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown, Samuel J. May, +and William Henry Channing, the young Unitarian minister from +Rochester; and when the men appeared on the platform, the audience +called for the women.</p> + +<p>Susan could not have asked for anything better than Elizabeth +Stanton's moving plea for property rights for married women and the +attention it received from the large audience in the Senate Chamber. +Her heart swelled with pride as she listened to her friend, and so +important did she think the speech that she had 50,000 copies printed +for distribution.</p> + +<p>To back up Mrs. Stanton's words with concrete evidence of a demand for +a change in the law, Susan presented petitions with 10,000 signatures, +6,000 asking that married women be granted the right to their wages +and 4,000 venturing to be recorded for woman suffrage.</p> + +<p>Enthusiastic over her Albany success, she impetuously wrote Lucy +Stone, "Is this not a wonderful time, an era long to be +remembered?"<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p> + +<p>Although the legislature failed to act on the petitions, she knew that +her cause had made progress, for never before had women been listened +to with such respect and never had newspapers been so friendly. She +cherished these words of praise from Lucy, "God bless you, Susan dear, +for the brave heart that will work on even in the midst of +discouragement and lack of helpers. Everywhere I am telling people +what your state is doing, and it is worth a great deal to the cause. +The example of positive action is what we need."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan continued her "example of positive action," this time against +the Kansas-Nebraska bill, pending in Congress, which threatened repeal +of the Missouri Compromise by admitting Kansas and Nebraska as +territories with the right to choose for themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> whether they +would be slave or free. "I feel that woman should in the very capitol +of the nation lift her voice against that abominable measure," she +wrote Lucy Stone, with whom she was corresponding more and more +frequently. "It is not enough that H. B. Stowe should write."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> +Harriet Beecher Stowe's <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> had been published in 1852 +and during that year 300,000 copies were sold.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;"> +<img src="images/042.jpg" width="430" height="450" alt="Ernestine Rose" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Ernestine Rose</span> +</div> + +<p>With Ernestine Rose, Susan now headed for Washington. These two women +had been drawn together by common interests ever since they had met in +Syracuse in 1852. Susan was not frightened, as many were, by +Ernestine's reputed atheism. She appreciated Ernestine's intelligence, +her devotion to woman's rights, and her easy eloquence. Conscious of +her own limitations as an orator, she recognized her need of Ernestine +for the many meetings she planned for the future.</p> + +<p>As they traveled to Washington together, she learned more about this +beautiful, impressive, black-haired Jewess from Poland, who was ten +years her senior. The daughter of a rabbi, Ernestine had found the +limitations of orthodox religion unbearable for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> woman and had left +her home to see and learn more of the world in Prussia, Holland, +France, Scotland, and England. She had married an Englishman +sympathetic to her liberal views, and together they had come to New +York where she began her career as a lecturer in 1836 when speaking in +public branded women immoral. She spoke easily and well on education, +woman's rights, and the evils of slavery. Her slight foreign accent +added charm to her rich musical voice, and before long she was in +demand as far west as Ohio and Michigan. With a colleague as +experienced as Ernestine, Susan dared arrange for meetings even in the +capital of the nation.</p> + +<p>Washington was tense over the slavery issue when they arrived, and +Ernestine's friends warned her not to mention the subject in her +lectures. Unheeding she commented on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, but the +press took no notice and her audiences showed no signs of +dissatisfaction. In fact, two comparatively unknown women, billed to +lecture on the "Educational and Social Rights of Women" and the +"Political and Legal Rights of Women," attracted little attention in a +city accustomed to a blaze of Congressional oratory. Hoping to draw +larger audiences and to lend dignity to their meetings, Susan asked +for the use of the Capitol on Sunday, but was refused because +Ernestine was not a member of a religious society. Making an attempt +for Smithsonian Hall, Ernestine was told it could not risk its +reputation by presenting a woman speaker.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p> + +<p>A failure financially, their Washington venture was rich in +experience. Susan took time out for sightseeing, visiting the +"President's house" and Mt. Vernon, which to her surprise she found in +a state of "delapidation and decay." "The mark of slavery o'ershadows +the whole," she wrote in her diary. "Oh the thought that it was here +that he whose name is the pride of this Nation, was the <i>Slave +Master</i>."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p> + +<p>Again and again in the Capitol, she listened to heated debates on the +Kansas-Nebraska bill, astonished at the eloquence and fervor with +which the "institution of slavery" could be defended. Seeing slavery +first-hand, she abhorred it more than ever and observed with dismay +its degenerating influence on master as well as slave. She began to +feel that even she herself might be undermined by it almost +unwittingly and confessed to her diary, "This noon, I ate my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> dinner +without once asking myself are these human beings who minister to my +wants, Slaves to be bought and sold and hired out at the will of a +master?... Even I am getting <i>accustomed</i> to <i>Slavery</i> ... so much so +that I have ceased continually to be made to feel its blighting, +cursing influence."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A few months later, Susan and Ernestine were in Philadelphia at a +national woman's rights convention, and when Ernestine was proposed +for president, Susan had her first opportunity to champion her new +friend. A foreigner and a free-thinker, Ernestine encountered a great +deal of prejudice even among liberal reformers, and Susan was +surprised at the strength of feeling against her. Impressed during +their trip to Washington by Ernestine's essentially fine qualities and +her value to the cause, Susan fought for her behind the scenes, +insisting that freedom of religion or the freedom to have no religion +be observed in woman's rights conventions, and she had the +satisfaction of seeing Ernestine elected to the office she so richly +deserved.</p> + +<p>Freedom of religion or freedom to have no religion had become for +Susan a principle to hold on to, as she listened at these early +woman's rights meetings to the lengthy fruitless discussions regarding +the lack of Scriptural sanction for women's new freedom. Usually a +clergyman appeared on the scene, volubly quoting the Bible to prove +that any widening of woman's sphere was contrary to the will of God. +But always ready to refute him were Antoinette Brown, now an ordained +minister, William Lloyd Garrison, and occasionally Susan herself. To +the young Quaker broadened by her Unitarian contacts and unhampered by +creed or theological dogma, such debates were worse than useless; they +deepened theological differences, stirred up needless antagonisms, +solved no problems, and wasted valuable time.</p> + +<p>During this convention, she was one of the twenty-four guests in +Lucretia Mott's comfortable home at 238 Arch Street. Every meal, with +its stimulating discussions, was a convention in itself. Susan's great +hero, William Lloyd Garrison, sat at Lucretia's right at the long +table in the dining room, Susan on her left, and at the end of each +meal, when the little cedar tub filled with hot soapy water was +brought in and set before Lucretia so that she could wash the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> silver, +glass, and fine china at the table, Susan dried them on a snowy-white +towel while the interesting conversation continued. There was talk of +woman's rights, of temperance, and of spiritualism, which was +attracting many new converts. There were thrilling stories of the +opening of the West and the building of transcontinental railways; but +most often and most earnestly the discussion turned to the progress of +the antislavery movement, to the infamous Kansas-Nebraska bill, to the +New England Emigrant Aid Company,<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> which was sending free-state +settlers to Kansas, to the weakness of the government in playing again +and again into the hands of the proslavery faction. Most of them saw +the country headed toward a vast slave empire which would embrace +Cuba, Mexico, and finally Brazil; and William Lloyd Garrison fervently +reiterated his doctrine, "No Union with Slaveholders."</p> + +<p>Before leaving home Susan had heard first-hand reports of the bitter +bloody antislavery contest in Kansas from her brother Daniel, who had +just returned from a trip to that frontier territory with settlers +sent out by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Now talking with +William Lloyd Garrison, she found herself torn between these two great +causes for human freedom, abolition and woman's rights, and it was +hard for her to decide which cause needed her more.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>She had not, however, forgotten her unfinished business in New York +State. The refusal of the legislature to amend the property laws had +doubled her determination to continue circulating petitions until +married women's civil rights were finally recognized. It took courage +to go alone to towns where she was unknown to arrange for meetings on +the unpopular subject of woman's rights. Not knowing how she would be +received, she found it almost as difficult to return to such towns as +Canajoharie where she had been highly respected as a teacher six years +before. In Canajoharie, however, she was greeted affectionately by her +uncle Joshua Read. He and his friends let her use the Methodist church +for her lecture, and when the trustees of the academy urged her to +return there to teach, Uncle Joshua interrupted with a vehement "No!" +protesting that others could teach but it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> Susan's work "to go +around and set people thinking about the laws."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p> + +<p>Returning to the scene of her girlhood in Battenville and Easton, +visiting her sisters Guelma and Hannah, and meeting many of her old +friends, Susan realized as never before how completely she had +outgrown her old environment. In her enthusiasm for her new work, she +exposed "many of her heresies," and when her friends labeled William +Lloyd Garrison an agnostic and rabble rouser, she protested that he +was the most Christlike man she had ever known. "Thus it is belief, +not Christian benevolence," she confided to her diary in 1854, "that +is made the modern test of Christianity."<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p> + +<p>After eight strenuous months away from home, she was welcomed warmly +by a family who believed in her work. She found abolition uppermost in +everyone's mind. Her brother Merritt, fired by Daniel's tales of the +West and the antislavery struggle in Kansas, was impatient to join the +settlers there and could talk of nothing else. While he poured out the +latest news about Kansas, he and a cousin Mary Luther helped Susan +fold handbills for future woman's rights meetings. Susan listened +eagerly and approvingly as he told of the 750 free-state settlers who +during the past summer had gone out to Kansas, traveling up the +Missouri on steamboats and over lonely trails in wagons marked +"Kansas." Most of them were not abolitionists but men who wanted +Kansas a free-labor state which they could develop with their own hard +work. She heard of the ruthless treatment these "Yankee" settlers +faced from the proslavery Missourians who wanted Kansas in the slavery +bloc. There was bloodshed and there would be more. John Brown's sons +had written from Kansas, "Send us guns. We need them more than +bread."<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> Merritt was ready and eager to join John Brown.</p> + +<p>The Anthony farm was virtually a hotbed of insurrection with Merritt +planning resistance in Kansas and Susan reform in New York. Susan +mapped out an ambitious itinerary, hoping to canvass with her +petitions every county in the state. With her father as security, she +borrowed money to print her handbills and notices, and then wrote +Wendell Phillips asking if any money for a woman's rights campaign had +been raised by the last national convention. He replied with his own +personal check for fifty dollars. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> generosity and confidence +touched her deeply, for already he had become a hero to her second +only to William Lloyd Garrison. This tall handsome intellectual, a +graduate of Harvard and an unsurpassed orator, had forfeited friends, +social position, and a promising career as a lawyer to plead for the +slave. He was also one of the very few men who sympathized with and +aided the woman's rights cause.</p> + +<p>Horace Greeley too proved at this time to be a good friend, writing, +"I have your letter and your programme, friend Susan. I will publish +the latter in all our editions, but return your dollars."<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p> + +<p>Her earnestness and ability made a great appeal to these men. They +marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but +wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted +and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained +impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and +intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William +Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction +to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement. +Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist from New Hampshire, +broad-shouldered, dark-bearded, with blazing eyes and almost fanatical +zeal, had become her devoted friend. He liked nothing better than to +tease her about her idleness and pretend to be in search of more work +for her to do.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>So impatient was Susan to begin her New York State campaign that she +left home on Christmas Day to hold her first meeting on December 26, +1854, at Mayville in Chatauqua County. The weather was cold and damp, +but the four pounds of candles which she had bought to light the court +house flickered cheerily while the small curious audience, gathered +from several nearby towns, listened to the first woman most of them +had ever heard speak in public. She would be, they reckoned, worth +hearing at least once.</p> + +<p>Traveling from town to town, she held meetings every other night. +Usually the postmasters or sheriffs posted her notices in the town +square and gave them to the newspapers and to the ministers to +announce in their churches. Even in a hostile community she almost +always found a gallant fair-minded man to come to her aid, such as the +hotel proprietor who offered his dining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> room for her meetings when +the court house, schoolhouse, and churches were closed to her, or the +group of men who, when the ministers refused to announce her meetings, +struck off handbills which they distributed at the church doors at the +close of the services. The newspapers too were generally friendly.</p> + +<p>As men were the voters with power to change the laws, she aimed to +attract them to her evening meetings, and usually they came, seeking +diversion, and listened respectfully. Some of them scoffed, others +condemned her for undermining the home, but many found her reasoning +logical and by their questions put life into the meetings. A few even +encouraged their wives to enlist in the cause.</p> + +<p>The women, on the other hand, were timid or indifferent, although she +pointed out to them the way to win the legal right to their earnings +and their children. It was difficult to find among them a rebellious +spirit brave enough to head a woman's rights society.</p> + +<p>"Susan B. Anthony is in town," wrote young Caroline Cowles, a +Canandaigua school girl, in her diary at this time. "She made a +special request that all seminary girls should come to hear her as +well as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audience and +she talked very plainly about our rights and how we ought to stand up +for them and said the world would never go right until the women had +just as much right to vote and rule as the men.... When I told +Grandmother about it, she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had +forgotten that St. Paul said women should keep silence. I told her, +no, she didn't, for she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if +he had lived in these times ... he would have been as anxious to have +women at the head of the government as she was. I could not make +Grandmother agree with her at all."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p> + +<p>Many of the towns Susan visited were not on a railroad. Often after a +long cold sleigh ride she slept in a hotel room without a fire; in the +morning she might have to break the ice in the pitcher to take the +cold sponge bath which nothing could induce her to omit since she had +begun to follow the water cure, a new therapeutic method then in +vogue.</p> + +<p>For a time Ernestine Rose came to her aid and it was a relief to turn +over the meetings to such an accomplished speaker. But for the most +part Susan braved it alone. Steadily adding names to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> her petitions +and leaving behind the leaflets which Elizabeth Stanton had written, +she aroused a glimmer of interest in a new valuation of women.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 394px;"> +<img src="images/049.jpg" width="394" height="450" alt="Parker Pillsbury" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Parker Pillsbury</span> +</div> + +<p>On the stagecoach leaving Lake George on a particularly cold day, she +found to her surprise a wealthy Quaker, whom she had met at the Albany +convention, so solicitous of her comfort that he placed heated planks +under her feet, making the long ride much more bearable. He turned up +again, this time with his own sleigh, at the close of one of her +meetings in northern New York, and wrapped in fur robes, she drove +with him behind spirited gray horses to his sisters' home to stay over +Sunday, and then to all her meetings in the neighborhood. It was +pleasant to be looked after and to travel in comfort and she enjoyed +his company, but when he urged her to give up the hard life of a +reformer to become his wife, there was no hesitation on her part. She +had dedicated her life to freeing women and Negroes and there could be +no turning aside. If she ever married, it must be to a man who would +encourage her work for humanity, a great man like Wendell Phillips, or +a reformer like Parker Pillsbury.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>Returning home in May 1855, she took stock of her accomplishments. She +had canvassed fifty-four counties and sold 20,000 tracts. Her expenses +had been $2,291 and she had paid her way by selling tracts and by a +small admission charge for her meetings. She even had seventy dollars +over and above all expenses. She promptly repaid the fifty dollars +which Wendell Phillips had advanced, but he returned it for her next +campaign.</p> + +<p>However, her heart quailed at the prospect of another such winter, as +she recalled the long, bitter-cold days of travel and the indifference +of the women she was trying to help. Even the unfailing praise of her +family and of Elizabeth Stanton, even the kindness and interest of the +new friends she made paled into insignificance before the thought of +another lone crusade. She was exhausted and suffering with rheumatic +pains, and yet she would not rest, but prepared for an ambitious +convention at Saratoga Springs, then the fashionable summer resort of +the East.</p> + +<p>She had braved this center of fashion and frivolity the year before +with her message of woman's rights, and to her great surprise, crowds +seeking entertainment had come to her meetings, their admission fees +and their purchase of tracts making the venture a financial success. +Here was fertile ground. Susan was counting on Lucy Stone and +Antoinette Brown to help her, for Elizabeth Stanton, then expecting +her sixth baby, was out of the picture. Now, to her dismay, Lucy and +Antoinette married the Blackwell brothers, Henry and Samuel.</p> + +<p>Fearing that they too like Elizabeth Stanton would be tied down with +babies and household cares, Susan saw a bleak lonely road ahead for +the woman's rights movement. She did so want her best speakers and +most valuable workers to remain single until the spade work for +woman's rights was done. Almost in a panic at the prospect of being +left to carry on the Saratoga convention alone, Susan wrote Lucy +irritable letters instead of praising her for drawing up a marriage +contract and keeping her own name. Later, however, she realized what +it had meant for Lucy to keep her own name, and then she wrote her, "I +am more and more rejoiced that you have declared by actual doing that +a woman has a name and may retain it all through her life."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p> + +<p>So persistently did she now pursue Lucy and Antoinette that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> they both +kept their promise to speak at the Saratoga convention, Lucy traveling +all the way from Cincinnati where she was visiting in the Blackwell +home. Lucy was loudly cheered by a large audience, eager to see this +young woman whose marriage had attracted so much notice in the press. +In fact Lucy Stone, who had kept her own name and who with her husband +had signed a marriage protest against the legal disabilities of a +married woman, was as much of a novelty in this fashionable circle as +one of Barnum's high-priced curiosities.</p> + +<p>Pleased at Lucy's reception, Susan surveyed the audience +hopefully—handsome men in nankeen trousers, red waistcoats, white +neckcloths, and gray swallowtail coats, sitting beside beautiful young +women wearing gowns of bombazine and watered silk with wide hoop +skirts and elaborately trimmed bonnets which set off their curls. To +her delight, they also applauded Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first +woman minister they had ever seen, and Ernestine Rose with her +appealing foreign accent. They clapped loudly when she herself asked +them to buy tracts and contribute to the work.</p> + +<p>Complimentary as this was, she did not flatter herself that they had +endorsed woman's rights. That they had come to her meetings in large +numbers while vacationing in Saratoga Springs, this was important. In +some a spark of understanding glowed, and this spark would light +others. They came from the South, from the West, and from the large +cities of the East. There were railroad magnates among them, rich +merchants, manufacturers, and politicians. Charles F. Hovey, the +wealthy Boston dry-goods merchant, listened attentively to every word, +and in the years that followed became a generous contributor to the +cause.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Realizing how very tired she was and that she must feel more +physically fit before continuing her work, Susan decided to take the +water cure at her cousin Seth Rogers' Hydropathic Institute in +Worcester, Massachusetts. This well-known sanitorium prescribed water +internally and externally as a remedy for all kinds of ailments, and +in an age when meals were overhearty, baths infrequent, and clothing +tight and confining, the drinking of water, tub baths, showers, and +wet packs had enthusiastic advocates. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> soothing baths relaxed +Susan and the leisure to read refreshed and strengthened her. She +read, one after another, Carlyle's <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, George Sand's +<i>Consuelo</i>, Madame de Stael's <i>Corinne</i>, then Frances Wright's <i>A Few +Days in Athens</i> and Mrs. Gaskell's <i>Life of Charlotte Brontë</i>, making +notes in her diary (1855) of passages she particularly liked. She +discussed current events with her cousin Seth on long drives in the +country, finding him a delightful companion, well-read, understanding, +and interested in people and causes. He took her to her first +political meeting, where she was the only woman present and had a seat +on the platform. It was one of the first rallies of the new Republican +party which had developed among rebellious northern Whigs, +Free-Soilers, and anti-Nebraska Democrats who opposed the extension of +slavery. After listening to the speakers, among them Charles Sumner, +she drew these conclusions: "Had the accident of birth given me place +among the aristocracy of sex, I doubt not I should be an active, +zealous advocate of Republicanism; unless perchance, I had received +that higher, holier light which would have lifted me to the sublime +height where now stand Garrison, Phillips, and all that small band +whose motto is 'No Union with Slaveholders.'"<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p> + +<p>After listening to the satisfying sermons of Thomas Wentworth +Higginson at his Free Church in Worcester, she wrote in her diary, "It +is plain to me now that it is not sitting under preaching I dislike, +but the fact that most of it is not of a stamp that my soul can +respond to."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p> + +<p>In September she interrupted "the cure" to attend a woman's rights +meeting in Boston, and with Lucy Stone, Antoinette and Ellen Blackwell +visited in the home of the wealthy merchant, Francis Jackson, making +many new friends, among them his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, whose +unhappy marriage was to prove a blessing to the woman's rights +cause.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p> + +<p>At tea at the Garrisons', she met many of the "distinguished" men and +women she had "worshiped" from afar. She heard Theodore Parker preach +a sermon which filled her soul, and with Mr. Garrison called on him in +his famous library. "It really seemed audacious in me to be ushered +into such a presence and on such a commonplace errand as to ask him to +come to Rochester to speak in a course of lectures I am planning," she +wrote her family, "but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> he received me with such kindness and +simplicity that the awe I felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then +called on Wendell Phillips in his sanctum for the same purpose. I have +invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter and all three have promised to +come. In the evening with Mr. Jackson's son James, Ellen Blackwell and +I went to see <i>Hamlet</i>. In spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy +all these worldly amusements intensely."<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In January 1856, Susan set out again on a woman's rights tour of New +York State to gather more signatures for her petitions. This time she +persuaded Frances D. Gage of Ohio, a temperance worker and popular +author of children's stories, to join her. An easy extemporaneous +speaker, Mrs. Gage was an attraction to offer audiences, who drove +eight or more miles to hear her; and in the cheerless hotels at night +and on the long cold sleigh rides from town to town, she was a +congenial companion.</p> + +<p>The winter was even colder and snowier than that of the year before. +"No trains running," Susan wrote her family, "and we had a 36-mile +ride in a sleigh.... Just emerged from a long line of snow drifts and +stopped at this little country tavern, supped, and am now roasting +over the hot stove."<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p> + +<p>Confronted almost daily with glaring examples of the injustices women +suffered under the property laws, she was more than ever convinced +that her work was worth-while. "We stopped at a little tavern where +the landlady was not yet twenty and had a baby, fifteen months old," +she reported. "Her supper dishes were not washed and her baby was +crying.... She rocked the little thing to sleep, washed the dishes and +got our supper; beautiful white bread, butter, cheese, pickles, apple +and mince pie, and excellent peach preserves. She gave us her warm +room to sleep in.... She prepared a six o'clock breakfast for us, +fried pork, mashed potatoes, mince pie, and for me at my special +request, a plate of sweet baked apples and a pitcher of rich milk.... +When we came to pay our bill, the dolt of a husband took the money and +put it in his pocket. He had not lifted a finger to lighten that +woman's burdens.... Yet the law gives him the right to every dollar +she earns, and when she needs two cents to buy a darning needle she +has to ask him and explain what she wants it for."<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> + +<p>When after a few weeks Mrs. Gage was called home by illness in her +family, Susan appealed hopefully to Lucretia Mott's sister, Martha C. +Wright, in Auburn, New York, "You can speak so much better, so much +more wisely, so much more everything than I can." Then she added, "I +should like a particular effort made to call out the Teachers, the +Sewing Women, the Working Women generally—Can't you write something +for your papers that will make them feel that it is for them that we +work more than [for] the wives and daughters of the rich?"<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> Mrs. +Wright, however, could help only in Auburn, and Susan was obliged to +continue her scheduled meetings alone. She interrupted them only to +present her petitions to the legislature.</p> + +<p>The response of the legislature to her two years of hard work was a +sarcastic, wholly irrelevant report issued by the judiciary committee +some weeks later to a Senate roaring with laughter. In the Albany +<i>Register</i> Susan read with mounting indignation portions of this +infuriating report: "The ladies always have the best places and the +choicest tidbit at the table. They have the best seats in cars, +carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in winter, the coolest in +summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie, +front or back. A lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a +gentleman; and at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one +lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman. +It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your committee, being +a majority ... that if there is any inequality or oppression in the +case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They, however, have presented +no petitions for redress, having doubtless made up their minds to +yield to an inevitable destiny."<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p> + +<p>Why, Susan wondered sadly, were woman's rights only a joke to most +men—something to be laughed at even in the face of glaring proofs of +the law's injustice.</p> + +<p>There was encouragement, however, in the letters which now came from +Lucy Stone in Ohio: "Hurrah Susan! Last week this State Legislature +passed a law giving wives equal property rights, and to mothers equal +baby rights with fathers. So much is gained. The petitions which I set +on foot in Wisconsin for suffrage have been presented, made a rousing +discussion, and then were tabled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> with three men to defend them!... In +Nebraska too, the bill for suffrage passed the House.... The world +moves!"<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p> + +<p>The world was moving in Great Britain as well, for as Susan read in +her newspaper, women there were petitioning Parliament for married +women's property rights, and among the petitioners were her +well-beloved Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. +Gaskell, and Charlotte Cushman. Better still, Harriet Taylor, inspired +by the example of woman's rights conventions in America, had written +for the <i>Westminster Review</i> an article advocating the enfranchisement +of women.</p> + +<p>All this reassured Susan, even if New York legislators laughed at her +efforts.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="NO_UNION_WITH_SLAVEHOLDERS" id="NO_UNION_WITH_SLAVEHOLDERS"></a>NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS</h2> + + +<p>Susan's thoughts during the summer of 1856 often strayed from woman's +rights meetings toward Kansas, where her brother Merritt had settled +on a claim near Osawatomie. Well aware of his eagerness to help John +Brown, she knew that he must be in the thick of the bloody antislavery +struggle. In fact the whole Anthony family had been anxiously waiting +for news from Merritt ever since the wires had flashed word in May +1856 of the burning of Lawrence by proslavery "border ruffians" from +Missouri and of John Brown's raid in retaliation at Pottawatomie +Creek.</p> + +<p>Merritt had built a log cabin at Osawatomie. While Susan was at home +in September, the newspapers reported an attack by proslavery men on +Osawatomie in which thirty out of fifty settlers were killed. Was +Merritt among them? Finally letters came through from him. Susan read +and reread them, assuring herself of his safety. Although ill at the +time, he had been in the thick of the fight, but was unharmed. Weak +from the exertion he had crawled back to his cabin on his hands and +knees and had lain there ill and alone for several weeks.</p> + +<p>Parts of Merritt's letters were published in the Rochester <i>Democrat</i>, +and the city took sides in the conflict, some papers claiming that his +letters were fiction. Susan wrote Merritt, "How much rather would I +have you at my side tonight than to think of your daring and enduring +greater hardships even than our Revolutionary heroes. Words cannot +tell how often we think of you or how sadly we feel that the terrible +crime of this nation against humanity is being avenged on the heads of +our sons and brothers.... Father brings the <i>Democrat</i> giving a list +of killed, wounded, and missing and the name of our Merritt is not +therein, but oh! the slain are sons, brothers, and husbands of others +as dearly loved and sadly mourned."<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p> + +<p>With difficulty, she prepared for the annual woman's rights +convention, for the country was in a state of unrest not only over +Kansas and the whole antislavery question, but also over the +presidential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> campaign with three candidates in the field. Even her +faithful friends Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith now failed her, +Horace Greeley writing that he could no longer publish her notices +free in the news columns of his <i>Tribune</i>, because they cast upon him +the stigma of ultraradicalism, and Gerrit Smith withholding his +hitherto generous financial support because woman's rights conventions +would not press for dress reform—comfortable clothing for women +suitable for an active life, which he believed to be the foundation +stone of women's emancipation.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/057.jpg" width="450" height="360" alt="Merritt Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Merritt Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>She watched the lively bitter presidential campaign with interest and +concern. The new Republican party was in the contest, offering its +first presidential candidate, the colorful hero and explorer of the +far West, John C. Frémont. She had leanings toward this virile young +party which stood firmly against the extension of slavery in the +territories, and discussed its platform with Elizabeth and Henry B. +Stanton, both enthusiastically for "Frémont and Freedom." Yet she was +distrustful of political parties, for they eventually yielded to +expediency, no matter how high their purpose at the start. Her ideal +was the Garrisonian doctrine, "No Union with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> Slaveholders" and +"Immediate Unconditional Emancipation," which courageously faced the +"whole question" of slavery. There was no compromise among +Garrisonians.</p> + +<p>With the burning issue of slavery now uppermost in her mind, she began +seriously to reconsider the offer she had received from the American +Antislavery Society, shortly after her visit to Boston in 1855, to act +as their agent in central and western New York. Unable to accept at +that time because she was committed to her woman's rights program, she +had nevertheless felt highly honored that she had been chosen. Still +hesitating a little, she wrote Lucy Stone, wanting reassurance that no +woman's rights work demanded immediate attention. "They talk of +sending two companies of Lecturers into this state," she wrote Lucy, +"wish me to lay out the route of each one and accompany one. They seem +to think me possessed of a vast amount of executive ability. I shrink +from going into Conventions where speaking is expected of me.... I +know they want me to help about finance and that part I like and am +good for nothing else."<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p> + +<p>She also had the farm home on her mind. With her father in the +insurance business, her brothers now both in Kansas, her sister Mary +teaching in the Rochester schools and "looking matrimonially-wise," +and her mother at home all alone, Susan often wondered if it might not +be as much her duty to stay there to take care of her mother and +father as it would be to make a home comfortable for a husband. +Sometimes the quietness of such a life beckoned enticingly. But after +the disappointing November elections which put into the presidency the +conservative James Buchanan, from whom only a vacillating policy on +the slavery issue could be expected, she wrote Samuel May, Jr., the +secretary of the American Antislavery Society, "I shall be very glad +if I am able to render even the most humble service to this cause. +Heaven knows there is need of earnest, effective radical workers. The +heart sickens over the delusions of the recent campaign and turns +achingly to the unconsidered <i>whole question</i>."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<p>His reply came promptly, "We put all New York into your control and +want your name to all letters and your hand in all arrangements."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> + +<p>For $10 a week and expenses, Susan now arranged antislavery meetings, +displayed posters bearing the provocative words, "No Union with +Slaveholders," planned tours for a corps of speakers, among them +Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and two free +Negroes, Charles Remond and his sister, Sarah.</p> + +<p>In debt from her last woman's rights campaign, she could not afford a +new dress for these tours, but she dyed a dark green the merino which +she had worn so proudly in Canajoharie ten years before, bought cloth +to match for a basque, and made a "handsome suit." "With my Siberian +squirrel cape, I shall be very comfortable," she noted in her +diary.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p> + +<p>She had met indifference and ridicule in her campaigns for woman's +rights. Now she faced outright hostility, for northern businessmen had +no use for abolition-mad fanatics, as they called anyone who spoke +against slavery. Abolitionists, they believed, ruined business by +stirring up trouble between the North and the South.</p> + +<p>Usually antislavery meetings turned into debates between speakers and +audience, often lasting until midnight, and were charged with +animosity which might flame into violence. All of the speakers lived +under a strain, and under emotional pressure. Consequently they were +not always easy to handle. Some of them were temperamental, a bit +jealous of each other, and not always satisfied with the tours Susan +mapped out for them. She expected of her colleagues what she herself +could endure, but they often complained and sometimes refused to +fulfill their engagements.</p> + +<p>When no one else was at hand, she took her turn at speaking, but she +was seldom satisfied with her efforts. "I spoke for an hour," she +confided to her diary, "but my heart fails me. Can it be that my +stammering tongue ever will be loosed?"</p> + +<p>Lucy Stone, who spoke with such ease, gave her advice and +encouragement. "You ought to cultivate your power of expression," she +wrote. "The subject is clear to you and you ought to be able to make +it so to others. It is only a few years ago that Mr. Higginson told me +he could not speak, he was so much accustomed to writing, and now he +is second only to Phillips. 'Go thou and do likewise.'"<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p> + +<p>In March 1857, the Supreme Court startled the country with the Dred +Scott decision, which not only substantiated the claim of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +Garrisonians that the Constitution sanctioned slavery and protected +the slaveholder, but practically swept away the Republican platform of +no extention of slavery in the territories. The decision declared that +the Constitution did not apply to Negroes, since they were citizens of +no state when it was adopted and therefore had not the right of +citizens to sue for freedom or to claim freedom in the territories; +that the Missouri Compromise had always been void, since Congress did +not have the right to enact a law which arbitrarily deprived citizens +of their property.</p> + +<p>Reading the decision word for word with dismay and pondering +indignantly over the cold letter of the law, Susan found herself so +aroused and so full of the subject that she occasionally made a +spontaneous speech, and thus gradually began to free herself from +reliance on written speeches. She spoke from these notes: "Consider +the fact of 4,000,000 slaves in a Christian and republican +government.... Antislavery prayers, resolutions, and speeches avail +nothing without action.... Our mission is to deepen sympathy and +convert into right action: to show that the men and women of the North +are slaveholders, those of the South slave-owners. The guilt rests on +the North equally with the South. Therefore our work is to rouse the +sleeping consciousness of the North....<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p> + +<p>"We ask you to feel as if you, yourselves, were the slaves. The +politician talks of slavery as he does of United States banks, tariff, +or any other commercial question. We demand the abolition of slavery +because the slave is a human being and because man should not hold +property in his fellowman.... We say disobey every unjust law; the +politician says obey them and meanwhile labor constitutionally for +repeal.... We preach revolution, the politicians, reform."</p> + +<p>Instinctively she reaffirmed her allegiance to the doctrine, "No Union +with Slaveholders," and she gloried in the courage of Garrison, +Phillips, and Higginson, who had called a disunion convention, +demanding that the free states secede. It was good to be one of this +devoted band, for she sincerely believed that in the ages to come "the +prophecies of these noble men and women will be read with the same +wonder and veneration as those of Isaiah and Jeremiah inspire +today."<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p> + +<p>She gave herself to the work with religious fervor. Even so, she could +not make her antislavery meetings self-supporting, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> at the end of +the first season, after paying her speakers, she faced a deficit of +$1,000. This troubled her greatly but the Antislavery Society, +recognizing her value, wrote her, "We cheerfully pay your expenses and +want to keep you at the head of the work." They took note of her +"business enterprise, practical sagacity, and platform ability," and +looked upon the expenditure of $1,000 for the education and +development of such an exceptional worker as a good investment.</p> + +<p>This new experience was a good investment for Susan as well. She made +many new friends. She won the further respect, confidence, and good +will of men like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Francis +Jackson. Her friendship with Parker Pillsbury deepened. "I can truly +say," she wrote Abby Kelley Foster, "my spirit has grown in grace and +that the experience of the past winter is worth more to me than all my +Temperance and Woman's Rights labors—though the latter were the +school necessary to bring me into the Antislavery work."<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></p> + +<p>Only the crusading spirit of the "antislavery apostles"<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> and what +to them seemed the desperate state of the nation made the hard +campaigning bearable. The animosity they faced, the cold, the poor +transportation, the long hours, and wretched food taxed the physical +endurance of all of them. "O the crimes that are committed in the +kitchens of this land!"<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> wrote Susan in her diary, as she ate heavy +bread and the cake ruined with soda and drank what passed for coffee. +A good cook herself, she had little patience with those who through +ignorance or carelessness neglected that art. Equally bad were the +food fads they had to endure when they were entertained in homes of +otherwise hospitable friends of the cause. Raw-food diets found many +devotees in those days, and often after long cold rides in the +stagecoach, these tired hungry antislavery workers were obliged to sit +down to a supper of apples, nuts, and a baked mixture of coarse bran +and water. Nor did breakfast or dinner offer anything more. Facing +these diets seemed harder for the men than for Susan. Repeatedly in +such situations, they hurried away, leaving her to complete two-or +three-day engagements among the food cranks. How she welcomed a good +beefsteak and a pot of hot coffee at home after these long days of +fasting!</p> + +<p>A night at home now was sheer bliss, and she wrote Lucy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Stone, "Here +I am once more in my own Farm Home, where my weary head rests upon my +own home pillows.... I had been gone <i>Four Months</i>, scarcely sleeping +the second night under the same roof."<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></p> + +<p>It was good to be with her mother again, to talk with her father when +he came home from work and with Mary who had not married after all but +continued teaching in the Rochester schools. Guelma and her husband, +Aaron McLean, who had moved to Rochester, often came out to the farm +with their children.</p> + +<p>Turning for relaxation to work in the garden in the warm sun, Susan +thought over the year's experience and planned for the future. "I can +but acknowledge to myself that Antislavery has made me richer and +braver in spirit," she wrote Samuel May, Jr., "and that it is the +school of schools for the true and full development of the nobler +elements of life. I find my raspberry field looking finely—also my +strawberry bed. The prospect for peaches, cherries, plums, apples, and +pears is very promising—Indeed all nature is clothed in her most +hopeful dress. It really seems to me that the trees and the grass and +the large fields of waving grain did never look so beautifully as now. +It is more probable, however, that my soul has grown to appreciate +Nature more fully...."<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p> + +<p>Susan needed that growth of soul to face the events of the next few +years and do the work which lay ahead. The whole country was tense +over the slavery issue, which could no longer be pushed into the +background. On public platforms and at every fireside, men and women +were discussing the subject. Antislavery workers sensed the gravity of +the situation and felt the onrush of the impending conflict between +what they regarded as the forces of good and evil—freedom and +slavery. When the Republican leader, William H. Seward, spoke in +Rochester, of "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring +forces,"<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> he was expressing only what Garrisonian abolitionists, +like Susan, always had recognized. In the West, a tall awkward country +lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, debating with the suave Stephen A. Douglas, +declared with prophetic wisdom, "'A house divided against itself +cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently +half slave and half free.... It will become all one thing or all the +other.'"<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p> + +<p>So Susan believed, and she was doing her best to make it all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> free. +Not only was she holding antislavery meetings, making speeches, and +distributing leaflets whenever and wherever possible, but she was also +lobbying in Albany for a personal liberty bill to protect the slaves +who were escaping from the South. "Treason in the Capitol," the +Democratic press labeled efforts for a personal liberty bill, and as +Susan reported to William Lloyd Garrison,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> even Republicans shied +away from it, many of them regarding Seward's "irrepressible conflict" +speech a sorry mistake. Such timidity and shilly-shallying were +repugnant to her. She could better understand the fervor of John Brown +although he fought with bullets.</p> + +<p>Yet John Brown's fervor soon ended in tragedy, sowing seeds of fear, +distrust, and bitter partisanship in all parts of the country. When, +in October 1859, the startling news reached Susan of the raid on +Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown, she sadly tried to piece +together the story of his failure. She admired and respected John +Brown, believing he had saved Kansas for freedom. That he had further +ambitious plans was common knowledge among antislavery workers, for he +had talked them over with Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the +three young militants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, and +Samuel Gridley Howe. Somehow these plans had failed, but she was sure +that his motives were good. He was imprisoned, accused of treason and +murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said, +implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing +the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so +completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end, +befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he had rescued +fugitive slaves.</p> + +<p>Scanning the <i>Liberator</i> for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it +colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to +all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild, +apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by +insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added, +"Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the +right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers."<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + +<p>Behind closed doors and in public meetings, abolitionists pledged +their allegiance to John Brown's noble purpose. He had wanted no +bloodshed, they said, had no thought of stirring up slaves to brutal +revenge. The raid was to be merely a signal for slaves to arise, to +cast off slavery forever, to follow him to a mountain refuge, which +other slave insurrections would reinforce until all slaves were free. +To him the plan seemed logical and he was convinced it was +God-inspired. To some of his friends it seemed possible—just a step +beyond the Underground Railroad and hiding fugitive slaves. To Susan +he was a hero and a martyr.</p> + +<p>Southerners, increasingly fearful of slave insurrections, called John +Brown a cold-blooded murderer and accused Republicans—"black +Republicans," they classed them—of taking orders from abolitionists +and planning evil against them. To law-abiding northerners, John Brown +was a menace, stirring up lawlessness. Seward and Lincoln, speaking +for the Republicans, declared that violence, bloodshed, and treason +could not be excused even if slavery was wrong and Brown thought he +was right. All saw before them the horrible threat of civil war.</p> + +<p>During John Brown's trial, his friends did their utmost to save him. +The noble old giant with flowing white beard, who had always been more +or less of a legend, now to them assumed heroic proportions. His +calmness, his steadfastness in what he believed to be right captured +the imagination.</p> + +<p>The jury declared him guilty—guilty of treason, of conspiring with +slaves to rebel, guilty of murder in the first degree. The papers +carried the story, and it spread by word of mouth—the story of those +last tense moments in the courtroom when John Brown declared, "It is +unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interferred ... in +behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called +great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... it would have been all +right.... I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any +respecter of persons. I believe that to have interferred as I have +done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong but right. Now if +it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the +furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with +the blood of my children and with the blood of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> millions in this slave +country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust +enactments, I say, let it be done...."<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p> + +<p>He was sentenced to die.</p> + +<p>Susan, sick at heart, talked all this over with her abolitionist +friends and began planning a meeting of protest and mourning in +Rochester if John Brown were hanged. She engaged the city's most +popular hall for this meeting, never thinking of the animosity she +might arouse, and as she went from door to door selling tickets, she +asked for contributions for John Brown's destitute family. She tried +to get speakers from among respected Republicans to widen the popular +appeal of the meeting, but her diary records, "Not one man of +prominence in religion or politics will identify himself with the John +Brown meeting."<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> Only a Free Church minister, the Rev. Abram Pryn, +and the ever-faithful Parker Pillsbury were willing to speak.</p> + +<p>There was still hope that John Brown might be saved and excitement ran +high. Some like Higginson, unwilling to let him die, wanted to rescue +him, but Brown forbade it. Others wanted to kidnap Governor Wise of +Virginia and hold him on the high seas, a hostage for John Brown. +Wendell Phillips was one of these. Parker Pillsbury, sending Susan the +latest news from "the seat of war" and signing his letter, "Faithfully +and fervently yours," wrote, "My voice is against any attempt at +rescue. It would inevitably, I fear, lead to bloodshed which could not +compensate nor be compensated. If the people dare murder their victim, +as they are determined to do, and in the name of the law ... the moral +effect of the execution will be without a parallel since the scenes on +Calvary eighteen hundred years ago, and the halter that day sanctified +shall be the cord to draw millions to salvation."<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> + +<p>On Friday, December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. Through the North, +church bells tolled and prayers were said for him. Everywhere people +gathered together to mourn and honor or to condemn. In New York City, +at a big meeting which overflowed to the streets, it was resolved +"that we regard the recent outrage at Harper's Ferry as a crime, not +only against the State of Virginia, but against the Union itself...." +In Boston, however, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to a tremendous audience +of "the new saint, than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> whom none purer or more brave was ever led by +love of man into conflict and death ... who will make the gallows +glorious," and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recorded in his diary, "This +will be a great day in our history; the date of a new revolution." Far +away in France, Victor Hugo declared, "The eyes of Europe are fixed on +America. The hanging of John Brown will open a latent fissure that +will finally split the union asunder.... You preserve your shame, but +you kill your glory."<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p> + +<p>In Rochester, three hundred people assembled. All were friends of the +cause and there was no unfriendly disturbance to mar the proceedings. +Susan presided and Parker Pillsbury, in her opinion, made "the +grandest speech of his life," for it was the only occasion he ever +found fully wicked enough to warrant "his terrific invective."<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p> + +<p>Thus these two militant abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and Parker +Pillsbury, joined hundreds of others throughout the nation in honoring +John Brown, sensing the portent of his martyrdom and prophesying that +his soul would go marching on.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_TRUE_WOMAN" id="THE_TRUE_WOMAN"></a>THE TRUE WOMAN</h2> + + +<p>Susan's preoccupation with antislavery work did not lessen her +interest in women's advancement. Her own expanding courage and ability +showed her the possibilities for all women in widened horizons and +activities. These possibilities were the chief topic of conversation +when she and Elizabeth Stanton were together. With Mrs. Stanton's +young daughters, Margaret and Harriot, in mind, they were continually +planning ways and means of developing the new woman, or the "true +woman" as they liked to call her; and one of these ways was physical +exercise in the fresh air, which was almost unheard of for women +except on the frontier.</p> + +<p>Taking off her hoops and working in the garden in the freedom of her +long calico dress, Susan was refreshed and exhilarated. "Uncovered the +strawberry and raspberry beds ..." her diary records. "Worked with +Simon building frames for the grapevines in the peach orchards.... Set +out 18 English black currants, 22 English gooseberries and Muscatine +grape vines.... Finished setting out the apple trees & 600 blackberry +bushes...."<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p> + +<p>She knew how little this strengthening work and healing influence +touched the lives of most women. Hemmed in by the walls of their +homes, weighed down by bulky confining clothing, fed on the tradition +of weakness, women could never gain the breadth of view, courage, and +stamina needed to demand and appreciate emancipation. She thought a +great deal about this and how it could be remedied, and wrote her +friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson "The salvation of the race depends, +in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their hot-house +existence. Whether in kitchen, nursery or parlor, all alike are shut +away from God's sunshine. Why did not your Caroline Plummer of Salem, +why do not all of our wealthy women leave money for industrial and +agricultural schools for girls, instead of ever and always providing +for boys alone?"<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p> + +<p>An exceptional opportunity was now offered Susan—to speak on the +controversial subject of coeducation before the State Teachers'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +Association, which only a few years before had been shocked by the +sound of a woman's voice. Deeply concerned over her ability to write +the speech, she at once appealed to Elizabeth Stanton, "Do you please +mark out a plan and give me as soon as you can...."<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 347px;"> +<img src="images/068.jpg" width="347" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony, 1856" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony, 1856</span> +</div> + +<p>Busy with preparations for woman's rights meetings in popular New York +summer resorts, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Clifton Springs, and +Avon, she grew panicky at the prospect of her impending speech and +dashed off another urgent letter to Mrs. Stanton, underlining it +vigorously for emphasis: "Not a <i>word written</i> ... and mercy only +knows when I can get a moment, and what is <i>worse</i>, as the <i>Lord knows +full well</i>, is, that if <i>I get all the time the world has—I can't get +up a decent document</i>.... It is of but small moment who writes the +Address, but of <i>vast moment</i> that it be <i>well done</i>.... No woman but +you can write from <i>my standpoint</i> for all would base their strongest +<i>argument</i> on the <i>un</i>likeness of the <i>sexes</i>....</p> + +<p>"Those of you who have the <i>talent</i> to do honor to poor, oh how poor +womanhood have all given yourselves over to <i>baby</i>-making and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> left +poor brainless <i>me</i> to battle alone. It is a shame. Such a lady as <i>I +might</i> be <i>spared</i> to <i>rock cradles</i>, but it is a crime for <i>you</i> and +<i>Lucy</i> and <i>Nette</i>."<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></p> + +<p>On a separate page she outlined for Mrs. Stanton the points she wanted +to make. Her title was affirmative, "Why the Sexes Should be Educated +Together." "Because," she reasoned, "by such education they get true +ideas of each other.... Because the endowment of both public and +private funds is ever for those of the male sex, while all the +Seminaries and Boarding Schools for Females are left to maintain +themselves as best they may by means of their tuition +fees—consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class +professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal +privileges with the boy.... No school <i>requires</i> and but very few +allow the <i>girls</i> to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys. +Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is +needed is to give the sexes <i>like motives</i> for acquirement. Very +rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge +useful, as a means of support...."<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to +help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the +puddings."<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> Gratefully Susan hurried to Seneca Falls and together +they "loaded her gun," not only for the teachers' convention but for +all the summer meetings.</p> + +<p>Addressing the large teachers' meeting in Troy, Susan declared that +mental sex-differences did not exist. She called attention to the +ever-increasing variety of occupations which women were carrying on +with efficiency. There were women typesetters, editors, publishers, +authors, clerks, engravers, watchmakers, bookkeepers, sculptors, +painters, farmers, and machinists. Two hundred and fifty women were +serving as postmasters. Girls, she insisted, must be educated to earn +a living and more vocations must be opened to them as an incentive to +study. "A woman," she added, "needs no particular kind of education to +be a wife and mother anymore than a man does to be a husband and +father. A man cannot make a living out of these relations. He must +fill them with something more and so must women."<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p> + +<p>Her advanced ideas did not cause as much consternation as she had +expected and she was asked to repeat her speech at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> Massachusetts +teachers' convention; but the thoughts of many in that audience were +echoed by the president when he said to her after the meeting, "Madam, +that was a splendid production and well delivered. I could not have +asked for a single thing different either in matter or manner; but I +would rather have followed my wife or daughter to Greenwood cemetery +than to have had her stand here before this promiscuous audience and +deliver that address."<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p> + +<p>It was one thing to talk about coeducation but quite another to offer +a resolution putting the New York State Teachers' Association on +record as asking all schools, colleges, and universities to open their +doors to women. This Susan did at their next convention, and while +there were enough women present to carry the resolution, most of them +voted against it, listening instead to the emotional arguments of a +group of conservative men who prophesied that coeducation would +coarsen women and undermine marriage. Nor did she forget the Negro at +these conventions, but brought much criticism upon herself by offering +resolutions protesting the exclusion of Negroes from public schools, +academies, colleges, and universities.</p> + +<p>Such controversial activities were of course eagerly reported in the +press, and Henry Stanton, reading his newspaper, pointed them out to +his wife, remarking drily, "Well, my dear, another notice of Susan. +You stir up Susan and she stirs up the world."<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The best method of arousing women and spreading new ideas, Susan +decided, was holding woman's rights conventions, for the discussions +at these conventions covered a wide field and were not limited merely +to women's legal disabilities. The feminists of that day extolled +freedom of speech, and their platform, like that of antislavery +conventions, was open to anyone who wished to express an opinion. +Always the limited educational opportunities offered to women were +pointed out, and Oberlin College and Antioch, both coeducational, were +held up as patterns for the future. Resolutions were passed, demanding +that Harvard and Yale admit women. Women's low wages and the very few +occupations open to them were considered, and whether it was fitting +for women to be doctors and ministers. At one convention Lucy Stone +made the suggestion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> that a prize be offered for a novel on women, +like <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>, to arouse the whole nation to the unjust +situation of women whose slavery, she felt, was comparable to that of +the Negro. At another, William Lloyd Garrison maintained that women +had the right to sit in the Congress and in state legislatures and +that there should be an equal number of men and women in all national +councils. Inevitably Scriptural edicts regarding woman's sphere were +thrashed out with Antoinette Brown, in her clerical capacity, setting +at rest the minds of questioning women and quashing the protests of +clergymen who thought they were speaking for God. Usually Ernestine +Rose was on hand, ready to speak when needed, injecting into the +discussions her liberal clear-cut feminist views. Nor was the +international aspect of the woman's rights movement forgotten. The +interest in Great Britain in the franchise for women of such men as +Lord Brougham and John Stuart Mill was reported as were the efforts +there among women to gain admission to the medical profession. +Distributed widely as a tract was the "admirable" article in the +<i>Westminster Review</i>, "The Enfranchisement of Women," by Harriet +Taylor, now Mrs. John Stuart Mill.</p> + +<p>In New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, where +state conventions were held annually, women carried back to their +homes and their friends new and stimulating ideas. National +conventions, which actually represented merely the northeastern states +and Ohio and occasionally attracted men and women from Indiana, +Missouri, and Kansas, were scheduled by Susan to meet every year in +New York, simultaneously with antislavery conventions. Thus she was +assured of a brilliant array of speakers, for the Garrisonian +abolitionists were sincere advocates of woman's rights.</p> + +<p>Both Elizabeth Stanton and Lucy Stone were a great help to Susan in +preparing for these national gatherings for which she raised the +money. Elizabeth wrote the calls and resolutions, while Lucy could not +only be counted upon for an eloquent speech, but through her wide +contacts brought new speakers and new converts to the meetings. +However, national woman's rights conventions would probably have +lapsed completely during the troubled years prior to the Civil War, +had it not been for Susan's persistence. She was obliged to omit the +1857 convention because all of her best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> speakers were either having +babies or were kept at home by family duties. Lucy's baby, Alice Stone +Blackwell, was born in September 1857, then Antoinette Brown's first +child, and Mrs. Stanton's seventh.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 349px;"> +<img src="images/072.jpg" width="349" height="450" alt="Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell</span> +</div> + +<p>Impatient to get on with the work, Susan chafed at the delay and when +Lucy wrote her, "I shall not assume the responsibility for another +convention until I have had my ten daughters,"<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> Susan was beside +herself with apprehension. When Lucy told her that it was harder to +take care of a baby day and night than to campaign for woman's rights, +she felt that Lucy regarded as unimportant her "common work" of hiring +halls, engaging speakers, and raising money. This rankled, for +although Susan realized it was work without glory, she did expect Lucy +to understand its significance.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton sensed the makings of a rift between Susan and these +young mothers, Lucy and Antoinette, and knowing from her own +experience how torn a woman could be between rearing a family and work +for the cause, she pleaded with Susan to be patient with them. "Let +them rest a while in peace and quietness, and think great thoughts for +the future," she wrote Susan. "It is not well to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> be in the excitement +of public life all the time. Do not keep stirring them up or mourning +over their repose. You need rest too. Let the world alone a while. We +cannot bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year."<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a></p> + +<p>But Susan could not let the world alone. There was too much to be +done. In addition to her woman's rights and antislavery work, she gave +a helping hand to any good cause in Rochester, such as a protest +meeting against capital punishment, a series of Sunday evening +lectures, or establishing a Free Church like that headed by Theodore +Parker in Boston where no one doctrine would be preached and all would +be welcome. There were days when weariness and discouragement hung +heavily upon her. Then impatient that she alone seemed to be carrying +the burden of the whole woman's rights movement, she complained to +Lydia Mott, "There is not one woman left who may be relied on. All +have first to please their husbands after which there is little time +or energy left to spend in any other direction.... How soon the last +standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia) will lay down the +individual 'shovel and de hoe' and with proper zeal and spirit grasp +those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I +declare to you that I distrust the powers of any woman, even of myself +to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!"<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p> + +<p>To Elizabeth Stanton she confessed, "I have very weak moments and long +to lay my weary head somewhere and nestle my full soul to that of +another in full sympathy. I sometimes fear that <i>I too</i> shall faint by +the wayside and drop out of the ranks of the faithful few."<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan thought a great deal about marriage at this time, about how it +interfered with the development of women's talents and their careers, +how it usually dwarfed their individuality. Nor were these thoughts +wholly impersonal, for she had attentive suitors during these years. +Her diary mentions moonlight rides and adds, "Mr.—walked home with +me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should +lack the moral spine."<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Her standards of matrimony were high, and +she carefully recorded in her diary Lucretia Mott's wise words, "In +the true marriage relation, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> independence of the husband and wife +is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations +reciprocal."<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p> + +<p>Marriage and the differences of the sexes were often discussed at the +many meetings she attended, and when remarks were made which to her +seemed to limit in any way the free and full development of woman, she +always registered her protest. She had no patience with any +unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory +that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities +reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke +frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with +sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called +"coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs. +Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or +gross. If it is a fact, there it is."<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a></p> + +<p>She was reading at this time Elizabeth Barrett Browning's <i>Aurora +Leigh</i>, called by Ruskin the greatest poem in the English language, +but criticized by others as an indecent romance revolting to the +purity of many women. Susan had bought a copy of the first American +edition and she carried it with her wherever she went. After a hard +active day, she found inspiration and refreshment in its pages. No +matter how dreary the hotel room or how unfriendly the town, she no +longer felt lonely or discouraged, for Aurora Leigh was a companion +ever at hand, giving her confidence in herself, strengthening her +ambition, and helping her build a satisfying, constructive philosophy +of life. On the flyleaf of her worn copy, which in later years she +presented to the Library of Congress, she wrote, "This book was +carried in my satchel for years and read and reread. The noble words +of Elizabeth Barrett, as Wendell Phillips always called her, sunk deep +into my heart. I have always cherished it above all other books. I now +present it to the Congressional Library with the hope that women may +more and more be like Aurora Leigh."</p> + +<p>The beauty of its poetry enchanted her, and Elizabeth Barrett +Browning's feminism found an echo in her own. She pencil-marked the +passages she wanted to reread. When her "common work" of hiring halls +and engaging speakers seemed unimportant and even futile, she found +comfort in these lines:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Be sure no earnest work<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of any honest creature, howbeit weak<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is not gathered as a grain of sand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To enlarge the sum of human action used<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For carrying out God's end....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">... let us be content in work,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To do the thing we can, and not presume<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To fret because it's little."<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Glorying in work, she read with satisfaction:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The honest earnest man must stand and work:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The woman also, otherwise she drops<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At once below the dignity of man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who ever fears God, fears to sit at ease."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Could she have written poetry, these words, spoken by Aurora, might +well have been her own:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You misconceive the question like a man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who sees a woman as the complement<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of his sex merely. You forget too much<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That every creature, female as the male,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stands single in responsible act and thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As also in birth and death. Whoever says<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will get fair answers, if the work and love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being good of themselves, are good for her—the best<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She was born for."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Inspired by <i>Aurora Leigh</i>, Susan planned a new lecture, "The True +Woman," and as she wrote it out word for word, her thoughts and +theories about women, which had been developing through the years, +crystallized. In her opinion, the "true woman" could no more than +Aurora Leigh follow the traditional course and sacrifice all for the +love of one man, adjusting her life to his whims. She must, instead, +develop her own personality and talents, advancing in learning, in the +arts, in science, and in business, cherishing at the same time her +noble womanly qualities. Susan hoped that some day the full +development of woman's individuality would be compatible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> with +marriage, and she held up as an ideal the words which Elizabeth +Barrett Browning put into the mouth of Aurora Leigh:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"The world waits<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For help. Beloved, let us work so well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our work shall still be better for our love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And still our love be sweeter for our work<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And both, commended, for the sake of each,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By all true workers and true lovers born."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She expressed this hope in her own practical words to Lydia Mott: +"Institutions, among them marriage, are justly chargeable with many +social and individual ills, but after all, the whole man or woman will +rise above them. I am sure my 'true woman' will never be crushed or +dwarfed by them. Woman must take to her soul a purpose and then make +circumstances conform to this purpose, instead of forever singing the +refrain, 'if and if and if.'"<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Late in 1858, Susan received a letter from Wendell Phillips which put +new life into all her efforts for women. He wrote her that an +anonymous donor had given him $5,000 for the woman's rights cause and +that he, Lucy Stone, and Susan had been named trustees to spend it +wisely and effectively.</p> + +<p>The man who felt that the woman's rights cause was important enough to +rate a gift of that size proved to be wealthy Francis Jackson of +Boston, in whose home Susan had visited a few years before with Lucy +and Antoinette. Jubilant over the prospects, she at once began to make +plans. She wanted to use all of the fund for lectures, conventions, +tracts, and newspaper articles; Lucy thought part of the money should +be spent to prove unconstitutional the law which taxed women without +representation and Antoinette was eager for a share to establish a +church in which she could preach woman's rights with the Gospel.</p> + +<p>Both Wendell Phillips and Lucy Stone agreed that Susan should have +$1,500 for the intensive campaign she had planned for New York, and +for once in her life she started off without a financial worry, with +money in hand to pay her speakers. She held meetings in all of the +principal towns of the state, making them at least partially pay for +themselves. Her lecturers each received $12 a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> week and she kept a +like amount for herself, for planning the tour, organizing the +meetings, and delivering her new lecture, "The True Woman."</p> + +<p>"I am having fine audiences of thinking men and women," she wrote Mary +Hallowell. "Oh, if we could but make our meetings ring like those of +the antislavery people, wouldn't the world hear us? But to do that we +must have souls baptized into the work and consecrated to it."<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a></p> + +<p>Some souls were deeply stirred by the woman's rights gospel. One of +these was the wealthy Boston merchant, Charles F. Hovey, who in his +will left $50,000 in trust to Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd +Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley Foster, and others, to be +spent for the "promotion of the antislavery cause and other reforms," +among them woman's rights, and not less than $8,000 a year to be spent +to promote these reforms. With all this financial help available, +Susan expected great things to happen.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>During the winter of 1860 while the legislature was in session, Susan +spent six weeks in Albany with Lydia Mott, and day after day she +climbed the long hill to the capitol to interview legislators on +amendments to the married women's property laws. When these amendments +were passed by the Senate, Assemblyman Anson Bingham urged her to +bring their mutual friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to Albany to speak +before his committee to assure passage by the Assembly.</p> + +<p>Once again Susan hurried to Seneca Falls, and unpacking her little +portmanteau stuffed with papers and statistics, discussed the subject +with Mrs. Stanton in front of the open fire late into the night. Then +the next morning while Mrs. Stanton shut herself up in the quietest +room in the house to write her speech, Susan gave the children their +breakfast, sent the older ones off to school, watched over the babies, +prepared the desserts, and made herself generally useful. By this time +the children regarded her affectionately as "Aunt Thusan," and they +knew they must obey her, for she was a stern disciplinarian whom even +the mischievous Stanton boys dared not defy.</p> + +<p>These visits of Susan's were happy, satisfying times for both these +young women. A few days' respite from travel in a well-run<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> home with +a friend she admired did wonders for Susan, giving her perspective on +the work she had already done and courage to tackle new problems, +while for Mrs. Stanton this short period of stimulating companionship +and freedom from household cares was a godsend. "Miss Anthony" had +long ago become Susan to Elizabeth, but Susan all through her life +called her very best friend "Mrs. Stanton," playfully to be sure, but +with a remnant of that formality which it was hard for her to cast +off.</p> + +<p>The speech was soon finished. Mrs. Stanton's imagination, fired by her +sympathetic understanding of women's problems, had turned Susan's cold +hard facts into moving prose, while Susan, the best of critics, +detected every weak argument or faltering phrase. They both felt they +had achieved a masterpiece.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton delivered this address before a joint session of the New +York legislature in March 1860. Susan beamed with pride as she watched +the large audience crowd even the galleries and heard the long loud +applause for the speech which she was convinced could not have been +surpassed by any man in the United States.</p> + +<p>The next day the Assembly passed the Married Women's Property Bill, +and when shortly it was signed by the governor, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +scored their first big victory, winning a legal revolution for the +women of New York State. This new law was a challenge to women +everywhere. Under it a married woman had the right to hold property, +real and personal, without the interference of her husband, the right +to carry on any trade or perform any service on her own account and to +collect and use her own earnings; a married woman might now buy, sell, +and make contracts, and if her husband had abandoned her or was +insane, a convict, or a habitual drunkard, his consent was +unnecessary; a married woman might sue and be sued, she was the joint +guardian with her husband of her children, and on the decease of her +husband the wife had the same rights that her husband would have at +her death.</p> + +<p>Susan did not then realize the full significance of what she had +accomplished—that she had unleashed a new movement for freedom which +would be the means of strengthening the democratic government of her +country.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_ZEALOT" id="THE_ZEALOT"></a>THE ZEALOT</h2> + + +<p>With a spirit of confidence inspired by her victory in New York State, +Susan looked forward to the tenth national woman's rights convention +in New York City in May 1860. At this convention she reported progress +everywhere. Four thousand dollars from the Jackson and Hovey funds had +been spent in the successful New York campaign, and similar work was +scheduled for Ohio. In Kansas, women had won from the constitutional +convention equal rights and privileges in state-controlled schools and +in the management of the public schools, including the right to vote +for members of school boards; mothers had been granted equal rights +with fathers in the control and custody of their children, and married +women had been given property rights. In Indiana, Maine, Missouri, and +Ohio, married women could now control their own earnings.</p> + +<p>"Each year we hail with pleasure," she continued, "new accessions to +our faith. Brave men and true from the higher walks of literature and +art, from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, and legislative halls are +now ready to help woman wherever she claims to stand." She was +thinking of the aid given her by Andrew J. Colvin and Anson Bingham of +the New York legislature, of the young journalist, George William +Curtis, just recently speaking for women, of Samuel Longfellow at his +first woman's rights convention, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher +who, just a few months before, had delivered his great woman's rights +speech, thereby identifying himself irrevocably with the cause. She +announced with great satisfaction the news, which the papers had +carried a few days before, that Matthew Vassar of Poughkeepsie had set +aside $400,000 to found a college for women equal in all respects to +Harvard and Yale.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p> + +<p>Progress and good feeling were in the air, and the speakers were not +heckled as in past years by the rowdies who had made it a practice to +follow abolitionists into woman's rights meetings to bait them. Into +this atmosphere of good will and rejoicing, Susan and Elizabeth +Stanton now injected a more serious note, bringing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> before the +convention the controversial question of marriage and divorce which +heretofore had been handled with kid gloves at all woman's rights +meetings, but which they sincerely believed demanded solution.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Divorce had been much in the news because several leading families in +America and in England were involved in lawsuits complicated by +stringent divorce laws. Invariably the wife bore the burden of censure +and hardship, for no matter how unprincipled her husband might be, he +was entitled to her children and her earnings under the property laws +of most states.</p> + +<p>In New York efforts were now being made to gain support for a liberal +divorce bill, patterned after the Indiana law, and a variety of +proposals were before the legislature, making drunkenness, insanity, +desertion, and cruel and abusive treatment grounds for divorce. Horace +Greeley in his <i>Tribune</i> had been vigorously opposing a more liberal +law for New York, while Robert Dale Owen of Indiana wrote in its +defense. Everywhere people were reading the Greeley-Owen debates in +the <i>Tribune</i>. Through his widely circulated paper, Horace Greeley had +in a sense become an oracle for the people who felt he was safe and +good; while Robert Dale Owen, because of his youthful association with +the New Harmony community and Frances Wright, was branded with +radicalism which even his valuable service in the Indiana legislature +and his two terms in Congress could not blot out.</p> + +<p>Susan and Mrs. Stanton had no patience with Horace Greeley's smug +old-fashioned opinions on marriage and divorce. In fact these +Greeley-Owen debates in the <i>Tribune</i> were the direct cause of their +decision to bring this subject before the convention, where they hoped +for support from their liberal friends. They counted especially on +Lucy Stone, who seemed to give her approval when she wrote, "I am glad +you will speak on the divorce question, provided you yourself are +clear on the subject. It is a great grave topic that one shudders to +grapple, but its hour is coming.... God touch your lips if you speak +on it."<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p> + +<p>Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton shuddered to grapple with any subject +which they believed needed attention. In fact, the discussion of +marriage and divorce in woman's rights conventions had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> been on their +minds for some time. Three years before Susan had written Lucy, "I +have thought with you until of late that the Social Question must be +kept separate from Woman's Rights, but we have always claimed that our +movement was <i>Human Rights</i>, not Woman's specially.... It seems to me +we have played on the surface of things quite long enough. Getting the +right to hold property, to vote, to wear what dress we please, etc., +are all to the good, but <i>Social Freedom</i>, after all, lies at the +bottom of all, and unless woman gets that she must continue the slave +of man in all other things."<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Consternation spread through the genial ranks of the convention as +Mrs. Stanton now offered resolutions calling for more liberal divorce +laws. Quick to sense the temper of an audience, Susan felt its +resistance to being jolted out of the pleasant contemplation of past +successes to the unpleasant recognition that there were still +difficult ugly problems ahead. She was conscious at once of a stir of +astonishment and disapproval when Mrs. Stanton in her clear compelling +voice read, "Resolved, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is +ever a calamity, but not ever, perhaps never a crime—and when society +or government, by its laws or customs, compels its continuance, always +to the grief of one of the parties, and the actual loss and damage of +both, it usurps an authority never delegated to man, nor exercised by +God, Himself...."<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p> + +<p>Listening to Mrs. Stanton's speech in defense of her ten bold +resolutions on marriage and divorce, Susan felt that her brave +colleague was speaking for women everywhere, for wives of the present +and the future. As the hearty applause rang out, she concluded that +even the disapproving admired her courage; but before the applause +ceased, she saw Antoinette Blackwell on her feet, waiting to be heard. +She knew that Antoinette, like Horace Greeley, preferred to think of +all marriages as made in heaven, and true to form Antoinette contended +that the marriage relation "must be lifelong" and "as permanent and +indissoluble as the relation of parent and child."<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> At once +Ernestine Rose came to the rescue in support of Mrs. Stanton.</p> + +<p>Then Wendell Phillips showed his displeasure by moving that Mrs. +Stanton's resolutions be laid on the table and expunged from the +record because they had no more to do with this convention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> than +slavery in Kansas or temperance. "This convention," he asserted, "as I +understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally upon +men and women, not those that rest equally on men and women."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a></p> + +<p>Aghast at this statement, Susan was totally unprepared to have his +views supported by that other champion of liberty, William Lloyd +Garrison, who, however, did not favor expunging the resolutions from +the record.</p> + +<p>It was incomprehensible to Susan that neither Garrison nor Phillips +recognized woman's subservient status in marriage under prevailing +laws and traditions, and she now stated her own views with firmness: +"As to the point that this question does not belong to this +platform—from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a +one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man +gains all—woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with +him—meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her."<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a></p> + +<p>Warming to the subject, she continued, "By law, public sentiment, and +religion from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has +never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be +disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. And this very hour, by +our statute books, by our so-called enlightened Christian +civilization, she has no voice in saying what shall be the basis of +the relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it or not at +all...."</p> + +<p>When finally the vote was taken, Mrs. Stanton's resolutions were laid +on the table, but not expunged from the record, and the convention +adjourned with much to talk about and think about for some time to +come.</p> + +<p>The newspapers, of course, could not overlook such a piece of news as +this heated argument on divorce in a woman's rights convention, and +fanned the flames pro and con, most of them holding up Miss Anthony +and Mrs. Stanton as dangerous examples of freedom for women. The Rev. +A. D. Mayo, Unitarian clergyman of Albany, heretofore Susan's loyal +champion, now made a point of reproving her. "You are not married," he +declared with withering scorn. "You have no business to be discussing +marriage." To this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> she retorted, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a +slave. Suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p> + +<p>Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton, amazed at the opposition and the +disapproval they had aroused, were grateful for Samuel Longfellow's +comforting words of commendation<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> and for the letters of approval +which came from women from all parts of the state. Most satisfying of +all was this reassurance from Lucretia Mott, whose judgment they so +highly valued: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense of the +resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the united +judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad they are +so vigorous in the work."<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a></p> + +<p>Hardest to bear was the disapproval of Wendell Phillips whom they both +admired so much. Difficult to understand and most disappointing was +Lucy Stone's failure to attend the convention or come to their +defense. Thinking over this first unfortunate difference of opinion +among the faithful crusaders for freedom to whom she had always felt +so close in spirit, Susan was sadly disillusioned, but she had no +regrets that the matter had been brought up, and she defied her +critics by speaking before a committee of the New York legislature in +support of a liberal divorce bill. Nor was she surprised when a group +of Boston women, headed by Caroline H. Dall, called a convention which +they hoped would counteract this radical outbreak in the woman's +rights movement by keeping to the safe subjects of education, +vocation, and civil position.</p> + +<p>Having learned by this time through the hard school of experience that +the bona-fide reformer could not play safe and go forward, Susan +thoughtfully commented, "Cautious, careful people, always casting +about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can +bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing +to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and +privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and +persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The repercussions of the divorce debates were soon drowned out by the +noise and excitement of the presidential campaign of 1860. With four +candidates in the field, Breckenridge, Bell, Douglas,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> and Lincoln, +each offering his party's solution for the nation's critical problems, +there was much to think about and discuss, and Susan found woman's +rights pushed into the background. At the same time antagonism toward +abolitionists was steadily mounting for they were being blamed for the +tensions between the North and the South.</p> + +<p>Dedicated to the immediate and unconditional emancipation of slavery, +Susan saw no hope in the promises of any political party. Even the +Republicans' opposition to the extension of slavery in the +territories, which had won over many abolitionists, including Henry +and Elizabeth Stanton, seemed to her a mild and ineffectual answer to +the burning questions of the hour. For her to further the election of +Abraham Lincoln was unthinkable, since he favored the enforcement of +the Fugitive Slave Law and had stated he was not in favor of Negro +citizenship.</p> + +<p>At heart she was a nonvoting Garrisonian abolitionist and would not +support a political party which in any way sanctioned slavery. Had she +been eligible as a voter she undoubtedly would have refused to cast +her ballot until a righteous antislavery government had been +established. As she expressed it in a letter to Mrs. Stanton, she +could not, if she were a man, vote for "the least of two evils, one of +which the Nation must surely have in the presidential chair."<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a></p> + +<p>She saw no possibility at this time of wiping out slavery by means of +political abolition, because in spite of the fact that slavery had for +years been one of the most pressing issues before the American people, +no great political party had yet endorsed abolition, nor had a single +prominent practical statesman<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> advocated immediate unconditional +emancipation. As the Liberty party experiment had proved, an +abolitionist running for office on an antislavery platform was doomed +to defeat. Therefore the gesture made in this critical campaign by a +small group of abolitionists in nominating Gerrit Smith for president +appeared utterly futile to Susan. Abolitionists, she believed, +followed the only course consistent with their principles when they +eschewed politics, abstained from voting, and devoted their energies +with the fervor of evangelists to a militant educational campaign.</p> + +<p>So, whenever she could, she continued to hold antislavery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> meetings. +"Crowded house at Port Byron," her diary records. "I tried to say a +few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is +a terrible martyrdom for me to speak."<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> Yet so great was the need +to enlighten people on the evils of slavery that she endured this +martyrdom, stepping into the breach when no other speaker was +available. Taking as her subject, "What Is American Slavery?" she +declared, "It is the legalized, systematic robbery of the bodies and +souls of nearly four millions of men, women, and children. It is the +legalized traffic in God's image."<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></p> + +<p>She asked for personal liberty laws to protect the human rights of +fugitive slaves, adding that the Dred Scott decision had been possible +only because it reflected the spirit and purpose of the American +people in the North as well as the South. She heaped blame on the +North for restricting the Negro's educational and economic +opportunities, for barring him from libraries, lectures, and theaters, +and from hotels and seats on trains and buses.</p> + +<p>"Let the North," she urged, "prove to the South by her acts that she +fully recognizes the humanity of the black man, that she respects his +rights in all her educational, industrial, social, and political +associations...."</p> + +<p>This was asking far more than the North was ready to give, but to +Susan it was justice which she must demand. No wonder free Negroes in +the North honored and loved her and expressed their gratitude whenever +they could. "A fine-looking colored man on the train presented me with +a bouquet," she wrote in her diary. "Can't tell whether he knew me or +only felt my sympathy."<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The threats of secession from the southern states, which followed +Lincoln's election, brought little anxiety to Susan or her +fellow-abolitionists, for they had long preached, "No Union with +Slaveholders," believing that dissolution of the Union would prevent +further expansion of slavery in the new western territories, and not +only lessen the damaging influence of slavery on northern +institutions, but relieve the North of complicity in maintaining +slavery. Garrison in his <i>Liberator</i> had already asked, "Will the +South be so obliging as to secede from the Union?" When, in December +1860, South Carolina seceded, Horace Greeley, who only a few months +before had called the disunion abolitionists "a little coterie of +common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> scolds," now wrote in the <i>Tribune</i>, "If the cotton states +shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we +insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a +revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless."<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/086.jpg" width="450" height="385" alt="William Lloyd Garrison" title="" /> +<span class="caption">William Lloyd Garrison</span> +</div> + +<p>What abolitionists feared far more than secession was that to save the +Union some compromise would be made which would fasten slavery on the +nation. Susan agreed with Garrison when he declared in the +<i>Liberator</i>, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last +'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell' +broken—at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all +the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></p> + +<p>Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and +confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil +war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them +Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the +Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line, +protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the +domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for +escaped slaves, and forbid Congress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> to abolish slavery in the +District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland. +Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing +noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such +an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous +declarations against compromise.</p> + +<p>While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of +President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan +heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May, +Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she +wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to +go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its +suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that +she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ... +no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band +of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p> + +<p>Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her +antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but +unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and +stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no +effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and +the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her +ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the +milling crowd.</p> + +<p>In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and +boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs +broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never before +shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with +Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she +opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting +and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the +speakers home through the jeering crowds.</p> + +<p>All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more +meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right +of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne +pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> Port Byron. In +Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee +of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> and +rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until +the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its +tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling +drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on +the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her +companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in +the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of +Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the +square.</p> + +<p>Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany +where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick +Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher, +was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming +opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists, +safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his +knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered +through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the +day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and +begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the +meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little +group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob +trailing behind them.</p> + +<p>Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of +mobs,"<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so +bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans +had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or +interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the +attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they +were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address +prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or +indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states +where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have +no inclination to do so."<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> To her the future looked dark when +statesmen would save the Union at such a price.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as +well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with +Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others. +They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the +hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had +started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with +Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to +them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly +respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three +children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was +unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had +insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an +insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to +communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent +Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus, +took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children +to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced +the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law +which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and +their children.</p> + +<p>Well aware of how often her friends of the Underground Railroad had +defied the Fugitive Slave Law and hidden and transported fugitive +slaves, Susan decided she would do the same for this cultured +intelligent woman, a slave to her husband under the law. Without a +thought of the consequences, she took the train on Christmas Day for +New York with Mrs. Phelps and her thirteen-year-old daughter, both in +disguise, hoping that in the crowded city they could hide from Dr. +Phelps and the law. Arriving late at night, they walked through the +snow and slush to a hotel, only to be refused a room because they were +not accompanied by a gentleman. They tried another hotel, with the +same result, and then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a +divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused +them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway +wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a +Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but +Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> much to the clerk, +adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this +office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she +retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to +the station."<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> Finally he relented and gave them a room without +heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her +friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and +finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the +Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive +wife into her home.</p> + +<p>Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and +threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers, +because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child. +Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding +place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through +western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all.</p> + +<p>When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging +her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any +"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard +for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and +dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest +assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had +I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I +should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any +movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle +my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment +of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the +slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p> + +<p>When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing +his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan, +"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the +entire guardianship and control of the children?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know it," she answered. "Does not the law of the United States +give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break +it every time you help a slave to Canada? Well, the law which gives +the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and +I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> you would deliver +a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child +to its father."</p> + +<p>Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could +not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap +his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a +divorce through the help of her friends.</p> + +<p>The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of +Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to +recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also +essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but +when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision +was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's +divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing +laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they +sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it, +Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to +sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or +was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like +themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have +yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_WAR_FOR_FREEDOM" id="A_WAR_FOR_FREEDOM"></a>A WAR FOR FREEDOM</h2> + + +<p>Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, +Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded +early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This +breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the +minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union. +Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must +go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention +in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help +her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter +and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists +called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize +that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour.</p> + +<p>Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the +solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of +abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was +not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for +guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an +audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a +nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the +government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the +North"<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions +and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand +by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize +Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but +to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those +abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until +it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the +front page of the <i>Liberator</i>, he now removed his slogan, "No Union +with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all +violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion, +and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I +am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> + +<p>She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these +men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few, +among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of +them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone +remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have +insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but +one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The +Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all +the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their +peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems +most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency, +not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment +of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even +the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto—'the +end justifies the means.'"<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p> + +<p>Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge, +traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas, +with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and +his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a +release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work. +"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary. +"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order.... +Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the +frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my +calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of +Harriet Tubman."<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p> + +<p>Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times +seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas +with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone +feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great +presences to which I have been so long accustomed."</p> + +<p>The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's <i>Tribune</i> and +the Rochester <i>Democrat</i>. The news was discouraging—the tragedy of +Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union +armies. General Frémont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only +to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border +states.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How not to do it seems the whole study of Washington," she wrote in +her diary. "I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom +to every slave and call on every able-bodied Negro to enlist in the +Union Army.... To forever blot out slavery is the only possible +compensation for this merciless war."<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a></p> + +<p>To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and +events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's +<i>Casa Guidi Windows</i>, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to +our terrible struggle," then to her <i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>, and +George Eliot's popular <i>Adam Bede</i>, recently published. More serious +reading also absorbed her, for she wanted to keep abreast of the most +advanced thought of the day. "Am reading Buckle's <i>History of +Civilization</i> and Darwin's <i>Descent of Man</i>," she wrote in her diary. +"Have finished <i>Origin of the Species</i>. Pillsbury has just given me +Emerson's poems."<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a></p> + +<p>Eager to thrash out all her new ideas with Elizabeth Stanton, she went +to Seneca Falls for a few days of good talk, hoping to get Mrs. +Stanton's help in organizing a woman's rights convention in 1862; but +not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this +time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the +war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship. +Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best +women were so willing to be swept aside by the onrush of events.</p> + +<p>Although opposed to war, Susan was far from advocating peace at any +price, and was greatly concerned over the confusion in Washington +which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton +received from her husband, now Washington correspondent for the New +York <i>Tribune</i>. Both she and Mrs. Stanton chafed at inaction. They had +loyalty, intelligence, an understanding of national affairs, and +executive ability to offer their country, but such qualities were not +sought after among women.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a +new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting +the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of +discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young +eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> Susan listened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> with pride and joy +while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the +issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth, +her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's +motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became +devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous +correspondence.</p> + +<p>Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence +in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she +herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she +studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet +Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble +breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and +elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of +Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal +painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by +a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other +artists."<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p> + +<p>This confidence was soon dispelled, however, when a letter came from +Lydia Mott containing the crushing news that the New York legislature +had amended the newly won Married Woman's Property Law of 1860, while +women's attention was focused on the war, and had taken away from +mothers the right to equal guardianship of their children and from +widows the control of the property left at the death of their +husbands.</p> + +<p>"We deserve to suffer for our confidence in 'man's sense of justice,'" +she confessed to Lydia. " ... All of our reformers seem suddenly to +have grown politic. All alike say, 'Have no conventions at this +crisis!' Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Stanton, +etc. say, 'Wait until the war excitement abates....' I am sick at +heart, but cannot carry the world against the wish and will of our +best friends...."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a></p> + +<p>Unable to arouse even a glimmer of interest in woman's rights at this +time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to +make people understand that this war, so abhorrent to her, must be +fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience +to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It +is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you +allow yourself to remain too long snuggled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> in the Abrahamic bosom of +home. It requires great will power to resurrect one's soul.<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p> + +<p>"I am speaking now extempore," she continued, "and more to my +satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not +do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely +off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by the war."</p> + +<p>Feeling particularly close to Lydia at this time, she gratefully +added, "What a stay, counsel, and comfort you have been to me, dear +Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance meeting in that +cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me to feel myself +competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and distrust. I can +never express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you."</p> + +<p>In the small towns of western New York, people were willing to listen +to Susan, for they were troubled by the defeats northern armies had +suffered and by the appalling lack of unity and patriotism in the +North. They were beginning to see that the problem of slavery had to +be faced and were discussing among themselves whether Negroes were +contraband, whether army officers should return fugitive slaves to +their masters, whether slaves of the rebels should be freed, whether +Negroes should be enlisted in the army.</p> + +<p>Susan had an answer for them. "It is impossible longer to hold the +African race in bondage," she declared, "or to reconstruct this +Republic on the old slaveholding basis. We can neither go back nor +stand still. With the nation as with the individual, every new +experience forces us into a new and higher life and the old self is +lost forever. Hundreds of men who never thought of emancipation a year +ago, talk it freely and are ready to vote for it and fight for it +now.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p> + +<p>"Can the thousands of Northern soldiers," she asked, "who in their +march through Rebel States have found faithful friends and generous +allies in the slaves ever consent to hurl them back into the hell of +slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter +in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree +of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently +endure the old life of bondage with all its degradation, its +cruelties, and wrong? No, No, there can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> be no reconstruction on the +old basis...." Far less degrading and ruinous, she earnestly added, +would be the recognition of the independence of the southern +Confederacy.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/097.jpg" width="450" height="345" alt="Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>To the question of what to do with the emancipated slaves, her quick +answer was, "Treat the Negroes just as you do the Irish, the Scotch, +and the Germans. Educate them to all the blessings of our free +institutions, to our schools and churches, to every department of +industry, trade, and art.</p> + +<p>"What arrogance in <i>us</i>," she continued, "to put the question, What +shall <i>we</i> do with a race of men and women who have fed, clothed, and +supported both themselves and their oppressors for centuries...."</p> + +<p>Often she spoke against Lincoln's policy of gradual, compensated +emancipation, which to an eager advocate of "immediate, unconditional +emancipation" seemed like weakness and appeasement. She had to admit, +however, that there had been some progress in the right direction, for +Congress had recently forbidden the return of fugitive slaves to their +masters, had decreed immediate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> emancipation in the District of +Columbia, and prohibited slavery in the territories.</p> + +<p>President Lincoln's promise of freedom on January 1, 1863, to slaves +in all states in armed rebellion against the government, seemed wholly +inadequate to her and to her fellow-abolitionists, because it left +slavery untouched in the border states, but it did encourage them to +hope that eventually Lincoln might see the light. Horace Greeley wrote +Susan, "I still keep at work with the President in various ways and +believe you will yet hear him proclaim universal freedom. Keep this +letter and judge me by the event."<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p> + +<p>It troubled her that public opinion in the North was still far from +sympathetic to emancipation. Northern Democrats, charging Lincoln with +incompetence and autocratic control, called for "The Constitution as +it is, the Union as it was." They had the support of many northern +businessmen who faced the loss of millions of credit given to +southerners and the support of northern workmen who feared the +competition of free Negroes. They had elected Horatio Seymour governor +of New York, and had gained ground in many parts of the country. A +militant group in Ohio, headed by Congressman Vallandigham, continued +to oppose the war, asking for peace at once with no terms unfavorable +to the South.</p> + +<p>All these developments Susan discussed with her father, for she +frequently came home between lectures. He was a tower of strength to +her. When she was disillusioned or when criticism and opposition were +hard to bear, his sympathy and wise counsel never failed her. There +was a strong bond of understanding and affection between them.</p> + +<p>His sudden illness and death, late in November 1862, were a shock from +which she had to struggle desperately to recover. Her life was +suddenly empty. The farm home was desolate. She could not think of +leaving her mother and her sister Mary there all alone. Nor could she +count on help from Daniel or Merritt, both of whom were serving in the +army in the West, Daniel, as a lieutenant colonel, and Merritt as a +captain in the 7th Kansas Cavalry. For many weeks she had no heart for +anything but grief. "It seemed as if everything in the world must +stop."<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p> + +<p>Not even President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued January +1, 1863, roused her. It took a letter from Henry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> Stanton from +Washington to make her see that there was war work for her to do. He +wrote her, "The country is rapidly going to destruction. The Army is +almost in a state of mutiny for want of its pay and lack of a leader. +Nothing can carry through but the southern Negroes, and nobody can +marshal them into the struggle except the abolitionists.... Such men +as Lovejoy, Hale, and the like have pretty much given up the struggle +in despair. You have no idea how dark the cloud is which hangs over +us.... We must not lay the flattering unction to our souls that the +proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and have a +dissolution of the Union. Here then is work for you, Susan, put on +your armor and go forth."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>A month later, Susan went to New York for a visit with Elizabeth +Stanton, confident that if they counseled together, they could find a +way to serve their country in its hour of need.</p> + +<p>She was well aware that all through the country women were responding +magnificently in this crisis, giving not only their husbands and sons +to the war, but carrying on for them in the home, on the farm, and in +business. Many were sewing and knitting for soldiers, scraping lint +for hospitals, and organizing Ladies' Aid Societies, which, operating +through the United States Sanitary Commission, the forerunner of the +Red Cross, sent clothing and nourishing food to the inadequately +equipped and poorly fed soldiers in the field. In the large cities +women were holding highly successful "Sanitary Fairs" to raise funds +for the Sanitary Commission. In fact, through the women, civilian +relief was organized as never before in history. Individual women too, +Susan knew, were making outstanding contributions to the war. Lucy +Stone's sister-in-law, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell,<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> a friend and +admirer of Florence Nightingale, was training much-needed nurses, +while Dr. Mary Walker, putting on coat and trousers, ministered +tirelessly to the wounded on the battlefield. Dorothea Dix, the +one-time schoolteacher who had awakened the people to their barbarous +treatment of the insane, had offered her services to the +Surgeon-General and was eventually appointed Superintendent of Army +Nurses, with authority to recruit nurses and oversee hospital +housekeeping. Clara Barton, a government employee, and other women +volunteers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> were finding their way to the front to nurse the wounded +who so desperately needed their help; and Mother Bickerdyke, living +with the armies in the field, nursed her boys and cooked for them, +lifting their morale by her motherly, strengthening presence. Through +the influence of Anna Ella Carroll, Maryland had been saved for the +Union and she, it was said, was ably advising President Lincoln.</p> + +<p>Susan herself had felt no call to nurse the wounded, although she had +often skillfully nursed her own family; nor had she felt that her +qualifications as an expert housekeeper and good executive demanded +her services at the front to supervise army housekeeping. Instead she +looked for some important task to which other women would not turn in +these days when relief work absorbed all their attention. It was not +enough, she felt, for women to be angels of mercy, valuable and +well-organized as this phase of their work had become. A spirit of +awareness was lacking among them, also a patriotic fervor, and this +led her to believe that northern women needed someone to stimulate +their thinking, to force them to come to grips with the basic issues +of the war and in so doing claim their own freedom. Women, she +reasoned, must be aroused to think not only in terms of socks, shirts, +and food for soldiers or of bandages and nursing, but in terms of the +traditions of freedom upon which this republic was founded. Women must +have a part in molding public opinion and must help direct policy as +Anna Ella Carroll was proving women could do. Here was the best +possible training for prospective women voters. To all this Mrs. +Stanton heartily agreed.</p> + +<p>As they sat at the dining-room table with Mrs. Stanton's two +daughters, Maggie and Hattie, all busily cutting linen into small +squares and raveling them into lint for the wounded, they discussed +the state of the nation. They were troubled by the low morale of the +North and by the insidious propaganda of the Copperheads, an antiwar, +pro-Southern group, which spread discontent and disrespect for the +government. Profiteering was flagrant, and through speculation and war +contracts, large fortunes were being built up among the few, while the +majority of the people not only found their lives badly disrupted by +the war but suffered from high prices and low wages. So far no +decisive victory had encouraged confidence in ultimate triumph over +the South. In newspapers and magazines, women of the North were being +unfavorably compared with southern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> women and criticized because of +their lack of interest in the war. Writing in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, +March, 1863, Gail Hamilton, a rising young journalist, accused +northern women of failing to come up to the level of the day. "If you +could have finished the war with your needles," she chided them, "it +would have been finished long ago, but stitching does not crush +rebellion, does not annihilate treason...."</p> + +<p>Thinking along these same lines, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now decided to +go a step further. They would act to bring women abreast of the issues +of the day, Susan with her flare for organizing women, Mrs. Stanton +with her pen and her eloquence. They would show women that they had an +ideal to fight for. They would show them the uselessness of this +bloody conflict unless it won freedom for all of the slaves. Freedom +for all, as a basic demand of the republic, would be their watchword. +Men were forming Union Leagues and Loyal Leagues to combat the +influence of secret antiwar societies, such as the Knights of the +Golden Circle. "Why not organize a Women's National Loyal League?" +Susan and Mrs. Stanton asked each other.</p> + +<p>They talked their ideas over first with the New York abolitionists, +then with Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and his dashing young +friend, Theodore Tilton, and with Robert Dale Owen, now in the city as +the recently appointed head of the Freedman's Inquiry Commission. +These men were in touch with Charles Sumner and other antislavery +members of Congress. All agreed that the Emancipation Proclamation +must be implemented by an act of Congress, by an amendment to the +Constitution, and that public opinion must be aroused to demand a +Thirteenth Amendment. If women would help, so much the better.</p> + +<p>Susan at once thought of petitions. If petitions had won the Woman's +Property Law in New York, they could win the Thirteenth Amendment. The +largest petition ever presented to Congress was her goal.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Carefully Susan and Mrs. Stanton worked over an <i>Appeal to the Women +of the Republic</i>, sending it out in March 1863 with a notice of a +meeting to be held in New York. It left no doubt in the minds of those +who received it that women had a responsibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> to their country +beyond services of mercy to the wounded and disabled.</p> + +<p>From all parts of the country, women responded to their call. The +veteran antislavery and woman's rights worker, Angelina Grimké Weld, +came out of her retirement for the meeting. Ernestine Rose, the ever +faithful, was on hand. Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell were +there, and the popular Hutchinson family, famous for their stirring +abolition songs. They helped Susan and Mrs. Stanton steer the course +of the meeting into the right channels, to show the women assembled +that the war was being fought not merely to preserve the Union, but +also to preserve the American way of life, based on the principle of +equal rights and freedom for all, to save it from the encroachments of +slavery and a slaveholding aristocracy. Susan proposed a resolution +declaring that there can never be a true peace until the civil and +political rights of all citizens are established, including those of +Negroes and women. The introduction of the woman's rights issue into a +war meeting with an antislavery program was vigorously opposed by +women from Wisconsin, but the faithful feminists came to the rescue +and the controversial resolution was adopted.</p> + +<p>Although she always instinctively related all national issues to +woman's rights and vice versa, Susan did not allow this subject to +overshadow the main purpose of the meeting. Instead she analyzed the +issue of the war and reproached Lincoln for suppressing the fact that +slavery was the real cause of the war and for waiting two long years +before calling the four million slaves to the side of the North. +"Every hour's delay, every life sacrificed up to the proclamation that +called the slave to freedom and to arms," she declared, "was nothing +less than downright murder by the government.... I therefore hail the +day when the government shall recognize that it is a war for +freedom."<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></p> + +<p>A Women's National Loyal League was organized, electing Susan +secretary and Mrs. Stanton president. They sent a long letter to +President Lincoln thanking him for the Emancipation Proclamation, +especially for the freedom it gave Negro women, and assuring him of +their loyalty and support in this war for freedom. Their own immediate +task, they decided, was to circulate petitions asking for an act of +Congress to emancipate "all persons of African descent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> held in +involuntary servitude." As Susan so tersely expressed it, they would +"canvass the nation for freedom."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>All the oratory over, Susan now undertook the hard work of making the +Women's National Loyal League a success, assuming the initial +financial burden of printing petitions and renting an office, Room 20, +at Cooper Institute, where she was busy all day and where New York +members met to help her. To each of the petitions sent out, she +attached her battle cry, "There must be a law abolishing slavery.... +Women, you cannot vote or fight for your country. Your only way to be +a power in the government is through the exercise of this one, sacred, +constitutional 'right of petition,' and we ask you to use it now to +the utmost...." She also asked those signing the petitions to +contribute a penny to help with expenses and in this way she slowly +raised $3,000.<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p> + +<p>At first the response was slow, although both Republican and +antislavery papers were generous in their praise of this undertaking, +but when the signed petitions began to come in, she felt repaid for +all her efforts, and when the Hovey Fund trustees appropriated twelve +dollars a week for her salary, the financial burden lifted a little. +Yet it was ever present. For herself she needed little. She wrote her +mother and Mary, "I go to a little restaurant nearby for lunch every +noon. I always take strawberries with two tea rusks. Today I said, +'all this lacks is a glass of milk from my mother's cellar,' and the +girl replied, 'We have very nice Westchester milk.' So tomorrow I +shall add that to my bill of fare. My lunch costs, berries five cents, +rusks five, and tomorrow the milk will be three."<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p> + +<p>The cost of postage mounted as the petitions continued to go out to +all parts of the country. In dire need of funds, Susan decided to +appeal to Henry Ward Beecher; and wearily climbing Columbia Heights to +his home, she suddenly felt a strong hand on her shoulder and a +familiar voice asking, "Well, old girl, what do you want now?" He took +up a collection for her in Plymouth Church, raising $200. Gerrit Smith +sent her $100, when she had hoped for $1,000, and Jessie Benton +Frémont, $50. Before long, her "war of ideas" won the support of +Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Horace Greeley, George William +Curtis, and other popular lecturers who spoke for her at Cooper Union +to large audiences whose admission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> fees swelled her funds; and +eventually Senator Sumner, realizing how important the petitions could +be in arousing public opinion for the Thirteenth Amendment, saved her +the postage by sending them out under his frank.<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a></p> + +<p>She made her home with the Stantons, who had moved from Brooklyn to 75 +West 45th Street, New York, and the comfortable evenings of good +conversation and her busy days at the office helped mightily to heal +her grief for her father. In the bustling life of the city she felt +she was living more intensely, more usefully, as these critical days +of war demanded. Henry Stanton, now an editorial writer for Greeley's +<i>Tribune</i>, brought home to them the inside story of the news and of +politics. All of them were highly critical of Lincoln, impatient with +his slowness and skeptical of his plans for slaveholders and slaves in +the border states. They questioned Garrison's wisdom in trusting +Lincoln. Susan could not feel that Lincoln was honest when he +protested that he did not have the power to do all that the +abolitionists asked. "The pity is," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "that +the vast mass of people really believe the man <i>honest</i>—that he +believes he has not the power—I wish I could...."<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p> + +<p>New York seethed with unrest as time for the enforcement of the draft +drew near. Indignant that rich men could avoid the draft by buying a +substitute, workingmen were easily incited to riot, and the city was +soon overrun by mobs bent on destruction. The lives of all Negroes and +abolitionists were in danger. The Stanton home was in the thick of the +rioting, and when Susan and Henry Stanton came home during a lull, +they all decided to take refuge for the night at the home of Mrs. +Stanton's brother-in-law, Dr. Bayard. Here they also found Horace +Greeley hiding from the mob, for hoodlums were marching through the +streets shouting, "We'll hang old Horace Greeley to a sour apple +tree."</p> + +<p>The next morning Susan started for the office as usual, thinking the +worst was over, but as not a single horsecar or stage was running, she +took the ferry to Flushing to visit her cousins. Here too there was +rioting, but she stayed on until order was restored by the army. She +returned to the city to find casualties mounting to over a thousand +and a million dollars' worth of property destroyed. Negroes had been +shot and hung on lamp posts, Horace Greeley's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> <i>Tribune</i> office had +been wrecked and the homes of abolitionist friends burned. "These are +terrible times," she wrote her family, and then went back to work, +staying devotedly at it through all the hot summer months.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p> + +<p>By the end of the year, she had enrolled the signatures of 100,000 men +and women on her petitions, and assured by Senator Sumner that these +petitions were invaluable in creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, she raised the number of signatures in the next few months +to 400,000.</p> + +<p>In April 1864, the Thirteenth Amendment passed the Senate and the +prospects for it in the House were good. This phase of her work +finished, Susan disbanded the Women's National Loyal League and +returned to her family in Rochester.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In despair over the possible re-election of Abraham Lincoln, Susan had +joined Henry and Elizabeth Stanton in stirring up sentiment for John +C. Frémont. Abolitionists were sharply divided in this presidential +campaign. Garrison and Phillips disagreed on the course of action, +Garrison coming out definitely for Lincoln in the <i>Liberator</i>, while +Phillips declared himself emphatically against four more years of +Lincoln. Susan, the Stantons, and Parker Pillsbury were among those +siding with Phillips because they feared premature reconstruction +under Lincoln. They cited Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation as an example +of his leniency toward the rebels. They saw danger in leaving free +Negroes under the control of southerners embittered by war, and called +for Negro suffrage as the only protection against oppressive laws. +They opposed the readmission of Louisiana without the enfranchisement +of Negroes. Lincoln, they knew, favored the extension of suffrage only +to literate Negroes and to those who had served in the military +forces. In fact, Lincoln held back while they wanted to go ahead under +full steam and they looked to Frémont to lead them.</p> + +<p>Following the presidential campaign anxiously from Rochester, Susan +wrote Mrs. Stanton, "I am starving for a full talk with somebody +posted, not merely pitted for Lincoln...." The persistent cry of the +<i>Liberator</i> and the <i>Antislavery Standard</i> to re-elect Lincoln and not +to swap horses in midstream did not ring true to her. "We read no more +of the good old doctrine 'of two evils choose neither,'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> she wrote +Anna E. Dickinson. She confessed to Anna, "It is only safe to seek and +act the truth and to profess confidence in Lincoln would be a lie in +me."<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a></p> + +<p>As the war dragged on through the summer without decisive victories +for the North, Lincoln's prospects looked bleak, and to her dismay, +Susan saw the chances improving for McClellan, the candidate of the +northern Democrats who wanted to end the war, leave slavery alone, and +conciliate the South. The whole picture changed, however, with the +capture of Atlanta by General Sherman in September. The people's +confidence in Lincoln revived and Frémont withdrew from the contest. +One by one the anti-Lincoln abolitionists were converted; and Susan, +anxiously waiting for word from Mrs. Stanton, was relieved to learn +that she was not one of them, nor was Wendell Phillips whose judgment +and vision both of them valued above that of any other man. With +approval she read these lines which Phillips had just written Mrs. +Stanton, "I would cut off both hands before doing anything to aid +Mac's [McClellan's] election. I would cut oft my right hand before +doing anything to aid Abraham Lincoln's election. I wholly distrust +his fitness to settle this thing and indeed his purpose."<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p> + +<p>There is nothing to indicate any change of opinion on Susan's part +regarding Lincoln's unfitness for a second term. That he was the +lesser of two evils, she of course acknowledged. For her these +pre-election days were discouraging and frustrating. She had very +definite ideas on reconstruction which she felt in justice to the +Negro must be carried out, and Lincoln did not meet her requirements.</p> + +<p>After Lincoln's re-election, she again looked to Wendell Phillips for +an adequate policy at this juncture, and she was not disappointed. +"Phillips has just returned from Washington," Mrs. Stanton wrote her. +"He says the radical men feel they are powerless and checkmated.... +They turn to such men as Phillips to say what politicians dare not +say.... We say now, as ever, 'Give us immediately unconditional +emancipation, and let there be no reconstruction except on the +broadest basis of justice and equality!...' Phillips and a few others +must hold up the pillars of the temple.... I cannot tell you how happy +I am to find Douglass on the same platform with us. Keep him on the +right track. Tell him in this revolution, he, Phillips, and you and I +must hold the highest ground and truly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> represent the best type of the +white man, the black man, and the woman."<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a></p> + +<p>Susan, holding "the highest ground," found it difficult to mark time +until she could find her place in the reconstruction. "The work of the +hour," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "is not alone to put down the +Rebels in arms, but to educate Thirty Millions of People into the idea +of a True Republic. Hence every influence and power that both men and +women can bring to bear will be needed in the reconstruction of the +Nation on the broad basis of justice and equality."<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p> + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_NEGROS_HOUR" id="THE_NEGROS_HOUR"></a>THE NEGRO'S HOUR</h2> + + +<p>Susan's thoughts now turned to Kansas, as they had many times since +her brothers had settled there. Daniel and Annie, his young wife from +the East, urged her to visit them.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> Daniel was well established in +Kansas, the publisher of his own newspaper and the mayor of +Leavenworth. He had served a little over a year in the Union army in +the First Kansas Cavalry. She longed to see him and the West that he +loved.</p> + +<p>Now for the first time she felt free to make the long journey, for her +mother and Mary had sold the farm on the outskirts of Rochester and +had moved into the city, buying a large red brick house shaded by +maples and a beautiful horse chestnut. It had been a wrench for Susan +to give up the farm with its memories of her father, but there were +compensations in the new home on Madison Street, for Guelma, her +husband, Aaron McLean, and their family lived with them there. Hannah +and her family had also settled in Rochester, and when they bought the +house next door, Susan had the satisfaction of living again in the +midst of her family.<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p> + +<p>She was particularly devoted to Guelma's twenty-three-year-old +daughter, Ann Eliza, whose "merry laugh" and "bright, joyous presence" +brought new life into the household. Ann Eliza was a stimulating +intelligent companion, and Susan looked forward to seeing many of her +own dreams fulfilled in her niece. Then suddenly in the fall of 1864, +Ann Eliza was taken ill, and her death within a few days left a great +void.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p> + +<p>In the midst of this sorrow, Daniel sent Susan a ticket and a check +for a trip to Kansas. Hesitating no longer, she waited only until her +"tip-top Rochester dressmaker" made up "the new, five-dollar silk" +which she had bought in New York.<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p> + +<p>Before leaving for Kansas, in January, 1865, she pasted on the first +page of her diary a clipping of a poem by Henry Wadsworth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Longfellow, +"Something Left Undone," which seemed so perfectly to interpret her +own feelings:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Labor with what zeal we will<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Something still remains undone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Something uncompleted still<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waits the rising of the sun....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Till at length it is or seems<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Greater than our strength can bear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the burden of our dreams<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pressing on us everywhere....<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With "the burden of her dreams" pressing on her, Susan traveled +westward. The future of the Negro was much on her mind, for the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had just been sent to the +states for ratification. That it would be ratified she had no doubt, +but she recognized the responsibility facing the North to provide for +the education and rehabilitation of thousands of homeless bewildered +Negroes trying to make their way in a still unfriendly world, and she +looked forward to taking part in this work.</p> + +<p>Beyond Chicago, where she stopped over to visit her uncle Albert +Dickinson and his family, her journey was rugged, and when she reached +Leavenworth she reveled in the comfort of Daniel's "neat, little, +snow-white cottage with green blinds." She liked Daniel's wife, Annie, +at once, admired her gaiety and the way she fearlessly drove her +beautiful black horse across the prairie. "They have a real 'Aunt +Chloe' in the kitchen," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "and a little Darkie +boy for errands and table waiter. I never saw a girl to match. The +more I see of the race, the more wonderful they are to me."<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p> + +<p>There was always good companionship in Daniel's home, for friends from +both the East and the West found it a convenient stopping place, and +there was much discussion of politics, the Negro question, and the +future of the West. Business was booming in Leavenworth, then the most +thriving town between St. Louis and San Francisco. Eight years before, +when Daniel had first settled there, it boasted a population of 4,000. +Now it had grown to 22,000, was lighted with gas, and was building its +business blocks of brick. As Susan drove through the busy streets with +Annie, she saw emigrants<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> coming in by steamer and train to settle in +Kansas and watched for the covered wagons that almost every day +stopped in Leavenworth for supplies before moving on to the far West. +Driving over the wide prairie, sometimes a warm brown, then again +white with snow under a wider expanse of deep blue sky than she had +ever seen before, she relaxed as she had not in many a year and began +to feel the call of the West. She even thought she might like to +settle in Kansas until she was caught up by the sharp realization of +how she would miss the stimulating companionship of her friends in the +East.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 314px;"> +<img src="images/110.jpg" width="314" height="450" alt="Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>When Daniel was busy with his campaign for his second term as mayor, +she helped him edit the <i>Bulletin</i>. He warned her not to fill his +paper up with woman's rights, and in spite of his sympathy for the +Negro, forbade her to advocate Negro suffrage in his paper.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could talk through it the things I'd like to say to the +young martyr state ..." she wrote Mrs. Stanton. "The Legislature gave +but six votes for Negro suffrage the other day.... The idea of Kansas +refusing her loyal Negroes."</p> + +<p>Again and again she was shocked at the prejudice against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Negroes in +Kansas, as when Daniel employed a Negro typesetter and the printers, +refusing to admit him to their union, went out on strike until he was +discharged.</p> + +<p>"In this city," she reported to Mrs. Stanton, "there are four thousand +ex-Missouri slaves who have sought refuge here within the three past +years." Making it her business to learn what was being done to help +them and educate them, she visited their schools, their Sunday +schools, and the Colored Home, and gave much of her time to them. To +encourage them to demand their rights, she organized an Equal Rights +League among them. This was one thing she could do, even if she could +not plead for Negro suffrage in Daniel's newspaper.<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p> + +<p>Then one breath-taking piece of news followed another—Lee's +surrender, April 9, 1865, and in less than a week, Lincoln's +assassination, his death, and Andrew Johnson's succession to the +Presidency.</p> + +<p>Susan looked upon Lincoln's assassination and death as an act of God. +She wrote to Mrs. Stanton, "Was there ever a more terrific command to +a Nation to 'stand still and know that I am God' since the world +began? The Old Book's terrible exhibitions of God's wrath sink into +nothingness. And this fell blow just at the very hour he was declaring +his willingness to consign those five million faithful, brave, and +loving loyal people of the South to the tender mercies of the ex-slave +lords of the lash."<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p> + +<p>She longed "to go out and do battle for the Lord once more," but when +she could have expressed her opinions at the big mass meeting held in +memory of Lincoln, she remained silent. "My soul was full," she +confessed to Mrs. Stanton, "but the flesh not equal to stemming the +awful current, to do what the people have called make an exhibition of +myself. So quenched the spirit and came home ashamed of myself."</p> + +<p>Then she added, "Dear-a-me—how overfull I am, and how I should like +to be nestled into some corner away from every chick and child with +you once more."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Disturbing news came from the East of dissension in the antislavery +ranks, of Garrison's desire to dissolve the American Antislavery +Society after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> and of +Phillips' insistence that it continue until freedom for the Negro was +firmly established. While Garrison maintained that northern states, +denying the ballot to the Negro, could not consistently make Negro +suffrage a requirement for readmitting rebel states to the Union, +Phillips demanded Negro suffrage as a condition of readmission. +Immediately abolitionists took sides. Parker Pillsbury, Lydia and +Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Anna E. Dickinson, the Stantons, +and others lined up with Phillips, whose vehement and scathing +criticism of reconstruction policies seemed to them the need of the +hour. Susan also took sides, praising "dear ever glorious Phillips" +and writing in her diary, "The disbanding of the American Antislavery +Society is fully as untimely as General Grant's and Sherman's granting +parole and pardon to the whole Rebel armies."<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></p> + +<p>To her friends in the East, she wrote, "How can anyone hold that +Congress has no right to demand Negro suffrage in the returning Rebel +states because it is not already established in all the loyal ones? +What would have been said of Abolitionists ten or twenty years ago, +had they preached to the people that Congress had no right to vote +against admitting a new state with slavery, because it was not already +abolished in all the old States? It is perfectly astounding, this +seeming eagerness of so many of our old friends to cover up and +apologize for the glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the +manhood of the black race."<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a></p> + +<p>She rejoiced when word came that the American Antislavery Society +would continue under the presidency of Phillips, with Parker Pillsbury +as editor of the <i>Antislavery Standard</i>; but she was saddened by the +withdrawal of Garrison, whom she had idolized for so many years and +whose editorials in the <i>Liberator</i> had always been her +inspiration.<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a></p> + +<p>As she read the weekly New York <i>Tribune</i>, which came regularly to +Daniel, she grew more and more concerned over President Johnson's +reconstruction policy and more and more convinced of the need of a +crusade for political and civil rights for the Negro. Asked to deliver +the Fourth of July oration at Ottumwa, Kansas, she decided to put into +it all her views on the controversial subject of reconstruction.</p> + +<p>Traveling by stage the 125 miles to Ottumwa, she found good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> company +en route and "great talk on politics, Negro equality, and temperance," +and thought the "grand old prairies ... perfectly splendid and the +timber-skirted creeks ... delightful."<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p> + +<p>Before a large gathering of Kansas pioneers, many of whom had driven +forty or fifty miles to hear her, she stood tall, straight, and +earnest, as she reminded them of the noble heritage of Kansas, of the +bloody years before the war when in the free-state fight, Kansas men +and women "taught the nation anew" the principles of the Declaration +of Independence. Lashing out with the vehemence of Phillips against +President Johnson's reconstruction policy, she warned, "There has been +no hour fraught with so much danger as the present.... To be foiled +now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories and to +re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of Negro disfranchisement ... +would be a disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath +to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars...."<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></p> + +<p>She then cited the results of the elections in Virginia, South +Carolina, and Tennessee to prove her point that unless Negroes were +given the vote, rebels would be put in office and a new code of laws +apprenticing Negroes passed, establishing a new form of slavery.</p> + +<p>She urged her audience to be awake to the politicians who were using +the peoples' reverence and near idolatry of Lincoln to push through +anti-Negro legislation under the guise of carrying out his policies. +Then putting behind her the prejudice and impatience with Lincoln +which she had felt during his lifetime, she added, "If the +administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people one +lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and +proclaim, and that he as their President was bound to execute their +will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he +did four years ago, 'I wait the voice of the people.'"</p> + +<p>In her special pleading for the Negro, she did not forget women. +Calling attention to the fact that our nation had never been a true +republic because the ballot was exclusively in the hands of the "free +white male," she asked for a government "of the people," men and +women, white and black, with Negro suffrage and woman suffrage as +basic requirements.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 341px;"> +<img src="images/114.jpg" width="341" height="450" alt="Wendell Phillips" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Wendell Phillips</span> +</div> + +<p>So enthusiastic were the Republicans over her speech that they urged +her to prepare it for publication, suggesting, however, that she +delete the passage on woman suffrage. This was her first intimation +that Republicans might balk at enfranchising women. So great had been +women's contribution to the winning of the war and so indebted were +the Republicans to women for creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, that she had come to expect, along with Mrs. Stanton, that +the ballot would without question be given them as a reward.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>It was soon obvious to Susan that politicians in the East as well as +in Kansas were shying away from woman suffrage. Mrs. Stanton reported +that even Wendell Phillips was backsliding, not wishing to campaign +for Negro suffrage and woman suffrage at the same time. "While I could +continue as heretofore, arguing for woman's rights, just as I do for +temperance every day," he had written, "still I would not mix the +movements.... I think such mixture would lose for the Negro far more +than we should gain for the woman. I am now engaged in abolishing +slavery in a land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> where the abolition of slavery means conferring or +recognizing citizenship, and where citizenship supposes the ballot for +all men."<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p> + +<p>Such reasoning filled Susan with despair, for she firmly believed that +women who had been asking for full citizenship for seventeen years +deserved precedence over the Negro. Mrs. Stanton agreed. To them, +Negro suffrage without woman suffrage was unthinkable, an unbearable +humiliation. Half of the Negroes were women, and manhood suffrage +would fasten upon them a new form of slavery. How could Wendell +Phillips, they asked each other, fail to recognize not only the +timeliness of woman suffrage, but the fact that women were better +qualified for the ballot than the majority of Negroes, who, because of +their years in slavery, were illiterate and the easy prey of +unscrupulous politicians? By all means enfranchise Negroes, they +argued with him, but enfranchise women as well, and if there must be a +limitation on suffrage, let it be on the basis of literacy, not on the +basis of sex.</p> + +<p>Among Republican members of Congress and abolitionists, there was +serious discussion of a Fourteenth Amendment to extend to the Negro +civil rights and the ballot. Susan, reading about this in Kansas, and +Mrs. Stanton, discussing it in New York with her husband, Wendell +Phillips, and Robert Dale Owen, saw in such a revision of the +Constitution a just and logical opportunity to extend woman's rights +at the same time. Previously committed to state action on woman +suffrage but only because it had then seemed the necessary first step, +both women welcomed the more direct road offered by an amendment to +the Constitution. Only they of all the old woman's rights workers were +awake to this opportunity.</p> + +<p>Throughout the United States, people were thinking about the +Constitution as Americans had not done since the Bill of Rights was +ratified in 1791. Not only were amendments to the federal Constitution +in the air, not only were rebel states being readmitted to the Union +with new constitutions, but state constitutions in the North were +being revised, and western territories sought statehood. In Susan's +opinion the time was ripe to proclaim equal rights for all. This +clearly was woman's hour.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"Come back and help," pleaded Elizabeth Stanton, who grew more and +more alarmed as she saw all interest in woman suffrage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> crowded out of +the minds of reformers by their zeal for the Negro. "I have argued +constantly with Phillips and the whole fraternity, but I fear one and +all will favor enfranchising the Negro without us. Woman's cause is in +deep water.... There is pressing need of our woman's rights +convention...."<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></p> + +<p>Susan's spirits revived at the prospect of holding a woman's rights +convention, and plans for the future began to take shape as she read +the closing lines of Mrs. Stanton's letter: "I hope in a short time to +be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready +for you.... I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you +scold me for all my sins and shortcomings.... Oh, Susan, you are very +dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this +earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and +all my future plans are based on you as coadjutor. Yes, our work is +one, we are one in aim and sympathy and should be together. Come +home."</p> + +<p>Parker Pillsbury also added his plea, "Why have you deserted the field +of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost +twenty centuries?... It is not for me to decide your field of labor. +Kansas needed John Brown and may need you ... but New York is to +revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is to +make the plea for woman?"</p> + +<p>Reading her newspaper a few days later, she found that the politicians +had made their first move, introducing in the House of Representatives +a resolution writing the word "male" into the qualifications of voters +in the second section of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. She +started at once for the East.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>On the long journey back, in the heat of August, traveling by stage +and railroad with many stops to make the necessary connections, Susan +not only visited her many relatives who had moved to the West, but +also called on antislavery and woman suffrage workers, and held +meetings to plead for free schools for Negroes and for the ballot for +Negroes and women. She found people relieved to have the war over and +busy with their own affairs, but with prejudices smoldering. Public +speaking was still an ordeal for her and she confessed to her diary, +"Made a labored talk.... Had a struggle to get through with speech," +and again, "Had a hard time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Thoughts nor words would come—Staggered +through."<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> However, she was a determined woman. The message must +be carried to the people and she would do it whether she suffered in +the process or not.</p> + +<p>Late in September, she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester, +but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few +weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton, deep in a serious +discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for woman suffrage +at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this +time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now +passed since the last national woman's rights convention, and the +workers were scattered; some had lost interest and others thought only +of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker +Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of +the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with +Lucy, confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with +her.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a></p> + +<p>Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey Fund, she went to New England +to revive interest there and in Concord talked with the Emersons, +Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he +thought it wise to demand woman suffrage at this time, he replied, +"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide +for me in practical matters." Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with +Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise +women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same +time.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a></p> + +<p>Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and woman +suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the +petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a +verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to +face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she +was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton +went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage +would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures.</p> + +<p>However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in +January 1866—the very first demand ever made for Congressional action +on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> women had rolled up +400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under +protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, +who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and +Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever +zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by +Elizabeth Cady Stanton.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p> + +<p>By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful +Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically +friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves +wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's +influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her +only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional +recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, +not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found +James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to +present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was +regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now +advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she +herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate +as well as in the House—a few because they saw justice in the demands +of the women, others because they believed white women should have +political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw +in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the +Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000 +signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and +Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had +found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young +editor of the <i>Independent</i>. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and +the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his +flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had +winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had +proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights +group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would +fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell +Phillips he suggested for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> president, and the <i>Antislavery Standard</i> +as the paper of the new organization.</p> + +<p>This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to +Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult +Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips, +however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of +amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before +any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually +oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but +when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May +1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society, +she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union +had been given to the members of the antislavery group and therefore +there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal +Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the woman's +rights convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the +Negro. To her this seemed a natural development as she had always +thought of woman's rights as part of the larger struggle for human +rights.</p> + +<p>"For twenty years," she declared, "we have pressed the claims of women +to the right of representation in the government.... Up to this hour +we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; +but now by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage +reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress +at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation +in a republican form of government.</p> + +<p>"There is, there can be, but one true basis," she continued. "Taxation +and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go +beyond woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights +platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human +rights platform."<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p> + +<p>The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their +own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical +experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton with all their hearts +wanted this experiment to succeed, and yet as they resolved their +woman's rights organization into the American Equal Rights +Association, they were apprehensive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p> + +<p>They did not have to wait long for disillusionment. Meeting Wendell +Phillips and Theodore Tilton in the office of the <i>Antislavery +Standard</i> to plan a campaign for the Equal Rights Association, they +discussed with them what should be done in New York, preparatory to +the revision of the state constitution. Emphatically Wendell Phillips +declared that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of +the constitution, but not the word "male." That could come, he added, +when the constitution was next revised, some twenty or thirty years +later. To their astonishment, Theodore Tilton heartily agreed. Then he +added, "The question of striking out the word 'male,' we as an equal +rights association shall of course present as an intellectual theory, +but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention." +Completely unprepared for such an attitude on Tilton's part, Susan +retorted with indignation, "I would sooner cut off my right hand than +ask for the ballot for the black man and not for woman." Then telling +the two men just what she thought of them for their betrayal of women, +she swept out of the office to keep another appointment.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></p> + +<p>Equally exasperated with these men, Mrs. Stanton stayed on, hoping to +heal the breach, but when Susan returned to the Stanton home that +evening, she found her highly indignant, declaring she was through +boosting the Negro over her own head. Then and there they vowed that +they would devote themselves with all their might and main to woman +suffrage and to that alone.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>By this time, Congress had passed a civil rights bill over President +Johnson's veto, conferring the rights of citizenship upon freedmen, +and a Fourteenth Amendment to make these rights permanent was now +before Congress. The latest developments regarding the various drafts +of the Fourteenth Amendment were passed along to Susan and Mrs. +Stanton by Robert Dale Owen. Senator Sumner, he reported, had yielded +to party pressure and now supported the Fourteenth Amendment, although +in the past he had always maintained such an amendment wholly +unnecessary since there was already enough justice, liberty, and +equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen. Senator +Sumner opposed and defeated a clause in the amendment referring to +"race" and "color," words which had never previously been mentioned +in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> the Constitution, but he raised no serious objection to the +introduction of the word "male" as a qualification for suffrage, which +was also unprecedented. That he tried time and time again to avoid the +word "male" when he was redrafting the amendment or that Thaddeus +Stevens tried to substitute "legal voters" for "male citizens" was no +comfort to Susan and Mrs. Stanton, as they saw the Fourteenth +Amendment writing discrimination against women into the federal +Constitution for the first time.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p> + +<p>As they carefully read over the first section of the Fourteenth +Amendment, which conferred citizenship on every person born or +naturalized in the United States, women's rights seemed assured:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and +subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the +United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State +shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the +privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; +nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or +property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person +within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Then in the controversial second section which provided the penalty of +reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes +of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by +the words, "male inhabitants" and "male citizens," used to define +legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single +word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise +arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere +abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to +women, there was no doubt.</p> + +<p>With determination, Susan and Mrs. Stanton fought this injustice. Were +they not "persons born ... in the United States," they asked. Were +they forever to be regarded as children or as lower than persons, +along with criminals, idiots, and the insane? Were women not counted +in the basis of representation and should they not have a voice in the +election of those representatives whose office their numbers helped to +establish?</p> + +<p>As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of +suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the +right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the +Fourteenth Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and +limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional, she +reasoned, when the first lines of the Constitution read, "We, the +people of the United States, in order to ... establish justice ... and +secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do +ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of +America." Of course "the people" must include women, if the English +language meant what it said.</p> + +<p>The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by +Congress and referred to the states for ratification in June 1866. As +never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the +unimportance of women. Once more politicians and reformers had ignored +women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's +intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman +of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the +Fourteenth Amendment's broad term of "persons." Yet according to +statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling, +both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the +possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property +of individuals from the interference of state and municipal +legislation, through the federal control extended by this amendment. +At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have +received abundant protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, along +with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a></p> + +<p>Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage +could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it +were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was +all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but +neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They +knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South +the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and +could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured +of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be +considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would +vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> + +<p>Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican +party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican, +Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the +watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each +and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any +distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate +floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking +out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He +stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and +although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud +the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the +three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two +issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a +separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas +objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it +with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his +approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's +amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine +votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p> + +<p>Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had +for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had +treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing +definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York +<i>Tribune</i>. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry +from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the +ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the +glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against +woman suffrage and the <i>Antislavery Standard</i> avoiding the subject as +if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached +the public.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a></p> + +<p>It was hard for Susan to forgive the <i>Antislavery Standard</i> for what +she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed +allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest +Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading +men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and +Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> Negro, were willing +to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage +at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the +Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of +political parties.</p> + +<p>Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the +antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one +temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was +the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own +claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. +Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha +C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John +Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the +ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not +criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure +am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the +country can be saved, is that of <span class="smcap lowercase">WOMAN</span>, that I want to ask you ... to +use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has +taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the +charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he +speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect +and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove +expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point +again."<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a></p> + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="TIMES_THAT_TRIED_WOMENS_SOULS" id="TIMES_THAT_TRIED_WOMENS_SOULS"></a>TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS</h2> + + +<p>Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She +carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to +the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights +Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, +many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she +hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. +She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the +amendment as "utterly inadequate."<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a></p> + +<p>This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's +constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for +writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an +interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was +more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this +convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the +<i>Tribune</i> to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he +emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that +measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This +is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a></p> + +<p>Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his +opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in +all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly +respected George William Curtis, now editor of <i>Harper's Magazine</i> and +also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and +Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped +mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of +signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, +and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the +right of suffrage.</p> + +<p>Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's +hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness +answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading +consternation among them by declaring that women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> would eventually +serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable +to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot +and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two +women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan +replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war—at the +point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she +reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought +in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and +paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a></p> + +<p>Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his +oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to +vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in +Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had +complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, +should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed +he would do.<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p> + +<p>In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over +their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many +reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. +Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William +Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in +my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, +citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from +the Constitution."<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a></p> + +<p>Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily +took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, +looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky +voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your +committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to +women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only +male citizens.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a></p> + +<p>Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter +to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom +that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the +governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and +practically all agreed in the conclusion that <i>the women of our state +do not choose to vote</i>. Individuals do, at least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> three fourths of the +sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in +favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The +few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the +situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to +me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto +existed...."<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a></p> + +<p>Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating +him in the constitutional convention or for the headlines in the +evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's +petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of +Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly +greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most +maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for +help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas, where in November +1867 two amendments would be voted upon, enfranchising women and +Negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare +Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak +throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy, as trustees of the Jackson +Fund, outvoting Wendell Phillips, were able to appropriate $1,500 for +this campaign.</p> + +<p>Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas, where +she and her husband, Henry Blackwell, were winning many friends for +the cause. "I fully expect we shall carry the State," Lucy confidently +wrote Susan. "The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past +all expression if they don't get the right to vote.... But the Negroes +are all against us.... These men <i>ought not to be allowed to vote +before we do</i>, because they will be just so much dead weight to +lift."<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p> + +<p>One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to +withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had +sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York <i>Tribune</i> and +the <i>Independent</i>, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word +favorable to woman suffrage, for these two papers with their influence +and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women +not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the +Republican press<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> changed from indifference to outright animosity, +striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them "free lovers," +because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as +Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful, believing the +Democrats were ready to take them up, but she reminded Susan, "It will +be necessary to have a good force here in the fall, and you will have +to come."</p> + +<p>Never for a moment did the importance of this election in Kansas +escape Susan, and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart +Mill, who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas woman +suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November +give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, history will +remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been +the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over +the earth and to be looked back to ... as one of the most fertile in +beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human +affairs."<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a></p> + +<p>Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman suffrage just as it +had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held +back. Her first problem, however, was to raise the money to get +herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson Fund +had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan, who +most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they +returned to the East. Olympia Brown, recently graduated from Antioch +College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist church, was a +new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable, she reached every +part of Kansas during the summer, driving over the prairies with the +Singing Hutchinsons.<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p> + +<p>Olympia Brown's valiant help made waiting in New York easier for Susan +as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the +Jackson Fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision; and the +trustees of the Hovey Fund, established to further the rights of both +Negroes and women, refused to finance a woman suffrage campaign in +Kansas.</p> + +<p>"We are left without a dollar," she wrote State Senator Samuel N. +Wood. "Every speaker who goes to Kansas must <i>now pay her own</i> +expenses out of her own private purse, unless money should come from +some unexpected source. I shall run the risk—as I told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> you—and draw +upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not +contract <i>debts</i> under the impression that <i>our</i> Association can pay +for them—<i>for it cannot</i>."<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a></p> + +<p>She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently +needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and +down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough +to pay the printer for 60,000 tracts, with the result that along with +the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore +Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went +advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and +patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to +attract the people of Kansas.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time +to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to +Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for +several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to +Kansas.</p> + +<p>On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a +congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new +experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest, +most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable +daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by +solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two +good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for +many a day.</p> + +<p>As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week +speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs. +Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the +meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary, +distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech +herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage +and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda +or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan +wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors" +out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p> + +<p>Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> as when +they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by +Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman, +had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a +rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly. +Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough +cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and +a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.... +Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very +scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that +great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings, +and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our +railroad fare—eight cents per mile—and hotel bills. Our collections +thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully +disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas +meetings."<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a></p> + +<p>The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win +her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years +which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old +maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke +down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender +energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin +to that of the frontiersman.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm. +The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a +brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a +queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully +curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor +built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager +to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her.</p> + +<p>This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She +sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small +towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular +and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State +Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In +the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the +campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine, +against which the continued support<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> of a few prominent Kansas +Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican, +the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up +as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and +woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought +women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the +liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against +votes for women.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the +Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage +Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in +Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he +telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own +expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy, +eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad, +Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she +herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the +women want you";<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> and he came into the state in a burst of glory, +speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences. +A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily +dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers, +patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth +driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment +they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of +his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none +of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous +sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the +day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences +held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When +he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were +building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman +suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when +he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who +throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother, +his daughter, his sister, and his wife."<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 314px;"> +<img src="images/132.jpg" width="314" height="450" alt="George Francis Train" title="" /> +<span class="caption">George Francis Train</span> +</div> + +<p>At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling +Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and +eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in +Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make +last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support +both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a +<i>Tribune</i> editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that +the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard +it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. +She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women +have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really +desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them +the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would +conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, +rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of +their husbands and fathers...."<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p> + +<p>These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in +Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> her back on such +fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously. +When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train +on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred +at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it +alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued +with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber +wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest +settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, +traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not +at all, unconventional though it was.</p> + +<p>She took charge of the meetings, opening them herself with a short +sincere plea for both the woman and Negro suffrage amendments, and +then she introduced George Francis Train, who, no matter how late they +arrived or how tiring the day, had changed his wrinkled gray traveling +suit for his resplendent platform costume. The expectant crowd never +failed to respond with a gasp of surprise, and immediately the fun +began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them, calling +for their support of woman suffrage and advocating as well some of his +own pet ideas, such as freeing Ireland from British oppression, paying +our national debt in greenbacks, establishing an eight-hour day in +industry, and even nominating himself for President.</p> + +<p>Amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit, Susan found +neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by +opponents of woman suffrage. As the days went by with their continued +hardships and increasing fatigue, she marveled at his unfailing +courteousness, his pluck, and good cheer, while he in turn admired her +courage, her endurance, and her zeal for her cause, and between them a +bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed +by the pressures of later years.</p> + +<p>During the long hours on the road, he entertained her with the story +of his life and his travels, an adventure story of a poor boy who had +made good. Building clipper ships, introducing American goods in +Australia, traveling in India, China, and Russia, promoting street +railways in England, and now building the Union Pacific, he had a +wealth of information to impart.</p> + +<p>Their views on the Negro differed sharply. Rating the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> race as +inferior and incapable of improvement, he naturally opposed +enfranchising Negroes before women. She, on the other hand, had always +regarded Negroes as her equals, and in campaigning with Train, she had +to make her choice between Negroes and women. She chose women, just as +her abolitionist friends in the East had chosen the Negro; and their +indifference and opposition to woman suffrage at this crucial time was +as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them. They +called him a Copperhead, remembering his southern wife and his hatred +of abolitionists, his vocal resistance to the draft, and his demands +for immediate unconditional peace. They ignored entirely his defense +of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated +with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy. They abused him in +their newspapers and he, not to be outdone, ridiculed them in his +speeches, shouting, "Where is Wendell Phillips, today? Lost caste +everywhere. Inconsistent in all things, cowardly in this. Where is +Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty? Pitching the woman +suffrage idea out of the Convention and bailing out Jeff Davis. Where +is William Lloyd Garrison? Being patted on the shoulders by his +employers, our enemies abroad, for his faithful work in trying to +destroy our nation. Where is Henry Ward Beecher? Writing a story for +Bonner's Ledger...."<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p> + +<p>They never forgave him this estimate of them, nor did they forgive +Susan for associating herself with him.</p> + +<p>On one of the last days of the Kansas campaign, while she was driving +over the prairie with him, he suddenly asked her why the woman +suffrage people did not have a paper of their own. "Not lack of +brains, but lack of money," she tersely replied.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p> + +<p>They talked for a while about the good such a paper would do, about +the people who should edit and write for it, what name it should have. +Then he said simply, "I will give you the money."</p> + +<p>Because a woman suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so +many years, she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant +gesture soon to be forgotten; but to her amazement that very evening +she heard Train announce to his audience, "When Miss Anthony gets back +to New York, she is going to start a woman suffrage paper. Its name is +to be <i>The Revolution</i>: its motto, 'Men their rights, and nothing +more; women, their rights and nothing less.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> This paper is to be a +weekly, price $2. per year; its editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and +Parker Pillsbury; its proprietor, Susan B. Anthony. Let everybody +subscribe for it!"</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Election day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth, +to Daniel's home, to learn the verdict of the people of Kansas. As the +returns came in, their hope of seeing Kansas become the first woman +suffrage state quickly faded. Neither their amendment nor the Negroes' +polled enough votes for adoption. Their woman suffrage amendment, +however, received only 1,773 votes less than the Republican-sponsored +Negro amendment, and to have accomplished this in a hard-fought bitter +campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves +and in their judgment of men and events. No longer need they depend +upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance. From +now on they would chart their own course. This led, they believed, to +Washington, where they must gain support among members of Congress for +a federal woman suffrage amendment. Few, if any, Republicans would +help them, but already one Democrat had come forward. George Francis +Train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a +lecture tour on their way East. To Susan, who had to raise every penny +spent in her work, this seemed like an answer to prayer, as did his +proposal to finance a woman suffrage paper for them.</p> + +<p>By this time their abolitionist friends in the East were writing them +indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on George +Francis Train and warning them not to link woman suffrage with an +unbalanced charlatan. Even their devoted friends in Kansas, including +Governor Robinson, advised them against further association with +Train.</p> + +<p>They did not make their decision lightly, nor was it easy to go +against the judgment of respected friends, but of this they were +confident—that with or without Train, they would estrange most of +their old friends if they campaigned for woman suffrage now. Without +him, their work, limited by lack of funds, would be ineffectual. With +his financial backing, they not only had the opportunity of spreading +their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New +York, but had the promise of a paper, now so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> desperately needed when +other news channels were closed to them. That Train was eccentric they +agreed, and they also admitted that possibly some of his financial +theories were unsound. They believed he was ahead of his time when he +advocated the eight-hour day and the abolition of standing armies; but +at least he looked forward, not backward. Susan had found him to be a +man of high principles. She had heard him "make speeches on woman's +suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> the +well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb +her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil +War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of +conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train +probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. +Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his +generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced.</p> + +<p>For Susan there was only one choice—to work for woman suffrage with +the financial backing of Train. Mrs. Stanton agreed, and as she +expressed it, "I have always found that when we see eye to eye, we are +sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong.... I take +my beloved Susan's judgment against the world."<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Traveling homeward with George Francis Train, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +spoke in Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, +Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Hartford, and other important cities where +they drew large crowds, which had never before listened to a +discussion of woman suffrage. Most of their old friends among the +suffragists and abolitionists shunned them, for they had been warned +against this folly by their colleagues in the East. The lively +meetings rated plenty of publicity, complimentary in the Democratic +papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press. Usually +"Woman Suffrage" got the headlines, but sometimes it was "Woman +Suffrage and Greenbacks" or "Train for President." Handbills, the +printing of which Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and +epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all +meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also +arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, <i>The +Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas</i>, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> this jingle, so +uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, on its cover:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Garrisons, Phillipses, Greeleys, and Beechers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">False prophets, false guides, false teachers and preachers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Brown, and Stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To fight the Kansas battle alone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While your Rosses, Pomeroys, and your Clarkes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood on the fence, or basely fled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While woman was saved by a Copperhead.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists were +the back-page advertisements of a new woman-suffrage paper, <i>The +Revolution</i>, and of woman's rights tracts which could be purchased +from Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the American Equal Rights +Association. That Susan would presume to line up this organization in +any way with George Francis Train aroused the indignation of Lucy +Stone, who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust. While Susan +and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward, enjoying the comfort of the best +hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences, a coalition against +them was being formed in the East.</p> + +<p>"All the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong," +Susan wrote in her diary, January 1, 1868. "Only time can tell, but I +believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_ONE_WORD_OF_THE_HOUR" id="THE_ONE_WORD_OF_THE_HOUR"></a>THE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR</h2> + + +<p>"If we women fail to speak the <i>one word</i> of the hour," Susan wrote +Anna E. Dickinson, "who shall do it? No man is able, for no man sees +or feels as we do. To whom God gives the word, to him or her he says, +'Go preach it.'"<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a></p> + +<p>This is just what Susan aimed to do in her new paper, <i>The +Revolution</i>. It's name, she believed, expressed exactly the stirring +up of thought necessary to establish justice for all—for women, +Negroes, workingmen and-women, and all who were oppressed. Her two +editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, reliable friends +as well as vivid forceful writers, were completely in sympathy with +her own liberal ideas and could be counted on to crusade fearlessly +for every righteous cause. What did it matter if George Francis Train +wanted space in the paper to publish his views and for a financial +column, edited by David M. Melliss of the New York <i>World</i>? Brought up +on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and +where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their +opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of <i>The Revolution</i> to +Train and to Melliss in return for financial backing.</p> + +<p>When on January 8, 1868, the first issue of her paper came off the +press, her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction as she turned +over its pages, read its good editorials, and under the frank of +Democratic Congressman James Brooks of New York, sent out ten thousand +copies to all parts of the country.</p> + +<p><i>The Revolution</i> promised to discuss not only subjects which were of +particular concern to her and to Elizabeth Stanton, such as "educated +suffrage, irrespective of sex or color," equal pay for women for equal +work, and practical education for girls as well as boys, but also the +eight-hour day, labor problems, and a new financial policy for +America. This new financial policy, the dream of George Francis Train, +advocated the purchase of American goods only; the encouragement of +immigration to rebuild the South and to settle the country from ocean +to ocean; the establishment of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> French financing systems, the +Crédit Foncier and Crédit Mobilier, to develop our mines and +railroads; the issuing of greenbacks; and penny ocean postage "to +strengthen the brotherhood of Labor."</p> + +<p>All in all it was not a program with wide appeal. Dazzled by the +opportunities for making money in this new undeveloped country, people +were in no mood to analyze the social order, or to consider the needs +of women or labor or the living standards of the masses. Unfamiliar +with the New York Stock Exchange, they found little to interest them +in the paper's financial department, while speculators and promoters, +such as Jay Gould and Jim Fiske, wanted no advice from the lone eagle, +George Francis Train, and resented Melliss's columns of Wall Street +gossip which often portrayed them in an unfavorable light. Nor did a +public-affairs paper edited and published by women carry much weight. +None of this, however, mattered much to Susan, who did not aim for a +popular paper but "to make public sentiment." It was her hope that +just as the <i>Liberator</i> under William Lloyd Garrison had been "the +pillar of light and of fire to the slave's emancipation," so <i>The +Revolution</i> would become "the guiding star to the enfranchisement of +women."<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Upon Susan fell the task of building up subscriptions, soliciting +advertisements, and getting copy to the printer. As her office in the +New York <i>World</i> building, 37 Park Row, was on the fourth floor and +the printer was several blocks away on the fifth floor of a building +without an elevator, her job proved to be a test of physical +endurance. To this was added an ever-increasing financial burden, for +Train had sailed for England when the first number was issued, had +been arrested because of his Irish sympathies, and had spent months in +a Dublin jail, from which he sent them his thoughts on every +conceivable subject but no money for the paper. He had left $600 with +Susan and had instructed Melliss to make payments as needed, but this +soon became impossible, and she had to face the alarming fact that, if +the paper were to continue, she must raise the necessary money +herself. Because the circulation was small, it was hard to get +advertisers, particularly as she was firm in her determination to +accept only advertisements of products she could recommend. Patent +medicines and any questionable products were ruled out. Subscriptions +came in encouragingly but in no sense met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the deficit which piled up +unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers.</p> + +<p>She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally +from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed +the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman +suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got +to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up." +Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her +that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the +last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because +he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was +"sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he +nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The +first member of the House to put his name on her list was her +dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many +others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President +Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons +and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was +powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her +request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every +day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he +had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr. +Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years +have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to +women as well as to Negroes, and by means of <i>The Revolution</i> we are +bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a +thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights." +This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and +in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say, +"Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a></p> + +<p>She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more +readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably +small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the +articles stimulating.</p> + +<p>Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments +and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> he was not +in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their +ruthless intrigue and disregard of the public. During the turbulent +days when the impeachment trial was front-page news everywhere, <i>The +Revolution</i> proclaimed it as a political maneuver of the Republicans +to confuse the people and divert their attention from more important +issues, such as corruption in government, high prices, taxation, and +the fabulous wealth being amassed by the few. This of course roused +the intense disapproval of Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, and +Horace Greeley, all of whom regarded Johnson as a traitor and shouted +for impeachment. It ran counter to the views of Susan's brother +Daniel, who telegraphed Senator Ross of Kansas demanding his vote for +impeachment. Although no supporter of President Johnson, Susan was now +completely awake to the political manipulations of the radical +Republicans and what seemed to her their readiness to sacrifice the +good of the nation for the success of their party. She repudiated them +all—all but the rugged Ben Wade, always true to woman suffrage, and +the tall handsome Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who, she believed, +stood for justice and equality.</p> + +<p>Both of these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the +Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the +Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked <i>The +Revolution</i>, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is +not too late, if true men and women will do their duty, to make an +honest man like Ben Wade, President. Let us save the Nation. As to the +Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of +Heaven the better."<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> Later when Chase was out of the running among +Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, <i>The +Revolution</i> urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal +suffrage as his slogan.</p> + +<p>Susan demanded civil rights, suffrage, education, and farms for the +Negroes as did the Republicans, but she could not overlook the +political corruption which was flourishing under the military control +of the South, and she recognized that the Republicans' insistence on +Negro suffrage in the South did not stem solely from devotion to a +noble principle, but also from an overwhelming desire to insure +victory for their party in the coming election. These views were +reflected editorially in <i>The Revolution</i>, which, calling attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +to the fact that Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and +Pennsylvania had refused to enfranchise their Negroes, asked why Negro +suffrage should be forced on the South before it was accepted in the +North.</p> + +<p>The Fourteenth Amendment was having hard sledding and <i>The Revolution</i> +repudiated it, calling instead for an amendment granting universal +suffrage, or in other words, suffrage for women and Negroes. <i>The +Revolution</i> also discussed in editorials by Mrs. Stanton other +subjects of interest to women, such as marriage, divorce, +prostitution, and infanticide, all of which Susan agreed needed frank +thoughtful consideration, but which other papers handled with kid +gloves.</p> + +<p>In still another unpopular field, that of labor and capital, <i>The +Revolution</i> also pioneered fearlessly, asking for shorter hours and +lower wages for workers, as it pointed out labor's valuable +contribution to the development of the country. It also called +attention to the vicious contrasts in large cities, where many lived +in tumbledown tenements in abject poverty while the few, with more +wealth than they knew what to do with, spent lavishly and built +themselves palaces.</p> + +<p>Sentiments such as these increased the indignation of Susan's critics, +but she gloried in the output of her two courageous editors just as +she had gloried in the evangelistic zeal of the antislavery crusaders. +Wisely, however, she added to her list of contributors some of the +popular women writers of the day, among them Alice and Phoebe Cary. +She ran a series of articles on women as farmers, machinists, +inventors, and dentists, secured news from foreign correspondents, +mostly from England, and published a Washington letter and woman's +rights news from the states. Believing that women should become +acquainted with the great women of the past, especially those who +fought for their freedom and advancement, she printed an article on +Frances Wright and serialized Mary Wollstonecraft's <i>A Vindication of +the Rights of Women</i>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the +press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York <i>Tribune</i> +completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the +<i>Antislavery Standard</i>. The New York <i>Times</i> ridiculed as usual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York +<i>Home Journal</i> called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some +of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the +Congregationalist paper, <i>The Independent</i>, commented in his usual +facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor +unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "<i>The Revolution</i> from +the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its +friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." +Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights +paper," declared the Troy (New York) <i>Times</i>, "is a realistic, +well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical +execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago +<i>Workingman's Advocate</i> observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an +able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the +Cincinnati <i>Commercial</i>, one of the few women journalists, described +sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable <i>Revolution</i> +office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the +determined—the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or +Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, +Susan."<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a></p> + +<p>While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with +Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's +harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret +and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their +senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be +associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," +George Francis Train. She published his letter in <i>The Revolution</i> +with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often +the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had +welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed +in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of +fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and +pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for +burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With +such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her +right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did +for woman suffrage.<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a></p> + +<p>None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> or upon +Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives +wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to +understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright, +who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of +<i>The Revolution</i>, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me +now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 422px;"> +<img src="images/144.jpg" width="422" height="450" alt="Anna E. Dickinson" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Anna E. Dickinson</span> +</div> + +<p>Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson, +with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft +hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps +of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually +burst into the <i>Revolution</i> office, showered Susan with kisses, and +carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that +the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her +stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very +becoming on her short black curls.</p> + +<p>Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters" +at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East +Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships +of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> such +financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely +past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was +sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign +speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in +attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen +her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign, +but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be +"the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and +civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even +now be that "evangel."<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the +officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used +the Association's office as a base for business connected with the +Train lecture tour and the establishment of <i>The Revolution</i>. She was +also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own +projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and +Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were +checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the +annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again +brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once +more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except +those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she +had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously +satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her +year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered +the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train +cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work—for no +<i>human</i> prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I +have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell +you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the +day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and +antislavery."<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a></p> + +<p>What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity +directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the +assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> all the men +present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When +Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose +content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other +mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and +wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to <i>know</i> that it is +impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who <i>personally +wrongs me</i>, if only that one will work nobly in the <i>cause</i> in their +own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I <i>never</i> +theirs."</p> + +<p>Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time +trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her +with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of +her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith +Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper +Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney +Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that +her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand +for it. This committee, with <i>The Revolution</i> as its mouthpiece, was +soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations +throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage +Association of America.</p> + +<p>To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated +General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded +memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the +reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the +Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New +York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on +the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York +<i>Sun</i> commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the +Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor +Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a +woman suffrage plank in their platform.</p> + +<p>This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal +Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic +resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic +convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a +plank in their platform.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> + +<p>Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the +ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans +to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since +the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the +dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and +which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the +corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from +the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs. +Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was +well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was +presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his +hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B. +Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the +audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the +enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We +appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend +the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly +for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and +thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the +proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a +similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your +political power for decades to come...."<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p> + +<p>To hear these words read in a national political convention was to +Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not +allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts +and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the +Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked.</p> + +<p>The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity, +the <i>Tribune</i> deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our +sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they +rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a></p> + +<p>The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as +reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of +General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon <i>The +Revolution</i> called for a new party, a people's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> party which would be +sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did +Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she +declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the +country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands +humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties +the better.... <i>The Revolution</i> calls for construction, not +reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a +nation's salvation?"<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p> + +<p>To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned +body and soul by the <i>Gold Gamblers</i> of the Nation—and so far as the +honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters +very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of +influence and money to move for a third party—universal suffrage and +anti-monopolist of land and gold."<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a></p> + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="WORK_WAGES_AND_THE_BALLOT" id="WORK_WAGES_AND_THE_BALLOT"></a>WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT</h2> + + +<p>In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned +her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long +hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her +for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the +factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being +paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New +York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary, +pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the +economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of +slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally, +and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could +compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity +for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in +their hands.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p> + +<p>As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New +York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and +later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A +few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled +women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the +National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose +of federating all unions.</p> + +<p>When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September +1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in +preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in <i>The +Revolution</i> office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she +hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting, +the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the +newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and +clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in +publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the +Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they +feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced +they should not seek political rights until they had improved their +working conditions. She could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> make them see that they were +putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form +Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the +National Labor Congress.</p> + +<p>Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with +the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of +them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women +were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace +collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also +represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar +industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young +girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the +morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week.</p> + +<p>"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan +told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome +discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better +wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and +again.... I will come and talk to you...."<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> They elected Mrs. Mary +Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress.</p> + +<p>With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar +Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's +Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton, +representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan +knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed +but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and +whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public +that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women.</p> + +<p>The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders' +Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress, +and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and +everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the +opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened +to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate +continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was +important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she +declared, "that makes men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> successful in their strikes."<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> She +recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing +out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced +men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York +<i>World</i>. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs. +Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress +to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage."</p> + +<p>A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of +its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote +would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a +perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong, +well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York. +Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper +campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you +had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have +succeeded?"<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p> + +<p>"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking +bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her +that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them +and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the +next election they would need the votes of all union men for their +candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you +too would have held the balance of political power in that little city +of Troy."</p> + +<p>Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong +report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as +well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or +form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable +means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying +them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the +National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to +demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask +Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for +women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was +quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the +report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in +comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among +prominent labor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney +of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor +Union and its national organizer of women.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a></p> + +<p>The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in <i>The Revolution</i> +as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which +would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the +women, the Negroes," <i>The Revolution</i> declared, "are destined to form +a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government +from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the +politicians."<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of +the New York <i>World</i>, whose reporters covered the meetings of the +Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local +interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, <i>The +Revolution</i> carried their import farther afield, bringing to the +attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work, +and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and +trade schools for them. <i>The Revolution</i> continually spurred women on +to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal +work if they expected equal pay.</p> + +<p>When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were +afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and +of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no +patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to +wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are +blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your +cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with +water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either +that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do +not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be +composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of +dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they +go into an office they would go through all that was required of them +and demand just as high wages as the men....</p> + +<p>"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the +'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> I +do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in +value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand +that you are in their service as workers, not as women."<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a></p> + +<p>Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, +San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts +at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged +ideas, and news of all of them was published in <i>The Revolution</i>. The +groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly +active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in +Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a +strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice +workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living +conditions.</p> + +<p>Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed +a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected +president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and +practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself +picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she +talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in +all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and +baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old +shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With +friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes +stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest +brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward +to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a +committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in +tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of +Central Park.</p> + +<p>This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers +were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal +opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's +work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a +week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's +scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women +themselves in their own interest—the forerunner of the reports of the +Labor Department's Women's Bureau.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p> + +<p>Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as +the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators +Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the +profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see +them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where +wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them. +However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this +project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step +toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able, +however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the +newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women.</p> + +<p>She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own +union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany <i>Daily +Knickerbocker</i>, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country +by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards +standing, intelligence, and manual ability."<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> <i>The Revolution</i> +encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging +all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out +how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more +Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45 +cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together +say <i>Equal Pay for Equal Work</i>."<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a></p> + +<p>Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were +higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for +them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women, +giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a +trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went +on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and +appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to +contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a +training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that +hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready +and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we +will soon give you competent women compositors."<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> Having learned +by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor +unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young +women to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage +they could get.</p> + +<p>It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new +occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's +opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work +and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as +members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they +disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them, +that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men. +She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the +printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union; +and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the +lately formed Women's Typographical Union.</p> + +<p>Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep, +bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in +1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York +Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an +unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had +recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a +delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the +Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in +opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations +against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union +members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they +called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take +men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not +understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been +fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they +completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had +supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her <i>Revolution</i>, they +claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and +her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract +outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not +realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she +would have set up a union shop had the funds been available.</p> + +<p>Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> were +also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was +not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply +criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association.</p> + +<p>"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she +reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think +they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association +is not a <i>trade</i> organization; and while I join heart and hand with +the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by +which they can protect themselves against the oppression of +capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is +more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general +questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the +condition of working people generally."<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p> + +<p>She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New +England delegates giving her their support. The New York <i>World</i>, very +fair in its coverage of the heated debates, declared, "Of her devotion +to the cause of workingwomen, there can be no question."<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The activities of the Workingwomen's Association had by this time +begun to irk employers, and some of them threatened instant dismissal +of any employee who reported her wages or hours to these meddling +women. Fear of losing their jobs now hung over many while others were +forbidden by their fathers, husbands, and brothers to have anything to +do with strong-minded Susan B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>To counteract this disintegrating influence and to bring all classes +of women together in their fight for equal rights, Susan persuaded the +popular lecturer, Anna E. Dickinson, to speak for the Workingwomen's +Association at Cooper Union. This, however, only added fuel to the +flames, for Anna, in an emotional speech, "A Struggle for Life," told +the tragic story of Hester Vaughn, a workingwoman who had been accused +of murdering her illegitimate child. Found in a critical condition +with her dead baby beside her, Hester Vaughn had been charged with +infanticide, tried without proper defense, and convicted by a +prejudiced court, although there was no proof that she had +deliberately killed her child. At Susan's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> instigation, the +Workingwomen's Association sent a woman physician, Dr. Clemence +Lozier, and the well-known author, Eleanor Kirk, to Philadelphia to +investigate the case. Both were convinced of Hester Vaughn's +innocence.</p> + +<p>With the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's courageous editorials in <i>The +Revolution</i>, Susan made such an issue of the conviction of Hester +Vaughn that many newspapers accused her of obstructing justice and +advocating free love, and this provided a moral weapon for her critics +to use in their fight against the growing independence of women. +Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for +Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served +to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that +poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women +like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the +need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even +suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women +so that a few of them might be able to understand their rights under +the law and bring aid to their less fortunate sisters.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Under Susan's guidance, the Workingwomen's Association continued to +hold meetings as long as she remained in New York. In its limited way, +it carried on much-needed educational work, building up self-respect +and confidence among workingwomen, stirring up "a wholesome +discontent," and preparing the way for women's unions. The public +responded. At Cooper Union, telegraphy courses were opened to women; +the New York Business School, at Susan's instigation, offered young +women scholarships in bookkeeping; and there were repeated requests +for the enrollment of women in the College of New York.</p> + +<p>Living in the heart of this rapidly growing, sprawling city, Susan saw +much to distress her and pondered over the disturbing social +conditions, looking for a way to relieve poverty and wipe out crime +and corruption. She saw luxury, extravagance, and success for the few, +while half of the population lived in the slums in dilapidated houses +and in damp cellars, often four or five to a room. Immigrants, +continually pouring in from Europe, overtaxed the already inadequate +housing, and unfamiliar with our language and customs, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the easy +prey of corrupt politicians. Many were homeless, sleeping in the +streets and parks until the rain or cold drove them into police +stations for warmth and shelter. Susan longed to bring order and +cleanliness, good homes and good government to this overcrowded city, +and again and again she came to the conclusion that votes for women, +which meant a voice in the government, would be the most potent factor +for reform.</p> + +<p>Yet she did not close her mind to other avenues of reform. Seeing +reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the +unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in +<i>The Revolution</i> against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of +the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation +to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public +lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads. +Her active mind also sought a solution of the complicated currency +problem. In fact there was no public question which she hesitated to +approach, to think out or attempt to solve. She did not keep her +struggle for woman suffrage aloof from the pressing problems of the +day. Instead she kept it abreast of the times, keenly alive to social, +political, and economic issues, and involved in current public +affairs.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_INADEQUATE_FIFTEENTH_AMENDMENT" id="THE_INADEQUATE_FIFTEENTH_AMENDMENT"></a>THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT</h2> + + +<p>The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July 1868, but +Republicans found it inadequate because it did not specifically +enfranchise Negroes. More than ever convinced that they needed the +Negro vote in order to continue in power, they prepared to supplement +it by a Fifteenth Amendment, which Susan hoped would be drafted to +enfranchise women as well as Negroes. Immediately through her Woman's +Suffrage Association of America, she petitioned Congress to make no +distinction between men and women in any amendment extending or +regulating suffrage.</p> + +<p>She and Elizabeth Stanton also persuaded their good friends, Senator +Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman Julian of Indiana, to introduce in +December 1868 resolutions providing that suffrage be based on +citizenship, be regulated by Congress, and that all citizens, native +or naturalized, enjoy this right without distinction of race, color, +or sex. Before the end of the month, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +and Congressman Julian had introduced other resolutions to enfranchise +women in the District of Columbia and in the territories. Even the New +York <i>Herald</i> could see no reason why "the experiment" of woman +suffrage should not be tried in the District of Columbia.<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a></p> + +<p>To focus attention on woman suffrage at this crucial time, Susan, in +January 1869, called together the first woman suffrage convention ever +held in Washington. No only did it attract women from as far west as +Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, but Senator Pomeroy lent it importance +by his opening speech, and through the detailed and respectful +reporting of the New York <i>World</i> and of Grace Greenwood of the +Philadelphia <i>Press</i> it received nationwide notice.</p> + +<p>Congress, however, gave little heed to women's demands. "The +experiment" of woman suffrage in the District of Columbia was not +tried and nothing came of the resolutions for universal suffrage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> +introduced by Pomeroy, Julian, and Wilson. In spite of all Susan's +efforts to have the word "sex" added to the Fifteenth Amendment, she +soon faced the bitter disappointment of seeing a version ignoring +women submitted to the states for ratification: "The right of citizens +of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the +United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous +condition of servitude."</p> + +<p>The blatant omission of the word "sex" forced Susan and Mrs. Stanton +to initiate an amendment of their own, a Sixteenth Amendment, and +again Congressman Julian came to their aid, although he too regarded +Negro suffrage as more "immediately important and absorbing"<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> than +suffrage for women. On March 15, 1869, at one of the first sessions of +the newly elected Congress, he introduced an amendment to the +Constitution, providing that the right of suffrage be based on +citizenship without any distinction or discrimination because of sex. +This was the first federal woman suffrage amendment ever proposed in +Congress.</p> + +<p>Opportunity to campaign for this amendment was now offered Susan and +Elizabeth Stanton as they addressed a series of conventions in Ohio, +Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Press notices were good, a +Milwaukee paper describing Susan as "an earnest enthusiastic, fiery +woman—ready, apt, witty and what a politician would call sharp ... +radical in the strongest sense," making "radical everything she +touches."<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> She found woman suffrage sentiment growing by leaps and +bounds in the West and western men ready to support a federal woman +suffrage amendment.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>With a lighter heart than she had had in many a day and with new +subscriptions to <i>The Revolution</i>, Susan returned to New York. She +moved the <i>Revolution</i> office to the first floor of the Women's +Bureau, a large four-story brownstone house at 49 East Twenty-third +Street, near Fifth Avenue, which had been purchased by a wealthy New +Yorker, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps, who looked forward to establishing a +center where women's organizations could meet and where any woman +interested in the advancement of her sex would find encouragement and +inspiration. Susan's hopes were high for the Women's Bureau, and in +this most respectable, fashionable, and even elegant setting, she +expected her <i>Revolution</i>, in spite of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> inflammable name, to live +down its turbulent past and win new friends and subscribers.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p> + +<p>She made one last effort to resuscitate the American Equal Rights +Association, writing personal letters to old friends, urging that past +differences be forgotten and that all rededicate themselves to +establishing universal suffrage by means of the Sixteenth Amendment. +She was optimistic as she prepared for a convention in New York, +particularly as one obstacle to unity had been removed. George Francis +Train had voluntarily severed all connections with <i>The Revolution</i> to +devote himself to freeing Ireland. She soon found, however, that the +misunderstandings between her and her old antislavery friends were far +deeper than George Francis Train, although he would for a long time be +blamed for them. The Fifteenth Amendment was still a bone of +contention and <i>The Revolution's</i> continued editorials against it +widened the breach.</p> + +<p>The fireworks were set off in the convention of the American Equal +Rights Association by Stephen S. Foster, who objected to the +nomination of Susan and Mrs. Stanton as officers of the Association +because they had in his opinion repudiated its principles. When asked +to explain further, he replied that not only had they published a +paper advocating educated suffrage while the Association stood for +universal suffrage but they had shown themselves unfit by +collaboration with George Francis Train who ridiculed Negroes and +opposed their enfranchisement.</p> + +<p>Trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, Mary Livermore, the popular +new delegate from Chicago, asked whether it was quite fair to bring up +George Francis Train when he had retired from <i>The Revolution</i>.</p> + +<p>To this Stephen Foster sternly replied, "If <i>The Revolution</i> which has +so often endorsed George Francis Train will repudiate him because of +his course in respect to the Negro's rights, I have nothing further to +say. But they do not repudiate him. He goes out; but they do not cast +him out."<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p> + +<p>"Of course we do not," Susan instantly protested.</p> + +<p>Mr. Foster then objected to the way Susan had spent the funds of the +Association, accusing her of failing to keep adequate accounts.</p> + +<p>This she emphatically denied, explaining that she had presented a full +accounting to the trust fund committee, that it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> been audited, and +she had been voted $1,000 to repay her for the amount she had +personally advanced for the work.</p> + +<p>Unwilling to accept her explanation and calling it unreliable, he +continued his complaints until interrupted by Henry Blackwell who +corroborated Susan's statement, adding that she had refused the $1,000 +due her because of the dissatisfaction expressed over her management. +Declaring himself completely satisfied with the settlement and +confident of the purity of Susan's motives even if some of her +expenditures were unwise, Henry Blackwell continued, "I will agree +that many unwise things have been written in <i>The Revolution</i> by a +gentleman who furnished part of the means by which the paper has been +carried on. But that gentleman has withdrawn, and you, who know the +real opinions of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of +Negro suffrage, do not believe that they mean to create antagonism +between the Negro and woman question...."</p> + +<p>To Susan's great relief Henry Blackwell's explanation satisfied the +delegates, who gave her and Mrs. Stanton a vote of confidence. Not so +easily healed, however, were the wounds left by the accusations of +mismanagement and dishonesty.</p> + +<p>The atmosphere was still tense, for differences of opinion on policy +remained. Most of the old reliable workers stood unequivocally for the +Fifteenth Amendment, which they regarded as the crowning achievement +of the antislavery movement, and they heartily disapproved of forcing +the issue of woman suffrage on Congress and the people at this time. +Although they had been deeply moved by the suffering of Negro women +under slavery and had used this as a telling argument for +emancipation, they now gave no thought to Negro women, who, even more +than Negro men, needed the vote to safeguard their rights. Believing +with the Republicans that one reform at a time was all they could +expect, they did not want to hear one word about woman suffrage or a +Sixteenth Amendment until male Negroes were safely enfranchised by the +Fifteenth Amendment.</p> + +<p>Offering a resolution endorsing the Fifteenth Amendment, Frederick +Douglass quoted Julia Ward Howe as saying, "I am willing that the +Negro shall get the ballot before me," and he added, "I cannot see how +anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot +to women as to the Negro."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<p>Quick as a flash, Susan was on her feet, challenging his statements, +and as the dauntless champion of women debated the question with the +dark-skinned fiery Negro, the friendship and warm affection built up +between them over the years occasionally shone through the sharp words +they spoke to each other.</p> + +<p>"The old antislavery school says that women must stand back," declared +Susan, "that they must wait until male Negroes are voters. But we say, +if you will not give the whole loaf of justice to an entire people, +give it to the most intelligent first."</p> + +<p>Here she was greeted with applause and continued, "If intelligence, +justice, and morality are to be placed in the government, then let the +question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last.... +Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro, how he is hunted +down ..., but with all the wrongs and outrages that he today suffers, +he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady +Stanton."</p> + +<p>"I want to know," shouted Frederick Douglass, "if granting you the +right of suffrage will change the nature of our sexes?"</p> + +<p>"It will change the pecuniary position of woman," Susan retorted +before the shouts of laughter had died down. "She will not be +compelled to take hold of only such employments as man chooses for +her."</p> + +<p>Lucy Stone, who so often in her youth had pleaded with Susan and +Frederick Douglass for both the Negro and women, now entered the +argument. She had matured, but her voice had lost none of its +conviction or its power to sway an audience. Disagreeing with +Douglass's assertion that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman +suffrage, she pointed out that white women of the North were robbed of +their children by the law just as Negro women had been by slavery.</p> + +<p>This was balm to Susan's soul, but with Lucy's next words she lost all +hope that her old friend would cast her lot wholeheartedly with women +at this time. "Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet," +Lucy continued, "and the Negro too has an ocean of wrongs that cannot +be fathomed. But I thank God for the Fifteenth Amendment, and hope +that it will be adopted in every state. I will be thankful in my soul +if anybody can get out of the terrible pit....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I believe," she admitted, "that the national safety of the government +would be more promoted by the admission of women as an element of +restoration and harmony than the other. I believe that the influence +of woman will save the country before every other influence. I see the +signs of the times pointing to this consummation. I believe that in +some parts of the country women will vote for the President of these +United States in 1872."</p> + +<p>Susan grew impatient as Lucy shifted from one side to the other, +straddling the issue. Her own clear-cut approach, earning for her the +reputation of always hitting the nail on the head, made Lucy's seem +like temporizing.</p> + +<p>The men now took control, criticizing the amount of time given to the +discussion of woman's rights, and voted endorsement of the Fifteenth +Amendment. Nevertheless, a small group of determined women continued +their fight, Susan declaring with spirit that she protested against +the Fifteenth Amendment because it was not Equal Rights and would put +2,000,000 more men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 women who +until now had been the equals of the Negro men at their side.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>It was now clear to Susan and to the few women who worked closely with +her that they needed a strong organization of their own and that it +was folly to waste more time on the Equal Rights Association. Western +delegates, disappointed in the convention's lack of interest in woman +suffrage, expressed themselves freely. They had been sorely tried by +the many speeches on extraneous subjects which cluttered the meetings, +the heritage of a free-speech policy handed down by antislavery +societies.</p> + +<p>"That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug," exploded Mary +Livermore to Susan. "I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor +would any of us, if we had known what it was. We supposed we were +coming to a woman suffrage convention."<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a></p> + +<p>At a reception for all the delegates held at the Women's Bureau at the +close of the convention, this dissatisfaction culminated in a +spontaneous demand for a new organization which would concentrate on +woman suffrage and the Sixteenth Amendment. Alert to the +possibilities, Susan directed this demand into concrete action by +turning the reception temporarily into a business meeting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> The result +was the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association by women +from nineteen states, with Mrs. Stanton as president and Susan as a +member of the executive committee. The younger women of the West, +trusting the judgment of Susan and Mrs. Stanton, looked to them for +leadership, as did a few of the old workers in the East—Ernestine +Rose, always in the vanguard, Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Smith +Miller, Lucretia Mott, who although holding no office in the new +organization gave it her support, Martha C. Wright, and Matilda Joslyn +Gage who never wavered in her allegiance. Lucy Stone, who would have +found it hard even to step into the <i>Revolution</i> office, did not +attend the reception at the Women's Bureau or take part in the +formation of the new woman suffrage organization.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 384px;"> +<img src="images/165.jpg" width="384" height="450" alt="Paulina Wright Davis" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Paulina Wright Davis</span> +</div> + +<p>Aided and abetted by her new National Woman Suffrage Association, +Susan continued her opposition in <i>The Revolution</i> to the Fifteenth +Amendment until it was ratified in 1870.</p> + +<p>So incensed was the Boston group by <i>The Revolution's</i> opposition to +the Fifteenth Amendment, so displeased was Lucy Stone by the formation +of the National Woman Suffrage Association<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> without consultation with +her, one of the oldest workers in the field, that they began to talk +of forming a national woman suffrage organization of their own. They +charged Susan with lust for power and autocratic control. Mrs. Stanton +they found equally objectionable because of her radical views on sex, +marriage, and divorce, expressed in <i>The Revolution</i> in connection +with the Hester Vaughn case. They sincerely felt that the course of +woman suffrage would run more smoothly, arouse less antagonism, and +make more progress without these two militants who were forever +stirring things up and introducing extraneous subjects.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>During these trying days of accusations, animosity, and rival +factions, Mrs. Stanton's unwavering support was a great comfort to +Susan as was the joy of having a paper to carry her message.</p> + +<p>In addition to all the responsibilities connected with publishing her +weekly paper, advertising, subscriptions, editorial policy, and +raising the money to pay the bills, Susan was also holding successful +conventions in Saratoga and Newport where men and women of wealth and +influence gathered for the summer; she was traveling out to St. Louis, +Chicago, and other western cities to speak on woman suffrage, making +trips to Washington to confer with Congressmen, getting petitions for +the Sixteenth Amendment circulated, and through all this, building up +the National Woman Suffrage Association.</p> + +<p>The <i>Revolution</i> office became the rallying point for a +forward-looking group of women, many of whom contributed to the +hard-hitting liberal sheet. Elizabeth Tilton, the lovely dark-haired +young wife of the popular lecturer and editor of the <i>Independent</i>, +selected the poetry. Alice and Phoebe Cary gladly offered poems and a +novel; and when Susan was away, Phoebe Cary often helped Mrs. Stanton +get out the paper. Elizabeth Smith Miller gave money, encouragement, +and invaluable aid with her translations of interesting letters which +<i>The Revolution</i> received from France and Germany. Laura Curtis +Bullard, the heir to the Dr. Winslow-Soothing-Syrup fortune, who +traveled widely in Europe, sent letters from abroad and took a lively +interest in the paper. Another new recruit was Lillie Devereux Blake, +who was gaining a reputation as a writer and who soon proved to be a +brilliant orator and an invaluable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> worker in the New York City +suffrage group. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, unfailingly gave her support, +and her calm assurance strengthened Susan. The wealthy Paulina Wright +Davis of Providence, Rhode Island, who followed Parker Pillsbury as +editor, when he felt obliged to resign for financial reasons, gave the +paper generous financial backing.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 411px;"> +<img src="images/167.jpg" width="411" height="450" alt="Isabella Beecher Hooker" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Isabella Beecher Hooker</span> +</div> + +<p>It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry +Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the +elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's +prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by +New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a +few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in +Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a +week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of +guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she +has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are +bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. +Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her +friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, +engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most +favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than +that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in +my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great +movement."<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a></p> + +<p>From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New +York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national +woman suffrage organization.</p> + + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_HOUSE_DIVIDED" id="A_HOUSE_DIVIDED"></a>A HOUSE DIVIDED</h2> + + +<p>"I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that +those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of +<i>The Revolution</i> may yet have an organization with which they can work +in harmony."<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during +the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands.</p> + +<p>"The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked +together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy +further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the +woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally +belong to it—and there will be harmonious work."</p> + +<p>When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old +friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be +held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot +use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a></p> + +<p>Those feeling as she did eagerly signed the call, while others who +knew little about the controversy in the East added their names +because they were glad to take part in a convention sponsored by such +prominent men and women as Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, +Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and William Lloyd +Garrison. Still others who did not understand the insurmountable +differences in temperament and policy between the two groups hoped +that a new truly national organization would unite the two factions. +Even Mary Livermore, who had been active in the formation of the +National Woman Suffrage Association, was by this time responding to +overtures from the Boston group, writing William Lloyd Garrison, "I +have been repelled by some of the idiosyncrasies of our New York +friends, as have others. Their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, +the buffoonery of George F. Train, the loose utterances of the +<i>Revolution</i> on the marriage and dress questions—and what is equally +potent hindrance to the cause, the fearful squandering of money<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> at +the New York headquarters—all this has tended to keep me on my own +feet, apart from those to whom I was at first attracted.... I am glad +at the prospect of an association that will be truly national and +which promises so much of success and character."<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p> + +<p>Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton received a notice of the Cleveland +convention, but Susan, scanning a copy of the call sent her by a +solicitous friend, was deeply disturbed when she saw the signatures of +Lydia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Myra Bradwell, Gerrit Smith, and other +good friends.</p> + +<p>The New York <i>World</i>, at once suspecting a feud, asked, "Where are +those well-known American names, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, +and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It is clear that there is a division in +the ranks of the strong-minded and that an effort is being made to +ostracize <i>The Revolution</i> which has so long upheld the cause of +Suffrage, through evil report and good...."<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a></p> + +<p>The Rochester <i>Democrat</i>, loyal to Susan, put this question, "Can it +be possible that a National Woman's Suffrage Convention is called +without Susan's knowledge or consent?... A National Woman's Suffrage +Association without speeches from Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton +will be a new order of things. The idea seems absurd."<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a></p> + +<p>To Susan it also seemed both absurd and unrealistic, for she +remembered how almost single-handed she had held together and built up +the woman suffrage movement during the years when her colleagues had +been busy with family duties. She was appalled at the prospect of a +division in the ranks at this time when she believed victory possible +through the action of a strong united front.</p> + +<p>Confident that many who signed the call were ignorant of or blind to +the animus behind it, she did her best to bring the facts before them. +She put the blame for the rift entirely upon Lucy Stone, believing +that without Lucy's continual stirring up, past differences in policy +would soon have been forgotten. The antagonism between the two burned +fiercely at this time. Susan was determined to fight to the last ditch +for control of the movement, convinced that her policies and Mrs. +Stanton's were forward-looking, unafraid, and always put women first.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> + +<p>Susan now also had to face the humiliating possibility that she might +be forced to give up <i>The Revolution</i>. Not only was the operating +deficit piling up alarmingly, but there were persistent rumors of a +competitor, another woman suffrage paper to be edited by Lucy Stone +and Julia Ward Howe.</p> + +<p>Susan had assumed full financial responsibility for <i>The Revolution</i> +because Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, both with families to +consider, felt unable to share this burden. Mrs. Stanton had always +contributed her services and Parker Pillsbury had been sadly +underpaid, while Susan had drawn out for her salary only the most +meager sums for bare living expenses.</p> + +<p>With a maximum of 3,000 subscribers, the paper could not hope to pay +its way even though she had secured a remarkably loyal group of +advertisers.<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> Reluctantly she raised the subscription price from +$2 to $3 a year. Her friends and family were generous with gifts and +loans, but these only met the pressing needs of the moment and in no +way solved the overall financial problem of the paper.</p> + +<p>Appealing once again to her wealthy and generous Quaker cousin, Anson +Lapham, she wrote him in desperation, "My paper must not, shall not go +down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also +in the grand work which <i>The Revolution</i> seeks to do, and therefore +you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. +Yesterday's mail brought 43 subscribers from Illinois and 20 from +California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you +will save me from giving the world a chance to say, 'There is a +woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business!' +If only I could die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say, 'Amen,' +but to live and fail—it would be too terrible to bear."<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> He came +to her aid as he always had in the past.</p> + +<p>Susan's sister Mary not only lent her all her savings, but spent her +summer vacation in New York in 1869, working in <i>The Revolution</i> +office while Susan, busy with woman suffrage conventions in Newport, +Saratoga, Chicago, and Ohio, was building up good will and +subscriptions for her paper. Concerned for her welfare, Mary +repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged her to give up. Daniel added his +entreaties to Mary's, begging Susan not to go further into debt,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> but +to form a stock company if she were determined to continue her paper. +She considered his advice very seriously for he was a practical +businessman and yet appreciated what she was trying to do. For a time +the formation of a stock company seemed possible, for the project +appealed to three women of means, Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella +Beecher Hooker, and Laura Curtis Bullard, but it never materialized.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>With the financial problem of <i>The Revolution</i> still unsolved, Susan +decided to make her appearance at Lucy Stone's convention in +Cleveland, Ohio, on November 24, 1869. Not only did she want to see +with her own eyes and hear with her own ears all that went on, but she +was determined to walk the second mile with Lucy and her supporters, +or even to turn the other cheek, if need be, for the sake of her +beloved cause.</p> + +<p>Seeing her in the audience, Judge Bradwell of Chicago moved that she +be invited to sit on the platform, but Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who +was presiding, replied that he thought this unnecessary as a special +invitation had already been extended to all desiring to identify +themselves with the movement. Judge Bradwell would not be put off, his +motion was carried, and as Susan walked up to the platform to join the +other notables, she was greeted with hearty applause. Sitting there +among her critics, she wondered what she could possibly say to +persuade them to forget their differences for the sake of the cause. +After listening to Lucy Stone plead for renewed work for woman +suffrage and for petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, she +spontaneously rose to her feet and asked permission to speak. "I +hope," she began, "that the work of this association, if it be +organized, will be to go in strong array up to the Capitol at +Washington to demand a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The +question of the admission of women to the ballot would not then be +left to the mass of voters in every State, but would be submitted by +Congress to the several legislatures of the States for ratification, +and ... be decided by the most intelligent portion of the people. If +the question is left to the vote of the rank and file, it will be put +off for years.<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p> + +<p>"So help me, Heaven!" she continued with emotion. "I care not what may +come out of this Convention, so that this great cause<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> shall go +forward to its consummation! And though this Convention by its action +shall nullify the National Association of which I am a member, and +though it shall tread its heel upon <i>The Revolution</i>, to carry on +which I have struggled as never mortal woman or mortal man struggled +for any cause ... still, if you will do the work in Washington so that +this Amendment will be proposed, and will go with me to the several +Legislatures and <i>compel</i> them to adopt it, I will thank God for this +Convention as long as I have the breath of life."</p> + +<p>Loud and continuous applause greeted these earnest words. However, +instead of pledging themselves to work for a Sixteenth Amendment, the +newly formed American Woman Suffrage Association, blind to the +exceptional opportunity at this time for Congressional action on woman +suffrage, decided to concentrate on work in the states where suffrage +bills were pending. Instead of electing an outstanding woman as +president, they chose Henry Ward Beecher, boasting that this was proof +of their genuine belief in equal rights. Lucy Stone headed the +executive committee.</p> + +<p>Divisions soon began developing among the suffragists in the field. +Many whose one thought previously had been the cause now spent time +weighing the differences between the two organizations and between +personalities, and antagonisms increased.</p> + +<p>Hardest of all for Susan to bear was the definite announcement of a +rival paper, the <i>Woman's Journal</i>, to be issued in Boston in January +1870 under the editorship of Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and Julia +Ward Howe, with Henry Blackwell as business manager. Mary Livermore, +who previously had planned to merge her paper, the <i>Agitator</i>, with +<i>The Revolution</i> now merged it with the <i>Woman's Journal</i>. Financed by +wealthy stockholders, all influential Republicans, the <i>Journal</i>, +Susan knew, would be spared the financial struggles of <i>The +Revolution</i>, but would be obliged to conform to Republican policy in +its support of woman's rights. Had not the <i>Woman's Journal</i> been such +an obvious affront to the heroic efforts of <i>The Revolution</i> and a +threat to its very existence, she could have rejoiced with Lucy over +one more paper carrying the message of woman suffrage.</p> + +<p>More determined than ever to continue <i>The Revolution</i>, Susan +redoubled her efforts, announcing an imposing list of contributors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +for 1870, including the British feminist, Lydia Becker, and as a +special attraction, a serial by Alice Cary. Through the efforts of +Mrs. Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe was persuaded to consider serving +as contributing editor provided the paper's name was changed to <i>The +True Republic</i> or to some other name satisfactory to her.<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a></p> + +<p>Having struggled against the odds for so long, Susan had no intention +of being stifled now by Mrs. Stowe's more conservative views, nor +would she give her crusading sheet an innocuous name. However, the +decision was taken out of her hands by <i>The Revolution's</i> coverage of +the sensational McFarland-Richardson murder case, which so shocked +both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe that they gave up all thought of being +associated in a publishing venture with Susan or Mrs. Stanton.</p> + +<p>The whole country was stirred in December 1869 by the fatal shooting +in the <i>Tribune</i> office of the well-known journalist, Albert D. +Richardson, by Daniel McFarland, to whose divorced wife Richardson had +been attentive. When just before his death, Richardson was married to +the divorced Mrs. McFarland by Henry Ward Beecher with Horace Greeley +as a witness, the press was agog. So strong was the feeling against a +divorced woman that Henry Ward Beecher was severely condemned for +officiating at the marriage, and Mrs. Richardson was played up in the +press and in court as the villain, although her divorce had been +granted because of the brutality and instability of McFarland.</p> + +<p>Indignant at the sophistry of the press and the general acceptance of +a double standard of morals, <i>The Revolution</i> not only spoke out +fearlessly in defense of Mrs. Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs. +Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the +case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over +every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the +education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of +the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and +despise each other...."<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> When the court acquitted McFarland, +giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old son, Susan called a +protest meeting which attracted an audience of two thousand.</p> + +<p>Such words and such activities disturbed many who sympathized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> with +Mrs. Richardson but saw no reason for flaunting exultant approval of +divorce in a woman suffrage paper, and they turned to the <i>Woman's +Journal</i> as more to their taste.</p> + +<p>Susan, however, reading the first number of the <i>Woman's Journal</i>, +found its editorials lacking fire. She rebelled at Julia Ward Howe's +counsel, "to lay down all partisan warfare and organize a peaceful +Grand Army of the Republic of Women ... not ... as against men, but as +against all that is pernicious to men and women."<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> Susan's fight +had never been against men but against man-made laws that held women +in bondage. There had always been men willing to help her. Experience +had taught her that the struggle for woman's rights was no peaceful +academic debate, but real warfare which demanded political strategy, +self-sacrifice, and unremitting labor. She was prouder than ever of +her <i>Revolution</i> and its liberal hard-hitting policy.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Convinced that the National Woman Suffrage Association must publicize +its existence and its value, Susan began the year 1870 with a +convention in Washington which even Senator Sumner praised as +exceeding in interest anything he had ever witnessed there. Its +striking demonstration of the vitality and intelligence of the +National Association was the best answer she could possibly have given +to the accusations and criticism aimed at her and her organization.</p> + +<p>Jessie Benton Frémont, watching the delegates enter the dining room of +the Arlington Hotel, called Susan over to her table and said with a +twinkle in her eyes, "Now, tell me, Miss Anthony, have you hunted the +country over and picked out and brought to Washington a score of the +most beautiful women you could find?"<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a></p> + +<p>They were a fine-looking and intelligent lot—Paulina Wright Davis, +Isabella Beecher Hooker, Josephine Griffin of the Freedman's Bureau, +Charlotte Wilbour, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Martha C. Wright, and Olympia +Brown; Phoebe Couzins and Virginia Minor from Missouri, Madam Annekè +from Wisconsin, and best of all to Susan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. +Their presence, their friendship and allegiance were a source of great +pride and joy. Elizabeth Stanton had come from St. Louis, interrupting +her successful lecture tour, when she much preferred to stay away from +all conventions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> She had written Susan, "Of course, I stand by you to +the end. I would not see you crushed by rivals even if to prevent it +required my being cut into inch bits.... No power in heaven, hell or +earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded +together."<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a></p> + +<p>Also at this convention to show his support of Susan and her program, +was her faithful friend of many years, the Rev. Samuel J. May of +Syracuse. Clara Barton, ill and unable to attend, sent a letter to be +read, an appeal to her soldier friends for woman suffrage.</p> + +<p>Not only did the large and enthusiastic audiences show a growing +interest in votes for women, but two great victories for women in +1869, one in Great Britain and the other in the United States, brought +to the convention a feeling of confidence. Women taxpayers had been +granted the right to vote in municipal elections in England, Scotland, +and Wales, through the efforts of Jacob Bright. In the Territory of +Wyoming, during the first session of its legislature, women had been +granted the right to vote, to hold office, and serve on juries, and +married women had been given the right to their separate property and +their earnings. This progressive action by men of the West turned +Susan's thoughts hopefully to the western territories, and early in +1870 when the Territory of Utah enfranchised its women, she had +further cause for rejoicing.</p> + +<p>To celebrate these victories for which her twenty years' work for +women had blazed the trail, some of her friends held a reception for +her in New York at the Women's Bureau on her fiftieth birthday. She +was amazed at the friendly attention her birthday received in the +press. "Susan's Half Century," read a headline in the <i>Herald</i>. The +<i>World</i> called her the Moses of her sex. "A Brave Old Maid," commented +the <i>Sun</i>. But it was to the <i>Tribune</i> that she turned with special +interest, always hoping for a word of approval from Horace Greeley and +finding at last this faint ray of praise: "Careful readers of the +<i>Tribune</i> have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not +always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. +Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said that her methods were +as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years +of disputation and struggling. Miss Anthony has thoroughly impressed +friends and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her +purpose...."<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a></p> + +<p>To Anna E. Dickinson, far away lecturing, Susan confided, "Oh, Anna, I +am so glad of it all because it will teach the young girls that to be +true to principle—to live an idea, though an unpopular one—that to +live single—without any man's name—may be honorable."<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a></p> + +<p>A few of Susan's younger colleagues still insisted that a merger of +the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations might be +possible. Again Theodore Tilton undertook the task of mediation and +Lucretia Mott, who had retired from active participation in the +woman's rights movement, tried to help work out a reconciliation. +Susan was skeptical but gave them her blessing. Representatives of the +American Association, however, again made it plain that they were +unwilling to work with Susan and Mrs. Stanton.<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a></p> + +<p>By this time <i>The Revolution</i> had become an overwhelming financial +burden. For some months Mrs. Stanton had been urging Susan to give it +up and turn to the lecture field, as she had done, to spread the +message of woman's rights. Susan hesitated, unwilling to give up <i>The +Revolution</i> and not yet confident that she could hold the attention of +an audience for a whole evening. However, she found herself a great +success when pushed into several Lyceum lecture engagements in +Pennsylvania by Mrs. Stanton's sudden illness. "Miss Anthony evidently +lectures not for the purpose of receiving applause," commented the +Pittsburgh <i>Commercial</i>, "but for the purpose of making people +understand and be convinced. She takes her place on the stage in a +plain and unassuming manner and speaks extemporaneously and fluently, +too, reminding one of an old campaign speaker, who is accustomed to +talk simply for the purpose of converting his audience to his +political theories. She used plain English and plenty of it.... She +clearly evinced a quality that many politicians lack—sincerity."<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a></p> + +<p>For each of these lectures on "Work, Wages, and the Ballot," she +received a fee of $75 and was able as well to get new subscribers for +<i>The Revolution</i>. She now saw the possibilities for herself and the +cause in a Lyceum tour, and when the Lyceum Bureau, pleased with her +reception in Pennsylvania wanted to book her for lectures in the West, +she accepted, calling Parker Pillsbury back to <i>The</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> <i>Revolution</i> to +take charge. All through Illinois she drew large audiences and her +fees increased to $95, $125, and $150. In two months she was able to +pay $1,300 of <i>The Revolution's</i> debt.</p> + +<p>When she returned to New York, she realized that she could not +continue to carry <i>The Revolution</i> alone, in spite of increased +subscriptions. Its $10,000 debt weighed heavily upon her. Parker +Pillsbury's help could only be temporary; Mrs. Stanton's strenuous +lecture tour left her little time to give to the paper; and Susan's +own friends and family were unable to finance it further.</p> + +<p>Fortunately the idea of editing a paper appealed strongly to the +wealthy Laura Curtis Bullard, who had the promise of editorial help +from Theodore Tilton. Susan now turned the paper over to them +completely, receiving nothing in return but shares of stock, while she +assumed the entire indebtedness.</p> + +<p>Giving up the control of her beloved paper was one of the most +humiliating experiences and one of the deepest sorrows she ever faced. +<i>The Revolution</i> had become to her the symbol of her crusade for +women. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, she confided to her diary on +the date of the transfer, "It was like signing my own death warrant," +and to a friend she wrote, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of +a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support."<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a></p> + +<p>She made a valiant announcement of the transfer in <i>The Revolution</i> of +May 26, 1870, expressing her delight that the paper had at last found +financial backing and a new, enthusiastic editor. "In view of the +active demand for conventions, lectures, and discussions on Woman +Suffrage," she added, "I have concluded that so far as my own personal +efforts are concerned, I can be more useful on the platform than in a +newspaper. So, on the 1st of June next, I shall cease to be the <i>sole</i> +proprietor of <i>The Revolution</i>, and shall be free to attend public +meetings where ever so plain and matter of fact an old worker as I am +can secure a hearing."<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a></p> + +<p>Financial backing, however, did not put <i>The Revolution</i> on its feet, +although its forthright editorials and articles were replaced by spicy +and brilliant observations on pleasant topics which offended no one. +Before the year was up, Mrs. Bullard was making overtures to Susan to +take the paper back. Susan wanted desperately "to keep the Old Ship +Revolution's colors flying"<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a> and to bring back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> Mrs. Stanton's +stinging editorials. She also feared that Mrs. Bullard on Theodore +Tilton's advice might turn the paper over to the Boston group to be +consolidated with the <i>Woman's Journal</i>. As no funds were available, +she had to turn her back on her beloved paper and hope for the best. +"I suppose there is a wise Providence in my being stripped of power to +go forward," she wrote at this time. "At any rate, I mean to try and +make good come out of it."<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a></p> + +<p>For one more year, <i>The Revolution</i> struggled on under the editorship +of Mrs. Bullard and Theodore Tilton and then was taken over by the +<i>Christian Enquirer</i>. The $10,000 debt, incurred under Susan's +management, she regarded as her responsibility, although her brother +Daniel and many of her friends urged bankruptcy proceedings. "My pride +for women, to say nothing of my conscience," she insisted, "says +no."<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_NEW_SLANT_ON_THE_FOURTEENTH_AMENDMENT" id="A_NEW_SLANT_ON_THE_FOURTEENTH_AMENDMENT"></a>A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT</h2> + + +<p>While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay +off <i>The Revolution's</i> debt, she was pondering a new approach to the +enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a +St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor.</p> + +<p>Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states +the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to +prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by +the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or +enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of +citizens of the United States."</p> + +<p>To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great +appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis +Minor's arguments in <i>The Revolution</i> and also his suggestion that +some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by +attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this +new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional +committee in 1870.</p> + +<p>With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked +forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in +Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she +reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands +of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on +Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more +ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and +women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however, +she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling +important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found +the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to +Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris +of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the +new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> on +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact +legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in +them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled before the House +judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/181.jpg" width="450" height="374" alt="Victoria C. Woodhull" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Victoria C. Woodhull</span> +</div> + +<p>Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan +consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's +hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a +woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer, +Albert G. Riddle,<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a> to represent the 30,000 women who had +petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker +attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage. +This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement. +Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the +District of Columbia.</p> + +<p>Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however, +she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister, +Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press +had been full of amused comments regarding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> the lady bankers, and +Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here +she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview +in <i>The Revolution</i>, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin & +Co., Bankers and Brokers.<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a></p> + +<p>About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established +their own paper, <i>Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly</i>, an "Organ of Social +Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed +its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her +own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore +unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance, +advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement, +spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the +nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States.</p> + +<p>Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan +listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her +Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated +voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat +perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest +youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary +committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment +at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright +crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella +Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. They invited Victoria and her +sister, Tennessee Claflin, to their convention, and asked her to +repeat her speech for them.</p> + +<p>At this convention Susan, encouraged by the favorable reception among +politicians of the Woodhull Memorial, mapped out a new and militant +campaign, based on her growing conviction that under the Fourteenth +Amendment women's rights as citizens were guaranteed. She urged women +to claim their rights as citizens and persons under the Fourteenth +Amendment, to register and prepare to vote at the next election, and +to bring suit in the courts if they were refused.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>So enthusiastic had been the reception of this new approach to woman +suffrage, so favorable had been the news from those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> close to leading +Republicans, that Susan was unprepared for the adverse report of the +judiciary committee on the Woodhull Memorial. She now studied the +favorable minority report issued by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts +and William Loughridge of Iowa. Their arguments seemed to her +unanswerable; and hurriedly and impulsively in the midst of her +western lecture tour, she dashed off a few lines to Victoria Woodhull, +to whom she willingly gave credit for bringing out this report. +"Glorious old Ben!" she wrote. "He surely is going to pronounce the +word that will settle the woman question, just as he did the word +'contraband' that so summarily settled the Negro question.... +Everybody here chimes in with the new conclusion that we are already +free."<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a></p> + +<p>Far from New York where Victoria's activities were being aired by the +press, Susan thought of her at this time only in connection with the +Memorial and its impact on the judiciary committee. To be sure, she +heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the +Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox +views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, +traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan +was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself +found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to +discount attacks on the reputations of progressive women. In fact, +Victoria Woodhull provided Susan and her associates with a spectacular +opportunity to prove the sincerity of their contention that there +should not be a double standard of morals—one for men and another for +women.</p> + +<p>Returning to New York in May 1871, to a convention of the National +Woman Suffrage Association, Susan found that Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. +Stanton, and Mrs. Davis had invited Victoria Woodhull to address that +convention and to sit on the platform between Lucretia Mott and Mrs. +Stanton.</p> + +<p>Through them and others more critical, Susan was brought up to date on +the sensational story of Victoria Woodhull, who had been drawing +record crowds to her lectures and whose unconventional life +continuously provided reporters with interesting copy. Victoria's home +at 15 East Thirty-eighth Street, resplendent and ornate with gilded +furniture and bric-a-brac, housed not only her husband, Colonel Blood, +and herself but her divorced husband and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> children as well, and +also all of her quarrelsome relatives. Here many radicals, social +reformers, and spiritualists gathered, among them Stephen Pearl +Andrews, who soon made use of Victoria and her <i>Weekly</i> to publicize +his dream of a new world order, the Pantarchy, as he called it. +Victoria, herself, was an ardent spiritualist, controlled by +Demosthenes of the spirit world to whom she believed she owed her most +brilliant utterances and by whom she was guided to announce herself as +a presidential candidate in 1872. Needless to say, with such a +background, Victoria Woodhull became a very controversial figure among +the suffragists.</p> + +<p>In New York only a few days, it was hard for Susan to separate fact +from fiction, truth from rumor and animosity. Even Demosthenes did not +seem too ridiculous to her, for many of her most respected friends +were spiritualists. Nor did Victoria's presidential aspirations +trouble her greatly. Presidential candidates had been nothing to brag +of, and willingly would she support the right woman for President. If +Victoria lived up to the high standard of the Woodhull Memorial, then +even she might be that woman. After all, it was an era of radical +theories and Utopian dreams, of extravagances of every sort. Almost +anything could happen.</p> + +<p>Whatever doubts the suffragists may have had when they saw Victoria +Woodhull on the platform at the New York meeting of the National +Association, she swept them all along with her when, as one inspired, +she made her "Great Secession" speech. "If the very next Congress +refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," she +declared, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to +frame a new constitution and to erect a new government.... We mean +treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than +was that of the South. We are plotting revolution; we will overthrow +this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its +stead...."<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a></p> + +<p>Susan, who felt deeply her right to full citizenship, who herself had +talked revolution, and who had so often listened to the extravagant +antislavery declarations of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, +and Parker Pillsbury, was not offended by these statements. She was, +however, troubled by the attitude of the press, particularly of the +<i>Tribune</i> which labeled this gathering the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> "Woodhull Convention" and +accused the suffragists of adopting Mrs. Woodhull's free-love +theories.</p> + +<p>Having experienced so recently the animosity stirred up by her +alliance with George Francis Train, Susan resolved to be cautious +regarding Victoria Woodhull and was beginning to wonder if Victoria +was not using the suffragists to further her own ambitions. Yet many +trusted friends, who had talked with Mrs. Woodhull far more than she +had the opportunity to do, were convinced that she was a genius and a +prophet who had risen above the sordid environment of her youth to do +a great work for women and who had the courage to handle subjects +which others feared to touch.</p> + +<p>Free love, for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled +indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less +stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of +marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that +Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did she actually advocate +promiscuity?</p> + +<p>With these questions puzzling her, she left for Rochester and the +West. Almost immediately the papers were full of Victoria Woodhull and +her family quarrels which brought her into court. This was a +disillusioning experience for the National Woman Suffrage Association +which had so recently featured Victoria Woodhull as a speaker, and +Susan began seriously to question the wisdom of further association +with this strange controversial character. Nevertheless, Victoria +still had her ardent defenders among the suffragists, particularly +Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. Even the thoughtful +judicious Martha C. Wright wrote Mrs. Hooker at this time, "It is not +always 'the wise and prudent' to whom the truth is revealed; tho' far +be it from me to imply aught derogatory to Mrs. Woodhull. No one can +be with her, see her gentle and modest bearing and her spiritual face, +without feeling sure that she is a true woman, whatever unhappy +surroundings may have compromised her. I have never met a stranger +toward whom I felt more tenderly drawn, in sympathy and love."<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a></p> + +<p>Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke her mind in Theodore Tilton's new paper, +<i>The Golden Age</i>: "Victoria C. Woodhull stands before us today a +grand, brave woman, radical alike in political, religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> and social +principles. Her face and form indicate the complete triumph in her +nature of the spiritual over the sensuous. The processes of her +education are little to us; the grand result everything."<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a></p> + +<p>Victoria was in dire need of defenders, for the press was venomous, +goading her on to revenge. Susan, now traveling westward, lecturing in +one state after another, thinking of ways to interest the people in +woman suffrage, was too busy and too far away to follow Victoria +Woodhull's court battles.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton met Susan in Chicago late in May 1871, to join her on a +lecture tour of the far West. Together they headed for Wyoming and +Utah, eager to set foot in the states which had been the first to +extend suffrage to women. The long leisurely days on the train gave +these two old friends, Susan now fifty-one and Mrs. Stanton, +fifty-six, ample time to talk and philosophize, to appraise their past +efforts for women, and plan their speeches for the days ahead. While +their main theme would always be votes for women, they decided that +from now on they must also arouse women to rebel against their legal +bondage under the "man marriage," as they called it, and to face +frankly the facts about sex, prostitution, and the double standard of +morals. In Utah, in the midst of polygamy fostered by the Mormon +Church, they would encounter still another sex problem.</p> + +<p>After an enthusiastic welcome in Denver, they moved on to Laramie, +Wyoming, where one hundred women greeted them as the train pulled in. +From this first woman suffrage state, Susan exultingly wrote, "We have +been moving over the soil, that is really the land of the free and the +home of the brave.... Women here can say, 'What a magnificent country +is ours, where every class and caste, color and sex, may find +freedom....'"<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a></p> + +<p>They reached Salt Lake City just after the Godbe secession by which a +group of liberal Mormons abandoned polygamy. As guests of the Godbes +for a week, they had every opportunity to become acquainted with the +Mormons, to observe women under polygamy, and to speak in long all-day +sessions to women alone.</p> + +<p>Susan tried to show her audiences in Utah that her point of attack +under both monogamy and polygamy was the subjection of women, and that +to remedy this the self-support of women was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> essential. In Utah she +found little opportunity for women to earn a living for themselves and +their children, as there was no manufacturing and there were no free +schools in need of teachers. "Women here, as everywhere," she +declared, "must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid +of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from +entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal."<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 336px;"> +<img src="images/187.jpg" width="336" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony, 1871" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony, 1871</span> +</div> + +<p>Some of Susan's' critics at home felt she was again besmirching the +suffrage cause by setting foot in polygamous Utah, but this was of no +moment to her, for she saw the crying need of the right kind of +missionary work among Mormon women, "no Phariseeism, no shudders of +Puritanic horror, ... but a simple, loving fraternal clasp of hands +with these struggling women" to encourage them and point the way.</p> + +<p>Hearing that Susan and Mrs. Stanton were in the West en route to +California, Leland Stanford, Governor of California and president of +the recently completed Central Pacific Railway, sent them passes for +their journey. They reached San Francisco with high hopes that they +could win the support of western men for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> demand for woman +suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Their welcome was warm and +the press friendly. An audience of over 1,200 listened with real +interest to Mrs. Stanton. Then the two crusaders made a misstep. Eager +to learn the woman's side of the case in the recent widely publicized +murder of the wealthy attorney, Alexander P. Crittenden, by Laura +Fair, they visited Laura Fair in prison. Immediately the newspapers +reported this move in a most critical vein, with the result that an +uneasy audience crowded into the hall where Susan was to speak on "The +Power of the Ballot." As she proceeded to prove that women needed the +ballot to protect themselves and their work and could not count on the +support and protection of men, she cited case after case of men's +betrayal of women. Then bringing home her point, she declared with +vigor, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight."<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a></p> + +<p>Boos and hisses from every part of the hall greeted this statement; +but Susan, trained on the antislavery platform to hold her ground +whatever the tumult, waited patiently until this protest subsided, +standing before the defiant audience, poised and unafraid. Then, in a +clear steady voice, she repeated her challenging words. This time, +above the hisses, she heard a few cheers, and for the third time she +repeated, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight."</p> + +<p>Now the audience, admiring her courage, roared its applause. "I +declare to you," she concluded, "that woman must not depend upon the +protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and here I +take my stand."</p> + +<p>Reading the newspapers the next morning, she found herself accused not +only of defending Laura Fair, but of condoning the murder of +Crittenden. This story was republished throughout the state and +eagerly picked up by New York newspapers.</p> + +<p>As it was now impossible for her or for Mrs. Stanton to draw a +friendly audience anywhere in California, they took refuge in the +Yosemite Valley for the next few weeks. Susan was inconsolable. These +slanders on top of the loss of <i>The Revolution</i> and the split in the +suffrage ranks seemed more than she could bear. "Never in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> all my hard +experience have I been under such fire," she confided to her diary. +"The clouds are so heavy over me.... I never before was so cut +down."<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a></p> + +<p>Not until she had spent several days riding horseback in the Yosemite +Valley on "men's saddles" in "linen bloomers," over long perilous +exhausting trails, did the clouds begin to lift. Gradually the beauty +and grandeur of the mountains and the giant redwoods brought her peace +and refreshment, putting to flight "all the old six-days story and the +6,000 jeers."</p> + +<p>Bearing the brunt of the censure in California, Susan expected Mrs. +Stanton to come to her defense in letters to the newspapers. When she +did not do so, Susan was deeply hurt, for in the past she had so many +times smoothed the way for her friend. Even now, on their return to +San Francisco, where she herself did not yet dare lecture, she did her +best to build up audiences for Mrs. Stanton and to get correct +transcripts of her lectures to the papers. Disillusioned and +heartsick, she was for the first time sadly disappointed in her +dearest friend.</p> + +<p>Moving on to Oregon to lecture at the request of the pioneer +suffragist, Abigail Scott Duniway, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, who had +left for the East, "As I rolled on the ocean last week feeling that +the very next strain might swamp the ship, and thinking over all my +sins of omission and commission, there was nothing undone which +haunted me like the failure to speak the word at San Francisco again +and more fully. I would rather today have the satisfaction of having +said the true and needful thing on Laura Fair and the social evil, +with the hisses and hoots of San Francisco and the entire nation +around me, than all that you or I could possibly experience from their +united eulogies with that one word unsaid."<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>So far Susan's western trip had netted her only $350. This was +disappointing in so far as she had counted upon it to reduce +substantially her <i>Revolution</i> debt. She now hoped to build her +earnings up to $1,000 in Oregon and Washington. Everywhere in these +two states people took her to their hearts and the press with a few +exceptions was complimentary. The beauty of the rugged mountainous +country compensated her somewhat for the long tiring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> stage rides over +rough roads and for the cold uncomfortable lonely nights in poor +hotels. Only occasionally did she enjoy the luxury of a good cup of +coffee or a clean bed in a warm friendly home.</p> + +<p>At first in Oregon she was apprehensive about facing an audience +because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton, +"But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in +store for me."<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's +right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to +be self-supporting, and clearly and logically she marshaled her facts +and her arguments. Occasionally she obliged with a temperance speech, +or gathered women together to talk to them about the social evil, +relieved when they responded to this delicate subject with earnestness +and gratitude. Practice soon made her an easy, extemporaneous speaker. +Yet she was only now and then satisfied with her efforts, recording in +her diary, "Was happy in a real Patrick Henry speech."<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a></p> + +<p>The proceeds from her lectures were disappointing, as money was scarce +in the West that winter, and she had just decided to return to the +East to spend Christmas with her mother and sisters when she was urged +to accept lecture engagements in California. Putting her own personal +longings behind her, she took the stage to California, sitting outside +with the driver so that she could better enjoy the scenery and learn +more about the people who had settled this new lonely overpowering +country. "Horrible indeed are the roads," she wrote her mother, "miles +and miles of corduroy and then twenty miles ... of black mud.... How +my thought does turn homeward, mother."<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a></p> + +<p>This time she was warmly received in San Francisco. The prejudice, so +vocal six months before, had disappeared. "Made my Fourteenth +Amendment argument splendidly," she wrote in her diary. "All delighted +with it and me—and it is such a comfort to have the friends feel that +I help the good work on."<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a></p> + +<p>She was gaining confidence in herself and wrote her family, "I miss +Mrs. Stanton. Still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people +call on me, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits +a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of +merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant +scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> magazine. +There is no alternative—whoever goes into a parlor or before an +audience with that woman does it at a cost of a fearful overshadowing, +a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, +because I felt our cause was most profited by her being seen and +heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a></p> + +<p>Starting homeward through Wyoming and Nevada where she also had +lecture engagements, she wrote in her diary on January 1, 1872, "6 +months of constant travel, full 8000 miles, 108 lectures. The year's +work full 13,000 miles travel—170 meetings." On the train she met the +new California Senator, Aaron A. Sargent, his wife Ellen, and their +children. A warm friendship developed on this long journey during +which the train was stalled in deep snow drifts. "This is indeed a +fearful ordeal, fastened here ... midway of the continent at the top +of the Rocky mountains," she recorded. "The railroad has supplied the +passengers with soda crackers and dried fish.... Mrs. Sargent and I +have made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing +mothers."<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> The Sargents had brought their own food for the journey +and shared it with Susan. This and the good conversation lightened the +ordeal for her, especially as both Senator and Mrs. Sargent believed +heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for +the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage.</p> + +<p>This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was +the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These +men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the +dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice +of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking +her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped +to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the +national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for +which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She +found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism +and dissension.</p> + +<p>Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> "I have +been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?' +Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to +Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to +Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the +judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was +young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to +capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a></p> + +<p>"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs. +Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I +did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of +Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about +Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they +make themselves."</p> + +<p>Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this +convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches +calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate +her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had +concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and +she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly +she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President +toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right +to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.</p> + +<p>This time it was Susan, not Victoria, who was granted a hearing before +the Senate judiciary committee. "At the close of the war," Susan +reminded the Senators, "Congress lifted the question of suffrage for +men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the +deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the +Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed ... we rushed to you with +petitions praying you not to insert the word 'male' in the second +clause. Our best friends ... said to us: 'The insertion of that word +puts no new barrier against women; therefore do not embarrass us but +wait until we get the Negro question settled.' So the Fourteenth +Amendment with the word 'male' was adopted.<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a></p> + +<p>"When the Fifteenth was presented without the word 'sex,'" she +continued, "we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends +declared that the absence of the word was no hindrance to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> us, and +again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war, +saying, 'After we have enfranchised the Negro, we will take up your +case.'</p> + +<p>"Have they done as they promised?" she asked. "When we come asking +protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men +say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in +the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void +the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word +'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon +yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the +end a bloody revolution...."</p> + +<p>Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for +women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse +report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent +supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the +House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and +Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the +right to vote and hold office in the territories.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for +woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in +Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of +the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she +realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run +do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality +who gave only part of herself to the task.</p> + +<p>When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly +that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new +political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We +have no element out of which to make a political party, because there +is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he +endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance +party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown +away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></p> + +<p>Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has +the newspaper, and she persistently means to run<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> our craft into her +port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I +might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is +wholly owned and dominated by <i>men</i> spirits and I spurn the whole lot +of them...."</p> + +<p>A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of <i>Woodhull & +Claflin's Weekly</i>, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call +to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage +Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her +name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not +to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's +presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new +political party while she was publishing <i>The Revolution</i>, she was +practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria +Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure.</p> + +<p>Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker +still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to +date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of +Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The +Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had +again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an +increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail +suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard, +Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to +free the National Association of her influence.</p> + +<p>When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into +the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association +in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a +joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they +would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a +woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her +flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she +called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of +the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope +with Victoria, should this again become necessary.</p> + +<p>Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance +near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention +adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> the people's +convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan +refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited +audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on +the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and +it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the +suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor +many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan +in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the +same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands +until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the +audience dispersed in the darkness.</p> + +<p>With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage +Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at +Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was +nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal +Rights party.</p> + +<p>Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan +breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her +diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle—all come of Mrs. S. +[Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's +Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with +the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by +letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull—though we rescued it—it was +as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no +condemnation of her actions in <i>Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly</i> but only +the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's +great work.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a></p> + +<p>The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria +Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into +line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under +Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood, +campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria +Woodhull.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the +sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of +financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +of her <i>Weekly</i>, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and +Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the +liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George +W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored +woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a +persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better. +Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated +Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this +coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go +the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a +plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which +Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important, +powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform.</p> + +<p>"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its +obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to +the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is +received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of +citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful +consideration."<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a></p> + +<p>Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her +Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready +to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown +around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the +two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and +work together for "the living, vital issue of today—freedom to +women."</p> + +<p>She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward +to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school +district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were +generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New +York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers +she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it +plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in +Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a +torrent of false accusations.<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a> Only Mary Livermore of the American +Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with +Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did +not lack for effective orators.</p> + +<p>In an <i>Appeal to the Women of America</i>, financed by the Republicans +and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and +the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most +bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has +heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women, +while the whole power of the <i>Tribune</i> had been used to crush our +great reform...."<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></p> + +<p>Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time +friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and +defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not +join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding +Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the +Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the +Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the +Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that +everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a +Democrat or an apostate."<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a></p> + +<p>Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as +they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse +further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her +speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the +Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs. +Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse +the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of +woman's claim to vote, <i>I</i> am not...."<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="TESTING_THE_FOURTEENTH_AMENDMENT" id="TESTING_THE_FOURTEENTH_AMENDMENT"></a>TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT</h2> + + +<p>Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign +of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the +Union.</p> + +<p>Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the +possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great +interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had +attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were +still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for +representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in +Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the +case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that +"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> This +legal contest had been fully reported in <i>The Revolution</i>, and +disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to +establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising +among women.</p> + +<p>There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she +hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She +had exulted in <i>The Revolution</i> in 1868 over the attempt of women to +vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of +women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French +had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla +Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming +this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871, +Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V. +White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California, +and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to +vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to +the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their +ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of +the United States.<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> Another test case based on the Fourteenth +Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell, +one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the +Illinois bar because she was a woman.</p> + +<p>With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women, +lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the +legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even +the press was friendly.</p> + +<p>Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth +and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the +thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she +glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these +challenging words, "Now Register!... If you were not permitted to vote +you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face +death for it...."<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></p> + +<p>This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right. +She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she +intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly +to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering. +Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered. +The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that +this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she +claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but +under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines. +Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she +persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both +Republicans, finally consented to register the four women.</p> + +<p>This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing +to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by +the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined +the ranks of the militants.</p> + +<p>On election day, November 5, 1872, Susan gleefully wrote Elizabeth +Stanton, "Well, I have gone and done it!!—positively voted the +Republican ticket—Strait—this <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> at 7 o'clock—& swore my vote in +at that.... All my three sisters voted—Rhoda deGarmo too—Amy Post +was rejected & she will immediately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> bring action against the +registrars.... Not a jeer not a word—not a look—disrespectful has +met a single woman.... I hope the mornings telegrams will tell of many +women all over the country trying to vote.... I hope you voted +too."<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which +Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in +Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie +Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had +courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth +Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm +about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan.</p> + +<p>However, the fact that Susan B. Anthony had voted won immediate +response from the press in all parts of the country. Newspapers in +general were friendly, the New York <i>Times</i> boldly declaring, "The act +of Susan B. Anthony should have a place in history," and the Chicago +<i>Tribune</i> venturing to suggest that she ought to hold public office. +The cartoonists, however, reveling in a new and tempting subject, +caricatured her unmercifully, the New York Graphic setting the tone. +Some Democratic papers condemned her, following the line of the +Rochester <i>Union and Advertiser</i> which flaunted the headline, "Female +Lawlessness," and declared that Miss Anthony's lawlessness had proved +women unfit for the ballot.</p> + +<p>Before she voted, Susan had taken the precaution of consulting Judge +Henry R. Selden, a former judge of the Court of Appeals. After +listening with interest to her story and examining the arguments of +Benjamin Butler, Francis Minor, and Albert G. Riddle in support of the +claim that women had a right to vote under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, he was convinced that women had a good case and +consented to advise her and defend her if necessary. Judge Selden, now +retired from the bench because of ill health, was practicing law in +Rochester where he was highly respected. A Republican, he had served +as lieutenant governor, member of the Assembly, and state senator. +Susan had known him as one of the city's active abolitionists, a +friend of Frederick Douglass who had warned him to flee the country +after the raid on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown. Such +a man she felt she could trust.</p> + +<p>All was quiet for about two weeks after the election and it looked as +if the episode might be forgotten in the jubilation over Grant's +election. Then, on November 18, the United States deputy marshal rang +the doorbell at 7 Madison Street and asked for Miss Susan B. Anthony. +When she greeted him, he announced with embarrassment that he had come +to arrest her.</p> + +<p>"Is this your usual manner of serving a warrant?" she asked in +surprise.<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a></p> + +<p>He then handed her papers, charging that she had voted in violation of +Section 19 of an Act of Congress, which stipulated that anyone voting +knowingly without having the lawful right to vote was guilty of a +crime, and on conviction would be punished by a fine not exceeding +$500, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years.</p> + +<p>This was a serious development. It had never occurred to Susan that +this law, passed in 1870 to halt the voting of southern rebels, could +actually be applicable to her. In fact, she had expected to bring suit +against election inspectors for refusing to accept the ballots of +women. Now charged with crime and arrested, she suddenly began to +sense the import of what was happening to her.</p> + +<p>When the marshal suggested that she report alone to the United States +Commissioner, she emphatically refused to go of her own free will and +they left the house together, she extending her wrists for the +handcuffs and he ignoring her gesture. As they got on the streetcar +and the conductor asked for her fare, she further embarrassed the +marshal by loudly announcing, "I'm traveling at the expense of the +government. This gentleman is escorting me to jail. Ask him for my +fare." When they arrived at the commissioner's office, he was not +there, but a hearing was set for November 29.</p> + +<p>On that day, in the office where a few years before fugitive slaves +had been returned to their masters, Susan was questioned and +cross-examined, and she felt akin to those slaves. Proudly she +admitted that she had voted, that she had conferred with Judge Selden, +that with or without his advice she would have attempted to vote to +test women's right to the franchise.<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Did you have any doubt yourself of your right to vote?" asked the +commissioner.</p> + +<p>"Not a particle," she replied.</p> + +<p>On December 23, 1872, in Rochester's common council chamber, before a +large curious audience, Susan, the other women voters, and the +election inspectors were arraigned. People expecting to see bold +notoriety-seeking women were surprised by their seriousness and +dignity. "The majority of these law-breakers," reported the press, +"were elderly, matronly-looking women with thoughtful faces, just the +sort one would like to see in charge of one's sick-room, considerate, +patient, kindly."<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a></p> + +<p>The United States Commissioner fixed their bail at $500 each. All +furnished bail but Susan, who through her counsel, Henry R. Selden, +applied for a writ of habeas corpus, demanding immediate release and +challenging the lawfulness of her arrest. When a writ of habeas corpus +was denied and her bail increased to $1,000 by United States District +Judge Nathan K. Hall, sitting in Albany, Susan was more than ever +determined to resist the interference of the courts in her +constitutional right as a citizen to vote. She refused to give bail, +emphatically stating that she preferred prison.</p> + +<p>Seeing no heroism but only disgrace in a jail term for his client and +unwilling to let her bring this ignominy upon herself. Henry Selden +chivalrously assured her that this was a time when she must be guided +by her lawyer's advice, and he paid her bail. Ignorant of the +technicalities of the law, she did not realize the far-reaching +implications of this well-intentioned act until they left the +courtroom and in the hallway met tall vigorous John Van Voorhis of +Rochester who was working on the case with Judge Selden. With the +impatience of a younger man, eager to fight to the finish, he +exclaimed, "You have lost your chance to get your case before the +Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus!"<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a></p> + +<p>Aghast, Susan rushed back to the courtroom, hoping to cancel the bond, +but it was too late. Bitterly disappointed, she remonstrated with +Henry Selden, but he quietly replied, "I could not see a lady I +respected in jail." She never forgave him for this, in spite of her +continued appreciation of his keen legal mind, his unfailing kindness, +and his willingness to battle for women.</p> + +<p>Within a few days she appeared before the Federal Grand Jury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> in +Albany and was indicted on the charge that she "did knowingly, +wrongfully and unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress of +the United States...."<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> Her trial was set for the term of the +United States District Court, beginning May 13, 1873, in Rochester, +New York.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;"> +<img src="images/203.jpg" width="376" height="450" alt="Judge Henry R. Selden" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Judge Henry R. Selden</span> +</div> + +<p>During these difficult days in Albany, Susan found comfort and +courage, as in the past, in the friendliness of Lydia Mott's home. +Here she planned the steps by which to win public approval and +financial aid for her test case. She addressed the commission which +was revising New York's constitution on woman's right to vote under +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pointing out that the law +limiting suffrage to males was nullified by this new interpretation. +Eager to spread the truth about her own legal contest, she distributed +printed copies of Judge Selden's argument. Then traveling to New York +and Washington, she personally presented copies to newspaper editors +and Congressmen. To one of these men she wrote, "It is not for +myself—but for all womanhood—yes and all manhood too—that I most +rejoice in the appeal to the legal mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> of the Nation. It is no +longer whether women wish to vote, or men are willing, but it is +woman's Constitutional right."<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In spite of the fact that Susan was technically in the custody of the +United States Marshal, who objected to her leaving Rochester, she +managed to carry out a full schedule of lectures in Ohio, Indiana, and +Illinois, and also the usual annual Washington and New York woman +suffrage conventions at which she told the story of her voting, her +arrest, and her pending trial, and where she received enthusiastic +support.</p> + +<p>Because she wanted the people to understand the legal points on which +she based her right to vote, Susan spoke on "The Equal Right of All +Citizens to the Ballot" in every district in Monroe County. So +thorough and convincing was she that the district attorney asked for a +change of venue, fearing that any Monroe County jury, sitting in +Rochester, would be prejudiced in her favor. When her case was +transferred to the United States Circuit Court in Canandaigua, to be +heard a month later, she immediately descended upon Ontario County +with her speech, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to +Vote?" and Matilda Joslyn Gage joined her, speaking on "The United +States on Trial, Not Susan B. Anthony."</p> + +<p>On the lecture platform Susan wore a gray silk dress with a soft, +white lace collar. Her hair, now graying, was smoothed back and +twisted neatly into a tight knot. Everything about her indicated +refinement and sincerity, and most of her audiences felt this.</p> + +<p>"Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the +natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and vote +in making and executing the laws," she declared as she looked into the +faces of the men and women who had gathered to hear her, farmers, +storekeepers, lawyers, and housewives, rich and poor, a cross section +of America.</p> + +<p>Repeating to them salient passages from the Declaration of +Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, she added, "It was +we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male +citizens: but we the whole people, who formed this Union. And we +formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; +not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the +whole people—women as well as men."<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p> + +<p>She asked, "Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities +of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state +prisoners will agree with me that it is not only one of them, but the +one without which all the others are nothing."<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a></p> + +<p>Quoting for them the Fifteenth Amendment, she told them it had settled +forever the question of the citizen's right to vote. The Fifteenth +Amendment, she reasoned, applies to women, first because women are +citizens and secondly because of their "previous condition of +servitude." Defining a slave as a person robbed of the proceeds of his +labor and subject to the will of another, she showed how state laws +relating to married women had placed them in the position of slaves.</p> + +<p>As she analyzed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments +and cited authorities for her conclusions, she left little doubt in +the minds of those who heard her that women were persons and citizens +whose privileges and immunities could not be abridged.</p> + +<p>On this note she concluded: "We ask the juries to fail to return +verdicts of 'guilty' against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United +States citizens for offering their votes at our elections ... We ask +the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and +wherever there is room for doubt to give its benefit on the side of +liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that 'the true rule of +interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its +amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, +everything against human rights unconstitutional.' And it is on this +line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot—all +peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, +when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before +the law."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Speaking twenty-one nights in succession was arduous. "So few see or +feel any special importance in the impending trial," she jotted down +in her diary. In towns, such as Geneva, where she had old friends, +like Elizabeth Smith Miller, she was assured of a friendly welcome and +a good audience.<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 325px;"> +<img src="images/206.jpg" width="325" height="500" alt=""The Woman Who Dared"" title="" /> +<span class="caption">"The Woman Who Dared"</span> +</div> + +<p>As the collections, taken up after her lectures, were too small to pay +her expenses, her financial problems weighed heavily. The notes she +had signed for <i>The Revolution</i> were in the main still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> unpaid, and +one of her creditors was growing impatient. She had recently paid her +counsel, Judge Selden, $200 and John Van Voorhis, $75, leaving only +$3.45 in her defense fund, but as usual a few of her loyal friends +came to her aid, and both Judge Selden and John Van Voorhis, deeply +interested in her courageous fight, gave most of their time without +charge.<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a></p> + +<p>If this campaign was a problem financially, it was a success in the +matter of nation-wide publicity. The New York <i>Herald</i> exulted in +hostile gibes at women suffrage and published fictitious interviews, +ridiculing Susan as a homely aggressive old maid, but the New York +<i>Evening Post</i> prophesied that the court decision would likely be in +her favor. The Rochester <i>Express</i> championed her warmly: "All +Rochester will assert—at least all of it worth heeding—that Miss +Anthony holds here the position of a refined and estimable woman, +thoroughly respected and beloved by the large circle of staunch +friends who swear by her common sense and loyalty, if not by her +peculiar views." In fact the consensus of opinion in Rochester was +much like that of the woman who remarked, "No, I am not converted to +what these women advocate. I am too cowardly for that; but I am +converted to Susan B. Anthony."<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a></p> + +<p>This, however, was far from the attitude of Lucy Stone's <i>Woman's +Journal</i>, which had ignored Susan's voting in November 1872 because it +was out of sympathy with this militant move and with her +interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Later, as +her case progressed in the courts, the <i>Journal</i> did give it brief +notice as a news item, but in 1873 when it listed as a mark of honor +the women who had worked wisely for the cause, Susan B. Anthony's name +was not among them, and this did not pass unnoticed by Susan; nor did +the fact that she was snubbed by the Congress of Women, meeting in New +York and sponsored by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Maria +Mitchell. This drawing away of women hurt her far more than newspaper +gibes. In fact she was sadly disappointed in women's response to the +herculean effort she was making for them.</p> + +<p>Even more disconcerting was the adverse decision of the Supreme Court +on the Myra Bradwell case, which at once shattered the confidence of +most of her legal advisors. The court held that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> Illinois had violated +no provision of the federal Constitution in refusing to allow Myra +Bradwell to practice law because she was a woman and declared that the +right to practice law in state courts is not a privilege or an +immunity of a citizen of the United States, nor is the power of a +state to prescribe qualifications for admission to the bar affected by +the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, filing a +dissenting opinion, lived up to Susan's faith in him, but Benjamin +Butler wrote her, "I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that +the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as +it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to +citizens. But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that +the constitutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as +guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give force to them +there must be legislation.... Therefore, the point is for the friends +of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation."<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a></p> + +<p>Susan, however, never wavered in her conviction that she as a citizen +had a constitutional right to vote and that it was her duty to test +this right in the courts.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="IS_IT_A_CRIME_FOR_A_CITIZEN_TO_VOTE" id="IS_IT_A_CRIME_FOR_A_CITIZEN_TO_VOTE"></a>"IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?"</h2> + + +<p>Charged with the crime of voting illegally, Susan was brought to trial +on June 17, 1873, in the peaceful village of Canandaigua, New York. +Simply dressed and wearing her new bonnet faced with blue silk and +draped with a dotted veil,<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a> she stoically climbed the court-house +steps, feeling as if on her shoulders she carried the political +destiny of American women. With her were her counsel, Henry R. Selden +and John Van Voorhis, her sister, Hannah Mosher, most of the women who +had voted with her in Rochester, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose +interest in this case was akin to her own.</p> + +<p>In the courtroom on the second floor, seated behind the bar, Susan +watched the curious crowd gather and fill every available seat. She +wondered, as she calmly surveyed the all-male jury, whether they could +possibly understand the humiliation of a woman who had been arrested +for exercising the rights of a citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not +promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench +through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the +undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter +opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small, +white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended. +Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of +black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth. +He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her testify on her own +behalf.</p> + +<p>She was completely satisfied, however, as she listened to Henry +Selden's presentation of her case. Tall and commanding, he stood +before the court with nobility and kindness in his face and eyes, +bringing to mind a handsome cultured Lincoln. So logical, so just was +his reasoning, so impressive were his citations of the law that it +seemed to her they must convince the jury and even the expressionless +judge on the bench.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>Pointing out that the only alleged ground of the illegality of Miss +Anthony's vote was that she was a woman, Henry Selden declared, "If +the same act had been done by her brother under the same +circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent and laudable, +but honorable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a +crime.... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has +been arraigned in a criminal court, merely on account of her +sex."<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a> He claimed that Miss Anthony had voted in good faith, +believing that the United States Constitution gave her the right to +vote, and he clearly outlined her interpretation of the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, declaring that she stood arraigned as a criminal +simply because she took the only step possible to bring this great +constitutional question before the courts.</p> + +<p>After he had finished, Susan followed closely for two long hours the +arguments of the district attorney, Richard Crowley, who contended +that whatever her intentions may have been, good or bad, she had by +her voting violated a law of the United States and was therefore +guilty of crime.</p> + +<p>At the close of the district attorney's argument, Judge Hunt without +leaving the bench drew out a written document, and to her surprise, +read from it as he addressed the jury. "The right of voting or the +privilege of voting," he declared, "is a right or privilege arising +under the constitution of the State, not of the United States.<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a></p> + +<p>"The Legislature of the State of New York," he continued, "has seen +fit to say, that the franchise of voting shall be limited to the male +sex.... If the Fifteenth Amendment had contained the word 'sex,' the +argument of the defendant would have been potent.... The Fourteenth +Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting of Miss +Anthony was in violation of the law....</p> + +<p>"There was no ignorance of any fact," he added, "but all the facts +being known, she undertook to settle a principle in her own person.... +To constitute a crime, it is true, that there must be a criminal +intent, but it is equally true that knowledge of the facts of the case +is always held to supply this intent...."</p> + +<p>Then hesitating a moment, he concluded, "Upon this evidence I suppose +there is no question for the jury and that the jury should be directed +to find a verdict of guilty."</p> + +<p>Immediately Henry Selden was on his feet, addressing the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> judge, +requesting that the jury determine whether or not the defendant was +guilty of crime.</p> + +<p>Judge Hunt, however, refused and firmly announced, "The question, +gentlemen of the jury, in the form it finally takes, is wholly a +question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, +in the first place, that under the Fourteenth Amendment which Miss +Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote.</p> + +<p>"And I have decided also," he continued, "that her belief and the +advice which she took does not protect her in the act which she +committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your +part of guilty, and therefore I direct that you find a verdict of +guilty."</p> + +<p>Again Henry Selden was on his feet. "That is a direction," he +declared, "that no court has power to make in a criminal case."</p> + +<p>The courtroom was tense. Susan, watching the jury and wondering if +they would meekly submit to his will, heard the judge tersely order, +"Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk."</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen of the jury," intoned the clerk, "hearken to your verdict +as the Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of +the offense whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all."</p> + +<p>Claiming exception to the direction of the Court that the jury find a +verdict of guilty in this a criminal case. Henry Selden asked that the +jury be polled.</p> + +<p>To this, Judge Hunt abruptly replied, "No. Gentlemen of the jury, you +are discharged."</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>That night Susan recorded her estimate of Judge Hunt's verdict in her +diary in one terse sentence, "The greatest outrage History ever +witnessed."<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a></p> + +<p>The New York <i>Sun</i>, the Rochester <i>Democrat and Chronicle</i>, and the +Canandaigua <i>Times</i> were indignant over Judge Hunt's failure to poll +the jury. "Judge Hunt," commented the <i>Sun</i>, "allowed the jury to be +impanelled and sworn, and to hear the evidence; but when the case had +reached the point of rendering the verdict, he directed a verdict of +guilty. He thus denied a trial by jury to an accused party in his +court; and either through malice, which we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> do not believe, or through +ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a +judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the +Constitution of the United States.... The privilege of polling the +jury has been held to be an absolute right in this State and it is a +substantial right ..."<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a></p> + +<p>Claiming that the defendant had been denied her right of trial by +jury. Henry Selden the next day moved for a new trial. Judge Hunt +denied the motion, and, ordering the defendant to stand up, asked her, +"Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be +pronounced."<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a></p> + +<p>"Yes, your honor," Susan replied, "I have many things to say; for in +your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every +vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, +my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored...."</p> + +<p>Impatiently Judge Hunt protested that he could not listen to a +rehearsal of arguments which her counsel had already presented.</p> + +<p>"May it please your honor," she persisted, "I am not arguing the +question but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice +be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is +the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial +of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my +right to a trial by a jury of my peers ..."</p> + +<p>"The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on," interrupted Judge +Hunt; but Susan, ignoring his command to sit down, protested that her +prosecutors and the members of the jury were all her political +sovereigns.</p> + +<p>Again Judge Hunt tried to stop her, but she was not to be put off. She +was pleading for all women and her voice rang out to every corner of +the courtroom.</p> + +<p>"The Court must insist," declared Judge Hunt, "the prisoner has been +tried according to established forms of law."</p> + +<p>"Yes, your honor," admitted Susan, "but by forms of law all made by +men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and +against women...."</p> + +<p>"The Court orders the prisoner to sit down," shouted Judge Hunt. "It +will not allow another word."</p> + +<p>Unheeding, Susan continued, "When I was brought before your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> honor for +trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the +Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United +States citizens under its protecting aegis—that should declare +equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or +naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this +justice—failing, even, to get a trial by a jury <i>not</i> of my peers—I +ask not leniency at your hands—but rather the full rigors of the +law."</p> + +<p>Once more Judge Hunt tried to stop her, and acquiescing at last, she +sat down, only to be ordered by him to stand up as he pronounced her +sentence, a fine of $100 and the costs of prosecution.</p> + +<p>"May it please your honor," she protested, "I shall never pay a dollar +of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 +debt, incurred by publishing my paper—<i>The Revolution</i> ... the sole +object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have +done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of +law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them +the right of representation in the government.... I shall earnestly +and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical +recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny +is obedience to God.'"</p> + +<p>Pouring cold water on this blaze of oratory. Judge Hunt tersely +remarked that the Court would not require her imprisonment pending the +payment of her fine.</p> + +<p>This shrewd move, obviously planned in advance, made it impossible to +carry the case to the United States Supreme Court by writ of habeas +corpus.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>That same afternoon, Susan was on hand for the trial of the three +election inspectors. This time Judge Hunt submitted the case to the +jury but with explicit instructions that the defendants were guilty. +The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the inspectors, denied a +new trial, were each fined $25 and costs. Two of them, Edwin F. Marsh +and William B. Hall, refused to pay their fines and were sent to jail. +Susan appealed on their behalf to Senator Sargent in Washington, who +eventually secured a pardon for them from President Grant. He also +presented a petition to the Senate, in January 1874, to remit Susan's +fine, as did William Loughridge of Iowa to the House, but the +judiciary committees reported adversely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p> + +<p>Because neither of these cases had been decided on the basis of +national citizenship and the right of a citizen to vote, Susan was +heartsick. To have them relegated to the category of election fraud +was as if her high purpose had been trailed in the dust. Wishing to +spread reliable information about her trial and the legal questions +involved, she had 3,000 copies of the court proceedings printed for +distribution.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a></p> + +<p>It was hard for her to concede that justice for women could not be +secured in the courts, but there seemed to be no way in the face of +the cold letter of the law to take her case to the Supreme Court of +the United States. This would have been possible on writ of habeas +corpus had Judge Hunt sentenced her to prison for failure to pay her +fine, but this he carefully avoided.</p> + +<p>Even that intrepid fighter, John Van Voorhis, could find no loophole, +and another of her loyal friends in the legal profession, Albert G. +Riddle, wrote her, "There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the +courts and just as little from the politicians. They will never take +up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never—till the thing +is done.... The trouble is that man can govern alone, and that, though +woman has the right, man wants to do it, and if she wait for him to +ask her, she will never vote.... Either man must be made to see and +feel ... the need of woman's help in the great field of human +government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as +she never has, and take her place."<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a></p> + +<p>The case of Virginia Minor of St. Louis still held out a glimmer of +hope. She had brought suit against an election inspector for his +refusal to register her as a voter in the presidential election of +1872, and the case of Minor vs. Happersett reached the United States +Supreme Court in 1874. An adverse decision, on March 29, 1875, +delivered by Chief Justice Waite, a friend of woman suffrage, was a +bitter blow to Susan and to all those who had pinned their faith on a +more liberal interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth +Amendments.</p> + +<p>Carefully studying the decision, Susan tried to fathom its reasoning, +so foreign to her own ideas of justice. "Sex," she read, "has never +been made of one of the elements of citizenship in the United +States.... The XIV Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women +any more than it did of men.... The direct question<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> is, therefore, +presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters."<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a></p> + +<p>She read on: "The Constitution does not define the privileges and +immunities of citizens.... In this case we need not determine what +they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It +certainly is nowhere made so in express terms....</p> + +<p>"When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the +several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had Constitutions +of their own.... We find in no State were all citizens permitted to +vote.... Women were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by +the express provision of their constitutions and laws ... No new State +has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of +suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered valid +objection to her admission. On the contrary ... the right of suffrage +was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey, +without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to +prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have +been reorganized under a requirement that, before their +Representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress, they must have +adopted new Constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these +Constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States +have all been restored to their original position as States in the +Union ... Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, +this is one....</p> + +<p>"Our province," concluded Chief Justice Waite, "is to decide what the +law is, not to declare what it should be.... Being unanimously of the +opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the +right of suffrage upon any one, and that the Constitutions and laws of +the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are +not necessarily void, we affirm the judgment of the Court below."</p> + +<p>"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored +it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration +which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal +control over the rights and privileges of citizens. If the +Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage, she asked herself, +why does it define the qualifications of those voting for members of +the House of Representatives? How about the enfranchisement of Negroes +by federal amendment or the enfranchisement of foreigners?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> Why did +the federal government interfere in her case, instead of leaving it in +the hands of the state of New York?</p> + +<p>Like most abolitionists, Susan had always regarded the principles of +the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as +the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation +of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of +harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also +contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, Sir Edward +Coke, who said, "Whenever the question of liberty runs doubtful, the +decision must be given in favor of liberty."<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a></p> + +<p>In the face of such a ruling by the highest court in the land, she was +helpless. Women were shut out of the Constitution and denied its +protection. From here on there was only one course to follow, to press +again for a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SOCIAL_PURITY" id="SOCIAL_PURITY"></a>SOCIAL PURITY</h2> + + +<p>Militancy among the suffragists continued to flare up here and there +in resistance to taxation without representation. Abby Kelley Foster's +home in Worcester was sold for taxes for a mere fraction of its worth, +while in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Abby and Julia Smith's cows and +personal property were seized for taxes. Both Dr. Harriot K. Hunt in +Boston and Mary Anthony in Rochester continued their tax protests. +Much as Susan admired this spirited rebellion, she recognized that +these militant gestures were but flames in the wind unless they had +behind them a well-organized, sustained campaign for a Sixteenth +Amendment, and this she could not undertake until <i>The Revolution</i> +debt was paid. Nor was there anyone to pinch-hit for her since +Ernestine Rose had returned to England and Mrs. Stanton gave all her +time to Lyceum lectures.</p> + +<p>At the moment the prospect looked bleak for woman suffrage. In +Congress, there was not the slightest hope of the introduction of or +action on a Sixteenth Amendment. In the states, interest was kept +alive by woman suffrage bills before the legislatures, and year by +year, with more people recognizing the inherent justice of the demand, +the margin of defeat grew smaller. Whenever these state contests were +critical, Susan managed to be on hand, giving up profitable lecture +engagements to speak without fees; in Michigan in 1874 and in Iowa in +1875, she made new friends for the cause but was unable to stem the +tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in +Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor, +drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then +the other extreme, every narrow, selfish religious bigot."<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a></p> + +<p>A new militant movement swept the country in 1874, starting in small +Ohio towns among women who were so aroused over the evil influence of +liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in +front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to +reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising, +the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next +few years was organized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> into a powerful reform movement by a young +schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard.</p> + +<p>A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the +conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly +temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women. +Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who +organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she +felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to +show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. +You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which +is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil +until you have votes."<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a></p> + +<p>As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what +she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment, +speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the +Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a +week, which she applied to the <i>Revolution</i> debt.</p> + +<p>Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their +popularity,—particularly in the West, where in the little towns +scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters, +and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met +the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and +children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons +to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card, +for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost +everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise, +discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe. +She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her +dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but +frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to +them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple +conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious +oratory of other lecturers.</p> + +<p>Continuous travel in all kinds of weather was difficult. Branch lines +were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by +blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel +by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> in dingy +dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy, +reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on +any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister +Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood +public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel +rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only +occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of +coffee."<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a> She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her +unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too +generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their +services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and +arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could +be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a></p> + +<p>Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and +Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously +she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in +despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she +reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy +a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done +until the <i>Revolution</i> debt was paid, for some of her creditors were +becoming impatient.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her +family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her +illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to +take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for +her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that +Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas.</p> + +<p>These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a +great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George +Eliot's <i>Middlemarch</i> and Hawthorne's <i>Scarlet Letter</i> of particular +interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions +which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case, +now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest +developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends. +She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in +whose home she had so often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> visited and toward whom she felt a warm +motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose +help and loyalty during the difficult days of <i>The Revolution</i> she +never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose +quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he +had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same +was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to +say a good word for woman's rights.</p> + +<p>Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before, +Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and +Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs. +Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in +1872 had revived her <i>Weekly</i> for a crusade on what she called "the +social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton +Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined +by merciless publicity.</p> + +<p>The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable +people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward +Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young +parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by +Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials +continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The +whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward +Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him. +Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote +Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike +anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a></p> + +<p>When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a +suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the +alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news +throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published +anything and everything even remotely connected with the case. +Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the +West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding +them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force +her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry +Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> steadfastly +refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who +astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her +in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice +quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton, +who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the +New York <i>Graphic</i> without Susan's consent published her letter to +Mrs. Hooker.</p> + +<p>The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher, +whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher, +whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word +carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could +not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a +sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that +the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his +side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes +influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church +real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, <i>Christian Union</i>, +and from his book the <i>Life of Christ</i>, now in preparation and for +which he had already been paid $20,000.</p> + +<p>Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular +side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own +defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her +to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew +far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or +Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press +campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman +Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their +previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as +were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in <i>The +Revolution</i> six years before.</p> + +<p>Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole +doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the +husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second +marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I +consider the marriage relation."<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a></p> + +<p>Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or +innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> her real feelings to +her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding +the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an +impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have +a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul +becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain +and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more +demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie +which denies it."<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a></p> + +<p>Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she +could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her +reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the +New York <i>Sun</i>, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by +those who know anything of her character." The Rochester <i>Democrat and +Chronicle</i> had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite +revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be +received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence +of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the +country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a></p> + +<p>She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of +trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a +verdict.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Realizing that many taboos were being broken down by the lurid +nation-wide publicity on the Beecher-Tilton case and that as a result +people were more willing to consider subjects which hitherto had not +been discussed in polite society, Susan began to plan a lecture on +"Social Purity."</p> + +<p>She was familiar with the public protest Englishwomen under the +leadership of Josephine Butler were making against the state +regulation of vice. Following with interest and admiration their +courageous fight for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which +placed women suspected of prostitution under police power, Susan found +encouragement in the support these reformers had received from such +men as John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright. Such legislation, she +resolved, must not gain a foothold in her country, because it not only +disregarded women's right to personal liberty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> but showed a dangerous +callousness toward men's share of responsibility for prostitution.</p> + +<p>She was awake to the problems prostitution presented in cities like +New York and Washington, its prevalence, the police protection it +received, the political corruption it fostered and the reluctance of +the public to face the situation, the majority of men regarding it as +a necessity, and most women closing their eyes to its existence.</p> + +<p>During the winter of 1875, while the Beecher-Tilton case was being +tried in Brooklyn, she delivered her speech on "Social Purity" at the +Chicago Grand Opera House, in the Sunday dime-lecture course, facing +with trepidation the immense crowd which gathered to hear her. Even +the daring Mrs. Stanton had warned her that she would never be asked +to speak in Chicago again, and with this the manager of the Slayton +Lecture Bureau agreed. But they were wrong. The people were hungry for +the truth and for a constructive policy. In the past they had heard +the "social evil" described and denounced in vivid thunderous words by +eloquent men and by the dramatic Anna E. Dickinson. Now an earnest +woman with graying hair, one of their own kind, talked to them without +mincing matters, calmly and logically, and offered them a remedy.</p> + +<p>Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and +breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of +abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these +evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them +successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics, +revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a +foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence +rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously +mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against +England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for +New York and Washington and which she described as licensed +prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social +corruption.</p> + +<p>Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as +the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more +statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work +formerly done in the household, she explained, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> being gradually +taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a +living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were +supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet +their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and +comfortable shelter into an immoral life.</p> + +<p>Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who +now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell +themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she +told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of +financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. +Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women +like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a></p> + +<p>"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals. +Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees, +legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there +must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers, +doctors—that wherever women go to seek counsel—spiritual, legal, +physical—there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest +of their own sex to minister to them."</p> + +<p>Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a +necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will +cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the +equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions."</p> + +<p>She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make +the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise, +rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them, +have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges, +jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our +courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married +woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence.</p> + +<p>Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity +presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause +was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott, +fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> smiling +approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott +declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, +truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a></p> + +<p>She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas, +and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the +issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed +by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper +observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the +sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the +subject."<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief +turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her +message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw +justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the +East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new. +Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had +brought to lonely bleak western towns—better homes, cleanliness, +comfort, then schools, churches, law and order—and many of them were +willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to +translate that willingness into law.</p> + +<p>As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her +family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending +to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she +recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have +paid the last dollar of the <i>Revolution</i> debt."<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a></p> + +<p>Even the press took notice, the Chicago <i>Daily News</i> commenting, "By +working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could +earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors +of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan +B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="A_FEDERAL_WOMAN_SUFFRAGE_AMENDMENT" id="A_FEDERAL_WOMAN_SUFFRAGE_AMENDMENT"></a>A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT</h2> + + +<p>Like everyone else in the United States in 1876, Susan now turned her +attention to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which was +proclaiming to the world the progress this new country had made. Susan +pointed out, however, that one hundred years after the signing of the +Declaration of Independence, women were still deprived of basic +citizenship rights.</p> + +<p>As an afterthought, a Woman's Pavilion had been erected on the +exposition grounds and exhibited here she found only women's +contribution to the arts but nothing which would in any way show the +part women had played in building up the country or developing +industry. She longed to explain so that all could hear how the skilled +work of women had contributed to the prosperous textile and shoe +industries, to the manufacture of cartridges and Waltham watches, and +countless other products. Could she have had her way, she would have +made the Woman's Pavilion an eloquent appeal for equal rights, but +unable to do this, she established a center of rebellion for the +National Woman Suffrage Association at 1431 Chestnut Street, in +parlors on the first floor. Here she spent many happy hours directing +the work, often sleeping on the sofa so that she could work late and +save money for the cause.</p> + +<p>Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott. +Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a +comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs. +Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in +June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary, +"Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a></p> + +<p>Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national +conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of +enfranchising women in this centennial year. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> no woman suffrage +plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. +Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a +document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed +for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for +presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in +Independence Square.</p> + +<p>Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made +plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as +reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth <i>Times</i>. Mrs. +Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so +indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the +Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First +Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan +by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of +her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they +pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that +bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the +platform.</p> + +<p>By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting +Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony. +Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made +one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for +permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather +than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her +four friends on the platform.</p> + +<p>"We ... sat there waiting ..." reported Mrs. Blake. "The heat was +frightful.... Amid such a throng it was difficult to hear anything ... +We decided that our presentation should take place immediately after +Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the +Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, +and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was +exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice +was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' +and cried, 'Now is the time.'</p> + +<p>"We all four rose, Miss Anthony first, next Mrs. Gage, bearing our +engrossed Declaration, and Mrs. Spencer and myself following with +hundreds of printed copies in our hands. There was a stir in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> the +crowd just at the time, and General Hawley who had been keeping a wary +eye on us, had relaxed his vigilance for a moment, as he signed to the +band to resume playing. He did not see us advancing until we reached +the Vice President's dais. There Miss Anthony, taking the parchment +from Mrs. Gage, stepped forward and presented it to Mr. Ferry, saying, +'I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of +the United States.'"<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a></p> + +<p>Nonplussed, Mr. Ferry bowed low and received the Declaration without a +word. Then the four intrepid women filed out, distributing printed +copies of their declaration while General Hawley boomed out, "Order! +Order!"</p> + +<p>Leaving the square and mounting a platform erected for musicians in +front of Independence Hall, they waited until a curious crowd had +gathered around them. Then while Mrs. Gage held an umbrella over Susan +to shield her from the hot sun, she read the Women's Declaration in a +loud clear voice that carried far.</p> + +<p>"We do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of +self-government," she began. "Our faith is firm and unwavering in the +broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as +abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot +forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and +clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of +citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the +degradation of disfranchisement."<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a></p> + +<p>Then she enumerated women's grievances and the crowd applauded as she +drove home point after point.</p> + +<p>"Woman," she continued, "has shown equal devotion with man to the +cause of freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense. +Together they have made this country what it is.... We ask our rulers, +at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges.... We ask +justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights +that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us +and our daughters forever."</p> + +<p>Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which +eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her +four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager +audience awaited their report and hailed their courage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/229.jpg" width="450" height="440" alt="Aaron A. Sargent" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Aaron A. Sargent</span> +</div> + +<p>The New York <i>Tribune</i>, commenting on Susan's militancy, prophesied +that it foreshadowed "the new forms of violence and disregard of order +which may accompany the participation of women in active partisan +politics."<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Nor was Congress impressed by Susan's centennial publicity demanding a +federal woman suffrage amendment. She had gathered petitions from +twenty-six states with 10,000 signatures which were presented to the +Senate in 1877. The majority of the Senators found these petitions +uproariously funny, and Susan in the visitors' gallery at the time of +their presentation was infuriated by the mirth and disrespect of these +men. "A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity +and without comment," reported the popular journalist, Mary Clemmer, +in her weekly Washington column, "but the majority seemed intensely +conscious of holding something unutterably funny in their hands.... +The entire Senate presented the appearance of a laughing school +practicing sidesplitting and ear-extended grins." After a few humorous +and sarcastic remarks the petitions were referred to the Committee on +Public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Lands. Only one Senator, Aaron A. Sargent of California, was +"man enough and gentleman enough to lift the petitions from this +insulting proposition.... He ... demanded for the petition of more +than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be given any +other."<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a></p> + +<p>Although his words did not deter the Senators, Susan was proud of this +tall vigorous white-haired Californian and grateful for his +spontaneous support in this humiliating situation. He had been a +trusted friend and counselor ever since she had shared with him and +his family the long snowy journey from Nevada in 1872. She looked +forward to the time when woman suffrage would have more such advocates +in the Congress and when she would find there new faces and a more +liberal spirit.</p> + +<p>Disappointment only drove Susan into more intensive activity. Between +lectures she now nursed her sister Hannah who was critically ill in +Daniel's home in Leavenworth. After Hannah's death in May 1877, Susan +worked off her grief in Colorado, where the question of votes for +women was being referred to the people of the state.</p> + +<p>The suffragists in Colorado were headed by Dr. Alida Avery, who had +left her post as resident physician at the new woman's college, +Vassar, to practice medicine in Denver. Making Dr. Avery's home her +headquarters, Susan carried her plea for the ballot to settlements far +from the railroads, traveling by stagecoach over rough lonely roads +through magnificent scenery. Holding meetings wherever she could, she +spoke in schoolhouses, in hotel dining rooms, and even in saloons, +when no other place was available, and always she was treated with +respect and listened to with interest. Occasionally only a mere +handful gathered to hear her, but in Lake City she spoke to an +audience of a thousand or more from a dry-goods box on the court-house +steps. She was equal to anything, but the mining towns depressed her, +for they were swarming with foreigners who had been welcomed as +naturalized, enfranchised citizens and who almost to a man opposed +extending the vote to women. This precedence of foreign-born men over +American women was not only galling to her but menaced, she believed, +the growth of American democracy.</p> + +<p>Woman suffrage was defeated in Colorado in 1877, two to one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> With the +Chinese coming into the state in great numbers to work in the mines, +the specter that stalked through this campaign was the fear of putting +the ballot into the hands of Chinese women.</p> + +<p>From Colorado, Susan moved on to Nebraska with a new lecture, "The +Homes of Single Women." Although she much preferred to speak on "Woman +and the Sixteenth Amendment" or "Bread and the Ballot," she realized +that, in order to be assured of return engagements, she must +occasionally vary her subjects, but she was unwilling to wander far +afield while women's needs still were so great. By means of this new +lecture she hoped to dispel the widespread, deeply ingrained fallacy +that single women were unwanted helpless creatures wholly dependent +upon some male relative for a home and support. Aware that this +mistaken estimate was slowly yielding in the face of a changing +economic order, she believed she could help lessen its hold by +presenting concrete examples of independent self-supporting single +women who had proved that marriage was not the only road to security +and a home. She told of Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose home in New York +City was a rendezvous for writers, artists, musicians, and reformers; +of Dr. Clemence Lozier, the friend of women medical students; of Mary +L. Booth, well established through her income as editor of <i>Harper's +Bazaar</i>; and of her beloved Lydia Mott, whose home had been a refuge +for fugitive slaves and reformers.<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a></p> + +<p>In Nebraska, she made a valuable new friend for the cause, Clara +Bewick Colby, whose zeal and earnest, intelligent face at once +attracted her. Within a few years, Mrs. Colby established in Beatrice, +Nebraska, a magazine for women, the <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, which to +Susan's joy spoke out for a federal woman suffrage amendment.</p> + +<p>Because Susan's contract with the Slayton Lecture Bureau allowed no +break in her engagements, she was obliged to leave the Washington +convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in the hands of +others in 1878. It was much on her mind as she traveled through +Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, and she sent a check for $100 +to help with the expenses of the convention. Particularly on her mind +was a federal woman suffrage amendment, for since 1869 when a +Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women had been introduced in +Congress and ignored, no further efforts along that line had been +made. Now good news came from Mrs. Stanton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> who had attended the +convention. She had persuaded Senator Sargent to introduce in the +Senate, on January 10, 1878, a new draft of a Sixteenth Amendment, +following the wording of the Fifteenth. It read, "The right of +citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged +by the United States or by any State on account of sex."<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;"> +<img src="images/232.jpg" width="374" height="450" alt="Clara Bewick Colby" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Clara Bewick Colby</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway, +although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking +the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging +as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of +several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return +Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a +newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs. +Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the +refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the +vote because it would wreck marriage and the home.</p> + +<p>Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> for +the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the +American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William +Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts +for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement +into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man +who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery. +Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right +track—the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you, +though between you and me, I still think the individual States must +lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State. +But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a></p> + +<p>The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state +method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for +experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced +the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increasing number of naturalized +immigrants, who had little understanding of democratic government or +sympathy with the rights of women. A federal amendment, on the other +hand, depending for its adoption upon Congress and ratifying +legislatures, was in the hands of a far more liberal, intelligent, and +preponderantly American group. "We have puttered with State rights for +thirty years," she sputtered, "without a foothold except in the +territories."<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a></p> + +<p>Year by year she continued her Washington conventions, convinced that +these gatherings in the national capital could not fail to impress +Congressmen with the seriousness of their purpose. As women from many +states lobbied for the Sixteenth Amendment, reporting a growing +sentiment everywhere for woman suffrage, as they received in the press +respectful friendly publicity, Congressmen began to take notice. At +the large receptions held at the Riggs House, through the generosity +of the proprietors, Jane Spofford and her husband, Congressmen became +better acquainted with the suffragists, finding that they were not +cranks, as they had supposed, but intelligent women and socially +charming.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton's poise as presiding officer and the warmth of her +personality made her the natural choice for president of the National +Woman Suffrage Association through the years. Her popularity, now well +established throughout the country after her ten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> years of lecturing +on the Lyceum circuit, lent prestige to the cause. To Susan, her +presence brought strength and the assurance that "the brave and true +word" would be spoken.<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> A new office had been created for Susan, +that of vice-president at large, and in that capacity she guided, +steadied, and prodded her flock.</p> + +<p>The subjects which the conventions discussed covered a wide field +going far beyond their persistent demands for a federal woman suffrage +amendment. Not only did they at this time urge an educational +qualification for voters to combat the argument that woman suffrage +would increase the ignorant vote, but they also protested the counting +of women in the basis of representation so long as they were +disfranchised. They criticized the church for barring women from the +ministry and from a share in church government. They took up the case +of Anna Ella Carroll,<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a> who had been denied recognition and a +pension for her services to her country during the Civil War, and they +urged pensions for all women who had nursed soldiers during the war. +They welcomed to their conventions Mormon women from Utah who came to +Washington to protest efforts to disfranchise them as a means of +discouraging polygamy.</p> + +<p>Susan injected international interest into these conventions by +reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from +Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's +son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in +Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women. Occasionally +foreign-born women, now making new homes for themselves in this +country, joined the ranks of the suffragists, and a few of them, like +Madam Anneké and Clara Heyman from Germany contributed a great deal +through their eloquence and wider perspective. These contacts with the +thoughts and aspirations of men and women of other countries led Susan +to dream of an international conference of women in the not too +distant future.<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a></p> + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="RECORDING_WOMENS_HISTORY" id="RECORDING_WOMENS_HISTORY"></a>RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY</h2> + + +<p>Recording women's history for future generations was a project that +had been in the minds of both Susan and Mrs. Stanton for a long time. +Both looked upon women's struggle for a share in government as a +potent force in strengthening democracy and one to be emphasized in +history. Men had always been the historians and had as a matter of +course extolled men's exploits, passing over women's record as +negligible. Susan intended to remedy this and she was convinced that +if women close to the facts did not record them now, they would be +forgotten or misinterpreted by future historians. Already many of the +old workers had died, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott, whom Susan had +nursed in her last illness, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison. +There was no time to be lost.<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a></p> + +<p>In the spring of 1880, Susan's mother died, and it was no longer +necessary for her to fit into her schedule frequent visits in +Rochester. Her sister Mary, busy with her teaching, was sharing her +home with her two widowed brothers-in-law and two nieces whose +education she was supervising.<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> Mrs. Stanton had just given up the +strenuous life of a Lyceum lecturer and welcomed work that would keep +her at home. Susan, who had managed to save $4,500 out of her lecture +fees, felt she could afford to devote at least a year to the history.</p> + +<p>She now shipped several boxes of letters, clippings, and documents to +the Stanton home in Tenafly, New Jersey.<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> As they planned their +book, it soon became obvious that the one volume which they had hoped +to finish in a few months would extend to two or three volumes and +take many years to write. They called in Matilda Joslyn Gage to help +them, and the three of them signed a contract to share the work and +the profits.</p> + +<p>The history presented a publishing problem as well as a writing +ordeal, and Susan, interviewing New York publishers, found the subject +had little appeal. Finally, however, she signed a contract with Fowler +& Wells under which the authors agreed to pay the cost of composition, +stereotyping, and engravings; and as usual she raised the necessary +funds.<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 349px;"> +<img src="images/236.jpg" width="349" height="450" alt="Matilda Joslyn Gage" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Matilda Joslyn Gage</span> +</div> + +<p>Returning to Tenafly as to a second home, Susan usually found Mrs. +Stanton beaming a welcome from the piazza and Margaret and Harriot +running to the gate to meet her. The Stanton children were fond of +Susan. It was a comfortable happy household, and Susan, thoroughly +enjoying Mrs. Stanton's companionship, attacked the history with +vigor. Sitting opposite each other at a big table in the sunny tower +room, they spent long hours at work. Susan, thin and wiry, her graying +hair neatly smoothed back over her ears, sat up very straight as she +rapidly sorted old clippings and letters and outlined chapters, while +Mrs. Stanton, stout and placid, her white curls beautifully arranged, +wrote steadily and happily, transforming masses of notes into readable +easy prose.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a></p> + +<p>Having sent appeals for information to colleagues in all parts of the +country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to +decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of +them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for +data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary +or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required +dates.... You say 'I' must be referred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> to in the history you are +writing.... I cannot furnish a biographical sketch and trust you will +not try to make one. Yours with ceaseless regret that any 'wing' of +suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a></p> + +<p>The greater part of the writing fell upon Mrs. Stanton, but Matilda +Joslyn Gage contributed the chapters, "Preceding Causes," "Women in +Newspapers," and "Women, Church, and State." Susan carefully selected +the material and checked the facts. She helped with the copying of the +handwritten manuscript and with the proofreading. Believing that +pictures of the early workers were almost as important for the +<i>History</i> as the subject matter itself, she tried to provide them, but +they presented a financial problem with which it was hard to cope, for +each engraving cost $100.<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a></p> + +<p>When the first volume of the <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> came off the +press in May 1881, she proudly and lovingly scanned its 878 pages +which told the story of women's progress in the United States up to +the Civil War.</p> + +<p>She was well aware that the <i>History</i> was not a literary achievement, +but the facts were there, as accurate as humanly possible; all the +eloquent, stirring speeches were there, a proof of the caliber and +high intelligence of the pioneers; and out of the otherwise dull +record of meetings, conventions, and petitions, a spirit of +independence and zeal for freedom shone forth, highlighted +occasionally by dramatic episodes. As Mrs. Stanton so aptly expressed +it, "We have furnished the bricks and mortar for some future architect +to rear a beautiful edifice."<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a></p> + +<p>The distribution of the book was very much on Susan's mind, for she +realized that it would not be in great demand because of its cost, +bulk, and subject matter. Nor could she at this time present it to +libraries, as she wished, for she had already spent her savings on the +illustrations. "It ought to be in every school library," she wrote +Amelia Bloomer, "where every boy and girl of the nation could see and +read and learn what women have done to secure equality of rights and +chances for girls and women...."<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a></p> + +<p>So much material had been collected while Volume I was in preparation +that both Susan and Mrs. Stanton felt they should immediately +undertake Volume II. After a summer of lecturing to help finance its +publication, Susan returned to Tenafly to the monotonous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> work of +compilation. "I am just sick to death of it," she wrote her young +friend Rachel Foster. "I had rather wash or whitewash or do any +possible hard work than sit here and go there digging into the dusty +records of the past—that is, rather <i>make</i> history than write +it."<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a></p> + +<p>Yet she never entirely gave up making history, for she was always +planning for the future and Rachel Foster was now her able lieutenant, +relieving her of details, doing the spade work for the annual +Washington conventions, and arranging for an occasional lecture +engagement. Susan would not leave Tenafly for a lecture fee of less +than $50.</p> + +<p>She took this intelligent young girl to her heart as she had Anna E. +Dickinson in the past. Rachel, however, had none of Anna's dramatic +temperament or love of the limelight, but in her orderly businesslike +way was eager to serve Susan, whom she had admired ever since as a +child she had heard her speak for woman suffrage in her mother's +drawing room.</p> + +<p>While Susan was pondering the ways and means of financing another +volume of the <i>History</i>, the light broke through in a letter from +Wendell Phillips, announcing the astonishing news that she and Lucy +Stone had inherited approximately $25,000 each for "the woman's cause" +under the will of Eliza Eddy, the daughter of their former benefactor, +Francis Jackson. Although the legacy was not paid until 1885 because +of litigation, its promise lightened considerably Susan's financial +burden and she knew that Volumes II and III were assured. Her +gratitude to Eliza Eddy was unbounded, and better still, she read +between the lines the good will of Wendell Phillips who had been Eliza +Eddy's legal advisor. That he, whom she admired above all men, should +after their many differences still regard her as worthy of this trust, +meant as much to her as the legacy itself.</p> + +<p>In May 1882 she had the satisfaction of seeing the second volume of +the <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> in print, carrying women's record +through 1875. Volume III was not completed until 1885.</p> + +<p>Women's response to their own history was a disappointment. Only a few +realized its value for the future, among them Mary L. Booth, editor of +<i>Harper's Bazaar</i>. The majority were indifferent and some even +critical. When Mrs. Stanton offered the three volumes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> to the Vassar +College library, they were refused.<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a> Nevertheless, every time +Susan looked at the three large volumes on her shelves, she was happy, +for now she was assured that women's struggle for citizenship and +freedom would live in print through the years. To libraries in the +United States and Europe, she presented well over a thousand copies, +grateful that the Eliza Eddy legacy now made this possible.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In 1883, Susan surprised everyone by taking a vacation in Europe. Soon +after Volume II of the <i>History</i> had been completed, Mrs. Stanton had +left for Europe with her daughter Harriot.<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a> Her letters to Susan +reported not only Harriot's marriage to an Englishman, William Henry +Blatch, but also encouraging talks with the forward-looking women of +England and France whom she hoped to interest in an international +organization. Repeatedly she urged Susan to join her, to meet these +women, and to rest for a while from her strenuous labors. The +possibility of forming an international organization of women was a +greater attraction to Susan than Europe itself, and when Rachel Foster +suggested that she make the journey with her, she readily consented.</p> + +<p>"She goes abroad a republican Queen," observed the Kansas City +<i>Journal</i>, "uncrowned to be sure, but none the less of the blood +royal, and we have faith that the noblest men and women of Europe will +at once recognize and welcome her as their equal."<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a></p> + +<p>In London, Susan met Mrs. Stanton, "her face beaming and her white +curls as lovely as ever." Then after talking with English suffragists +and her two old friends, William Henry Channing and Ernestine Rose, +now living in England, Susan traveled with Rachel through Italy, +Switzerland, Germany, and France, where a whole new world opened +before her. She thoroughly enjoyed its beauty; yet there was much that +distressed her and she found herself far more interested in the +people, their customs and living conditions than in the treasures of +art. "It is good for our young civilization," she wrote Daniel, "to +see and study that of the old world and observe the hopelessness of +lifting the masses into freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and +integrity. How any American, any lover of our free institutions, based +on equality of rights for all, can settle down and live here is more +than I can comprehend. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> will only be by overturning the powers that +education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The +hope of the world is indeed our republic...." To a friend she +reported, "Amidst it all my head and heart turn to our battle for +women at home. Here in the old world, with ... its utter blotting out +of women as an equal, there is no hope, no possibility of changing her +condition; so I look to our own land of equality for men, and partial +equality for women, as the only one for hope or work."<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a></p> + +<p>Back in London again, she allowed herself a few luxuries, such as an +expensive India shawl and more social life than she had had in many a +year, and she longed to have Mary enjoy it all with her. She visited +suffragists in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England and +occasionally spoke at their meetings.<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> Here as in America +suffragists differed over the best way to win the vote, and even the +most radical among them were more conservative and cautious than +American women, but she admired them all and tried to understand the +very different problems they faced. Gradually she interested a few of +them in an international conference of women, and before she sailed +back to America with Mrs. Stanton in November 1883, she had their +promise of cooperation.</p> + +<p>The newspapers welcomed her home. "Susan B. Anthony is back from +Europe," announced the Cleveland <i>Leader</i>, "and is here for a winter's +fight on behalf of woman suffrage. She seems remarkably well, and has +gained fifteen pounds since she left last spring. She is sixty-three, +but looks just the same as twenty years ago. There is perhaps an extra +wrinkle in her face, a little more silver in her hair, but her blue +eyes are just as bright, her mouth as serious and her step as active +as when she was forty. She would attract attention in any crowd."<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a></p> + +<p>Susan came back to an indifferent Congress. "All would fall flat and +dead if someone were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to +us," she wrote a friend at this time, and to her diary she confided, +"It is perfectly disheartening that no member feels any especial +interest or earnest determination in pushing this question of woman +suffrage, to all men only a side issue."<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="IMPETUS_FROM_THE_WEST" id="IMPETUS_FROM_THE_WEST"></a>IMPETUS FROM THE WEST</h2> + + +<p>"My heart almost stands still. I hope against hope, but still I hope," +Susan wrote in her diary in 1885, as she waited for news from Oregon +Territory regarding the vote of the people on a woman suffrage +amendment.<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a> Woman suffrage was defeated in Oregon; and in +Washington Territory, where in 1883 it had carried, a contest was +being waged in the courts to invalidate it. In Nebraska it had also +been defeated in 1882. Since the victories in Wyoming and Utah in 1869 +and 1870, not another state or territory had written woman suffrage +into law.</p> + +<p>In spite of these setbacks, Susan still saw great promise in the West +and resumed her lecturing there. She knew the rapidly growing young +western states and territories as few easterners did, and she +understood their people. Here women were making themselves +indispensable as teachers, and state universities, now open to them, +graduated over two thousand women a year. The Farmers' Alliance, the +Grange, and the Prohibition party, all distinctly western in origin, +admitted women to membership and were friendly to woman suffrage. +School suffrage had been won in twelve western states as against five +in the East, and Kansas women were now voting in municipal elections. +In a sense, woman suffrage was becoming respectable in the West, and a +woman was no longer ostracized by her friends for working with Susan +B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>Still critical of her own speaking, Susan was often discouraged over +her lectures, but her vitality, her naturalness, and her flashes of +wit seldom failed to win over her audiences. Her nephew, Daniel Jr., a +student at the University of Michigan, hearing her speak, wrote his +parents, "At the beginning of her lecture, Aunt Susan does not do so +well; but when she is in the midst of her argument and all her +energies brought into play, I think she is a very powerful +speaker."<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a></p> + +<p>On these trips through the West, she kept in close touch with her +brothers Daniel and Merritt in Kansas, frequently visiting in their +homes and taking her numerous nieces to Rochester. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> valued +Daniel's judgment highly, and he, well-to-do and influential, was a +great help to her in many ways, investing her savings and furnishing +her with railroad passes which greatly reduced her ever-increasing +traveling expenses.</p> + +<p>Everywhere she met active zealous members of the Women's Christian +Temperance Union. Since the Civil War, temperance had become a +vigorous movement in the Middle West, doing its utmost to counteract +the influence of the many large new breweries and saloons. Through the +Prohibition party, organized on a national basis in 1872, temperance +was now a political issue in Kansas, Iowa, and the Territory of +Dakota, and through the W.C.T.U. women waged an effective +total-abstinence campaign. Brought into the suffrage movement by +Frances Willard under the slogan, "For God and Home and Country," +these women quickly sensed the value of their votes to the temperance +cause. Nor was Susan slow to recognize their importance to her and her +work, for they represented an entirely new group, churchwomen, who +heretofore had been suspicious of and hostile toward woman's rights. +Through them, she anticipated a powerful impetus for her cause.</p> + +<p>With admiration she had watched Frances Willard's career.<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> This +vivid consecrated young woman was a born leader, quick to understand +woman's need of the vote and eager to lead women forward. It was a +disappointment, however, when she joined the American rather than the +National Woman Suffrage Association. The reasons for this, Susan +readily understood, were Frances Willard's warm friendship with Mary +Livermore and her own preference for the American's state-by-state +method, similar to that she had so successfully followed in her +W.C.T.U. Yet Frances Willard, whenever she could, cooperated with +Susan whom she admired and loved; and through the years these two +great leaders valued and respected each other, even though they +frequently differed over policy and method.</p> + +<p>Susan, for example, was often troubled because women suffrage and +temperance were more and more linked together in the public mind, thus +confusing the issues and arousing the hostility of those who might +have been friendly toward woman suffrage had they not feared that +women's votes would bring in prohibition. She did her best to make it +clear to her audiences that she did not ask for the ballot in order +that women might vote against saloons and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> for prohibition. She +demanded only that women have the same right as men to express their +opinions at the polls. Such an attitude was hard for many temperance +women to understand and to forgive.</p> + +<p>Over women's support of specific political parties, Susan and Frances +Willard were never able to agree. Susan had never been willing to ally +herself with a minority party. Therefore, to Frances Willard's +disappointment, she withheld her support from the Prohibition party in +1880, although their platform acknowledged woman's need of the ballot +and directed them to use it to settle the liquor question, and in 1884 +when they recommended state suffrage for women. Finding women eager to +support the Prohibitionists in gratitude for these inadequate planks, +Susan even issued a statement urging them to support the Republicans, +who held out the most hope to them even if woman suffrage had not been +mentioned in their platform. Her experience in Washington had proved +to her the friendliness and loyalty of individual Republicans, and she +was unwilling to jeopardize their support.</p> + +<p>Her judgment was confirmed during the next few years when friendly +Republicans spoke for woman suffrage in the Senate, and when in 1887 +the woman suffrage amendment was debated and voted on in the Senate. +In the Senate gallery eagerly listening, Susan took notice that the +sixteen votes cast for the amendment were those of Republicans.<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a></p> + +<p>Still hoping to win Susan's endorsement of the Prohibition party in +1888, Frances Willard asked her to outline what kind of plank would +satisfy her.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean so satisfy me," Susan replied, "that I would work, and +recommend to all women to work ... for the success of the third party +ticket?... Not until a third party gets into power ... which promises +a larger per cent of representatives, on the floor of Congress, and in +the several State legislatures, who will speak and vote for women's +enfranchisement, than does the Republican, shall I work for it. You +see, as yet there is not a single Prohibitionist in Congress while +there are at least twenty Republicans on the floor of the United +States Senate, besides fully one-half of the members of the House of +Representatives who are in favor of woman suffrage.... I do not +propose to work for the defeat of the party which thus far has +furnished nearly every vote in that direction."<a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p> + +<p>Nor was she lured away when, in 1888, the Prohibition party endorsed +woman suffrage and granted Frances Willard the honor of addressing its +convention and serving on the resolutions committee.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The temperance issue also cropped up in the annual Washington +conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association, preparations +for which Susan now left to Rachel Foster, May Wright Sewall, a +capable young recruit from Indiana, and Jane Spofford. However, she +still supervised these conventions, prodding and interfering, in what +she called her most Andrew Jackson-like manner. She always returned to +Washington with excitement and pleasure, and with the hope of some +outstanding victory, and the suite at the Riggs House, given her by +generous Jane Spofford, was a delight after months of hard travel in +the West. "I shall come both ragged and dirty," she wrote Mrs. +Spofford in 1887. "Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the +mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little +milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who +will patch me together so that I shall be presentable."<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a></p> + +<p>Open to all women irrespective of race or creed, the National Woman +Suffrage Association attracted fearless independent devoted members. +They welcomed Mormon women into the fold, and when the bill to +disfranchise Mormon women as a punishment for polygamy was before +Congress in 1887, they did their utmost to help Mormon women retain +the vote, but were defeated.</p> + +<p>They welcomed as well many temperance advocates. A few delegates, +however, among them Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Colby, scorned +what they called the "singing and praying" temperance group and +protested that temperance and religion were getting too strong a hold +on the organization. Abigail Duniway from Oregon contended that +suffragists should not join forces with temperance groups and blamed +the defeat of woman suffrage in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, in +1887, on men's fear that women would vote for prohibition.</p> + +<p>Often Susan was obliged to act as arbiter between the temperance and +nontemperance groups. She did not underestimate the momentum which the +well-organized W.C.T.U. had already given the suffrage cause, +particularly in states where the National Association<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> had only a few +and scattered workers. She needed and wanted the help of these +temperance women and of Frances Willard's forceful and winning +personality. She also saw the importance of breaking down with Frances +Willard's aid the slow-yielding opposition of the church.</p> + +<p>Occasionally enthusiastic workers undertook projects which to her +seemed unwise. She told them frankly how she felt and left it at that, +but most of them had to learn by experience. When Belva Lockwood, one +of her most able colleagues in Washington, accepted the nomination for +President of the United States, offered her by the women of California +in 1884 and by the women of Iowa in 1888 through their Equal Rights +party, she did not lend her support or that of the National +Association, but followed her consistent policy of no alignment with a +minority party. Nevertheless, she heartily believed in women's right +and ability to hold the highest office in the land.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Ever since her trip to Europe in 1883, Susan had been planning for an +international gathering of women. Interest in this project was kept +alive among European women by Mrs. Stanton during her frequent visits +with her daughter Harriot in England and her son Theodore in France. +It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the +National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an +international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate +the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten +thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all +parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as +well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and +an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference +and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of +Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the +enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide +contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many +and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy +development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her <i>Woman's +Tribune</i> in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's <i>Tribune</i>, +established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> since then met in a +measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she +welcomed its transfer to Washington.<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a></p> + +<p>Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House +in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which +opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted +entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the +pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national +organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England, +France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada.</p> + +<p>Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record +attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and +Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in +Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening +thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel +not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and +demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training +in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal +suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their +responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education +and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were +listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White +House by President and Mrs. Cleveland.</p> + +<p>Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress +with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine +of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore <i>Sun</i>, "daily +grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good +works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of +press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of +doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the +parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without +murmur or dissent."<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a></p> + +<p>A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five +years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as +president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed +as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as +vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral +reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> first as +Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international +movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn +by experience.</p> + +<p>Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women, +two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and +overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American +Woman Suffrage Associations.</p> + +<p>Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary +Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she assumed, was a narrow Methodist +minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman +in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience +spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm +personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a +matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan +and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled +as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met.</p> + +<p>Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her +indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the +hardships and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary +Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her +way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School, +from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two +Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist +Episcopal church because of her sex. Eventually she was ordained by +the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied +medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker +was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups. +Through the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she met an +inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances +Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave +the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage +movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the +Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was placed at the head +of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she +met Susan B. Anthony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 348px;"> +<img src="images/248.jpg" width="348" height="450" alt="Anna Howard Shaw" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Anna Howard Shaw</span> +</div> + +<p>The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the +feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant +vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her, +seemed particularly well fitted to assist Susan in the arduous +campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure +take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western +tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's +promise that she would lecture for the National Association.</p> + +<p>One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after +meeting her at the International Council. A warm friendship quickly +developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years +they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and +planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester +through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home +and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and +devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker +nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her +tasks, though less spectacular,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> were important and freed both Susan +and Anna from many details.</p> + +<p>Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard +Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman +Suffrage Association, just so it clarified the opinions of other young +women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of +both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups +should not work together in one large strong organization, and this +seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other +countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the +personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had +caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the +difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they +press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt +themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked +forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together, +but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had +made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by +surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American Association proposed +that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous +partisans, and in the <i>Woman's Journal</i>, the <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, and +elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the +twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the +tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the +past aroused little interest.</p> + +<p>The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most +difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton, +nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed +for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for +Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger +members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were +chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's +favor. Her popularity in the National Association was tremendous. +Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and +admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she +now spent so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many +who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go +to Susan, who was always on the job.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 332px;"> +<img src="images/250.jpg" width="332" height="450" alt="Harriot Stanton Blatch" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Harriot Stanton Blatch</span> +</div> + +<p>Most of the American Association regarded Susan as safer and less +radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path +of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election.</p> + +<p>Susan did not want the presidency. She wanted it for Mrs. Stanton, who +had headed the National Association so ably for so many years. She +pleaded earnestly with the delegates of the National Association: "I +will say to every woman who is a National and who has any love for the +old Association, or for Susan B. Anthony, that I hope you will not +vote for her for president.... Don't you vote for any human being but +Mrs. Stanton.... When the division was made 22 years ago it was +because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too +radical.... And now ... if Mrs. Stanton shall be deposed ... you +virtually degrade her.... I want our platform to be kept broad enough +for the infidel, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> atheist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian.... +These are the broad principles I want you to stand upon."<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a></p> + +<p>When the two organizations met in February 1890 to effect formal union +as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton was elected president by a majority of 41 votes, while Susan +was the almost unanimous choice for vice-president at large. With Lucy +Stone chosen chairman of the executive committee, Jane Spofford +treasurer, and Rachel Foster and Alice Stone Blackwell +secretaries,<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> the new organization was well equipped with able +leaders for the work ahead. It was dedicated to work for both state +and federal woman suffrage amendments and its official organ would be +the <i>Woman's Journal</i>.</p> + +<p>Susan now faced the future with gratitude that a strong unified +organization could be handed down to the younger women who would +gradually take over the work she had started, and her confidence in +these young women grew day by day. Working closely with Rachel Foster +and May Wright Sewall, she knew their caliber. Anna Howard Shaw and +Alice Stone Blackwell showed great promise, and Harriot Stanton Blatch +was living up to her expectations. In England where Harriot had made +her home since her marriage in 1882, she was active in the cause, and +on her visits to her mother in New York, she kept in touch with the +suffrage movement in the United States. She took part in the union +meeting, and in her diary, Susan recorded these words of commendation, +"Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy of her mother +and her mother's lifelong friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment +for me."<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a></p> + +<p>To such she could entrust her beloved cause.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="VICTORIES_IN_THE_WEST" id="VICTORIES_IN_THE_WEST"></a>VICTORIES IN THE WEST</h2> + + +<p>New western states were coming into the Union, North and South Dakota, +Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, and in Susan's opinion it was +highly important that they be admitted as woman suffrage states, for +she had not forgotten that disturbing line of the Supreme Court +decision in the Virginia Minor case which read, "No new State has ever +been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage +on women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her +admission."<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> Susan wanted to start a new trend.</p> + +<p>Opposition to Wyoming's woman suffrage provision was strong in +Congress in spite of the fact that it had the unanimous approval of +Wyoming's constitutional convention. To Susan in the gallery of the +House of Representatives, listening anxiously to the debate on the +admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in +the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wishing to +block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman +suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment +offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment, +however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming +legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of +the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman +suffrage."<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a> After this, the House voted to admit Wyoming, 139 to +127, but the Senate delayed, renewing the attack on the woman suffrage +provision. Not until July 1890, while she was speaking to a large +audience in the opera house at Madison, South Dakota, did the good +news of the admission of Wyoming reach her. Jubilant as she commented +on this great victory, she spoke as one inspired, for she saw this as +the turning point in her forty long years of uphill work.</p> + +<p>Neither North Dakota nor South Dakota had wanted to risk their chances +of statehood by incorporating woman suffrage in their +constitutions.<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a> Yet public opinion in both states was friendly, +South Dakota directing its first legislature to submit the question to +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> voters. It was this that brought Susan to South Dakota in 1890. +Sentiment for woman suffrage in South Dakota had previously been +created almost entirely by the W.C.T.U., and this had linked woman +suffrage and prohibition together. Now, the liquor interests made +prohibition an issue in this woman suffrage campaign, as they rallied +their forces for the repeal of prohibition which had been adopted when +South Dakota was admitted to statehood. Through the propaganda of the +liquor interests the 30,000 foreign-born voters became formidable +opponents, and newly naturalized Russians, Scandinavians, and Poles, +given the vote before American women, wore badges carrying the slogan, +"Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a> Both Republicans +and Democrats cultivated these foreign-born voters, turning a cold +shoulder to the woman suffrage amendment and refusing to endorse it in +their state conventions. Even the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of +Labor, previously friendly to woman suffrage, now joined with the +Prohibitionists to form a third political party which also failed to +endorse the woman suffrage amendment. On top of all this, +anti-suffragists from Massachusetts, calling themselves Remonstrants, +flooded South Dakota with their leaflets.</p> + +<p>It now seemed to Susan as if every clever politician had lined up +against women. During these trying days, Anna Howard Shaw joined her, +and together they covered the state, hoping by the truth and sincerity +of their statements to quash the propaganda against woman suffrage. +Often they traveled in freight cars, as transportation was limited, or +drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat +was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything +they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately +poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress +could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these +honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an investigating +commission.<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a></p> + +<p>Occasionally Susan and Anna spent the night in isolated sod houses +where ingenious pioneer women cooked their scant meals over burning +chips of buffalo bones gathered on the prairie. Glorying in the +valiant spirit of these women, who in loneliness and hardship played +an important but unheralded role in the conquest of this new country, +Susan was generous with her praise. To them her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> words of commendation +were like a benediction, and few of them ever forgot a visit from +Susan B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>By this time life on the frontier was an old story to her, for she had +campaigned under similar conditions in Kansas and in the far West. +Nonetheless, the hardships were trying. Yet this plucky woman of +seventy wrote friends in the East, "Tell everybody that I am perfectly +well in body and in mind, never better, and never doing more work.... +O, the lack of modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with +it better than any of the young folks.... I shall push ahead and do my +level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... +I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of +the good people everywhere...."<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a></p> + +<p>Young vigorous Anna Howard Shaw proved to be a campaigner after +Susan's own heart, tireless, uncomplaining, and good-tempered, an +exceptional speaker, witty and quick to say the right word at the +right time. It was a joy to find in Anna the same devotion to the +cause that she herself felt, the same crusading fervor and +reliability. During the long drives over the prairie, she talked to +Anna of the work that must be done, of what it would mean to the women +of the future, and she fired Anna's soul "with the flame that burned +in her own."<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a></p> + +<p>Another young western woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, also attracted +Susan's attention at this time. She had volunteered for the South +Dakota campaign, after attending her first national woman suffrage +convention; and Susan, meeting her in Huron, South Dakota, to map out +a speaking tour for her, found a tall handsome confident young woman +ready to attack the work and see it through, in spite of the hardships +which confronted her.</p> + +<p>Carrie Lane, a graduate of Iowa State College, had briefly studied law +and taught school before her marriage to Lee Chapman. Now, four years +after his death, she had married George W. Catt of Seattle, a +promising young engineer and a former fellow-student at Iowa State +College. What particularly impressed Susan was that Carrie, in spite +of her marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota. +She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every +difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and +planned for the future. In Carrie's report of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> her work there was a +ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's +approval. Here was a young woman to watch and to keep in the work.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 306px;"> +<img src="images/255.jpg" width="306" height="450" alt="The Anthony home, Rochester, New York" title="" /> +<span class="caption">The Anthony home, Rochester, New York</span> +</div> + +<p>The visible result of six months of campaigning was defeat, with the +vote 22,972 for woman suffrage and 45,632 opposed, and as Susan +remembered the maneuvers of the politicians, the trading of votes for +the location of the state capital, and the scheming of the liquor +interests, she felt she was championing a lonely cause.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>From now on Susan hoped to turn over to the younger women much of the +lecturing and organizing in the West, and she needed an anchorage, a +home of her own from which she could direct the work. Her mother had +willed 17 Madison Street to Mary, who had rented the first floor and +was living on the second where there was a room for Susan. Now that +Susan planned to spend more time at home and Mary had retired from +teaching, they decided to take over the whole house, modernize and +redecorate it, and enjoy it the rest of their lives. Mary as usual +took charge, but Susan had definite ideas about what should be done. +Mary, who had learned to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> cautious and frugal, was more willing +than Susan to make old furnishings do, but their friends came to the +rescue, showering them with gifts.</p> + +<p>Freshly painted and papered, with new rugs on the floor, lace curtains +at the windows, easy chairs and new furniture here and there, the +house was all Susan had wished for, and everywhere were familiar +touches, such as her mother's spinning wheel by the fireplace in the +back parlor.</p> + +<p>She spent most of her time in her study on the second floor. Here she +hung her pictures of the reformers she admired and loved; and right +over her desk, looking down at her, was the comforting picture of her +dearest friend, Mrs. Stanton. Hour after hour, she sat at this desk, +writing letters, hurriedly dashing off one after another, writing just +as the thoughts came, as if she were talking, bothering little with +punctuation, using dashes instead, and vigorously underlining words +and phrases for emphasis. Instructions to workers in all parts of the +country, letters of friendship and sympathy, answers to the many +questions which came in every mail, these were signed and sealed one +after another, and slipped into the mail box when she took a brisk +walk before going to bed.</p> + +<p>She started each day with the morning newspaper, stepping out on the +front veranda to pick it up, taking a deep breath of fresh air, and +enjoying the green grass and the tall graceful chestnut trees in front +of the house. Then sitting down in the back parlor beside the big +table covered with magazines and mail, she carefully read her paper +before beginning the work at her desk, for she must keep up-to-date on +the news.</p> + +<p>Rochester was important to her. It was her city, and she was on hand +with her colleagues whenever there was an opportunity for women to +express interest in its government, progress, or welfare. Not only did +she encourage women to make use of their newly won right to vote in +school elections, she also urged municipal suffrage for women. +Appealing to the governor to appoint a woman to fill a vacancy on the +board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School, she herself +received the appointment which the <i>Democrat and Chronicle</i> called "a +fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the +commonwealth."<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a></p> + +<p>One of her first acts as trustee was a practical one for the girls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> +"Spent entire day at State Industrial School," she wrote in her diary, +"getting the laundry girls—who had always washed for the entire +institution by hand and ironed that old way—transferred to the boys' +laundry room to use its machinery—am sure it will work well—girls 12 +of them delighted."<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a> She also taught the boys to patch and darn, +and later asked for coeducation.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/257.jpg" width="450" height="314" alt="Susan B. Anthony at her desk" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony at her desk</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan looked forward to welcoming Mrs. Stanton at 17 Madison Street +when she returned to this country in 1891, particularly because she +had sold her home in Tenafly after her husband's death, in 1887, and +now had no home to go to. Susan hoped that as they again worked +together she could persuade Mrs. Stanton to concentrate on more +serious writing than the chatty reminiscences she had just published +and which Susan felt were "not the greatest" of herself.<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a> When she +heard that Mrs. Stanton seriously contemplated living in New York with +two of her children, she begged her to reconsider, writing, "This is +the first time since 1850 that I have anchored myself to any +particular spot, and in doing it my constant thought was that you +would come here ... and stay for as long, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> least, as we must be +together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to +posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for +myself, but is for the one by the side of whom I have wrought these +forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences ... has been +the delight of my life."<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a></p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton decided to make her home in New York, but first she +visited Susan who found her as stimulating as ever and brimful of +ideas. They plotted and planned as of old and managed to stir up +public opinion on the question of admitting women to the University of +Rochester. With women enrolled at the University of Michigan since +1870, and at Cornell since 1872, and with Columbia University yielding +at last to women's entreaties by establishing Barnard College in 1889, +they felt it their duty to awaken Rochester, and although their +agitation produced no immediate results, it did start other women +thinking and made news for the press. The cartoons on the subject +delighted them both.<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a></p> + +<p>Susan soon realized that the writing she had planned for Mrs. Stanton +would never be done, for Mrs. Stanton had already made up her mind to +write for magazines and newspapers on new and controversial subjects, +feeling this was the best contribution she could make to the cause. +Susan also found it increasingly difficult to hold her old friend to +the straight path of woman suffrage, Mrs. Stanton insisting that too +much concentration on this one subject was narrowing and left women +unprepared for the intelligent use of the ballot. Women, Mrs. Stanton +argued, needed to be stirred up to think, and this they would not do +as long as their minds were dominated by the church, which, she +believed, had for generations hampered their development by +emphasizing their inferiority and subordination. She was determined to +analyze and rebel, and Susan could in no way divert her. Completely +absorbed in trying to prove that the Bible, accurately translated and +interpreted, did not teach the inferiority or the subordination of +women, she was writing a book which she called <i>The Woman's Bible</i>, +chapters of which were already appearing in the <i>Woman's Tribune</i>.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 349px;"> +<img src="images/259.jpg" width="349" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton</span> +</div> + +<p>Susan was not unsympathetic to Mrs. Stanton's ideas, but she opposed +this excursion into religious controversy because she was sure it +would stir up futile wrangles among the suffragists and keep Mrs. +Stanton from giving her best to the cause. Her lack of interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> then +and her frank disapproval as <i>The Woman's Bible</i> progressed were a +great disappointment to Mrs. Stanton, and these two old friends began +to grow somewhat apart as they took different roads to reach their +goal, the one intent on freeing women's minds, the other determined to +establish their citizenship. Yet their friendship endured.</p> + +<p>In 1892 Susan reluctantly consented to Mrs. Stanton's retirement as +president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. +Stanton's request that she be followed by Susan won unanimous +approval, and Anna Howard Shaw was moved up to second place, +vice-president at large. For forty years, Susan had watched Mrs. +Stanton preside with a poise, warmth, and skill which few could equal. +She knew she would miss her dynamic reassuring presence at the +conventions. Yet she was obliged to admit to herself that it was more +than fitting that she should at last head the ever-growing +organization which she had built up. This was the last convention +which Mrs. Stanton attended, and it was the last for Lucy Stone who +died the next year. Susan appreciated the eager young women who now +took their places, but she did not yet feel completely at home with +them. "Only think," she wrote an old-time colleague, "I shall not have +a white-haired woman on the platform with me, and I shall be alone +there of all the pioneer workers. Always with the 'old guard' I had +perfect confidence that the wise and right thing would be said. What a +platform ours then was of self-reliant strong women! I felt sure of +you all.... I can not feel quite certain that our younger sisters will +be equal to the emergency, yet they are each and all valiant, earnest, +and talented, and will soon be left to manage the ship without even +me."<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a></p> + +<p>In 1892, the year of the presidential election, Susan hopefully +attended the national political conventions. Again the Republicans +made their proverbial excuses, explaining that they not only faced a +formidable opponent in Grover Cleveland but also the threat of a new +People's party. The familiar ring of their alibis, which they had +repeated since Reconstruction days, made Susan wonder when and if ever +the Republicans would feel able to bear the strain of woman suffrage. +Their platform remembered the poor, the foreign-born, and male +Negroes, but it still ignored women. Yet hope for the future stirred +in her heart as she saw at the convention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> two women serving as +delegates from Wyoming. Here was the entering wedge.</p> + +<p>The Democrats as usual were silent on woman suffrage, but undismayed +by them or by the Prohibitionists, who this year failed to endorse +votes for women, Susan moved on to Omaha with Anna Howard Shaw for the +first national convention of the new People's party. Here she met +representatives of the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, +both friendly to woman suffrage, and men from other groups, critical +of the two major political parties for their failure to solve the +pressing economic problems confronting the nation. Susan was +sympathetic with many of the aims of the People's party, having seen +with her own eyes the plight of debt-burdened, hard-working farmers +and having crusaded in her own paper, <i>The Revolution</i>, for the rights +of labor and for the control of industrial monopoly. However, she +still viewed minor, reform parties with a highly critical eye. The +People's party gave her no woman suffrage plank and she found them +"quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as +either of the old parties...."<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a></p> + +<p>With the election of Grover Cleveland, whose opposition to woman +suffrage was well known, and with the Democrats in the saddle for +another four years, Congressional action on the woman suffrage +amendment was blocked. Nevertheless, the cause moved ahead in the +states; Colorado was to vote on the question in 1893 and Kansas in +1894, and New York was revising its constitution. In addition, the +World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 offered endless opportunities to bring +the subject before the people.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>As soon as plans for the World's Fair were under way, Susan began to +work indirectly through prominent women in Washington and Chicago for +the appointment of women to the board of management. "Lady Managers" +were appointed, 115 strong, who proved to be very much alive under the +leadership of Mrs. Bertha Honoré Palmer. Susan found Mrs. Palmer +almost as determined as she to secure equality of rights for women at +the World's Fair, and nothing that she herself might have planned +could have been more effective than the series of world congresses in +which both men and women took part, or than the World's Congress of +Representative Women.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/262.jpg" width="450" height="312" alt="Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and +Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and +Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>Two of Susan's "girls," as she liked to call them, Rachel Foster +Avery<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a> and May Wright Sewall, were appointed by Mrs. Palmer to +take charge of the World's Congress of Representative Women, and they +arranged a meeting of the International Council of Women as a part of +this Congress.</p> + +<p>Convening soon after the opening of the World's Fair, the Congress of +Representative Women drew record crowds at its eighty-one sessions. +Twenty-seven countries and 126 organizations were represented. Here +Susan, to her joy, heard Negroes, American Indians, and Mormons tell +of their progress and their problems, and saw them treated with as +much respect as American millionaires, English nobility, or the most +virtuous, conservative housewife. Watching these women assemble, +talking with them, and listening to their well-delivered speeches, she +felt richly rewarded for the lonely work she had undertaken forty +years before, when scarcely a woman could be coaxed to a meeting or be +persuaded to express her opinions in public. Although only one session +of the congress was devoted to the civil and political rights of +women, it was gratifying to her that women's need of the ballot was +spontaneously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> brought up in meeting after meeting, showing that +women, whatever their cause or whatever their organization, were +recognizing that only by means of the vote could their reforms be +achieved.</p> + +<p>Speaking on the subject to which she had dedicated her life, Susan +gave credit to the pioneering suffragists for the change which had +taken place in public opinion regarding the position of women. She +urged women's organizations to give suffrage their wholehearted +support and pointed out the great power of some of the newer +organizations, such as the W.C.T.U. with its membership of half a +million and the young General Federation of Women's Clubs of 40,000 +members. Confessing that her own National American Woman Suffrage +Association in comparison was poor in numbers and limited in funds, +she added, "I would philosophize on the reason why. It is because +women have been taught always to work for something else than their +own personal freedom; and the hardest thing in the world is to +organize women for the one purpose of securing their political liberty +and political equality."<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> Even so, the vital woman's rights +organizations, she concluded, drew the whole world to them in spirit +if not in person.</p> + +<p>Her very presence among them without her words, in fact her very +presence on the fair grounds, advertised her cause, for in the mind of +the public she personified woman suffrage. This tall dignified woman +with smooth gray hair, abundant in energy and spontaneous +friendliness, was the center of attraction at the World's Congress of +Representative Women. In her new black dress of Chinese silk, +brightened with blue, and her small black bonnet, trimmed with lace +and blue forget-me-nots, she was the perfect picture of everyone's +grandmother, and the people took her to their hearts.<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> She was the +one woman all wanted to see. Curious crowds jammed the hall and +corridors when she was scheduled to speak, and often a policeman had +to clear the way for her. At whatever meeting she appeared, the +audience at once burst into applause and started calling for her, +interrupting the speakers, and were not satisfied until she had +mounted the platform so that all could see her and she had said a few +words. Then they cheered her. After years of ridicule and +unpopularity, she hardly knew what to make of all this, but she +accepted it with happiness as a tribute to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> beloved cause. Many +who had been critical and wary of her newfangled notions began to +reverse their opinions after they saw her and heard her words of good +common sense. Even those who still opposed woman suffrage left the +World's Fair with a new respect for Susan B. Anthony.</p> + +<p>She stayed on in Chicago for much of the summer and fall, for she was +in demand as a speaker at several of the world congresses and had five +speeches to read for Mrs. Stanton, who felt unable to brave the heat +and the crowds. She felt at home in this bustling, rapidly growing +city which for so many years had been the halfway station on her +lecture and campaign trips through the West. Here she had always found +a warm welcome, first from her cousins, the Dickinsons, then from the +ever-widening circle of friends she won for her cause. Now she was +literally swamped with hospitality.<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> She rejoiced that such great +numbers of everyday people were able to enjoy the beauty of the fair +grounds and the many interesting exhibits, and when a group of +clergymen urged Sunday closing, she took issue with them, declaring +that Sunday was the only day on which many were free to attend. Asked +by a disapproving clergyman if she would like to have a son of hers +attend Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on Sunday, she promptly and +bluntly replied, "Of course I would, and I think he would learn far +more there than from the sermons in some churches!"<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a></p> + +<p>Hearing of this, Buffalo Bill offered her a box at his popular Wild +West Show, and she appeared the next day with twelve of her "girls." +Dashing into the arena on his spirited horse while the band played and +the spotlight flashed on him, Buffalo Bill rode directly up to Susan's +box, reined his horse, and swept off his big western hat to salute +her. Quick to respond, she rose and bowed, and beaming with pleasure, +waved her handkerchief at him while the immense audience applauded and +cheered.</p> + +<p>She returned home early in November 1893, with happy memories of the +World's Fair and to good news from Colorado. "Telegram ... from +Denver—said woman suffrage carried by 5000 majority," she recorded in +her diary.<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a> This laconic comment in no way expressed the joy in +her heart.</p> + +<p>Her diaries, written hurriedly in small fine script, year after year, +in black-covered notebooks about three inches by six, were a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> brief +terse record of her work and her travels. Only occasionally a line of +philosophizing shone out from the mass of routine detail, or an +illuminating comment on a friend or a difficult situation, but she +never failed to record a family anniversary, a birthday, or a death.</p> + +<p>The Colorado victory, referred to so casually in her diary, was +actually of great importance to her and her cause, for it carried +forward the trend initiated by the admission of Wyoming as a woman +suffrage state in 1890. Colorado also proved to her that her "girls" +could take over her work. So busy had she been winning good will for +the cause at the World's Fair that she had left Colorado in the +capable hands of the women of the state and of young efficient Carrie +Chapman Catt, to whom she now turned over the supervision of all state +campaigns.</p> + +<p>Encouragement also came from another part of the world, from New +Zealand, where the vote was extended to women. This confirmed her +growing conviction that equal citizenship was best understood on the +frontier and that in her own country victory would come from the West.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="LIQUOR_INTERESTS_ALERT_FOREIGN-BORN_VOTERS_AGAINST_WOMAN_SUFFRAGE" id="LIQUOR_INTERESTS_ALERT_FOREIGN-BORN_VOTERS_AGAINST_WOMAN_SUFFRAGE"></a>LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE</h2> + + +<p>"I am in the midst of as severe a treadmill as I ever experienced, +traveling from fifty to one hundred miles every day and speaking five +or six nights a week,"<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a> Susan wrote a friend in 1894, during the +campaign to wrest woman suffrage from the New York constitutional +convention. She was now seventy-four years old. Political machines and +financial interests were deeply intrenched in New York, and although +two governors had recommended that women be represented in the +constitutional convention and a bill had been passed making women +eligible as delegates, neither Republicans nor Democrats had the +slightest intention of allowing women to slip into men's stronghold. +It was obvious to Susan that without representation at the convention +and without power to enforce their demands, women's only hope was an +intensive educational campaign which she now directed with vigor. +Whenever she could, she conferred with Mrs. Stanton, whose judgment +she valued, and there was zest in working together as they had during +the previous constitutional convention in 1867.</p> + +<p>The women of New York were aroused as never before. Young able +speakers went through the state, piling up signatures on their +petitions, but they had few influential friends among the delegates. +Anti-suffragists were active, encouraged by Bishop Doane of the +Protestant Episcopal church and Mrs. Lyman Abbott, whose name carried +the prestige and influence of her husband's popular magazine, <i>The +Outlook</i>.</p> + +<p>With the election of Joseph Choate of New York as president of the +convention, Susan knew that woman suffrage was doomed, for Choate had +political aspirations and was not likely to let his sympathies for an +unpopular cause jeopardize his chances of becoming governor. While he +gave women every opportunity to be heard, at the same time he arranged +for the defeat of woman suffrage by appointing men to consider the +subject who were definitely opposed, and they submitted an adverse +report. Here was a situation similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> to that in 1867, when her +one-time friend, Horace Greeley, had deserted women for political +expediency.</p> + +<p>"I am used to defeat every time and know how to pick up and push on +for another attack," she wrote as she now turned her attention to +Kansas.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The Republicans in Kansas had sponsored school and municipal suffrage +for women and had passed a woman suffrage amendment to be referred to +the people in 1894. Yet they proved to be as great a disappointment to +Susan as they were in 1867, when as a last resort she had been obliged +to campaign with the Democrats and George Francis Train.</p> + +<p>The population of Kansas had changed with the years, as immigrants +from Europe had come into the state, and Susan was again confronted +with the powerful opposition of foreign-born voters for whose support +the political parties bargained. The liquor interests were also +active, and the Republicans, who had brought prohibition to Kansas, +now left the question discreetly alone, even making a deal with German +Democrats for their votes by promising to ignore in their platform +both prohibition and woman suffrage. Prohibition and woman suffrage +were synonymous in the minds of voters, because women had generally +voted for enforcement in municipal elections, and no matter how hard +Susan tried, she found it impossible to have woman suffrage considered +on its own merits.</p> + +<p>Watching the straws in the wind, she saw Republican supremacy +seriously threatened by the new Populist party. Convinced that she +could no longer count on help from Kansas Republicans, she turned to +the Populist party, ignoring the pleas of Republican women who warned +her she would hurt the cause by association with such a radical group. +The Populists were generally regarded as the party of social unrest, +of a regulated economy, and unsound money, and they were looked upon +with suspicion. To many they represented a threat to the American +free-enterprise system, and they were blamed for the labor troubles +which had flared up in the bloody Homestead strike in the steel mills +of Pennsylvania and in the Pullman strike, defying the powerful +railroads. Susan was never afraid to side with the underdog, and she +could well understand why western farmers, in the hope of relief, were +eagerly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> flocking into the Populist party when their corn sold for ten +cents a bushel and the products they bought were high-priced and their +mortgage interest was never lower than 10 per cent.</p> + +<p>To the Populist convention, she declared, "I have labored for women's +enfranchisement for forty years and I have always said that for the +party that endorsed it, whether Republican, Democratic, or Populist, I +would wave my handkerchief."<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a></p> + +<p>"We want more than the waving of your handkerchief, Miss Anthony," +interrupted a delegate, who then asked her, "If the People's party put +a woman suffrage plank in its platform, will you go before the voters +of this state and tell them that because the People's party has +espoused the cause of woman suffrage, it deserves the vote of every +one who is a supporter of that cause?"</p> + +<p>"I most certainly will," she replied, adding as the audience cheered +her wildly, "for I would surely choose to ask votes for the party +which stood for the principle of justice to women, though wrong on +financial theories, rather than for the party which was sound on +questions of money and tariff, and silent on the pending amendment to +secure political equality to half of the people."</p> + +<p>"I most certainly will" was the phrase which was remembered and was +flashed through the country, and as a result, the Republican press and +Susan's Republican friends harshly criticized her for taking her stand +with the radicals.</p> + +<p>Like all political parties, the Populists found it hard to comprehend +justice for women, but after a four-hour debate, the convention +endorsed the woman suffrage amendment, absolving, however, members who +refused to support it. The rank and file rejoiced as if each and every +one of them were heart and soul for the cause. They cheered, they +waved their canes, they threw their hats high in the air, and then +swarmed around Susan and Anna Shaw to shake their hands and welcome +them into the Populist party.</p> + +<p>With woman suffrage at last a political issue in Kansas, Susan left +the field to her "girls." Her homecoming brought reporters to 17 +Madison Street for the details about her alignment with the Populist +party. "I didn't go over to the Populists," she told them. "I have +been like a drowning man for a long time, waiting for someone to throw +a plank in my direction. I didn't step on the whole platform, but just +on the woman suffrage plank.... Here is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> a party in power which is +likely to remain in power, and if it will give its endorsement to our +movement, we want it."<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a></p> + +<p>This explanation, however, did not satisfy her critics, and as the +Republican press circulated false stories about her enthusiasm for the +Populist party, letters of protest poured in, among them one from +Henry Blackwell. To him, she replied, "I shall not praise the +Republicans of Kansas, or wish or work for their success, when I know +by their own confessions to me that the rights of the women of their +state have been traded by them in cold blood for the votes of the +lager beer foreigners and whisky Democrats.... I never, in my whole +forty years work, so utterly repudiated any set of politicians as I do +those Republicans of Kansas.... I never was surer of my position that +no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a +party that ignores her political rights."<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a></p> + +<p>The contest in Kansas was close and bitter. Kansas women carried on an +able campaign with the help of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman +Catt. When Susan returned to the state in October, she not only found +that the Democrats had entered the fight with an anti-suffrage plank +but the Populists had noticeably lost ground since the Pullman strike +riots, the court injunction against the strikers, and the arrest of +Eugene V. Debs. Again this prairie state, from which she had hoped so +much, refused to extend suffrage to women. Impulsively she recommended +a little "Patrick Henryism" to the women of Kansas, suggesting that +they fold their hands and refuse to help men run the churches, the +charities, and the reform movements.<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>California was the next state to demand Susan's attention. A +Republican legislature had submitted a woman suffrage amendment to be +voted on by the people in 1896, and the women of California asked for +her help. She toured the state in the spring of 1895 with Anna Howard +Shaw, and everywhere she won friends. The continuous travel and +speaking, however, taxed her far more than she realized, and soon +after her return to the East, she collapsed. As this news flashed over +the wires, letters poured in from her friends, begging her to spare +herself. Two of these letters were especially precious. One in bold +vigorous script was from her good comrade, Parker Pillsbury, now +eighty-six, who had been an unfailing help<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> during the most difficult +years of her career and whom she probably trusted more completely than +any other man. The other from her dearest friend, Elizabeth Stanton, +read, "I never realized how desolate the world would be to me without +you until I heard of your sudden illness. Let me urge you with all the +strength I have, and all the love I bear you, to stay at home and rest +and save your precious self."<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a></p> + +<p>She now realized that rest was imperative for a time, but it troubled +her that people thought of her as old and ill, and she wrote Clara +Colby never to mention anyone's illness in her <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, +adding, "It is so dreadful to get public thought centered on one as +ill—as I have had it the last two months."<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a></p> + +<p>She had no intention of retiring from the field. She knew her own +strength and that her life must be one of action. "I am able to endure +the strain of daily traveling and lecturing at over three-score and +ten," she observed, "mainly because I have always worked and loved +work.... As machinery in motion lasts longer than when lying idle, so +a body and soul in active exercise escapes the corroding rust of +physical and mental laziness, which prematurely cuts off the life of +so many women."<a name="FNanchor_395_395" id="FNanchor_395_395"></a><a href="#Footnote_395_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a></p> + +<p>Yet she did slow up a little, refusing an offer from the Slayton +Lecture Bureau for a series of lectures at $100 a night, and she +engaged a capable secretary, Emma B. Sweet, to help her with her +tremendous correspondence. "Dear Rachel" had given her a typewriter, +and now instead of dashing off letters at her desk late at night, she +learned to dictate them to Mrs. Sweet at regular hours. As requests +came in from newspapers and magazines for her comments on a wide +variety of subjects, she answered those that made possible a word on +the advancement of women.</p> + +<p>Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it +up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers. +What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb +mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit +them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has +done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I +rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a +feeling of self-reliance and independence the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> moment she takes her +seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."<a name="FNanchor_396_396" id="FNanchor_396_396"></a><a href="#Footnote_396_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 411px;"> +<img src="images/271.jpg" width="411" height="450" alt="Ida Husted Harper" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Ida Husted Harper</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity +and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister, +William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take +her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her +devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking +tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece +Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances +Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state, +for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the +California campaign.</p> + +<p>With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies +running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of +keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the +aid of a young journalist, Ida Husted Harper, whom she had met in 1878 +while lecturing in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who was in California +that winter. When the San Francisco<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> <i>Examiner</i>, William Randolph +Hearst's powerful Democratic paper, offered Susan a column on the +editorial page if she would write it and sign it, she dictated her +thoughts to Mrs. Harper, who smoothed them out for the column, helping +her as Mrs. Stanton had in the past, for writing was still a great +hardship. Grateful to Mrs. Harper, she sang her praises: "The moment I +give the idea—the point—she formulates it into a good +sentence—while I should have to haggle over it half an hour."<a name="FNanchor_397_397" id="FNanchor_397_397"></a><a href="#Footnote_397_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a></p> + +<p>California women had won suffrage planks from Republicans, Populists, +and Prohibitionists, and the prospects looked bright. Rich women came +to their aid, Mrs. Leland Stanford, with her railroad fortune, +furnishing passes for all the speakers and organizers, and Mrs. Phoebe +Hearst contributing $1,000 to their campaign. What warmed Susan's +heart, however, was the spirit of the rank and file, the seamstresses +and washerwomen, paying their two-dollar pledges in twenty-five-cent +installments, the poorly clad women bringing in fifty cents or a +dollar which they had saved by going without tea, and the women who +had worked all day at their jobs, stopping at headquarters for a +package of circulars to fold and address at night. The working women +of California made it plain that they wanted to vote.</p> + +<p>Susan insisted upon carrying out what she called her "wild goose +chase" over the state.<a name="FNanchor_398_398" id="FNanchor_398_398"></a><a href="#Footnote_398_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a> People crowded to hear her at farmers' +picnics in the mountains, in schoolhouses in small towns, and in +poolrooms where chalked up on the blackboard she often found "Welcome +Susan B. Anthony." She was at home everywhere and ready for anything. +The men liked her short matter-of-fact speeches and her flashes of +wit. Her hopes were high that the friendly people she met would not +fail to vote justice to women.</p> + +<p>She grew apprehensive, however, when the newspapers, pressured by +their advertisers, one by one began to ignore woman suffrage. The +Liquor Dealers' League had been sending letters to hotel owners, +grocers, and druggists, as well as to saloons, warning that votes for +women would mean prohibition and would threaten their livelihood. Word +was spread that if women voted not one glass of beer would be sold in +San Francisco. As in Kansas, liquor interests had persuaded +naturalized Irish, Germans, and Swedes to oppose woman suffrage, so +now in California, they appealed to the Chinese.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> + +<p>On election day Susan was in San Francisco with Anna Howard Shaw and +Ellen Sargent, watching and anxiously waiting for the returns. Telling +the story of those last tense hours when women's fate hung in the +balance, Anna Howard Shaw reported, "I shall always remember the +picture of Miss Anthony and the wife of Senator Sargent wandering +around the polls arm in arm at eleven o'clock at night, their tired +faces taking on lines of deeper depression with every minute, for the +count was against us.... When the final counts came in, we found that +we had won the state from the north down to Oakland and from the south +up to San Francisco; but there was not sufficient majority to overcome +the adverse votes of San Francisco and Oakland. In San Francisco the +saloon element and the most aristocratic section ... made an equal +showing against us.... Every Chinese vote was against us."<a name="FNanchor_399_399" id="FNanchor_399_399"></a><a href="#Footnote_399_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a></p> + +<p>In spite of defeat in California, Susan had the joy of marking up two +more states for woman suffrage in 1896. Utah was granted statehood +with a woman suffrage provision in its constitution and Idaho's +favorable vote, though contested in the courts, was upheld by the +State Supreme Court. Now women in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah +were voters.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="AUNT_SUSAN_AND_HER_GIRLS" id="AUNT_SUSAN_AND_HER_GIRLS"></a>AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS</h2> + + +<p>The future of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was +much on Susan's mind. This organization which she had conceived and +nursed through its struggling infancy had grown in numbers and +prestige, and she understood, as no one else could, the importance of +leaving it in the right hands so that it could function successfully +without her.</p> + +<p>The young women now in the work, many of them just out of college, +were intelligent, efficient, and confident, and yet as she compared +them with the vivid consecrated women active in the early days of the +movement, she observed in her diary, "[Clarina] Nichols—Paulina +Davis—Lucy Stone—Frances D. Gage—Lucretia Mott & E. C. +Stanton—each without peer among any of our college graduates—young +women of today."<a name="FNanchor_400_400" id="FNanchor_400_400"></a><a href="#Footnote_400_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a></p> + +<p>Even so, she appreciated the "young women of today" whom she +affectionately called her girls or her adopted nieces, but she still +held the reins tightly, although they often champed at the bit. +Recognizing, however, that she must choose between personal power and +progress for her cause, she characteristically chose progress. Quick +to appreciate ability and zeal when she saw it, she seldom failed to +make use of it. When Carrie Chapman Catt presented a detailed plan for +a thorough overhauling of the mechanics of the organization, she gave +her approval, remarking drily, "There never yet was a young woman who +did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the +beginning, the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just +that way when I was young."<a name="FNanchor_401_401" id="FNanchor_401_401"></a><a href="#Footnote_401_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a></p> + +<p>On four of her adopted nieces, Rachel Foster Avery, Anna Howard Shaw, +Harriet Taylor Upton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan felt that the +greater part of her work would fall and be "worthily done."<a name="FNanchor_402_402" id="FNanchor_402_402"></a><a href="#Footnote_402_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a> Yet +she feared that in their enthusiasm for efficient organization they +might lose the higher concepts of freedom and justice which had been +the driving force behind her work. Not having learned the lessons of +leadership when the cause was unpopular, they lacked the discipline of +adversity, which bred in the consecrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> reformer the wisdom, +tolerance, and vision so necessary for the success of her task. What +they did understand far better than the highly individualistic +pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the +National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one +person to cope with it.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<img src="images/275.jpg" width="400" height="450" alt="Rachel Foster Avery" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Rachel Foster Avery</span> +</div> + +<p>Probably first in her affections was Rachel Foster Avery, who had been +like a daughter to her since their trip to Europe together in 1883. +The confidence she felt in their friendship was always a comfort. +Rachel's intelligent approach to problems made her an asset at every +meeting, and Susan relied much on her judgment.</p> + +<p>In Anna Howard Shaw, ten years older than Rachel, Susan had found the +hardy campaigner and orator for whom she had longed. Anna expressed a +warmth and understanding that most of the younger women lacked, and +best of all she loved the cause as Susan herself loved it. Because of +her close friendship with Susan's niece Lucy, she was regarded as one +of the family, and whenever possible between lectures she stopped over +in Rochester for a good talk with "Aunt Susan."</p> + +<p>Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren, Ohio, had enlisted in the ranks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> in +the 1880s when her father was a member of Congress. Because of her +influence in Washington and Ohio, Harriet was invaluable, and Susan +speedily brought her into the official circle of the National American +Association as treasurer, even thinking of her as a possible +president.<a name="FNanchor_403_403" id="FNanchor_403_403"></a><a href="#Footnote_403_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a> Harriet's jovial irrepressible personality readily won +friends, and Susan found her a refreshing and comfortable companion, +able to see a bit of humor in almost every situation. When differences +of opinion at meetings threatened to get out of hand, Harriet could +always be relied on to break the tension with a few witty remarks.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 419px;"> +<img src="images/276.jpg" width="419" height="450" alt="Harriet Taylor Upton" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Harriet Taylor Upton</span> +</div> + +<p>Carrie Chapman Catt gave every indication of developing into an +outstanding executive. Not another one of Susan's "girls" could so +quickly or so intelligently size up a situation as Carrie, nor could +they so effectively put into action well-thought-out plans. Not as +popular a speaker as the more emotional Anna Howard Shaw, she held her +audiences by her appeal to their intelligence. Tall, handsome, and +well dressed, she never failed to leave a favorable impression. Only +her name irked Susan, and as Susan wrote Clara Colby, "If Catt it must +be then I insist, she should keep her own father's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> name—Lane—and +not her first husband's name—Chapman,"<a name="FNanchor_404_404" id="FNanchor_404_404"></a><a href="#Footnote_404_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a> but the three Cs +intrigued Carrie and she continued to be known as Carrie Chapman Catt. +Now living in the East because her husband's expanding business had +brought him to New York, she was easily accessible, and from her +beautiful new home at Bensonhurst, a suburb of Brooklyn, she carried +on the rapidly growing work of the organization committee until a New +York City office became imperative. In Carrie, Susan recognized +qualities demanded of a leader at this stage of the campaign when +suffragists must learn to be as keen as politicians and as well +organized.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>"Spring is not heralded in Washington by the arrival of the robin," +commented a Washington newspaper, "but by the appearance of Miss +Anthony's red shawl." Susan was still the dominating figure at the +annual woman suffrage conventions. Everyone looked eagerly for the +tall lithe gray-haired woman with a red shawl on her arm or around her +shoulders. Once when Susan appeared on the platform with a new white +crepe shawl, the reporters immediately registered their displeasure by +putting down their pencils. This did not escape her, and always on +good terms with the newsmen and informal with her audiences, she +called out, "Boys, what is the matter?"<a name="FNanchor_405_405" id="FNanchor_405_405"></a><a href="#Footnote_405_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a></p> + +<p>"Where is the red shawl?" one of them asked. "No red shawl, no +report."</p> + +<p>Enjoying this little by-play, she sent her niece Lucy back to the +hotel for the red shawl, and when Lucy brought it up to the platform +and put it about her shoulders, the audience burst into applause, for +the red shawl, like Susan herself, had become the well-loved symbol of +woman suffrage.</p> + +<p>Susan was convinced that the annual national convention should always +be held in Washington, where Congress could see and feel the growing +strength and influence of the movement. Her "girls," on the other +hand, wanted to take their conventions to different parts of the +country to widen their influence. Not as certain as Susan that work +for a federal amendment must come first, many of them contended that a +few more states won for woman suffrage would best help the cause at +this time. The southern women, now active, were firm believers in +states' rights and supported state work.<a name="FNanchor_406_406" id="FNanchor_406_406"></a><a href="#Footnote_406_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a> Susan's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> experience had +taught her the impracticability of direct appeal to the voters in the +states, now that foreign-born men in increasing numbers were arrayed +against votes for women. In spite of her arguments and her pleas, the +National American Association voted in 1894 to hold conventions in +different parts of the country in alternate years. Disappointed, but +trying her best graciously to follow the will of the majority, she +traveled to Atlanta and to Des Moines for the conventions of 1895 and +1897.</p> + +<p>Nor did the younger women welcome the messages which Mrs. Stanton, at +Susan's insistence, sent to every convention. Susan herself often +wished her good friend would stick more closely to woman suffrage +instead of introducing extraneous subjects, such as "Educated +Suffrage," "The Matriarchate," or "Women and the Church," but +nevertheless she proudly read her papers to successive conventions. +Insisting that the conventions were too academic, Mrs. Stanton urged +Susan to inject more vitality into them by broadening their platform. +Susan, however, had come to the conclusion that concentration on woman +suffrage was imperative in order to unite all women under one banner +and build up numbers which Congressmen were bound to respect. With +this her "girls" agreed 100 per cent. While all of them were convinced +suffragists, they were divided on other issues, and few of them were +wholehearted feminists, as were Susan and Mrs. Stanton.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>With the publication of <i>The Woman's Bible</i> in 1895, Mrs. Stanton +almost upset the applecart, stirring up heated controversy in the +National American Woman Suffrage Association. <i>The Woman's Bible</i> was +a keen and sometimes biting commentary on passages in the Bible +relating to women. It questioned the traditional interpretation which +for centuries has fastened the stigma of inferiority upon women, and +pointed out that the female as well as the male was created in the +image of God. To those who regarded every word of the Bible as +inspired by God, <i>The Woman's Bible</i> was heresy, and both the clergy +and the press stirred up a storm of protest against it. Suffragists +were condemned for compiling a new Bible and were obliged to explain +again and again that <i>The Woman's Bible</i> expressed Mrs. Stanton's +personal views and not those of the movement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> + +<p>Susan regarded <i>The Woman's Bible</i> as a futile, questionable +digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby, +who praised it in her <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, she wrote, "Of all her great +speeches, I am always proud—but of her Bible commentaries, I am not +proud—either of their spirit or letter.... I could cry a heap—every +time I read or think—if it would undo them—or do anybody or myself +or the cause or Mrs. Stanton any good—they are so entirely unlike her +former self—so flippant and superficial. But she thinks I have gone +over to the enemy—so counts my judgment worth nothing more than that +of any other narrow-souled body.... But I shall love and honor her to +the end—whether her <i>Bible</i> please me or not. So I hope she will do +for me."<a name="FNanchor_407_407" id="FNanchor_407_407"></a><a href="#Footnote_407_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a></p> + +<p>She was, however, wholly unprepared for the rebellion staged by her +"girls" at the Washington convention of 1896, when, led by Rachel +Foster Avery, they repudiated <i>The Woman's Bible</i> and proposed a +resolution declaring that their organization had no connection with +it. This was clear proof to Susan that her "girls" lacked tolerance +and wisdom. Listening to the debate, she was heartsick. Anna Howard +Shaw and Mrs. Catt as well as Alice Stone Blackwell spoke for the +resolution. Only a few raised their voices against it, among them her +sister Mary, Clara Colby, Mrs. Blake, and a young woman new to the +ranks, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.</p> + +<p>Susan was presiding, and leaving the chair to express her opinions, +she firmly declared, "To pass such a resolution is to set back the +hands on the dial of reform.... We have all sorts of people in the +Association and ... a Christian has no more right on our platform than +an atheist. When this platform is too narrow for all to stand on, I +shall not be on it.... Who is to set up a line? Neither you nor I can +tell but Mrs. Stanton will come out triumphant and that this will be +the great thing done in woman's cause. Lucretia Mott at first thought +Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of woman's rights by insisting on +the demand for woman suffrage, but she had sense enough not to pass a +resolution about it....<a name="FNanchor_408_408" id="FNanchor_408_408"></a><a href="#Footnote_408_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a></p> + +<p>"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she +asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when +you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> create +and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman +on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance +and bigotry."</p> + +<p>Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted +will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in +intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a +century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in +regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of +women."<a name="FNanchor_409_409" id="FNanchor_409_409"></a><a href="#Footnote_409_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a></p> + +<p>When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in +her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to +resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs. +Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both +resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women +to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this +step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely +reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them +they were setting up an inquisition.</p> + +<p>Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning +and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it +my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the +next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."<a name="FNanchor_410_410" id="FNanchor_410_410"></a><a href="#Footnote_410_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a></p> + +<p>To a reporter who wanted her views on <i>The Woman's Bible</i>, she made it +plain that she had no part in writing the book, but added, "I think +women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to +their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to +theirs. It was written by men, and therefore its reference to women +reflects the light in which they were regarded in those days. In the +same way the history of our Revolutionary War was written, in which +very little is said of the noble deeds of women, though we know how +they stood by and helped the great work; it is so with history all +through."<a name="FNanchor_411_411" id="FNanchor_411_411"></a><a href="#Footnote_411_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>For some years, Susan's girls had been urging her to write her +reminiscences, spurred on by the fact that Mrs. Stanton, Mary +Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe were writing theirs. There were also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> +other good reasons for putting her to work at this task. Writing would +keep her safely at home and away from the strenuous work in the field +which they feared was sapping her strength. It would keep her well +occupied so that they could develop the work and the conventions in +their own way.</p> + +<p>Susan put off this task from month to month and from year to year, +torn between her desire to leave a true record of her work and her +longing to be always in the thick of the suffrage fight. Finally she +began looking about for a collaborator, convinced that she herself +could never write an interesting line. Ida Husted Harper, with her +newspaper experience and her interest in the cause, seemed the logical +choice, and in the spring of 1897, she came to 17 Madison Street to +work on the biography.<a name="FNanchor_412_412" id="FNanchor_412_412"></a><a href="#Footnote_412_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a></p> + +<p>The attic had been remodeled for workrooms and here Susan now spent +her days with Mrs. Harper, trying to reconstruct the past. She had +definite ideas about how the book should be written, holding up as a +model the biography of William Lloyd Garrison recently written by his +children. Mrs. Harper also had high standards, and influenced by the +formalities of the day, edited Susan's vivid brusque +letters—hurriedly written and punctuated with dashes—so that they +conformed with her own easy but more formal style. To this Susan +readily consented, for she always depreciated her own writing ability. +On one point, however, she was adamant, that her story be told without +dwelling upon the disagreements among the old workers.</p> + +<p>The household was geared to the "bog," as they called the biography. +Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework +with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had +recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their +hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young girl, +Genevieve Hawley from Fort Scott, Kansas, was employed to help with +the endless copying, sorting of letters, and pasting of scrapbooks, +and with the current correspondence which piled up and diverted Susan +from the book.<a name="FNanchor_413_413" id="FNanchor_413_413"></a><a href="#Footnote_413_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a> Through 1897 and 1898, they worked at top speed.</p> + +<p><i>The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, A Story of the Evolution of +the Status of Women</i>, in two volumes, by Ida Husted Harper, was +published by the Bowen Merrill Company of Indianapolis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> just before +Christmas 1898. Happy as a young girl out of school, Susan inscribed +copies for her many friends and eagerly watched for reviews, pleased +with the favorable comments in newspapers and magazines throughout +this country and Europe.<a name="FNanchor_414_414" id="FNanchor_414_414"></a><a href="#Footnote_414_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>By this time the Cuban rebellion was crowding all other news out of +the papers, and Susan followed it closely, for this struggle for +freedom instantly won her sympathy. She hoped that Spain under +pressure from the United States might be persuaded to give Cuba her +independence, but the blowing up of the battleship <i>Maine</i> and the war +cries of the press and of a faction in Congress led to armed +intervention in April 1898. Always opposed to war as a means of +settling disputes, she wrote Rachel, "To think of the mothers of this +nation sitting back in silence without even the power of a legal +protest—while their sons are taken without a by-your-leave! Well all +through—it is barbarous ... and I hope you and all our young women +will rouse to work as never before—and get the women of the Republic +clothed with the power of control of conditions in peace—or when it +shall come again—which Heaven forbid—in war."<a name="FNanchor_415_415" id="FNanchor_415_415"></a><a href="#Footnote_415_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a></p> + +<p>Not only did she express these sentiments in letters to her friends, +but in a public meeting, where only patriotic fervor and flag-waving +were welcome, she dared criticize the unsanitary army camps and the +greed and graft which deprived soldiers of wholesome food. "There +isn't a mother in the land," she declared, "who wouldn't know that a +shipload of typhoid stricken soldiers would need cots to lie on and +fuel to cook with, and that a swamp was not a desirable place in which +to pitch a camp.... What the government needs at such a time is not +alone bacteriologists and army officers but also women who know how to +take care of sick boys and have the common sense to surround them with +sanitary conditions."<a name="FNanchor_416_416" id="FNanchor_416_416"></a><a href="#Footnote_416_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a> At this her audience, at first hostile, +burst into applause.</p> + +<p>More and more disturbed by the inefficient care of the wounded and the +feeding of enlisted men, she wrote Rachel, "Every day's reports and +comments about the war only show the need of women at the front—not +as employees permitted to be there because they begged to be—but +there by right—as managers and dictators<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> in all departments in which +women have been trained—those of feeding and caring for in health and +nursing the sick."<a name="FNanchor_417_417" id="FNanchor_417_417"></a><a href="#Footnote_417_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a></p> + +<p>The war over, the problem of governing the Philippines, Puerto Rico, +and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the +enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. +She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the +world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male +oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she +wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise +your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod—or +cremated and floating in the air—I shall have to stir you and others +up. How can you not be all on fire?"<a name="FNanchor_418_418" id="FNanchor_418_418"></a><a href="#Footnote_418_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a></p> + +<p>The unwillingness of her "girls" to relate woman suffrage to +contemporary public affairs such as this, repeatedly disappointed her. +Yet she was well aware that the younger generation would never see the +work through her eyes, or exactly follow her pattern.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Disappointed that her National American Woman Suffrage Association did +not attract members as did the W.C.T.U. or the General Federation of +Women's Clubs, she confessed to Clara Colby, "It is the disheartening +part of my life that so very few women will work for the emancipation +of their own half of the race."<a name="FNanchor_419_419" id="FNanchor_419_419"></a><a href="#Footnote_419_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a> Watching women flock into these +other organizations and contributing to all sorts of charities, she +was obliged to admit that "very few are capable of seeing that the +cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and +to men also, lies in the subjection of women, and therefore the +important thing is to lay the ax at the root."<a name="FNanchor_420_420" id="FNanchor_420_420"></a><a href="#Footnote_420_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a></p> + +<p>She also discovered that it was one thing to build up a large +organization and another to keep women so busy with pressing work for +the cause that they did not find time to expend their energies on the +mechanics of organization. Not only did she chafe at the red tape most +of them spun, but she often felt that they were too prone to linger in +academic by-ways, listening to speeches and holding pleasant +conventions. Since the California campaign of 1896, only one state, +Washington, had been roused to vote on a woman suffrage amendment, +which was defeated and only one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> more state Delaware had granted women +the right to vote for members of school boards.</p> + +<p>Again and again she warned her "girls" that some kind of action on +woman suffrage by Congress every year was important. A hearing, a +committee report, a debate, or even an unfavorable vote would, she was +convinced, do more to stir up the whole nation than all the speakers +and organizers that could be sent through the country.</p> + +<p>Such thoughts as these, relative to the work which was always on her +mind, she dashed off to one after another of her young colleagues. +"Your letters sound like a trumpet blast," wrote Anna Howard Shaw, +grateful for her counsel. "They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the +Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage."<a name="FNanchor_421_421" id="FNanchor_421_421"></a><a href="#Footnote_421_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a></p> + +<p>At seventy-eight, Susan realized that the time was approaching when +she must make up her mind to turn over to a younger woman the +presidency of the National American Association, and during the summer +of 1898 she announced to her executive committee that she would retire +on her eightieth birthday in 1900.</p> + + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PASSING_ON_THE_TORCH" id="PASSING_ON_THE_TORCH"></a>PASSING ON THE TORCH</h2> + + +<p>The last year of Susan's presidency was particularly precious to her. +In a sense it represented her farewell to the work she had carried on +most of her life, and at the same time it was also the hopeful +beginning of the period leading to victory. Yet she had no illusion of +speedy or easy success for her "girls" and she did her best to prepare +them for the obstacles they would inevitably meet. She warned them not +to expect their cause to triumph merely because it was just. +"Governments," she told them, "never do any great good things from +mere principle, from mere love of justice.... You expect too much of +human nature when you expect that."<a name="FNanchor_422_422" id="FNanchor_422_422"></a><a href="#Footnote_422_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a></p> + +<p>The movement had reached an impasse. The temper of Congress, as shown +by the admission of Hawaii as a territory without woman suffrage, was +both indifferent and hostile. That this attitude did not express the +will of the American people, she was firmly convinced. It was due, she +believed, to the political influence of powerful groups opposed to +woman suffrage—the liquor interests controlling the votes of +increasing numbers of immigrants, machine politicians fearful of +losing their power, and financial interests whose conservatism +resisted any measure which might upset the status quo. How to +undermine this opposition was now her main problem, and she saw no +other way but persistent agitation through a more active, more +effective, ever-growing woman suffrage organization, reaching a wider +cross section of the people. She herself had established a press +bureau which was feeding interesting factual articles on woman +suffrage to newspapers throughout the country, for as she wrote Mrs. +Colby, the suffrage cause "needs to picture its demands in the daily +papers where the unconverted can see them rather than in special +papers where only those already converted can see them."<a name="FNanchor_423_423" id="FNanchor_423_423"></a><a href="#Footnote_423_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a></p> + +<p>Of greatest importance to her was winning the support of organized +labor. Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of +Labor, had already shown his friendliness toward equal pay and votes +for women and was putting women organizers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> in the field to speed the +unionization of women. Even so she was surprised at the enthusiasm +with which she was received at the American Federation of Labor +convention in 1899, when the four hundred delegates by a rising vote +adopted a strong resolution urging favorable action on a federal woman +suffrage amendment.</p> + +<p>So far as possible she had always established friendly relations with +labor organizations, first in 1869 with William H. Sylvis's National +Labor Union and then with the Knights of Labor and their leader, +Terrence V. Powderly.<a name="FNanchor_424_424" id="FNanchor_424_424"></a><a href="#Footnote_424_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a> When Eugene V. Debs, president of the +American Railway Union, was arrested during the Pullman strike in 1894 +for defying a court injunction, she did not rate him, as so many did, +a dangerous radical, but as an earnest reformer, crusading for an +unpopular cause. They had met years before in Terre Haute, where at +his request she had lectured on woman suffrage, and immediately they +had won each other's sympathy and respect. She did not see indications +of anarchy in the Pullman and Homestead strikes or in the Haymarket +riot, but regarded them as an unfortunate phase of an industrial +revolution which in time would improve the relations of labor and +capital.</p> + +<p>That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious +to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in +it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National +American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments +affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young +suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley, +had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in +her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago, +and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of +women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and +work—social service—which made a great appeal to college women and +set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and +children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as +a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking +protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but +through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of +women's right to contract for their labor on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> the same terms as men. +Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of +the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so +much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor +Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of +the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed +labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to +visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into +woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of +her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a +friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."<a name="FNanchor_425_425" id="FNanchor_425_425"></a><a href="#Footnote_425_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage +and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not +keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance, +bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand, +regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself.</p> + +<p>The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always +of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable +epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself +freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as +indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership +to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization. +Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her +own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington +convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the +pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to +speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their +organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her +own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who +came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a +religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone +employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She +rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage +conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear +Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> had been +educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and +even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist +movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years +old, she headed the United States delegation to the International +Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch +at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading +British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of +their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the +suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to +their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for +the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's +Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss +Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist +ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United +States.</p> + +<p>From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa, +Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the +United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and +their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which +they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man +will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the +councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the +perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the +highest development of the race."<a name="FNanchor_426_426" id="FNanchor_426_426"></a><a href="#Footnote_426_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a></p> + +<p>She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at +Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International +Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and +so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was +important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she +was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the +improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her +of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the +opportunity. All that influential<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> Englishwomen were able to arrange +was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle +to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room +without the Queen.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;"> +<img src="images/289.jpg" width="368" height="450" alt="Carrie Chapman Catt" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Carrie Chapman Catt</span> +</div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Returning home late in August 1899, Susan began at once to make +definite plans to turn over the presidency of the National American +Woman Suffrage Association to a younger woman. Although she well knew +that the choice of her successor was actually in the hands of the +membership, it was her intention to do what she could within the +bounds of democratic procedure to insure the best possible leadership. +To fill the office, she turned instinctively to Anna Howard Shaw whom +she loved more dearly as the years went by and whose selfless devotion +to the cause she trusted implicitly. Yet Anna, in spite of her many +qualifications, lacked a few which were exceptional in Carrie Chapman +Catt—creative executive ability, diplomacy, a talent for working with +people, directing them, and winning their devotion. With growing +admiration, Susan had been watching Mrs. Catt's indefatigable work in +the states where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> she had been building up active branches. Her flare +for raising money was outstanding, and Susan realized, as few others +did, the crying need of funds for the campaigns ahead. In addition +Mrs. Catt had no personal financial worries, for her husband, +successful in business, was sympathetic to her work. Anna, on the +other hand, would have to support herself by lecturing and carry as +well the burden of the presidency of a rapidly growing organization.</p> + +<p>Anna made the decision for Susan. She urged the candidacy of Mrs. +Catt, although her highest ambition had always been to succeed her +beloved Aunt Susan. As she later confessed to Susan, this was a +personal sacrifice which cost her many a heartache, but she "honestly +felt that Mrs. Catt was better fitted ... as well as freer to go into +an unpaid field."<a name="FNanchor_427_427" id="FNanchor_427_427"></a><a href="#Footnote_427_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a> Susan therefore approached Mrs. Catt through +Rachel and Harriet Upton, and was relieved when she consented to stand +for election.</p> + +<p>Rumors of Susan's retirement aroused ambitions in Lillie Devereux +Blake, who from the point of seniority and devoted work in New York +was regarded as being next in line for the presidency by Mrs. Stanton +and Mrs. Colby. Unable to visualize Mrs. Blake as the leader of this +large organization with its diverse strong personalities, Susan +nevertheless conceded her right to compete for the office. Although +she appreciated Mrs. Blake's valuable work for the cause, there never +had been understanding or sympathy between them. Temperamentally the +blunt stern New Englander with untiring drive had little in common +with the southern beauty turned reformer.</p> + +<p>A change in the presidency needed wise and patient handling as +personal ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstandings reared their +heads. When there were murmurings of secession among a small group if +Mrs. Catt were elected, Susan wrote Mrs. Colby that such talk was +"very immature, very despotic, very undemocratic," and she hoped she +was not one of the malcontents.<a name="FNanchor_428_428" id="FNanchor_428_428"></a><a href="#Footnote_428_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a></p> + +<p>Another problem was the future of the organization committee which +under Mrs. Catt's chairmanship had carried on a large part of the +work. Its influence was considerable and could readily develop so as +to conflict with that of the officers, thus threatening the unity of +the whole organization. To dissolve the committee seemed to Susan and +her closest advisors the wisest procedure. Mary Garrett<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> Hay, who had +worked closely with Mrs. Catt on the organization committee, opposed +this plan, but after earnest discussion the officers, including Mrs. +Catt, agreed to dissolve the organization committee.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>As Susan appeared on the platform at the opening session of the +Washington convention in February 1900, there was thunderous applause +from an audience tense with emotion at the thought of losing the +leader who had guided them for so many years. The tall gray-haired +woman in black satin, with soft rich lace at her throat and the +proverbial red shawl about her shoulders, had become the symbol of +their cause. Now, as she looked down upon them with a friendly smile +and motherly tenderness, tears came to their eyes, and they wanted to +remember always just how she looked at that moment. Then she broke the +tension with a call to duty, a summons to press for the federal +amendment, and one more plea that they always hold their annual +conventions in the national capital.</p> + +<p>Difficult and sad as this official leave-taking was, she had made up +her mind to carry if through with good cheer. Tirelessly she presided +at three sessions daily. With the pride of a mother, she listened to +the many reports and with particular satisfaction to that of the +treasurer which showed all debts paid and pledges amounting to $10,000 +to start the new year. Susan herself had made this possible, raising +enough to pay past debts and securing pledges so that the new +administration could start its work free from financial worries.</p> + +<p>"I have fully determined to retire from the active presidency of the +Association," she announced when the reports and speeches were over. +"I am not retiring now because I feel unable, mentally or physically, +to do the necessary work, but because I wish to see the organization +in the hands of those who are to have its management in the future. I +want to see you all at work, while I am alive, so I can scold if you +do not do it well. Give the matter of selecting your officers serious +thought. Consider who will do the best work for the political +enfranchisement of women, and let no personal feelings enter into the +question."<a name="FNanchor_429_429" id="FNanchor_429_429"></a><a href="#Footnote_429_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a></p> + +<p>Watching developments with the keen eye of a politician, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> was +confident that Mrs. Catt would be elected to succeed her, although +Mrs. Blake's candidacy was still being assiduously pressed and +circulars recommending her, signed by Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Russell Sage +and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, were being widely distributed. Just before +the balloting, however, Mrs. Blake withdrew her name in the interest +of harmony. This left the field to Mrs. Catt, who received 254 votes +of the 278 cast.</p> + +<p>A burst of applause greeted the announcement of Mrs. Catt's election. +Then abruptly it stopped, as the realization swept over the delegates +that Aunt Susan was no longer their president. Walking to the front of +the platform, Susan took Mrs. Catt by the hand, and while the +delegates applauded, the two women stood before them, the one showing +in her kind face the experience and wisdom of years, the other young, +intelligent, and beautiful, her life still before her. There were +tears in Susan's eyes and her voice was unsteady as she said, "I am +sure you have made a wise choice.... 'New conditions bring new +duties.' These new duties, these changed conditions, demand stronger +hands, younger heads, and fresher hearts. In Mrs. Catt, you have my +ideal leader. I present to you my successor."<a name="FNanchor_430_430" id="FNanchor_430_430"></a><a href="#Footnote_430_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan's joyous confidence in the new administration was rudely jolted +as controversy over the future of the organization committee flared up +during the last days of the convention. Under strong pressure from +Mary Garrett Hay, Mrs. Catt had counseled with Henry Blackwell, and at +one of the last sessions he had slipped in a motion authorizing the +continuance of the organization committee.<a name="FNanchor_431_431" id="FNanchor_431_431"></a><a href="#Footnote_431_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a></p> + +<p>Stunned by this development and looking upon it as a threat to the +harmony of the new administration, Susan, supported by Harriet Upton +and Rachel, prepared to take action, and the next morning, at the +first post-convention executive committee meeting at which Mrs. Catt +presided, Susan proposed that the national officers, headed by Mrs. +Catt, take over the duties of the organization committee. This +precipitated a heated debate, during which Henry Blackwell and his +daughter, Alice, called such procedure unconstitutional, and Mary Hay +resigned. As the discussion became too acrimonious, Mrs. Catt put an +end to it by calling up unfinished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> business, and thus managed to +steer the remainder of the session into less troubled waters. The next +day, however, Susan brought the matter up again, and on her motion the +organization committee was voted out of existence with praise for its +admirable record of service.</p> + +<p>Here were all the makings of a factional feud which, if fanned into +flame, could well have split the National American Association. Not +only had the old organization interfered with the new, indirectly +reprimanding Mrs. Catt, but Susan, by her own personal influence and +determination, had reversed the action of the convention. As a result, +Mrs. Catt was indignant, hurt, and sorely tempted to resign, but after +sending a highly critical letter to every member of the business +committee, she took up her work with vigor.</p> + +<p>Disappointed and heartsick over the turn of events, Susan searched for +a way to re-establish harmony and her own faith in her successor. +Realizing that a mother's cool counsel and guiding hand were needed to +heal the misunderstandings, and convinced that unity and trust could +be restored only by frank discussion of the problem by those involved, +she asked for a meeting of the business committee at her home. "What +can we do to get back into trust in each other?" she wrote Laura Clay. +"That is the thing we must do—somehow—and it cannot be done by +letter. We must hold a meeting—and we must have you—and every single +one of our members at it."<a name="FNanchor_432_432" id="FNanchor_432_432"></a><a href="#Footnote_432_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a></p> + +<p>Impatient at what to her seemed unnecessary delay, she kept prodding +Mrs. Catt to call this meeting. Fortunately both Susan and Mrs. Catt +were genuinely fond of each other and placed the welfare of the cause +above personal differences. Both were tolerant and steady and +understood the pressures put on the leader of a great organization. +Anxious and troubled as she waited for this meeting, Susan appreciated +Anna Shaw's visits as never before, marking them as red-letter days on +her calender.</p> + +<p>Late in August 1900, all the officers finally gathered at 17 Madison +Street, and Susan listened to their discussions with deep concern. She +was confident she could rely completely on Harriet Upton, Rachel, and +Anna and could count on Laura Clay's "level head and good common +sense."<a name="FNanchor_433_433" id="FNanchor_433_433"></a><a href="#Footnote_433_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a> She never felt sure of Alice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> Stone Blackwell and knew +there was great sympathy and often a working alliance between her, her +father, and Mrs. Catt. Of the latest member of the official family, +Catharine Waugh McCulloch, she had little first-hand knowledge. Mrs. +Catt, whom she longed to fathom and trust, was still an enigma. During +those hot humid August days, misunderstandings were healed, unity was +restored, and Susan was reassured that not a single one of her "girls" +desired "other than was good for the work."<a name="FNanchor_434_434" id="FNanchor_434_434"></a><a href="#Footnote_434_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Susan had always been a champion of coeducation, speaking for it as +early as the 1850s at state teachers' meetings and proposing it for +Columbia University in her <i>Revolution</i>. In 1891, she and Mrs. Stanton +had agitated for the admission of women to the University of +Rochester. Seven years later the trustees consented to admit women +provided $100,000 could be raised in a year, and Susan served on the +fund-raising committee with her friend, Helen Barrett Montgomery. +Because the alumni of the University of Rochester opposed coeducation +and the city's wealthiest men were indifferent, progress was slow, but +the trustees were persuaded to extend the time and to reduce by one +half the amount to be raised.</p> + +<p>With so much else on her mind in 1900, including the sudden death of +her brother Merritt, she had given the fund little thought until the +committee appealed to her in desperation when only one day remained in +which to raise the last $8,000. Immediately she went into action. +Remembering that Mary had talked of willing the University $2,000 if +it became coeducational, she persuaded her to pledge that amount now. +Then setting out in a carriage on a very hot September morning, she +slowly collected pledges for all but $2,000. As the trustees were in +session and likely to adjourn any minute, she appealed to Samuel +Wilder, one of Rochester's prominent elder citizens who had already +contributed, to guarantee that amount until she could raise it. To +this he gladly agreed. Reaching the trustees' meeting with Mrs. +Montgomery just in time, with pledges assuring the payment of the full +$50,000, she was amazed at their reception. Instead of rejoicing with +them, the trustees began to quibble over Samuel Wilder's guarantee of +the last $2,000 because of the state of his health. When she offered +her life insurance as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> security, they still put her off, telling her +to come back in a few days. Even then they continued to quibble, but +finally admitted that the women had won. Disillusioned, she wrote in +her diary, "Not a trustee has given anything although there are +several millionaires among them."<a name="FNanchor_435_435" id="FNanchor_435_435"></a><a href="#Footnote_435_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a> Only her life insurance policy +and her dogged persistence had saved the day.</p> + +<p>This effort to open Rochester University to women, on top of a very +full and worrisome year, was so taxing and so disillusioning that she +became seriously ill. When she recovered sufficiently for a drive, she +asked to be taken to the university campus and afterward wrote in her +diary, "As I drove over the campus, I felt 'these are not forbidden +grounds to the girls of the city any longer.' It is good to feel that +the old doors sway on their hinges—to women! Will the vows be kept to +them—will the girls have equal chances with the boys? They promised +well—the fulfilment will be seen—whether there shall not be some +hitch from the proposed to a separate school."<a name="FNanchor_436_436" id="FNanchor_436_436"></a><a href="#Footnote_436_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, +Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first +annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an +"entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss +Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan +was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency +that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the +proceedings.<a name="FNanchor_437_437" id="FNanchor_437_437"></a><a href="#Footnote_437_437" class="fnanchor">[437]</a></p> + +<p>Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well +satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume +of the <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> on which she and Mrs. Harper had +been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late +in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than +satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her +happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom +saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by +letter.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and +planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's +eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> "It +is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through +every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of +women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a +century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle +to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to +know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, +with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in +public—all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These +strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and +complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a +handful...."<a name="FNanchor_438_438" id="FNanchor_438_438"></a><a href="#Footnote_438_438" class="fnanchor">[438]</a></p> + +<p>Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a +telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. +Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, +trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy +which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself +at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to +speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to +describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."<a name="FNanchor_439_439" id="FNanchor_439_439"></a><a href="#Footnote_439_439" class="fnanchor">[439]</a></p> + +<p>From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in +anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved +to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. +Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am +all at sea—but the Laws of Nature are still going on—with no shadow +or turning—what a wonder it is—it goes right on and on—no matter +who lives or who dies."<a name="FNanchor_440_440" id="FNanchor_440_440"></a><a href="#Footnote_440_440" class="fnanchor">[440]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>National woman suffrage conventions were still red-letter events to +Susan and she attended them no matter how great the physical effort, +traveling to New Orleans in 1903. Of particular concern was the 1904 +convention because of Mrs. Catt's decision at the very last moment not +to stand for re-election on account of her health. Looking over the +field, Susan saw no one capable of taking her place but Anna Howard +Shaw. Not to be able to turn to Mrs. Stanton's capable daughter, +Harriot Stanton Blatch, at this time was disappointing, but Harriot's +long absence in England had made her more or less of a stranger to the +membership of the National American Association,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> and for some reason +she did not seem to fit in, lacking her mother's warmth and +appeal.<a name="FNanchor_441_441" id="FNanchor_441_441"></a><a href="#Footnote_441_441" class="fnanchor">[441]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/297.jpg" width="500" height="492" alt="Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony</span> +</div> + +<p>"I don't see anybody in the whole rank of our suffrage movement to +take her [Mrs. Catt's] place but you," Susan now wrote Anna Howard +Shaw. "If you will take it with a salary of say, $2,000, I will go +ahead and try to see what I can do. We must not let the society down +into <i>feeble</i> hands.... Don't say <i>no</i>, for the <i>life</i> of <i>you</i>, for +if Mrs. Catt <i>persists</i> in going out, we shall simply <i>have</i> to +<i>accept it</i> and we must <i>tide over</i> with the <i>best material</i> that we +have, and <i>you are the best</i>, and would you have taken office <i>four +years ago</i>, you would have been elected over-whelmingly."<a name="FNanchor_442_442" id="FNanchor_442_442"></a><a href="#Footnote_442_442" class="fnanchor">[442]</a></p> + +<p>Anna could not refuse Aunt Susan, and when she was elected with Mrs. +Catt as vice-president, Susan breathed freely again.</p> + +<p>It warmed Susan's heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth +birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called +her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There +now, girls, that's enough."<a name="FNanchor_443_443" id="FNanchor_443_443"></a><a href="#Footnote_443_443" class="fnanchor">[443]</a> Nothing could have been more +appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she +presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> success of woman +suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where +women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in +Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration +in favor of the pending franchise bill.</p> + +<p>For the last time, she spoke to a Senate committee on the woman +suffrage amendment. Standing before these indifferent men, a tired +warrior at the end of a long hard campaign, she reminded them that she +alone remained of those who thirty-five years before, in 1869, had +appealed to Congress for justice. "And I," she added, "shall not be +able to come much longer.</p> + +<p>"We have waited," she told them. "We stood aside for the Negro; we +waited for the millions of immigrants; now we must wait till the +Hawaiians, the Filipinos, and the Puerto Ricans are enfranchised; then +no doubt the Cubans will have their turn. For all these ignorant, +alien peoples, educated women have been compelled to stand aside and +wait!" Then with mounting impatience, she asked them, "How long will +this injustice, this outrage continue?"<a name="FNanchor_444_444" id="FNanchor_444_444"></a><a href="#Footnote_444_444" class="fnanchor">[444]</a></p> + +<p>Their answer to her was silence. They sent no report to the Senate on +the woman suffrage amendment. Yet she was able to say to a reporter of +the New York <i>Sun</i>, "I have never lost my faith, not for a moment in +fifty years."<a name="FNanchor_445_445" id="FNanchor_445_445"></a><a href="#Footnote_445_445" class="fnanchor">[445]</a></p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="SUSAN_B_ANTHONY_OF_THE_WORLD" id="SUSAN_B_ANTHONY_OF_THE_WORLD"></a>SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD</h2> + + +<p>Susan was on the ocean in May 1904 with her sister Mary and a group of +good friends, headed for a meeting of the International Council of +Women in Berlin. What drew her to Berlin was the plan initiated by +Carrie Chapman Catt to form an International Woman Suffrage Alliance +prior to the meetings of the International Council. This had been +Susan's dream and Mrs. Stanton's in 1883, when they first conferred +with women of other countries regarding an international woman +suffrage organization and found only the women of England ready to +unite on such a radical program. Now that women had worked together +successfully in the International Council for sixteen years on other +less controversial matters relating to women, she and Mrs. Catt were +confident that a few of them at least were willing to unite to demand +the vote.</p> + +<p>Chosen as a matter of course to preside over this gathering of +suffragists in Berlin, Susan received an enthusiastic welcome. For her +it was a momentous occasion, and eager to spread news of the meeting +far and wide, she could not understand the objections of many of the +delegates to the presence of reporters who they feared might send out +sensational copy.</p> + +<p>"My friends, what are we here for?" she asked her more timid +colleagues. "We have come from many countries, travelled thousands of +miles to form an organization for a great international work, and do +we want to keep it a secret from the public? No; welcome all reporters +who want to come, the more, the better. Let all we say and do here be +told far and wide. Let the people everywhere know that in Berlin women +from all parts of the world have banded themselves together to demand +political freedom. I rejoice in the presence of these reporters, and +instead of excluding them from our meetings let us help them to all +the information we can and ask them to give it the widest +publicity."<a name="FNanchor_446_446" id="FNanchor_446_446"></a><a href="#Footnote_446_446" class="fnanchor">[446]</a></p> + +<p>This won the battle for the reporters, who gave her rousing applause, +and the news flashed over the wires was sympathetic, dignified, and +abundant. It told the world of the formation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> the International +Woman Suffrage Alliance by women from the United States, Great +Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Norway, and +Denmark, "to secure the enfranchisement of women of all nations." It +praised the honorary president, Susan B. Anthony, and the American +women who took over the leadership of this international venture, +Carrie Chapman Catt, the president, and Rachel Foster Avery, +corresponding secretary.</p> + +<p>To celebrate the occasion, German suffragists called a public mass +meeting, and Susan, eager to rejoice with them, was surprised to find +members of the International Council disgruntled and accusing the +International Woman Suffrage Alliance of stealing their thunder and +casting the dark shadow of woman suffrage over their conference. To +placate them and restore harmony, she stayed away from this public +meeting, but she could not control the demand for her presence.</p> + +<p>"Where is Susan B. Anthony?" were the first words spoken as the mass +meeting opened. Then immediately the audience rose and burst into +cheers which continued without a break for ten minutes. Anna Howard +Shaw there on the platform and deeply moved by this tribute to Aunt +Susan, later described how she felt: "Every second of that time I +seemed to see Miss Anthony alone in her hotel room, longing with all +her big heart to be with us, as we longed to have her.... Afterwards, +when we burst in upon her and told her of the great demonstration, the +mere mention of her name had caused, her lips quivered and her brave +old eyes filled with tears."<a name="FNanchor_447_447" id="FNanchor_447_447"></a><a href="#Footnote_447_447" class="fnanchor">[447]</a></p> + +<p>The next morning her "girls" brought her the Berlin newspapers, +translating for her the report of the meeting and these heart-warming +lines, "The Americans call her 'Aunt Susan.' She is our 'Aunt Susan' +too."</p> + +<p>This was but a foretaste of her reception throughout her stay in +Berlin. To the International Council, she was "Susan B. Anthony of the +World," the woman of the hour, whom all wanted to meet. Every time she +entered the conference hall, the audience rose and remained standing +until she was seated. Every mention of her name brought forth cheers. +The many young women, acting as ushers, were devoted to her and eager +to serve her. They greeted her by kissing her hand. Embarrassed at +first by such homage, she soon responded by kissing them on the +cheek.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 323px;"> +<img src="images/301.jpg" width="323" height="450" alt="Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five</span> +</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Empress Victoria Augusta, receiving the delegates in the Royal +Palace, singled out Susan, and instead of following the custom of +kissing the Empress's hand, Susan bowed as she would to any +distinguished American, explaining that she was a Quaker and did not +understand the etiquette of the court. The Empress praised Susan's +great work, and unwilling to let such an opportunity slip by, Susan +offered the suggestion that Emperor William who had done so much to +build up his country might now wish to raise the status of German +women. To this the Empress replied with a smile, "The gentlemen are +very slow to comprehend this great movement."<a name="FNanchor_448_448" id="FNanchor_448_448"></a><a href="#Footnote_448_448" class="fnanchor">[448]</a></p> + +<p>When the talented Negro, Mary Church Terrell, addressing the +International Council in both German and French, received an ovation, +Susan's cup of joy was filled to the brim, for she glimpsed the bright +promise of a world without barriers of sex or race.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>The newspapers welcomed her home, and in her own comfortable sitting +room she read Rochester's greeting in the <i>Democrat and Chronicle</i>, +"There are woman suffragists and anti-suffragists, but all Rochester +people, irrespective of opinion ... are Anthony men and women. We +admire and esteem one so single-minded, earnest and unselfish, who, +with eighty-four years to her credit, is still too busy and useful to +think of growing old."<a name="FNanchor_449_449" id="FNanchor_449_449"></a><a href="#Footnote_449_449" class="fnanchor">[449]</a></p> + +<p>Her happiness over this welcome was clouded, however, by the serious +illness of her brother Daniel, and she and Mary hurried to Kansas to +see him. Two months later he passed away. Now only she and Mary were +left of all the large Anthony family. Without Daniel, the world seemed +empty. His strength of character, independence, and sympathy with her +work had comforted and encouraged her all through her life. A fearless +editor, a successful businessman, a politician with principles, he had +played an important role in Kansas, and proud of him, she cherished +the many tributes published throughout the country.</p> + +<p>Courageously she now picked up the threads of her life. Her precious +National American Woman Suffrage Association was out of her hands, but +she still had the <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> to distribute, and it +gave her a great sense of accomplishment to hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> on to future +generations this record of women's struggle for freedom.<a name="FNanchor_450_450" id="FNanchor_450_450"></a><a href="#Footnote_450_450" class="fnanchor">[450]</a></p> + +<p>Missing the stimulous of work with her "girls," she took more and more +pleasure in the company of William and Mary Gannett of the First +Unitarian Church, whose liberal views appealed to her strongly. She +liked to have young people about her and followed the lives of all her +nieces and nephews with the greatest interest, spurring on their +ambitions and helping finance their education. The frequent visits of +"Niece Lucy" were a great joy during these years, as was the nearness +of "Niece Anna O,"<a name="FNanchor_451_451" id="FNanchor_451_451"></a><a href="#Footnote_451_451" class="fnanchor">[451]</a> who married and settled in Rochester. The +young Canadian girl, Anna Dann, had become almost indispensable to her +and to Mary, as companion, secretary, and nurse, and her marriage left +a void in the household. Anna Dann was married at 17 Madison Street by +Anna Howard Shaw with Susan beaming upon her like a proud grandmother.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Longing to see one more state won for suffrage, Susan carefully +followed the news from the field, looking hopefully to California and +urging her "girls" to keep hammering away there in spite of defeats. +Her eyes were also on the Territory of Oklahoma, where a constitution +was being drafted preparatory to statehood. "The present bill for the +new state," she wrote Anna Howard Shaw, in December 1904, "is an +insult to women of Oklahoma, such as has never been perpetrated +before. We have always known that women were in reality ranked with +idiots and criminals, but it has never been said in words that the +state should ... restrict or abridge the suffrage ... on account of +illiteracy, minority, <i>sex</i>, conviction of felony, mental condition, +etc.... We must fight this bill to the utmost...."<a name="FNanchor_452_452" id="FNanchor_452_452"></a><a href="#Footnote_452_452" class="fnanchor">[452]</a></p> + +<p>The brightest spot in the West was Oregon, where suffrage had been +defeated in 1900 by only 2,000 votes. In June 1905, when the National +American Association held its first far western convention in Portland +during the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Susan could not keep away, +although she had never expected to go over the mountains again. As she +traveled to Portland with Mary and a hundred or more delegates in +special cars, she recalled her many long tiring trips through the West +to carry the message of woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> suffrage to the frontier. In +comparison, this was a triumphal journey, showing her, as nothing else +could, what her work had accomplished. Greeted at railroad stations +along the way by enthusiastic crowds, showered with flowers and gifts, +she stood on the back platform of the train with her "girls," shaking +hands, waving her handkerchief, and making an occasional speech.</p> + +<p>Presiding over the opening session of the Portland convention, +standing in a veritable garden of flowers which had been presented to +her, she remarked with a droll smile, "This is rather different from +the receptions I used to get fifty years ago.... I am thankful for +this change of spirit which has come over the American people."<a name="FNanchor_453_453" id="FNanchor_453_453"></a><a href="#Footnote_453_453" class="fnanchor">[453]</a></p> + +<p>On Woman's Day, she was chosen to speak at the unveiling of the statue +of Sacajawea, the Indian woman who had led Lewis and Clark through the +dangerous mountain passes to the Pacific, winning their gratitude and +their praise. In the story of Sacajawea who had been overlooked by the +government when every man in the Lewis and Clark expedition had been +rewarded with a large tract of land, Susan saw the perfect example of +man's thoughtless oversight of the valuable services of women. Looking +up at the bronze statue of the Indian woman, her papoose on her back +and her arm outstretched to the Pacific, Susan said simply, "This is +the first statue erected to a woman because of deeds of daring.... +This recognition of the assistance rendered by a woman in the +discovery of this great section of the country is but the beginning of +what is due." Then, with the sunlight playing on her hair and lighting +up her face, she appealed to the men of Oregon for the vote. "Next +year," she reminded them, "the men of this proud state, made possible +by a woman, will decide whether women shall at last have the rights in +it which have been denied them so many years. Let men remember the +part women have played in its settlement and progress and vote to give +them these rights which belong to every citizen."<a name="FNanchor_454_454" id="FNanchor_454_454"></a><a href="#Footnote_454_454" class="fnanchor">[454]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Reporters were at Susan's door, when she returned to Rochester, for +comments on ex-President Cleveland's tirade against clubwomen and +woman suffrage in the popular <i>Ladies' Home Journal</i>. "Pure +fol-de-rol," she told them, adding testily, "I would think that Grover +Cleveland was about the last person to talk about the sanctity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> the +home and woman's sphere." This was good copy for Republican newspapers +and they made the most of it, as women throughout the country added +their protests to Susan's. A popular jingle of the day ran, "Susan B. +Anthony, she took quite a fall out of Grover C."<a name="FNanchor_455_455" id="FNanchor_455_455"></a><a href="#Footnote_455_455" class="fnanchor">[455]</a></p> + +<p>Susan, however, had something far more important on her mind than +fencing with Grover Cleveland—an interview with President Theodore +Roosevelt. Here was a man eager to right wrongs, to break monopolies, +to see justice done to the Negro, a man who talked of a "square deal" +for all, and yet woman suffrage aroused no response in him.</p> + +<p>In November 1905, she undertook a trip to Washington for the express +purpose of talking with him. The year before, at a White House +reception, he had singled her out to stand at his side in the +receiving line. She looked for the same friendliness now. Memorandum +in hand, she plied him with questions which he carefully evaded, but +she would not give up.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Roosevelt," she earnestly pleaded, "this is my principle request. +It is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you +leave the Presidential chair recommend to Congress to submit to the +Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, +and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great +emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without +doing this."<a name="FNanchor_456_456" id="FNanchor_456_456"></a><a href="#Footnote_456_456" class="fnanchor">[456]</a></p> + +<p>To this he made no response, and trying once more to wring from him +some slight indication of sympathy for her cause, she added, "Mr. +President, your influence is so great that just one word from you in +favor of woman suffrage would give our cause a tremendous impetus."</p> + +<p>"The public knows my attitude," he tersely replied. "I recommended it +when Governor of New York."</p> + +<p>"True," she acknowledged, "but that was a long time ago. Our enemies +say that was the opinion of your younger years and that since you have +been President you have never uttered one word that could be construed +as an endorsement."</p> + +<p>"They have no cause to think I have changed my mind," he suavely +replied as he bade her good-bye. In the months that followed he gave +her no sign that her interview had made the slightest impression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> + +<p>One of the most satisfying honors bestowed on Susan during these last +years was the invitation to be present at Bryn Mawr College in 1902 +for the unveiling of a bronze portrait medallion of herself. Bryn +Mawr, under its brilliant young president, M. Carey Thomas, herself a +pioneer in establishing the highest standards for women's education, +showed no such timidity as Vassar where neither Susan nor Elizabeth +Cady Stanton had been welcome as speakers. At Bryn Mawr, Susan talked +freely and frankly with the students, and best of all, became better +acquainted with M. Carey Thomas and her enterprising friend, Mary +Garrett of Baltimore, who was using her great wealth for the +advancement of women. She longed to channel their abilities to woman +suffrage and a few years later arranged for a national convention in +their home city, Baltimore, appealing to them to make it an +outstanding success.<a name="FNanchor_457_457" id="FNanchor_457_457"></a><a href="#Footnote_457_457" class="fnanchor">[457]</a></p> + +<p>Arriving in Baltimore in January 1906 for this convention, Susan was +the honored guest in Mary Garrett's luxurious home. Frail and ill, she +was unable to attend all the sessions, as in the past, but she was +present at the highlight of this very successful convention, the +College Evening arranged by M. Carey Thomas. With women's colleges +still resisting the discussion of woman suffrage and the Association +of Collegiate Alumnae refusing to support it, the College Evening +marked the first public endorsement of this controversial subject by +college women. Up to this time the only encouraging sign had been the +formation in 1900 of the College Equal Suffrage League by two young +Radcliffe alumnae, Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin. Now here, in +conservative Baltimore, college presidents and college faculty gave +woman suffrage their blessing, and Susan listened happily as +distinguished women, one after another, allied themselves to the +cause: Dr. Mary E. Woolley, who as president of Mt. Holyoke was +developing Mary Lyons' pioneer seminary into a high ranking college; +Lucy Salmon, Mary A. Jordan, and Mary W. Calkins of the faculties of +Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley; Eva Perry Moore, a trustee of Vassar and +president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, with whom she +dared differ on this subject; Maud Wood Park, representing the younger +generation in the College Equal Suffrage League; and last of all, the +president of Bryn Mawr, M. Carey Thomas. After expressing her +gratitude to the pioneers of this great movement, Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> Thomas turned +to Susan and said, "To you, Miss Anthony, belongs by right, as to no +other woman in the world's history, the love and gratitude of all +women in every country of the civilized globe. We your daughters in +spirit, rise up today and call you blessed.... Of such as you were the +lines of the poet Yeats written:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'They shall be remembered forever,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They shall be alive forever,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They shall be speaking forever,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The people shall hear them forever.'"<a name="FNanchor_458_458" id="FNanchor_458_458"></a><a href="#Footnote_458_458" class="fnanchor">[458]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>During the thundering applause, Susan came forward to respond, her +face alight, and the audience rose. "If any proof were needed of the +progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight," +she said simply. "The presence on the stage of these college women, +and in the audience of all those college girls who will someday be the +nation's greatest strength, tell their story to the world. They give +the highest joy and encouragement to me...."<a name="FNanchor_459_459" id="FNanchor_459_459"></a><a href="#Footnote_459_459" class="fnanchor">[459]</a></p> + +<p>During her visit at the home of Mary Garrett, Susan spoke freely with +her and with M. Carey Thomas of the needs of the National American +Association, particularly of the Standing Fund of $100,000 of which +she had dreamed and which she had started to raise. Now, like an +answer to prayer, Mary Garrett and President Thomas, fresh from their +successful money-raising campaigns for Johns Hopkins and Bryn Mawr, +offered to undertake a similar project for woman suffrage, proposing +to raise $60,000—$12,000 a year for the next five years.</p> + +<p>"As we sat at her feet day after day between sessions of the +convention, listening to what she wanted us to do to help women and +asking her questions," recalled M. Carey Thomas in later years, "I +realized that she was the greatest person I had ever met. She seemed +to me everything that a human being could be—a leader to die for or +to live for and follow wherever she led."<a name="FNanchor_460_460" id="FNanchor_460_460"></a><a href="#Footnote_460_460" class="fnanchor">[460]</a></p> + +<p>Immediately after the convention, Susan went to Washington with the +women who were scheduled to speak at the Congressional hearing on +woman suffrage. In her room at the Shoreham Hotel, a room with a view +of the Washington Monument which the manager always saved for her, she +stood at the window looking out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> over the city as if saying farewell. +Then turning to Anna Shaw, she said with emotion, "I think it is the +most beautiful monument in the whole world."<a name="FNanchor_461_461" id="FNanchor_461_461"></a><a href="#Footnote_461_461" class="fnanchor">[461]</a></p> + +<p>That evening she sat quietly through the many tributes offered to her +on her eighty-sixth birthday, longing to tell all her friends the +gratitude and hope that welled up in her heart. Finally she rose, and +standing by Anna Howard Shaw who was presiding, she impulsively put +her hand on her shoulder and praised her for her loyal support. Then +turning to the other officers, she thanked them for all they had done. +"There are others also," she added, "just as true and devoted to the +cause—I wish I could name everyone—but with such women consecrating +their lives—" She hesitated a moment, and then in her clear rich +voice, added with emphasis, "Failure is impossible."<a name="FNanchor_462_462" id="FNanchor_462_462"></a><a href="#Footnote_462_462" class="fnanchor">[462]</a></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>In Rochester, in the home she so dearly loved, she spent her last +weeks, thinking of the cause and the women who would carry it on. +Longing to talk with Anna Shaw, she sent for her, but Anna, feeling +she was needed, came even before a letter could reach her. With Anna +at her bedside, Susan was content.</p> + +<p>"I want you to give me a promise," she pleaded, reaching for Anna's +hand. "Promise me you will keep the presidency of the association as +long as you are well enough to do the work."<a name="FNanchor_463_463" id="FNanchor_463_463"></a><a href="#Footnote_463_463" class="fnanchor">[463]</a></p> + +<p>Deeply moved, Anna replied, "But how can I promise that? I can keep it +only as long as others wish me to keep it."</p> + +<p>"Promise to make them wish you to keep it," Susan urged. "Just as I +wish you to keep it...."</p> + +<p>After a moment, she continued, "I do not know anything about what +comes to us after this life ends, but ... if I have any conscious +knowledge of this world and of what you are doing, I shall not be far +away from you; and in times of need I will help you all I can. Who +knows? Perhaps I may be able to do more for the Cause after I am gone +than while I am here."</p> + +<p>A few days later, on March 13, 1906, she passed away, her hand in +Anna's.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;"> +<img src="images/309.jpg" width="350" height="493" alt="Susan B. Anthony, 1905" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Susan B. Anthony, 1905</span> +</div> + +<p>Asked, a few years before, if she believed that all women in the +United States would ever be given the vote, she had replied with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> +assurance, "It will come, but I shall not see it.... It is inevitable. +We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half +our people than we could keep the Negro forever in bondage. It will +not be wrought by the same disrupting forces that freed the slave, but +come it will, and I believe within a generation."<a name="FNanchor_464_464" id="FNanchor_464_464"></a><a href="#Footnote_464_464" class="fnanchor">[464]</a></p> + +<p>She had so longed to see women voting throughout the United States, to +see them elected to legislatures and Congress, but for her there had +only been the promise of fulfillment in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and +Idaho, and far away in New Zealand and Australia.</p> + +<p>"Failure is impossible" was the rallying cry she left with her "girls" +to spur them on in the long discouraging struggle ahead, fourteen more +years of campaigning until on August 26, 1920, women were enfranchised +throughout the United States by the Nineteenth Amendment.</p> + +<p>Even then their work was not finished, for she had looked farther +ahead to the time when men and women everywhere, regardless of race, +religion, or sex, would enjoy equal rights. Her challenging words, +"Failure is impossible," still echo and re-echo through the years, as +the crusade for human rights goes forward and men and women together +strive to build and preserve a free world.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES</h2> + + +<h4>CHAPTER I — QUAKER HERITAGE</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Report of the International Council of Women</i>, 1888 +(Washington, 1888), p. 163.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Charles B. Waite, "Who Were the Voters in the Early +History of This Country?" <i>Chicago Law Times</i>, Oct., 1888.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Janet Whitney, <i>Abigail Adams</i> (Boston, 1947), p. 129. In +1776, Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, at the Continental +Congress in Philadelphia, "In the new code of laws which I suppose it +will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the +ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors! +Do not put such unlimited powers into the hands of husbands. Remember +all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and +attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a +rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we +have no voice or representation." Ethel Armes, <i>Stratford Hall</i> +(Richmond, Va., 1936), pp. 206-209.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Under the Missouri Compromise, Maine was admitted as a +free state, Missouri as a slave state, and slavery was excluded from +all of the Louisiana Purchase, north of latitude 36°31'.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The meeting house, built in 1783, is still standing. It +is owned by the town of Adams, and cared for by the Adams Society of +Friends Descendants. Susan traced her ancestry to William Anthony of +Cologne who migrated to England and during the reign of Edward VI, was +made Chief Graver of the Royal Mint and Master of the Scales, holding +this office also during the reign of Queen Mary and part of Queen +Elizabeth's reign. In 1634, one of his descendants, John Anthony, +settled in Rhode Island, and just before the Revolution, his great +grandson, David, Susan's great grandfather, bought land near Adams, +Massachusetts, then regarded as the far West.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Ida Husted Harper, <i>The Life and Work of Susan B. +Anthony</i> (Indianapolis, 1898), I, p. 10.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Daniel and Susannah Richardson Read gave Lucy and Daniel +Anthony land for their home, midway between the Anthony and Read +farms. Here Susan was born in a substantial two-story, frame house, +built by her father.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Ms., Diary, 1837.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 25.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Jan. 21, Feb. 10, 1838</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 31.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Feb. 26, 1838.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Feb. 6, 1838.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, May 7, 1838.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 36.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 37.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 40.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 39.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 43-44.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER II — WIDENING HORIZONS</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Anthony Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, +Rochester, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Hannah Anthony married Eugene Mosher, a merchant of +Easton, New York, on September 4, 1845.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, +New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 48.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> May 28, 1848, Lucy E. Anthony Collection.</p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 53.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Report of the International Council of Women</i>, 1888, p. +327.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> To Nora Blatch, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, +Vassar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I. p. 52.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Amy H. Croughton, <i>Antislavery Days in Rochester</i> +(Rochester, N.Y., 1936). Anyone implicated in the escape of a slave +was liable to $1000 fine, to the payment of $1000 to the owner of the +fugitive, and to a possible jail sentence of six months.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER III — FREEDOM TO SPEAK</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 65.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>The Lily</i>, May, 1852.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda +Joslyn Gage, <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i> (New York, 1881), I, p. 489.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 77.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 78.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 90.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Eds., +<i>Elizabeth Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and +Reminiscences</i> (New York, 1922), II, p. 52.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Aug., 1853, Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 98-99; <i>History of +Woman Suffrage</i>, I, pp. 513-515.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Ms., Diary, 1853.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER IV — A PURSE OF HER OWN</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Judge William Hay of Saratoga Springs, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Feb. 19, 1854, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 116. Among those who wore the +bloomer costume were Angelina and Sarah Grimké, many women in +sanitoriums and some of the Lowell, Mass. mill workers. In Ohio, the +bloomer was so popular that 60 women in Akron wore it at a ball, and +in Battle Creek, Michigan, 31 attended a Fourth of July celebration in +the bloomer. Amelia Bloomer, moving to the West wore it for eight +years. Garrison, Phillips, and William Henry Channing disapproved of +the bloomer costume, but Gerrit Smith continued to champion it and his +daughter wore it at fashionable receptions in Washington during his +term in Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, I, p. 608.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 111-112.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> March 3, 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Ms., Diary, March 24, 28, 1854.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, March 29, 1854.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, March 30, 1854.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> The New England Emigrant Aid Company, headed by Eli +Thayer of Worcester, was formed to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, +offering reduced fare and farm equipment. Their first settlers reached +Kansas in August, 1854, founding the town of Lawrence in honor of one +of their chief patrons, the wealthy Amos Lawrence of Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> Diary, April 28, 1854.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Leonard C. Ehrlich, <i>God's Angry Man</i> (New York, 1941), +p. 57.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 122.</p></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Caroline Cowles Richards, <i>Village Life in America</i> (New +York, 1913), p. 49.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 133.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Eliza J. Eddy's husband, James Eddy, took their two +young daughters away from their mother and to Europe, causing her +great anguish. This led her father, Francis Jackson, to give liberally +to the woman's rights cause. Mrs. Eddy, herself, left a bequest of +$56,000 to be divided between Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 131-133.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 138.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 139.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Jan. 18, 1856, Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, +Smith College.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 140-141.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> May 25, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER V — NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 144-145. As John Brown visited +Frederick Douglass in Rochester, it is possible that Susan B. Anthony +had met him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Oct. 19, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 148.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 151; also quotation following.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Alice Stone Blackwell, <i>Lucy Stone</i> (Boston, 1930), pp. +197-198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 152.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> April 20, 1857, Abby Kelley Foster Papers, American +Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> Parker Pillsbury, <i>The Acts of the Antislavery Apostles</i> +(Concord, N.H., 1883).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I. p. 160.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> March 22, 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> N.d., Alma Lutz Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Charles A. and Mary B. Beard, <i>The Rise of American +Civilization</i> (New York, 1930), II, p. 9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> A. M. Schlesinger and H. C. Hockett, <i>Land of the Free</i> +(New York, 1944), p. 297.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> March 19, 1859, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Francis Jackson, William Lloyd II, and Wendell Phillips +Garrison, <i>William Lloyd Garrison</i>, 1805-1879 (New York, 1889), III, +p. 486.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 490.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 181.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 180.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Henrietta Buckmaster, <i>Let My People Go</i> (New York, +1941), p. 269; Ehrlich, <i>God's Angry Man</i>, pp. 344-345, 350.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. In +1890, after visiting the John Brown Memorial at North Elbe, New York, +Susan B. Anthony wrote: "John Brown was crucified for doing what he +believed God commanded him to do, 'to break the yoke and let the +oppressed go free,' precisely as were the saints of old for following +what they believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our +government was by so much the greater as our light and knowledge are +greater than those of two thousand years ago." Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, +p. 708.</p></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VI — THE TRUE WOMAN</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 173-174, 198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 160.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> May 26, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar +College Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, June 5, 1856. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was +often called Nette.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. A +notation on this ms. reads, "Written by Elizabeth Cady +Stanton—Delivered by Susan B. Anthony."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 143.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Stanton and Blatch, <i>Stanton</i>, II, p. 71.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 162.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> June 10, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 171.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> Ms., Diary, 1855.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Elizabeth Barrett Browning, <i>Aurora Leigh</i> (New York, +1857), p. 316; quotations following, pp. 53-54, pp. 364-365.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 170.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 177. Mary Hallowell, a liberal Rochester +Quaker, always interested in Susan B. Anthony and her work.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VII — THE ZEALOT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, I. p. 689. Henry Ward +Beecher's speech, <i>The Public Function of Women</i>, delivered at Cooper +Union, Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, I, p. 717.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 725.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 732.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 735.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 196.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Elizabeth Cady Stanton, <i>Eighty Years and More</i> (New +York, 1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in +the midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the +convention will sustain you."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I. p. 195.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 197.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar +College Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to +speak for emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican +Convention.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Garrisons, <i>Garrison</i>, III, p. 504; Beards, <i>The Rise +of American Civilization</i>, II, p. 63.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Garrisons, <i>Garrison</i>, III, p. 508.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 210.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> Carl Sandburg, <i>Abraham Lincoln, The War Years</i> (New +York, 1939), I, p. 125.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a +more permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 203-204.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 198.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VIII — A WAR FOR FREEDOM</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> Garrisons, <i>Garrison</i>, IV, pp. 30-31.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> Lydia Mott to W. L. Garrison, May 8, 1861, Boston +Public Library; Stanton and Blatch, <i>Stanton</i>, II, p. 89.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 215.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 216. Harriet Tubman, a fugitive slave, was +often called the Moses of her people because she led so many of them +into the promised land of freedom.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> Anna E. Dickinson was born in Philadelphia in 1842. The +death of her father, two years later, left the family in straightened +circumstances, and Anna, after attending a Friends school, began very +early to support herself by copying in lawyers' offices and by working +at the U.S. Mint. Speaking extemporaneously at Friends and antislavery +meetings, she discovered she had a gift for oratory and was soon in +demand as a speaker.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 219.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> April, 1862. <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, I, p. 748.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 218, 222.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> <i>Emancipation, the Duty of Government</i>, Ms., Lucy E. +Anthony Collection. Reading that General Grant had returned 13 slaves +to their masters, an indignant Susan B. Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton, +"Such gratuitous outrage should be met with instant death—without +judge or jury—if any offense may." Feb. 27, 1862, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 221.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> Jan. 24, 1904, Anna Dann Mason Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, p. 226.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> The first woman in the United States to obtain a +medical degree, 1849.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 57-58.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 230. Members of the Women's +National Loyal League wore a silver pin showing a slave breaking his +last chains and bearing the inscription, "In emancipation is national +unity." Susan B. Anthony to Mrs. Drake, Sept. 18, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 234.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, To Samuel May, Jr., Sept. 21, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> April 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 230.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> June 12, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, July 1, +1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. About this time, +a friend of Susan B. Anthony's youth, now a widower living in Ohio in +comfortable circumstances, unsuccessfully urged her to marry him.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> Sept. 23, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> Stanton and Blatch, <i>Stanton</i>, II, pp. 103-104.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> March 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER IX — THE NEGRO'S HOUR</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, +Martha's Vineyard, in 1864.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> Before buying the house on Madison Street, then +numbered 7, Mrs. Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, +Rochester. Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on +Madison Street in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's +profitable insurance business.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 241.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, April 19, 1862.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 245.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> The <i>Liberator</i> ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, pp. 960-967.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> Stanton and Blatch, <i>Stanton</i>, II, p. 105.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>; Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 244.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Nov. 26-27, 1865.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 251.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 96-97.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 260.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 261, 323.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 322-324. One of +Thaddeus Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of +its citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out +of the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or +not disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result +was a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> Beards, <i>The Rise of American Civilization</i>, II, pp. +111-112; Joseph B. James, <i>The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment</i> +(Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 103. Senator Henry +B. Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted +for woman suffrage.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 101. The New York <i>Post</i>, which had been +friendly to woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen +Bryant, now came out against it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> John Albree, Editor, <i>Whittier Correspondence from +Oakknoll</i> (Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, +Caroline H. Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also +supported woman suffrage at this time.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER X — TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> Ms., Petition, Jan. 9, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> Ms., note, 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library +of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 278; <i>History of Woman +Suffrage</i>, II, p. 284.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 279.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 287. Petitions with +20,000 signatures were presented.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 285.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> Aug. 25, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 287.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 234-235, 239.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 252.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> A famous family of singers who enlivened woman's +rights, antislavery, and temperance meetings with their songs.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> July 9, 1867, Anthony Papers, Kansas State Historical +Society, Topeka, Kansas.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 284.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 242.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 287. George Francis Train on +his own initiative spoke for woman suffrage before the New York +Constitutional Convention.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> George Francis Train, <i>The Great Epigram Campaign of +Kansas</i> (Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867), p. 68.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 248-249.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> Train, <i>The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas</i>, p. 40.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 290.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Inscription by Susan B. Anthony on copy of Train's <i>The +Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas</i>, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 293.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 295.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XI — HE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; <i>The +Revolution</i>, I, Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 301.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, +Library of Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they +prepared to move to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, July 16, 1868, p. 17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XII — WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> Feb. 18, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, II, Sept. 24, 1868, p. 198. L. A. +Hines of Cincinnati, publisher of Hine's Quarterly, assisted Miss +Anthony in organizing women in the sewing trades.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 204.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, pp. 999-1000.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, II, Oct. 1, 1868, p. 204.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 200.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Oct. 8, 1868, p. 214. A Woman's Exchange was +also initiated by the Workingwomen's Association.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, June 24, 1869, p. 394.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, March 18, 1869, p. 173.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Feb. 4, 1869, p. 73.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Sept. 9, 1869, p. 154.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Aug. 26, 1869, p. 120.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XIII — THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> George W. Julian, <i>Political Recollections</i>, 1840-1872 +(Chicago, 1884), pp. 324-325.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's +Bureau while it housed the radical <i>Revolution</i>, and as women showed +so little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a +year's trial.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 392.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 327-328.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 332.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XIV — A HOUSE DIVIDED</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> Lucy Stone to Frank Sanborn, Aug. 18, 1869, Alma Lutz +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> Lucy Stone to Esther Pugh, Aug. 30, 1869, Ida Husted +Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, +California.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> Mary Livermore to W. L. Garrison, Oct. 4, 1869, Boston +Public Library. Wendell Phillips did not sign the call or attend the +convention for "reasons that are good to him," wrote Lucy Stone to +Garrison, Sept. 27, 1869, Boston Public Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, IV, Oct. 21, 1869, p. 265.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 266.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> The Empire Sewing Machine Co., Benedict's Watches, +Madame Demorest's dress patterns, Sapolio, insurance companies, +savings banks, the Union Pacific, offering first mortgage bonds.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 354-355. In 1873, Anson +Lapham cancelled notes, amounting to $4000, and praised Susan for her +continued courageous work for women.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, IV, Dec. 2, 1869, p. 343.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> Harriet Beecher Stowe to Susan B. Anthony, Dec., 1869, +Alma Lutz Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, IV, Dec. 23, 1869, p. 385.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> <i>Woman's Journal</i>, Jan. 8, 1870.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Jan. 18, 1870.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> Stanton and Blatch, <i>Stanton</i>, II, pp. 124-125.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, V, Feb. 24, 1870, pp. 117-118. Susan +attributed the <i>Tribune</i> editorial to Whitelaw Reid. Susan B. Anthony +Scrapbook, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> Feb. 21, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress. Anna E. Dickinson sent Miss Anthony generous checks to help +finance <i>The Revolution</i>. Although she lectured at Cooper Union for +the National Woman Suffrage Association shortly after it was +organized, she never became a member of the organization or attended +its conventions. This was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> Finally, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton against their +best judgment were persuaded by younger members of the National Woman +Suffrage Association to drop the name National and replace it with +Union and then to try to negotiate further with the American +Association. Theodore Tilton was elected president of the Union Woman +Suffrage Society. This proved to be an organization in name only, and +in a short time these same younger members clamored for the return to +office of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and reestablished the National +Woman Suffrage Association.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, V, March 10, 1870, p. 153. Mrs. +Stanton's Lyceum lectures were undertaken to finance the education of +her 7 children.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 362.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, V, May 26, 1870, p. 328.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Sept. 19, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's +Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. +Anthony Collection</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XV — A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of +Senator Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> <i>The Revolution</i>, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> Clipping from <i>Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly</i>, Susan B. +Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> Emanie, Sachs, <i>The Terrible Siren</i> (New York, 1928), +p. 87. After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage +meeting in Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, +1871, "I wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet +modest and dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely +inspired for her work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much +impressed with her work and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, +Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. +Huntington Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> <i>The Golden Age</i>, Dec., 1871.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 388.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 389-390.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had +been the mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was +acquitted of his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to +her pistol shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia +Cooley Altrocchi, <i>The Spectacular San Franciscans</i> (New York, 1949).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 396.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 403.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 396.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> <i>Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly</i>, Jan. 23, 1873.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 410-411.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 413.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 416-417.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the +<i>Woman's Journal</i>, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the +movement to which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their +lot with the Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would +have been better for all concerned...."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 519. The +Republicans financed a paper, <i>Woman's Campaign</i>, edited by Helen +Barnard, which published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for +a time hoped to convert into a woman suffrage paper.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 422.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XVI — TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> Ray Strachey, <i>Struggle</i> (New York, 1930), pp. +113-116.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of a lower +court that without specific legislation by Congress, the 14th +Amendment could not overrule the law of the District of Columbia which +limited suffrage to male citizens over 21. <i>History of Woman +Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 587-601.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 423.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> Nov. 5, 1872, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. +Huntington Library. Miss Anthony had assured the election inspectors +that she would pay the cost of any suit which might be brought against +them for accepting women's votes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 426. The Anthony home was then +numbered 7 Madison Street.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> <i>An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. +Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting</i> (Rochester, New York, 1874), +p. 16.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 428.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 433.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> <i>Trial</i>, pp. 2-3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> N.d., Susan B. Anthony Papers, New York Public +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> <i>Trial</i>, pp. 151, 153. Judge Story, <i>Commentaries on +the Constitution of the United States</i>, Sec. 456: "The importance of +examining the preamble for the purpose of expounding the language of a +statute has long been felt and universally conceded in all juridical +discussion." <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, p. 477.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, pp. 978, 986-987.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> Ms., Diary, May 10, June 7, 1873.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> Suffrage clubs in New York, Buffalo, Chicago, and +Milwaukee sent $50 and $100 contributions. Susan's cousin, Anson +Lapham, cancelled notes for $4000 which she had signed while +struggling to finance <i>The Revolution</i>. The women of Rochester rallied +behind her, forming a Taxpayers' Association to protest taxation +without representation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, pp. 994-995.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, I, p. 429.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XVII — "IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?"</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> Ms., Diary, April 26, 1873.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> <i>Trial</i>, p. 17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 62-68.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> Ms., Diary, June 18, 1873.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1873, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> <i>Trial</i>, pp. 81-85.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> This booklet also included the speeches of Susan B. +Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage, delivered prior to the trial, and a +short appraisal of the trial, <i>Judge Hunt and the Right of Trial by +Jury</i>, by John Hooker, the husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker. The +Rochester <i>Democrat and Chronicle</i> called the booklet "the most +important contribution yet made to the discussion of woman suffrage +from a legal standpoint." The <i>Woman's Suffrage Journal</i>, IV, Aug. 1, +1873, p. 121, published in England by Lydia Becker, said: "The +American law which makes it a criminal offense for a person to vote +who is not legally qualified appears harsh to our ideas."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 455-456.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, pp. 737-739, 741-742.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> <i>Trial</i>, p. 191.</p></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XVIII — SOCIAL PURITY</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her +stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> New York <i>Graphic</i>, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker +believed her half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, +assuring him she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." +Kenneth R. Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. +Rumors that Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 463.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> Only a few entries relating to the +Beecher-Tilton case remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the +Library of Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 462.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, II, pp. 1007-1009.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, I, p. 468.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing +for nine weeks to nurse her brother Daniel after he had been shot by a +rival editor in Leavenworth.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 472.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 473.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XIX — A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> Ms., Diary, June 18, 1876.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> Katherine D. Blake and Margaret Wallace, <i>Champion of +Women, The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake</i> (New York, 1943), pp. +124-126.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, III, pp. 31, 34. The +Woman's Journal surprised Susan with a friendly editorial, "Good Use +of the Fourth of July," written by Lucy Stone, July 15, 1876.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, III, p. 43. The +Philadelphia <i>Press</i> praised the Declaration of Rights and the women +in the suffrage movement. The report of the New York <i>Post</i> was +patronizingly favorable, pointing out the indifference of the public +to the subject.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, pp. 485-486.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> This amendment was re-introduced in the same form in +every succeeding Congress until it was finally passed in 1919 as the +Nineteenth Amendment. It was ratified by the states in 1920, 14 years +after Susan B. Anthony's death. When occasionally during her lifetime +it was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by those who wished to +honor her devotion to the cause, she protested, meticulously giving +Elizabeth Cady Stanton credit for making the first public demand for +woman suffrage in 1848. She also made it clear that although she +worked for the amendment long and hard, she did not draft it. After +her death, during the climax of the woman suffrage campaign, these +facts were overlooked by the younger workers who made a point of +featuring the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, both because they wished to +immortalize her and because they realized the publicity value of her +name.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 484.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, III, p. 66.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 544.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, III, p. 153; II, pp. 3-12, +863-868; Sarah Ellen Blackwell, <i>A Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella +Carroll of Maryland</i> (Washington, D.C., 1891), I, pp. 153-154.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> "Woman Suffrage as a Means of Moral Improvement and the +Prevention of Crime" by Alexander Dumas, <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, +III, p. 190. Theodore Stanton, foreign correspondent for the New York +<i>Tribune</i>, now lived in Paris.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XX — RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> The only such history available was the <i>History of the +National Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty Years</i> (New York, 1871), +written by Paulina Wright Davis to commemorate the first national +woman's rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. This +brief record, ending with Victoria Woodhull's Memorial to Congress, +was inadequate and placed too much emphasis on Victoria Woodhull who +had flashed through the movement like a meteor, leaving behind her a +trail of discord and little that was constructive.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> Aaron McLean, Eugene Mosher, his daughter Louise, +Merritt's daughter, Lucy E. Anthony from Fort Scott, Kansas, and later +Lucy's sister "Anna O."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> Mrs. Stanton moved to the new home she had built in +Tenafly, New Jersey, in 1868.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> Fowler & Wells furnished the paper, press work, and +advertising and paid the authors 12½% commission on sales. They did +not look askance at such a controversial subject, having published the +Fowler family's phrenological books. In addition the women of the +family were suffragists.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> In 1855, at the instigation of her father. Miss Anthony +began to preserve her press clippings. She now found them a valuable +record, and she hired a young girl to paste them in six large account +books. Thirty-two of her scrapbooks are now in the Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a> Aug. 30, 1876, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. +Huntington Library. The history of the American Woman Suffrage +Association was compiled for Volume II from the <i>Woman's Journal</i> and +Mary Livermore's <i>The Agitator</i> by Harriot Stanton.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> Nov. 30, 1880, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls +Historical Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 531. The <i>History</i> received +friendly and complimentary reviews, the New York <i>Tribune</i> and <i>Sun</i> +giving it two columns.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> June 28, 1881, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls +Historical Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y. The cost of a cloth copy of +the <i>History</i> was $3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a> Dec. 19, 1880, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of +Congress. Rachel Foster's mother was a life-long friend of Elizabeth +Cady Stanton and sympathetic to her work for women. The widow of a +wealthy Pittsburgh newspaperman, she was now active in Pennsylvania +suffrage organizations. Her daughters, Rachel and Julia, early became +interested in the cause.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> E. C. Stanton to Laura Collier, Jan. 21, 1886, +Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College Library. Mary Livermore +criticized the <i>History</i> as poorly edited.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> After her marriage in 1882, to William Henry Blatch of +Basingstoke, Harriot made her home in England for the next 20 years.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 549.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 553, 558, 562. Miss Anthony spent a week +with her old friends, Ellen and Aaron Sargent in Berlin where Aaron +was serving as American Minister to Germany. In Paris she visited +Theodore Stanton and his French wife.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> Lydia Becker, Mrs. Jacob Bright, Helen Taylor, +Priscilla Bright McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd, and +Elizabeth Pease Nichol. A bill to enfranchise widows and spinsters was +pending in Parliament. Only a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> few women were courageous enough to +demand votes for married women as well.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 582.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 591, 583.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XXI — IMPETUS FROM THE WEST</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 592.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 658.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> Miss Anthony first met Frances Willard in 1875 when she +lectured in Rochester. Invited to sit on the platform, by her side, +she thoughtfully refused, adding "You have a heavy enough load to +carry without me." Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, I, p. 472. When Frances Willard +took her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876, Miss +Anthony wrote her, "Now you are to go forward. I wish I could see you +and make you feel my gladness." Mary Earhart, <i>Frances Willard</i> +(Chicago, 1944), p. 153.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> During the debate, Frances Willard rendered valuable +aid with a petition for woman suffrage, signed by 200,000 women. This +counteracted in a measure the protests against woman suffrage by +President Eliot of Harvard and 200 New England clergymen.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, pp. 622-623.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 612.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> So successful was Mrs. Colby's Washington venture that +she continued to publish her <i>Woman's Tribune</i> there for the next 16 +years</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 637.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, Feb. 22, 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> The credit for achieving union after two years of +patient negotiation goes to Rachel Foster Avery, secretary of the +National Association, and to Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone +Blackwell, secretary of the American Association.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 675.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XXII — VICTORIES IN THE WEST</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> Minor vs. Happersett, <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, II, +pp. 741-742. North and South Dakota, Washington and Montana were +admitted in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, IV, pp. 999-1000.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> North Dakota's constitution provided that the +legislature might in the future enfranchise women.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, IV, p. 556.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 690.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 688.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> Anna Howard Shaw, <i>The Story of a Pioneer</i> (New York, +1915), p. 202.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 731.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Feb. 28, April 18, 1893.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> Published first in the <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, then as a +book in 1898 under the title, <i>Eighty Years and More</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 712.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> During this visit the young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, +modeled busts of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton which later were +chiseled in marble and were exhibited with the bust of Lucretia Mott +at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. They are now in the Capitol in +Washington.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> To Clarina Nichols. Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 544. Miss +Anthony wrote in her diary, Oct. 18, 1893, "Lucy Stone died this +evening at her home—Dorchester, Mass. aged 75—I can but wonder if +the spirit now sees things as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> it did 25 years ago!" The wound +inflicted by Lucy's misunderstanding of her motives had never healed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 727.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> Rachel Foster was married in 1888 to Cyrus Miller +Avery.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> May Wright Sewall, Editor, <i>The World's Congress of +Representative Women</i> (Chicago, 1894), p. 464.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> Statement by Lucy E. Anthony, Una R. Winter +Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> Miss Anthony's diary, 1893, mentions visiting "dear +Mrs. Coonley" (Lydia Avery Coonley) in her beautiful, friendly home. +May Wright Sewall, and devoted Emily Gross. Her sister Mary, Daniel, +Merritt, and their families joined her at the Fair for a few weeks.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> Shaw, <i>The Story of a Pioneer</i>, pp. 205-207.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Nov. 8, 1893.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XXIII — LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 763.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> To Elizabeth Smith Miller, July 25, 1894, Elizabeth +Smith Miller Papers, New York Public Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 788.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 791.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 794.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> To Clara Colby, July 22, 1895, Anthony Collection, +Henry E. Huntington Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 842.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> N.d., Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_395_395" id="Footnote_395_395"></a><a href="#FNanchor_395_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 843.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396_396" id="Footnote_396_396"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 844, 859.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_397_397" id="Footnote_397_397"></a><a href="#FNanchor_397_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a> Ms., Diary, July 10, 1896.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_398_398" id="Footnote_398_398"></a><a href="#FNanchor_398_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a> Sept. 8, 1896, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_399_399" id="Footnote_399_399"></a><a href="#FNanchor_399_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a> Shaw, <i>The Story of a Pioneer</i>, pp. 274-275.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XIV — AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400_400" id="Footnote_400_400"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Nov. 7, 1895</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_401_401" id="Footnote_401_401"></a><a href="#FNanchor_401_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a> Mary Gray Peck, <i>Carrie Chapman Catt</i> (New York, 1944), +p. 84.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402_402" id="Footnote_402_402"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Nov. 27, 1895.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_403_403" id="Footnote_403_403"></a><a href="#FNanchor_403_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a> To Mrs. Upton, Sept. 5, 1890, University of Rochester +Library, Rochester, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404_404" id="Footnote_404_404"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a> Feb. 10, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405_405" id="Footnote_405_405"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1113.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406_406" id="Footnote_406_406"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a> Miss Anthony's first attempt to win Southern women to +suffrage was at the time of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. +Because of her reputation as an abolitionist, she had much resistance +to overcome in the South.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407_407" id="Footnote_407_407"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a> Dec. 18, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408_408" id="Footnote_408_408"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a> <i>Woman's Tribune</i>, Feb. 1, 1896.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409_409" id="Footnote_409_409"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, IV, p. 264.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410_410" id="Footnote_410_410"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 855. The action of the +National American Woman Suffrage Association on the Woman's Bible was +never reversed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_411_411" id="Footnote_411_411"></a><a href="#FNanchor_411_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 856.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_412_412" id="Footnote_412_412"></a><a href="#FNanchor_412_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a> Susan thought seriously of Clara Colby as a +collaborator but concluded she was too involved with the <i>Woman's +Tribune</i>. Susan agreed to share royalties with Mrs. Harper on the +biography and any other work on which they might collaborate. On her +75th birthday Susan's girls had presented her with an annuity of $800 +a year. This made it possible for her to give up lecturing and +concentrate on her book.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413_413" id="Footnote_413_413"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a> Genevieve Hawley left an interesting record of these +years in letters to her aunt, many of which are preserved in the Susan +B. Anthony Memorial Collection in Rochester, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_414_414" id="Footnote_414_414"></a><a href="#FNanchor_414_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a> Both the New York <i>Herald</i> and Chicago <i>Inter-Ocean</i> +gave the book full-page reviews. A third volume was published in +1908.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415_415" id="Footnote_415_415"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a> Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_416_416" id="Footnote_416_416"></a><a href="#FNanchor_416_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_417_417" id="Footnote_417_417"></a><a href="#FNanchor_417_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a> Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of +Congress.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_418_418" id="Footnote_418_418"></a><a href="#FNanchor_418_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a> Dec. 17, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. Clara Colby, making her headquarters in Washington, kept +Susan informed on developments and they carried on an animated, +voluminous correspondence during these years.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_419_419" id="Footnote_419_419"></a><a href="#FNanchor_419_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a> March 12, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_420_420" id="Footnote_420_420"></a><a href="#FNanchor_420_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 920.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_421_421" id="Footnote_421_421"></a><a href="#FNanchor_421_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, II, p. 924.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XXV — PASSING ON THE TORCH</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_422_422" id="Footnote_422_422"></a><a href="#FNanchor_422_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a> Rachel Foster Avery, Ed., <i>National Council of Women</i>, +1891 (Philadelphia, 1891), p. 229.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_423_423" id="Footnote_423_423"></a><a href="#FNanchor_423_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a> Dec. 1, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. Mrs. Elnora Babcock of New York was in charge of the press +bureau.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_424_424" id="Footnote_424_424"></a><a href="#FNanchor_424_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a> Miss Anthony was enrolled as a member of the Knights of +Labor and invited this organization to send delegates to the +International Council of Women in 1888.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_425_425" id="Footnote_425_425"></a><a href="#FNanchor_425_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a> To Ellen Wright Garrison, 1900, Sophia Smith +Collection, Smith College.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_426_426" id="Footnote_426_426"></a><a href="#FNanchor_426_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1137. A few years later, +militant suffragists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, were active in +London. Mrs. Pankhurst heard Miss Anthony speak in Manchester in +1904.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_427_427" id="Footnote_427_427"></a><a href="#FNanchor_427_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a> Ida Husted Harper Ms., Catharine Waugh McCulloch +Papers, Radcliffe Women's Archives.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_428_428" id="Footnote_428_428"></a><a href="#FNanchor_428_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a> Nov. 20, 1899, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_429_429" id="Footnote_429_429"></a><a href="#FNanchor_429_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, IV, p. 385. Miss Anthony +was "moved up," as she expressed it, to Honorary President.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_430_430" id="Footnote_430_430"></a><a href="#FNanchor_430_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a> Peck, Catt, p. 107, Washington <i>Post</i> quotation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_431_431" id="Footnote_431_431"></a><a href="#FNanchor_431_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a> To Laura Clay, April 15, 1900, University of Kentucky +Library, Lexington, Kentucky.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_432_432" id="Footnote_432_432"></a><a href="#FNanchor_432_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, March 15, 1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_433_433" id="Footnote_433_433"></a><a href="#FNanchor_433_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_434_434" id="Footnote_434_434"></a><a href="#FNanchor_434_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Sept. 7, 1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_435_435" id="Footnote_435_435"></a><a href="#FNanchor_435_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a> Ms., Diary, Nov. 10, 1900.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_436_436" id="Footnote_436_436"></a><a href="#FNanchor_436_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, Sept. 26, 1900. A separate woman's college was +established at the University of Rochester and not until 1952 were the +men's and women's colleges merged.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_437_437" id="Footnote_437_437"></a><a href="#FNanchor_437_437"><span class="label">[437]</span></a> May 20, 1901, Note, Susan B. Anthony Memorial +Collection, Rochester, New York.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_438_438" id="Footnote_438_438"></a><a href="#FNanchor_438_438"><span class="label">[438]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, V, pp. 741-742.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_439_439" id="Footnote_439_439"></a><a href="#FNanchor_439_439"><span class="label">[439]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1263.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_440_440" id="Footnote_440_440"></a><a href="#FNanchor_440_440"><span class="label">[440]</span></a> Oct. 28, 1902, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_441_441" id="Footnote_441_441"></a><a href="#FNanchor_441_441"><span class="label">[441]</span></a> Oct. 27, 1904, Elizabeth Smith Miller Collection, New +York Public Library. A few years later, Mrs. Blatch made a vital +contribution to the cause through the Women's Political Union which +she organized and which brought more militant methods and new life +into the woman suffrage campaign in New York State.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_442_442" id="Footnote_442_442"></a><a href="#FNanchor_442_442"><span class="label">[442]</span></a> Jan. 27, 1904, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. Mrs. Blake +who had been a candidate in 1900 had by this time formed her own +organization, the National Legislative League.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_443_443" id="Footnote_443_443"></a><a href="#FNanchor_443_443"><span class="label">[443]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, V, p. 99.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_444_444" id="Footnote_444_444"></a><a href="#FNanchor_444_444"><span class="label">[444]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1308.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_445_445" id="Footnote_445_445"></a><a href="#FNanchor_445_445"><span class="label">[445]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> +</div> + + +<h4>CHAPTER XVI — SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD</h4> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_446_446" id="Footnote_446_446"></a><a href="#FNanchor_446_446"><span class="label">[446]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1325.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_447_447" id="Footnote_447_447"></a><a href="#FNanchor_447_447"><span class="label">[447]</span></a> Shaw, <i>The Story of a Pioneer</i>, p. 210.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_448_448" id="Footnote_448_448"></a><a href="#FNanchor_448_448"><span class="label">[448]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1319.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_449_449" id="Footnote_449_449"></a><a href="#FNanchor_449_449"><span class="label">[449]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 1336.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_450_450" id="Footnote_450_450"></a><a href="#FNanchor_450_450"><span class="label">[450]</span></a> Miss Anthony also carefully prepared her scrapbooks, +her books, and bound volumes of <i>The Revolution</i>, woman's rights and +antislavery magazines for presentation to the Library of Congress, +inscribing each with a note of explanation.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_451_451" id="Footnote_451_451"></a><a href="#FNanchor_451_451"><span class="label">[451]</span></a> Ann Anthony Bacon.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_452_452" id="Footnote_452_452"></a><a href="#FNanchor_452_452"><span class="label">[452]</span></a> <i>New York Suffrage Newsletter</i>, Jan., 1905.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_453_453" id="Footnote_453_453"></a><a href="#FNanchor_453_453"><span class="label">[453]</span></a> <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, V, p. 122.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_454_454" id="Footnote_454_454"></a><a href="#FNanchor_454_454"><span class="label">[454]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1365. The statue of +Sacajawea, presented to the Exposition by the clubwomen of America, +was the work of Alice Cooper of Denver. Woman suffrage was again +defeated in Oregon in 1906.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_455_455" id="Footnote_455_455"></a><a href="#FNanchor_455_455"><span class="label">[455]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, pp. 1357, 1359.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_456_456" id="Footnote_456_456"></a><a href="#FNanchor_456_456"><span class="label">[456]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 1376-1377.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_457_457" id="Footnote_457_457"></a><a href="#FNanchor_457_457"><span class="label">[457]</span></a> The medallion, the work of Leila Usher of Boston, was +commissioned by Mary Garrett.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_458_458" id="Footnote_458_458"></a><a href="#FNanchor_458_458"><span class="label">[458]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1395.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_459_459" id="Footnote_459_459"></a><a href="#FNanchor_459_459"><span class="label">[459]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, pp. 1395-1396.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_460_460" id="Footnote_460_460"></a><a href="#FNanchor_460_460"><span class="label">[460]</span></a> Sept., 1935, Statement, Una R. Winter Collection.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_461_461" id="Footnote_461_461"></a><a href="#FNanchor_461_461"><span class="label">[461]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1409.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_462_462" id="Footnote_462_462"></a><a href="#FNanchor_462_462"><span class="label">[462]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_463_463" id="Footnote_463_463"></a><a href="#FNanchor_463_463"><span class="label">[463]</span></a> Shaw, <i>The Story of a Pioneer</i>, pp. 230-232.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_464_464" id="Footnote_464_464"></a><a href="#FNanchor_464_464"><span class="label">[464]</span></a> Harper, <i>Anthony</i>, III, p. 1259.</p></div> +</div> + + + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2> + + +<p class="sc heading lowercase">MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS</p> + +<p class="biblio">American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts:<br /> +Abby Kelley Foster Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lucy E. Anthony and Ann Anthony Bacon Papers:<br /> +Susan B. Anthony Diaries, Letters, and Speeches.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Boston Public Library, Manuscript Division:<br /> + Antislavery, Garrison, and Higginson Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Matilda Joslyn Gage Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, Manuscript Division:<br /> + Ida Husted Harper Collection.<br /> + Anthony Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas:<br /> + Anthony Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Division:<br /> + Susan B. Anthony Papers, including Diaries.<br /> + Anna E. Dickinson Papers.<br /> + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Rare Book Room:<br /> + Susan B. Anthony Scrapbooks.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Alma Lutz Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Anna Dann Mason Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New York:<br /> + Anthony Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">New York Public Library, Manuscript Division:<br /> + Susan B. Anthony Papers.<br /> + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers.<br /> + Elizabeth Smith Miller Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ohio State Library, Columbus, Ohio:<br /> + Ohioana Library Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Seneca Falls Historical Society, Seneca Falls, New York:<br /> + Amelia Bloomer Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts:<br /> + Sophia Smith Collection.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Edna M. Stantial Collection:<br /> + Blackwell Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, New York.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Radcliffe Women's Archives, Radcliffe College, +Cambridge, Massachusetts.</p> + +<p class="biblio">University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California:<br /> + Susan B. Anthony Papers.<br /> + Keith Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">University of Kentucky Library, Lexington, Kentucky:<br /> + Laura Clay Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">University of Rochester Library, Rochester, New York:<br /> + Susan B. Anthony Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Vassar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York:<br /> + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers.<br /> + Margaret Stanton Lawrence Papers.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Una R. Winter Collection.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p> + + +<p class="heading sc lowercase">PUBLISHED MATERIAL</p> + +<p class="biblio">Abbott, Mrs. Lyman. <i>Mrs. Lyman Abbott on Woman Suffrage.</i> Pamphlet. +New York, n.d.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Albree, John (ed.). <i>Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll.</i> Salem, +Mass., 1911.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Altrocchi, Julia Cooley. <i>The Spectacular San Franciscans.</i> New York, +1949.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the +Charge of Illegal Voting.</i> Rochester, N.Y., 1874.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ames, Mary Clemmer. <i>A Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary.</i> New York, +1873.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Andrews, Kenneth. <i>Nook Farm.</i> Cambridge, Mass., 1950.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Anthony, Charles L. <i>Genealogy of the Anthony Family from 1495 to +1904.</i> Sterling, Ill., 1904.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Anthony, Katharine. <i>Susan B. Anthony, Her Personal History and Her +Era.</i> New York, 1954.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Anthony, Susan B. "Woman's Half Century of Evolution," <i>North American +Review</i>, December 1902.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "Educating Husbands for the Twentieth Century," <i>McClure's +Syndicate</i>, 1901.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "The Status of Women Past, Present and Future," <i>The Arena</i>, May +1897.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "Why Some Marriages Are Failures," <i>McClure's Syndicate</i>, 1901.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "The Wrongs of Man," <i>McClure's Syndicate</i>, 1901.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "What I Would Have Done with a Bad Husband," <i>McClure's +Syndicate</i>, 1901.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Armes, Ethel. <i>Stratford Hall.</i> Richmond, Va., 1936.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Avery, Rachel Foster (ed.). <i>National Council of Women</i>, 1891. +Philadelphia, 1891.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Barnes, Gilbert H. <i>The Antislavery Impulse.</i> New York, 1933.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Beard, Charles A. and Mary R. <i>The American Spirit.</i> New York, 1927.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Rise of American Civilization.</i> New York, 1930.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Beard, Charles A. and William. <i>The American Leviathan.</i> New York, +1930.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Beecher, Henry Ward. <i>Woman's Influence in Politics.</i> Pamphlet. +Boston, 1870.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Birney, Catherine H. <i>The Grimké Sisters.</i> Boston, 1885.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Blackwell, Alice Stone. <i>Lucy Stone.</i> Boston, 1930.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Blackwell, Sarah Ellen. <i>A Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella Carroll +of Maryland.</i> Washington, D.C., 1891.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Blake, Katherine D., and Wallace, Margaret. <i>Champion of Women, The +Life of Lillie Devereux Blake.</i> New York, 1943.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Blatch, Harriot Stanton, and Lutz, Alma. <i>Challenging Years.</i> New +York, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Bloomer, D. C. <i>Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer.</i> Boston, 1895.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Boas, Louise S. <i>Elizabeth Barrett Browning.</i> New York, 1930.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Bowditch, William I. <i>Woman Suffrage a Right, Not a Privilege.</i> +Pamphlet. Cambridge, Mass., 1879.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Brink, Carol. <i>Harps in the Wind, The Story of the Singing +Hutchinsons.</i> New York, 1947.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Brockett, Dr. L. F. <i>Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and +Responsibilities.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Brown, Olympia (ed.). <i>Democratic Ideals, A Memorial Sketch of Clara +B. Colby.</i> Portland, Ore., 1917.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Browne, Junius Henri. <i>The Great Metropolis, A Mirror of New York.</i> +Hartford, Conn., 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Browne, William B. "Laphams Were Among the First Quakers to Settle +Within the Town of Adams." <i>Transcript</i> (North Adams, Mass.), +September 6, 1924.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. <i>Aurora Leigh.</i> New York, 1857.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Buckmaster, Henrietta. <i>Let My People Go.</i> New York, 1941.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Burnham, Carrie S. <i>Woman Suffrage, The Argument of Carrie S. Burnham +before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.</i> Pamphlet. Philadelphia, +1873.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Calhoun, Lucia Gilbert. "Modern Women and What Is Said of Them." +Pamphlet reprinted from <i>The Saturday Review</i>. New York, 1868.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Shuler, Nettie Rogers. <i>Woman Suffrage and +Politics.</i> New York, 1923.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Channing, William Henry. <i>Review of the History of Woman Suffrage.</i> +Pamphlet reprinted in 1881 from the <i>Inquirer</i> (London), November 5, +1881.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Chester, Giraud. <i>Embattled Maiden, The Life of Anna Dickinson.</i> New +York, 1951.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Claflin, Tennessee. <i>Constitutional Equality, A Right of Woman.</i> New +York, 1871.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Cole, Arthur Charles. <i>The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865.</i> New +York, 1934.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Colman, Lucy M. <i>Reminiscences.</i> Buffalo, N.Y., 1891.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Croughton, Amy H. <i>Antislavery Days in Rochester.</i> Rochester, N.Y., +1936.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Curtis, George William. <i>Equal Rights for Women.</i> Pamphlet. Boston, +1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Dahlgren, Madeline Vinton. <i>Thoughts on Female Suffrage and in +Vindication of Woman's True Rights.</i> Pamphlet. Washington, 1871.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Davis, Paulina Wright. <i>History of the National Woman's Rights +Movement for Twenty Years.</i> New York, 1871.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Debs, Eugene V. "Susan B. Anthony, Pioneer of Freedom," <i>Pearsons +Magazine</i>, July 1917.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Dictionary of American Biography.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Dorr, Rheta Childe. <i>Susan B. Anthony, The Woman Who Changed the Mind +of a Nation.</i> New York, 1928.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Douglass, Frederick. <i>The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.</i> +Hartford, Conn., 1881.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Duniway, Abigail Scott. <i>Path Breaking.</i> Portland, Ore., 1914.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Earhart, Mary. <i>Frances Willard.</i> Chicago, 1944.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ehrlich, Leonard C. <i>God's Angry Man.</i> New York, 1941.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Eminent Women of the Age.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Finch, Edith. <i>Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr.</i> New York, 1947.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Garrison, Francis J., William Lloyd II, and Wendell P. <i>William Lloyd +Garrison, 1805-1879.</i> New York, 1885-1889.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ginger, Ray. <i>The Bending Cross, A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs.</i> +New Brunswick, N.J., 1949.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Goodman, Clavia. <i>Bitter Harvest, Laura Clay's Suffrage Work.</i> +Lexington, Ky., 1946.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Gray, Wood. <i>The Hidden Civil War.</i> New York, 1942.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Greeley, Horace. <i>Recollections of a Busy Life.</i> New York, 1868.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Greenbie, Marjorie B. <i>Lincoln's Daughters of Mercy.</i> New York, 1944.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>My Dear Lady, The Story of Anna Ella Carroll.</i> New York, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Greenbie, Marjorie B., and Sydney. <i>Anna Ella Carroll and Abraham +Lincoln.</i> Tampa, Fla., 1952.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hallowell, Anna Davis. <i>James and Lucretia Mott.</i> Boston, 1884.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hamilton, Gail. "A Call to My Country-Women," <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, +March 1863.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hare, Lloyd C. M. <i>Lucretia Mott, The Greatest American Woman.</i> New +York, 1937.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Harlow, Ralph V. <i>Gerrit Smith.</i> New York, 1939.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Harper, Ida Husted. <i>The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony.</i> +Indianapolis, 1898, 1908.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, Vols. V and VI. New York, 1922.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Harper, Ida Husted, and Anthony, Susan B. <i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, +Vol. IV. Rochester, N.Y., 1902.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hayek, F. A. <i>John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor.</i> Chicago, 1951.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hebard, Grace Raymond. <i>How Woman Suffrage Came to Wyoming.</i> Pamphlet. +New York, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Henry, Alice. <i>The Trade Union Woman.</i> New York, 1923.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hibben, Paxton. <i>Henry Ward Beecher.</i> New York, 1927.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Higginson, Mary Thatcher (ed.). <i>Letters and Journals of Thomas +Wentworth Higginson.</i> Boston, 1921.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. <i>Women and the Alphabet.</i> Boston, 1881.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hooker, Isabella Beecher. <i>The Constitutional Rights of Women of the +United States.</i> Washington, 1888.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Howe, Julia Ward. <i>Reminiscences, 1819-1899.</i> Boston, 1900.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hutchinson, John Wallace. <i>The Story of the Hutchinsons.</i> Boston, +1896.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>International Woman Suffrage Conference.</i> Washington, D.C., 1902.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Isely, J. A. <i>Horace Greeley and the Republican Party, 1853-1861.</i> +Princeton, N.J., 1947.</p> + +<p class="biblio">James, Joseph B. <i>The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment.</i> Urbana, +Ill., 1956.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Johns, Helen. "This Is a Day Full of Meaning to Friends of Woman +Suffrage," <i>Public Ledger</i> (Philadelphia), Feb. 14, 1920.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Johnson, Oliver. <i>William Lloyd Garrison and His Times.</i> Boston, 1879.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Julian, George W. <i>Political Recollections</i>, 1840-1872. Chicago, 1884.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Kerr, Laura. <i>Lady in the Pulpit.</i> New York, 1951.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Korngold, Ralph. <i>Two Friends of Man.</i> Boston, 1950.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Livermore, Mary A. <i>The Story of My Life.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1897.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>My Story of the War.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1889.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lutz, Alma. <i>Created Equal, A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.</i> +New York, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Emma Willard, Daughter of Democracy.</i> Boston, 1929.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Macy, Jesse. <i>The Antislavery Crusade.</i> New Haven, 1920.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Malin, James C. <i>John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six.</i> +Philadelphia, 1942.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mason, Anna Dann. "The Most Unforgettable Character I've Met," +<i>Genessee Country Scrapbook</i>, Vol. IV (Rochester, N. Y., 1953).</p> + +<p class="biblio">May, Samuel J. <i>Some Recollections of the Antislavery Conflict.</i> +Boston, 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mill, Elizabeth Taylor. <i>Enfranchisement of Women</i>, reprinted from the +<i>Westminster and Quarterly Review</i>, New York, 1868.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mill, John Stuart. <i>Autobiography.</i> London, 1873.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Social and Political Dependence of Women.</i> Boston, 1868.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Subjection of Women.</i> London, 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Suffrage for Women</i> (Speech in British Parliament, May 20, +1867). Pamphlet. Boston, 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Mormon Women's Protest, An Appeal for Freedom, Justice, and Equal +Rights.</i> Pamphlet. Salt Lake City, Utah, 1886.</p> + +<p class="biblio">McKelvey, Blake. <i>Rochester, the Flower City, 1855-1890.</i> Cambridge, +Mass., 1949.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "Susan B. Anthony," <i>Rochester History</i>, April, 1945, Rochester, +N. Y.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Nichols, Mrs. C. I. H. <i>The Responsibilities of Woman.</i> Pamphlet. +1851.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Nordholf, Charles. "A Tilt at the Woman Question," <i>Harper's</i> +Magazine, February 1863.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Norton, Frank H. <i>Frank Leslie's Historical Register of the U. S. +Centennial Exposition, 1876.</i> New York, 1877.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Our Famous Women.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1883.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">Pankhurst, Emmeline. <i>My Own Story.</i> New York, 1914.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Parker, P. J. M. <i>Rochester, A Story Historical.</i> Rochester, N.Y., +1884.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Parker, Theodore. <i>A Sermon on the Public Function of Women.</i> +Pamphlet. Boston, 1853.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Peck, Mary Gray. <i>Carrie Chapman Catt.</i> New York, 1944.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Phillips, Wendell. <i>Freedom for Woman.</i> Pamphlet. New York, 1868.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Pillsbury, Parker. <i>The Acts of the Antislavery Apostles.</i> Concord, +N.H., 1883.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Mortality of Nations.</i> Pamphlet. New York, 1867.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Place of Women in the Society of Friends.</i> Pamphlet. Oxford, +England, 1910.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Powderly, Terrence V. <i>The Path I Trod.</i> New York, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Convention Held at Syracuse, +September 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1852.</i> Pamphlet.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Quarles, Benjamin. <i>Frederick Douglass.</i> Washington, D.C., 1948.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Report of the International Council of Women, 1888.</i> Washington, +D.C., 1888.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Richards, Caroline Cowles. <i>Village Life in America.</i> New York, 1913.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Richardson, Albert D. <i>Beyond the Mississippi.</i> Hartford, Conn., 1867.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Robinson, Sara T. D. <i>Kansas, Its Interior and Exterior.</i> Lawrence, +Kansas, 1899.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Rosenberger, Jesse Leonard. <i>Rochester, The Making of a University.</i> +Rochester, N.Y., 1927.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ross, Ishbel. <i>Angel of the Battlefield.</i> New York, 1956.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Ladies of the Press.</i> New York, 1936.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Rourke, Constance. <i>Trumpets of Jubilee.</i> New York, 1927.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sachs, Emanie. <i>The Terrible Siren.</i> New York, 1928.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sanborn, F. B. <i>Life and Letters of John Brown.</i> Boston, 1891.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sandburg, Carl. <i>Abraham Lincoln, The War Years.</i> New York, 1939.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sanford, Harold W. <i>A Century of Unitarianism in Rochester.</i> +Rochester, N.Y., 1939.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Schlesinger, Arthur M. <i>The American As Reformer.</i> Cambridge, Mass., +1950.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Political and Social Growth of the United States, +1852-1933.</i> New York, 1936.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Rise of Modern America, 1865-1951.</i> New York, 1951.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Schlesinger, Arthur M., and Hockett, H. C. <i>Land of the Free.</i> New +York, 1944.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sears, Lorenzo. <i>Wendell Phillips.</i> New York, 1909.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Selden, Clara Sayre. <i>Family Sketches.</i> Rochester, N.Y., 1939.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sewall, May Wright (ed.). <i>The World's Congress of Representative +Women.</i> Chicago, 1894.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Shaw, Anna Howard. <i>The Story of a Pioneer.</i> New York, 1915.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Smith, Gerrit. <i>Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Woman's Rights and +Dress Reform.</i> Pamphlet. Peterboro, N.H., 1855.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Smith, Julia. <i>Abby Smith and Her Cows, With a Report of the Law Case +Decided Contrary to Law.</i> Pamphlet. Hartford, Conn., 1877.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Smith, Matthew Hale. <i>Sunshine and Shadow in New York.</i> Hartford, +Conn., 1869.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sprague, William F. <i>Women and the West.</i> Boston, 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. <i>Address to the Legislature of New York, +February, 1854.</i> Pamphlet. Albany, 1854.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Bible and Church Degrade Women.</i> Pamphlet. Chicago, 1884.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Christian Church and Women.</i> Pamphlet reprinted from <i>The +Index</i> (Boston), n.d.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. "The Degradation of Disfranchisement," <i>National Bulletin</i>, +March 1891. Pamphlet.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Eighty Years and More.</i> New York, 1898.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Slave's Appeal.</i> Pamphlet. Albany, 1860.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Significance and History of the Ballot.</i> Pamphlet. Washington, +D.C., 1898.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Solitude of Self.</i> Pamphlet. Washington, D.C., 1892.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Suffrage, a Natural Right.</i> Pamphlet. Chicago, 1894.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>The Woman's Bible.</i> New York, 1898.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B., and Gage, Matilda Joslyn. +<i>History of Woman Suffrage</i>, Vols. I, II, III. New York and Rochester, +1881, 1882, 1886.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stanton, Theodore. <i>The Woman Question in Europe.</i> New York, 1884.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stanton, Theodore, and Blatch, Harriot Stanton (Ed.). <i>Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences</i>, New +York, 1922.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stevens, G. A., <i>New York Typographical Union No. 6.</i> Albany, 1913.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Strachey, Ray. <i>Struggle.</i> New York, 1930.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ten Broek, Jacobus. <i>The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth +Amendment.</i> Berkeley, Calif., 1951.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Terrell, Mary Church. <i>A Colored Woman in a White World.</i> Washington, +D.C., 1940.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Thornton, Willis. <i>The Nine Lives of Citizen Train.</i> New York, 1948.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Tilton, Theodore. <i>Biography of Victoria C. Woodhull.</i> (Golden Age +Tract No. 3.) Pamphlet. New York, 1871.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Tracy, George A. <i>History of the Typographical Union.</i> Indianapolis, +1913.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Train, George Francis. <i>The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas.</i> +Pamphlet. Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>My Life in Many States and Foreign Lands.</i> New York, 1902.</p> + +<p class="biblio">———. <i>Train's Union Speeches.</i> Pamphlet. Philadelphia, 1862.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Trowbridge, Lydia Jones. <i>Frances Willard of Evanston.</i> Chicago, 1938.</p> + +<p class="biblio">True, Charles H. <i>Ten Years of Woman Suffrage in Wyoming.</i> Pamphlet. +Rochester, N.Y., 1879.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Waite, Charles B. "Who Were the Voters in the Early History of this +Country?" <i>Chicago Law Times</i>, October 1888.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Willard, Frances. <i>Glimpses of Fifty Years.</i> Chicago, 1889.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Willard, Frances E., and Livermore, Mary A. <i>A Woman of the Century.</i> +New York, 1893.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Williams, Blanche Colton. <i>Clara Barton.</i> New York, 1941.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Whitney, Janet. <i>Abigail Adams.</i> Boston, 1947.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Woodhull, Victoria C. <i>The Argument for Women's Electoral Rights under +Amendments XIV and XV of the Constitution of the United States.</i> +London, 1887.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Woody, Thomas. <i>A History of Women's Education in the United States.</i> +New York, 1929.</p> + + +<p class="heading sc lowercase">NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS</p> + +<p> +Adams (Mass.) <i>Freeman</i><br /> +<i>The Agitator</i><br /> +<i>Antislavery Standard</i><br /> +Chicago Daily <i>Tribune</i><br /> +Chicago <i>Inter-Ocean</i><br /> +<i>The Golden Age</i><br /> +<i>Harper's Weekly</i><br /> +<i>The Independent</i><br /> +<i>Ladies' Home Journal</i><br /> +<i>The Liberator</i><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span><i>The Lily</i><br /> +New York <i>Daily Graphic</i><br /> +New York <i>Herald</i><br /> +New York <i>Post</i><br /> +New York <i>Suffrage News Letter</i><br /> +New York <i>Sun</i><br /> +New York <i>Times</i><br /> +New York <i>Tribune</i><br /> +New York <i>World</i><br /> +Philadelphia <i>Press</i><br /> +<i>The Revolution</i><br /> +<i>Rochester History</i><br /> +San Francisco <i>Examiner</i><br /> +<i>The Una</i><br /> +<i>Woman's Campaign</i><br /> +<i>Woman's Journal</i><br /> +<i>Woman's Tribune</i><br /> +<i>Woman's Suffrage Journal</i> (London, England)<br /> +<i>Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly</i><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr /> +<p> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<table style="width:60%;" border="0" summary="index"> + <tr> + <td> <a href="#IX_A">A</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_B">B</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_C">C</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_D">D</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_E">E</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_F">F</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_G">G</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_H">H</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_I">I</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_J">J</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_K">K</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_L">L</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_M">M</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> <a href="#IX_N">N</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_O">O</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_P">P</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_Q">Q</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_R">R</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_S">S</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_T">T</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_U">U</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_V">V</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_W">W</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_W">X</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_W">Y</a></td> + <td> <a href="#IX_W">Z</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_A" name="IX_A"></a>Addams, Jane, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> +<li>Alcott, Bronson, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> +<li>American Antislavery Society, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-<a href="#Page_119">19</a></li> +<li>American Equal Rights Association, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-<a href="#Page_120">20</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_146">46</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> +<li>American Federation of Labor, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_286">86</a></li> +<li>American Woman Suffrage Association, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_173">73</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_250">50</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Anneké, Madam, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Ann O. <i>See</i> Bacon, Ann Anthony.</li> +<li>Anthony, Anna Osborne, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>-<a href="#Page_109">09</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Daniel (father), <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Daniel Jr. (nephew), <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Daniel Read (brother), <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>-<a href="#Page_112">12</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>-<a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Eliza, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Guelma. <i>See</i> McLean, Guelma Anthony.</li> +<li>Anthony, Hannah. <i>See</i> Mosher, Hannah Anthony.</li> +<li>Anthony, Hannah Latham, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Humphrey, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Jacob Merritt, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Lucy E., <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Lucy Read, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Mary Luther, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Mary S., <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Sarah Burtis, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> +<li>Anthony, Susan B., birth of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>; + <ul class="IX"> + <li>ancestry of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>;</li> + <li>her school days, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>-<a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-<a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li> + <li>as teacher, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li> + <li>her first temperance speech, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</li> + <li>her interest in books, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li> + <li>her interest in outdoor work, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</li> + <li>her opinions on marriage, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, + <ul class="IX"> + <li>on women's support of political parties, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>,</li> + <li>on woman as president, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</li> + </ul></li> + <li>her first appeal for Congressional action on woman suffrage, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</li> + <li>50th birthday celebration of, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;</li> + <li>arrest and trial of, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_203">03</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>-<a href="#Page_213">13</a>;</li> + <li>diaries of, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>-<a href="#Page_265">65</a>;</li> + <li>retirement of, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</li> + <li>84th birthday celebration of, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li> + <li>last illness and death of, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</li> + <li>prophecy of, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> + </ul></li> +<li>Aurora Leigh, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> +<li>Avery, Dr. Alida, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> +<li>Avery, Rachel Foster, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_239">39</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">45</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_275">75</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">80</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_293">93</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">23</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_B" name="IX_B"></a>Bacon, Ann Anthony, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Barton, Clara, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> +<li>Becker, Lydia, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Beecher, Henry Ward, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>-<a href="#Page_174">74</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_222">22</a></li> +<li>Beecher-Tilton case, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_223">23</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> +<li>Bickerdyke, Mother, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> +<li>Bingham, Anson, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> +<li>Bingham, John A., <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Alice Stone, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Ellen, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Henry, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> +<li>Blackwell, Samuel, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> +<li>Blake, Lillie Devereux, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Blatch, Harriot Stanton, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>-<a href="#Page_251">51</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_288">88</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> +<li>Blatch, William Henry, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Bloomer, Amelia, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>Bloomer Costume, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>Booth, Mary L., <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> +<li>Bradwell, Myra, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_208">08</a></li> +<li>Bright, Jacob, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> +<li>Brown, Antoinette. <i>See</i> Blackwell, Antoinette Brown.</li> +<li>Brown, B. Gratz, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> +<li>Brown, John, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> +<li>Brown, Olympia, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> +<li>Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> +<li>Bryn Mawr College, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">07</a></li> +<li>Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> +<li>Bullard, Laura Curtis, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>-<a href="#Page_179">79</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> +<li>Burnham, Carrie S., <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> +<li>Butler, Benjamin F., <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_C" name="IX_C"></a>Caldwell, Margaret Read, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> +<li>California campaign, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_273">73</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>Carroll, Ella Anna, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> +<li>Cary, Alice, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> +<li>Cary, Phoebe, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> +<li>Catt, Carrie Chapman, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>-<a href="#Page_255">55</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>-<a href="#Page_277">77</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">80</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-<a href="#Page_294">94</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_297">97</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> +<li>Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_228">28</a></li> +<li>Channing, William Henry, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>Chase, Salmon P., <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> +<li>Child, Lydia Maria, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> +<li>Claflin, Tennessee, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_182">82</a></li> +<li>Clay, Laura, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> +<li>Clemmer, Mary, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> +<li>Cleveland, Grover, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">61</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_305">05</a></li> +<li>Coeducation, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> +<li>Colby, Clara Bewick, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">45</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>-<a href="#Page_325">25</a></li> +<li>College Equal Suffrage League, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +<li>College Evening, the, Baltimore, Maryland, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> +<li>Conkling, Roscoe, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> +<li>Conway, Moncure D., <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> +<li>Corbin, Hannah Lee, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> +<li>Couzins, Phoebe, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> +<li>Cowles, Caroline. <i>See</i> Richards, Caroline Cowles.</li> +<li>Crittenden, Alexander P., <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> +<li>Curtis, George William, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_126">26</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_D" name="IX_D"></a>Dall, Caroline H., <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Dann, Anna. <i>See</i> Mason, Anna Dann.</li> +<li>Daughters of Temperance, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> +<li>Davis, Paulina Wright, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>-<a href="#Page_185">85</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> +<li>Debs, Eugene V., <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> +<li>De Garmo, Rhoda, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> +<li>Democrats, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_131">31</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_136">36</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_148">48</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">97</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_269">69</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> +<li>Demorest, Mme. Louise, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> +<li>Dickinson, Albert, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> +<li>Dickinson, Anna E., <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_107">07</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>-<a href="#Page_145">45</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> +<li>Divorce, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> +<li>Dix, Dorothea, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> +<li>Douglas, Stephen A., <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> +<li>Douglass, Frederick, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_163">63</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>Duniway, Abigail Scott, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_E" name="IX_E"></a>Eddy, Eliza J., <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_239">39</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> +<li>Emancipation Proclamation, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_102">02</a></li> +<li>Emerson, Ralph Waldo, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_F" name="IX_F"></a>Fair, Laura, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>-<a href="#Page_189">89</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> +<li>Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> +<li>Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_162">62</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_173">73</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_218">18</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_34">234</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> +<li>Fifteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_165">65</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_193">93</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> +<li>First National Woman's Rights convention, 1850, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> +<li>First Woman's Rights convention, 1848, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> +<li>Foster, Abby Kelley, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> +<li>Foster, Rachel. <i>See</i> Avery, Rachel Foster.</li> +<li>Foster, Stephen S., <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> +<li>Fourteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_116">16</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_122">22</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_182">82</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_193">93</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_208">08</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>-<a href="#Page_211">11</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> +<li>Frémont, Jessie Benton, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> +<li>Frémont, John C., <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_G" name="IX_G"></a>Gage, Frances D., <a href="#Page_53">53</a>-<a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Gage, Matilda Joslyn, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>-<a href="#Page_228">28</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> +<li>Gannett, Mary Lewis, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>Gannett, William C., <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>Garrett, Mary, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">07</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Garrison, William Lloyd, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>-<a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-<a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_105">05</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_112">12</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>General Federation of Women's Clubs, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> +<li>Gibbons, Abby Hopper, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> +<li>Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> +<li>Godbe, William S., <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> +<li>Gompers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> +<li>Gough, John B., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> +<li>Grant, Ulysses S., <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_147">47</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> +<li>Greeley, Horace, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_104">04</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>-<a href="#Page_127">27</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>-<a href="#Page_142">42</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">97</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> +<li>Greeley, Mary Cheney, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> +<li>Greenwood, Grace, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> +<li>Grimké Sisters, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_H" name="IX_H"></a>Hallowell, Mary, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> +<li>Hamilton, Gail, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> +<li>Harper, Ida Husted, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>-<a href="#Page_272">72</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_296">96</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> +<li>Hawley, Genevieve, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> +<li>Hay, Mary Garrett, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>-<a href="#Page_292">92</a></li> +<li>Hearst, Phoebe, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> +<li>Hearst, William Randolph, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> +<li>Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_146">46</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> +<li>History of Woman Suffrage, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_239">39</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> +<li>Hooker, Isabella Beecher, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>-<a href="#Page_168">68</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_175">75</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_183">83</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_195">95</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>-<a href="#Page_321">21</a></li> +<li>Hooker, John, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> +<li>Hovey, Charles F., <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> +<li>Hovey Fund, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Howe, Julia Ward, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> +<li>Howe, Samuel G., <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> +<li>Hoxie, Hannah Anthony, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> +<li>Hunt, Dr. Harriot K., <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> +<li>Hunt, Judge Ward, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>-<a href="#Page_214">14</a></li> +<li>Hutchinson Family Singers, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_I" name="IX_I"></a>International Council of Women, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_249">49</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_89">289</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> +<li>International Woman Suffrage Alliance, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> +<li>Irwin, Inez Haynes, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_J" name="IX_J"></a>Jackson, Francis, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> +<li>Jackson Fund, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> +<li>Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> +<li>Johnson, Adelaide, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Johnson, Andrew, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a></li> +<li>Julian, George W., <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_160">60</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_K" name="IX_K"></a>Kansas campaigns, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_138">38</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>-<a href="#Page_269">69</a></li> +<li>Kelley, Abby. <i>See</i> Foster, Abby Kelley.</li> +<li>Kelley, Florence, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> +<li>Knights of Labor, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_L" name="IX_L"></a>Lane, Carrie. <i>See</i> Catt, Carrie Chapman.</li> +<li>Lapham, Anson, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> +<li>Laughlin, Gail, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> +<li>Lawrence, Margaret Stanton, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> +<li>Lewis and Clark Exposition, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_304">04</a></li> +<li><i>Liberator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> +<li><i>Lily, The</i>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> +<li>Lincoln, Abraham, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>-<a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_106">06</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> +<li>Livermore, Mary, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Lockwood, Belva, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> +<li>Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> +<li>Longfellow, Samuel, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> +<li>Lozier, Dr. Clemence, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> +<li>Luther, Mary. <i>See</i> Anthony, Mary Luther.</li> +<li>Lyceum Lecture Tours, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> +<li>Lyon, Mary, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_M" name="IX_M"></a>Married Women's Property Law, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> +<li>Mason, Anna Dann, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>May, Samuel J., <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> +<li>May, Samuel Jr., <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> +<li>Mayo, Rev. A. D., <a href="#Page_82">82</a>-<a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> +<li>McCulloch, Catharine Waugh, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> +<li>McFarland, Daniel, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> +<li>McFarland, Mrs. <i>See</i> Richardson, Abby Sage.</li> +<li>McLean, Aaron, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>McLean, Ann Eliza, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> +<li>McLean, Guelma Anthony, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> +<li>McLean, Judge John, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>-<a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> +<li>Melliss, David M., <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_139">39</a></li> +<li>Mill, Harriet Taylor, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> +<li>Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_129">29</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> +<li>Miller, Elizabeth Smith, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_166">66</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>Minor, Francis, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> +<li>Minor, Virginia, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> +<li>Mitchell, Maria, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> +<li>Monroe County Lectures, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_207">07</a></li> +<li>Montgomery, Helen Barrett, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> +<li>Mormons, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>-<a href="#Page_187">87</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> +<li>Mosher, Eugene, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Mosher, Hannah Anthony, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Mosher, Louise, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Mott, James, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> +<li>Mott, Lucretia, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_227">27</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Mott, Lydia, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>-<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li> +<li>Moulson, Deborah, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_N" name="IX_N"></a>National American Woman Suffrage Association, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_278">78</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>-<a href="#Page_287">87</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-<a href="#Page_293">93</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_297">97</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_303">03</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_308">08</a></li> +<li>National Council of Women, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> +<li>National Labor Union Congress, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-<a href="#Page_152">52</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_156">56</a></li> +<li>National Woman Suffrage Association, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_195">95</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_251">51</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Negro slavery, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>-<a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>-<a href="#Page_103">03</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_113">13</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> +<li>Negro suffrage, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_114">14</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_118">18</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>-<a href="#Page_125">25</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_133">33</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_142">42</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_163">63</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_166">66</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> +<li>New York constitutional conventions, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_127">27</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_167">67</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> +<li>New York State Industrial School, Rochester, New York, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> +<li>New York State Teachers' convention, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> +<li>Nichols, Clarina, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Nightingale, Florence, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> +<li>Nineteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_O" name="IX_O"></a>Oberlin College, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> +<li>Occupations, Women's, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> +<li>Oklahoma campaign, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>Oregon campaigns, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>-<a href="#Page_190">90</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_304">04</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Owen, Robert Dale, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_P" name="IX_P"></a>Palmer, Bertha Honoré, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_262">62</a></li> +<li>Pankhurst, Emmeline, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> +<li>Park, Maud Wood, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +<li>Parker, Theodore, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> +<li>Phelps, Dr. Charles Abner, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> +<li>Phelps, Mrs. Charles Abner, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> +<li>Phelps, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> +<li>Phillips, Wendell, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>-<a href="#Page_106">06</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>-<a href="#Page_117">17</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>-<a href="#Page_135">35</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> +<li>Pillsbury, Parker, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> +<li>Pomeroy, Senator S. C., <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_160">60</a></li> +<li>Post, Amy, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> +<li>Purvis, Robert, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_Q" name="IX_Q"></a>Quakers, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>-<a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_315">15</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_R" name="IX_R"></a>Read, Daniel, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> +<li>Read, Joshua, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> +<li>Read, Susannah Richardson, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> +<li>Republicans, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_115">15</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>-<a href="#Page_124">24</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_132">32</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_136">36</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_148">48</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">97</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>-<a href="#Page_269">69</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> +<li><i>Revolution, The</i>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>-<a href="#Page_146">46</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>-<a href="#Page_149">49</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_155">55</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>-<a href="#Page_158">58</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_162">62</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_167">67</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_174">74</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_180">80</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>-<a href="#Page_189">89</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_221">21</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Richards, Caroline Cowles, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> +<li>Richardson, Abbie Sage, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_175">75</a></li> +<li>Richardson, Albert D., <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> +<li>Ricker, Marilla, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> +<li>Riddle, Albert G., <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> +<li>Robinson, Charles, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> +<li>Rochester, University of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>-<a href="#Page_295">95</a></li> +<li>Rogers, Dr. Seth, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> +<li>Roosevelt, Theodore, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> +<li>Rose, Ernestine, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>-<a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_S" name="IX_S"></a>Sacajawea, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> +<li>Sage, Mrs. Russell, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> +<li>Sanborn, Frank, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> +<li>Sargent, Aaron A., <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Sargent, Ellen Clark, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Selden, Judge Henry R., <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-<a href="#Page_203">03</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>-<a href="#Page_212">12</a></li> +<li>Sewall, May Wright, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">45</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> +<li>Seward, William H., <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> +<li>Seymour, Horatio, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_147">47</a></li> +<li>Shaw, Anne Howard, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_249">49</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_254">54</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">61</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_269">69</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>-<a href="#Page_276">76</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">80</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>-<a href="#Page_290">90</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_297">97</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li> +<li>Sixteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_162">62</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_173">73</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_217">17</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_233">33</a></li> +<li>Smith, Abby and Julia, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> +<li>Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> +<li>Smith, Gerrit, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> +<li>South Dakota campaign, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_255">55</a></li> +<li>Spanish-American War, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>-<a href="#Page_283">83</a></li> +<li>Spencer, Sarah Andrews, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> +<li>Spofford, Jane, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> +<li>Stanford, Leland, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> +<li>Stanford, Mrs. Leland, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> +<li>Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>-<a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>-<a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>-<a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_130">30</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_138">38</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>-<a href="#Page_143">43</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_162">62</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>-<a href="#Page_167">67</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>-<a href="#Page_171">71</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>-<a href="#Page_177">77</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>-<a href="#Page_180">80</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>-<a href="#Page_191">91</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_197">97</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_221">21</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_227">27</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_240">40</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">45</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>-<a href="#Page_251">51</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>-<a href="#Page_258">58</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>-<a href="#Page_280">80</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>-<a href="#Page_296">96</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>-<a href="#Page_318">18</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_323">23</a></li> +<li>Stanton, Harriot. <i>See</i> Blatch, Harriot Stanton.</li> +<li>Stanton, Henry B., <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> +<li>Stanton, Margaret. <i>See</i> Lawrence, Margaret Stanton.</li> +<li>Stanton, Theodore, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. <i>See</i> Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.</li> +<li>Stevens, Thaddeus, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> +<li>Stone, Lucy, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>-<a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_128">28</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>-<a href="#Page_145">45</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>-<a href="#Page_165">65</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>-<a href="#Page_173">73</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_238">38</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Stowe, Harriet Beecher, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> +<li>Sumner, Charles, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>-<a href="#Page_118">18</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> +<li>Sweet, Emma B., <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> +<li>Sylvis, William H., <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_T" name="IX_T"></a>Taylor, Harriet. <i>See</i> Mill, Harriet Taylor.</li> +<li>Terrell, Mary Church, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>-<a href="#Page_288">88</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> +<li>Thirteenth Amendment, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_105">05</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> +<li>Thomas, M. Carey, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">07</a></li> +<li>Tilton, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">21</a></li> +<li>Tilton, Theodore, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">21</a></li> +<li>Train, George Francis, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_133">33</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_139">39</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> +<li>Tubman, Harriet, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_U" name="IX_U"></a>Unitarians, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> +<li>Upton, Harriet Taylor, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_276">76</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_V" name="IX_V"></a>Van Voorhis, John, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-<a href="#Page_203">03</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> +<li>Vassar College, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +<li>Vaughn, Hester, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>-<a href="#Page_157">57</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> +<li>Victoria, Queen, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> +<li>Victoria Augusta, Empress, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><a id="IX_W" name="IX_W"></a>Wade, Senator Benjamin, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_141">41</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> +<li>Wages, Women's, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a href="#Page_156">56</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>-<a href="#Page_286">86</a></li> +<li>Waite, Chief Justice, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>-<a href="#Page_215">15</a></li> +<li>Walker, Dr. Mary, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> +<li>Weed, Thurlow, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> +<li>Weld, Theodore, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> +<li>Whittier, John G., <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> +<li>Willard, Emma, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> +<li>Willard, Frances E., <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>-<a href="#Page_243">43</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>-<a href="#Page_247">47</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> +<li>Wilson, Senator Henry, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_160">60</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> +<li>Wollstonecraft, Mary, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> +<li>Woman Suffrage, in Australia, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>; + <ul class="IX"> + <li>in Colorado, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_231">31</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li>in Great Britain, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>-<a href="#Page_323">23</a>;</li> + <li>in Idaho, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li>in New Zealand, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li>in Utah, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li>in Wyoming, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li> + </ul></li> +<li>Woman Suffrage Conventions, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>-<a href="#Page_173">73</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_176">76</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_181">81</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>-<a href="#Page_185">85</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_195">95</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">34</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_278">78</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>-<a href="#Page_296">96</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>-<a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>-<a href="#Page_307">07</a></li> +<li><i>Woman's Bible</i>, The, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>-<a href="#Page_260">60</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_280">80</a></li> +<li><i>Woman's Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> +<li>Woman's Rights Conventions, Seneca Falls, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>; + <ul class="IX"> + <li>Rochester, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;</li> + <li>Syracuse, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</li> + <li>Albany, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</li> + <li>Philadelphia, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</li> + <li>Saratoga, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>-<a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</li> + <li>New York, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + </ul></li> +<li>Woman's State Temperance Society, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> +<li>Woman's Suffrage Association of America, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> +<li><i>Woman's Tribune</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>-<a href="#Page_324">24</a></li> +<li>Women's Christian Temperance Union, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_218">18</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, + <ul class="IX"> + <li>271, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + </ul></li> +<li>Women's National Loyal League, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_103">03</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> +<li>Woodhull, Victoria C., <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_186">86</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_195">95</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_221">21</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> +<li>Woolley, Dr. Mary E., <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> +<li>Workingwomen's Association, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-<a href="#Page_153">53</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_157">57</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> +<li>World's Fair, Chicago, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_262">62</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>-<a href="#Page_324">24</a></li> +<li>World's Temperance Convention, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> +<li>Wright, Frances, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> +<li>Wright, Martha C., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr class="full" /> +<a name="END" id="END"></a> +<div class="trans-note"> +<p class="heading">Transcriber's Notes:</p> +<p>Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. The transcriber made the following changes to the +text to correct obvious errors:</p> + +<pre class="note"> + 1. p. 14, Footnote #5 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "ancestory" changed to "ancestry" + 2. p. 14, Footnote #12 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "Dairy" changed to "Diary" + 3. p. 19, "responsibiity" changed to "responsibility" + 4. p. 31, "Presbysterian" changed to "Presbyterian" + 5. p. 53, "litle" changed to "little" + 6. p. 56, "Osawatamie" changed to "Osawatomie" + 7. p. 66, "marytrdom" changed to "martyrdom" + 8. p. 70, "newpaper" changed to "newspaper" + 9. p. 71, "Westminister" changed to "Westminster" +10. p. 84, "betwen" changed to "between" +11. p. 91, "fredom" changed to "freedom" +12. p. 99, "marshall" changed to "marshal" +13. p. 141, "Greley" changed to "Greeley" +14. p. 143, "Garrion" changed to "Garrison" +15. p. 154, "indepedence" changed to "independence" +16. p. 155, rat office" changed to "rat office" +17. p. 157, "Eourope" changed to "Europe" +18. p. 162, "betwen" changed to "between" +19. p. 164, at their side. (Removed ending quote) +20. p. 169, Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...." (Added ending quote) +21. p. 175, "Griffing" changed to "Griffin" +22. p. 184, "Victorial" changed to "Victoria" +23. p. 186, "senusous" changed to "sensuous" +24. p. 195, "Wodhull" changed to "Woodhull" +25. p. 203, "womanhoood" changed to "womanhood" +26. p. 209, "againt" changed to "against" +27. p. 231, "ben" changed to "been" +28. p. 234, "discused" changed to "discussed" +29. p. 235, "Josyln" changed to "Joslyn" +30. p. 236, "Cage" changed to "Gage" +31. p. 253, "politican" changed to "politician" +32. p. 265, "suffage" changed to "suffrage" +33. p. 265, Footnote #367 in Chapter "Victories in the West" + "Happerset" changed to "Happersett" +34. p. 274, "ue" changed to "use" +35. p. 298, "contine" changed to "continue" +36. p. 298, Footnote #426 in Chapter "Passing the Torch" + "yater" changed to "later" +37. p. 306, "Byrn" changed to "Bryn" +38. p. 308, "farwell" changed to "farewell" +39. p. 329, "Thoguhts" changed to "Thoughts" +40. p. 335, "phophecy" changed to "prophecy" +</pre> + +</div> +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Susan B. 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Anthony, by Alma Lutz + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Susan B. Anthony + Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian + +Author: Alma Lutz + +Release Date: January 25, 2007 [EBook #20439] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY *** + + + + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on +this publication was renewed. + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. Text that has been changed to correct an obvious +error is noted at the end of this ebook. + + + + +SUSAN B. ANTHONY + + +REBEL, CRUSADER, HUMANITARIAN + + +BY ALMA LUTZ + + +ZENGER PUBLISHING CO. INC. BOX 9883, WASHINGTON DC 20015 + + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony] + + +Alma Lutz was born and brought up in North Dakota, graduated from the +Emma Willard School and Vassar College, and attended the Boston +University School of Business Administration. She has written numerous +articles and pamphlets and for many years has been a contributor to +_The Christian Science Monitor_. Active in organizations working for +the political, civil, and economic rights of women, she has also been +interested in preserving the records of women's role in history and +serves on the Advisory Board of the Radcliffe Women's Archives. Miss +Lutz is the author of _Emma Willard, Daughter of Democracy_ (1929), +_Created Equal, A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton_ (1940), +_Challenging Years, The Memoirs of Harriot Stanton Blatch_, with +Harriot Stanton Blatch (1940), and the editor of _With Love Jane, +Letters from American Women on the War Fronts_ (1945). + +(C) 1959 by Alma Lutz +Member of the Authors League of America + +Published by arrangement with +Beacon Press +All rights reserved. + + +Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data + +Lutz, Alma. +Susan B. Anthony: rebel, crusader, humanitarian. + +Reprint of the ed. published by Beacon Press, Boston. +Bibliography: p. +Includes index. +1. Anthony, Susan Brownell, 1820-1906. +[JK1899.A6L8 1975] 324'.3'0924 [B] 75-37764 +ISBN 0-89201-017-7 + +Printed in the United States of America + + +_To the young women of today_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +To strive for liberty and for a democratic way of life has always been +a noble tradition of our country. Susan B. Anthony followed this +tradition. Convinced that the principle of equal rights for all, as +stated in the Declaration of Independence, must be expressed in the +laws of a true republic, she devoted her life to the establishment of +this ideal. + +Because she recognized in Negro slavery and in the legal bondage of +women flagrant violations of this principle, she became an active, +courageous, effective antislavery crusader and a champion of civil and +political rights for women. She saw women's struggle for freedom from +legal restrictions as an important phase in the development of +American democracy. To her this struggle was never a battle of the +sexes, but a battle such as any freedom-loving people would wage for +civil and political rights. + +While her goals for women were only partially realized in her +lifetime, she prepared the soil for the acceptance not only of her +long-hoped-for federal woman suffrage amendment but for a worldwide +recognition of human rights, now expressed in the United Nations +Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights. She looked forward to the +time when throughout the world there would be no discrimination +because of race, color, religion, or sex. + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + + +"The letters of a person ...," said Thomas Jefferson, "form the only +full and genuine journal of his life." Susan B. Anthony's letters, +hundreds of them, preserved in libraries and private collections, and +her diaries have been the basis of this biography, and I acknowledge +my indebtedness to the following libraries and their helpful +librarians: the American Antiquarian Society; the Bancroft Library of +the University of California; the Boston Public Library; the Henry E. +Huntington Library and Art Gallery; the Indiana State Library; the +Kansas Historical Society; the Library of Congress; the Susan B. +Anthony Memorial Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, which +has been transferred to the Henry E. Huntington Library; the New York +Public Library; the New York State Library; the Ohio State Library; +the Radcliffe Women's Archives; the Seneca Falls Historical Society; +the Smith College Library; the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Inc., +Rochester, New York; the University of Rochester Library; the +University of Kentucky Library; and the Vassar College Library. + +I am particularly indebted to Lucy E. Anthony, who asked me to write a +biography of her aunt, lent me her aunt's diaries, and was most +generous with her records and personal recollections. To her and to +her sister, Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon, I am very grateful for photographs +and for permission to quote from Susan B. Anthony's diaries and from +her letters and manuscripts. + +Ida Husted Harper's _Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_, written in +collaboration with Susan B. Anthony, and the _History of Woman +Suffrage_, compiled by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, +Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, have been invaluable. As +many of the letters and documents used in the preparation of these +books were destroyed, they have preserved an important record of the +work of Susan B. Anthony and of the woman's rights movement. + +I am especially grateful to Martha Taylor Howard for her unfailing +interest and for the use of the valuable Susan B. Anthony Memorial +Collection which she initiated and developed in Rochester, New York; +and to Una R. Winter for her interest and for the use of her Susan B. +Anthony Collection, most of which is now in the Henry E. Huntington +Library. + +I thank Edna M. Stantial for permission to examine and quote from the +Blackwell Papers; Anna Dann Mason for permission to read her +reminiscences and the many letters written to her by Susan B. Anthony; +Ellen Garrison for permission to quote from letters of Lucretia Mott +and Martha C. Wright; Eleanor W. Thompson for copies of Susan B. +Anthony's letters to Amelia Bloomer; Henry R. Selden II whose +grandfather was Susan B. Anthony's lawyer during her trial for voting; +Judge John Van Voorhis whose grandfather was associated with Judge +Selden in Miss Anthony's defense; William B. Brown for information +about the early history of Adams, Massachusetts, the Susan B. Anthony +birthplace, and the Friends Meeting House in Adams; Dr. James Harvey +Young for information about Anna E. Dickinson; Margaret Lutz Fogg for +help in connection with the trial of Susan B. Anthony; Dr. Blake +McKelvey, City Historian of Rochester; Clara Sayre Selden and Wheeler +Chapin Case of the Rochester Historical Society; the grand-nieces of +Susan B. Anthony, Marion and Florence Mosher; Matilda Joslyn Gage II; +Florence L. C. Kitchelt; and Rose Arnold Powell. + +I thank _The Christian Science Monitor_ for permission to use portions +of an article published on October 24, 1958. + +I am especially grateful to A. Marguerite Smith for her constructive +criticism of the manuscript and her unfailing encouragement. + + ALMA LUTZ + +_Highmeadow_ +_Berlin, New York_ + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + QUAKER HERITAGE 1 + + WIDENING HORIZONS 15 + + FREEDOM TO SPEAK 28 + + A PURSE OF HER OWN 39 + + NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS 56 + + THE TRUE WOMAN 67 + + THE ZEALOT 79 + + A WAR FOR FREEDOM 92 + + THE NEGRO'S HOUR 108 + + TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS 125 + + HE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR 138 + + WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT 149 + + THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT 159 + + A HOUSE DIVIDED 169 + + A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 180 + + TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 198 + + "IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?" 209 + + SOCIAL PURITY 217 + + A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT 226 + + RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY 235 + + IMPETUS FROM THE WEST 241 + + VICTORIES IN THE WEST 252 + + LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN + SUFFRAGE 266 + + AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS 274 + + PASSING ON THE TORCH 285 + + SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD 299 + + NOTES 311 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 + + INDEX 335 + + + + +TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-five _Frontispiece_ + (From a daguerrotype, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, + New York, N.Y.) + + Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony 2 + (From _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ by + Ida Husted Harper) + + Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony 3 + (From _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ by + Ida Husted Harper) + + Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts 5 + (The Smith Studio, Adams, Massachusetts) + + Frederick Douglass 22 + + Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume" 27 + (From _The Lily_) + + Lucy Stone 29 + (From _Lucy Stone_ by Alice Stone Blackwell. Courtesy Little, + Brown and Company) + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four 31 + (Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York) + + James and Lucretia Mott 33 + (From _James and Lucretia Mott_ by Anna D. Hallowell. + Courtesy Houghton Mifflin Company) + + Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry 40 + + Ernestine Rose 42 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Parker Pillsbury 49 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison_ by His Children) + + Merritt Anthony 57 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Susan B. Anthony, 1856 68 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell 72 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + William Lloyd Garrison 86 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison and His Times_ by Oliver + Johnson) + + Susan B. Anthony 97 + + Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony 110 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Wendell Phillips 114 + (From _William Lloyd Garrison_ by His Children) + + George Francis Train 132 + (Courtesy New York Public Library) + + Anna E. Dickinson 144 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Paulina Wright Davis 165 + + Isabella Beecher Hooker 167 + + Victoria C. Woodhull 181 + + Susan B. Anthony, 1871 187 + (Courtesy Mrs. Ann Anthony Bacon) + + Judge Henry R. Selden 203 + (Courtesy Henry R. Selden II) + + "The Woman Who Dared" 206 + (New York _Daily Graphic_, June 5, 1873) + + Aaron A. Sargent 229 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Clara Bewick Colby 232 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Matilda Joslyn Gage 236 + (From _History of Woman Suffrage_ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, + Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage) + + Anna Howard Shaw 248 + (From a photograph by Mary Carnel) + + Harriot Stanton Blatch 250 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + The Anthony home, Rochester, New York 255 + (Courtesy Susan B. Anthony Memorial, Inc., Rochester, New York) + + Susan B. Anthony at her desk 257 + (Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, + Northampton, Massachusetts) + + Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton 259 + + Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 262 + and Susan B. Anthony + + Ida Husted Harper 271 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Rachel Foster Avery 275 + (Courtesy Library of Congress) + + Harriet Taylor Upton 276 + (Courtesy Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, + San Marino, California) + + Carrie Chapman Catt 289 + (Courtesy Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, + Northampton, Massachusetts) + + Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony 297 + + Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five 301 + (From a photograph by J. E. Hale) + + Susan B. Anthony, 1905 309 + (From a photograph by Ellis) + + + + + +QUAKER HERITAGE + + +"If Sally Ann knows more about weaving than Elijah," reasoned +eleven-year-old Susan with her father, "then why don't you make her +overseer?" + +"It would never do," replied Daniel Anthony as a matter of course. "It +would never do to have a woman overseer in the mill." + +This answer did not satisfy Susan and she often thought about it. To +enter the mill, to stand quietly and look about, was the best kind of +entertainment, for she was fascinated by the whir of the looms, by the +nimble fingers of the weavers, and by the general air of efficiency. +Admiringly she watched Sally Ann Hyatt, the tall capable weaver from +Vermont. When the yarn on the beam was tangled or there was something +wrong with the machinery, Elijah, the overseer, always called out to +Sally Ann, "I'll tend your loom, if you'll look after this." Sally Ann +never failed to locate the trouble or to untangle the yarn. Yet she +was never made overseer, and this continued to puzzle Susan.[1] + +The manufacture of cotton was a new industry, developing with great +promise in the United States, when Susan B. Anthony was born on +February 15, 1820, in the wide valley at the foot of Mt. Greylock, +near Adams, Massachusetts. Enterprising young men like her father, +Daniel Anthony, saw a potential cotton mill by the side of every +rushing brook, and young women, eager to earn the first money they +could call their own, were leaving the farms, for a few months at +least, to work in the mills. Cotton cloth was the new sensation and +the demand for it was steadily growing. Brides were proud to display a +few cotton sheets instead of commonplace homespun linen. + +When Susan was two years old, her father built a cotton factory of +twenty-six looms beside the brook which ran through Grandfather Read's +meadow, hauling the cotton forty miles by wagon from Troy, New York. +The millworkers, most of them young girls from Vermont, boarded, as +was the custom, in the home of the millowner; Susan's mother, Lucy +Read Anthony, although she had three small daughters to care for, +Guelma, Susan, and Hannah, boarded eleven of the millworkers with +only the help of a thirteen-year-old girl who worked for her after +school hours. Lucy Anthony cooked their meals on the hearth of the big +kitchen fireplace, and in the large brick oven beside it baked crisp +brown loaves of bread. In addition, washing, ironing, mending, and +spinning filled her days. But she was capable and strong and was doing +only what all women in this new country were expected to do. She +taught her young daughters to help her, and Susan, even before she was +six, was very useful; by the time she was ten she could cook a good +meal and pack a dinner pail. + +[Illustration: Daniel Anthony, father of Susan B. Anthony] + + * * * * * + +Hard work and skill were respected as Susan grew up in the rapidly +expanding young republic which less than fifty years before had been +founded and fought for. Settlers, steadily pushing westward, had built +new states out of the wilderness, adding ten to the original thirteen. +Everywhere the leaven of democracy was working and men were putting +into practice many of the principles so boldly stated in the +Declaration of Independence, claiming for themselves equal rights and +opportunities. The new states entered the Union with none of the +traditional property and religious limitations on the franchise, but +with manhood suffrage and all voters eligible for office. The older +states soon fell into line, Massachusetts in 1820 removing property +qualifications for voters. Before long, throughout the United States, +all free white men were enfranchised, leaving only women, Negroes, and +Indians without the full rights of citizenship. + +[Illustration: Lucy Read Anthony, mother of Susan B. Anthony] + +Although women freeholders had voted in some of the colonies and in +New Jersey as late as 1807,[2] just as in England in the fifteenth +franchise had gradually found its way into the statutes, and women's +rights as citizens were ignored, in spite of the contribution they had +made to the defense and development of the new nation. However, +European travelers, among them De Tocqueville, recognized that the +survival of the New World experiment in government and the prosperity +and strength of the people were due in large measure to the +superiority of American women. A few women had urged their claims: +Abigail Adams asked her husband, a member of the Continental Congress, +"to remember the ladies" in the "new code of laws"; and Hannah Lee +Corbin of Virginia pleaded with her brother, Richard Henry Lee, to +make good the principle of "no taxation without representation" by +enfranchising widows with property.[3] + +Yet the legal bondage of women continued to be overlooked. It seemed a +less obvious threat to free institutions and democratic government +than the Negro in slavery. In fact, Negro slavery presented a problem +which demanded attention again and again, flaring up alarmingly in +1820, the year Susan B. Anthony was born, when Missouri was admitted +to the Union as a slave state.[4] + + * * * * * + +These were some of the forces at work in the minds of Americans during +Susan's childhood. Her father, a liberal Quaker, was concerned over +the extension of slavery, and she often heard him say that he tried to +avoid purchasing cotton raised by slave labor. This early impression +of the evil of slavery was never erased. + +The Quakers' respect for women's equality with men before God also +left its mark on young Susan. As soon as she was old enough she went +regularly to Meeting with her father, for all of the Anthonys were +Quakers. They had migrated to western Massachusetts from Rhode Island, +and there on the frontier had built prosperous farms, comfortable +homes, and a meeting house where they could worship God in their own +way. Susan, sitting with the women and children on the hand-hewn +benches near the big fireplace in the meeting house[5] which her +ancestors had built, found peace and consecration in the simple +unordered service, in the long reverent silence broken by both the men +and the women in the congregation as they were led to say a prayer or +give out a helpful message. Forty families now worshiped here, the +women sitting on one side and the men on the other; but women took +their places with men in positions of honor, Susan's own grandmother, +Hannah Latham Anthony, an elder, sitting in the "high seat," and her +aunt, Hannah Anthony Hoxie, preaching as the spirit moved her. With +this valuation of women accepted as a matter of course in her church +and family circle, Susan took it for granted that it existed +everywhere. + +Although her father was a devout Friend, she discovered that he had +the reputation of thinking for himself, following the "inner light" +even when its leading differed from the considered judgment of his +fellow Quakers. For this he became a hero to her, especially after she +heard the romantic story of his marriage to Lucy Read who was not a +Quaker. The Anthonys and the Reads had been neighbors for years, and +Lucy was one of the pupils at the "home school" which Grandfather +Humphrey Anthony had built for his children on the farm, under the +weeping willow at the front gate. Daniel and Lucy were schoolmates +until Daniel at nineteen was sent to Richard Mott's Friends' boarding +school at Nine Partners on the Hudson. When he returned as a teacher, +he found his old playmate still one of the pupils, but now a beautiful +tall young woman with deep blue eyes and glossy brown hair. Full of +fun, a good dancer, and always dressed in the prettiest clothes, she +was the most popular girl in the neighborhood. Promptly Daniel Anthony +fell in love with her, but an almost insurmountable obstacle stood in +the way: Quakers were not permitted to "marry out of Meeting." This, +however, did not deter Daniel. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony Homestead, Adams, Massachusetts] + +It was harder for Lucy to make up her mind. She enjoyed parties, +dances, and music. She had a full rich voice, and as she sat at her +spinning wheel, singing and spinning, she often wished that she could +"go into a ten acre lot with the bars down"[6] and let her voice out. +If she married Daniel, she would have to give all this up, but she +decided in favor of Daniel. A few nights before the wedding, she went +to her last party and danced until four in the morning while Daniel +looked on and patiently waited until she was ready to leave. + +For his transgression of marrying out of Meeting, Daniel had to face +the elders as soon as he returned from his wedding trip. They weighed +the matter carefully, found him otherwise sincere and earnest, and +decided not to turn him out. Lucy gave up her dancing and her singing. +She gave up her pretty bright-colored dresses for plain somber +clothes, but she did not adopt the Quaker dress or use the "plain +speech." She went to meeting with Daniel but never became a Quaker, +feeling always that she could not live up to their strict standard of +righteousness.[7] + +This was Susan's heritage--Quaker discipline and austerity lightened +by her father's independent spirit and by the kindly understanding of +her mother who had not forgotten her own fun-loving girlhood; an +environment where men and women were partners in church and at home, +where hard physical work was respected, where help for the needy and +unfortunate was spontaneous, and where education was regarded as so +important that Grandfather Anthony built a school for his children and +the neighbors' in his front yard. Her childhood was close enough to +the Revolution to make Grandfather Read's part in it very real and a +source of great pride. Eagerly and often she listened to the story of +how he enlisted in the Continental army as soon as the news of the +Battle of Lexington reached Cheshire and served with outstanding +bravery under Arnold at Quebec, Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, and +Colonel Stafford at Bennington while his young wife waited anxiously +for him throughout the long years of the war. + + * * * * * + +The wide valley in the Berkshire Hills where Susan grew up made a +lasting impression on her. There was beauty all about her--the fruit +trees blooming in the spring, the meadows white with daisies, the +brook splashing over the rocks and sparkling in the summer sun, the +flaming colors of autumn, the strength and companionship of the hills +when the countryside was white with snow. She seldom failed to watch +the sun set behind Greylock. + +Her father's cotton mill flourished. Regarded as one of the most +promising, successful young men of the district, he soon attracted the +attention of Judge John McLean, a cotton manufacturer of Battenville, +New York, who, eager to enlarge his mills, saw in Daniel Anthony an +able manager. Daniel, always ready to take the next step ahead, +accepted McLean's offer, and on a sunny July day in 1826, Susan drove +with her family through the hills forty-four miles to the new world of +Battenville. + +Here in the home of Judge McLean, she saw Negroes for the first time, +Negroes working to earn their freedom. Startled by their black faces, +she was a little afraid, but when her father explained that in the +South they could be sold like cattle and torn from their families, her +fear turned to pity. + +At the district school, taught by a woman in summer and by a man in +the winter, she learned to sew, spell, read, and write, and she wanted +to study long division but the schoolmaster, unable to teach it, saw +no reason why a woman should care for such knowledge. Her father, then +realizing the need of better education for his five children, Guelma, +Susan, Hannah, Daniel, and Mary, established a school for them in the +new brick building where he had opened a store. Later on when their +new brick house was finished, he set aside a large room for the +school, and here for the first time in that district the pupils had +separate seats, stools without backs, instead of the usual benches +around the schoolroom walls. He engaged as teachers young women who +had studied a year or two in a female seminary; and because female +seminaries were rare in those days, women teachers with up-to-date +training were hard to find. Only a few visionaries believed in the +education of women. Nearby Emma Willard's recently established Troy +Female Seminary was being watched with interest and suspicion. Mary +Lyon, who had not yet founded her own seminary at Mt. Holyoke, was +teaching at Zilpha Grant's school in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and one +of her pupils, Mary Perkins, came to Battenville to teach the Anthony +children. Mary Perkins brought new methods and new studies to the +little school. She introduced a primer with small black illustrations +which fascinated Susan. She taught the children to recite poetry, +drilled them regularly in calisthenics, and longed to add music as +well, but Daniel Anthony forbade this, for Quakers believed that music +might seduce the thoughts of the young. So Susan, although she often +had a song in her heart, had to repress it and never knew the joy of +singing the songs of childhood. + +Her father, looking upon the millworkers as part of his family, +started an evening school for them, often teaching it himself or +calling in the family teacher. He organized a temperance society among +the workers, and all signed a pledge never to drink distilled liquor. +When he opened a store in the new brick building, he refused to sell +liquor, although Judge McLean warned him it would ruin his trade. +Daniel Anthony went even further. He resolved not to serve liquor when +the millworkers' houses were built and the neighbors came to the +"raising." Again Judge McLean protested, feeling certain that the men +and boys would demand their gin and their rum, but Susan and her +sisters helped their mother serve lemonade, tea, coffee, doughnuts, +and gingerbread in abundance. The men joked a bit about the lack of +strong drink which they expected with every meal, but they did not +turn away from the good substitutes which were offered and they were +on hand for the next "raising." Hearing all of this discussed at home, +Susan, again proud of her father, ardently advocated the cause of +temperance. + + * * * * * + +The mill was still of great interest to her and she watched every +operation closely in her spare time, longing to try her hand at the +work. One day when a "spooler" was ill, Susan and her sister Hannah +eagerly volunteered to take her place. Their father was ready to let +them try, pleased by their interest and curious to see what they could +do, but their mother protested that the mill was no place for +children. Finally Susan's earnest pleading won her mother's reluctant +consent, and the two girls drew lots for the job. It went to +twelve-year-old Susan on the condition that she divide her earnings +with Hannah. Every day for two weeks she went early to the mill in her +plain homespun dress, her straight hair neatly parted and smoothed +over her ears. Proudly she tended the spools. She was skillful and +quick, and received the regular wage of $1.50 a week, which she +divided with Hannah, buying with her share six pale blue coffee cups +for her mother who had allowed her this satisfying adventure. + +A few weeks before her thirteenth birthday, Susan became a member of +the Society of Friends which met in nearby Easton, New York, and +learned to search her heart and ask herself, "Art thou faithful?" +Parties, dancing, and entertainments were generally ruled out of her +life as sinful, and rarely were a temptation, but occasionally her +mother, remembering her own good times, let her and her sisters go to +parties at the homes of their Presbyterian neighbors, and for this her +father was criticized at Friends' Meeting. Condemning bright colors, +frills, and jewelry as vain and worldly, Susan accepted plain somber +clothing as a mark of righteousness, and when she deviated to the +extent of wearing the Scotch-plaid coat which her mother had bought +her, she wondered if the big rent torn in it by a dog might not be +deserved punishment for her pride in wearing it. + +That same year, the family moved into their new brick house of fifteen +rooms, with hard-finish plaster walls and light green woodwork, the +finest house in that part of the country. Here Susan's brother Merritt +was born the next April, and her two-year-old sister, Eliza, died. + +Susan, Guelma, and Hannah continued their studies longer than most +girls in the neighborhood, for Quakers not only encouraged but +demanded education for both boys and girls. As soon as Susan and her +sister Guelma were old enough, they taught the "home" school in the +summer when the younger children attended, and then went further +afield to teach in nearby villages. At fifteen Susan was teaching a +district school for $1.50 a week and board, and although it was hard +for her to be away from home, she accepted it as a Friend's duty to +provide good education for children. Now Presbyterian neighbors +criticized her father, protesting that well-to-do young ladies should +not venture into paid work. + +Daniel Anthony was now a wealthy man, his factory the largest and most +prosperous in that part of the country, and he could afford more and +better education for his daughters. He sent Guelma, the eldest, to +Deborah Moulson's Friends' Seminary near Philadelphia, where for $125 +a year "the inculcation of the principles of Humility, Morality, and +Virtue" received particular attention; and when Guelma was asked to +stay on a second year as a teacher, he suggested that Susan join her +there as a pupil. + + * * * * * + +It was a long journey from Battenville to Philadelphia in 1837, and +when Susan left her home on a snowy afternoon with her father, she +felt as if the parting would be forever. Her first glimpse of the +world beyond Battenville interested her immensely until her father +left her at the seminary, and then she confessed to her diary, "Oh +what pangs were felt. It seemed impossible for me to part with him. I +could not speak to bid him farewell."[8] She tried to comfort herself +by writing letters, and wrote so many and so much that Guelma often +exclaimed, "Susan, thee writes too much; thee should learn to be +concise." As it was a rule of the seminary that each letter must first +be written out carefully on a slate, inspected by Deborah Moulson, +then copied with care, inspected again, and finally sent out after +four or five days of preparation, all spontaneity was stifled and her +letters were stilted and overvirtuous. This censorship left its mark, +and years later she confessed, "Whenever I take my pen in hand, I +always seem to be mounted on stilts."[9] + +To her diary she could confide her real feelings--her discouragement +over her lack of improvement and her inability to understand her many +"sins," such as not dotting an _i_, too much laughter, or smiling at +her friends instead of reproving them for frivolous conduct. She +wrote, "Thought so much of my resolutions to do better in the future +that even my dreams were filled with these desires.... Although I have +been guilty of much levity and nonsensical conversation, and have also +admitted thoughts to occupy my mind which should have been far distant +from it, I do not consider myself as having committed any wilful +offense but perhaps the reason I cannot see my own defects is because +my heart is hardened."[10] + +The girls studied a variety of subjects, arithmetic, algebra, +literature, chemistry, philosophy, physiology, astronomy, and +bookkeeping. Men came to the school to conduct some of the classes, +and Deborah Moulson was also assisted by several student teachers, one +of whom, Lydia Mott, became Susan's lifelong friend. Susan worked +hard, for she was a conscientious child, but none of her efforts +seemed to satisfy Deborah Moulson, who was a hard taskmaster. Her +reproofs cut deep, and once when Susan protested that she was always +censured while Guelma was praised, Deborah Moulson sternly replied, +"Thy sister Guelma does the best she is capable of, but thou dost not. +Thou hast greater abilities and I demand of thee the best of thy +capacity."[11] + +Mail from home was a bright spot, bringing into those busy austere +days news of her friends, and when she read that one of them had +married an old widower with six children, she reflected sagely, "I +should think any female would rather live and die an old maid."[12] + +Then came word that her father's business had been so affected by the +financial depression that the family would have to give up their home +in Battenville. Sorrowfully she wrote in her diary, "O can I ever +forget that loved residence in Battenville, and no more to call it +home seems impossible."[13] It helped little to realize that countless +other families throughout the country were facing the future penniless +because banks had failed, mills were shut down, and work on canals and +railroads had ceased. In April 1838, Daniel Anthony came to the +seminary to take his daughters home. + +Susan felt keenly her father's sorrow over the failure of his business +and the loss of the home he had built for his family, and she resolved +at once to help out by teaching in Union Village, New York. In May +1838, she wrote in her diary, "On last evening ... I again left my +home to mingle with strangers which seems to be my sad lot. Separation +was rendered more trying on account of the embarrassing condition of +our business affairs, an inventory was expected to be taken today of +our furniture by assignees.... Spent this day in school, found it +small and quite disorderly. O, may my patience hold out to persevere +without intermission."[14] + +Her patience did hold out, and also her courage, as the news came from +home telling her how everything had to be sold to satisfy the +creditors, the furniture, her mother's silver spoons, their clothing +and books, the flour, tea, coffee, and sugar in the pantries. She +rejoiced to hear that Uncle Joshua Read from Palatine Bridge, New +York, had come to the rescue, had bought their most treasured and +needed possessions and turned them over to her mother. + +On a cold blustery March day in 1839, when she was nineteen, Susan +moved with her family two miles down the Battenkill to the little +settlement of Hardscrabble, later called Center Falls, where her +father owned a satinet factory and grist mill, built in more +prosperous times. These were now heavily mortgaged but he hoped to +save them. They moved into a large house which had been a tavern in +the days when lumber had been cut around Hardscrabble. It was +disappointing after their fine brick house in Battenville, but they +made it comfortable, and their love for and loyalty to each other made +them a happy family anywhere. As it had been a halfway house on the +road to Troy and travelers continued to stop there asking for a meal +or a night's lodging, they took them in, and young Daniel served them +food and nonintoxicating drinks at the old tavern bar. + +Susan, when her school term was over, put her energies into housework, +recording in her diary, "Did a large washing today.... Spent today at +the spinning wheel.... Baked 21 loaves of bread.... Wove three yards +of carpet yesterday."[15] + +The attic of the tavern had been finished off for a ballroom with +bottles laid under the floor to give a nice tone to the music of the +fiddles, and now the young people of the village wanted to hold their +dancing school there. Susan's father, true to his Quaker training, +felt obliged to refuse, but when they came the second time to tell him +that the only other place available was a disreputable tavern where +liquor was sold, he relented a little, and talked the matter over with +his wife and daughters. Lucy Anthony, recalling her love of dancing, +urged him to let the young people come. Finally he consented on the +condition that Guelma, Hannah, and Susan would not dance. They agreed. +Every two weeks all through the winter, the fiddles played in the +attic room and the boys and girls of the neighborhood danced the +Virginia reel and their rounds and squares, while the three Quaker +girls sat around the wall, watching and longing to join in the fun. + +Such frivolous entertainment in the home of a Quaker could not be +condoned, and Daniel Anthony was not only severely censured by the +Friends but read out of Meeting, "because he kept a place of amusement +in his house." But he did not regret his so-called sin any more than +he regretted marrying out of Meeting. He continued to attend Friends' +Meeting, but grew more and more liberal as the years went by. At this +time, like all Quakers, he refused to vote, not wishing in any way to +support a government that believed in war, and this influenced Susan +who for some years regarded voting as unimportant. He refused to pay +taxes for the same reason, and she often saw him put his pocketbook on +the table and then remark drily to the tax collector, "I shall not +voluntarily pay these taxes. If thee wants to rifle my pocketbook, +thee can do so."[16] + + * * * * * + +To help her father with his burden of debt was now Susan's purpose in +life, and in the spring she again left the family circle to teach at +Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary in New Rochelle, New York. There +were twenty-eight day pupils and a few boarders at the seminary, and +for long periods while Eunice Kenyon was ill, Susan took full charge. + +She wrote her family all the little details of her life, but their +letters never came often enough to satisfy her. Occasionally she +received a paper or a letter from Aaron McLean, Judge McLean's +grandson, who had been her good friend and Guelma's ever since they +had moved to Battenville. His letters almost always started an +argument which both of them continued with zest. After hearing the +Quaker preacher, Rachel Barker, she wrote him, "I guess if you would +hear her you would believe in a woman's preaching. What an absurd +notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficient +for anything but domestic concerns."[17] + +When New Rochelle welcomed President Van Buren with a parade, bands +playing, and crowds in the streets, this prim self-righteous young +woman took no part in this hero worship, but gave vent to her +disapproval in a letter to Aaron. + +Disturbed over the treatment Negroes received at Friends' Meeting in +New Rochelle, she impulsively wrote him, "The people about here are +anti-abolitionist and anti everything else that's good. The Friends +raised quite a fuss about a colored man sitting in the meeting house, +and some left on account of it.... What a lack of Christianity is +this!"[18] + +Her school term of fifteen weeks, for which she was paid $30, was over +early in September, just in time for her to be at home for Guelma's +wedding to Aaron McLean, and afterward she stayed on to teach the +village school in Center Falls. This made it possible for her to join +in the social life of the neighborhood. Often the young people drove +to nearby villages, twenty buggies in procession. On a drive to +Saratoga, her escort asked her to give up teaching to marry him. She +refused, as she did again a few years later when a Quaker elder tried +to entice her with his fine house, his many acres, and his sixty cows. +Although she had reached the age of twenty, when most girls felt they +should be married, she was still particular, and when a friend married +a man far inferior mentally, she wrote in her diary, "'Tis strange, +'tis passing strange that a girl possessed of common sense should be +willing to marry a lunatic--but so it is."[19] + +During the next few years, both she and Hannah taught school almost +continuously, for $2 to $2.50 a week. Time and time again Susan +replaced a man who had been discharged for inefficiency. Although she +made a success of the school, she discovered that she was paid only a +fourth the salary he had received, and this rankled. + +Almost everywhere except among Quakers, she encountered a false +estimate of women which she instinctively opposed. After spending +several months with relatives in Vermont, where she had the unexpected +opportunity of studying algebra, she stopped over for a visit with +Guelma and Aaron in Battenville, where Aaron was a successful +merchant. Eagerly she told them of her latest accomplishment. Aaron +was not impressed. Later at dinner when she offered him the delicious +cream biscuits which she had baked, he remarked with his most +tantalizing air of male superiority, "I'd rather see a woman make +biscuits like these than solve the knottiest problem in algebra." + +"There is no reason," she retorted, "why she should not be able to do +both."[20] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888 (Washington, +1888), p. 163. + +[2] Charles B. Waite, "Who Were the Voters in the Early History of +This Country?" _Chicago Law Times_, Oct., 1888. + +[3] Janet Whitney, _Abigail Adams_ (Boston, 1947), p. 129. In 1776, +Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, at the Continental +Congress in Philadelphia, "In the new code of laws which I suppose it +will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the +ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors! +Do not put such unlimited powers into the hands of husbands. Remember +all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and +attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a +rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we +have no voice or representation." Ethel Armes, _Stratford Hall_ +(Richmond, Va., 1936), pp. 206-209. + +[4] Under the Missouri Compromise, Maine was admitted as a free state, +Missouri as a slave state, and slavery was excluded from all of the +Louisiana Purchase, north of latitude 36 deg.31'. + +[5] The meeting house, built in 1783, is still standing. It is owned +by the town of Adams, and cared for by the Adams Society of Friends +Descendants. Susan traced her ancestry to William Anthony of Cologne +who migrated to England and during the reign of Edward VI, was made +Chief Graver of the Royal Mint and Master of the Scales, holding this +office also during the reign of Queen Mary and part of Queen +Elizabeth's reign. In 1634, one of his descendants, John Anthony, +settled in Rhode Island, and just before the Revolution, his great +grandson, David, Susan's great grandfather, bought land near Adams, +Massachusetts, then regarded as the far West. + +[6] Ida Husted Harper, _The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony_ +(Indianapolis, 1898), I, p. 10. + +[7] Daniel and Susannah Richardson Read gave Lucy and Daniel Anthony +land for their home, midway between the Anthony and Read farms. Here +Susan was born in a substantial two-story, frame house, built by her +father. + +[8] Ms., Diary, 1837. + +[9] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 25. + +[10] Ms., Diary, Jan. 21, Feb. 10, 1838 + +[11] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 31. + +[12] Ms., Diary, Feb. 26, 1838. + +[13] _Ibid._, Feb. 6, 1838. + +[14] _Ibid._, May 7, 1838. + +[15] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 36. + +[16] _Ibid._, p. 37. + +[17] _Ibid._, p. 40. + +[18] _Ibid._, p. 39. + +[19] _Ibid._ + +[20] _Ibid._, pp. 43-44. + + + + +WIDENING HORIZONS + + +Unable to recoup his business losses in Center Falls and losing even +the satinet factory, Susan's father had looked about in Virginia and +Michigan as well as western New York for an opportunity to make a +fresh start. A farm on the outskirts of Rochester looked promising, +and with the money which Lucy Anthony had inherited from Grandfather +Read and which had been held for her by Uncle Joshua Read, the first +payment had been made on the farm by Uncle Joshua, who held it in his +name and leased it to Daniel.[21] Had it been turned over to Susan's +mother, it would have become Daniel Anthony's property under the law +and could have been claimed by his creditors. + +Only Susan, Merritt, and Mary climbed into the stage with their +parents, early in November 1845, on the first lap of their journey to +their new home, near Rochester, New York. Guelma and Hannah[22] were +both married and settled in homes of their own, and young Daniel, +clerking in Lenox, had decided to stay behind. + +After a visit with Uncle Joshua at Palatine Bridge, they boarded a +line boat on the Erie Canal, taking with them their gray horse and +wagon; and surrounded by their household goods, they moved slowly +westward. Standing beside her father in the warm November sunshine, +Susan watched the strong horses on the towpath, plodding patiently +ahead, and heard the wash of the water against the prow and the noisy +greeting of boat horns. As they passed the snug friendly villages +along the canal and the wide fertile fields, now brown and bleak after +the harvest, she wondered what the new farm would be like and what the +future would bring; and at night when the lights twinkled in the +settlements along the shore, she thought longingly of her old home and +the sisters she had left behind. + +After a journey of several days, they reached Rochester late in the +afternoon. Her father took the horse and wagon off the boat, and in +the chill gray dusk drove them three miles over muddy roads to the +farm. It was dark when they arrived, and the house was cold, empty, +and dismal, but after the fires were lighted and her mother had cooked +a big kettle of cornmeal mush, their spirits revived. Within the next +few days they transformed it into a cheerful comfortable home. + +The house on a little hill overlooked their thirty-two acres. Back of +it was the barn, a carriage house, and a little blacksmith shop.[23] +Looking out over the flat snowy fields toward the curving Genesee +River and the church steeples in Rochester, Susan often thought +wistfully of the blue hills around Center Falls and Battenville and of +the good times she had had there. + +The winter was lonely for her in spite of the friendliness of their +Quaker neighbors, the De Garmos, and the Quaker families in Rochester +who called at once to welcome them. Her father found these neighbors +very congenial and they readily interested him in the antislavery +movement, now active in western New York. Within the next few months, +several antislavery meetings were held in the Anthony home and opened +a new world to Susan. For the first time she heard of the Underground +Railroad which secretly guided fugitive slaves to Canada and of the +Liberty party which was making a political issue of slavery. She +listened to serious, troubled discussion of the annexation of Texas, +bringing more power to the proslavery block, which even the +acquisition of free Oregon could not offset. She read antislavery +tracts and copies of William Lloyd Garrison's _Liberator_, borrowed +from Quaker friends; and on long winter evenings, as she sat by the +fire sewing, she talked over with her father the issues they raised. + +When spring came and the trees and bushes leafed out, she took more +interest in the farm, discovering its good points one by one--the +flowering quince along the driveway, the pinks bordering the walk to +the front door, the rosebushes in the yard, and cherry trees, currant +and gooseberry bushes in abundance. Her father planted peach and apple +orchards and worked the "sixpenny farm,"[24] as he called it, to the +best of his ability, but the thirty-two acres seemed very small +compared with the large Anthony and Read farms in the Berkshires, and +he soon began to look about for more satisfying work. This he found a +few years later with the New York Life Insurance Company, then +developing its business in western New York. Very successful in this +new field, he continued in it the rest of his life, but he always kept +the farm for the family home. + + * * * * * + +The first member of the family to leave the Rochester farm was Susan. +The cherry trees were in bloom when she received an offer from +Canajoharie Academy to teach the female department. As Canajoharie was +across the river from Uncle Joshua Read's home in Palatine Bridge and +he was a trustee of the academy, she read between the lines his kindly +interest in her. He was an influential citizen of that community, a +bank director and part owner of the Albany-Utica turnpike and the +stage line to Schenectady. Accepting the offer at once, she made the +long journey by canal boat to Canajoharie, and early in May 1846 was +comfortably settled in the home of Uncle Joshua's daughter, Margaret +Read Caldwell. + +She soon loved Margaret as a sister and was devoted to her children. +None of her new friends were Quakers and she enjoyed their social life +thoroughly, leaving behind her forever the somber clothing which she +had heretofore regarded as a mark of righteousness. She began her +school with twenty-five pupils and a yearly salary of approximately +$110. This was more than she had ever earned before, and for the first +time in her life she spent her money freely on herself. + +Her first quarterly examination, held before the principal, the +trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in +addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."[25] She had +dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple, +white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a +gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her +smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new +prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so +pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some +young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy +of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon +saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for +the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room +of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced. + +In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but because of +the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two +years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only +a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott. +In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents, +"Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of +building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My +room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not +pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at +least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school +of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty +compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is +wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest +and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage to +persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my +fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That +is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches, +cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in +bloom and all about the farming business."[26] + + * * * * * + +During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active +abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this +time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform +movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the +country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, +but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting +that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off +when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance +societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters +of Temperance. + +Canajoharie had its Daughters of Temperance, and Susan, long an +advocate of temperance, gladly joined the crusade, and made her first +speech when the Daughters of Temperance held a supper meeting to +interest the people of the village. Few women at this time could have +been persuaded to address an audience of both men and women, believing +this to be bold, unladylike, and contrary to the will of God; but the +young Quaker, whose grandmother and aunts had always spoken in +Meeting when the spirit moved them, was ready to say her word for +temperance, taking it for granted that it was not only woman's right +but her responsibility to speak and work for social reform. + +About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the +hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her +amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out +Susan B. Anthony. + +"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly +regard,"[27] she confided to her family. + +She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages +together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its +formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now +despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of +reform. + +"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the +social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females +possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but +we do believe that were they en masse to discontinue the use of wine +and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not +one of the opposite sex, who has any claim to the title of gentleman, +would so insult them as to come into their presence after having +quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement.... +Ladies! There is no neutral position for us to assume...."[28] + +The next day the village buzzed with talk of the meeting; only a few +criticized Susan for speaking in public, and almost all agreed that +she was the smartest woman in Canajoharie. + +While she was busy with her temperance work, there were stirrings +among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early +summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated +petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible +sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to +own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made +it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name. +Heretofore all property owned by a woman at marriage and all received +by gift or inheritance had at once become her husband's and he had had +the right to sell it or will it away without her consent and to +collect the rents or the income. The new law was welcomed in the +Anthony household, for now Lucy Anthony's inheritance, which had +bought the Rochester farm, could at last be put in her own name and +need no longer be held for her by her brother. + +In the newspapers in July, Susan read scornful, humorous, and +indignant reports of a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New +York, at which women had issued a Declaration of Sentiments, +announcing themselves men's equals. They had protested against legal, +economic, social, and educational discriminations and asked for the +franchise. A woman's rights convention in the 1840s was a startling +event. Women, if they were "ladies" did not attend public gatherings +where politics or social reforms were discussed, because such subjects +were regarded as definitely out of their sphere. Much less did they +venture to call meetings of their own and issue bold resolutions. + +Susan was not shocked by this break with tradition, but she did not +instinctively come to the defense of these rebellious women, nor +champion their cause. She was amused rather than impressed. Yet +Lucretia Mott's presence at the convention aroused her curiosity. +Among her father's Quaker friends in Rochester, she had heard only +praise of Mrs. Mott, and she herself, when a pupil at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, had been inspired by Mrs. Mott's remarks at +Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia. + +So far Susan had encountered few barriers because she was a woman. She +had had little personal contact with the hardships other women +suffered because of their inferior legal status. To be sure, it had +been puzzling to her as child that Sally Hyatt, the most skillful +weaver in her father's mill, had never been made overseer, but the +fact that her mother had not the legal right to hold property in her +own name did not at the time make an impression upon her. Brought up +as a Quaker, she had no obstacles put in the way of her education. She +had an exceptional father who was proud of his daughters' intelligence +and ability and respected their opinions and decisions. Her only real +complaint was the low salary she had been obliged to accept as a +teacher because she was a woman. She sensed a feeling of male +superiority, which she resented, in her brother-in-law, Aaron McLean, +who did not approve of women preachers and who thought it more +important for a woman to bake biscuits than to study algebra. She met +the same arrogance of sex in her Cousin Margaret's husband, but she +had not analyzed the cause, or seen the need of concerted action by +women. + +Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise +that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in +the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister +Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had +signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her +cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father +showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she +laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the +times."[29] She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with +good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so +enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's +rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her +black curls and ruddy cheeks"[30] and about Lucretia Mott "with her +Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both +"speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest +was finally aroused and she decided she would like to meet these women +and talk with them. There was no opportunity for this, however, before +she returned to Canajoharie for another year of teaching. + +It proved to be a year of great sadness because of the illness of her +cousin Margaret whom she loved dearly. In addition to her teaching, +she nursed Margaret and looked after the house and children. She saw +much to discredit the belief that men were the stronger and women the +weaker sex, and impatient with Margaret's husband, she wrote her +mother that there were some drawbacks to marriage that made a woman +quite content to remain single. In explanation she added, "Joseph had +a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one +for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine +pain, yours is sort of a natural consequence.'"[31] + +Within a few weeks Margaret died. This was heart-breaking for Susan, +and without her cousin, Canajoharie offered little attraction. +Teaching had become irksome. The new principal was uncongenial, a +severe young man from the South whose father was a slaveholder. Susan +longed for a change, and as she read of the young men leaving for the +West, lured by gold in California, she envied them their adventure and +their opportunity to explore and conquer a whole new world. + +[Illustration: Frederick Douglass] + + * * * * * + +The peaches were ripe when Susan returned to the farm. The orchard +which her father had planted, now bore abundantly. Restless and eager +for hard physical work, she discarded the stylish hoops which impeded +action, put on an old calico dress, and spent days in the warm +September sunshine picking peaches. Then while she preserved, canned, +and pickled them, there was little time to long for pioneering in the +West. + +She enjoyed the active life on the farm for she was essentially a +doer, most happy when her hands and her mind were busy. As she helped +with the housework, wove rag carpet, or made shirts by hand for her +father and brothers, she dreamed of the future, of the work she might +do to make her life count for something. Teaching, she decided, was +definitely behind her. She would not allow her sister Mary's interest +in that career to persuade her otherwise, even if teaching were the +only promising and well-thought-of occupation for women. Reading the +poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she was deeply stirred and looked +forward romantically to some great and useful life work. + +The _Liberator_, with its fearless denunciation of Negro slavery, now +came regularly to the Anthony home, and as she pored over its pages, +its message fired her soul. Eagerly she called with her father at the +home of Frederick Douglass, who had recently settled in Rochester and +was publishing his paper, the _North Star_. Not only did she want to +show friendliness to this free Negro of whose intelligence and +eloquence she had heard so much, but she wanted to hear first-hand +from him and his wife of the needs of his people. + +Almost every Sunday the antislavery Quakers met at the Anthony farm. +The Posts, the Hallowells, the De Garmos, and the Willises were sure +to be there. Sometimes they sent a wagon into the city for Frederick +Douglass and his family. Now and then famous abolitionists joined the +circle when their work brought them to western New York--William Lloyd +Garrison, looking with fatherly kindness at his friends through his +small steel-rimmed spectacles; Wendell Phillips, handsome, learned, +and impressive; black-bearded, fiery Parker Pillsbury; and the +friendly Unitarian pastor from Syracuse, the Reverend Samuel J. May. +Susan, helping her mother with dinner for fifteen or twenty, was torn +between establishing her reputation as a good cook and listening to +the interesting conversation. She heard them discuss woman's rights, +which had divided the antislavery ranks. They talked of their +antislavery campaigns and the infamous compromises made by Congress to +pacify the powerful slaveholding interests. Like William Lloyd +Garrison, all of them refused to vote, not wishing to take any part in +a government which countenanced slavery. They called the Constitution +a proslavery document, advocated "No Union with Slaveholders," and +demanded immediate and unconditional emancipation. All about them and +with their help the Underground Railroad was operating, circumventing +the Fugitive Slave Law and guiding Negro refugees to Canada and +freedom. Amy and Isaac Post's barn, Susan knew, was a station on the +Underground, and the De Garmos and Frederick Douglass almost always +had a Negro hidden away. She heard of riots and mobs in Boston and +Ohio; but in Rochester not a fugitive was retaken and there were no +street battles, although the New York _Herald_ advised the city to +throw its "nigger printing press"[32] into Lake Ontario and banish +Douglass to Canada. + +As the Society of Friends in Rochester was unfriendly to the +antislavery movement, Susan with her father and other liberal Hicksite +Quakers left it for the Unitarian church. Here for the first time they +listened to "hireling ministry" and to a formal church service with +music. This was a complete break with what they had always known as +worship, but the friendly Christian spirit expressed by both minister +and congregation made them soon feel at home. This new religious +fellowship put Susan in touch with the most advanced thought of the +day, broke down some of the rigid precepts drilled into her at Deborah +Moulson's seminary, and encouraged liberalism and tolerance. Although +there had been austerity in the outward forms of her Quaker training, +it had developed in her a very personal religion, a strong sense of +duty, and a high standard of ethics, which always remained with her. +It had fostered a love of mankind that reached out spontaneously to +help the needy, the unfortunate, and the oppressed, and this now +became the driving force of her life. It led her naturally to seek +ways and means to free the Negro from slavery and to turn to the +temperance movement to wipe out the evil of drunkenness. + +These were the days when the reformed drunkard, John B. Gough, was +lecturing throughout the country with the zeal of an evangelist, +getting thousands to sign the total-abstinence pledge. Inspired by his +example, the Daughters of Temperance were active in Rochester. They +elected Susan their president, and not only did she plan suppers and +festivals to raise money for their work but she organized new +societies in neighboring towns. Her more ambitious plans for them were +somewhat delayed by home responsibilities which developed when her +father became an agent of the New York Life Insurance Company. This +took him away from home a great deal, and as both her brothers were +busy with work of their own and Mary was teaching, it fell to Susan to +take charge of the farm. She superintended the planting, the +harvesting, and the marketing, and enjoyed it, but she did not let it +crowd out her interest in the causes which now seemed so vital. + +Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ came regularly to the farm, for +the Anthonys, like many others throughout the country, had come to +depend upon it for what they felt was a truthful report of the news. +In this day of few magazines, it met a real need, and Susan, poring +over its pages, not only kept in touch with current events, but found +inspiration in its earnest editorials which so often upheld the ideals +which she felt were important. She found thought-provoking news in the +full and favorable report of the national woman's rights convention +held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Better informed now +through her antislavery friends about this new movement for woman's +rights, she was ready to consider it seriously and she read all the +stirring speeches, noting the caliber of the men and women taking +part. Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, and Lucretia Mott were there, as +well as Lucy Stone, that appealing young woman of whose eloquence on +the antislavery platform Susan had heard so much, and Abby Kelley +Foster, whose appointment to office in the American Antislavery +Society had precipitated a split in the ranks on the "woman question." + + * * * * * + +A year later, when Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen spoke at +antislavery meetings in Rochester, Susan had her first opportunity to +meet this fearless woman. Listening to Abby's speeches and watching +the play of emotion on her eager Irish face under the Quaker bonnet, +Susan wondered if she would ever have the courage to follow her +example. Like herself, Abby had started as a schoolteacher, but after +hearing Theodore Weld speak, had devoted herself to the antislavery +cause, traveling alone through the country to say her word against +slavery and facing not only the antagonism which abolition always +provoked, but the unreasoning prejudice against public speaking by +women, which was fanned into flame by the clergy. For listening to +Abby Kelley, men and women had been excommunicated. Mobs had jeered at +her and often pelted her with rotten eggs. She had married a +fellow-abolitionist, Stephen Foster, even more unrelenting than she. + +Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make +an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them +on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's ability to hold +the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and +wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence. + +Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her +apprenticeship by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and +traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out +of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear +William Lloyd Garrison and the English abolitionist, George Thompson, +and was the guest of a temperance colleague, Amelia Bloomer, an +enterprising young woman who was editing a temperance paper for women, +_The Lily_. + +To her surprise Susan found Amelia in the bloomer costume about which +she had read in _The Lily_. Introduced in Seneca Falls by Elizabeth +Smith Miller, the costume, because of its comfort, had so intrigued +Amelia that she had advocated it in her paper and it had been dubbed +with her name. Looking at Amelia's long full trousers, showing beneath +her short skirt but modestly covering every inch of her leg, Susan was +a bit startled. Yet she could understand the usefulness of the costume +even if she had no desire to wear it herself. In fact she was more +than ever pleased with her new gray delaine dress with its long full +skirt. + +Seneca Falls, however, had an attraction for Susan far greater than +either William Lloyd Garrison or Amelia Bloomer, for it was the home +of Elizabeth Cady Stanton whom she had longed to meet ever since 1848 +when her parents had reported so enthusiastically about her and the +Rochester woman's rights convention. Walking home from the antislavery +meeting with Mrs. Bloomer, Susan met Mrs. Stanton. She liked her at +once and later called at her home. They discussed abolition, +temperance, and woman's rights, and with every word Susan's interest +grew. Mrs. Stanton's interest in woman's rights and her forthright, +clear thinking made an instant appeal. Never before had Susan had such +a satisfactory conversation with another woman, and she thought her +beautiful. Mrs. Stanton's deep blue eyes with their mischievous +twinkle, her rosy cheeks and short dark hair gave her a very youthful +appearance, and it was hard for Susan to realize she was the mother of +three lively boys. + +Susan listened enthralled while Mrs. Stanton told how deeply she had +been moved as a child by the pitiful stories of the women who came to +her father's law office, begging for relief from the unjust property +laws which turned over their inheritance and their earnings to their +husbands. For the first time, Susan heard the story of the exclusion +of women delegates from the World's antislavery convention in London, +in 1840, which Mrs. Stanton had attended with her husband and where +she became the devoted friend of Lucretia Mott. She now better +understood why these two women had called the first woman's rights +convention in 1848 at which Mrs. Stanton had made the first public +demand for woman suffrage. + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"] + +They talked about the bloomer costume which Mrs. Stanton now wore and +about dress reform which at the moment seemed to Mrs. Stanton an +important phase of the woman's rights movement, and she pointed out to +Susan the advantages of the bloomer in the life of a busy housekeeper +who ran up and down stairs carrying babies, lamps, and buckets of +water. She praised the freedom it gave from uncomfortable stays and +tight lacing, confident it would be a big factor in improving the +health of women. + +Thoroughly interested, Susan left Seneca Falls with much to think +about, but not yet converted to the bloomer costume, or even to woman +suffrage. Of one thing, however, she was certain. She wanted this +woman of vision and courage for her friend. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[21] Anthony Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New +York. + +[22] Hannah Anthony married Eugene Mosher, a merchant of Easton, New +York, on September 4, 1845. + +[23] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, New York. + +[24] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 48. + +[25] _Ibid._, p. 50. + +[26] May 28, 1848, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. + +[27] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 53. + +[28] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[29] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888, p. 327. + +[30] To Nora Blatch, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar +College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York. + +[31] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 52. + +[32] Amy H. Croughton, _Antislavery Days in Rochester_ (Rochester, +N.Y., 1936). Anyone implicated in the escape of a slave was liable to +$1000 fine, to the payment of $1000 to the owner of the fugitive, and +to a possible jail sentence of six months. + + + + +FREEDOM TO SPEAK + + +Susan was soon rejoicing at the prospect of meeting Lucy Stone and +Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_. Mrs. Stanton had +invited her to Seneca Falls to discuss with them and other influential +men and women the founding of a people's college. Unhesitatingly she +joined forces with Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone to insist that the +people's college be opened to women on the same terms as men. Lucy had +proved the practicability of this as a student at Oberlin, the first +college to admit women, and was one of the first women to receive a +college degree. However, to suggest coeducation in those days was +enough to jeopardize the founding of a college, and Horace Greeley +stood out against them, his babylike face, fringed with throat +whiskers, getting redder by the moment as he begged them not to +agitate the question. + +The people's college did not materialize, but out of this meeting grew +a friendship between Susan, Elizabeth Stanton, and Lucy Stone, which +developed the woman's rights movement in the United States. Susan +discovered at once that Lucy, like Mrs. Stanton, was an ardent +advocate of woman's rights. Brought up in a large family on a farm in +western Massachusetts where a woman's lot was an unending round of +hard work with no rights over her children or property, Lucy had seen +much to make her rebellious. Resolving to free herself from this +bondage, she had worked hard for an education, finally reaching +Oberlin College. Here she held out for equal rights in education, and +now as she went through the country, pleading for the abolition of +slavery, she was not only putting into practice woman's right to +express herself on public affairs, but was scattering woman's rights +doctrine wherever she went. Listening to this rosy-cheeked, +enthusiastic young woman with her little snub nose and soulful gray +eyes, Susan began to realize how little opposition in comparison she +herself had met because she was a woman. Not only had her father +encouraged her to become a teacher, but he had actually aroused her +interest in such causes as abolition, temperance, and woman's rights, +while both Lucy and Mrs. Stanton had met disapproval and resistance +all the way. + +[Illustration: Lucy Stone] + +She found Lucy, as well as Mrs. Stanton, in the bloomer dress, +praising its convenience. As Lucy traveled about lecturing, in all +kinds of weather, climbing on trains, into carriages, and walking on +muddy streets, she found it much more practical and comfortable than +the fashionable long full skirts. Nevertheless, there was discomfort +in being stared at on the streets and in the chagrin of her friends. +This reform was much on their minds and they discussed it pro and con, +for Mrs. Stanton was facing real persecution in Seneca Falls, with +boys screaming "breeches" at her when she appeared in the street and +with her husband's political opponents ridiculing her costume in their +campaign speeches. Both women, however, felt it their duty to bear +this cross to free women from the bondage of cumbersome clothing, +hoping always that the bloomer, because of its utility, would win +converts and finally become the fashion. Susan admired their courage, +but still could not be persuaded to put on the bloomer. + +Fired with their zeal, she began planning what she herself might do +to rouse women. The idea of a separate woman's rights movement did not +as yet enter her mind. Her thoughts turned rather to the two national +reform movements already well under way, temperance and antislavery. +While a career as an antislavery worker appealed strongly to her, she +felt unqualified when she measured herself with the courageous Grimke +sisters from South Carolina, or with Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone, +and the eloquent men in the movement. She had made a place for herself +locally in temperance societies, and she decided that her work was +there--to make women an active, important part of this reform. + +That winter, as a delegate of the Rochester Daughters of Temperance, +she went with high hopes to the state convention of the Sons of +Temperance in Albany, where she visited Lydia Mott and her sister +Abigail, who lived in a small house on Maiden Lane. Both Lydia and +Abigail, because of their independence, interested Susan greatly. They +supported themselves by "taking in" boarders from among the leading +politicians in Albany. They also kept a men's furnishings store on +Broadway and made hand-ruffled shirt bosoms and fine linen accessories +for Thurlow Weed, Horatio Seymour, and other influential citizens. +Their political contacts were many and important, and yet they were +also among the very few in that conservative city who stood for +temperance, abolition of slavery, and woman's rights. Their home was a +rallying point for reformers and a refuge for fugitive slaves. It was +to be a second home to Susan in the years to come. + +When Susan and the other women delegates entered the convention of the +Sons of Temperance, they looked forward proudly, if a bit timidly, to +taking part in the meetings, but when Susan spoke to a motion, the +chairman, astonished that a woman would be so immodest as to speak in +a public meeting, scathingly announced, "The sisters were not invited +here to speak, but to listen and to learn."[33] + +This was the first time that Susan had been publicly rebuked because +she was a woman, and she did not take it lightly. Leaving the hall +with several other indignant women delegates, amid the critical +whisperings of those who remained "to listen and to learn," she +hurried over to Lydia's shop to ask her advice on the next step to be +taken. Lydia, delighted that they had had the spirit to leave the +meeting, suggested they engage the lecture room of the Hudson Street +Presbyterian Church and hold a meeting of their own that very night. +She went with them to the office of her friend Thurlow Weed, the +editor of the _Evening Journal_, who published the whole story in his +paper. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four] + +Well in advance of the meeting, Susan was at the church, feeling very +responsible, and when she saw Samuel J. May enter, she was greatly +relieved. He had read the notice in the _Evening Journal_ and +persuaded a friend to come with him. To see his genial face in the +audience gave her confidence, for he would speak easily and well if +others should fail her. Only a few people drifted into the meeting, +for the night was snowy and cold. The room was poorly lighted, the +stove smoked, and in the middle of the speeches, the stovepipe fell +down. Yet in spite of all this, a spirit of independence and +accomplishment was born in that gathering and plans were made to call +a woman's state temperance convention in Rochester with Susan in +charge. + +All this Susan reported to her new friend, Elizabeth Stanton, who +promised to help all she could, urging that the new organization lead +the way and not follow the advice of cautious, conservative women. +Susan agreed, and as a first step in carrying out this policy, she +asked Mrs. Stanton to make the keynote speech of the convention. Soon +the Woman's State Temperance Society was a going concern with Mrs. +Stanton as president and Susan as secretary. There was no doubt about +its leading the way far ahead of the rank and file of the temperance +movement when Mrs. Stanton, with Susan's full approval, recommended +divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, declaring, "Let us petition our +State government so to modify the laws affecting marriage and the +custody of children that the drunkard shall have no claims on wife and +child."[34] + +Such independence on the part of women could not be tolerated, and +both the press and the clergy ruthlessly denounced the Woman's State +Temperance Society. Susan, however, did not take this too seriously, +familiar as she was with the persecution antislavery workers endured +when they frankly expressed their convictions. + + * * * * * + +Now recognized as the leader of women's temperance groups in New York, +Susan traveled throughout the state, organizing temperance societies, +getting subscriptions for Amelia Bloomer's temperance paper, _The +Lily_, and attending temperance conventions in spite of the fact that +she met determined opposition to the participation of women. Impressed +by the success of political action in Maine, where in 1851 the first +prohibition law in the country had been passed, she now signed her +letters, "Yours for Temperance Politics."[35] She appealed to women to +petition for a Maine law for New York and brought a group of women +before the legislature for the first time for a hearing on this +prohibition bill. Realizing then that women's indirect influence could +be of little help in political action, she saw clearly that women +needed the vote. + +However, it was the woman's rights convention in Syracuse, New York, +in September 1852, which turned her thoughts definitely in the +direction of votes for women. It was the first woman's rights +gathering she had ever attended and she was enthusiastic over the +people she met. She talked eagerly with the courageous Jewish +lecturer, Ernestine Rose; with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston, one of +the first women physicians, who was waging a battle against taxation +without representation; with Clarina Nichols of Vermont, editor of +the _Windham County Democrat_, and with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the +youngest member of the convention. All of these became valuable, loyal +friends in the years ahead. Susan renewed her acquaintance with Lucy +Stone, and met Antoinette Brown who had also studied at Oberlin +College and was now the first woman ordained as a minister. With real +pleasure she greeted Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now +Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, +the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her +long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's +sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and +Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared +at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with +loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply +intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore +ultrafashionable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights +advocates were frumps wearing the hideous bloomer, she could not +forgive them for what to her seemed bad taste. How could such women, +she asked herself, hope to represent the earnest, hard-working women +who must be the backbone of the equal rights movement? Always +forthright, when a principle was at stake, she expressed her feelings +frankly when James Mott, serving with her on the nominating committee, +proposed Elizabeth Oakes Smith for president. His reply, that they +must not expect all women to dress as plainly as the Friends, in no +way quieted her opposition. To her delight, Lucretia Mott was elected, +and her dignity and poise as president of this large convention of +2,000 won the respect even of the critical press. Susan was elected +secretary and so clearly could her voice be heard as she read the +minutes and the resolutions that the Syracuse _Standard_ commented, +"Miss Anthony has a capital voice and deserves to be clerk of the +Assembly."[36] + +[Illustration: James and Lucretia Mott] + +Not all of the newspapers were so friendly. Some labeled the gathering +"a Tomfoolery convention" of "Aunt Nancy men and brawling women"; +others called it "the farce at Syracuse,"[37] but for Susan it marked +a milestone. Never before had she heard so many earnest, intelligent +women plead so convincingly for property rights, civil rights, and the +ballot. Never before had she seen so clearly that in a republic women +as well as men should enjoy these rights. The ballot assumed a new +importance for her. Her conversion to woman suffrage was complete. + + * * * * * + +This new interest in the vote was steadily nurtured by Elizabeth +Stanton, whom Susan now saw more frequently. Whenever she could, Susan +stopped over in Seneca Falls for a visit. Here she found inspiration, +new ideas, and good advice, and always left the comfortable Stanton +home ready to battle for the rights of women. While Susan traveled +about, organizing temperance societies and attending conventions, Mrs. +Stanton, tied down at home by a family of young children, wrote +letters and resolutions for her and helped her with her speeches. +Susan was very reluctant about writing speeches or making them. The +moment she sat down to write, her thoughts refused to come and her +phrases grew stilted. She needed encouragement, and Mrs. Stanton gave +it unstintingly, for she had grown very fond of this young woman whose +mental companionship she found so stimulating. + +During one of these visits, Susan finally put on the bloomer and cut +her long thick brown hair as part of the stern task of winning +freedom for women. It was not an easy decision and she came to it only +because she was unwilling to do less for the cause than Mrs. Stanton +or Lucy Stone. Comfortable as the new dress was, it always attracted +unfavorable attention and added fuel to the fire of an unfriendly +press. This fire soon scorched her at the World's Temperance +convention in New York, where women delegates faced the determined +animosity of the clergy, who held the balance of power and quoted the +Bible to prove that women were defying the will of God when they took +part in public meetings. Obliged to withdraw, the women held meetings +of their own in the Broadway Tabernacle, over which Susan presided +with a poise and confidence undreamed of a few months before. A +success in every way, they were nevertheless described by the press as +a battle of the sexes, a free-for-all struggle in which shrill-voiced +women in the bloomer costume were supported by a few "male Betties." +The New York _Sun_ spoke of Susan's "ungainly form rigged out in the +bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to laughter and ridicule +by her very motions on the platform."[38] Untruth was piled upon +untruth until dignified ladylike Susan with her earnest pleasing +appearance was caricatured into everything a woman should not be. Less +courageous temperance women now began to wonder whether they ought to +associate with such a strong-minded woman as Susan B. Anthony. + +There were rumblings of discontent when the Woman's State Temperance +Society met in Rochester for its next annual convention in June 1853, +and Susan and Mrs. Stanton were roundly criticized because they did +not confine themselves to the subject of temperance and talked too +much about woman's rights. Not only was Mrs. Stanton defeated for the +presidency but the by-laws were amended to make men eligible as +officers. Men had been barred when the first by-laws were drafted by +Susan and Mrs. Stanton because they wished to make the society a +proving ground for women and were convinced that men holding office +would take over the management, and women, less experienced, would +yield to their wishes. + +This now proved to be the case, as the men began to do all the +talking, calling for a new name for the society and insisting that all +discussion of woman's rights be ruled out. In the face of this clear +indication of a determined new policy which few of the women wished to +resist, Susan refused re-election as secretary and both she and Mrs. +Stanton resigned. + +This was Susan's first experience with intrigue and her first rebuff +by women whom she had sincerely tried to serve. Defeated, hurt, and +uncertain, she poured out her disappointment in troubled letters to +Elizabeth Stanton, who, with the steadying touch of an older sister, +roused her with the challenge, "We have other and bigger fish to +fry."[39] + + * * * * * + +A few months later, Susan was off on a new crusade as she attended the +state teachers' convention in Rochester. Of the five hundred teachers +present, two-thirds were women, but there was not the slightest +recognition of their presence. They filled the back seats of +Corinthian Hall, forming an inert background for the vocal minority, +the men. After sitting through two days' sessions and growing more and +more impatient as not one woman raised her voice, Susan listened, as +long as she could endure it, to a lengthy debate on the question, "Why +the profession of teacher is not as much respected as that of lawyer, +doctor, or minister."[40] Then she rose to her feet and in a +low-pitched, clear voice addressed the chairman. + +At the sound of a woman's voice, an astonished rustle of excitement +swept through the audience, and when the chairman, Charles Davies, +Professor of Mathematics at West Point, had recovered from his +surprise, he patronizingly asked, "What will the lady have?" + +"I wish, sir, to speak to the subject under discussion," she bravely +replied. + +Turning to the men in the front row, Professor Davies then asked, +"What is the pleasure of the convention?" + +"I move that she be heard," shouted an unexpected champion. Another +seconded the motion. After a lengthy debate during which Susan stood +patiently waiting, the men finally voted their approval by a small +majority, and Professor Davies, a bit taken aback, announced, "The +lady may speak." + +"It seems to me, gentlemen," Susan began, "that none of you quite +comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you +not see that so long as society says woman is incompetent to be a +lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, +every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that +he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that +teaching is a less lucrative profession; as here men must compete with +the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those +who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the +salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our +future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen." + +For a moment after this bombshell, there was complete silence. Then +three men rushed down the aisle to congratulate her, telling her she +had pluck, that she had hit the nail on the head, but the women near +by glanced scornfully at her, murmuring, "Who can that creature be?" + +Susan, however, had started a few women thinking and questioning, and +the next morning, Professor Davies, resplendent in his buff vest and +blue coat with brass buttons, opened the convention with an +explanation. "I have been asked," he said, "why no provisions have +been made for female lecturers before this association and why ladies +are not appointed on committees. I will answer." Then, in flowery +metaphor, he assured them that he would not think of dragging women +from their pedestals into the dust. + +"Beautiful, beautiful," murmured the women in the back rows, but Mrs. +Northrup of Rochester offered resolutions recognizing the right of +women teachers to share in all the privileges and deliberations of the +organization and calling attention to the inadequate salaries women +teachers received. These resolutions were kept before the meeting by a +determined group and finally adopted. Susan also offered the name of +Emma Willard as a candidate for vice-president, thinking the +successful retired principal of the Troy Female Seminary, now +interested in improving the public schools, might also be willing to +lend a hand in improving the status of women in this educational +organization. Mrs. Willard, however, declined the nomination, refusing +to be drawn into Susan's rebellion.[41] Susan, nevertheless, left the +convention satisfied that she had driven an entering wedge into +Professor Davies' male stronghold, and she continued battering at +this stronghold whenever she had an opportunity. She meant to put +women in office and to win approval for coeducation and equal pay. + + * * * * * + +Teachers' conventions, however, were only a minor part of her new +crusade, plans for which were still simmering in her mind and +developing from day to day. Going back to many of the towns where she +had held temperance meetings, she found that most of the societies she +had organized had disbanded because women lacked the money to engage +speakers or to subscribe to temperance papers. If they were married, +they had no money of their own and no right to any interest outside +their homes, unless their husbands consented. + +Discouraged, she wrote in her diary, "As I passed from town to town I +was made to feel the great evil of woman's entire dependency upon man +for the necessary means to aid on any and every reform movement. +Though I had long admitted the wrong, I never until this time so fully +took in the grand idea of pecuniary and personal independence. It +matters not how overflowing with benevolence toward suffering humanity +may be the heart of woman, it avails nothing so long as she possesses +not the power to act in accordance with these promptings. Woman must +have a purse of her own, and how can this be, so long as the _Wife_ is +denied the right to her individual and joint earnings. Reflections +like these, caused me to see and really feel that there was no true +freedom for Woman without the possession of all her property rights, +and that these rights could be obtained through legislation only, and +so, the sooner the demand was made of the Legislature, the sooner +would we be likely to obtain them."[42] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[33] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 65. + +[34] _The Lily_, May, 1852. + +[35] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn +Gage, _History of Woman Suffrage_ (New York, 1881), I, p. 489. + +[36] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 77. + +[37] _Ibid._, p. 78. + +[38] _Ibid._, p. 90. + +[39] Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch, Eds., _Elizabeth +Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences_ +(New York, 1922), II, p. 52. + +[40] Aug., 1853, Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 98-99; _History of Woman +Suffrage_, I, pp. 513-515. + +[41] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[42] Ms., Diary, 1853. + + + + +A PURSE OF HER OWN + + +The next important step in winning further property rights for women, +it seemed to Susan, was to hold a woman's rights convention in the +conservative capital city of Albany. This was definitely a challenge +and she at once turned to Elizabeth Stanton for counsel. Somehow she +must persuade Mrs. Stanton to find time in spite of her many household +cares to prepare a speech for the convention and for presentation to +the legislature. As eager as Susan to free women from unjust property +laws, Mrs. Stanton asked only that Susan get a good lawyer, and one +sympathetic to the cause, to look up New York State's very worst laws +affecting women.[43] She could think and philosophize while she was +baking and sewing, she assured Susan, but she had no time for +research. Susan produced the facts for Mrs. Stanton, and while she +worked on the speech, Susan went from door to door during the cold +blustery days of December and January 1854 to get signatures on her +petitions for married women's property rights and woman suffrage. Some +of the women signed, but more of them slammed the door in her face, +declaring indignantly that they had all the rights they wanted. Yet at +this time a father had the legal authority to apprentice or will away +a child without the mother's consent and an employer was obliged by +law to pay a wife's wages to her husband. + +In spite of the fact that the bloomer costume made it easier for her +to get about in the snowy streets, she now found it a real burden +because it always attracted unfavorable attention. Boys jeered at her +and she was continually conscious of the amused, critical glances of +the men and women she met. She longed to take it off and wear an +inconspicuous trailing skirt, but if she had been right to put it on, +it would be weakness to take it off. By this time Elizabeth Stanton +had given it up except in her own home, convinced that it harmed the +cause and that the physical freedom it gave was not worth the price. +"I hope you have let down a dress and a petticoat," she now wrote +Susan. "The cup of ridicule is greater than you can bear. It is not +wise, Susan, to use up so much energy and feeling in that way. You +can put them to better use. I speak from experience."[44] + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her son, Henry] + +Lucy Stone too was wavering and was thinking of having her next dress +made long. The three women corresponded about it, and Lucy as well as +Mrs. Stanton urged Susan to give up the bloomer. With these entreaties +ringing in her ears, Susan set out for Albany in February 1854 to make +final arrangements for the convention. On the streets in Albany, in +the printing offices, and at the capitol, men stared boldly at her, +some calling out hilariously, "Here comes my bloomer." She endured it +bravely until her work was done, but at night alone in her room at +Lydia Mott's she poured out her anguish in letters to Lucy. "Here I am +known only," she wrote, "as one of the women who ape men--coarse, +brutal men! Oh, I can not, can not bear it any longer."[45] + +Even so she did not let down the hem of her skirt, but wore her +bloomer costume heroically during the entire convention, determined +that she would not be stampeded into a long skirt by the jeers of +Albany men or the ridicule of the women. However, she made up her mind +that immediately after the convention she would take off the bloomer +forever. She had worn it a little over a year. Never again could she +be lured into the path of dress reform. + +The Albany _Register_ scoffed at the "feminine propagandists of +woman's rights" exhibiting themselves in "short petticoats and +long-legged boots."[46] Nevertheless, the convention aroused such +genuine interest that evening meetings were continued for two weeks, +featuring as speakers Ernestine Rose, Antoinette Brown, Samuel J. May, +and William Henry Channing, the young Unitarian minister from +Rochester; and when the men appeared on the platform, the audience +called for the women. + +Susan could not have asked for anything better than Elizabeth +Stanton's moving plea for property rights for married women and the +attention it received from the large audience in the Senate Chamber. +Her heart swelled with pride as she listened to her friend, and so +important did she think the speech that she had 50,000 copies printed +for distribution. + +To back up Mrs. Stanton's words with concrete evidence of a demand for +a change in the law, Susan presented petitions with 10,000 signatures, +6,000 asking that married women be granted the right to their wages +and 4,000 venturing to be recorded for woman suffrage. + +Enthusiastic over her Albany success, she impetuously wrote Lucy +Stone, "Is this not a wonderful time, an era long to be +remembered?"[47] + +Although the legislature failed to act on the petitions, she knew that +her cause had made progress, for never before had women been listened +to with such respect and never had newspapers been so friendly. She +cherished these words of praise from Lucy, "God bless you, Susan dear, +for the brave heart that will work on even in the midst of +discouragement and lack of helpers. Everywhere I am telling people +what your state is doing, and it is worth a great deal to the cause. +The example of positive action is what we need."[48] + + * * * * * + +Susan continued her "example of positive action," this time against +the Kansas-Nebraska bill, pending in Congress, which threatened repeal +of the Missouri Compromise by admitting Kansas and Nebraska as +territories with the right to choose for themselves whether they +would be slave or free. "I feel that woman should in the very capitol +of the nation lift her voice against that abominable measure," she +wrote Lucy Stone, with whom she was corresponding more and more +frequently. "It is not enough that H. B. Stowe should write."[49] +Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had been published in 1852 +and during that year 300,000 copies were sold. + +[Illustration: Ernestine Rose] + +With Ernestine Rose, Susan now headed for Washington. These two women +had been drawn together by common interests ever since they had met in +Syracuse in 1852. Susan was not frightened, as many were, by +Ernestine's reputed atheism. She appreciated Ernestine's intelligence, +her devotion to woman's rights, and her easy eloquence. Conscious of +her own limitations as an orator, she recognized her need of Ernestine +for the many meetings she planned for the future. + +As they traveled to Washington together, she learned more about this +beautiful, impressive, black-haired Jewess from Poland, who was ten +years her senior. The daughter of a rabbi, Ernestine had found the +limitations of orthodox religion unbearable for a woman and had left +her home to see and learn more of the world in Prussia, Holland, +France, Scotland, and England. She had married an Englishman +sympathetic to her liberal views, and together they had come to New +York where she began her career as a lecturer in 1836 when speaking in +public branded women immoral. She spoke easily and well on education, +woman's rights, and the evils of slavery. Her slight foreign accent +added charm to her rich musical voice, and before long she was in +demand as far west as Ohio and Michigan. With a colleague as +experienced as Ernestine, Susan dared arrange for meetings even in the +capital of the nation. + +Washington was tense over the slavery issue when they arrived, and +Ernestine's friends warned her not to mention the subject in her +lectures. Unheeding she commented on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, but the +press took no notice and her audiences showed no signs of +dissatisfaction. In fact, two comparatively unknown women, billed to +lecture on the "Educational and Social Rights of Women" and the +"Political and Legal Rights of Women," attracted little attention in a +city accustomed to a blaze of Congressional oratory. Hoping to draw +larger audiences and to lend dignity to their meetings, Susan asked +for the use of the Capitol on Sunday, but was refused because +Ernestine was not a member of a religious society. Making an attempt +for Smithsonian Hall, Ernestine was told it could not risk its +reputation by presenting a woman speaker.[50] + +A failure financially, their Washington venture was rich in +experience. Susan took time out for sightseeing, visiting the +"President's house" and Mt. Vernon, which to her surprise she found in +a state of "delapidation and decay." "The mark of slavery o'ershadows +the whole," she wrote in her diary. "Oh the thought that it was here +that he whose name is the pride of this Nation, was the _Slave +Master_."[51] + +Again and again in the Capitol, she listened to heated debates on the +Kansas-Nebraska bill, astonished at the eloquence and fervor with +which the "institution of slavery" could be defended. Seeing slavery +first-hand, she abhorred it more than ever and observed with dismay +its degenerating influence on master as well as slave. She began to +feel that even she herself might be undermined by it almost +unwittingly and confessed to her diary, "This noon, I ate my dinner +without once asking myself are these human beings who minister to my +wants, Slaves to be bought and sold and hired out at the will of a +master?... Even I am getting _accustomed_ to _Slavery_ ... so much so +that I have ceased continually to be made to feel its blighting, +cursing influence."[52] + + * * * * * + +A few months later, Susan and Ernestine were in Philadelphia at a +national woman's rights convention, and when Ernestine was proposed +for president, Susan had her first opportunity to champion her new +friend. A foreigner and a free-thinker, Ernestine encountered a great +deal of prejudice even among liberal reformers, and Susan was +surprised at the strength of feeling against her. Impressed during +their trip to Washington by Ernestine's essentially fine qualities and +her value to the cause, Susan fought for her behind the scenes, +insisting that freedom of religion or the freedom to have no religion +be observed in woman's rights conventions, and she had the +satisfaction of seeing Ernestine elected to the office she so richly +deserved. + +Freedom of religion or freedom to have no religion had become for +Susan a principle to hold on to, as she listened at these early +woman's rights meetings to the lengthy fruitless discussions regarding +the lack of Scriptural sanction for women's new freedom. Usually a +clergyman appeared on the scene, volubly quoting the Bible to prove +that any widening of woman's sphere was contrary to the will of God. +But always ready to refute him were Antoinette Brown, now an ordained +minister, William Lloyd Garrison, and occasionally Susan herself. To +the young Quaker broadened by her Unitarian contacts and unhampered by +creed or theological dogma, such debates were worse than useless; they +deepened theological differences, stirred up needless antagonisms, +solved no problems, and wasted valuable time. + +During this convention, she was one of the twenty-four guests in +Lucretia Mott's comfortable home at 238 Arch Street. Every meal, with +its stimulating discussions, was a convention in itself. Susan's great +hero, William Lloyd Garrison, sat at Lucretia's right at the long +table in the dining room, Susan on her left, and at the end of each +meal, when the little cedar tub filled with hot soapy water was +brought in and set before Lucretia so that she could wash the silver, +glass, and fine china at the table, Susan dried them on a snowy-white +towel while the interesting conversation continued. There was talk of +woman's rights, of temperance, and of spiritualism, which was +attracting many new converts. There were thrilling stories of the +opening of the West and the building of transcontinental railways; but +most often and most earnestly the discussion turned to the progress of +the antislavery movement, to the infamous Kansas-Nebraska bill, to the +New England Emigrant Aid Company,[53] which was sending free-state +settlers to Kansas, to the weakness of the government in playing again +and again into the hands of the proslavery faction. Most of them saw +the country headed toward a vast slave empire which would embrace +Cuba, Mexico, and finally Brazil; and William Lloyd Garrison fervently +reiterated his doctrine, "No Union with Slaveholders." + +Before leaving home Susan had heard first-hand reports of the bitter +bloody antislavery contest in Kansas from her brother Daniel, who had +just returned from a trip to that frontier territory with settlers +sent out by the New England Emigrant Aid Company. Now talking with +William Lloyd Garrison, she found herself torn between these two great +causes for human freedom, abolition and woman's rights, and it was +hard for her to decide which cause needed her more. + + * * * * * + +She had not, however, forgotten her unfinished business in New York +State. The refusal of the legislature to amend the property laws had +doubled her determination to continue circulating petitions until +married women's civil rights were finally recognized. It took courage +to go alone to towns where she was unknown to arrange for meetings on +the unpopular subject of woman's rights. Not knowing how she would be +received, she found it almost as difficult to return to such towns as +Canajoharie where she had been highly respected as a teacher six years +before. In Canajoharie, however, she was greeted affectionately by her +uncle Joshua Read. He and his friends let her use the Methodist church +for her lecture, and when the trustees of the academy urged her to +return there to teach, Uncle Joshua interrupted with a vehement "No!" +protesting that others could teach but it was Susan's work "to go +around and set people thinking about the laws."[54] + +Returning to the scene of her girlhood in Battenville and Easton, +visiting her sisters Guelma and Hannah, and meeting many of her old +friends, Susan realized as never before how completely she had +outgrown her old environment. In her enthusiasm for her new work, she +exposed "many of her heresies," and when her friends labeled William +Lloyd Garrison an agnostic and rabble rouser, she protested that he +was the most Christlike man she had ever known. "Thus it is belief, +not Christian benevolence," she confided to her diary in 1854, "that +is made the modern test of Christianity."[55] + +After eight strenuous months away from home, she was welcomed warmly +by a family who believed in her work. She found abolition uppermost in +everyone's mind. Her brother Merritt, fired by Daniel's tales of the +West and the antislavery struggle in Kansas, was impatient to join the +settlers there and could talk of nothing else. While he poured out the +latest news about Kansas, he and a cousin Mary Luther helped Susan +fold handbills for future woman's rights meetings. Susan listened +eagerly and approvingly as he told of the 750 free-state settlers who +during the past summer had gone out to Kansas, traveling up the +Missouri on steamboats and over lonely trails in wagons marked +"Kansas." Most of them were not abolitionists but men who wanted +Kansas a free-labor state which they could develop with their own hard +work. She heard of the ruthless treatment these "Yankee" settlers +faced from the proslavery Missourians who wanted Kansas in the slavery +bloc. There was bloodshed and there would be more. John Brown's sons +had written from Kansas, "Send us guns. We need them more than +bread."[56] Merritt was ready and eager to join John Brown. + +The Anthony farm was virtually a hotbed of insurrection with Merritt +planning resistance in Kansas and Susan reform in New York. Susan +mapped out an ambitious itinerary, hoping to canvass with her +petitions every county in the state. With her father as security, she +borrowed money to print her handbills and notices, and then wrote +Wendell Phillips asking if any money for a woman's rights campaign had +been raised by the last national convention. He replied with his own +personal check for fifty dollars. His generosity and confidence +touched her deeply, for already he had become a hero to her second +only to William Lloyd Garrison. This tall handsome intellectual, a +graduate of Harvard and an unsurpassed orator, had forfeited friends, +social position, and a promising career as a lawyer to plead for the +slave. He was also one of the very few men who sympathized with and +aided the woman's rights cause. + +Horace Greeley too proved at this time to be a good friend, writing, +"I have your letter and your programme, friend Susan. I will publish +the latter in all our editions, but return your dollars."[57] + +Her earnestness and ability made a great appeal to these men. They +marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but +wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted +and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained +impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and +intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William +Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction +to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement. +Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist from New Hampshire, +broad-shouldered, dark-bearded, with blazing eyes and almost fanatical +zeal, had become her devoted friend. He liked nothing better than to +tease her about her idleness and pretend to be in search of more work +for her to do. + + * * * * * + +So impatient was Susan to begin her New York State campaign that she +left home on Christmas Day to hold her first meeting on December 26, +1854, at Mayville in Chatauqua County. The weather was cold and damp, +but the four pounds of candles which she had bought to light the court +house flickered cheerily while the small curious audience, gathered +from several nearby towns, listened to the first woman most of them +had ever heard speak in public. She would be, they reckoned, worth +hearing at least once. + +Traveling from town to town, she held meetings every other night. +Usually the postmasters or sheriffs posted her notices in the town +square and gave them to the newspapers and to the ministers to +announce in their churches. Even in a hostile community she almost +always found a gallant fair-minded man to come to her aid, such as the +hotel proprietor who offered his dining room for her meetings when +the court house, schoolhouse, and churches were closed to her, or the +group of men who, when the ministers refused to announce her meetings, +struck off handbills which they distributed at the church doors at the +close of the services. The newspapers too were generally friendly. + +As men were the voters with power to change the laws, she aimed to +attract them to her evening meetings, and usually they came, seeking +diversion, and listened respectfully. Some of them scoffed, others +condemned her for undermining the home, but many found her reasoning +logical and by their questions put life into the meetings. A few even +encouraged their wives to enlist in the cause. + +The women, on the other hand, were timid or indifferent, although she +pointed out to them the way to win the legal right to their earnings +and their children. It was difficult to find among them a rebellious +spirit brave enough to head a woman's rights society. + +"Susan B. Anthony is in town," wrote young Caroline Cowles, a +Canandaigua school girl, in her diary at this time. "She made a +special request that all seminary girls should come to hear her as +well as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audience and +she talked very plainly about our rights and how we ought to stand up +for them and said the world would never go right until the women had +just as much right to vote and rule as the men.... When I told +Grandmother about it, she said she guessed Susan B. Anthony had +forgotten that St. Paul said women should keep silence. I told her, +no, she didn't, for she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if +he had lived in these times ... he would have been as anxious to have +women at the head of the government as she was. I could not make +Grandmother agree with her at all."[58] + +Many of the towns Susan visited were not on a railroad. Often after a +long cold sleigh ride she slept in a hotel room without a fire; in the +morning she might have to break the ice in the pitcher to take the +cold sponge bath which nothing could induce her to omit since she had +begun to follow the water cure, a new therapeutic method then in +vogue. + +For a time Ernestine Rose came to her aid and it was a relief to turn +over the meetings to such an accomplished speaker. But for the most +part Susan braved it alone. Steadily adding names to her petitions +and leaving behind the leaflets which Elizabeth Stanton had written, +she aroused a glimmer of interest in a new valuation of women. + +[Illustration: Parker Pillsbury] + +On the stagecoach leaving Lake George on a particularly cold day, she +found to her surprise a wealthy Quaker, whom she had met at the Albany +convention, so solicitous of her comfort that he placed heated planks +under her feet, making the long ride much more bearable. He turned up +again, this time with his own sleigh, at the close of one of her +meetings in northern New York, and wrapped in fur robes, she drove +with him behind spirited gray horses to his sisters' home to stay over +Sunday, and then to all her meetings in the neighborhood. It was +pleasant to be looked after and to travel in comfort and she enjoyed +his company, but when he urged her to give up the hard life of a +reformer to become his wife, there was no hesitation on her part. She +had dedicated her life to freeing women and Negroes and there could be +no turning aside. If she ever married, it must be to a man who would +encourage her work for humanity, a great man like Wendell Phillips, or +a reformer like Parker Pillsbury. + +Returning home in May 1855, she took stock of her accomplishments. She +had canvassed fifty-four counties and sold 20,000 tracts. Her expenses +had been $2,291 and she had paid her way by selling tracts and by a +small admission charge for her meetings. She even had seventy dollars +over and above all expenses. She promptly repaid the fifty dollars +which Wendell Phillips had advanced, but he returned it for her next +campaign. + +However, her heart quailed at the prospect of another such winter, as +she recalled the long, bitter-cold days of travel and the indifference +of the women she was trying to help. Even the unfailing praise of her +family and of Elizabeth Stanton, even the kindness and interest of the +new friends she made paled into insignificance before the thought of +another lone crusade. She was exhausted and suffering with rheumatic +pains, and yet she would not rest, but prepared for an ambitious +convention at Saratoga Springs, then the fashionable summer resort of +the East. + +She had braved this center of fashion and frivolity the year before +with her message of woman's rights, and to her great surprise, crowds +seeking entertainment had come to her meetings, their admission fees +and their purchase of tracts making the venture a financial success. +Here was fertile ground. Susan was counting on Lucy Stone and +Antoinette Brown to help her, for Elizabeth Stanton, then expecting +her sixth baby, was out of the picture. Now, to her dismay, Lucy and +Antoinette married the Blackwell brothers, Henry and Samuel. + +Fearing that they too like Elizabeth Stanton would be tied down with +babies and household cares, Susan saw a bleak lonely road ahead for +the woman's rights movement. She did so want her best speakers and +most valuable workers to remain single until the spade work for +woman's rights was done. Almost in a panic at the prospect of being +left to carry on the Saratoga convention alone, Susan wrote Lucy +irritable letters instead of praising her for drawing up a marriage +contract and keeping her own name. Later, however, she realized what +it had meant for Lucy to keep her own name, and then she wrote her, "I +am more and more rejoiced that you have declared by actual doing that +a woman has a name and may retain it all through her life."[59] + +So persistently did she now pursue Lucy and Antoinette that they both +kept their promise to speak at the Saratoga convention, Lucy traveling +all the way from Cincinnati where she was visiting in the Blackwell +home. Lucy was loudly cheered by a large audience, eager to see this +young woman whose marriage had attracted so much notice in the press. +In fact Lucy Stone, who had kept her own name and who with her husband +had signed a marriage protest against the legal disabilities of a +married woman, was as much of a novelty in this fashionable circle as +one of Barnum's high-priced curiosities. + +Pleased at Lucy's reception, Susan surveyed the audience +hopefully--handsome men in nankeen trousers, red waistcoats, white +neckcloths, and gray swallowtail coats, sitting beside beautiful young +women wearing gowns of bombazine and watered silk with wide hoop +skirts and elaborately trimmed bonnets which set off their curls. To +her delight, they also applauded Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first +woman minister they had ever seen, and Ernestine Rose with her +appealing foreign accent. They clapped loudly when she herself asked +them to buy tracts and contribute to the work. + +Complimentary as this was, she did not flatter herself that they had +endorsed woman's rights. That they had come to her meetings in large +numbers while vacationing in Saratoga Springs, this was important. In +some a spark of understanding glowed, and this spark would light +others. They came from the South, from the West, and from the large +cities of the East. There were railroad magnates among them, rich +merchants, manufacturers, and politicians. Charles F. Hovey, the +wealthy Boston dry-goods merchant, listened attentively to every word, +and in the years that followed became a generous contributor to the +cause. + + * * * * * + +Realizing how very tired she was and that she must feel more +physically fit before continuing her work, Susan decided to take the +water cure at her cousin Seth Rogers' Hydropathic Institute in +Worcester, Massachusetts. This well-known sanitorium prescribed water +internally and externally as a remedy for all kinds of ailments, and +in an age when meals were overhearty, baths infrequent, and clothing +tight and confining, the drinking of water, tub baths, showers, and +wet packs had enthusiastic advocates. The soothing baths relaxed +Susan and the leisure to read refreshed and strengthened her. She +read, one after another, Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_, George Sand's +_Consuelo_, Madame de Stael's _Corinne_, then Frances Wright's _A Few +Days in Athens_ and Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, making +notes in her diary (1855) of passages she particularly liked. She +discussed current events with her cousin Seth on long drives in the +country, finding him a delightful companion, well-read, understanding, +and interested in people and causes. He took her to her first +political meeting, where she was the only woman present and had a seat +on the platform. It was one of the first rallies of the new Republican +party which had developed among rebellious northern Whigs, +Free-Soilers, and anti-Nebraska Democrats who opposed the extension of +slavery. After listening to the speakers, among them Charles Sumner, +she drew these conclusions: "Had the accident of birth given me place +among the aristocracy of sex, I doubt not I should be an active, +zealous advocate of Republicanism; unless perchance, I had received +that higher, holier light which would have lifted me to the sublime +height where now stand Garrison, Phillips, and all that small band +whose motto is 'No Union with Slaveholders.'"[60] + +After listening to the satisfying sermons of Thomas Wentworth +Higginson at his Free Church in Worcester, she wrote in her diary, "It +is plain to me now that it is not sitting under preaching I dislike, +but the fact that most of it is not of a stamp that my soul can +respond to."[61] + +In September she interrupted "the cure" to attend a woman's rights +meeting in Boston, and with Lucy Stone, Antoinette and Ellen Blackwell +visited in the home of the wealthy merchant, Francis Jackson, making +many new friends, among them his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, whose +unhappy marriage was to prove a blessing to the woman's rights +cause.[62] + +At tea at the Garrisons', she met many of the "distinguished" men and +women she had "worshiped" from afar. She heard Theodore Parker preach +a sermon which filled her soul, and with Mr. Garrison called on him in +his famous library. "It really seemed audacious in me to be ushered +into such a presence and on such a commonplace errand as to ask him to +come to Rochester to speak in a course of lectures I am planning," she +wrote her family, "but he received me with such kindness and +simplicity that the awe I felt on entering was soon dissipated. I then +called on Wendell Phillips in his sanctum for the same purpose. I have +invited Ralph Waldo Emerson by letter and all three have promised to +come. In the evening with Mr. Jackson's son James, Ellen Blackwell and +I went to see _Hamlet_. In spite of my Quaker training, I find I enjoy +all these worldly amusements intensely."[63] + + * * * * * + +In January 1856, Susan set out again on a woman's rights tour of New +York State to gather more signatures for her petitions. This time she +persuaded Frances D. Gage of Ohio, a temperance worker and popular +author of children's stories, to join her. An easy extemporaneous +speaker, Mrs. Gage was an attraction to offer audiences, who drove +eight or more miles to hear her; and in the cheerless hotels at night +and on the long cold sleigh rides from town to town, she was a +congenial companion. + +The winter was even colder and snowier than that of the year before. +"No trains running," Susan wrote her family, "and we had a 36-mile +ride in a sleigh.... Just emerged from a long line of snow drifts and +stopped at this little country tavern, supped, and am now roasting +over the hot stove."[64] + +Confronted almost daily with glaring examples of the injustices women +suffered under the property laws, she was more than ever convinced +that her work was worth-while. "We stopped at a little tavern where +the landlady was not yet twenty and had a baby, fifteen months old," +she reported. "Her supper dishes were not washed and her baby was +crying.... She rocked the little thing to sleep, washed the dishes and +got our supper; beautiful white bread, butter, cheese, pickles, apple +and mince pie, and excellent peach preserves. She gave us her warm +room to sleep in.... She prepared a six o'clock breakfast for us, +fried pork, mashed potatoes, mince pie, and for me at my special +request, a plate of sweet baked apples and a pitcher of rich milk.... +When we came to pay our bill, the dolt of a husband took the money and +put it in his pocket. He had not lifted a finger to lighten that +woman's burdens.... Yet the law gives him the right to every dollar +she earns, and when she needs two cents to buy a darning needle she +has to ask him and explain what she wants it for."[65] + +When after a few weeks Mrs. Gage was called home by illness in her +family, Susan appealed hopefully to Lucretia Mott's sister, Martha C. +Wright, in Auburn, New York, "You can speak so much better, so much +more wisely, so much more everything than I can." Then she added, "I +should like a particular effort made to call out the Teachers, the +Sewing Women, the Working Women generally--Can't you write something +for your papers that will make them feel that it is for them that we +work more than [for] the wives and daughters of the rich?"[66] Mrs. +Wright, however, could help only in Auburn, and Susan was obliged to +continue her scheduled meetings alone. She interrupted them only to +present her petitions to the legislature. + +The response of the legislature to her two years of hard work was a +sarcastic, wholly irrelevant report issued by the judiciary committee +some weeks later to a Senate roaring with laughter. In the Albany +_Register_ Susan read with mounting indignation portions of this +infuriating report: "The ladies always have the best places and the +choicest tidbit at the table. They have the best seats in cars, +carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in winter, the coolest in +summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie, +front or back. A lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a +gentleman; and at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one +lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman. +It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your committee, being +a majority ... that if there is any inequality or oppression in the +case, the gentlemen are the sufferers. They, however, have presented +no petitions for redress, having doubtless made up their minds to +yield to an inevitable destiny."[67] + +Why, Susan wondered sadly, were woman's rights only a joke to most +men--something to be laughed at even in the face of glaring proofs of +the law's injustice. + +There was encouragement, however, in the letters which now came from +Lucy Stone in Ohio: "Hurrah Susan! Last week this State Legislature +passed a law giving wives equal property rights, and to mothers equal +baby rights with fathers. So much is gained. The petitions which I set +on foot in Wisconsin for suffrage have been presented, made a rousing +discussion, and then were tabled with three men to defend them!... In +Nebraska too, the bill for suffrage passed the House.... The world +moves!"[68] + +The world was moving in Great Britain as well, for as Susan read in +her newspaper, women there were petitioning Parliament for married +women's property rights, and among the petitioners were her +well-beloved Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. +Gaskell, and Charlotte Cushman. Better still, Harriet Taylor, inspired +by the example of woman's rights conventions in America, had written +for the _Westminster Review_ an article advocating the enfranchisement +of women. + +All this reassured Susan, even if New York legislators laughed at her +efforts. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[43] Judge William Hay of Saratoga Springs, New York. + +[44] Feb. 19, 1854, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[45] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 116. Among those who wore the bloomer +costume were Angelina and Sarah Grimke, many women in sanitoriums and +some of the Lowell, Mass. mill workers. In Ohio, the bloomer was so +popular that 60 women in Akron wore it at a ball, and in Battle Creek, +Michigan, 31 attended a Fourth of July celebration in the bloomer. +Amelia Bloomer, moving to the West wore it for eight years. Garrison, +Phillips, and William Henry Channing disapproved of the bloomer +costume, but Gerrit Smith continued to champion it and his daughter +wore it at fashionable receptions in Washington during his term in +Congress. + +[46] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 608. + +[47] 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[48] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 111-112. + +[49] March 3, 1854 (copy), Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial +Collection. + +[50] Ms., Diary, March 24, 28, 1854. + +[51] _Ibid._, March 29, 1854. + +[52] _Ibid._, March 30, 1854. + +[53] The New England Emigrant Aid Company, headed by Eli Thayer of +Worcester, was formed to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, offering +reduced fare and farm equipment. Their first settlers reached Kansas +in August, 1854, founding the town of Lawrence in honor of one of +their chief patrons, the wealthy Amos Lawrence of Massachusetts. + +[54] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 121. + +[55] Diary, April 28, 1854. + +[56] Leonard C. Ehrlich, _God's Angry Man_ (New York, 1941), p. 57. + +[57] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 122. + +[58] Caroline Cowles Richards, _Village Life in America_ (New York, +1913), p. 49. + +[59] 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[60] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 133. + +[61] _Ibid._ + +[62] Eliza J. Eddy's husband, James Eddy, took their two young +daughters away from their mother and to Europe, causing her great +anguish. This led her father, Francis Jackson, to give liberally to +the woman's rights cause. Mrs. Eddy, herself, left a bequest of +$56,000 to be divided between Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. + +[63] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 131-133. + +[64] _Ibid._, p. 138. + +[65] _Ibid._, p. 139. + +[66] Jan. 18, 1856, Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith +College. + +[67] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 140-141. + +[68] May 25, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + + + + +NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS + + +Susan's thoughts during the summer of 1856 often strayed from woman's +rights meetings toward Kansas, where her brother Merritt had settled +on a claim near Osawatomie. Well aware of his eagerness to help John +Brown, she knew that he must be in the thick of the bloody antislavery +struggle. In fact the whole Anthony family had been anxiously waiting +for news from Merritt ever since the wires had flashed word in May +1856 of the burning of Lawrence by proslavery "border ruffians" from +Missouri and of John Brown's raid in retaliation at Pottawatomie +Creek. + +Merritt had built a log cabin at Osawatomie. While Susan was at home +in September, the newspapers reported an attack by proslavery men on +Osawatomie in which thirty out of fifty settlers were killed. Was +Merritt among them? Finally letters came through from him. Susan read +and reread them, assuring herself of his safety. Although ill at the +time, he had been in the thick of the fight, but was unharmed. Weak +from the exertion he had crawled back to his cabin on his hands and +knees and had lain there ill and alone for several weeks. + +Parts of Merritt's letters were published in the Rochester _Democrat_, +and the city took sides in the conflict, some papers claiming that his +letters were fiction. Susan wrote Merritt, "How much rather would I +have you at my side tonight than to think of your daring and enduring +greater hardships even than our Revolutionary heroes. Words cannot +tell how often we think of you or how sadly we feel that the terrible +crime of this nation against humanity is being avenged on the heads of +our sons and brothers.... Father brings the _Democrat_ giving a list +of killed, wounded, and missing and the name of our Merritt is not +therein, but oh! the slain are sons, brothers, and husbands of others +as dearly loved and sadly mourned."[69] + +With difficulty, she prepared for the annual woman's rights +convention, for the country was in a state of unrest not only over +Kansas and the whole antislavery question, but also over the +presidential campaign with three candidates in the field. Even her +faithful friends Horace Greeley and Gerrit Smith now failed her, +Horace Greeley writing that he could no longer publish her notices +free in the news columns of his _Tribune_, because they cast upon him +the stigma of ultraradicalism, and Gerrit Smith withholding his +hitherto generous financial support because woman's rights conventions +would not press for dress reform--comfortable clothing for women +suitable for an active life, which he believed to be the foundation +stone of women's emancipation. + +[Illustration: Merritt Anthony] + +She watched the lively bitter presidential campaign with interest and +concern. The new Republican party was in the contest, offering its +first presidential candidate, the colorful hero and explorer of the +far West, John C. Fremont. She had leanings toward this virile young +party which stood firmly against the extension of slavery in the +territories, and discussed its platform with Elizabeth and Henry B. +Stanton, both enthusiastically for "Fremont and Freedom." Yet she was +distrustful of political parties, for they eventually yielded to +expediency, no matter how high their purpose at the start. Her ideal +was the Garrisonian doctrine, "No Union with Slaveholders" and +"Immediate Unconditional Emancipation," which courageously faced the +"whole question" of slavery. There was no compromise among +Garrisonians. + +With the burning issue of slavery now uppermost in her mind, she began +seriously to reconsider the offer she had received from the American +Antislavery Society, shortly after her visit to Boston in 1855, to act +as their agent in central and western New York. Unable to accept at +that time because she was committed to her woman's rights program, she +had nevertheless felt highly honored that she had been chosen. Still +hesitating a little, she wrote Lucy Stone, wanting reassurance that no +woman's rights work demanded immediate attention. "They talk of +sending two companies of Lecturers into this state," she wrote Lucy, +"wish me to lay out the route of each one and accompany one. They seem +to think me possessed of a vast amount of executive ability. I shrink +from going into Conventions where speaking is expected of me.... I +know they want me to help about finance and that part I like and am +good for nothing else."[70] + +She also had the farm home on her mind. With her father in the +insurance business, her brothers now both in Kansas, her sister Mary +teaching in the Rochester schools and "looking matrimonially-wise," +and her mother at home all alone, Susan often wondered if it might not +be as much her duty to stay there to take care of her mother and +father as it would be to make a home comfortable for a husband. +Sometimes the quietness of such a life beckoned enticingly. But after +the disappointing November elections which put into the presidency the +conservative James Buchanan, from whom only a vacillating policy on +the slavery issue could be expected, she wrote Samuel May, Jr., the +secretary of the American Antislavery Society, "I shall be very glad +if I am able to render even the most humble service to this cause. +Heaven knows there is need of earnest, effective radical workers. The +heart sickens over the delusions of the recent campaign and turns +achingly to the unconsidered _whole question_."[71] + +His reply came promptly, "We put all New York into your control and +want your name to all letters and your hand in all arrangements." + +For $10 a week and expenses, Susan now arranged antislavery meetings, +displayed posters bearing the provocative words, "No Union with +Slaveholders," planned tours for a corps of speakers, among them +Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and two free +Negroes, Charles Remond and his sister, Sarah. + +In debt from her last woman's rights campaign, she could not afford a +new dress for these tours, but she dyed a dark green the merino which +she had worn so proudly in Canajoharie ten years before, bought cloth +to match for a basque, and made a "handsome suit." "With my Siberian +squirrel cape, I shall be very comfortable," she noted in her +diary.[72] + +She had met indifference and ridicule in her campaigns for woman's +rights. Now she faced outright hostility, for northern businessmen had +no use for abolition-mad fanatics, as they called anyone who spoke +against slavery. Abolitionists, they believed, ruined business by +stirring up trouble between the North and the South. + +Usually antislavery meetings turned into debates between speakers and +audience, often lasting until midnight, and were charged with +animosity which might flame into violence. All of the speakers lived +under a strain, and under emotional pressure. Consequently they were +not always easy to handle. Some of them were temperamental, a bit +jealous of each other, and not always satisfied with the tours Susan +mapped out for them. She expected of her colleagues what she herself +could endure, but they often complained and sometimes refused to +fulfill their engagements. + +When no one else was at hand, she took her turn at speaking, but she +was seldom satisfied with her efforts. "I spoke for an hour," she +confided to her diary, "but my heart fails me. Can it be that my +stammering tongue ever will be loosed?" + +Lucy Stone, who spoke with such ease, gave her advice and +encouragement. "You ought to cultivate your power of expression," she +wrote. "The subject is clear to you and you ought to be able to make +it so to others. It is only a few years ago that Mr. Higginson told me +he could not speak, he was so much accustomed to writing, and now he +is second only to Phillips. 'Go thou and do likewise.'"[73] + +In March 1857, the Supreme Court startled the country with the Dred +Scott decision, which not only substantiated the claim of +Garrisonians that the Constitution sanctioned slavery and protected +the slaveholder, but practically swept away the Republican platform of +no extention of slavery in the territories. The decision declared that +the Constitution did not apply to Negroes, since they were citizens of +no state when it was adopted and therefore had not the right of +citizens to sue for freedom or to claim freedom in the territories; +that the Missouri Compromise had always been void, since Congress did +not have the right to enact a law which arbitrarily deprived citizens +of their property. + +Reading the decision word for word with dismay and pondering +indignantly over the cold letter of the law, Susan found herself so +aroused and so full of the subject that she occasionally made a +spontaneous speech, and thus gradually began to free herself from +reliance on written speeches. She spoke from these notes: "Consider +the fact of 4,000,000 slaves in a Christian and republican +government.... Antislavery prayers, resolutions, and speeches avail +nothing without action.... Our mission is to deepen sympathy and +convert into right action: to show that the men and women of the North +are slaveholders, those of the South slave-owners. The guilt rests on +the North equally with the South. Therefore our work is to rouse the +sleeping consciousness of the North....[74] + +"We ask you to feel as if you, yourselves, were the slaves. The +politician talks of slavery as he does of United States banks, tariff, +or any other commercial question. We demand the abolition of slavery +because the slave is a human being and because man should not hold +property in his fellowman.... We say disobey every unjust law; the +politician says obey them and meanwhile labor constitutionally for +repeal.... We preach revolution, the politicians, reform." + +Instinctively she reaffirmed her allegiance to the doctrine, "No Union +with Slaveholders," and she gloried in the courage of Garrison, +Phillips, and Higginson, who had called a disunion convention, +demanding that the free states secede. It was good to be one of this +devoted band, for she sincerely believed that in the ages to come "the +prophecies of these noble men and women will be read with the same +wonder and veneration as those of Isaiah and Jeremiah inspire +today."[75] + +She gave herself to the work with religious fervor. Even so, she could +not make her antislavery meetings self-supporting, and at the end of +the first season, after paying her speakers, she faced a deficit of +$1,000. This troubled her greatly but the Antislavery Society, +recognizing her value, wrote her, "We cheerfully pay your expenses and +want to keep you at the head of the work." They took note of her +"business enterprise, practical sagacity, and platform ability," and +looked upon the expenditure of $1,000 for the education and +development of such an exceptional worker as a good investment. + +This new experience was a good investment for Susan as well. She made +many new friends. She won the further respect, confidence, and good +will of men like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Francis +Jackson. Her friendship with Parker Pillsbury deepened. "I can truly +say," she wrote Abby Kelley Foster, "my spirit has grown in grace and +that the experience of the past winter is worth more to me than all my +Temperance and Woman's Rights labors--though the latter were the +school necessary to bring me into the Antislavery work."[76] + +Only the crusading spirit of the "antislavery apostles"[77] and what +to them seemed the desperate state of the nation made the hard +campaigning bearable. The animosity they faced, the cold, the poor +transportation, the long hours, and wretched food taxed the physical +endurance of all of them. "O the crimes that are committed in the +kitchens of this land!"[78] wrote Susan in her diary, as she ate heavy +bread and the cake ruined with soda and drank what passed for coffee. +A good cook herself, she had little patience with those who through +ignorance or carelessness neglected that art. Equally bad were the +food fads they had to endure when they were entertained in homes of +otherwise hospitable friends of the cause. Raw-food diets found many +devotees in those days, and often after long cold rides in the +stagecoach, these tired hungry antislavery workers were obliged to sit +down to a supper of apples, nuts, and a baked mixture of coarse bran +and water. Nor did breakfast or dinner offer anything more. Facing +these diets seemed harder for the men than for Susan. Repeatedly in +such situations, they hurried away, leaving her to complete two-or +three-day engagements among the food cranks. How she welcomed a good +beefsteak and a pot of hot coffee at home after these long days of +fasting! + +A night at home now was sheer bliss, and she wrote Lucy Stone, "Here +I am once more in my own Farm Home, where my weary head rests upon my +own home pillows.... I had been gone _Four Months_, scarcely sleeping +the second night under the same roof."[79] + +It was good to be with her mother again, to talk with her father when +he came home from work and with Mary who had not married after all but +continued teaching in the Rochester schools. Guelma and her husband, +Aaron McLean, who had moved to Rochester, often came out to the farm +with their children. + +Turning for relaxation to work in the garden in the warm sun, Susan +thought over the year's experience and planned for the future. "I can +but acknowledge to myself that Antislavery has made me richer and +braver in spirit," she wrote Samuel May, Jr., "and that it is the +school of schools for the true and full development of the nobler +elements of life. I find my raspberry field looking finely--also my +strawberry bed. The prospect for peaches, cherries, plums, apples, and +pears is very promising--Indeed all nature is clothed in her most +hopeful dress. It really seems to me that the trees and the grass and +the large fields of waving grain did never look so beautifully as now. +It is more probable, however, that my soul has grown to appreciate +Nature more fully...."[80] + +Susan needed that growth of soul to face the events of the next few +years and do the work which lay ahead. The whole country was tense +over the slavery issue, which could no longer be pushed into the +background. On public platforms and at every fireside, men and women +were discussing the subject. Antislavery workers sensed the gravity of +the situation and felt the onrush of the impending conflict between +what they regarded as the forces of good and evil--freedom and +slavery. When the Republican leader, William H. Seward, spoke in +Rochester, of "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring +forces,"[81] he was expressing only what Garrisonian abolitionists, +like Susan, always had recognized. In the West, a tall awkward country +lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, debating with the suave Stephen A. Douglas, +declared with prophetic wisdom, "'A house divided against itself +cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently +half slave and half free.... It will become all one thing or all the +other.'"[82] + +So Susan believed, and she was doing her best to make it all free. +Not only was she holding antislavery meetings, making speeches, and +distributing leaflets whenever and wherever possible, but she was also +lobbying in Albany for a personal liberty bill to protect the slaves +who were escaping from the South. "Treason in the Capitol," the +Democratic press labeled efforts for a personal liberty bill, and as +Susan reported to William Lloyd Garrison,[83] even Republicans shied +away from it, many of them regarding Seward's "irrepressible conflict" +speech a sorry mistake. Such timidity and shilly-shallying were +repugnant to her. She could better understand the fervor of John Brown +although he fought with bullets. + +Yet John Brown's fervor soon ended in tragedy, sowing seeds of fear, +distrust, and bitter partisanship in all parts of the country. When, +in October 1859, the startling news reached Susan of the raid on +Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown, she sadly tried to piece +together the story of his failure. She admired and respected John +Brown, believing he had saved Kansas for freedom. That he had further +ambitious plans was common knowledge among antislavery workers, for he +had talked them over with Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the +three young militants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, and +Samuel Gridley Howe. Somehow these plans had failed, but she was sure +that his motives were good. He was imprisoned, accused of treason and +murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said, +implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing +the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so +completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end, +befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he had rescued +fugitive slaves. + +Scanning the _Liberator_ for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it +colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to +all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild, +apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by +insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added, +"Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the +right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers."[84] + +Behind closed doors and in public meetings, abolitionists pledged +their allegiance to John Brown's noble purpose. He had wanted no +bloodshed, they said, had no thought of stirring up slaves to brutal +revenge. The raid was to be merely a signal for slaves to arise, to +cast off slavery forever, to follow him to a mountain refuge, which +other slave insurrections would reinforce until all slaves were free. +To him the plan seemed logical and he was convinced it was +God-inspired. To some of his friends it seemed possible--just a step +beyond the Underground Railroad and hiding fugitive slaves. To Susan +he was a hero and a martyr. + +Southerners, increasingly fearful of slave insurrections, called John +Brown a cold-blooded murderer and accused Republicans--"black +Republicans," they classed them--of taking orders from abolitionists +and planning evil against them. To law-abiding northerners, John Brown +was a menace, stirring up lawlessness. Seward and Lincoln, speaking +for the Republicans, declared that violence, bloodshed, and treason +could not be excused even if slavery was wrong and Brown thought he +was right. All saw before them the horrible threat of civil war. + +During John Brown's trial, his friends did their utmost to save him. +The noble old giant with flowing white beard, who had always been more +or less of a legend, now to them assumed heroic proportions. His +calmness, his steadfastness in what he believed to be right captured +the imagination. + +The jury declared him guilty--guilty of treason, of conspiring with +slaves to rebel, guilty of murder in the first degree. The papers +carried the story, and it spread by word of mouth--the story of those +last tense moments in the courtroom when John Brown declared, "It is +unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interferred ... in +behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called +great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... it would have been all +right.... I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any +respecter of persons. I believe that to have interferred as I have +done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong but right. Now if +it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the +furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with +the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave +country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust +enactments, I say, let it be done...."[85] + +He was sentenced to die. + +Susan, sick at heart, talked all this over with her abolitionist +friends and began planning a meeting of protest and mourning in +Rochester if John Brown were hanged. She engaged the city's most +popular hall for this meeting, never thinking of the animosity she +might arouse, and as she went from door to door selling tickets, she +asked for contributions for John Brown's destitute family. She tried +to get speakers from among respected Republicans to widen the popular +appeal of the meeting, but her diary records, "Not one man of +prominence in religion or politics will identify himself with the John +Brown meeting."[86] Only a Free Church minister, the Rev. Abram Pryn, +and the ever-faithful Parker Pillsbury were willing to speak. + +There was still hope that John Brown might be saved and excitement ran +high. Some like Higginson, unwilling to let him die, wanted to rescue +him, but Brown forbade it. Others wanted to kidnap Governor Wise of +Virginia and hold him on the high seas, a hostage for John Brown. +Wendell Phillips was one of these. Parker Pillsbury, sending Susan the +latest news from "the seat of war" and signing his letter, "Faithfully +and fervently yours," wrote, "My voice is against any attempt at +rescue. It would inevitably, I fear, lead to bloodshed which could not +compensate nor be compensated. If the people dare murder their victim, +as they are determined to do, and in the name of the law ... the moral +effect of the execution will be without a parallel since the scenes on +Calvary eighteen hundred years ago, and the halter that day sanctified +shall be the cord to draw millions to salvation."[87] + +On Friday, December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. Through the North, +church bells tolled and prayers were said for him. Everywhere people +gathered together to mourn and honor or to condemn. In New York City, +at a big meeting which overflowed to the streets, it was resolved +"that we regard the recent outrage at Harper's Ferry as a crime, not +only against the State of Virginia, but against the Union itself...." +In Boston, however, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to a tremendous audience +of "the new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by +love of man into conflict and death ... who will make the gallows +glorious," and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recorded in his diary, "This +will be a great day in our history; the date of a new revolution." Far +away in France, Victor Hugo declared, "The eyes of Europe are fixed on +America. The hanging of John Brown will open a latent fissure that +will finally split the union asunder.... You preserve your shame, but +you kill your glory."[88] + +In Rochester, three hundred people assembled. All were friends of the +cause and there was no unfriendly disturbance to mar the proceedings. +Susan presided and Parker Pillsbury, in her opinion, made "the +grandest speech of his life," for it was the only occasion he ever +found fully wicked enough to warrant "his terrific invective."[89] + +Thus these two militant abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and Parker +Pillsbury, joined hundreds of others throughout the nation in honoring +John Brown, sensing the portent of his martyrdom and prophesying that +his soul would go marching on. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[69] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 144-145. As John Brown visited +Frederick Douglass in Rochester, it is possible that Susan B. Anthony +had met him. + +[70] Oct. 19, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[71] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 148. + +[72] _Ibid._, p. 151; also quotation following. + +[73] Alice Stone Blackwell, _Lucy Stone_ (Boston, 1930), pp. 197-198. + +[74] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[75] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 152. + +[76] April 20, 1857, Abby Kelley Foster Papers, American Antiquarian +Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. + +[77] Parker Pillsbury, _The Acts of the Antislavery Apostles_ +(Concord, N.H., 1883). + +[78] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 160. + +[79] March 22, 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[80] N.d., Alma Lutz Collection. + +[81] Charles A. and Mary B. Beard, _The Rise of American Civilization_ +(New York, 1930), II, p. 9. + +[82] A. M. Schlesinger and H. C. Hockett, _Land of the Free_ (New +York, 1944), p. 297. + +[83] March 19, 1859, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[84] Francis Jackson, William Lloyd II, and Wendell Phillips Garrison, +_William Lloyd Garrison_, 1805-1879 (New York, 1889), III, p. 486. + +[85] _Ibid._, p. 490. + +[86] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 181. + +[87] _Ibid._, p. 180. + +[88] Henrietta Buckmaster, _Let My People Go_ (New York, 1941), p. +269; Ehrlich, _God's Angry Man_, pp. 344-345, 350. + +[89] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. In 1890, after +visiting the John Brown Memorial at North Elbe, New York, Susan B. +Anthony wrote: "John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed +God commanded him to do, 'to break the yoke and let the oppressed go +free,' precisely as were the saints of old for following what they +believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by +so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those +of two thousand years ago." Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 708. + + + + +THE TRUE WOMAN + + +Susan's preoccupation with antislavery work did not lessen her +interest in women's advancement. Her own expanding courage and ability +showed her the possibilities for all women in widened horizons and +activities. These possibilities were the chief topic of conversation +when she and Elizabeth Stanton were together. With Mrs. Stanton's +young daughters, Margaret and Harriot, in mind, they were continually +planning ways and means of developing the new woman, or the "true +woman" as they liked to call her; and one of these ways was physical +exercise in the fresh air, which was almost unheard of for women +except on the frontier. + +Taking off her hoops and working in the garden in the freedom of her +long calico dress, Susan was refreshed and exhilarated. "Uncovered the +strawberry and raspberry beds ..." her diary records. "Worked with +Simon building frames for the grapevines in the peach orchards.... Set +out 18 English black currants, 22 English gooseberries and Muscatine +grape vines.... Finished setting out the apple trees & 600 blackberry +bushes...."[90] + +She knew how little this strengthening work and healing influence +touched the lives of most women. Hemmed in by the walls of their +homes, weighed down by bulky confining clothing, fed on the tradition +of weakness, women could never gain the breadth of view, courage, and +stamina needed to demand and appreciate emancipation. She thought a +great deal about this and how it could be remedied, and wrote her +friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson "The salvation of the race depends, +in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their hot-house +existence. Whether in kitchen, nursery or parlor, all alike are shut +away from God's sunshine. Why did not your Caroline Plummer of Salem, +why do not all of our wealthy women leave money for industrial and +agricultural schools for girls, instead of ever and always providing +for boys alone?"[91] + +An exceptional opportunity was now offered Susan--to speak on the +controversial subject of coeducation before the State Teachers' +Association, which only a few years before had been shocked by the +sound of a woman's voice. Deeply concerned over her ability to write +the speech, she at once appealed to Elizabeth Stanton, "Do you please +mark out a plan and give me as soon as you can...."[92] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1856] + +Busy with preparations for woman's rights meetings in popular New York +summer resorts, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Clifton Springs, and +Avon, she grew panicky at the prospect of her impending speech and +dashed off another urgent letter to Mrs. Stanton, underlining it +vigorously for emphasis: "Not a _word written_ ... and mercy only +knows when I can get a moment, and what is _worse_, as the _Lord knows +full well_, is, that if _I get all the time the world has--I can't get +up a decent document_.... It is of but small moment who writes the +Address, but of _vast moment_ that it be _well done_.... No woman but +you can write from _my standpoint_ for all would base their strongest +_argument_ on the _un_likeness of the _sexes_.... + +"Those of you who have the _talent_ to do honor to poor, oh how poor +womanhood have all given yourselves over to _baby_-making and left +poor brainless _me_ to battle alone. It is a shame. Such a lady as _I +might_ be _spared_ to _rock cradles_, but it is a crime for _you_ and +_Lucy_ and _Nette_."[93] + +On a separate page she outlined for Mrs. Stanton the points she wanted +to make. Her title was affirmative, "Why the Sexes Should be Educated +Together." "Because," she reasoned, "by such education they get true +ideas of each other.... Because the endowment of both public and +private funds is ever for those of the male sex, while all the +Seminaries and Boarding Schools for Females are left to +maintain themselves as best they may by means of their tuition +fees--consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class +professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal +privileges with the boy.... No school _requires_ and but very few +allow the _girls_ to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys. +Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is +needed is to give the sexes _like motives_ for acquirement. Very +rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge +useful, as a means of support...."[94] + +Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to +help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the +puddings."[95] Gratefully Susan hurried to Seneca Falls and together +they "loaded her gun," not only for the teachers' convention but for +all the summer meetings. + +Addressing the large teachers' meeting in Troy, Susan declared that +mental sex-differences did not exist. She called attention to the +ever-increasing variety of occupations which women were carrying on +with efficiency. There were women typesetters, editors, publishers, +authors, clerks, engravers, watchmakers, bookkeepers, sculptors, +painters, farmers, and machinists. Two hundred and fifty women were +serving as postmasters. Girls, she insisted, must be educated to earn +a living and more vocations must be opened to them as an incentive to +study. "A woman," she added, "needs no particular kind of education to +be a wife and mother anymore than a man does to be a husband and +father. A man cannot make a living out of these relations. He must +fill them with something more and so must women."[96] + +Her advanced ideas did not cause as much consternation as she had +expected and she was asked to repeat her speech at the Massachusetts +teachers' convention; but the thoughts of many in that audience were +echoed by the president when he said to her after the meeting, "Madam, +that was a splendid production and well delivered. I could not have +asked for a single thing different either in matter or manner; but I +would rather have followed my wife or daughter to Greenwood cemetery +than to have had her stand here before this promiscuous audience and +deliver that address."[97] + +It was one thing to talk about coeducation but quite another to offer +a resolution putting the New York State Teachers' Association on +record as asking all schools, colleges, and universities to open their +doors to women. This Susan did at their next convention, and while +there were enough women present to carry the resolution, most of them +voted against it, listening instead to the emotional arguments of a +group of conservative men who prophesied that coeducation would +coarsen women and undermine marriage. Nor did she forget the Negro at +these conventions, but brought much criticism upon herself by offering +resolutions protesting the exclusion of Negroes from public schools, +academies, colleges, and universities. + +Such controversial activities were of course eagerly reported in the +press, and Henry Stanton, reading his newspaper, pointed them out to +his wife, remarking drily, "Well, my dear, another notice of Susan. +You stir up Susan and she stirs up the world."[98] + + * * * * * + +The best method of arousing women and spreading new ideas, Susan +decided, was holding woman's rights conventions, for the discussions +at these conventions covered a wide field and were not limited merely +to women's legal disabilities. The feminists of that day extolled +freedom of speech, and their platform, like that of antislavery +conventions, was open to anyone who wished to express an opinion. +Always the limited educational opportunities offered to women were +pointed out, and Oberlin College and Antioch, both coeducational, were +held up as patterns for the future. Resolutions were passed, demanding +that Harvard and Yale admit women. Women's low wages and the very few +occupations open to them were considered, and whether it was fitting +for women to be doctors and ministers. At one convention Lucy Stone +made the suggestion that a prize be offered for a novel on women, +like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, to arouse the whole nation to the unjust +situation of women whose slavery, she felt, was comparable to that of +the Negro. At another, William Lloyd Garrison maintained that women +had the right to sit in the Congress and in state legislatures and +that there should be an equal number of men and women in all national +councils. Inevitably Scriptural edicts regarding woman's sphere were +thrashed out with Antoinette Brown, in her clerical capacity, setting +at rest the minds of questioning women and quashing the protests of +clergymen who thought they were speaking for God. Usually Ernestine +Rose was on hand, ready to speak when needed, injecting into the +discussions her liberal clear-cut feminist views. Nor was the +international aspect of the woman's rights movement forgotten. The +interest in Great Britain in the franchise for women of such men as +Lord Brougham and John Stuart Mill was reported as were the efforts +there among women to gain admission to the medical profession. +Distributed widely as a tract was the "admirable" article in the +_Westminster Review_, "The Enfranchisement of Women," by Harriet +Taylor, now Mrs. John Stuart Mill. + +In New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, where +state conventions were held annually, women carried back to their +homes and their friends new and stimulating ideas. National +conventions, which actually represented merely the northeastern states +and Ohio and occasionally attracted men and women from Indiana, +Missouri, and Kansas, were scheduled by Susan to meet every year in +New York, simultaneously with antislavery conventions. Thus she was +assured of a brilliant array of speakers, for the Garrisonian +abolitionists were sincere advocates of woman's rights. + +Both Elizabeth Stanton and Lucy Stone were a great help to Susan in +preparing for these national gatherings for which she raised the +money. Elizabeth wrote the calls and resolutions, while Lucy could not +only be counted upon for an eloquent speech, but through her wide +contacts brought new speakers and new converts to the meetings. +However, national woman's rights conventions would probably have +lapsed completely during the troubled years prior to the Civil War, +had it not been for Susan's persistence. She was obliged to omit the +1857 convention because all of her best speakers were either having +babies or were kept at home by family duties. Lucy's baby, Alice Stone +Blackwell, was born in September 1857, then Antoinette Brown's first +child, and Mrs. Stanton's seventh. + +[Illustration: Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell] + +Impatient to get on with the work, Susan chafed at the delay and when +Lucy wrote her, "I shall not assume the responsibility for another +convention until I have had my ten daughters,"[99] Susan was beside +herself with apprehension. When Lucy told her that it was harder to +take care of a baby day and night than to campaign for woman's rights, +she felt that Lucy regarded as unimportant her "common work" of hiring +halls, engaging speakers, and raising money. This rankled, for +although Susan realized it was work without glory, she did expect Lucy +to understand its significance. + +Mrs. Stanton sensed the makings of a rift between Susan and these +young mothers, Lucy and Antoinette, and knowing from her own +experience how torn a woman could be between rearing a family and work +for the cause, she pleaded with Susan to be patient with them. "Let +them rest a while in peace and quietness, and think great thoughts for +the future," she wrote Susan. "It is not well to be in the excitement +of public life all the time. Do not keep stirring them up or mourning +over their repose. You need rest too. Let the world alone a while. We +cannot bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year."[100] + +But Susan could not let the world alone. There was too much to be +done. In addition to her woman's rights and antislavery work, she gave +a helping hand to any good cause in Rochester, such as a protest +meeting against capital punishment, a series of Sunday evening +lectures, or establishing a Free Church like that headed by Theodore +Parker in Boston where no one doctrine would be preached and all would +be welcome. There were days when weariness and discouragement hung +heavily upon her. Then impatient that she alone seemed to be carrying +the burden of the whole woman's rights movement, she complained to +Lydia Mott, "There is not one woman left who may be relied on. All +have first to please their husbands after which there is little time +or energy left to spend in any other direction.... How soon the last +standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia) will lay down the +individual 'shovel and de hoe' and with proper zeal and spirit grasp +those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I +declare to you that I distrust the powers of any woman, even of myself +to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!"[101] + +To Elizabeth Stanton she confessed, "I have very weak moments and long +to lay my weary head somewhere and nestle my full soul to that of +another in full sympathy. I sometimes fear that _I too_ shall faint by +the wayside and drop out of the ranks of the faithful few."[102] + + * * * * * + +Susan thought a great deal about marriage at this time, about how it +interfered with the development of women's talents and their careers, +how it usually dwarfed their individuality. Nor were these thoughts +wholly impersonal, for she had attentive suitors during these years. +Her diary mentions moonlight rides and adds, "Mr.--walked home with +me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should +lack the moral spine."[103] Her standards of matrimony were high, and +she carefully recorded in her diary Lucretia Mott's wise words, "In +the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife +is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations +reciprocal."[104] + +Marriage and the differences of the sexes were often discussed at the +many meetings she attended, and when remarks were made which to her +seemed to limit in any way the free and full development of woman, she +always registered her protest. She had no patience with any +unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory +that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities +reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke +frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with +sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called +"coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs. +Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or +gross. If it is a fact, there it is."[105] + +She was reading at this time Elizabeth Barrett Browning's _Aurora +Leigh_, called by Ruskin the greatest poem in the English language, +but criticized by others as an indecent romance revolting to the +purity of many women. Susan had bought a copy of the first American +edition and she carried it with her wherever she went. After a hard +active day, she found inspiration and refreshment in its pages. No +matter how dreary the hotel room or how unfriendly the town, she no +longer felt lonely or discouraged, for Aurora Leigh was a companion +ever at hand, giving her confidence in herself, strengthening her +ambition, and helping her build a satisfying, constructive philosophy +of life. On the flyleaf of her worn copy, which in later years she +presented to the Library of Congress, she wrote, "This book was +carried in my satchel for years and read and reread. The noble words +of Elizabeth Barrett, as Wendell Phillips always called her, sunk deep +into my heart. I have always cherished it above all other books. I now +present it to the Congressional Library with the hope that women may +more and more be like Aurora Leigh." + +The beauty of its poetry enchanted her, and Elizabeth Barrett +Browning's feminism found an echo in her own. She pencil-marked the +passages she wanted to reread. When her "common work" of hiring halls +and engaging speakers seemed unimportant and even futile, she found +comfort in these lines: + + "Be sure no earnest work + Of any honest creature, howbeit weak + Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much, + It is not gathered as a grain of sand + To enlarge the sum of human action used + For carrying out God's end.... + ... let us be content in work, + To do the thing we can, and not presume + To fret because it's little."[106] + +Glorying in work, she read with satisfaction: + + "The honest earnest man must stand and work: + The woman also, otherwise she drops + At once below the dignity of man, + Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work; + Who ever fears God, fears to sit at ease." + +Could she have written poetry, these words, spoken by Aurora, might +well have been her own: + + "You misconceive the question like a man, + Who sees a woman as the complement + Of his sex merely. You forget too much + That every creature, female as the male, + Stands single in responsible act and thought, + As also in birth and death. Whoever says + To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,' + Will get fair answers, if the work and love + Being good of themselves, are good for her--the best + She was born for." + +Inspired by _Aurora Leigh_, Susan planned a new lecture, "The True +Woman," and as she wrote it out word for word, her thoughts and +theories about women, which had been developing through the years, +crystallized. In her opinion, the "true woman" could no more than +Aurora Leigh follow the traditional course and sacrifice all for the +love of one man, adjusting her life to his whims. She must, instead, +develop her own personality and talents, advancing in learning, in the +arts, in science, and in business, cherishing at the same time her +noble womanly qualities. Susan hoped that some day the full +development of woman's individuality would be compatible with +marriage, and she held up as an ideal the words which Elizabeth +Barrett Browning put into the mouth of Aurora Leigh: + + "The world waits + For help. Beloved, let us work so well, + Our work shall still be better for our love + And still our love be sweeter for our work + And both, commended, for the sake of each, + By all true workers and true lovers born." + +She expressed this hope in her own practical words to Lydia Mott: +"Institutions, among them marriage, are justly chargeable with many +social and individual ills, but after all, the whole man or woman will +rise above them. I am sure my 'true woman' will never be crushed or +dwarfed by them. Woman must take to her soul a purpose and then make +circumstances conform to this purpose, instead of forever singing the +refrain, 'if and if and if.'"[107] + + * * * * * + +Late in 1858, Susan received a letter from Wendell Phillips which put +new life into all her efforts for women. He wrote her that an +anonymous donor had given him $5,000 for the woman's rights cause and +that he, Lucy Stone, and Susan had been named trustees to spend it +wisely and effectively. + +The man who felt that the woman's rights cause was important enough to +rate a gift of that size proved to be wealthy Francis Jackson of +Boston, in whose home Susan had visited a few years before with Lucy +and Antoinette. Jubilant over the prospects, she at once began to make +plans. She wanted to use all of the fund for lectures, conventions, +tracts, and newspaper articles; Lucy thought part of the money should +be spent to prove unconstitutional the law which taxed women without +representation and Antoinette was eager for a share to establish a +church in which she could preach woman's rights with the Gospel. + +Both Wendell Phillips and Lucy Stone agreed that Susan should have +$1,500 for the intensive campaign she had planned for New York, and +for once in her life she started off without a financial worry, with +money in hand to pay her speakers. She held meetings in all of the +principal towns of the state, making them at least partially pay for +themselves. Her lecturers each received $12 a week and she kept a +like amount for herself, for planning the tour, organizing the +meetings, and delivering her new lecture, "The True Woman." + +"I am having fine audiences of thinking men and women," she wrote Mary +Hallowell. "Oh, if we could but make our meetings ring like those of +the antislavery people, wouldn't the world hear us? But to do that we +must have souls baptized into the work and consecrated to it."[108] + +Some souls were deeply stirred by the woman's rights gospel. One of +these was the wealthy Boston merchant, Charles F. Hovey, who in his +will left $50,000 in trust to Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd +Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley Foster, and others, to be +spent for the "promotion of the antislavery cause and other reforms," +among them woman's rights, and not less than $8,000 a year to be spent +to promote these reforms. With all this financial help available, +Susan expected great things to happen. + + * * * * * + +During the winter of 1860 while the legislature was in session, Susan +spent six weeks in Albany with Lydia Mott, and day after day she +climbed the long hill to the capitol to interview legislators on +amendments to the married women's property laws. When these amendments +were passed by the Senate, Assemblyman Anson Bingham urged her to +bring their mutual friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to Albany to speak +before his committee to assure passage by the Assembly. + +Once again Susan hurried to Seneca Falls, and unpacking her little +portmanteau stuffed with papers and statistics, discussed the subject +with Mrs. Stanton in front of the open fire late into the night. Then +the next morning while Mrs. Stanton shut herself up in the quietest +room in the house to write her speech, Susan gave the children their +breakfast, sent the older ones off to school, watched over the babies, +prepared the desserts, and made herself generally useful. By this time +the children regarded her affectionately as "Aunt Thusan," and they +knew they must obey her, for she was a stern disciplinarian whom even +the mischievous Stanton boys dared not defy. + +These visits of Susan's were happy, satisfying times for both these +young women. A few days' respite from travel in a well-run home with +a friend she admired did wonders for Susan, giving her perspective on +the work she had already done and courage to tackle new problems, +while for Mrs. Stanton this short period of stimulating companionship +and freedom from household cares was a godsend. "Miss Anthony" had +long ago become Susan to Elizabeth, but Susan all through her life +called her very best friend "Mrs. Stanton," playfully to be sure, but +with a remnant of that formality which it was hard for her to cast +off. + +The speech was soon finished. Mrs. Stanton's imagination, fired by her +sympathetic understanding of women's problems, had turned Susan's cold +hard facts into moving prose, while Susan, the best of critics, +detected every weak argument or faltering phrase. They both felt they +had achieved a masterpiece. + +Mrs. Stanton delivered this address before a joint session of the New +York legislature in March 1860. Susan beamed with pride as she watched +the large audience crowd even the galleries and heard the long loud +applause for the speech which she was convinced could not have been +surpassed by any man in the United States. + +The next day the Assembly passed the Married Women's Property Bill, +and when shortly it was signed by the governor, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +scored their first big victory, winning a legal revolution for the +women of New York State. This new law was a challenge to women +everywhere. Under it a married woman had the right to hold property, +real and personal, without the interference of her husband, the right +to carry on any trade or perform any service on her own account and to +collect and use her own earnings; a married woman might now buy, sell, +and make contracts, and if her husband had abandoned her or was +insane, a convict, or a habitual drunkard, his consent was +unnecessary; a married woman might sue and be sued, she was the joint +guardian with her husband of her children, and on the decease of her +husband the wife had the same rights that her husband would have at +her death. + +Susan did not then realize the full significance of what she had +accomplished--that she had unleashed a new movement for freedom which +would be the means of strengthening the democratic government of her +country. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[90] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 173-174, 198. + +[91] _Ibid._, p. 160. + +[92] May 26, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College +Library. + +[93] _Ibid._, June 5, 1856. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was often +called Nette. + +[94] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[95] 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress. + +[96] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. A notation on +this ms. reads, "Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton--Delivered by Susan +B. Anthony." + +[97] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 143. + +[98] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 71. + +[99] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 162. + +[100] June 10, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[101] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 171. + +[102] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[103] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 175. + +[104] Ms., Diary, 1855. + +[105] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[106] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, _Aurora Leigh_ (New York, 1857), p. +316; quotations following, pp. 53-54, pp. 364-365. + +[107] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 170. + +[108] _Ibid._, p. 177. Mary Hallowell, a liberal Rochester Quaker, +always interested in Susan B. Anthony and her work. + + + + +THE ZEALOT + + +With a spirit of confidence inspired by her victory in New York State, +Susan looked forward to the tenth national woman's rights convention +in New York City in May 1860. At this convention she reported progress +everywhere. Four thousand dollars from the Jackson and Hovey funds had +been spent in the successful New York campaign, and similar work was +scheduled for Ohio. In Kansas, women had won from the constitutional +convention equal rights and privileges in state-controlled schools and +in the management of the public schools, including the right to vote +for members of school boards; mothers had been granted equal rights +with fathers in the control and custody of their children, and married +women had been given property rights. In Indiana, Maine, Missouri, and +Ohio, married women could now control their own earnings. + +"Each year we hail with pleasure," she continued, "new accessions to +our faith. Brave men and true from the higher walks of literature and +art, from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, and legislative halls are +now ready to help woman wherever she claims to stand." She was +thinking of the aid given her by Andrew J. Colvin and Anson Bingham of +the New York legislature, of the young journalist, George William +Curtis, just recently speaking for women, of Samuel Longfellow at his +first woman's rights convention, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher +who, just a few months before, had delivered his great woman's rights +speech, thereby identifying himself irrevocably with the cause. She +announced with great satisfaction the news, which the papers had +carried a few days before, that Matthew Vassar of Poughkeepsie had set +aside $400,000 to found a college for women equal in all respects to +Harvard and Yale.[109] + +Progress and good feeling were in the air, and the speakers were not +heckled as in past years by the rowdies who had made it a practice to +follow abolitionists into woman's rights meetings to bait them. Into +this atmosphere of good will and rejoicing, Susan and Elizabeth +Stanton now injected a more serious note, bringing before the +convention the controversial question of marriage and divorce which +heretofore had been handled with kid gloves at all woman's rights +meetings, but which they sincerely believed demanded solution. + + * * * * * + +Divorce had been much in the news because several leading families in +America and in England were involved in lawsuits complicated by +stringent divorce laws. Invariably the wife bore the burden of censure +and hardship, for no matter how unprincipled her husband might be, he +was entitled to her children and her earnings under the property laws +of most states. + +In New York efforts were now being made to gain support for a liberal +divorce bill, patterned after the Indiana law, and a variety of +proposals were before the legislature, making drunkenness, insanity, +desertion, and cruel and abusive treatment grounds for divorce. Horace +Greeley in his _Tribune_ had been vigorously opposing a more liberal +law for New York, while Robert Dale Owen of Indiana wrote in its +defense. Everywhere people were reading the Greeley-Owen debates in +the _Tribune_. Through his widely circulated paper, Horace Greeley had +in a sense become an oracle for the people who felt he was safe and +good; while Robert Dale Owen, because of his youthful association with +the New Harmony community and Frances Wright, was branded with +radicalism which even his valuable service in the Indiana legislature +and his two terms in Congress could not blot out. + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton had no patience with Horace Greeley's smug +old-fashioned opinions on marriage and divorce. In fact these +Greeley-Owen debates in the _Tribune_ were the direct cause of their +decision to bring this subject before the convention, where they hoped +for support from their liberal friends. They counted especially on +Lucy Stone, who seemed to give her approval when she wrote, "I am glad +you will speak on the divorce question, provided you yourself are +clear on the subject. It is a great grave topic that one shudders to +grapple, but its hour is coming.... God touch your lips if you speak +on it."[110] + +Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton shuddered to grapple with any subject +which they believed needed attention. In fact, the discussion of +marriage and divorce in woman's rights conventions had been on their +minds for some time. Three years before Susan had written Lucy, "I +have thought with you until of late that the Social Question must be +kept separate from Woman's Rights, but we have always claimed that our +movement was _Human Rights_, not Woman's specially.... It seems to me +we have played on the surface of things quite long enough. Getting the +right to hold property, to vote, to wear what dress we please, etc., +are all to the good, but _Social Freedom_, after all, lies at the +bottom of all, and unless woman gets that she must continue the slave +of man in all other things."[111] + + * * * * * + +Consternation spread through the genial ranks of the convention as +Mrs. Stanton now offered resolutions calling for more liberal divorce +laws. Quick to sense the temper of an audience, Susan felt its +resistance to being jolted out of the pleasant contemplation of past +successes to the unpleasant recognition that there were still +difficult ugly problems ahead. She was conscious at once of a stir of +astonishment and disapproval when Mrs. Stanton in her clear compelling +voice read, "Resolved, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is +ever a calamity, but not ever, perhaps never a crime--and when society +or government, by its laws or customs, compels its continuance, always +to the grief of one of the parties, and the actual loss and damage of +both, it usurps an authority never delegated to man, nor exercised by +God, Himself...."[112] + +Listening to Mrs. Stanton's speech in defense of her ten bold +resolutions on marriage and divorce, Susan felt that her brave +colleague was speaking for women everywhere, for wives of the present +and the future. As the hearty applause rang out, she concluded that +even the disapproving admired her courage; but before the applause +ceased, she saw Antoinette Blackwell on her feet, waiting to be heard. +She knew that Antoinette, like Horace Greeley, preferred to think of +all marriages as made in heaven, and true to form Antoinette contended +that the marriage relation "must be lifelong" and "as permanent and +indissoluble as the relation of parent and child."[113] At once +Ernestine Rose came to the rescue in support of Mrs. Stanton. + +Then Wendell Phillips showed his displeasure by moving that Mrs. +Stanton's resolutions be laid on the table and expunged from the +record because they had no more to do with this convention than +slavery in Kansas or temperance. "This convention," he asserted, "as I +understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally upon +men and women, not those that rest equally on men and women."[114] + +Aghast at this statement, Susan was totally unprepared to have his +views supported by that other champion of liberty, William Lloyd +Garrison, who, however, did not favor expunging the resolutions from +the record. + +It was incomprehensible to Susan that neither Garrison nor Phillips +recognized woman's subservient status in marriage under prevailing +laws and traditions, and she now stated her own views with firmness: +"As to the point that this question does not belong to this +platform--from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a +one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man +gains all--woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with +him--meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her."[115] + +Warming to the subject, she continued, "By law, public sentiment, and +religion from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has +never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be +disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. And this very hour, by +our statute books, by our so-called enlightened Christian +civilization, she has no voice in saying what shall be the basis of +the relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it or not at +all...." + +When finally the vote was taken, Mrs. Stanton's resolutions were laid +on the table, but not expunged from the record, and the convention +adjourned with much to talk about and think about for some time to +come. + +The newspapers, of course, could not overlook such a piece of news as +this heated argument on divorce in a woman's rights convention, and +fanned the flames pro and con, most of them holding up Miss Anthony +and Mrs. Stanton as dangerous examples of freedom for women. The Rev. +A. D. Mayo, Unitarian clergyman of Albany, heretofore Susan's loyal +champion, now made a point of reproving her. "You are not married," he +declared with withering scorn. "You have no business to be discussing +marriage." To this she retorted, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a +slave. Suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."[116] + +Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton, amazed at the opposition and the +disapproval they had aroused, were grateful for Samuel Longfellow's +comforting words of commendation[117] and for the letters of approval +which came from women from all parts of the state. Most satisfying of +all was this reassurance from Lucretia Mott, whose judgment they so +highly valued: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense of the +resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the united +judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad they are +so vigorous in the work."[118] + +Hardest to bear was the disapproval of Wendell Phillips whom they both +admired so much. Difficult to understand and most disappointing was +Lucy Stone's failure to attend the convention or come to their +defense. Thinking over this first unfortunate difference of opinion +among the faithful crusaders for freedom to whom she had always felt +so close in spirit, Susan was sadly disillusioned, but she had no +regrets that the matter had been brought up, and she defied her +critics by speaking before a committee of the New York legislature in +support of a liberal divorce bill. Nor was she surprised when a group +of Boston women, headed by Caroline H. Dall, called a convention which +they hoped would counteract this radical outbreak in the woman's +rights movement by keeping to the safe subjects of education, +vocation, and civil position. + +Having learned by this time through the hard school of experience that +the bona-fide reformer could not play safe and go forward, Susan +thoughtfully commented, "Cautious, careful people, always casting +about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can +bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing +to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and +privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and +persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences."[119] + + * * * * * + +The repercussions of the divorce debates were soon drowned out by the +noise and excitement of the presidential campaign of 1860. With four +candidates in the field, Breckenridge, Bell, Douglas, and Lincoln, +each offering his party's solution for the nation's critical problems, +there was much to think about and discuss, and Susan found woman's +rights pushed into the background. At the same time antagonism toward +abolitionists was steadily mounting for they were being blamed for the +tensions between the North and the South. + +Dedicated to the immediate and unconditional emancipation of slavery, +Susan saw no hope in the promises of any political party. Even the +Republicans' opposition to the extension of slavery in the +territories, which had won over many abolitionists, including Henry +and Elizabeth Stanton, seemed to her a mild and ineffectual answer to +the burning questions of the hour. For her to further the election of +Abraham Lincoln was unthinkable, since he favored the enforcement of +the Fugitive Slave Law and had stated he was not in favor of Negro +citizenship. + +At heart she was a nonvoting Garrisonian abolitionist and would not +support a political party which in any way sanctioned slavery. Had she +been eligible as a voter she undoubtedly would have refused to cast +her ballot until a righteous antislavery government had been +established. As she expressed it in a letter to Mrs. Stanton, she +could not, if she were a man, vote for "the least of two evils, one of +which the Nation must surely have in the presidential chair."[120] + +She saw no possibility at this time of wiping out slavery by means of +political abolition, because in spite of the fact that slavery had for +years been one of the most pressing issues before the American people, +no great political party had yet endorsed abolition, nor had a single +prominent practical statesman[121] advocated immediate unconditional +emancipation. As the Liberty party experiment had proved, an +abolitionist running for office on an antislavery platform was doomed +to defeat. Therefore the gesture made in this critical campaign by a +small group of abolitionists in nominating Gerrit Smith for president +appeared utterly futile to Susan. Abolitionists, she believed, +followed the only course consistent with their principles when they +eschewed politics, abstained from voting, and devoted their energies +with the fervor of evangelists to a militant educational campaign. + +So, whenever she could, she continued to hold antislavery meetings. +"Crowded house at Port Byron," her diary records. "I tried to say a +few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is +a terrible martyrdom for me to speak."[122] Yet so great was the need +to enlighten people on the evils of slavery that she endured this +martyrdom, stepping into the breach when no other speaker was +available. Taking as her subject, "What Is American Slavery?" she +declared, "It is the legalized, systematic robbery of the bodies and +souls of nearly four millions of men, women, and children. It is the +legalized traffic in God's image."[123] + +She asked for personal liberty laws to protect the human rights of +fugitive slaves, adding that the Dred Scott decision had been possible +only because it reflected the spirit and purpose of the American +people in the North as well as the South. She heaped blame on the +North for restricting the Negro's educational and economic +opportunities, for barring him from libraries, lectures, and theaters, +and from hotels and seats on trains and buses. + +"Let the North," she urged, "prove to the South by her acts that she +fully recognizes the humanity of the black man, that she respects his +rights in all her educational, industrial, social, and political +associations...." + +This was asking far more than the North was ready to give, but to +Susan it was justice which she must demand. No wonder free Negroes in +the North honored and loved her and expressed their gratitude whenever +they could. "A fine-looking colored man on the train presented me with +a bouquet," she wrote in her diary. "Can't tell whether he knew me or +only felt my sympathy."[124] + + * * * * * + +The threats of secession from the southern states, which followed +Lincoln's election, brought little anxiety to Susan or her +fellow-abolitionists, for they had long preached, "No Union with +Slaveholders," believing that dissolution of the Union would prevent +further expansion of slavery in the new western territories, and not +only lessen the damaging influence of slavery on northern +institutions, but relieve the North of complicity in maintaining +slavery. Garrison in his _Liberator_ had already asked, "Will the +South be so obliging as to secede from the Union?" When, in December +1860, South Carolina seceded, Horace Greeley, who only a few months +before had called the disunion abolitionists "a little coterie of +common scolds," now wrote in the _Tribune_, "If the cotton states +shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we +insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a +revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless."[125] + +[Illustration: William Lloyd Garrison] + +What abolitionists feared far more than secession was that to save the +Union some compromise would be made which would fasten slavery on the +nation. Susan agreed with Garrison when he declared in the +_Liberator_, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last +'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell' +broken--at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all +the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."[126] + +Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and +confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil +war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them +Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the +Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line, +protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the +domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for +escaped slaves, and forbid Congress to abolish slavery in the +District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland. +Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing +noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such +an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous +declarations against compromise. + +While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of +President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan +heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May, +Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she +wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to +go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its +suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that +she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ... +no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band +of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."[127] + +Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her +antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but +unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and +stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no +effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and +the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her +ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the +milling crowd. + +In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and +boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs +broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never before +shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with +Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she +opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting +and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the +speakers home through the jeering crowds. + +All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more +meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right +of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne +pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In +Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee +of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"[128] and +rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until +the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its +tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling +drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on +the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her +companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in +the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of +Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the +square. + +Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany +where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick +Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher, +was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming +opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists, +safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his +knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered +through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the +day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and +begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the +meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little +group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob +trailing behind them. + +Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of +mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so +bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans +had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or +interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the +attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they +were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address +prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or +indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states +where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have +no inclination to do so."[130] To her the future looked dark when +statesmen would save the Union at such a price. + +"No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as +well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with +Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others. +They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the +hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had +started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with +Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to +them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly +respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three +children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was +unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had +insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an +insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to +communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent +Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus, +took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children +to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced +the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law +which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and +their children. + +Well aware of how often her friends of the Underground Railroad had +defied the Fugitive Slave Law and hidden and transported fugitive +slaves, Susan decided she would do the same for this cultured +intelligent woman, a slave to her husband under the law. Without a +thought of the consequences, she took the train on Christmas Day for +New York with Mrs. Phelps and her thirteen-year-old daughter, both in +disguise, hoping that in the crowded city they could hide from Dr. +Phelps and the law. Arriving late at night, they walked through the +snow and slush to a hotel, only to be refused a room because they were +not accompanied by a gentleman. They tried another hotel, with the +same result, and then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a +divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused +them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway +wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a +Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but +Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as much to the clerk, +adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this +office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she +retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to +the station."[131] Finally he relented and gave them a room without +heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her +friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and +finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the +Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive +wife into her home. + +Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and +threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers, +because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child. +Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding +place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through +western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all. + +When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging +her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any +"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard +for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and +dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest +assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had +I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I +should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any +movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle +my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment +of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the +slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."[132] + +When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing +his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan, +"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the +entire guardianship and control of the children?" + +"Yes, I know it," she answered. "Does not the law of the United States +give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break +it every time you help a slave to Canada? Well, the law which gives +the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and +I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before you would deliver +a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child +to its father." + +Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could +not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap +his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a +divorce through the help of her friends. + +The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of +Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to +recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also +essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but +when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision +was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's +divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing +laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they +sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it, +Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to +sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or +was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like +themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have +yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."[133] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[109] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I. p. 689. Henry Ward Beecher's +speech, _The Public Function of Women_, delivered at Cooper Union, +Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract. + +[110] April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[111] June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection. + +[112] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 717. + +[113] _Ibid._, p. 725. + +[114] _Ibid._, p. 732. + +[115] _Ibid._, p. 735. + +[116] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 196. + +[117] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, _Eighty Years and More_ (New York, +1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in the +midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the convention +will sustain you." + +[118] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 195. + +[119] _Ibid._, p. 197. + +[120] Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College +Library. + +[121] Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to speak for +emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican Convention. + +[122] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198. + +[123] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[124] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198. + +[125] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 504; Beards, _The Rise of +American Civilization_, II, p. 63. + +[126] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 508. + +[127] Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[128] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 210. + +[129] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress. + +[130] Carl Sandburg, _Abraham Lincoln, The War Years_ (New York, +1939), I, p. 125. + +[131] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a more +permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet. + +[132] _Ibid._, pp. 203-204. + +[133] _Ibid._, p. 198. + + + + +A WAR FOR FREEDOM + + +Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, +Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded +early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This +breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the +minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union. +Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must +go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention +in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help +her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter +and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists +called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize +that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour. + +Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the +solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of +abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was +not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for +guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an +audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a +nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the +government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the +North"[134] a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions +and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand +by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize +Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but +to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those +abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until +it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the +front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union +with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all +violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion, +and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I +am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135] + +She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these +men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few, +among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of +them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone +remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have +insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but +one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The +Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all +the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their +peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems +most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency, +not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment +of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even +the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the +end justifies the means.'"[136] + +Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge, +traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas, +with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and +his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a +release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work. +"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary. +"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order.... +Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the +frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my +calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of +Harriet Tubman."[137] + +Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times +seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas +with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone +feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great +presences to which I have been so long accustomed." + +The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's _Tribune_ and +the Rochester _Democrat_. The news was discouraging--the tragedy of +Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union +armies. General Fremont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only +to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border +states. + +"How not to do it seems the whole study of Washington," she wrote in +her diary. "I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom +to every slave and call on every able-bodied Negro to enlist in the +Union Army.... To forever blot out slavery is the only possible +compensation for this merciless war."[138] + +To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and +events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's +_Casa Guidi Windows_, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to +our terrible struggle," then to her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, and +George Eliot's popular _Adam Bede_, recently published. More serious +reading also absorbed her, for she wanted to keep abreast of the most +advanced thought of the day. "Am reading Buckle's _History of +Civilization_ and Darwin's _Descent of Man_," she wrote in her diary. +"Have finished _Origin of the Species_. Pillsbury has just given me +Emerson's poems."[139] + +Eager to thrash out all her new ideas with Elizabeth Stanton, she went +to Seneca Falls for a few days of good talk, hoping to get Mrs. +Stanton's help in organizing a woman's rights convention in 1862; but +not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this +time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the +war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship. +Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best +women were so willing to be swept aside by the onrush of events. + +Although opposed to war, Susan was far from advocating peace at any +price, and was greatly concerned over the confusion in Washington +which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton +received from her husband, now Washington correspondent for the New +York _Tribune_. Both she and Mrs. Stanton chafed at inaction. They had +loyalty, intelligence, an understanding of national affairs, and +executive ability to offer their country, but such qualities were not +sought after among women. + + * * * * * + +In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a +new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting +the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of +discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young +eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.[140] Susan listened with pride and joy +while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the +issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth, +her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's +motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became +devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous +correspondence. + +Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence +in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she +herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she +studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet +Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble +breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and +elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of +Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal +painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by +a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other +artists."[141] + +This confidence was soon dispelled, however, when a letter came from +Lydia Mott containing the crushing news that the New York legislature +had amended the newly won Married Woman's Property Law of 1860, while +women's attention was focused on the war, and had taken away from +mothers the right to equal guardianship of their children and from +widows the control of the property left at the death of their +husbands. + +"We deserve to suffer for our confidence in 'man's sense of justice,'" +she confessed to Lydia. " ... All of our reformers seem suddenly to +have grown politic. All alike say, 'Have no conventions at this +crisis!' Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Stanton, +etc. say, 'Wait until the war excitement abates....' I am sick at +heart, but cannot carry the world against the wish and will of our +best friends...."[142] + +Unable to arouse even a glimmer of interest in woman's rights at this +time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to +make people understand that this war, so abhorrent to her, must be +fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience +to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It +is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you +allow yourself to remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of +home. It requires great will power to resurrect one's soul.[143] + +"I am speaking now extempore," she continued, "and more to my +satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not +do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely +off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by the war." + +Feeling particularly close to Lydia at this time, she gratefully +added, "What a stay, counsel, and comfort you have been to me, dear +Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance meeting in that +cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me to feel myself +competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and distrust. I can +never express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you." + +In the small towns of western New York, people were willing to listen +to Susan, for they were troubled by the defeats northern armies had +suffered and by the appalling lack of unity and patriotism in the +North. They were beginning to see that the problem of slavery had to +be faced and were discussing among themselves whether Negroes were +contraband, whether army officers should return fugitive slaves to +their masters, whether slaves of the rebels should be freed, whether +Negroes should be enlisted in the army. + +Susan had an answer for them. "It is impossible longer to hold the +African race in bondage," she declared, "or to reconstruct this +Republic on the old slaveholding basis. We can neither go back nor +stand still. With the nation as with the individual, every new +experience forces us into a new and higher life and the old self is +lost forever. Hundreds of men who never thought of emancipation a year +ago, talk it freely and are ready to vote for it and fight for it +now.[144] + +"Can the thousands of Northern soldiers," she asked, "who in their +march through Rebel States have found faithful friends and generous +allies in the slaves ever consent to hurl them back into the hell of +slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter +in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree +of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently +endure the old life of bondage with all its degradation, its +cruelties, and wrong? No, No, there can be no reconstruction on the +old basis...." Far less degrading and ruinous, she earnestly added, +would be the recognition of the independence of the southern +Confederacy. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony] + +To the question of what to do with the emancipated slaves, her quick +answer was, "Treat the Negroes just as you do the Irish, the Scotch, +and the Germans. Educate them to all the blessings of our free +institutions, to our schools and churches, to every department of +industry, trade, and art. + +"What arrogance in _us_," she continued, "to put the question, What +shall _we_ do with a race of men and women who have fed, clothed, and +supported both themselves and their oppressors for centuries...." + +Often she spoke against Lincoln's policy of gradual, compensated +emancipation, which to an eager advocate of "immediate, unconditional +emancipation" seemed like weakness and appeasement. She had to admit, +however, that there had been some progress in the right direction, for +Congress had recently forbidden the return of fugitive slaves to their +masters, had decreed immediate emancipation in the District of +Columbia, and prohibited slavery in the territories. + +President Lincoln's promise of freedom on January 1, 1863, to slaves +in all states in armed rebellion against the government, seemed wholly +inadequate to her and to her fellow-abolitionists, because it left +slavery untouched in the border states, but it did encourage them to +hope that eventually Lincoln might see the light. Horace Greeley wrote +Susan, "I still keep at work with the President in various ways and +believe you will yet hear him proclaim universal freedom. Keep this +letter and judge me by the event."[145] + +It troubled her that public opinion in the North was still far from +sympathetic to emancipation. Northern Democrats, charging Lincoln with +incompetence and autocratic control, called for "The Constitution as +it is, the Union as it was." They had the support of many northern +businessmen who faced the loss of millions of credit given to +southerners and the support of northern workmen who feared the +competition of free Negroes. They had elected Horatio Seymour governor +of New York, and had gained ground in many parts of the country. A +militant group in Ohio, headed by Congressman Vallandigham, continued +to oppose the war, asking for peace at once with no terms unfavorable +to the South. + +All these developments Susan discussed with her father, for she +frequently came home between lectures. He was a tower of strength to +her. When she was disillusioned or when criticism and opposition were +hard to bear, his sympathy and wise counsel never failed her. There +was a strong bond of understanding and affection between them. + +His sudden illness and death, late in November 1862, were a shock from +which she had to struggle desperately to recover. Her life was +suddenly empty. The farm home was desolate. She could not think of +leaving her mother and her sister Mary there all alone. Nor could she +count on help from Daniel or Merritt, both of whom were serving in the +army in the West, Daniel, as a lieutenant colonel, and Merritt as a +captain in the 7th Kansas Cavalry. For many weeks she had no heart for +anything but grief. "It seemed as if everything in the world must +stop."[146] + +Not even President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued January +1, 1863, roused her. It took a letter from Henry Stanton from +Washington to make her see that there was war work for her to do. He +wrote her, "The country is rapidly going to destruction. The Army is +almost in a state of mutiny for want of its pay and lack of a leader. +Nothing can carry through but the southern Negroes, and nobody can +marshal them into the struggle except the abolitionists.... Such men +as Lovejoy, Hale, and the like have pretty much given up the struggle +in despair. You have no idea how dark the cloud is which hangs over +us.... We must not lay the flattering unction to our souls that the +proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and have a +dissolution of the Union. Here then is work for you, Susan, put on +your armor and go forth."[147] + + * * * * * + +A month later, Susan went to New York for a visit with Elizabeth +Stanton, confident that if they counseled together, they could find a +way to serve their country in its hour of need. + +She was well aware that all through the country women were responding +magnificently in this crisis, giving not only their husbands and sons +to the war, but carrying on for them in the home, on the farm, and in +business. Many were sewing and knitting for soldiers, scraping lint +for hospitals, and organizing Ladies' Aid Societies, which, operating +through the United States Sanitary Commission, the forerunner of the +Red Cross, sent clothing and nourishing food to the inadequately +equipped and poorly fed soldiers in the field. In the large cities +women were holding highly successful "Sanitary Fairs" to raise funds +for the Sanitary Commission. In fact, through the women, civilian +relief was organized as never before in history. Individual women too, +Susan knew, were making outstanding contributions to the war. Lucy +Stone's sister-in-law, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell,[148] a friend and +admirer of Florence Nightingale, was training much-needed nurses, +while Dr. Mary Walker, putting on coat and trousers, ministered +tirelessly to the wounded on the battlefield. Dorothea Dix, the +one-time schoolteacher who had awakened the people to their barbarous +treatment of the insane, had offered her services to the +Surgeon-General and was eventually appointed Superintendent of Army +Nurses, with authority to recruit nurses and oversee hospital +housekeeping. Clara Barton, a government employee, and other women +volunteers were finding their way to the front to nurse the wounded +who so desperately needed their help; and Mother Bickerdyke, living +with the armies in the field, nursed her boys and cooked for them, +lifting their morale by her motherly, strengthening presence. Through +the influence of Anna Ella Carroll, Maryland had been saved for the +Union and she, it was said, was ably advising President Lincoln. + +Susan herself had felt no call to nurse the wounded, although she had +often skillfully nursed her own family; nor had she felt that her +qualifications as an expert housekeeper and good executive demanded +her services at the front to supervise army housekeeping. Instead she +looked for some important task to which other women would not turn in +these days when relief work absorbed all their attention. It was not +enough, she felt, for women to be angels of mercy, valuable and +well-organized as this phase of their work had become. A spirit of +awareness was lacking among them, also a patriotic fervor, and this +led her to believe that northern women needed someone to stimulate +their thinking, to force them to come to grips with the basic issues +of the war and in so doing claim their own freedom. Women, she +reasoned, must be aroused to think not only in terms of socks, shirts, +and food for soldiers or of bandages and nursing, but in terms of the +traditions of freedom upon which this republic was founded. Women must +have a part in molding public opinion and must help direct policy as +Anna Ella Carroll was proving women could do. Here was the best +possible training for prospective women voters. To all this Mrs. +Stanton heartily agreed. + +As they sat at the dining-room table with Mrs. Stanton's two +daughters, Maggie and Hattie, all busily cutting linen into small +squares and raveling them into lint for the wounded, they discussed +the state of the nation. They were troubled by the low morale of the +North and by the insidious propaganda of the Copperheads, an antiwar, +pro-Southern group, which spread discontent and disrespect for the +government. Profiteering was flagrant, and through speculation and war +contracts, large fortunes were being built up among the few, while the +majority of the people not only found their lives badly disrupted by +the war but suffered from high prices and low wages. So far no +decisive victory had encouraged confidence in ultimate triumph over +the South. In newspapers and magazines, women of the North were being +unfavorably compared with southern women and criticized because of +their lack of interest in the war. Writing in the _Atlantic Monthly_, +March, 1863, Gail Hamilton, a rising young journalist, accused +northern women of failing to come up to the level of the day. "If you +could have finished the war with your needles," she chided them, "it +would have been finished long ago, but stitching does not crush +rebellion, does not annihilate treason...." + +Thinking along these same lines, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now decided to +go a step further. They would act to bring women abreast of the issues +of the day, Susan with her flare for organizing women, Mrs. Stanton +with her pen and her eloquence. They would show women that they had an +ideal to fight for. They would show them the uselessness of this +bloody conflict unless it won freedom for all of the slaves. Freedom +for all, as a basic demand of the republic, would be their watchword. +Men were forming Union Leagues and Loyal Leagues to combat the +influence of secret antiwar societies, such as the Knights of the +Golden Circle. "Why not organize a Women's National Loyal League?" +Susan and Mrs. Stanton asked each other. + +They talked their ideas over first with the New York abolitionists, +then with Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and his dashing young +friend, Theodore Tilton, and with Robert Dale Owen, now in the city as +the recently appointed head of the Freedman's Inquiry Commission. +These men were in touch with Charles Sumner and other antislavery +members of Congress. All agreed that the Emancipation Proclamation +must be implemented by an act of Congress, by an amendment to the +Constitution, and that public opinion must be aroused to demand a +Thirteenth Amendment. If women would help, so much the better. + +Susan at once thought of petitions. If petitions had won the Woman's +Property Law in New York, they could win the Thirteenth Amendment. The +largest petition ever presented to Congress was her goal. + + * * * * * + +Carefully Susan and Mrs. Stanton worked over an _Appeal to the Women +of the Republic_, sending it out in March 1863 with a notice of a +meeting to be held in New York. It left no doubt in the minds of those +who received it that women had a responsibility to their country +beyond services of mercy to the wounded and disabled. + +From all parts of the country, women responded to their call. The +veteran antislavery and woman's rights worker, Angelina Grimke Weld, +came out of her retirement for the meeting. Ernestine Rose, the ever +faithful, was on hand. Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell were +there, and the popular Hutchinson family, famous for their stirring +abolition songs. They helped Susan and Mrs. Stanton steer the course +of the meeting into the right channels, to show the women assembled +that the war was being fought not merely to preserve the Union, but +also to preserve the American way of life, based on the principle of +equal rights and freedom for all, to save it from the encroachments of +slavery and a slaveholding aristocracy. Susan proposed a resolution +declaring that there can never be a true peace until the civil and +political rights of all citizens are established, including those of +Negroes and women. The introduction of the woman's rights issue into a +war meeting with an antislavery program was vigorously opposed by +women from Wisconsin, but the faithful feminists came to the rescue +and the controversial resolution was adopted. + +Although she always instinctively related all national issues to +woman's rights and vice versa, Susan did not allow this subject to +overshadow the main purpose of the meeting. Instead she analyzed the +issue of the war and reproached Lincoln for suppressing the fact that +slavery was the real cause of the war and for waiting two long years +before calling the four million slaves to the side of the North. +"Every hour's delay, every life sacrificed up to the proclamation that +called the slave to freedom and to arms," she declared, "was nothing +less than downright murder by the government.... I therefore hail the +day when the government shall recognize that it is a war for +freedom."[149] + +A Women's National Loyal League was organized, electing Susan +secretary and Mrs. Stanton president. They sent a long letter to +President Lincoln thanking him for the Emancipation Proclamation, +especially for the freedom it gave Negro women, and assuring him of +their loyalty and support in this war for freedom. Their own immediate +task, they decided, was to circulate petitions asking for an act of +Congress to emancipate "all persons of African descent held in +involuntary servitude." As Susan so tersely expressed it, they would +"canvass the nation for freedom." + + * * * * * + +All the oratory over, Susan now undertook the hard work of making the +Women's National Loyal League a success, assuming the initial +financial burden of printing petitions and renting an office, Room 20, +at Cooper Institute, where she was busy all day and where New York +members met to help her. To each of the petitions sent out, she +attached her battle cry, "There must be a law abolishing slavery.... +Women, you cannot vote or fight for your country. Your only way to be +a power in the government is through the exercise of this one, sacred, +constitutional 'right of petition,' and we ask you to use it now to +the utmost...." She also asked those signing the petitions to +contribute a penny to help with expenses and in this way she slowly +raised $3,000.[150] + +At first the response was slow, although both Republican and +antislavery papers were generous in their praise of this undertaking, +but when the signed petitions began to come in, she felt repaid for +all her efforts, and when the Hovey Fund trustees appropriated twelve +dollars a week for her salary, the financial burden lifted a little. +Yet it was ever present. For herself she needed little. She wrote her +mother and Mary, "I go to a little restaurant nearby for lunch every +noon. I always take strawberries with two tea rusks. Today I said, +'all this lacks is a glass of milk from my mother's cellar,' and the +girl replied, 'We have very nice Westchester milk.' So tomorrow I +shall add that to my bill of fare. My lunch costs, berries five cents, +rusks five, and tomorrow the milk will be three."[151] + +The cost of postage mounted as the petitions continued to go out to +all parts of the country. In dire need of funds, Susan decided to +appeal to Henry Ward Beecher; and wearily climbing Columbia Heights to +his home, she suddenly felt a strong hand on her shoulder and a +familiar voice asking, "Well, old girl, what do you want now?" He took +up a collection for her in Plymouth Church, raising $200. Gerrit Smith +sent her $100, when she had hoped for $1,000, and Jessie Benton +Fremont, $50. Before long, her "war of ideas" won the support of +Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Horace Greeley, George William +Curtis, and other popular lecturers who spoke for her at Cooper Union +to large audiences whose admission fees swelled her funds; and +eventually Senator Sumner, realizing how important the petitions could +be in arousing public opinion for the Thirteenth Amendment, saved her +the postage by sending them out under his frank.[152] + +She made her home with the Stantons, who had moved from Brooklyn to 75 +West 45th Street, New York, and the comfortable evenings of good +conversation and her busy days at the office helped mightily to heal +her grief for her father. In the bustling life of the city she felt +she was living more intensely, more usefully, as these critical days +of war demanded. Henry Stanton, now an editorial writer for Greeley's +_Tribune_, brought home to them the inside story of the news and of +politics. All of them were highly critical of Lincoln, impatient with +his slowness and skeptical of his plans for slaveholders and slaves in +the border states. They questioned Garrison's wisdom in trusting +Lincoln. Susan could not feel that Lincoln was honest when he +protested that he did not have the power to do all that the +abolitionists asked. "The pity is," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "that +the vast mass of people really believe the man _honest_--that he +believes he has not the power--I wish I could...."[153] + +New York seethed with unrest as time for the enforcement of the draft +drew near. Indignant that rich men could avoid the draft by buying a +substitute, workingmen were easily incited to riot, and the city was +soon overrun by mobs bent on destruction. The lives of all Negroes and +abolitionists were in danger. The Stanton home was in the thick of the +rioting, and when Susan and Henry Stanton came home during a lull, +they all decided to take refuge for the night at the home of Mrs. +Stanton's brother-in-law, Dr. Bayard. Here they also found Horace +Greeley hiding from the mob, for hoodlums were marching through the +streets shouting, "We'll hang old Horace Greeley to a sour apple +tree." + +The next morning Susan started for the office as usual, thinking the +worst was over, but as not a single horsecar or stage was running, she +took the ferry to Flushing to visit her cousins. Here too there was +rioting, but she stayed on until order was restored by the army. She +returned to the city to find casualties mounting to over a thousand +and a million dollars' worth of property destroyed. Negroes had been +shot and hung on lamp posts, Horace Greeley's _Tribune_ office had +been wrecked and the homes of abolitionist friends burned. "These are +terrible times," she wrote her family, and then went back to work, +staying devotedly at it through all the hot summer months.[154] + +By the end of the year, she had enrolled the signatures of 100,000 men +and women on her petitions, and assured by Senator Sumner that these +petitions were invaluable in creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, she raised the number of signatures in the next few months +to 400,000. + +In April 1864, the Thirteenth Amendment passed the Senate and the +prospects for it in the House were good. This phase of her work +finished, Susan disbanded the Women's National Loyal League and +returned to her family in Rochester. + + * * * * * + +In despair over the possible re-election of Abraham Lincoln, Susan had +joined Henry and Elizabeth Stanton in stirring up sentiment for John +C. Fremont. Abolitionists were sharply divided in this presidential +campaign. Garrison and Phillips disagreed on the course of action, +Garrison coming out definitely for Lincoln in the _Liberator_, while +Phillips declared himself emphatically against four more years of +Lincoln. Susan, the Stantons, and Parker Pillsbury were among those +siding with Phillips because they feared premature reconstruction +under Lincoln. They cited Lincoln's Amnesty Proclamation as an example +of his leniency toward the rebels. They saw danger in leaving free +Negroes under the control of southerners embittered by war, and called +for Negro suffrage as the only protection against oppressive laws. +They opposed the readmission of Louisiana without the enfranchisement +of Negroes. Lincoln, they knew, favored the extension of suffrage only +to literate Negroes and to those who had served in the military +forces. In fact, Lincoln held back while they wanted to go ahead under +full steam and they looked to Fremont to lead them. + +Following the presidential campaign anxiously from Rochester, Susan +wrote Mrs. Stanton, "I am starving for a full talk with somebody +posted, not merely pitted for Lincoln...." The persistent cry of the +_Liberator_ and the _Antislavery Standard_ to re-elect Lincoln and not +to swap horses in midstream did not ring true to her. "We read no more +of the good old doctrine 'of two evils choose neither,'" she wrote +Anna E. Dickinson. She confessed to Anna, "It is only safe to seek and +act the truth and to profess confidence in Lincoln would be a lie in +me."[155] + +As the war dragged on through the summer without decisive victories +for the North, Lincoln's prospects looked bleak, and to her dismay, +Susan saw the chances improving for McClellan, the candidate of the +northern Democrats who wanted to end the war, leave slavery alone, and +conciliate the South. The whole picture changed, however, with the +capture of Atlanta by General Sherman in September. The people's +confidence in Lincoln revived and Fremont withdrew from the contest. +One by one the anti-Lincoln abolitionists were converted; and Susan, +anxiously waiting for word from Mrs. Stanton, was relieved to learn +that she was not one of them, nor was Wendell Phillips whose judgment +and vision both of them valued above that of any other man. With +approval she read these lines which Phillips had just written Mrs. +Stanton, "I would cut off both hands before doing anything to aid +Mac's [McClellan's] election. I would cut oft my right hand before +doing anything to aid Abraham Lincoln's election. I wholly distrust +his fitness to settle this thing and indeed his purpose."[156] + +There is nothing to indicate any change of opinion on Susan's part +regarding Lincoln's unfitness for a second term. That he was the +lesser of two evils, she of course acknowledged. For her these +pre-election days were discouraging and frustrating. She had very +definite ideas on reconstruction which she felt in justice to the +Negro must be carried out, and Lincoln did not meet her requirements. + +After Lincoln's re-election, she again looked to Wendell Phillips for +an adequate policy at this juncture, and she was not disappointed. +"Phillips has just returned from Washington," Mrs. Stanton wrote her. +"He says the radical men feel they are powerless and checkmated.... +They turn to such men as Phillips to say what politicians dare not +say.... We say now, as ever, 'Give us immediately unconditional +emancipation, and let there be no reconstruction except on the +broadest basis of justice and equality!...' Phillips and a few others +must hold up the pillars of the temple.... I cannot tell you how happy +I am to find Douglass on the same platform with us. Keep him on the +right track. Tell him in this revolution, he, Phillips, and you and I +must hold the highest ground and truly represent the best type of the +white man, the black man, and the woman."[157] + +Susan, holding "the highest ground," found it difficult to mark time +until she could find her place in the reconstruction. "The work of the +hour," she wrote Anna E. Dickinson, "is not alone to put down the +Rebels in arms, but to educate Thirty Millions of People into the idea +of a True Republic. Hence every influence and power that both men and +women can bring to bear will be needed in the reconstruction of the +Nation on the broad basis of justice and equality."[158] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[134] Garrisons, _Garrison_, IV, pp. 30-31. + +[135] Lydia Mott to W. L. Garrison, May 8, 1861, Boston Public +Library; Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 89. + +[136] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 215. + +[137] _Ibid._, p. 216. Harriet Tubman, a fugitive slave, was often +called the Moses of her people because she led so many of them into +the promised land of freedom. + +[138] _Ibid._ + +[139] _Ibid._, p. 198. + +[140] Anna E. Dickinson was born in Philadelphia in 1842. The death of +her father, two years later, left the family in straightened +circumstances, and Anna, after attending a Friends school, began very +early to support herself by copying in lawyers' offices and by working +at the U.S. Mint. Speaking extemporaneously at Friends and antislavery +meetings, she discovered she had a gift for oratory and was soon in +demand as a speaker. + +[141] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 219. + +[142] April, 1862. _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 748. + +[143] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 218, 222. + +[144] _Emancipation, the Duty of Government_, Ms., Lucy E. Anthony +Collection. Reading that General Grant had returned 13 slaves to their +masters, an indignant Susan B. Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton, "Such +gratuitous outrage should be met with instant death--without judge or +jury--if any offense may." Feb. 27, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton +Papers, Library of Congress. + +[145] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 221. + +[146] Jan. 24, 1904, Anna Dann Mason Collection. + +[147] Harper, _Anthony_, p. 226. + +[148] The first woman in the United States to obtain a medical degree, +1849. + +[149] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 57-58. + +[150] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 230. Members of the Women's National +Loyal League wore a silver pin showing a slave breaking his last +chains and bearing the inscription, "In emancipation is national +unity." Susan B. Anthony to Mrs. Drake, Sept. 18, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[151] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 234. + +[152] _Ibid._, To Samuel May, Jr., Sept. 21, 1863, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[153] April 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[154] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 230. + +[155] June 12, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, July 1, 1864, Anna +E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. About this time, a friend of +Susan B. Anthony's youth, now a widower living in Ohio in comfortable +circumstances, unsuccessfully urged her to marry him. + +[156] Sept. 23, 1864, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[157] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, pp. 103-104. + +[158] March 14, 1864, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + + + + +THE NEGRO'S HOUR + + +Susan's thoughts now turned to Kansas, as they had many times since +her brothers had settled there. Daniel and Annie, his young wife from +the East, urged her to visit them.[159] Daniel was well established in +Kansas, the publisher of his own newspaper and the mayor of +Leavenworth. He had served a little over a year in the Union army in +the First Kansas Cavalry. She longed to see him and the West that he +loved. + +Now for the first time she felt free to make the long journey, for her +mother and Mary had sold the farm on the outskirts of Rochester and +had moved into the city, buying a large red brick house shaded by +maples and a beautiful horse chestnut. It had been a wrench for Susan +to give up the farm with its memories of her father, but there were +compensations in the new home on Madison Street, for Guelma, her +husband, Aaron McLean, and their family lived with them there. Hannah +and her family had also settled in Rochester, and when they bought the +house next door, Susan had the satisfaction of living again in the +midst of her family.[160] + +She was particularly devoted to Guelma's twenty-three-year-old +daughter, Ann Eliza, whose "merry laugh" and "bright, joyous presence" +brought new life into the household. Ann Eliza was a stimulating +intelligent companion, and Susan looked forward to seeing many of her +own dreams fulfilled in her niece. Then suddenly in the fall of 1864, +Ann Eliza was taken ill, and her death within a few days left a great +void.[161] + +In the midst of this sorrow, Daniel sent Susan a ticket and a check +for a trip to Kansas. Hesitating no longer, she waited only until her +"tip-top Rochester dressmaker" made up "the new, five-dollar silk" +which she had bought in New York.[162] + +Before leaving for Kansas, in January, 1865, she pasted on the first +page of her diary a clipping of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, +"Something Left Undone," which seemed so perfectly to interpret her +own feelings: + + Labor with what zeal we will + Something still remains undone + Something uncompleted still + Waits the rising of the sun.... + + Till at length it is or seems + Greater than our strength can bear + As the burden of our dreams + Pressing on us everywhere....[163] + +With "the burden of her dreams" pressing on her, Susan traveled +westward. The future of the Negro was much on her mind, for the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had just been sent to the +states for ratification. That it would be ratified she had no doubt, +but she recognized the responsibility facing the North to provide for +the education and rehabilitation of thousands of homeless bewildered +Negroes trying to make their way in a still unfriendly world, and she +looked forward to taking part in this work. + +Beyond Chicago, where she stopped over to visit her uncle Albert +Dickinson and his family, her journey was rugged, and when she reached +Leavenworth she reveled in the comfort of Daniel's "neat, little, +snow-white cottage with green blinds." She liked Daniel's wife, Annie, +at once, admired her gaiety and the way she fearlessly drove her +beautiful black horse across the prairie. "They have a real 'Aunt +Chloe' in the kitchen," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "and a little Darkie +boy for errands and table waiter. I never saw a girl to match. The +more I see of the race, the more wonderful they are to me."[164] + +There was always good companionship in Daniel's home, for friends from +both the East and the West found it a convenient stopping place, and +there was much discussion of politics, the Negro question, and the +future of the West. Business was booming in Leavenworth, then the most +thriving town between St. Louis and San Francisco. Eight years before, +when Daniel had first settled there, it boasted a population of 4,000. +Now it had grown to 22,000, was lighted with gas, and was building its +business blocks of brick. As Susan drove through the busy streets with +Annie, she saw emigrants coming in by steamer and train to settle in +Kansas and watched for the covered wagons that almost every day +stopped in Leavenworth for supplies before moving on to the far West. +Driving over the wide prairie, sometimes a warm brown, then again +white with snow under a wider expanse of deep blue sky than she had +ever seen before, she relaxed as she had not in many a year and began +to feel the call of the West. She even thought she might like to +settle in Kansas until she was caught up by the sharp realization of +how she would miss the stimulating companionship of her friends in the +East. + +[Illustration: Daniel Anthony, brother of Susan B. Anthony] + +When Daniel was busy with his campaign for his second term as mayor, +she helped him edit the _Bulletin_. He warned her not to fill his +paper up with woman's rights, and in spite of his sympathy for the +Negro, forbade her to advocate Negro suffrage in his paper. + +"I wish I could talk through it the things I'd like to say to the +young martyr state ..." she wrote Mrs. Stanton. "The Legislature gave +but six votes for Negro suffrage the other day.... The idea of Kansas +refusing her loyal Negroes." + +Again and again she was shocked at the prejudice against Negroes in +Kansas, as when Daniel employed a Negro typesetter and the printers, +refusing to admit him to their union, went out on strike until he was +discharged. + +"In this city," she reported to Mrs. Stanton, "there are four thousand +ex-Missouri slaves who have sought refuge here within the three past +years." Making it her business to learn what was being done to help +them and educate them, she visited their schools, their Sunday +schools, and the Colored Home, and gave much of her time to them. To +encourage them to demand their rights, she organized an Equal Rights +League among them. This was one thing she could do, even if she could +not plead for Negro suffrage in Daniel's newspaper.[165] + +Then one breath-taking piece of news followed another--Lee's +surrender, April 9, 1865, and in less than a week, Lincoln's +assassination, his death, and Andrew Johnson's succession to the +Presidency. + +Susan looked upon Lincoln's assassination and death as an act of God. +She wrote to Mrs. Stanton, "Was there ever a more terrific command to +a Nation to 'stand still and know that I am God' since the world +began? The Old Book's terrible exhibitions of God's wrath sink into +nothingness. And this fell blow just at the very hour he was declaring +his willingness to consign those five million faithful, brave, and +loving loyal people of the South to the tender mercies of the ex-slave +lords of the lash."[166] + +She longed "to go out and do battle for the Lord once more," but when +she could have expressed her opinions at the big mass meeting held in +memory of Lincoln, she remained silent. "My soul was full," she +confessed to Mrs. Stanton, "but the flesh not equal to stemming the +awful current, to do what the people have called make an exhibition of +myself. So quenched the spirit and came home ashamed of myself." + +Then she added, "Dear-a-me--how overfull I am, and how I should like +to be nestled into some corner away from every chick and child with +you once more." + + * * * * * + +Disturbing news came from the East of dissension in the antislavery +ranks, of Garrison's desire to dissolve the American Antislavery +Society after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, and of +Phillips' insistence that it continue until freedom for the Negro was +firmly established. While Garrison maintained that northern states, +denying the ballot to the Negro, could not consistently make Negro +suffrage a requirement for readmitting rebel states to the Union, +Phillips demanded Negro suffrage as a condition of readmission. +Immediately abolitionists took sides. Parker Pillsbury, Lydia and +Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Anna E. Dickinson, the Stantons, +and others lined up with Phillips, whose vehement and scathing +criticism of reconstruction policies seemed to them the need of the +hour. Susan also took sides, praising "dear ever glorious Phillips" +and writing in her diary, "The disbanding of the American Antislavery +Society is fully as untimely as General Grant's and Sherman's granting +parole and pardon to the whole Rebel armies."[167] + +To her friends in the East, she wrote, "How can anyone hold that +Congress has no right to demand Negro suffrage in the returning Rebel +states because it is not already established in all the loyal ones? +What would have been said of Abolitionists ten or twenty years ago, +had they preached to the people that Congress had no right to vote +against admitting a new state with slavery, because it was not already +abolished in all the old States? It is perfectly astounding, this +seeming eagerness of so many of our old friends to cover up and +apologize for the glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the +manhood of the black race."[168] + +She rejoiced when word came that the American Antislavery Society +would continue under the presidency of Phillips, with Parker Pillsbury +as editor of the _Antislavery Standard_; but she was saddened by the +withdrawal of Garrison, whom she had idolized for so many years and +whose editorials in the _Liberator_ had always been her +inspiration.[169] + +As she read the weekly New York _Tribune_, which came regularly to +Daniel, she grew more and more concerned over President Johnson's +reconstruction policy and more and more convinced of the need of a +crusade for political and civil rights for the Negro. Asked to deliver +the Fourth of July oration at Ottumwa, Kansas, she decided to put into +it all her views on the controversial subject of reconstruction. + +Traveling by stage the 125 miles to Ottumwa, she found good company +en route and "great talk on politics, Negro equality, and temperance," +and thought the "grand old prairies ... perfectly splendid and the +timber-skirted creeks ... delightful."[170] + +Before a large gathering of Kansas pioneers, many of whom had driven +forty or fifty miles to hear her, she stood tall, straight, and +earnest, as she reminded them of the noble heritage of Kansas, of the +bloody years before the war when in the free-state fight, Kansas men +and women "taught the nation anew" the principles of the Declaration +of Independence. Lashing out with the vehemence of Phillips against +President Johnson's reconstruction policy, she warned, "There has been +no hour fraught with so much danger as the present.... To be foiled +now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories and to +re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of Negro disfranchisement ... +would be a disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath +to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars...."[171] + +She then cited the results of the elections in Virginia, South +Carolina, and Tennessee to prove her point that unless Negroes were +given the vote, rebels would be put in office and a new code of laws +apprenticing Negroes passed, establishing a new form of slavery. + +She urged her audience to be awake to the politicians who were using +the peoples' reverence and near idolatry of Lincoln to push through +anti-Negro legislation under the guise of carrying out his policies. +Then putting behind her the prejudice and impatience with Lincoln +which she had felt during his lifetime, she added, "If the +administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people one +lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and +proclaim, and that he as their President was bound to execute their +will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he +did four years ago, 'I wait the voice of the people.'" + +In her special pleading for the Negro, she did not forget women. +Calling attention to the fact that our nation had never been a true +republic because the ballot was exclusively in the hands of the "free +white male," she asked for a government "of the people," men and +women, white and black, with Negro suffrage and woman suffrage as +basic requirements. + +[Illustration: Wendell Phillips] + +So enthusiastic were the Republicans over her speech that they urged +her to prepare it for publication, suggesting, however, that she +delete the passage on woman suffrage. This was her first intimation +that Republicans might balk at enfranchising women. So great had been +women's contribution to the winning of the war and so indebted were +the Republicans to women for creating sentiment for the Thirteenth +Amendment, that she had come to expect, along with Mrs. Stanton, that +the ballot would without question be given them as a reward. + + * * * * * + +It was soon obvious to Susan that politicians in the East as well as +in Kansas were shying away from woman suffrage. Mrs. Stanton reported +that even Wendell Phillips was backsliding, not wishing to campaign +for Negro suffrage and woman suffrage at the same time. "While I could +continue as heretofore, arguing for woman's rights, just as I do for +temperance every day," he had written, "still I would not mix the +movements.... I think such mixture would lose for the Negro far more +than we should gain for the woman. I am now engaged in abolishing +slavery in a land where the abolition of slavery means conferring or +recognizing citizenship, and where citizenship supposes the ballot for +all men."[172] + +Such reasoning filled Susan with despair, for she firmly believed that +women who had been asking for full citizenship for seventeen years +deserved precedence over the Negro. Mrs. Stanton agreed. To them, +Negro suffrage without woman suffrage was unthinkable, an unbearable +humiliation. Half of the Negroes were women, and manhood suffrage +would fasten upon them a new form of slavery. How could Wendell +Phillips, they asked each other, fail to recognize not only the +timeliness of woman suffrage, but the fact that women were better +qualified for the ballot than the majority of Negroes, who, because of +their years in slavery, were illiterate and the easy prey of +unscrupulous politicians? By all means enfranchise Negroes, they +argued with him, but enfranchise women as well, and if there must be a +limitation on suffrage, let it be on the basis of literacy, not on the +basis of sex. + +Among Republican members of Congress and abolitionists, there was +serious discussion of a Fourteenth Amendment to extend to the Negro +civil rights and the ballot. Susan, reading about this in Kansas, and +Mrs. Stanton, discussing it in New York with her husband, Wendell +Phillips, and Robert Dale Owen, saw in such a revision of the +Constitution a just and logical opportunity to extend woman's rights +at the same time. Previously committed to state action on woman +suffrage but only because it had then seemed the necessary first step, +both women welcomed the more direct road offered by an amendment to +the Constitution. Only they of all the old woman's rights workers were +awake to this opportunity. + +Throughout the United States, people were thinking about the +Constitution as Americans had not done since the Bill of Rights was +ratified in 1791. Not only were amendments to the federal Constitution +in the air, not only were rebel states being readmitted to the Union +with new constitutions, but state constitutions in the North were +being revised, and western territories sought statehood. In Susan's +opinion the time was ripe to proclaim equal rights for all. This +clearly was woman's hour. + + * * * * * + +"Come back and help," pleaded Elizabeth Stanton, who grew more and +more alarmed as she saw all interest in woman suffrage crowded out of +the minds of reformers by their zeal for the Negro. "I have argued +constantly with Phillips and the whole fraternity, but I fear one and +all will favor enfranchising the Negro without us. Woman's cause is in +deep water.... There is pressing need of our woman's rights +convention...."[173] + +Susan's spirits revived at the prospect of holding a woman's rights +convention, and plans for the future began to take shape as she read +the closing lines of Mrs. Stanton's letter: "I hope in a short time to +be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready +for you.... I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you +scold me for all my sins and shortcomings.... Oh, Susan, you are very +dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this +earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and +all my future plans are based on you as coadjutor. Yes, our work is +one, we are one in aim and sympathy and should be together. Come +home." + +Parker Pillsbury also added his plea, "Why have you deserted the field +of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost +twenty centuries?... It is not for me to decide your field of labor. +Kansas needed John Brown and may need you ... but New York is to +revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is to +make the plea for woman?" + +Reading her newspaper a few days later, she found that the politicians +had made their first move, introducing in the House of Representatives +a resolution writing the word "male" into the qualifications of voters +in the second section of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. She +started at once for the East. + + * * * * * + +On the long journey back, in the heat of August, traveling by stage +and railroad with many stops to make the necessary connections, Susan +not only visited her many relatives who had moved to the West, but +also called on antislavery and woman suffrage workers, and held +meetings to plead for free schools for Negroes and for the ballot for +Negroes and women. She found people relieved to have the war over and +busy with their own affairs, but with prejudices smoldering. Public +speaking was still an ordeal for her and she confessed to her diary, +"Made a labored talk.... Had a struggle to get through with speech," +and again, "Had a hard time. Thoughts nor words would come--Staggered +through."[174] However, she was a determined woman. The message must +be carried to the people and she would do it whether she suffered in +the process or not. + +Late in September, she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester, +but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few +weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton, deep in a serious +discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for woman suffrage +at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this +time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now +passed since the last national woman's rights convention, and the +workers were scattered; some had lost interest and others thought only +of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker +Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of +the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with +Lucy, confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with +her.[175] + +Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey Fund, she went to New England +to revive interest there and in Concord talked with the Emersons, +Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he +thought it wise to demand woman suffrage at this time, he replied, +"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide +for me in practical matters." Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with +Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise +women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same +time.[176] + +Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and woman +suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the +petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a +verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to +face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she +was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton +went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage +would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures. + +However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in +January 1866--the very first demand ever made for Congressional action +on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up +400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under +protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, +who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and +Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever +zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by +Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[177] + +By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful +Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically +friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves +wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's +influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her +only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional +recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, +not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found +James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to +present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was +regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now +advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she +herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate +as well as in the House--a few because they saw justice in the demands +of the women, others because they believed white women should have +political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw +in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the +Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000 +signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans. + +In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and +Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had +found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young +editor of the _Independent_. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and +the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his +flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had +winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the +Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had +proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights +group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would +fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell +Phillips he suggested for president, and the _Antislavery Standard_ +as the paper of the new organization. + +This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to +Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult +Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips, +however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of +amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before +any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually +oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but +when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May +1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society, +she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union +had been given to the members of the antislavery group and therefore +there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal +Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the woman's +rights convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the +Negro. To her this seemed a natural development as she had always +thought of woman's rights as part of the larger struggle for human +rights. + +"For twenty years," she declared, "we have pressed the claims of women +to the right of representation in the government.... Up to this hour +we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; +but now by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage +reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress +at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation +in a republican form of government. + +"There is, there can be, but one true basis," she continued. "Taxation +and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go +beyond woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights +platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human +rights platform."[178] + +The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their +own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical +experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton with all their hearts +wanted this experiment to succeed, and yet as they resolved their +woman's rights organization into the American Equal Rights +Association, they were apprehensive. + +They did not have to wait long for disillusionment. Meeting Wendell +Phillips and Theodore Tilton in the office of the _Antislavery +Standard_ to plan a campaign for the Equal Rights Association, they +discussed with them what should be done in New York, preparatory to +the revision of the state constitution. Emphatically Wendell Phillips +declared that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of +the constitution, but not the word "male." That could come, he added, +when the constitution was next revised, some twenty or thirty years +later. To their astonishment, Theodore Tilton heartily agreed. Then he +added, "The question of striking out the word 'male,' we as an equal +rights association shall of course present as an intellectual theory, +but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention." +Completely unprepared for such an attitude on Tilton's part, Susan +retorted with indignation, "I would sooner cut off my right hand than +ask for the ballot for the black man and not for woman." Then telling +the two men just what she thought of them for their betrayal of women, +she swept out of the office to keep another appointment.[179] + +Equally exasperated with these men, Mrs. Stanton stayed on, hoping to +heal the breach, but when Susan returned to the Stanton home that +evening, she found her highly indignant, declaring she was through +boosting the Negro over her own head. Then and there they vowed that +they would devote themselves with all their might and main to woman +suffrage and to that alone. + + * * * * * + +By this time, Congress had passed a civil rights bill over President +Johnson's veto, conferring the rights of citizenship upon freedmen, +and a Fourteenth Amendment to make these rights permanent was now +before Congress. The latest developments regarding the various drafts +of the Fourteenth Amendment were passed along to Susan and Mrs. +Stanton by Robert Dale Owen. Senator Sumner, he reported, had yielded +to party pressure and now supported the Fourteenth Amendment, although +in the past he had always maintained such an amendment wholly +unnecessary since there was already enough justice, liberty, and +equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen. Senator +Sumner opposed and defeated a clause in the amendment referring to +"race" and "color," words which had never previously been mentioned +in the Constitution, but he raised no serious objection to the +introduction of the word "male" as a qualification for suffrage, which +was also unprecedented. That he tried time and time again to avoid the +word "male" when he was redrafting the amendment or that Thaddeus +Stevens tried to substitute "legal voters" for "male citizens" was no +comfort to Susan and Mrs. Stanton, as they saw the Fourteenth +Amendment writing discrimination against women into the federal +Constitution for the first time.[180] + +As they carefully read over the first section of the Fourteenth +Amendment, which conferred citizenship on every person born or +naturalized in the United States, women's rights seemed assured: + + "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and + subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the + United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State + shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the + privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; + nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or + property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person + within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." + +Then in the controversial second section which provided the penalty of +reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes +of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by +the words, "male inhabitants" and "male citizens," used to define +legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single +word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise +arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere +abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to +women, there was no doubt. + +With determination, Susan and Mrs. Stanton fought this injustice. Were +they not "persons born ... in the United States," they asked. Were +they forever to be regarded as children or as lower than persons, +along with criminals, idiots, and the insane? Were women not counted +in the basis of representation and should they not have a voice in the +election of those representatives whose office their numbers helped to +establish? + +As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of +suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there +were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the +right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the +Fourteenth Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and +limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional, she +reasoned, when the first lines of the Constitution read, "We, the +people of the United States, in order to ... establish justice ... and +secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do +ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of +America." Of course "the people" must include women, if the English +language meant what it said. + +The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by +Congress and referred to the states for ratification in June 1866. As +never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the +unimportance of women. Once more politicians and reformers had ignored +women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's +intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman +of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the +Fourteenth Amendment's broad term of "persons." Yet according to +statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling, +both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the +possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property +of individuals from the interference of state and municipal +legislation, through the federal control extended by this amendment. +At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have +received abundant protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, along +with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.[181] + +Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage +could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it +were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was +all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but +neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They +knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South +the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and +could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured +of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be +considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would +vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted. + +Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican +party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican, +Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the +watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each +and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any +distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate +floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking +out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He +stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and +although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud +the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the +three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two +issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a +separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas +objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it +with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his +approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's +amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine +votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182] + +Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had +for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had +treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing +definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York +_Tribune_. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry +from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the +ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the +glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against +woman suffrage and the _Antislavery Standard_ avoiding the subject as +if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached +the public.[183] + +It was hard for Susan to forgive the _Antislavery Standard_ for what +she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed +allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest +Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading +men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and +Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing +to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage +at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the +Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of +political parties. + +Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the +antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one +temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was +the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own +claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. +Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha +C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John +Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the +ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not +criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure +am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the +country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to +use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has +taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the +charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he +speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect +and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove +expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point +again."[184] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's +Vineyard, in 1864. + +[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs. +Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester. +Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street +in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable +insurance business. + +[161] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 241. + +[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862. + +[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[165] _Ibid._ + +[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862. + +[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865. + +[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245. + +[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865. + +[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865. + +[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967. + +[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105. + +[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244. + +[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865. + +[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865. + +[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251. + +[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97. + +[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260. + +[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323. + +[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus +Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its +citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of +the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not +disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was +a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male." + +[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112; +Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana, +Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200. + +[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B. +Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted +for woman suffrage. + +[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to +woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came +out against it. + +[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_ +(Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H. +Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported +woman suffrage at this time. + + + + +TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS + + +Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She +carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to +the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights +Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, +many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she +hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. +She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the +amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185] + +This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's +constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for +writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an +interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was +more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this +convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the +_Tribune_ to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he +emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that +measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This +is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186] + +Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his +opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in +all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly +respected George William Curtis, now editor of _Harper's Magazine_ and +also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and +Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped +mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of +signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, +and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the +right of suffrage. + +Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's +hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness +answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading +consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually +serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable +to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot +and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two +women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan +replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the +point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she +reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought +in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and +paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187] + +Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his +oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to +vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in +Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had +complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, +should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed +he would do.[188] + +In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over +their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many +reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. +Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William +Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in +my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, +citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from +the Constitution."[189] + +Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily +took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, +looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky +voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your +committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to +women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only +male citizens.[190] + +Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter +to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom +that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the +governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and +practically all agreed in the conclusion that _the women of our state +do not choose to vote_. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the +sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in +favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The +few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the +situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to +me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto +existed...."[191] + +Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating +him in the constitutional convention or for the headlines in the +evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's +petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of +Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly +greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most +maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."[192] + + * * * * * + +While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for +help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas, where in November +1867 two amendments would be voted upon, enfranchising women and +Negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare +Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak +throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy, as trustees of the Jackson +Fund, outvoting Wendell Phillips, were able to appropriate $1,500 for +this campaign. + +Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas, where +she and her husband, Henry Blackwell, were winning many friends for +the cause. "I fully expect we shall carry the State," Lucy confidently +wrote Susan. "The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past +all expression if they don't get the right to vote.... But the Negroes +are all against us.... These men _ought not to be allowed to vote +before we do_, because they will be just so much dead weight to +lift."[193] + +One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to +withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had +sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York _Tribune_ and +the _Independent_, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word +favorable to woman suffrage, for these two papers with their influence +and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women +not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the +Republican press changed from indifference to outright animosity, +striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them "free lovers," +because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as +Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful, believing the +Democrats were ready to take them up, but she reminded Susan, "It will +be necessary to have a good force here in the fall, and you will have +to come." + +Never for a moment did the importance of this election in Kansas +escape Susan, and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart +Mill, who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas woman +suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November +give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, history will +remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been +the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over +the earth and to be looked back to ... as one of the most fertile in +beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human +affairs."[194] + +Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman suffrage just as it +had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held +back. Her first problem, however, was to raise the money to get +herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson Fund +had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan, who +most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they +returned to the East. Olympia Brown, recently graduated from Antioch +College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist church, was a +new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable, she reached every +part of Kansas during the summer, driving over the prairies with the +Singing Hutchinsons.[195] + +Olympia Brown's valiant help made waiting in New York easier for Susan +as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the +Jackson Fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision; and the +trustees of the Hovey Fund, established to further the rights of both +Negroes and women, refused to finance a woman suffrage campaign in +Kansas. + +"We are left without a dollar," she wrote State Senator Samuel N. +Wood. "Every speaker who goes to Kansas must _now pay her own_ +expenses out of her own private purse, unless money should come from +some unexpected source. I shall run the risk--as I told you--and draw +upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not +contract _debts_ under the impression that _our_ Association can pay +for them--_for it cannot_."[196] + +She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently +needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and +down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough +to pay the printer for 60,000 tracts, with the result that along with +the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore +Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went +advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and +patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to +attract the people of Kansas. + + * * * * * + +With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time +to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to +Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for +several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to +Kansas. + +On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a +congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new +experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest, +most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable +daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by +solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two +good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for +many a day. + +As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week +speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs. +Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the +meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary, +distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech +herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage +and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda +or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan +wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors" +out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197] + +Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when +they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by +Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman, +had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a +rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly. +Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough +cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and +a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.... +Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very +scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that +great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings, +and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our +railroad fare--eight cents per mile--and hotel bills. Our collections +thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully +disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas +meetings."[198] + +The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win +her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years +which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old +maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke +down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender +energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin +to that of the frontiersman. + +Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm. +The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a +brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a +queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully +curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor +built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager +to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her. + +This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She +sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small +towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular +and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State +Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In +the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the +campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine, +against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas +Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican, +the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up +as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and +woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought +women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the +liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against +votes for women. + + * * * * * + +While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the +Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage +Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in +Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he +telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own +expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy, +eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad, +Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she +herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the +women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory, +speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences. +A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily +dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers, +patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth +driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment +they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of +his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none +of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous +sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the +day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences +held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When +he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were +building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman +suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when +he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who +throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother, +his daughter, his sister, and his wife."[200] + +[Illustration: George Francis Train] + +At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling +Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and +eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in +Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make +last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support +both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a +_Tribune_ editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that +the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard +it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. +She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women +have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really +desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them +the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would +conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, +rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of +their husbands and fathers...."[201] + +These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in +Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning her back on such +fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously. +When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train +on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred +at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it +alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued +with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber +wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest +settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, +traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not +at all, unconventional though it was. + +She took charge of the meetings, opening them herself with a short +sincere plea for both the woman and Negro suffrage amendments, and +then she introduced George Francis Train, who, no matter how late they +arrived or how tiring the day, had changed his wrinkled gray traveling +suit for his resplendent platform costume. The expectant crowd never +failed to respond with a gasp of surprise, and immediately the fun +began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them, calling +for their support of woman suffrage and advocating as well some of his +own pet ideas, such as freeing Ireland from British oppression, paying +our national debt in greenbacks, establishing an eight-hour day in +industry, and even nominating himself for President. + +Amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit, Susan found +neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by +opponents of woman suffrage. As the days went by with their continued +hardships and increasing fatigue, she marveled at his unfailing +courteousness, his pluck, and good cheer, while he in turn admired her +courage, her endurance, and her zeal for her cause, and between them a +bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed +by the pressures of later years. + +During the long hours on the road, he entertained her with the story +of his life and his travels, an adventure story of a poor boy who had +made good. Building clipper ships, introducing American goods in +Australia, traveling in India, China, and Russia, promoting street +railways in England, and now building the Union Pacific, he had a +wealth of information to impart. + +Their views on the Negro differed sharply. Rating the whole race as +inferior and incapable of improvement, he naturally opposed +enfranchising Negroes before women. She, on the other hand, had always +regarded Negroes as her equals, and in campaigning with Train, she had +to make her choice between Negroes and women. She chose women, just as +her abolitionist friends in the East had chosen the Negro; and their +indifference and opposition to woman suffrage at this crucial time was +as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them. They +called him a Copperhead, remembering his southern wife and his hatred +of abolitionists, his vocal resistance to the draft, and his demands +for immediate unconditional peace. They ignored entirely his defense +of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated +with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy. They abused him in +their newspapers and he, not to be outdone, ridiculed them in his +speeches, shouting, "Where is Wendell Phillips, today? Lost caste +everywhere. Inconsistent in all things, cowardly in this. Where is +Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty? Pitching the woman +suffrage idea out of the Convention and bailing out Jeff Davis. Where +is William Lloyd Garrison? Being patted on the shoulders by his +employers, our enemies abroad, for his faithful work in trying to +destroy our nation. Where is Henry Ward Beecher? Writing a story for +Bonner's Ledger...."[202] + +They never forgave him this estimate of them, nor did they forgive +Susan for associating herself with him. + +On one of the last days of the Kansas campaign, while she was driving +over the prairie with him, he suddenly asked her why the woman +suffrage people did not have a paper of their own. "Not lack of +brains, but lack of money," she tersely replied.[203] + +They talked for a while about the good such a paper would do, about +the people who should edit and write for it, what name it should have. +Then he said simply, "I will give you the money." + +Because a woman suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so +many years, she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant +gesture soon to be forgotten; but to her amazement that very evening +she heard Train announce to his audience, "When Miss Anthony gets back +to New York, she is going to start a woman suffrage paper. Its name is +to be _The Revolution_: its motto, 'Men their rights, and nothing +more; women, their rights and nothing less.' This paper is to be a +weekly, price $2. per year; its editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and +Parker Pillsbury; its proprietor, Susan B. Anthony. Let everybody +subscribe for it!" + + * * * * * + +Election day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth, +to Daniel's home, to learn the verdict of the people of Kansas. As the +returns came in, their hope of seeing Kansas become the first woman +suffrage state quickly faded. Neither their amendment nor the Negroes' +polled enough votes for adoption. Their woman suffrage amendment, +however, received only 1,773 votes less than the Republican-sponsored +Negro amendment, and to have accomplished this in a hard-fought bitter +campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves +and in their judgment of men and events. No longer need they depend +upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance. From +now on they would chart their own course. This led, they believed, to +Washington, where they must gain support among members of Congress for +a federal woman suffrage amendment. Few, if any, Republicans would +help them, but already one Democrat had come forward. George Francis +Train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a +lecture tour on their way East. To Susan, who had to raise every penny +spent in her work, this seemed like an answer to prayer, as did his +proposal to finance a woman suffrage paper for them. + +By this time their abolitionist friends in the East were writing them +indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on George +Francis Train and warning them not to link woman suffrage with an +unbalanced charlatan. Even their devoted friends in Kansas, including +Governor Robinson, advised them against further association with +Train. + +They did not make their decision lightly, nor was it easy to go +against the judgment of respected friends, but of this they were +confident--that with or without Train, they would estrange most of +their old friends if they campaigned for woman suffrage now. Without +him, their work, limited by lack of funds, would be ineffectual. With +his financial backing, they not only had the opportunity of spreading +their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New +York, but had the promise of a paper, now so desperately needed when +other news channels were closed to them. That Train was eccentric they +agreed, and they also admitted that possibly some of his financial +theories were unsound. They believed he was ahead of his time when he +advocated the eight-hour day and the abolition of standing armies; but +at least he looked forward, not backward. Susan had found him to be a +man of high principles. She had heard him "make speeches on woman's +suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"[204] the +well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb +her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil +War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of +conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train +probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. +Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his +generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced. + +For Susan there was only one choice--to work for woman suffrage with +the financial backing of Train. Mrs. Stanton agreed, and as she +expressed it, "I have always found that when we see eye to eye, we are +sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong.... I take +my beloved Susan's judgment against the world."[205] + + * * * * * + +Traveling homeward with George Francis Train, Susan and Mrs. Stanton +spoke in Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, +Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Hartford, and other important cities where +they drew large crowds, which had never before listened to a +discussion of woman suffrage. Most of their old friends among the +suffragists and abolitionists shunned them, for they had been warned +against this folly by their colleagues in the East. The lively +meetings rated plenty of publicity, complimentary in the Democratic +papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press. Usually +"Woman Suffrage" got the headlines, but sometimes it was "Woman +Suffrage and Greenbacks" or "Train for President." Handbills, the +printing of which Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and +epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all +meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also +arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, _The +Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, with this jingle, so +uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, on its cover: + + The Garrisons, Phillipses, Greeleys, and Beechers, + False prophets, false guides, false teachers and preachers, + Left Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Brown, and Stone, + To fight the Kansas battle alone; + While your Rosses, Pomeroys, and your Clarkes + Stood on the fence, or basely fled, + While woman was saved by a Copperhead. + +Even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists were +the back-page advertisements of a new woman-suffrage paper, _The +Revolution_, and of woman's rights tracts which could be purchased +from Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the American Equal Rights +Association. That Susan would presume to line up this organization in +any way with George Francis Train aroused the indignation of Lucy +Stone, who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust. While Susan +and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward, enjoying the comfort of the best +hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences, a coalition against +them was being formed in the East. + +"All the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong," +Susan wrote in her diary, January 1, 1868. "Only time can tell, but I +believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."[206] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[185] Ms., Petition, Jan. 9, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection + +[186] Ms., note, 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of +Congress. + +[187] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 278; _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, +p. 284. + +[188] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 279. + +[189] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287. Petitions with 20,000 +signatures were presented. + +[190] _Ibid._, p. 285. + +[191] Aug. 25, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection. + +[192] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287. + +[193] _Ibid._, pp. 234-235, 239. + +[194] _Ibid._, p. 252. + +[195] A famous family of singers who enlivened woman's rights, +antislavery, and temperance meetings with their songs. + +[196] July 9, 1867, Anthony Papers, Kansas State Historical Society, +Topeka, Kansas. + +[197] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 284. + +[198] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 242. + +[199] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 287. George Francis Train on his own +initiative spoke for woman suffrage before the New York Constitutional +Convention. + +[200] George Francis Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_ +(Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867), p. 68. + +[201] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 248-249. + +[202] Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, p. 40. + +[203] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 290. + +[204] Inscription by Susan B. Anthony on copy of Train's _The Great +Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, Library of Congress. + +[205] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 293. + +[206] _Ibid._, p. 295. + + + + +THE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR + + +"If we women fail to speak the _one word_ of the hour," Susan wrote +Anna E. Dickinson, "who shall do it? No man is able, for no man sees +or feels as we do. To whom God gives the word, to him or her he says, +'Go preach it.'"[207] + +This is just what Susan aimed to do in her new paper, _The +Revolution_. It's name, she believed, expressed exactly the stirring +up of thought necessary to establish justice for all--for women, +Negroes, workingmen and-women, and all who were oppressed. Her two +editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, reliable friends +as well as vivid forceful writers, were completely in sympathy with +her own liberal ideas and could be counted on to crusade fearlessly +for every righteous cause. What did it matter if George Francis Train +wanted space in the paper to publish his views and for a financial +column, edited by David M. Melliss of the New York _World_? Brought up +on the antislavery platform where free speech was the watchword and +where all, even long-winded cranks, were allowed to express their +opinions, Susan willingly opened the pages of _The Revolution_ to +Train and to Melliss in return for financial backing. + +When on January 8, 1868, the first issue of her paper came off the +press, her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction as she turned +over its pages, read its good editorials, and under the frank of +Democratic Congressman James Brooks of New York, sent out ten thousand +copies to all parts of the country. + +_The Revolution_ promised to discuss not only subjects which were of +particular concern to her and to Elizabeth Stanton, such as "educated +suffrage, irrespective of sex or color," equal pay for women for equal +work, and practical education for girls as well as boys, but also the +eight-hour day, labor problems, and a new financial policy for +America. This new financial policy, the dream of George Francis Train, +advocated the purchase of American goods only; the encouragement of +immigration to rebuild the South and to settle the country from ocean +to ocean; the establishment of the French financing systems, the +Credit Foncier and Credit Mobilier, to develop our mines and +railroads; the issuing of greenbacks; and penny ocean postage "to +strengthen the brotherhood of Labor." + +All in all it was not a program with wide appeal. Dazzled by the +opportunities for making money in this new undeveloped country, people +were in no mood to analyze the social order, or to consider the needs +of women or labor or the living standards of the masses. Unfamiliar +with the New York Stock Exchange, they found little to interest them +in the paper's financial department, while speculators and promoters, +such as Jay Gould and Jim Fiske, wanted no advice from the lone eagle, +George Francis Train, and resented Melliss's columns of Wall Street +gossip which often portrayed them in an unfavorable light. Nor did a +public-affairs paper edited and published by women carry much weight. +None of this, however, mattered much to Susan, who did not aim for a +popular paper but "to make public sentiment." It was her hope that +just as the _Liberator_ under William Lloyd Garrison had been "the +pillar of light and of fire to the slave's emancipation," so _The +Revolution_ would become "the guiding star to the enfranchisement of +women."[208] + + * * * * * + +Upon Susan fell the task of building up subscriptions, soliciting +advertisements, and getting copy to the printer. As her office in the +New York _World_ building, 37 Park Row, was on the fourth floor and +the printer was several blocks away on the fifth floor of a building +without an elevator, her job proved to be a test of physical +endurance. To this was added an ever-increasing financial burden, for +Train had sailed for England when the first number was issued, had +been arrested because of his Irish sympathies, and had spent months in +a Dublin jail, from which he sent them his thoughts on every +conceivable subject but no money for the paper. He had left $600 with +Susan and had instructed Melliss to make payments as needed, but this +soon became impossible, and she had to face the alarming fact that, if +the paper were to continue, she must raise the necessary money +herself. Because the circulation was small, it was hard to get +advertisers, particularly as she was firm in her determination to +accept only advertisements of products she could recommend. Patent +medicines and any questionable products were ruled out. Subscriptions +came in encouragingly but in no sense met the deficit which piled up +unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers. + +She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally +from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed +the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman +suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got +to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up." +Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her +that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the +last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because +he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was +"sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he +nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The +first member of the House to put his name on her list was her +dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many +others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President +Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons +and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was +powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her +request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every +day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he +had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr. +Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years +have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to +women as well as to Negroes, and by means of _The Revolution_ we are +bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a +thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights." +This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and +in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say, +"Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."[209] + +She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more +readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably +small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the +articles stimulating. + +Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments +and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which he was not +in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their +ruthless intrigue and disregard of the public. During the turbulent +days when the impeachment trial was front-page news everywhere, _The +Revolution_ proclaimed it as a political maneuver of the Republicans +to confuse the people and divert their attention from more important +issues, such as corruption in government, high prices, taxation, and +the fabulous wealth being amassed by the few. This of course roused +the intense disapproval of Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton, and +Horace Greeley, all of whom regarded Johnson as a traitor and shouted +for impeachment. It ran counter to the views of Susan's brother +Daniel, who telegraphed Senator Ross of Kansas demanding his vote for +impeachment. Although no supporter of President Johnson, Susan was now +completely awake to the political manipulations of the radical +Republicans and what seemed to her their readiness to sacrifice the +good of the nation for the success of their party. She repudiated them +all--all but the rugged Ben Wade, always true to woman suffrage, and +the tall handsome Chief Justice, Salmon P. Chase, who, she believed, +stood for justice and equality. + +Both of these men Susan regarded as far better qualified for the +Presidency than General Grant, who now was the obvious choice of the +Republicans for 1868. "Why go pell-mell for Grant," asked _The +Revolution_, "when all admit that he is unfit for the position? It is +not too late, if true men and women will do their duty, to make an +honest man like Ben Wade, President. Let us save the Nation. As to the +Republican party the sooner it is scattered to the four winds of +Heaven the better."[210] Later when Chase was out of the running among +Republicans and not averse to overtures from the Democrats, _The +Revolution_ urged him as the Democratic candidate with universal +suffrage as his slogan. + +Susan demanded civil rights, suffrage, education, and farms for the +Negroes as did the Republicans, but she could not overlook the +political corruption which was flourishing under the military control +of the South, and she recognized that the Republicans' insistence on +Negro suffrage in the South did not stem solely from devotion to a +noble principle, but also from an overwhelming desire to insure +victory for their party in the coming election. These views were +reflected editorially in _The Revolution_, which, calling attention +to the fact that Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and +Pennsylvania had refused to enfranchise their Negroes, asked why Negro +suffrage should be forced on the South before it was accepted in the +North. + +The Fourteenth Amendment was having hard sledding and _The Revolution_ +repudiated it, calling instead for an amendment granting universal +suffrage, or in other words, suffrage for women and Negroes. _The +Revolution_ also discussed in editorials by Mrs. Stanton other +subjects of interest to women, such as marriage, divorce, +prostitution, and infanticide, all of which Susan agreed needed frank +thoughtful consideration, but which other papers handled with kid +gloves. + +In still another unpopular field, that of labor and capital, _The +Revolution_ also pioneered fearlessly, asking for shorter hours and +lower wages for workers, as it pointed out labor's valuable +contribution to the development of the country. It also called +attention to the vicious contrasts in large cities, where many lived +in tumbledown tenements in abject poverty while the few, with more +wealth than they knew what to do with, spent lavishly and built +themselves palaces. + +Sentiments such as these increased the indignation of Susan's critics, +but she gloried in the output of her two courageous editors just as +she had gloried in the evangelistic zeal of the antislavery crusaders. +Wisely, however, she added to her list of contributors some of the +popular women writers of the day, among them Alice and Phoebe Cary. +She ran a series of articles on women as farmers, machinists, +inventors, and dentists, secured news from foreign correspondents, +mostly from England, and published a Washington letter and woman's +rights news from the states. Believing that women should become +acquainted with the great women of the past, especially those who +fought for their freedom and advancement, she printed an article on +Frances Wright and serialized Mary Wollstonecraft's _A Vindication of +the Rights of Women_. + + * * * * * + +Eagerly Susan looked for favorable notices of her new paper in the +press. Much to her sorrow, Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ +completely ignored its existence, as did her old standby, the +_Antislavery Standard_. The New York _Times_ ridiculed as usual +anything connected with woman's rights or woman suffrage. The New York +_Home Journal_ called it "plucky, keen, and wide awake, although some +of its ways are not at all to our taste." Theodore Tilton in the +Congregationalist paper, _The Independent_, commented in his usual +facetious style, which pinned him down neither to praise nor +unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "_The Revolution_ from +the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its +friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing." +Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights +paper," declared the Troy (New York) _Times_, "is a realistic, +well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical +execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago +_Workingman's Advocate_ observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an +able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the +Cincinnati _Commercial_, one of the few women journalists, described +sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable _Revolution_ +office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the +determined--the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or +Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee, +Susan."[211] + +While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with +Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's +harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret +and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their +senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be +associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," +George Francis Train. She published his letter in _The Revolution_ +with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often +the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had +welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed +in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of +fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and +pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for +burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With +such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her +right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did +for woman suffrage.[212] + +None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon +Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives +wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to +understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright, +who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of +_The Revolution_, "Its vigorous pages are what we need. Count on me +now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."[213] + +[Illustration: Anna E. Dickinson] + +Another bright spot was Susan's friendship with Anna E. Dickinson, +with whom she carried on a lively correspondence, scratching oft +hurried notes to her on the backs of old envelopes or any odd scraps +of paper that came to hand. Whenever Anna was in New York, she usually +burst into the _Revolution_ office, showered Susan with kisses, and +carried on such an animated conversation about her experiences that +the whole office force was spellbound, admiring at the same time her +stylish costume and jaunty velvet cap with its white feather, very +becoming on her short black curls. + +Repeatedly Susan urged Anna to stay with her in her "plain quarters" +at 44 Bond Street or in her "nice hall bedroom" at 116 East +Twenty-third Street. That Anna could have risen out of the hardships +of her girlhood to such popularity as a lecturer and to such +financial success was to Susan like a fairy tale come true. Scarcely +past twenty, Anna not only had moved vast audiences to tears, but was +sought after by the Republicans as one of their most popular campaign +speakers and had addressed Congress with President Lincoln in +attendance. Susan had been sadly disappointed that Anna had not seen +her way clear to speak a strong word for women in the Kansas campaign, +but she hoped that this vivid talented young woman would prove to be +"the evangel" who would lead women "into the kingdom of political and +civil rights." It never occurred to her that she herself might even +now be that "evangel."[214] + + * * * * * + +By this time Susan had been called on the carpet by some of the +officers of the American Equal Rights Association because she had used +the Association's office as a base for business connected with the +Train lecture tour and the establishment of _The Revolution_. She was +also accused of spending the funds of the Association for her own +projects and to advertise Train. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and +Stephen Foster were particularly suspicious of her. Her accounts were +checked and rechecked by them and found in good order. However, at the +annual meeting of the Association in May 1868, Henry Blackwell again +brought the matter up. Deeply hurt by his public accusation, she once +more carefully explained that because there had been no funds except +those which came out of her own pocket or had been raised by her, she +had felt free to spend them as she thought best. This obviously +satisfied the majority, many of whom expressed appreciation of her +year of hard work for the cause. She later wrote Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, "Even if not one old friend had seemed to have remembered +the past and it had been swallowed up, overshadowed by the Train +cloud, I should still have rejoiced that I have done the work--for no +_human_ prejudice or power can rob me of the joy, the compensation, I +have stored up therefrom. That it is wholly spiritual, I need but tell +you that this day, I have not two hundred dollars more than I had the +day I entered upon the public work of woman's rights and +antislavery."[215] + +What troubled her most at these meetings was not the animosity +directed against her by Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone, but the +assertion, made by Frederick Douglass and agreed to by all the men +present, that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage. When +Lucy Stone came to the defense of woman suffrage in a speech whose +content and eloquence Susan thought surpassed that of "any other +mortal woman speaker," she was willing to forgive Lucy anything, and +wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "I want you to _know_ that it is +impossible for me to lay a straw in the way of anyone who _personally +wrongs me_, if only that one will work nobly in the _cause_ in their +own way and time. They may try to hinder my success but I _never_ +theirs." + +Realizing that it would be futile for her to spend any more time +trying to persuade the American Equal Rights Association to help her +with her woman suffrage campaign, she now formed a small committee of +her own, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It included Elizabeth Smith +Miller, the liberal wealthy daughter of Gerrit Smith, Abby Hopper +Gibbons, the Quaker philanthropist and social worker; and Mary Cheney +Greeley, the wife of Horace Greeley, who, in spite of the fact that +her husband now opposed woman suffrage, continued to take her stand +for it. This committee, with _The Revolution_ as its mouthpiece, was +soon acting as a clearing house for woman suffrage organizations +throughout the country and called itself the Woman's Suffrage +Association of America. + +To the national Republican convention in Chicago which nominated +General Grant for President, these women sent a carefully worded +memorial asking that the rights of women be recognized in the +reconstruction. It was ignored. Thereupon Susan turned to the +Democrats, attending with Mrs. Stanton a preconvention rally in New +York, addressed by Governor Horatio Seymour. Given seats of honor on +the platform, they attracted considerable attention and the New York +_Sun_ commented editorially that this honor conferred upon them by the +Democrats not only committed Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to Governor +Seymour's views but also committed the Democrats to incorporate a +woman suffrage plank in their platform. + +This was too much for some of the officers of the American Equal +Rights Association, whose executive committee now adopted a sarcastic +resolution proposing that Susan attend the national Democratic +convention and prove her confidence in the Democrats by securing a +plank in their platform. + +Ignoring the unfriendly implications of this resolution and the +ridicule heaped upon her by the New York City papers, Susan made plans +to attend the Democratic convention, which for the first time since +the war was bringing northern and southern Democrats together for the +dedication of their new, imposing headquarters, Tammany Hall, and +which was also attracting many liberals who, disgusted by the +corruption of the Republicans, were looking for a "new departure" from +the Democrats. To the amazement of the delegates, Susan with Mrs. +Stanton and several other women walked into the convention when it was +well under way and sent a memorial up to Governor Seymour who was +presiding. He received it graciously, announcing that he held in his +hand a memorial of the women of the United States signed by Susan B. +Anthony, and then turned it over to the secretary to be read while the +audience shouted and cheered. The sonorous passages demanding the +enfranchisement of women rang out through and above the bedlam: "We +appeal to you because ... you have been the party heretofore to extend +the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought most valiantly +for the removal of the 'property qualification' from all white men and +thereby placed the poorest ditch digger on a political level with the +proudest millionaire.... And now you have an opportunity to confer a +similar boon on the women of the country and thus ... perpetuate your +political power for decades to come...."[216] + +To hear these words read in a national political convention was to +Susan worth any ridicule she might be forced to endure. She was not +allowed to speak to the convention as she had requested, and shouts +and jeers continued as her memorial was hurriedly referred to the +Resolutions committee where it could be conveniently overlooked. + +The Republican press reported the incident with sarcasm and animosity, +the _Tribune_ deeply wounding her: "Miss Susan B. Anthony has our +sincere pity. She has been an ardent suitor of democracy, and they +rejected her overtures yesterday with screams of laughter."[217] + +The Democrats' nomination of Horatio Seymour and Frank Blair was as +reactionary and unpromising of a "new departure" as was the choice of +General Grant and Schuyler Colfax by the Republicans. Thereupon _The +Revolution_ called for a new party, a people's party which would be +sincerely devoted to the welfare of all the people. So strongly did +Susan feel about this that in one of her few signed editorials she +declared, "Both the great political parties pretending to save the +country are only endeavoring to save themselves.... In their hands +humanity has no hope.... The sooner their power is broken as parties +the better.... _The Revolution_ calls for construction, not +reconstruction.... Who will aid us in our grand enterprise of a +nation's salvation?"[218] + +To "darling Anna" she wrote more specifically, "Both parties are owned +body and soul by the _Gold Gamblers_ of the Nation--and so far as the +honest working men and women of the country are concerned, it matters +very little which succeeds. Oh that the Gods would inspire men of +influence and money to move for a third party--universal suffrage and +anti-monopolist of land and gold."[219] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[207] July 6, 1866, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[208] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 8, 1868, pp. 1-12. + +[209] _Ibid._ + +[210] _Ibid._, April 23, June 25, 1868, pp. 49, 392. + +[211] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 296-297, 302-303; _The Revolution_, I, +Jan. 22, 1868, p. 34. + +[212] _The Revolution_, I, Jan. 29, 1868, p. 243. + +[213] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 301. + +[214] March 18, May 4, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of +Congress. Susan had a room at the Stantons until they prepared to move +to their new home in Tenafly, New Jersey. + +[215] Aug. 20, 1868, Higginson Papers, Boston Public Library. + +[216] _The Revolution_, II, July 9, 1868, p. 1. + +[217] _Ibid._, July 16, 1868, p. 17. + +[218] _Ibid._, Aug. 6, 1868, p. 72. + +[219] July 10, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + + + + +WORK, WAGES, AND THE BALLOT + + +In her zeal to promote the welfare of all the people, Susan now turned +her attention to the workingwomen of New York, whose low wages, long +hours, and unhealthy working and living conditions had troubled her +for a long time. Women were being forced out of the home into the +factory by a changing and expanding economy, and at last were being +paid for their work. However, the women she met on the streets of New +York, hurrying to work at dawn and returning late at night, weary, +pale, and shabbily dressed, had none of the confidence of the +economically independent. They had merely exchanged one form of +slavery for another. She saw the ballot as their most powerful ally, +and as she told the factory girls of Cohoes, New York, they could +compel their employers to grant them a ten-hour day, equal opportunity +for advancement, and equal pay, the moment they held the ballot in +their hands.[220] + +As yet labor unions were few and short-lived. The women tailors of New +York had formed a union as early as 1825, but it had not survived, and +later attempts to form women's unions had rarely been successful. A +few men's unions had weathered the years, but they had not enrolled +women, fearing their competition. Women were welcomed only by the +National Labor Union, established in Baltimore in 1866 for the purpose +of federating all unions. + +When the National Labor Union Congress met in New York in September +1868, Susan saw an opportunity for women to take part, and in +preparation she called a group of workingwomen together in _The +Revolution_ office to form a Workingwomen's Association which she +hoped would eventually represent all of the trades. At this meeting, +the majority were from the printing trade, typesetters operating the +newly invented typesetting machines, press feeders, bookbinders, and +clerks, in whom she had become interested through her venture in +publishing. She wanted them to call their organization the +Workingwomen's Suffrage Association, but they refused, because they +feared the public's disapproval of woman suffrage and were convinced +they should not seek political rights until they had improved their +working conditions. She could not make them see that they were +putting the cart before the horse. They did, however, form +Workingwomen's Association No. 1, electing her their delegate to the +National Labor Congress. + +Next she called a meeting of the women in the sewing trades, and with +the help of men from the National Labor Union, persuaded a hundred of +them to form Workingwomen's Association No. 2. Most of these women +were seamstresses making men's shirts, women's coats, vests, lace +collars, hoop skirts, corsets, fur garments, and straw hats, but also +represented were women from the umbrella, parasol, and paper collar +industry, metal burnishers, and saleswomen. Most of them were young +girls who worked from ten to fourteen hours a day, from six in the +morning until eight at night, and earned from $4 to $8 a week. + +"You must not work for these starving prices any longer ...," Susan +told them. "Have a spirit of independence among you, 'a wholesome +discontent,' as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, and you will get better +wages for yourselves. Get together and discuss, and meet again and +again.... I will come and talk to you...."[221] They elected Mrs. Mary +Kellogg Putnam to represent them at the National Labor Congress. + +With Mrs. Putnam and Kate Mullaney, the able president of the Collar +Laundry Union of Troy, New York, with Mary A. MacDonald of the Women's +Protective Labor Union of Mt. Vernon, New York, and Mrs. Stanton, +representing the Woman's Suffrage Association of America, Susan +knocked at the door of the National Labor Congress. All were welcomed +but Mrs. Stanton, who represented a woman suffrage organization and +whose acceptance the rank and file feared might indicate to the public +that the Labor Congress endorsed votes for women. + +The women had a friend in William H. Sylvis of the Iron Molders' +Union, who was the driving force behind the National Labor Congress, +and he made it clear at once that he welcomed Mrs. Stanton and +everyone else who believed in his cause. So strong, however, was the +opposition to woman suffrage among union men that eighteen threatened +to resign if Mrs. Stanton were admitted as a delegate. The debate +continued, giving Susan an opportunity to explain why the ballot was +important to workingwomen. "It is the power of the ballot," she +declared, "that makes men successful in their strikes."[222] She +recommended that both men and women be enrolled in unions, pointing +out that had this been done, women typesetters would not have replaced +men at lower wages in the recent strike of printers on the New York +_World_. Finally a resolution was adopted, making it clear that Mrs. +Stanton's acceptance in no way committed the National Labor Congress +to her "peculiar ideas" or to "Female Suffrage." + +A committee on female labor was then appointed with Susan as one of +its members. At once she tried to show the committee how the vote +would help women in their struggle for higher wages. She had at hand a +perfect example in the unsuccessful strike of Kate Mullaney's strong, +well-organized union of 500 collar laundry workers in Troy, New York. +Aware that Kate blamed their defeat on the ruthless newspaper +campaign, inspired and paid for by employers, Susan asked her, "If you +had been 500 carpenters or 500 masons, do you not think you would have +succeeded?"[223] + +"Certainly," Kate Mullaney replied, adding that the striking +bricklayers had won everything they demanded. Susan then reminded her +that because the bricklayers were voters, newspapers respected them +and would hesitate to arouse their displeasure, realizing that in the +next election they would need the votes of all union men for their +candidates. "If you collar women had been voters," she told them, "you +too would have held the balance of political power in that little city +of Troy." + +Susan convinced the committee on female labor, and in their strong +report to the convention they urged women "to secure the ballot" as +well as "to learn the trades, engage in business, join labor unions or +form protective unions of their own, ... and use every other honorable +means to persuade or force employers to do justice to women by paying +them equal wages for equal work." These women also called upon the +National Labor Congress to aid the organization of women's unions, to +demand the eight-hour day for women as well as men, and to ask +Congress and state legislatures to pass laws providing equal pay for +women in government employ. The phrase, "to secure the ballot," was +quickly challenged by some of the men and had to be deleted before the +report was accepted; but this setback was as nothing to Susan in +comparison with the friends she had made for woman suffrage among +prominent labor leaders and with the fact that a woman, Kate Mullaney +of Troy, had been chosen assistant secretary of the National Labor +Union and its national organizer of women.[224] + +The National Labor Union Congress won high praise in _The Revolution_ +as laying the foundation of the new political party of America which +would be triumphant in 1872. "The producers, the working-men, the +women, the Negroes," _The Revolution_ declared, "are destined to form +a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government +from the non-producers, the land monopolists, the bondholders, and the +politicians."[225] + + * * * * * + +One of the most encouraging signs at this time was the friendliness of +the New York _World_, whose reporters covered the meetings of the +Workingwomen's Association with sympathy, arousing much local +interest. Reprinting these reports and supplementing them, _The +Revolution_ carried their import farther afield, bringing to the +attention of many the wisdom and justice of equal pay for equal work, +and the need to organize workingwomen and to provide training and +trade schools for them. _The Revolution_ continually spurred women on +to improve themselves, to learn new skills, and actually to do equal +work if they expected equal pay. + +When reports reached Susan that women in the printing trade were +afraid of manual labor, of getting their hands and fingers dirty, and +of lifting heavy galleys, she quickly let them know that she had no +patience with this. "Those who stay at home," she told them, "have to +wash kettles and lift wash tubs and black stoves until their hands are +blackened and hardened. In this spirit, you must go to work on your +cases of type. Are these cases heavier than a wash tub filled with +water and clothes, or the old cheese tubs?... The trouble is either +that girls are not educated to have physical strength or else they do +not like to use it. If a union of women is to succeed, it must be +composed of strength, nerve, courage, and persistence, with no fear of +dirtying their white fingers, but with a determination that when they +go into an office they would go through all that was required of them +and demand just as high wages as the men.... + +"Make up your mind," she continued, "to take the 'lean' with the +'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as the men are. I +do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in +value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand +that you are in their service as workers, not as women."[226] + +Workingwomen's associations now existed in Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, +San Francisco and other cities, encouraged and aroused by the efforts +at organization in New York. These associations occasionally exchanged +ideas, and news of all of them was published in _The Revolution_. The +groups in Boston and in the outlying textile mills were particularly +active, and Susan brought to her next suffrage convention in +Washington in 1870 Jennie Collins of Lowell who was ably leading a +strike against a cut in wages. The newspapers, too, began to notice +workingwomen, publishing articles about their working and living +conditions. + +Trying to amalgamate the various groups in New York, Susan now formed +a Workingwomen's Central Association, of which she was elected +president. To its meetings she brought interesting speakers and +practical reports on wages, hours, and working conditions. She herself +picked up a great deal of useful information in her daily round as she +talked with this one and that one. On her walks to and from work, in +all kinds of weather, she met poorly clad women carrying sacks and +baskets in which they collected rags, scraps of paper, bones, old +shoes, and anything worth rescuing from "garbage boxes." With +friendliness and good cheer, she greeted these ragpickers, sometimes +stopping to talk with them about their work, and through her interest +brought several into the Workingwomen's Association. Looking forward +to surveys on all women's occupations, she started out by appointing a +committee to investigate the ragpickers, many of whom lived in +tumbledown slab shanties on the rocky land which is now a part of +Central Park. + +This investigation revealed that more than half of the 1200 ragpickers +were women and that it was the one occupation in which women had equal +opportunity with men and received equal compensation for their day's +work. Average earnings ranged from forty cents a day to ten dollars a +week. The report, highly sentimental in the light of today's +scientific approach, was a promising beginning, a survey made by women +themselves in their own interest--the forerunner of the reports of the +Labor Department's Women's Bureau. + +Cooperatives appealed to Susan as they did to many labor leaders as +the best means of freeing labor. When the Sewing Machine Operators +Union tried to establish a shop where their members could share the +profits of their labor, she did her best to help them, hoping to see +them gain economic independence in a light airy clean shop where +wealthy women, eager to help their sisters, would patronize them. +However, the wealthy women to whom she appealed to finance this +project did not respond, looking upon a cooperative as a first step +toward socialism and a threat to their own profits. She was able, +however, to arouse a glimmer of interest among the members of the +newly formed literary club, Sorosis, in the problems of working women. + +She had the satisfaction of seeing women typesetters form their own +union in 1869, and this was, according to the Albany _Daily +Knickerbocker_, "the first move of the kind ever made in the country +by any class of labor, to place woman on a par with man as regards +standing, intelligence, and manual ability."[227] _The Revolution_ +encouraged this union by printing notices of its meetings and urging +all women compositors to join. In signed articles, Susan pointed out +how wages had improved since the union was organized. "A little more +Union, girls," she said, "and soon all employers will come up to 45 +cents, the price paid men.... So join the Union, girls, and together +say _Equal Pay for Equal Work_."[228] + +Eager to bring more women into the printing trade where wages were +higher, she tried in every possible way to establish trade schools for +them. She looked forward to a printing business run entirely by women, +giving employment to hundreds. So obsessed was she by the idea of a +trade school for women compositors that when printers in New York went +on a strike, she saw an opportunity for women to take their places and +appealed by letter and in person to a group of employers "to +contribute liberally for the purpose of enabling us to establish a +training school for girls in the art of typesetting." Explaining that +hundreds of young women, now stitching at starvation wages, were ready +and eager to learn the trade, she added, "Give us the means and we +will soon give you competent women compositors."[229] Having learned +by experience that men always kept women out of their field of labor +unless forced by circumstances to admit them, she also urged young +women to take the places of striking typesetters at whatever wage +they could get. + +It never occurred to her in her eagerness to bring women into a new +occupation that she might be breaking the strike. She saw only women's +opportunity to prove to employers that they were able to do the work +and to show the Typographical Union that they should admit women as +members. Labor men, however, soon let her know how much they +disapproved of her strategy. She tried to explain her motives to them, +that she was trying to fit these women to earn equal wages with men. +She reminded these men of how hard it was for women to get into the +printing trade and how they had refused to admit women to their union; +and she called their attention to her whole-hearted support of the +lately formed Women's Typographical Union. + +Some of the men were never convinced and never forgot this misstep, +bringing it up at the National Labor Union Congress in Philadelphia in +1869, which Susan attended as a delegate of the New York +Workingwomen's Association. Here she found herself facing an +unfriendly group without the support of William H. Sylvis, who had +recently died. For three days they debated her eligibility as a +delegate, first expressing fear that her admission would commit the +Labor Congress to woman suffrage. When she won 55 votes against 52 in +opposition, Typographical Union No. 6 of New York brought accusations +against her which aroused suspicion in the minds of many union +members. They pointed out that she belonged to no union, and they +called her an enemy of labor because she had encouraged women to take +men's jobs during the printers' strike. They could not or would not +understand that in urging women to take men's jobs, she had been +fighting for women just as they fought for their union, and they +completely overlooked how continuously and effectively she had +supported the Women's Typographical Union. Her _Revolution_, they +claimed, was printed at less than union rates in a "rat office" and +her explanation was not satisfactory. That it was printed on contract +outside her office was no answer to satisfy union men who could not +realize on what a scant margin her paper operated or how gladly she +would have set up a union shop had the funds been available. + +Not only were these accusations repeated again and again, they were +also carried far and wide by the press, with the result that Susan was +not only kept out of the Labor Congress but was even sharply +criticized by some members of her Workingwomen's Association. + +"As to the charges which were made by Typographical Union No. 6," she +reported to this Association, "no one believes them; and I don't think +they are worth answering. I admit that this Workingwomen's Association +is not a _trade_ organization; and while I join heart and hand with +the working people in their trades unions, and in everything else by +which they can protect themselves against the oppression of +capitalists and employers, I say that this organization of ours is +more upon the broad platform of philosophizing on the general +questions of labor, and to discuss what can be done to ameliorate the +condition of working people generally."[230] + +She was not without friends in the ranks of labor, however, the New +England delegates giving her their support. The New York _World_, very +fair in its coverage of the heated debates, declared, "Of her devotion +to the cause of workingwomen, there can be no question."[231] + + * * * * * + +The activities of the Workingwomen's Association had by this time +begun to irk employers, and some of them threatened instant dismissal +of any employee who reported her wages or hours to these meddling +women. Fear of losing their jobs now hung over many while others were +forbidden by their fathers, husbands, and brothers to have anything to +do with strong-minded Susan B. Anthony. + +To counteract this disintegrating influence and to bring all classes +of women together in their fight for equal rights, Susan persuaded the +popular lecturer, Anna E. Dickinson, to speak for the Workingwomen's +Association at Cooper Union. This, however, only added fuel to the +flames, for Anna, in an emotional speech, "A Struggle for Life," told +the tragic story of Hester Vaughn, a workingwoman who had been accused +of murdering her illegitimate child. Found in a critical condition +with her dead baby beside her, Hester Vaughn had been charged with +infanticide, tried without proper defense, and convicted by a +prejudiced court, although there was no proof that she had +deliberately killed her child. At Susan's instigation, the +Workingwomen's Association sent a woman physician, Dr. Clemence +Lozier, and the well-known author, Eleanor Kirk, to Philadelphia to +investigate the case. Both were convinced of Hester Vaughn's +innocence. + +With the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's courageous editorials in _The +Revolution_, Susan made such an issue of the conviction of Hester +Vaughn that many newspapers accused her of obstructing justice and +advocating free love, and this provided a moral weapon for her critics +to use in their fight against the growing independence of women. +Eventually her efforts and those of her colleagues won a pardon for +Hester Vaughn. At the same time the publicity given this case served +to educate women on a subject heretofore taboo, showing them that +poverty and a double standard of morals made victims of young women +like Hester Vaughn. Susan also made use of this case to point out the +need for women jurors to insure an unprejudiced trial. She even +suggested that Columbia University Law School open its doors to women +so that a few of them might be able to understand their rights under +the law and bring aid to their less fortunate sisters. + + * * * * * + +Under Susan's guidance, the Workingwomen's Association continued to +hold meetings as long as she remained in New York. In its limited way, +it carried on much-needed educational work, building up self-respect +and confidence among workingwomen, stirring up "a wholesome +discontent," and preparing the way for women's unions. The public +responded. At Cooper Union, telegraphy courses were opened to women; +the New York Business School, at Susan's instigation, offered young +women scholarships in bookkeeping; and there were repeated requests +for the enrollment of women in the College of New York. + +Living in the heart of this rapidly growing, sprawling city, Susan saw +much to distress her and pondered over the disturbing social +conditions, looking for a way to relieve poverty and wipe out crime +and corruption. She saw luxury, extravagance, and success for the few, +while half of the population lived in the slums in dilapidated houses +and in damp cellars, often four or five to a room. Immigrants, +continually pouring in from Europe, overtaxed the already inadequate +housing, and unfamiliar with our language and customs, were the easy +prey of corrupt politicians. Many were homeless, sleeping in the +streets and parks until the rain or cold drove them into police +stations for warmth and shelter. Susan longed to bring order and +cleanliness, good homes and good government to this overcrowded city, +and again and again she came to the conclusion that votes for women, +which meant a voice in the government, would be the most potent factor +for reform. + +Yet she did not close her mind to other avenues of reform. Seeing +reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the +unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in +_The Revolution_ against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of +the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation +to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public +lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads. +Her active mind also sought a solution of the complicated currency +problem. In fact there was no public question which she hesitated to +approach, to think out or attempt to solve. She did not keep her +struggle for woman suffrage aloof from the pressing problems of the +day. Instead she kept it abreast of the times, keenly alive to social, +political, and economic issues, and involved in current public +affairs. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[220] Feb. 18, 1868, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[221] _The Revolution_, II, Sept. 24, 1868, p. 198. L. A. Hines of +Cincinnati, publisher of Hine's Quarterly, assisted Miss Anthony in +organizing women in the sewing trades. + +[222] _Ibid._, p. 204. + +[223] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 999-1000. + +[224] _The Revolution_, II, Oct. 1, 1868, p. 204. + +[225] _Ibid._, p. 200. + +[226] _Ibid._, Oct. 8, 1868, p. 214. A Woman's Exchange was also +initiated by the Workingwomen's Association. + +[227] _Ibid._, June 24, 1869, p. 394. + +[228] _Ibid._, March 18, 1869, p. 173. + +[229] _Ibid._, Feb. 4, 1869, p. 73. + +[230] _Ibid._, Sept. 9, 1869, p. 154. + +[231] _Ibid._, Aug. 26, 1869, p. 120. + + + + +THE INADEQUATE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in July 1868, but +Republicans found it inadequate because it did not specifically +enfranchise Negroes. More than ever convinced that they needed the +Negro vote in order to continue in power, they prepared to supplement +it by a Fifteenth Amendment, which Susan hoped would be drafted to +enfranchise women as well as Negroes. Immediately through her Woman's +Suffrage Association of America, she petitioned Congress to make no +distinction between men and women in any amendment extending or +regulating suffrage. + +She and Elizabeth Stanton also persuaded their good friends, Senator +Pomeroy of Kansas and Congressman Julian of Indiana, to introduce in +December 1868 resolutions providing that suffrage be based on +citizenship, be regulated by Congress, and that all citizens, native +or naturalized, enjoy this right without distinction of race, color, +or sex. Before the end of the month, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts +and Congressman Julian had introduced other resolutions to enfranchise +women in the District of Columbia and in the territories. Even the New +York _Herald_ could see no reason why "the experiment" of woman +suffrage should not be tried in the District of Columbia.[232] + +To focus attention on woman suffrage at this crucial time, Susan, in +January 1869, called together the first woman suffrage convention ever +held in Washington. No only did it attract women from as far west as +Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, but Senator Pomeroy lent it importance +by his opening speech, and through the detailed and respectful +reporting of the New York _World_ and of Grace Greenwood of the +Philadelphia _Press_ it received nationwide notice. + +Congress, however, gave little heed to women's demands. "The +experiment" of woman suffrage in the District of Columbia was not +tried and nothing came of the resolutions for universal suffrage +introduced by Pomeroy, Julian, and Wilson. In spite of all Susan's +efforts to have the word "sex" added to the Fifteenth Amendment, she +soon faced the bitter disappointment of seeing a version ignoring +women submitted to the states for ratification: "The right of citizens +of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the +United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous +condition of servitude." + +The blatant omission of the word "sex" forced Susan and Mrs. Stanton +to initiate an amendment of their own, a Sixteenth Amendment, and +again Congressman Julian came to their aid, although he too regarded +Negro suffrage as more "immediately important and absorbing"[233] than +suffrage for women. On March 15, 1869, at one of the first sessions of +the newly elected Congress, he introduced an amendment to the +Constitution, providing that the right of suffrage be based on +citizenship without any distinction or discrimination because of sex. +This was the first federal woman suffrage amendment ever proposed in +Congress. + +Opportunity to campaign for this amendment was now offered Susan and +Elizabeth Stanton as they addressed a series of conventions in Ohio, +Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Press notices were good, a +Milwaukee paper describing Susan as "an earnest enthusiastic, fiery +woman--ready, apt, witty and what a politician would call sharp ... +radical in the strongest sense," making "radical everything she +touches."[234] She found woman suffrage sentiment growing by leaps and +bounds in the West and western men ready to support a federal woman +suffrage amendment. + + * * * * * + +With a lighter heart than she had had in many a day and with new +subscriptions to _The Revolution_, Susan returned to New York. She +moved the _Revolution_ office to the first floor of the Women's +Bureau, a large four-story brownstone house at 49 East Twenty-third +Street, near Fifth Avenue, which had been purchased by a wealthy New +Yorker, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps, who looked forward to establishing a +center where women's organizations could meet and where any woman +interested in the advancement of her sex would find encouragement and +inspiration. Susan's hopes were high for the Women's Bureau, and in +this most respectable, fashionable, and even elegant setting, she +expected her _Revolution_, in spite of its inflammable name, to live +down its turbulent past and win new friends and subscribers.[235] + +She made one last effort to resuscitate the American Equal Rights +Association, writing personal letters to old friends, urging that past +differences be forgotten and that all rededicate themselves to +establishing universal suffrage by means of the Sixteenth Amendment. +She was optimistic as she prepared for a convention in New York, +particularly as one obstacle to unity had been removed. George Francis +Train had voluntarily severed all connections with _The Revolution_ to +devote himself to freeing Ireland. She soon found, however, that the +misunderstandings between her and her old antislavery friends were far +deeper than George Francis Train, although he would for a long time be +blamed for them. The Fifteenth Amendment was still a bone of +contention and _The Revolution's_ continued editorials against it +widened the breach. + +The fireworks were set off in the convention of the American Equal +Rights Association by Stephen S. Foster, who objected to the +nomination of Susan and Mrs. Stanton as officers of the Association +because they had in his opinion repudiated its principles. When asked +to explain further, he replied that not only had they published a +paper advocating educated suffrage while the Association stood for +universal suffrage but they had shown themselves unfit by +collaboration with George Francis Train who ridiculed Negroes and +opposed their enfranchisement. + +Trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, Mary Livermore, the popular +new delegate from Chicago, asked whether it was quite fair to bring up +George Francis Train when he had retired from _The Revolution_. + +To this Stephen Foster sternly replied, "If _The Revolution_ which has +so often endorsed George Francis Train will repudiate him because of +his course in respect to the Negro's rights, I have nothing further to +say. But they do not repudiate him. He goes out; but they do not cast +him out."[236] + +"Of course we do not," Susan instantly protested. + +Mr. Foster then objected to the way Susan had spent the funds of the +Association, accusing her of failing to keep adequate accounts. + +This she emphatically denied, explaining that she had presented a full +accounting to the trust fund committee, that it had been audited, and +she had been voted $1,000 to repay her for the amount she had +personally advanced for the work. + +Unwilling to accept her explanation and calling it unreliable, he +continued his complaints until interrupted by Henry Blackwell who +corroborated Susan's statement, adding that she had refused the $1,000 +due her because of the dissatisfaction expressed over her management. +Declaring himself completely satisfied with the settlement and +confident of the purity of Susan's motives even if some of her +expenditures were unwise, Henry Blackwell continued, "I will agree +that many unwise things have been written in _The Revolution_ by a +gentleman who furnished part of the means by which the paper has been +carried on. But that gentleman has withdrawn, and you, who know the +real opinions of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of +Negro suffrage, do not believe that they mean to create antagonism +between the Negro and woman question...." + +To Susan's great relief Henry Blackwell's explanation satisfied the +delegates, who gave her and Mrs. Stanton a vote of confidence. Not so +easily healed, however, were the wounds left by the accusations of +mismanagement and dishonesty. + +The atmosphere was still tense, for differences of opinion on policy +remained. Most of the old reliable workers stood unequivocally for the +Fifteenth Amendment, which they regarded as the crowning achievement +of the antislavery movement, and they heartily disapproved of forcing +the issue of woman suffrage on Congress and the people at this time. +Although they had been deeply moved by the suffering of Negro women +under slavery and had used this as a telling argument for +emancipation, they now gave no thought to Negro women, who, even more +than Negro men, needed the vote to safeguard their rights. Believing +with the Republicans that one reform at a time was all they could +expect, they did not want to hear one word about woman suffrage or a +Sixteenth Amendment until male Negroes were safely enfranchised by the +Fifteenth Amendment. + +Offering a resolution endorsing the Fifteenth Amendment, Frederick +Douglass quoted Julia Ward Howe as saying, "I am willing that the +Negro shall get the ballot before me," and he added, "I cannot see how +anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot +to women as to the Negro." + +Quick as a flash, Susan was on her feet, challenging his statements, +and as the dauntless champion of women debated the question with the +dark-skinned fiery Negro, the friendship and warm affection built up +between them over the years occasionally shone through the sharp words +they spoke to each other. + +"The old antislavery school says that women must stand back," declared +Susan, "that they must wait until male Negroes are voters. But we say, +if you will not give the whole loaf of justice to an entire people, +give it to the most intelligent first." + +Here she was greeted with applause and continued, "If intelligence, +justice, and morality are to be placed in the government, then let the +question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last.... +Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro, how he is hunted +down ..., but with all the wrongs and outrages that he today suffers, +he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady +Stanton." + +"I want to know," shouted Frederick Douglass, "if granting you the +right of suffrage will change the nature of our sexes?" + +"It will change the pecuniary position of woman," Susan retorted +before the shouts of laughter had died down. "She will not be +compelled to take hold of only such employments as man chooses for +her." + +Lucy Stone, who so often in her youth had pleaded with Susan and +Frederick Douglass for both the Negro and women, now entered the +argument. She had matured, but her voice had lost none of its +conviction or its power to sway an audience. Disagreeing with +Douglass's assertion that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman +suffrage, she pointed out that white women of the North were robbed of +their children by the law just as Negro women had been by slavery. + +This was balm to Susan's soul, but with Lucy's next words she lost all +hope that her old friend would cast her lot wholeheartedly with women +at this time. "Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet," +Lucy continued, "and the Negro too has an ocean of wrongs that cannot +be fathomed. But I thank God for the Fifteenth Amendment, and hope +that it will be adopted in every state. I will be thankful in my soul +if anybody can get out of the terrible pit.... + +"I believe," she admitted, "that the national safety of the government +would be more promoted by the admission of women as an element of +restoration and harmony than the other. I believe that the influence +of woman will save the country before every other influence. I see the +signs of the times pointing to this consummation. I believe that in +some parts of the country women will vote for the President of these +United States in 1872." + +Susan grew impatient as Lucy shifted from one side to the other, +straddling the issue. Her own clear-cut approach, earning for her the +reputation of always hitting the nail on the head, made Lucy's seem +like temporizing. + +The men now took control, criticizing the amount of time given to the +discussion of woman's rights, and voted endorsement of the Fifteenth +Amendment. Nevertheless, a small group of determined women continued +their fight, Susan declaring with spirit that she protested against +the Fifteenth Amendment because it was not Equal Rights and would put +2,000,000 more men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 women who +until now had been the equals of the Negro men at their side.[237] + + * * * * * + +It was now clear to Susan and to the few women who worked closely with +her that they needed a strong organization of their own and that it +was folly to waste more time on the Equal Rights Association. Western +delegates, disappointed in the convention's lack of interest in woman +suffrage, expressed themselves freely. They had been sorely tried by +the many speeches on extraneous subjects which cluttered the meetings, +the heritage of a free-speech policy handed down by antislavery +societies. + +"That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug," exploded Mary +Livermore to Susan. "I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor +would any of us, if we had known what it was. We supposed we were +coming to a woman suffrage convention."[238] + +At a reception for all the delegates held at the Women's Bureau at the +close of the convention, this dissatisfaction culminated in a +spontaneous demand for a new organization which would concentrate on +woman suffrage and the Sixteenth Amendment. Alert to the +possibilities, Susan directed this demand into concrete action by +turning the reception temporarily into a business meeting. The result +was the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association by women +from nineteen states, with Mrs. Stanton as president and Susan as a +member of the executive committee. The younger women of the West, +trusting the judgment of Susan and Mrs. Stanton, looked to them for +leadership, as did a few of the old workers in the East--Ernestine +Rose, always in the vanguard, Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Smith +Miller, Lucretia Mott, who although holding no office in the new +organization gave it her support, Martha C. Wright, and Matilda Joslyn +Gage who never wavered in her allegiance. Lucy Stone, who would have +found it hard even to step into the _Revolution_ office, did not +attend the reception at the Women's Bureau or take part in the +formation of the new woman suffrage organization. + +[Illustration: Paulina Wright Davis] + +Aided and abetted by her new National Woman Suffrage Association, +Susan continued her opposition in _The Revolution_ to the Fifteenth +Amendment until it was ratified in 1870. + +So incensed was the Boston group by _The Revolution's_ opposition to +the Fifteenth Amendment, so displeased was Lucy Stone by the formation +of the National Woman Suffrage Association without consultation with +her, one of the oldest workers in the field, that they began to talk +of forming a national woman suffrage organization of their own. They +charged Susan with lust for power and autocratic control. Mrs. Stanton +they found equally objectionable because of her radical views on sex, +marriage, and divorce, expressed in _The Revolution_ in connection +with the Hester Vaughn case. They sincerely felt that the course of +woman suffrage would run more smoothly, arouse less antagonism, and +make more progress without these two militants who were forever +stirring things up and introducing extraneous subjects. + + * * * * * + +During these trying days of accusations, animosity, and rival +factions, Mrs. Stanton's unwavering support was a great comfort to +Susan as was the joy of having a paper to carry her message. + +In addition to all the responsibilities connected with publishing her +weekly paper, advertising, subscriptions, editorial policy, and +raising the money to pay the bills, Susan was also holding successful +conventions in Saratoga and Newport where men and women of wealth and +influence gathered for the summer; she was traveling out to St. Louis, +Chicago, and other western cities to speak on woman suffrage, making +trips to Washington to confer with Congressmen, getting petitions for +the Sixteenth Amendment circulated, and through all this, building up +the National Woman Suffrage Association. + +The _Revolution_ office became the rallying point for a +forward-looking group of women, many of whom contributed to the +hard-hitting liberal sheet. Elizabeth Tilton, the lovely dark-haired +young wife of the popular lecturer and editor of the _Independent_, +selected the poetry. Alice and Phoebe Cary gladly offered poems and a +novel; and when Susan was away, Phoebe Cary often helped Mrs. Stanton +get out the paper. Elizabeth Smith Miller gave money, encouragement, +and invaluable aid with her translations of interesting letters which +_The Revolution_ received from France and Germany. Laura Curtis +Bullard, the heir to the Dr. Winslow-Soothing-Syrup fortune, who +traveled widely in Europe, sent letters from abroad and took a lively +interest in the paper. Another new recruit was Lillie Devereux Blake, +who was gaining a reputation as a writer and who soon proved to be a +brilliant orator and an invaluable worker in the New York City +suffrage group. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, unfailingly gave her support, +and her calm assurance strengthened Susan. The wealthy Paulina Wright +Davis of Providence, Rhode Island, who followed Parker Pillsbury as +editor, when he felt obliged to resign for financial reasons, gave the +paper generous financial backing. + +[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker] + +It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry +Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the +elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's +prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by +New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a +few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in +Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a +week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of +guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she +has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are +bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. +Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of +others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her +friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, +engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most +favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than +that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in +my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great +movement."[239] + +From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New +York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national +woman suffrage organization. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[232] _The Revolution_, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385. + +[233] George W. Julian, _Political Recollections_, 1840-1872 (Chicago, +1884), pp. 324-325. + +[234] _The Revolution_, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148. + +[235] The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's Bureau +while it housed the radical _Revolution_, and as women showed so +little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a year's +trial. + +[236] _The Revolution_, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307. + +[237] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 392. + +[238] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 327-328. + +[239] _Ibid._, p. 332. + + + + +A HOUSE DIVIDED + + +"I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that +those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of +_The Revolution_ may yet have an organization with which they can work +in harmony."[240] So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during +the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands. + +"The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked +together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy +further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the +woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally +belong to it--and there will be harmonious work." + +When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old +friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be +held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot +use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."[241] + +Those feeling as she did eagerly signed the call, while others who +knew little about the controversy in the East added their names +because they were glad to take part in a convention sponsored by such +prominent men and women as Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, +Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and William Lloyd +Garrison. Still others who did not understand the insurmountable +differences in temperament and policy between the two groups hoped +that a new truly national organization would unite the two factions. +Even Mary Livermore, who had been active in the formation of the +National Woman Suffrage Association, was by this time responding to +overtures from the Boston group, writing William Lloyd Garrison, "I +have been repelled by some of the idiosyncrasies of our New York +friends, as have others. Their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, +the buffoonery of George F. Train, the loose utterances of the +_Revolution_ on the marriage and dress questions--and what is equally +potent hindrance to the cause, the fearful squandering of money at +the New York headquarters--all this has tended to keep me on my own +feet, apart from those to whom I was at first attracted.... I am glad +at the prospect of an association that will be truly national and +which promises so much of success and character."[242] + +Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton received a notice of the Cleveland +convention, but Susan, scanning a copy of the call sent her by a +solicitous friend, was deeply disturbed when she saw the signatures of +Lydia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Myra Bradwell, Gerrit Smith, and other +good friends. + +The New York _World_, at once suspecting a feud, asked, "Where are +those well-known American names, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, +and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It is clear that there is a division in +the ranks of the strong-minded and that an effort is being made to +ostracize _The Revolution_ which has so long upheld the cause of +Suffrage, through evil report and good...."[243] + +The Rochester _Democrat_, loyal to Susan, put this question, "Can it +be possible that a National Woman's Suffrage Convention is called +without Susan's knowledge or consent?... A National Woman's Suffrage +Association without speeches from Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton +will be a new order of things. The idea seems absurd."[244] + +To Susan it also seemed both absurd and unrealistic, for she +remembered how almost single-handed she had held together and built up +the woman suffrage movement during the years when her colleagues had +been busy with family duties. She was appalled at the prospect of a +division in the ranks at this time when she believed victory possible +through the action of a strong united front. + +Confident that many who signed the call were ignorant of or blind to +the animus behind it, she did her best to bring the facts before them. +She put the blame for the rift entirely upon Lucy Stone, believing +that without Lucy's continual stirring up, past differences in policy +would soon have been forgotten. The antagonism between the two burned +fiercely at this time. Susan was determined to fight to the last ditch +for control of the movement, convinced that her policies and Mrs. +Stanton's were forward-looking, unafraid, and always put women first. + +Susan now also had to face the humiliating possibility that she might +be forced to give up _The Revolution_. Not only was the operating +deficit piling up alarmingly, but there were persistent rumors of a +competitor, another woman suffrage paper to be edited by Lucy Stone +and Julia Ward Howe. + +Susan had assumed full financial responsibility for _The Revolution_ +because Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, both with families to +consider, felt unable to share this burden. Mrs. Stanton had always +contributed her services and Parker Pillsbury had been sadly +underpaid, while Susan had drawn out for her salary only the most +meager sums for bare living expenses. + +With a maximum of 3,000 subscribers, the paper could not hope to pay +its way even though she had secured a remarkably loyal group of +advertisers.[245] Reluctantly she raised the subscription price from +$2 to $3 a year. Her friends and family were generous with gifts and +loans, but these only met the pressing needs of the moment and in no +way solved the overall financial problem of the paper. + +Appealing once again to her wealthy and generous Quaker cousin, Anson +Lapham, she wrote him in desperation, "My paper must not, shall not go +down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also +in the grand work which _The Revolution_ seeks to do, and therefore +you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. +Yesterday's mail brought 43 subscribers from Illinois and 20 from +California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you +will save me from giving the world a chance to say, 'There is a +woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business!' +If only I could die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say, 'Amen,' +but to live and fail--it would be too terrible to bear."[246] He came +to her aid as he always had in the past. + +Susan's sister Mary not only lent her all her savings, but spent her +summer vacation in New York in 1869, working in _The Revolution_ +office while Susan, busy with woman suffrage conventions in Newport, +Saratoga, Chicago, and Ohio, was building up good will and +subscriptions for her paper. Concerned for her welfare, Mary +repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged her to give up. Daniel added his +entreaties to Mary's, begging Susan not to go further into debt, but +to form a stock company if she were determined to continue her paper. +She considered his advice very seriously for he was a practical +businessman and yet appreciated what she was trying to do. For a time +the formation of a stock company seemed possible, for the project +appealed to three women of means, Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella +Beecher Hooker, and Laura Curtis Bullard, but it never materialized. + + * * * * * + +With the financial problem of _The Revolution_ still unsolved, Susan +decided to make her appearance at Lucy Stone's convention in +Cleveland, Ohio, on November 24, 1869. Not only did she want to see +with her own eyes and hear with her own ears all that went on, but she +was determined to walk the second mile with Lucy and her supporters, +or even to turn the other cheek, if need be, for the sake of her +beloved cause. + +Seeing her in the audience, Judge Bradwell of Chicago moved that she +be invited to sit on the platform, but Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who +was presiding, replied that he thought this unnecessary as a special +invitation had already been extended to all desiring to identify +themselves with the movement. Judge Bradwell would not be put off, his +motion was carried, and as Susan walked up to the platform to join the +other notables, she was greeted with hearty applause. Sitting there +among her critics, she wondered what she could possibly say to +persuade them to forget their differences for the sake of the cause. +After listening to Lucy Stone plead for renewed work for woman +suffrage and for petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, she +spontaneously rose to her feet and asked permission to speak. "I +hope," she began, "that the work of this association, if it be +organized, will be to go in strong array up to the Capitol at +Washington to demand a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The +question of the admission of women to the ballot would not then be +left to the mass of voters in every State, but would be submitted by +Congress to the several legislatures of the States for ratification, +and ... be decided by the most intelligent portion of the people. If +the question is left to the vote of the rank and file, it will be put +off for years.[247] + +"So help me, Heaven!" she continued with emotion. "I care not what may +come out of this Convention, so that this great cause shall go +forward to its consummation! And though this Convention by its action +shall nullify the National Association of which I am a member, and +though it shall tread its heel upon _The Revolution_, to carry on +which I have struggled as never mortal woman or mortal man struggled +for any cause ... still, if you will do the work in Washington so that +this Amendment will be proposed, and will go with me to the several +Legislatures and _compel_ them to adopt it, I will thank God for this +Convention as long as I have the breath of life." + +Loud and continuous applause greeted these earnest words. However, +instead of pledging themselves to work for a Sixteenth Amendment, the +newly formed American Woman Suffrage Association, blind to the +exceptional opportunity at this time for Congressional action on woman +suffrage, decided to concentrate on work in the states where suffrage +bills were pending. Instead of electing an outstanding woman as +president, they chose Henry Ward Beecher, boasting that this was proof +of their genuine belief in equal rights. Lucy Stone headed the +executive committee. + +Divisions soon began developing among the suffragists in the field. +Many whose one thought previously had been the cause now spent time +weighing the differences between the two organizations and between +personalities, and antagonisms increased. + +Hardest of all for Susan to bear was the definite announcement of a +rival paper, the _Woman's Journal_, to be issued in Boston in January +1870 under the editorship of Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and Julia +Ward Howe, with Henry Blackwell as business manager. Mary Livermore, +who previously had planned to merge her paper, the _Agitator_, with +_The Revolution_ now merged it with the _Woman's Journal_. Financed by +wealthy stockholders, all influential Republicans, the _Journal_, +Susan knew, would be spared the financial struggles of _The +Revolution_, but would be obliged to conform to Republican policy in +its support of woman's rights. Had not the _Woman's Journal_ been such +an obvious affront to the heroic efforts of _The Revolution_ and a +threat to its very existence, she could have rejoiced with Lucy over +one more paper carrying the message of woman suffrage. + +More determined than ever to continue _The Revolution_, Susan +redoubled her efforts, announcing an imposing list of contributors +for 1870, including the British feminist, Lydia Becker, and as a +special attraction, a serial by Alice Cary. Through the efforts of +Mrs. Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe was persuaded to consider serving +as contributing editor provided the paper's name was changed to _The +True Republic_ or to some other name satisfactory to her.[248] + +Having struggled against the odds for so long, Susan had no intention +of being stifled now by Mrs. Stowe's more conservative views, nor +would she give her crusading sheet an innocuous name. However, the +decision was taken out of her hands by _The Revolution's_ coverage of +the sensational McFarland-Richardson murder case, which so shocked +both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe that they gave up all thought of being +associated in a publishing venture with Susan or Mrs. Stanton. + +The whole country was stirred in December 1869 by the fatal shooting +in the _Tribune_ office of the well-known journalist, Albert D. +Richardson, by Daniel McFarland, to whose divorced wife Richardson had +been attentive. When just before his death, Richardson was married to +the divorced Mrs. McFarland by Henry Ward Beecher with Horace Greeley +as a witness, the press was agog. So strong was the feeling against a +divorced woman that Henry Ward Beecher was severely condemned for +officiating at the marriage, and Mrs. Richardson was played up in the +press and in court as the villain, although her divorce had been +granted because of the brutality and instability of McFarland. + +Indignant at the sophistry of the press and the general acceptance of +a double standard of morals, _The Revolution_ not only spoke out +fearlessly in defense of Mrs. Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs. +Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the +case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over +every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the +education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of +the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and +despise each other...."[249] When the court acquitted McFarland, +giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old son, Susan called a +protest meeting which attracted an audience of two thousand. + +Such words and such activities disturbed many who sympathized with +Mrs. Richardson but saw no reason for flaunting exultant approval of +divorce in a woman suffrage paper, and they turned to the _Woman's +Journal_ as more to their taste. + +Susan, however, reading the first number of the _Woman's Journal_, +found its editorials lacking fire. She rebelled at Julia Ward Howe's +counsel, "to lay down all partisan warfare and organize a peaceful +Grand Army of the Republic of Women ... not ... as against men, but as +against all that is pernicious to men and women."[250] Susan's fight +had never been against men but against man-made laws that held women +in bondage. There had always been men willing to help her. Experience +had taught her that the struggle for woman's rights was no peaceful +academic debate, but real warfare which demanded political strategy, +self-sacrifice, and unremitting labor. She was prouder than ever of +her _Revolution_ and its liberal hard-hitting policy. + + * * * * * + +Convinced that the National Woman Suffrage Association must publicize +its existence and its value, Susan began the year 1870 with a +convention in Washington which even Senator Sumner praised as +exceeding in interest anything he had ever witnessed there. Its +striking demonstration of the vitality and intelligence of the +National Association was the best answer she could possibly have given +to the accusations and criticism aimed at her and her organization. + +Jessie Benton Fremont, watching the delegates enter the dining room of +the Arlington Hotel, called Susan over to her table and said with a +twinkle in her eyes, "Now, tell me, Miss Anthony, have you hunted the +country over and picked out and brought to Washington a score of the +most beautiful women you could find?"[251] + +They were a fine-looking and intelligent lot--Paulina Wright Davis, +Isabella Beecher Hooker, Josephine Griffin of the Freedman's Bureau, +Charlotte Wilbour, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Martha C. Wright, and Olympia +Brown; Phoebe Couzins and Virginia Minor from Missouri, Madam Anneke +from Wisconsin, and best of all to Susan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. +Their presence, their friendship and allegiance were a source of great +pride and joy. Elizabeth Stanton had come from St. Louis, interrupting +her successful lecture tour, when she much preferred to stay away from +all conventions. She had written Susan, "Of course, I stand by you to +the end. I would not see you crushed by rivals even if to prevent it +required my being cut into inch bits.... No power in heaven, hell or +earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded +together."[252] + +Also at this convention to show his support of Susan and her program, +was her faithful friend of many years, the Rev. Samuel J. May of +Syracuse. Clara Barton, ill and unable to attend, sent a letter to be +read, an appeal to her soldier friends for woman suffrage. + +Not only did the large and enthusiastic audiences show a growing +interest in votes for women, but two great victories for women in +1869, one in Great Britain and the other in the United States, brought +to the convention a feeling of confidence. Women taxpayers had been +granted the right to vote in municipal elections in England, Scotland, +and Wales, through the efforts of Jacob Bright. In the Territory of +Wyoming, during the first session of its legislature, women had been +granted the right to vote, to hold office, and serve on juries, and +married women had been given the right to their separate property and +their earnings. This progressive action by men of the West turned +Susan's thoughts hopefully to the western territories, and early in +1870 when the Territory of Utah enfranchised its women, she had +further cause for rejoicing. + +To celebrate these victories for which her twenty years' work for +women had blazed the trail, some of her friends held a reception for +her in New York at the Women's Bureau on her fiftieth birthday. She +was amazed at the friendly attention her birthday received in the +press. "Susan's Half Century," read a headline in the _Herald_. The +_World_ called her the Moses of her sex. "A Brave Old Maid," commented +the _Sun_. But it was to the _Tribune_ that she turned with special +interest, always hoping for a word of approval from Horace Greeley and +finding at last this faint ray of praise: "Careful readers of the +_Tribune_ have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not +always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. +Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said that her methods were +as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years +of disputation and struggling. Miss Anthony has thoroughly impressed +friends and enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her +purpose...."[253] + +To Anna E. Dickinson, far away lecturing, Susan confided, "Oh, Anna, I +am so glad of it all because it will teach the young girls that to be +true to principle--to live an idea, though an unpopular one--that to +live single--without any man's name--may be honorable."[254] + +A few of Susan's younger colleagues still insisted that a merger of +the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations might be +possible. Again Theodore Tilton undertook the task of mediation and +Lucretia Mott, who had retired from active participation in the +woman's rights movement, tried to help work out a reconciliation. +Susan was skeptical but gave them her blessing. Representatives of the +American Association, however, again made it plain that they were +unwilling to work with Susan and Mrs. Stanton.[255] + +By this time _The Revolution_ had become an overwhelming financial +burden. For some months Mrs. Stanton had been urging Susan to give it +up and turn to the lecture field, as she had done, to spread the +message of woman's rights. Susan hesitated, unwilling to give up _The +Revolution_ and not yet confident that she could hold the attention of +an audience for a whole evening. However, she found herself a great +success when pushed into several Lyceum lecture engagements in +Pennsylvania by Mrs. Stanton's sudden illness. "Miss Anthony evidently +lectures not for the purpose of receiving applause," commented the +Pittsburgh _Commercial_, "but for the purpose of making people +understand and be convinced. She takes her place on the stage in a +plain and unassuming manner and speaks extemporaneously and fluently, +too, reminding one of an old campaign speaker, who is accustomed to +talk simply for the purpose of converting his audience to his +political theories. She used plain English and plenty of it.... She +clearly evinced a quality that many politicians lack--sincerity."[256] + +For each of these lectures on "Work, Wages, and the Ballot," she +received a fee of $75 and was able as well to get new subscribers for +_The Revolution_. She now saw the possibilities for herself and the +cause in a Lyceum tour, and when the Lyceum Bureau, pleased with her +reception in Pennsylvania wanted to book her for lectures in the West, +she accepted, calling Parker Pillsbury back to _The_ _Revolution_ to +take charge. All through Illinois she drew large audiences and her +fees increased to $95, $125, and $150. In two months she was able to +pay $1,300 of _The Revolution's_ debt. + +When she returned to New York, she realized that she could not +continue to carry _The Revolution_ alone, in spite of increased +subscriptions. Its $10,000 debt weighed heavily upon her. Parker +Pillsbury's help could only be temporary; Mrs. Stanton's strenuous +lecture tour left her little time to give to the paper; and Susan's +own friends and family were unable to finance it further. + +Fortunately the idea of editing a paper appealed strongly to the +wealthy Laura Curtis Bullard, who had the promise of editorial help +from Theodore Tilton. Susan now turned the paper over to them +completely, receiving nothing in return but shares of stock, while she +assumed the entire indebtedness. + +Giving up the control of her beloved paper was one of the most +humiliating experiences and one of the deepest sorrows she ever faced. +_The Revolution_ had become to her the symbol of her crusade for +women. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, she confided to her diary on +the date of the transfer, "It was like signing my own death warrant," +and to a friend she wrote, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of +a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support."[257] + +She made a valiant announcement of the transfer in _The Revolution_ of +May 26, 1870, expressing her delight that the paper had at last found +financial backing and a new, enthusiastic editor. "In view of the +active demand for conventions, lectures, and discussions on Woman +Suffrage," she added, "I have concluded that so far as my own personal +efforts are concerned, I can be more useful on the platform than in a +newspaper. So, on the 1st of June next, I shall cease to be the _sole_ +proprietor of _The Revolution_, and shall be free to attend public +meetings where ever so plain and matter of fact an old worker as I am +can secure a hearing."[258] + +Financial backing, however, did not put _The Revolution_ on its feet, +although its forthright editorials and articles were replaced by spicy +and brilliant observations on pleasant topics which offended no one. +Before the year was up, Mrs. Bullard was making overtures to Susan to +take the paper back. Susan wanted desperately "to keep the Old Ship +Revolution's colors flying"[259] and to bring back Mrs. Stanton's +stinging editorials. She also feared that Mrs. Bullard on Theodore +Tilton's advice might turn the paper over to the Boston group to be +consolidated with the _Woman's Journal_. As no funds were available, +she had to turn her back on her beloved paper and hope for the best. +"I suppose there is a wise Providence in my being stripped of power to +go forward," she wrote at this time. "At any rate, I mean to try and +make good come out of it."[260] + +For one more year, _The Revolution_ struggled on under the editorship +of Mrs. Bullard and Theodore Tilton and then was taken over by the +_Christian Enquirer_. The $10,000 debt, incurred under Susan's +management, she regarded as her responsibility, although her brother +Daniel and many of her friends urged bankruptcy proceedings. "My pride +for women, to say nothing of my conscience," she insisted, "says +no."[261] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[240] Lucy Stone to Frank Sanborn, Aug. 18, 1869, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[241] Lucy Stone to Esther Pugh, Aug. 30, 1869, Ida Husted Harper +Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. + +[242] Mary Livermore to W. L. Garrison, Oct. 4, 1869, Boston Public +Library. Wendell Phillips did not sign the call or attend the +convention for "reasons that are good to him," wrote Lucy Stone to +Garrison, Sept. 27, 1869, Boston Public Library. + +[243] _The Revolution_, IV, Oct. 21, 1869, p. 265. + +[244] _Ibid._, p. 266. + +[245] The Empire Sewing Machine Co., Benedict's Watches, Madame +Demorest's dress patterns, Sapolio, insurance companies, savings +banks, the Union Pacific, offering first mortgage bonds. + +[246] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 354-355. In 1873, Anson Lapham +cancelled notes, amounting to $4000, and praised Susan for her +continued courageous work for women. + +[247] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 2, 1869, p. 343. + +[248] Harriet Beecher Stowe to Susan B. Anthony, Dec., 1869, Alma Lutz +Collection. + +[249] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 23, 1869, p. 385. + +[250] _Woman's Journal_, Jan. 8, 1870. + +[251] Ms., Diary, Jan. 18, 1870. + +[252] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, pp. 124-125. + +[253] _The Revolution_, V, Feb. 24, 1870, pp. 117-118. Susan +attributed the _Tribune_ editorial to Whitelaw Reid. Susan B. Anthony +Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[254] Feb. 21, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. +Anna E. Dickinson sent Miss Anthony generous checks to help finance +_The Revolution_. Although she lectured at Cooper Union for the +National Woman Suffrage Association shortly after it was organized, +she never became a member of the organization or attended its +conventions. This was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony. + +[255] Finally, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton against their best +judgment were persuaded by younger members of the National Woman +Suffrage Association to drop the name National and replace it with +Union and then to try to negotiate further with the American +Association. Theodore Tilton was elected president of the Union Woman +Suffrage Society. This proved to be an organization in name only, and +in a short time these same younger members clamored for the return to +office of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and reestablished the National +Woman Suffrage Association. + +[256] _The Revolution_, V, March 10, 1870, p. 153. Mrs. Stanton's +Lyceum lectures were undertaken to finance the education of her 7 +children. + +[257] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 362. + +[258] _The Revolution_, V, May 26, 1870, p. 328. + +[259] Sept. 19, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. + +[260] To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's Archives, +Cambridge, Massachusetts. + +[261] To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. Anthony +Collection + + + + +A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay +off _The Revolution's_ debt, she was pondering a new approach to the +enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a +St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor. + +Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states +the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to +prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by +the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or +enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of +citizens of the United States." + +To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great +appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis +Minor's arguments in _The Revolution_ and also his suggestion that +some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by +attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this +new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional +committee in 1870. + +With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked +forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in +Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she +reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands +of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on +Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more +ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and +women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however, +she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling +important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found +the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to +Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris +of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the +new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments on +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact +legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in +them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled before the House +judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened. + +[Illustration: Victoria C. Woodhull] + +Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan +consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's +hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a +woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer, +Albert G. Riddle,[262] to represent the 30,000 women who had +petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker +attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage. +This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement. +Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the +District of Columbia. + +Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however, +she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister, +Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press +had been full of amused comments regarding the lady bankers, and +Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here +she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview +in _The Revolution_, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin & +Co., Bankers and Brokers.[263] + +About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established +their own paper, _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, an "Organ of Social +Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed +its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her +own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore +unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance, +advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement, +spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the +nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States. + +Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan +listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her +Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated +voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat +perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest +youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary +committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment +at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright +crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella +Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. They invited Victoria and her +sister, Tennessee Claflin, to their convention, and asked her to +repeat her speech for them. + +At this convention Susan, encouraged by the favorable reception among +politicians of the Woodhull Memorial, mapped out a new and militant +campaign, based on her growing conviction that under the Fourteenth +Amendment women's rights as citizens were guaranteed. She urged women +to claim their rights as citizens and persons under the Fourteenth +Amendment, to register and prepare to vote at the next election, and +to bring suit in the courts if they were refused. + + * * * * * + +So enthusiastic had been the reception of this new approach to woman +suffrage, so favorable had been the news from those close to leading +Republicans, that Susan was unprepared for the adverse report of the +judiciary committee on the Woodhull Memorial. She now studied the +favorable minority report issued by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts +and William Loughridge of Iowa. Their arguments seemed to her +unanswerable; and hurriedly and impulsively in the midst of her +western lecture tour, she dashed off a few lines to Victoria Woodhull, +to whom she willingly gave credit for bringing out this report. +"Glorious old Ben!" she wrote. "He surely is going to pronounce the +word that will settle the woman question, just as he did the word +'contraband' that so summarily settled the Negro question.... +Everybody here chimes in with the new conclusion that we are already +free."[264] + +Far from New York where Victoria's activities were being aired by the +press, Susan thought of her at this time only in connection with the +Memorial and its impact on the judiciary committee. To be sure, she +heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the +Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox +views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, +traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan +was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself +found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to +discount attacks on the reputations of progressive women. In fact, +Victoria Woodhull provided Susan and her associates with a spectacular +opportunity to prove the sincerity of their contention that there +should not be a double standard of morals--one for men and another for +women. + +Returning to New York in May 1871, to a convention of the National +Woman Suffrage Association, Susan found that Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. +Stanton, and Mrs. Davis had invited Victoria Woodhull to address that +convention and to sit on the platform between Lucretia Mott and Mrs. +Stanton. + +Through them and others more critical, Susan was brought up to date on +the sensational story of Victoria Woodhull, who had been drawing +record crowds to her lectures and whose unconventional life +continuously provided reporters with interesting copy. Victoria's home +at 15 East Thirty-eighth Street, resplendent and ornate with gilded +furniture and bric-a-brac, housed not only her husband, Colonel Blood, +and herself but her divorced husband and their children as well, and +also all of her quarrelsome relatives. Here many radicals, social +reformers, and spiritualists gathered, among them Stephen Pearl +Andrews, who soon made use of Victoria and her _Weekly_ to publicize +his dream of a new world order, the Pantarchy, as he called it. +Victoria, herself, was an ardent spiritualist, controlled by +Demosthenes of the spirit world to whom she believed she owed her most +brilliant utterances and by whom she was guided to announce herself as +a presidential candidate in 1872. Needless to say, with such a +background, Victoria Woodhull became a very controversial figure among +the suffragists. + +In New York only a few days, it was hard for Susan to separate fact +from fiction, truth from rumor and animosity. Even Demosthenes did not +seem too ridiculous to her, for many of her most respected friends +were spiritualists. Nor did Victoria's presidential aspirations +trouble her greatly. Presidential candidates had been nothing to brag +of, and willingly would she support the right woman for President. If +Victoria lived up to the high standard of the Woodhull Memorial, then +even she might be that woman. After all, it was an era of radical +theories and Utopian dreams, of extravagances of every sort. Almost +anything could happen. + +Whatever doubts the suffragists may have had when they saw Victoria +Woodhull on the platform at the New York meeting of the National +Association, she swept them all along with her when, as one inspired, +she made her "Great Secession" speech. "If the very next Congress +refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," she +declared, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to +frame a new constitution and to erect a new government.... We mean +treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than +was that of the South. We are plotting revolution; we will overthrow +this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its +stead...."[265] + +Susan, who felt deeply her right to full citizenship, who herself had +talked revolution, and who had so often listened to the extravagant +antislavery declarations of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, +and Parker Pillsbury, was not offended by these statements. She was, +however, troubled by the attitude of the press, particularly of the +_Tribune_ which labeled this gathering the "Woodhull Convention" and +accused the suffragists of adopting Mrs. Woodhull's free-love +theories. + +Having experienced so recently the animosity stirred up by her +alliance with George Francis Train, Susan resolved to be cautious +regarding Victoria Woodhull and was beginning to wonder if Victoria +was not using the suffragists to further her own ambitions. Yet many +trusted friends, who had talked with Mrs. Woodhull far more than she +had the opportunity to do, were convinced that she was a genius and a +prophet who had risen above the sordid environment of her youth to do +a great work for women and who had the courage to handle subjects +which others feared to touch. + +Free love, for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled +indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less +stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of +marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that +Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did she actually advocate +promiscuity? + +With these questions puzzling her, she left for Rochester and the +West. Almost immediately the papers were full of Victoria Woodhull and +her family quarrels which brought her into court. This was a +disillusioning experience for the National Woman Suffrage Association +which had so recently featured Victoria Woodhull as a speaker, and +Susan began seriously to question the wisdom of further association +with this strange controversial character. Nevertheless, Victoria +still had her ardent defenders among the suffragists, particularly +Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. Even the thoughtful +judicious Martha C. Wright wrote Mrs. Hooker at this time, "It is not +always 'the wise and prudent' to whom the truth is revealed; tho' far +be it from me to imply aught derogatory to Mrs. Woodhull. No one can +be with her, see her gentle and modest bearing and her spiritual face, +without feeling sure that she is a true woman, whatever unhappy +surroundings may have compromised her. I have never met a stranger +toward whom I felt more tenderly drawn, in sympathy and love."[266] + +Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke her mind in Theodore Tilton's new paper, +_The Golden Age_: "Victoria C. Woodhull stands before us today a +grand, brave woman, radical alike in political, religious and social +principles. Her face and form indicate the complete triumph in her +nature of the spiritual over the sensuous. The processes of her +education are little to us; the grand result everything."[267] + +Victoria was in dire need of defenders, for the press was venomous, +goading her on to revenge. Susan, now traveling westward, lecturing in +one state after another, thinking of ways to interest the people in +woman suffrage, was too busy and too far away to follow Victoria +Woodhull's court battles. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Stanton met Susan in Chicago late in May 1871, to join her on a +lecture tour of the far West. Together they headed for Wyoming and +Utah, eager to set foot in the states which had been the first to +extend suffrage to women. The long leisurely days on the train gave +these two old friends, Susan now fifty-one and Mrs. Stanton, +fifty-six, ample time to talk and philosophize, to appraise their past +efforts for women, and plan their speeches for the days ahead. While +their main theme would always be votes for women, they decided that +from now on they must also arouse women to rebel against their legal +bondage under the "man marriage," as they called it, and to face +frankly the facts about sex, prostitution, and the double standard of +morals. In Utah, in the midst of polygamy fostered by the Mormon +Church, they would encounter still another sex problem. + +After an enthusiastic welcome in Denver, they moved on to Laramie, +Wyoming, where one hundred women greeted them as the train pulled in. +From this first woman suffrage state, Susan exultingly wrote, "We have +been moving over the soil, that is really the land of the free and the +home of the brave.... Women here can say, 'What a magnificent country +is ours, where every class and caste, color and sex, may find +freedom....'"[268] + +They reached Salt Lake City just after the Godbe secession by which a +group of liberal Mormons abandoned polygamy. As guests of the Godbes +for a week, they had every opportunity to become acquainted with the +Mormons, to observe women under polygamy, and to speak in long all-day +sessions to women alone. + +Susan tried to show her audiences in Utah that her point of attack +under both monogamy and polygamy was the subjection of women, and that +to remedy this the self-support of women was essential. In Utah she +found little opportunity for women to earn a living for themselves and +their children, as there was no manufacturing and there were no free +schools in need of teachers. "Women here, as everywhere," she +declared, "must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid +of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from +entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal."[269] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1871] + +Some of Susan's' critics at home felt she was again besmirching the +suffrage cause by setting foot in polygamous Utah, but this was of no +moment to her, for she saw the crying need of the right kind of +missionary work among Mormon women, "no Phariseeism, no shudders of +Puritanic horror, ... but a simple, loving fraternal clasp of hands +with these struggling women" to encourage them and point the way. + +Hearing that Susan and Mrs. Stanton were in the West en route to +California, Leland Stanford, Governor of California and president of +the recently completed Central Pacific Railway, sent them passes for +their journey. They reached San Francisco with high hopes that they +could win the support of western men for their demand for woman +suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Their welcome was warm and +the press friendly. An audience of over 1,200 listened with real +interest to Mrs. Stanton. Then the two crusaders made a misstep. Eager +to learn the woman's side of the case in the recent widely publicized +murder of the wealthy attorney, Alexander P. Crittenden, by Laura +Fair, they visited Laura Fair in prison. Immediately the newspapers +reported this move in a most critical vein, with the result that an +uneasy audience crowded into the hall where Susan was to speak on "The +Power of the Ballot." As she proceeded to prove that women needed the +ballot to protect themselves and their work and could not count on the +support and protection of men, she cited case after case of men's +betrayal of women. Then bringing home her point, she declared with +vigor, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight."[270] + +Boos and hisses from every part of the hall greeted this statement; +but Susan, trained on the antislavery platform to hold her ground +whatever the tumult, waited patiently until this protest subsided, +standing before the defiant audience, poised and unafraid. Then, in a +clear steady voice, she repeated her challenging words. This time, +above the hisses, she heard a few cheers, and for the third time she +repeated, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their +own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in +your jail tonight." + +Now the audience, admiring her courage, roared its applause. "I +declare to you," she concluded, "that woman must not depend upon the +protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and here I +take my stand." + +Reading the newspapers the next morning, she found herself accused not +only of defending Laura Fair, but of condoning the murder of +Crittenden. This story was republished throughout the state and +eagerly picked up by New York newspapers. + +As it was now impossible for her or for Mrs. Stanton to draw a +friendly audience anywhere in California, they took refuge in the +Yosemite Valley for the next few weeks. Susan was inconsolable. These +slanders on top of the loss of _The Revolution_ and the split in the +suffrage ranks seemed more than she could bear. "Never in all my hard +experience have I been under such fire," she confided to her diary. +"The clouds are so heavy over me.... I never before was so cut +down."[271] + +Not until she had spent several days riding horseback in the Yosemite +Valley on "men's saddles" in "linen bloomers," over long perilous +exhausting trails, did the clouds begin to lift. Gradually the beauty +and grandeur of the mountains and the giant redwoods brought her peace +and refreshment, putting to flight "all the old six-days story and the +6,000 jeers." + +Bearing the brunt of the censure in California, Susan expected Mrs. +Stanton to come to her defense in letters to the newspapers. When she +did not do so, Susan was deeply hurt, for in the past she had so many +times smoothed the way for her friend. Even now, on their return to +San Francisco, where she herself did not yet dare lecture, she did her +best to build up audiences for Mrs. Stanton and to get correct +transcripts of her lectures to the papers. Disillusioned and +heartsick, she was for the first time sadly disappointed in her +dearest friend. + +Moving on to Oregon to lecture at the request of the pioneer +suffragist, Abigail Scott Duniway, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, who had +left for the East, "As I rolled on the ocean last week feeling that +the very next strain might swamp the ship, and thinking over all my +sins of omission and commission, there was nothing undone which +haunted me like the failure to speak the word at San Francisco again +and more fully. I would rather today have the satisfaction of having +said the true and needful thing on Laura Fair and the social evil, +with the hisses and hoots of San Francisco and the entire nation +around me, than all that you or I could possibly experience from their +united eulogies with that one word unsaid."[272] + + * * * * * + +So far Susan's western trip had netted her only $350. This was +disappointing in so far as she had counted upon it to reduce +substantially her _Revolution_ debt. She now hoped to build her +earnings up to $1,000 in Oregon and Washington. Everywhere in these +two states people took her to their hearts and the press with a few +exceptions was complimentary. The beauty of the rugged mountainous +country compensated her somewhat for the long tiring stage rides over +rough roads and for the cold uncomfortable lonely nights in poor +hotels. Only occasionally did she enjoy the luxury of a good cup of +coffee or a clean bed in a warm friendly home. + +At first in Oregon she was apprehensive about facing an audience +because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton, +"But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in +store for me."[273] She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's +right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to +be self-supporting, and clearly and logically she marshaled her facts +and her arguments. Occasionally she obliged with a temperance speech, +or gathered women together to talk to them about the social evil, +relieved when they responded to this delicate subject with earnestness +and gratitude. Practice soon made her an easy, extemporaneous speaker. +Yet she was only now and then satisfied with her efforts, recording in +her diary, "Was happy in a real Patrick Henry speech."[274] + +The proceeds from her lectures were disappointing, as money was scarce +in the West that winter, and she had just decided to return to the +East to spend Christmas with her mother and sisters when she was urged +to accept lecture engagements in California. Putting her own personal +longings behind her, she took the stage to California, sitting outside +with the driver so that she could better enjoy the scenery and learn +more about the people who had settled this new lonely overpowering +country. "Horrible indeed are the roads," she wrote her mother, "miles +and miles of corduroy and then twenty miles ... of black mud.... How +my thought does turn homeward, mother."[275] + +This time she was warmly received in San Francisco. The prejudice, so +vocal six months before, had disappeared. "Made my Fourteenth +Amendment argument splendidly," she wrote in her diary. "All delighted +with it and me--and it is such a comfort to have the friends feel that +I help the good work on."[276] + +She was gaining confidence in herself and wrote her family, "I miss +Mrs. Stanton. Still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people +call on me, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits +a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of +merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant +scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted magazine. +There is no alternative--whoever goes into a parlor or before an +audience with that woman does it at a cost of a fearful overshadowing, +a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, +because I felt our cause was most profited by her being seen and +heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."[277] + +Starting homeward through Wyoming and Nevada where she also had +lecture engagements, she wrote in her diary on January 1, 1872, "6 +months of constant travel, full 8000 miles, 108 lectures. The year's +work full 13,000 miles travel--170 meetings." On the train she met the +new California Senator, Aaron A. Sargent, his wife Ellen, and their +children. A warm friendship developed on this long journey during +which the train was stalled in deep snow drifts. "This is indeed a +fearful ordeal, fastened here ... midway of the continent at the top +of the Rocky mountains," she recorded. "The railroad has supplied the +passengers with soda crackers and dried fish.... Mrs. Sargent and I +have made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing +mothers."[278] The Sargents had brought their own food for the journey +and shared it with Susan. This and the good conversation lightened the +ordeal for her, especially as both Senator and Mrs. Sargent believed +heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for +the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage. + +This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was +the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These +men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the +dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice +of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country. + + * * * * * + +Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking +her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped +to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the +national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for +which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She +found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism +and dissension. + +Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention: "I have +been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?' +Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to +Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to +Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the +judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was +young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to +capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."[279] + +"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs. +Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I +did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of +Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about +Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they +make themselves." + +Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this +convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches +calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate +her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had +concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and +she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly +she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President +toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right +to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. + +This time it was Susan, not Victoria, who was granted a hearing before +the Senate judiciary committee. "At the close of the war," Susan +reminded the Senators, "Congress lifted the question of suffrage for +men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the +deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the +Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed ... we rushed to you with +petitions praying you not to insert the word 'male' in the second +clause. Our best friends ... said to us: 'The insertion of that word +puts no new barrier against women; therefore do not embarrass us but +wait until we get the Negro question settled.' So the Fourteenth +Amendment with the word 'male' was adopted.[280] + +"When the Fifteenth was presented without the word 'sex,'" she +continued, "we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends +declared that the absence of the word was no hindrance to us, and +again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war, +saying, 'After we have enfranchised the Negro, we will take up your +case.' + +"Have they done as they promised?" she asked. "When we come asking +protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men +say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in +the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void +the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word +'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon +yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the +end a bloody revolution...." + +Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for +women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse +report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent +supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the +House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and +Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the +right to vote and hold office in the territories. + + * * * * * + +Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for +woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in +Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of +the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she +realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run +do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality +who gave only part of herself to the task. + +When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly +that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new +political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We +have no element out of which to make a political party, because there +is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he +endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance +party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown +away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."[281] + +Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has +the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her +port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I +might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is +wholly owned and dominated by _men_ spirits and I spurn the whole lot +of them...." + +A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of _Woodhull & +Claflin's Weekly_, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call +to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage +Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her +name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not +to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's +presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new +political party while she was publishing _The Revolution_, she was +practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria +Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure. + +Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker +still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to +date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of +Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The +Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had +again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an +increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail +suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard, +Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to +free the National Association of her influence. + +When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into +the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association +in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a +joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they +would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a +woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her +flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she +called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of +the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope +with Victoria, should this again become necessary. + +Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance +near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention +adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with the people's +convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan +refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited +audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on +the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and +it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the +suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor +many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan +in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the +same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands +until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the +audience dispersed in the darkness. + +With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage +Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at +Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was +nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal +Rights party. + +Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan +breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her +diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle--all come of Mrs. S. +[Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's +Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with +the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by +letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull--though we rescued it--it was +as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no +condemnation of her actions in _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ but only +the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's +great work.[282] + +The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria +Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into +line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under +Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood, +campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria +Woodhull. + + * * * * * + +While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the +sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of +financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication +of her _Weekly_, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and +Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the +liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George +W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored +woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a +persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better. +Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated +Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this +coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go +the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a +plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which +Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important, +powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform. + +"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its +obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to +the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is +received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of +citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful +consideration."[283] + +Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her +Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready +to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown +around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the +two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and +work together for "the living, vital issue of today--freedom to +women." + +She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward +to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school +district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were +generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New +York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers +she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it +plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in +Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a +torrent of false accusations.[284] Only Mary Livermore of the American +Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with +Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did +not lack for effective orators. + +In an _Appeal to the Women of America_, financed by the Republicans +and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and +the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most +bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has +heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women, +while the whole power of the _Tribune_ had been used to crush our +great reform...."[285] + +Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time +friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and +defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not +join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding +Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the +Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the +Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the +Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that +everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a +Democrat or an apostate."[286] + +Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as +they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse +further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her +speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the +Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs. +Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse +the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of +woman's claim to vote, _I_ am not...."[287] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[262] A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of Senator +Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage. + +[263] _The Revolution_, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159. + +[264] Clipping from _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Susan B. Anthony +Scrapbook, Library of Congress. + +[265] Emanie, Sachs, _The Terrible Siren_ (New York, 1928), p. 87. +After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage meeting in +Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, 1871, "I +wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet modest and +dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely inspired for her +work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much impressed with her work +and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, +Smith College. + +[266] May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. + +[267] _The Golden Age_, Dec., 1871. + +[268] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 388. + +[269] _Ibid._, pp. 389-390. + +[270] _Ibid._, pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had been the +mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was acquitted of +his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to her pistol +shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia Cooley +Altrocchi, _The Spectacular San Franciscans_ (New York, 1949). + +[271] Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871. + +[272] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396. + +[273] _Ibid._ + +[274] Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871. + +[275] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 403. + +[276] Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871. + +[277] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396. + +[278] Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872. + +[279] _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Jan. 23, 1873. + +[280] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 410-411. + +[281] _Ibid._, p. 413. + +[282] Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872. + +[283] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 416-417. + +[284] Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the _Woman's +Journal_, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the movement to +which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their lot with the +Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would have been +better for all concerned...." + +[285] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 519. The Republicans +financed a paper, _Woman's Campaign_, edited by Helen Barnard, which +published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for a time hoped to +convert into a woman suffrage paper. + +[286] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 422. + +[287] _Ibid._ + + + + +TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT + + +Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign +of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the +Union. + +Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the +possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great +interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had +attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were +still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for +representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in +Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the +case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that +"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This +legal contest had been fully reported in _The Revolution_, and +disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to +establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising +among women. + +There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she +hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She +had exulted in _The Revolution_ in 1868 over the attempt of women to +vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of +women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French +had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla +Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming +this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871, +Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V. +White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California, +and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to +vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to +the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their +ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election +Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of +the United States.[289] Another test case based on the Fourteenth +Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell, +one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the +Illinois bar because she was a woman. + +With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women, +lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the +legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even +the press was friendly. + +Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth +and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the +thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she +glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these +challenging words, "Now Register!... If you were not permitted to vote +you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face +death for it...."[290] + +This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right. +She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she +intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly +to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering. +Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered. +The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that +this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she +claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but +under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines. +Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she +persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both +Republicans, finally consented to register the four women. + +This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing +to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by +the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined +the ranks of the militants. + +On election day, November 5, 1872, Susan gleefully wrote Elizabeth +Stanton, "Well, I have gone and done it!!--positively voted the +Republican ticket--Strait--this A.M. at 7 o'clock--& swore my vote in +at that.... All my three sisters voted--Rhoda deGarmo too--Amy Post +was rejected & she will immediately bring action against the +registrars.... Not a jeer not a word--not a look--disrespectful has +met a single woman.... I hope the mornings telegrams will tell of many +women all over the country trying to vote.... I hope you voted +too."[291] + + * * * * * + +Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which +Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in +Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie +Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had +courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth +Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm +about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan. + +However, the fact that Susan B. Anthony had voted won immediate +response from the press in all parts of the country. Newspapers in +general were friendly, the New York _Times_ boldly declaring, "The act +of Susan B. Anthony should have a place in history," and the Chicago +_Tribune_ venturing to suggest that she ought to hold public office. +The cartoonists, however, reveling in a new and tempting subject, +caricatured her unmercifully, the New York Graphic setting the tone. +Some Democratic papers condemned her, following the line of the +Rochester _Union and Advertiser_ which flaunted the headline, "Female +Lawlessness," and declared that Miss Anthony's lawlessness had proved +women unfit for the ballot. + +Before she voted, Susan had taken the precaution of consulting Judge +Henry R. Selden, a former judge of the Court of Appeals. After +listening with interest to her story and examining the arguments of +Benjamin Butler, Francis Minor, and Albert G. Riddle in support of the +claim that women had a right to vote under the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, he was convinced that women had a good case and +consented to advise her and defend her if necessary. Judge Selden, now +retired from the bench because of ill health, was practicing law in +Rochester where he was highly respected. A Republican, he had served +as lieutenant governor, member of the Assembly, and state senator. +Susan had known him as one of the city's active abolitionists, a +friend of Frederick Douglass who had warned him to flee the country +after the raid on Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown. Such +a man she felt she could trust. + +All was quiet for about two weeks after the election and it looked as +if the episode might be forgotten in the jubilation over Grant's +election. Then, on November 18, the United States deputy marshal rang +the doorbell at 7 Madison Street and asked for Miss Susan B. Anthony. +When she greeted him, he announced with embarrassment that he had come +to arrest her. + +"Is this your usual manner of serving a warrant?" she asked in +surprise.[292] + +He then handed her papers, charging that she had voted in violation of +Section 19 of an Act of Congress, which stipulated that anyone voting +knowingly without having the lawful right to vote was guilty of a +crime, and on conviction would be punished by a fine not exceeding +$500, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years. + +This was a serious development. It had never occurred to Susan that +this law, passed in 1870 to halt the voting of southern rebels, could +actually be applicable to her. In fact, she had expected to bring suit +against election inspectors for refusing to accept the ballots of +women. Now charged with crime and arrested, she suddenly began to +sense the import of what was happening to her. + +When the marshal suggested that she report alone to the United States +Commissioner, she emphatically refused to go of her own free will and +they left the house together, she extending her wrists for the +handcuffs and he ignoring her gesture. As they got on the streetcar +and the conductor asked for her fare, she further embarrassed the +marshal by loudly announcing, "I'm traveling at the expense of the +government. This gentleman is escorting me to jail. Ask him for my +fare." When they arrived at the commissioner's office, he was not +there, but a hearing was set for November 29. + +On that day, in the office where a few years before fugitive slaves +had been returned to their masters, Susan was questioned and +cross-examined, and she felt akin to those slaves. Proudly she +admitted that she had voted, that she had conferred with Judge Selden, +that with or without his advice she would have attempted to vote to +test women's right to the franchise.[293] + +"Did you have any doubt yourself of your right to vote?" asked the +commissioner. + +"Not a particle," she replied. + +On December 23, 1872, in Rochester's common council chamber, before a +large curious audience, Susan, the other women voters, and the +election inspectors were arraigned. People expecting to see bold +notoriety-seeking women were surprised by their seriousness and +dignity. "The majority of these law-breakers," reported the press, +"were elderly, matronly-looking women with thoughtful faces, just the +sort one would like to see in charge of one's sick-room, considerate, +patient, kindly."[294] + +The United States Commissioner fixed their bail at $500 each. All +furnished bail but Susan, who through her counsel, Henry R. Selden, +applied for a writ of habeas corpus, demanding immediate release and +challenging the lawfulness of her arrest. When a writ of habeas corpus +was denied and her bail increased to $1,000 by United States District +Judge Nathan K. Hall, sitting in Albany, Susan was more than ever +determined to resist the interference of the courts in her +constitutional right as a citizen to vote. She refused to give bail, +emphatically stating that she preferred prison. + +Seeing no heroism but only disgrace in a jail term for his client and +unwilling to let her bring this ignominy upon herself. Henry Selden +chivalrously assured her that this was a time when she must be guided +by her lawyer's advice, and he paid her bail. Ignorant of the +technicalities of the law, she did not realize the far-reaching +implications of this well-intentioned act until they left the +courtroom and in the hallway met tall vigorous John Van Voorhis of +Rochester who was working on the case with Judge Selden. With the +impatience of a younger man, eager to fight to the finish, he +exclaimed, "You have lost your chance to get your case before the +Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus!"[295] + +Aghast, Susan rushed back to the courtroom, hoping to cancel the bond, +but it was too late. Bitterly disappointed, she remonstrated with +Henry Selden, but he quietly replied, "I could not see a lady I +respected in jail." She never forgave him for this, in spite of her +continued appreciation of his keen legal mind, his unfailing kindness, +and his willingness to battle for women. + +Within a few days she appeared before the Federal Grand Jury in +Albany and was indicted on the charge that she "did knowingly, +wrongfully and unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress of +the United States...."[296] Her trial was set for the term of the +United States District Court, beginning May 13, 1873, in Rochester, +New York. + +[Illustration: Judge Henry R. Selden] + +During these difficult days in Albany, Susan found comfort and +courage, as in the past, in the friendliness of Lydia Mott's home. +Here she planned the steps by which to win public approval and +financial aid for her test case. She addressed the commission which +was revising New York's constitution on woman's right to vote under +the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pointing out that the law +limiting suffrage to males was nullified by this new interpretation. +Eager to spread the truth about her own legal contest, she distributed +printed copies of Judge Selden's argument. Then traveling to New York +and Washington, she personally presented copies to newspaper editors +and Congressmen. To one of these men she wrote, "It is not for +myself--but for all womanhood--yes and all manhood too--that I most +rejoice in the appeal to the legal mind of the Nation. It is no +longer whether women wish to vote, or men are willing, but it is +woman's Constitutional right."[297] + + * * * * * + +In spite of the fact that Susan was technically in the custody of the +United States Marshal, who objected to her leaving Rochester, she +managed to carry out a full schedule of lectures in Ohio, Indiana, and +Illinois, and also the usual annual Washington and New York woman +suffrage conventions at which she told the story of her voting, her +arrest, and her pending trial, and where she received enthusiastic +support. + +Because she wanted the people to understand the legal points on which +she based her right to vote, Susan spoke on "The Equal Right of All +Citizens to the Ballot" in every district in Monroe County. So +thorough and convincing was she that the district attorney asked for a +change of venue, fearing that any Monroe County jury, sitting in +Rochester, would be prejudiced in her favor. When her case was +transferred to the United States Circuit Court in Canandaigua, to be +heard a month later, she immediately descended upon Ontario County +with her speech, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to +Vote?" and Matilda Joslyn Gage joined her, speaking on "The United +States on Trial, Not Susan B. Anthony." + +On the lecture platform Susan wore a gray silk dress with a soft, +white lace collar. Her hair, now graying, was smoothed back and +twisted neatly into a tight knot. Everything about her indicated +refinement and sincerity, and most of her audiences felt this. + +"Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the +natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and vote +in making and executing the laws," she declared as she looked into the +faces of the men and women who had gathered to hear her, farmers, +storekeepers, lawyers, and housewives, rich and poor, a cross section +of America. + +Repeating to them salient passages from the Declaration of +Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, she added, "It was +we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male +citizens: but we the whole people, who formed this Union. And we +formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; +not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the +whole people--women as well as men."[298] + +She asked, "Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities +of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state +prisoners will agree with me that it is not only one of them, but the +one without which all the others are nothing."[299] + +Quoting for them the Fifteenth Amendment, she told them it had settled +forever the question of the citizen's right to vote. The Fifteenth +Amendment, she reasoned, applies to women, first because women are +citizens and secondly because of their "previous condition of +servitude." Defining a slave as a person robbed of the proceeds of his +labor and subject to the will of another, she showed how state laws +relating to married women had placed them in the position of slaves. + +As she analyzed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments +and cited authorities for her conclusions, she left little doubt in +the minds of those who heard her that women were persons and citizens +whose privileges and immunities could not be abridged. + +On this note she concluded: "We ask the juries to fail to return +verdicts of 'guilty' against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United +States citizens for offering their votes at our elections ... We ask +the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and +wherever there is room for doubt to give its benefit on the side of +liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that 'the true rule of +interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its +amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, +everything against human rights unconstitutional.' And it is on this +line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot--all +peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, +when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before +the law." + + * * * * * + +Speaking twenty-one nights in succession was arduous. "So few see or +feel any special importance in the impending trial," she jotted down +in her diary. In towns, such as Geneva, where she had old friends, +like Elizabeth Smith Miller, she was assured of a friendly welcome and +a good audience.[300] + +[Illustration: "The Woman Who Dared"] + +As the collections, taken up after her lectures, were too small to pay +her expenses, her financial problems weighed heavily. The notes she +had signed for _The Revolution_ were in the main still unpaid, and +one of her creditors was growing impatient. She had recently paid her +counsel, Judge Selden, $200 and John Van Voorhis, $75, leaving only +$3.45 in her defense fund, but as usual a few of her loyal friends +came to her aid, and both Judge Selden and John Van Voorhis, deeply +interested in her courageous fight, gave most of their time without +charge.[301] + +If this campaign was a problem financially, it was a success in the +matter of nation-wide publicity. The New York _Herald_ exulted in +hostile gibes at women suffrage and published fictitious interviews, +ridiculing Susan as a homely aggressive old maid, but the New York +_Evening Post_ prophesied that the court decision would likely be in +her favor. The Rochester _Express_ championed her warmly: "All +Rochester will assert--at least all of it worth heeding--that Miss +Anthony holds here the position of a refined and estimable woman, +thoroughly respected and beloved by the large circle of staunch +friends who swear by her common sense and loyalty, if not by her +peculiar views." In fact the consensus of opinion in Rochester was +much like that of the woman who remarked, "No, I am not converted to +what these women advocate. I am too cowardly for that; but I am +converted to Susan B. Anthony."[302] + +This, however, was far from the attitude of Lucy Stone's _Woman's +Journal_, which had ignored Susan's voting in November 1872 because it +was out of sympathy with this militant move and with her +interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Later, as +her case progressed in the courts, the _Journal_ did give it brief +notice as a news item, but in 1873 when it listed as a mark of honor +the women who had worked wisely for the cause, Susan B. Anthony's name +was not among them, and this did not pass unnoticed by Susan; nor did +the fact that she was snubbed by the Congress of Women, meeting in New +York and sponsored by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Maria +Mitchell. This drawing away of women hurt her far more than newspaper +gibes. In fact she was sadly disappointed in women's response to the +herculean effort she was making for them. + +Even more disconcerting was the adverse decision of the Supreme Court +on the Myra Bradwell case, which at once shattered the confidence of +most of her legal advisors. The court held that Illinois had violated +no provision of the federal Constitution in refusing to allow Myra +Bradwell to practice law because she was a woman and declared that the +right to practice law in state courts is not a privilege or an +immunity of a citizen of the United States, nor is the power of a +state to prescribe qualifications for admission to the bar affected by +the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, filing a +dissenting opinion, lived up to Susan's faith in him, but Benjamin +Butler wrote her, "I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that +the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as +it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to +citizens. But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that +the constitutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as +guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give force to them +there must be legislation.... Therefore, the point is for the friends +of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation."[303] + +Susan, however, never wavered in her conviction that she as a citizen +had a constitutional right to vote and that it was her duty to test +this right in the courts. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[288] Ray Strachey, _Struggle_ (New York, 1930), pp. 113-116. + +[289] The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of a lower court that +without specific legislation by Congress, the 14th Amendment could not +overrule the law of the District of Columbia which limited suffrage to +male citizens over 21. _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 587-601. + +[290] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 423. + +[291] Nov. 5, 1872, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. Miss Anthony had assured the election inspectors that she +would pay the cost of any suit which might be brought against them for +accepting women's votes. + +[292] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 426. The Anthony home was then numbered +7 Madison Street. + +[293] _An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony +on the Charge of Illegal Voting_ (Rochester, New York, 1874), p. 16. + +[294] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 428. + +[295] _Ibid._, p. 433. + +[296] _Trial_, pp. 2-3. + +[297] N.d., Susan B. Anthony Papers, New York Public Library. + +[298] _Trial_, pp. 151, 153. Judge Story, _Commentaries on the +Constitution of the United States_, Sec. 456: "The importance of +examining the preamble for the purpose of expounding the language of a +statute has long been felt and universally conceded in all juridical +discussion." _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 477. + +[299] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 978, 986-987. + +[300] Ms., Diary, May 10, June 7, 1873. + +[301] Suffrage clubs in New York, Buffalo, Chicago, and Milwaukee sent +$50 and $100 contributions. Susan's cousin, Anson Lapham, cancelled +notes for $4000 which she had signed while struggling to finance _The +Revolution_. The women of Rochester rallied behind her, forming a +Taxpayers' Association to protest taxation without representation. + +[302] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 994-995. + +[303] _Ibid._, I, p. 429. + + + + +"IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?" + + +Charged with the crime of voting illegally, Susan was brought to trial +on June 17, 1873, in the peaceful village of Canandaigua, New York. +Simply dressed and wearing her new bonnet faced with blue silk and +draped with a dotted veil,[304] she stoically climbed the court-house +steps, feeling as if on her shoulders she carried the political +destiny of American women. With her were her counsel, Henry R. Selden +and John Van Voorhis, her sister, Hannah Mosher, most of the women who +had voted with her in Rochester, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose +interest in this case was akin to her own. + +In the courtroom on the second floor, seated behind the bar, Susan +watched the curious crowd gather and fill every available seat. She +wondered, as she calmly surveyed the all-male jury, whether they could +possibly understand the humiliation of a woman who had been arrested +for exercising the rights of a citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not +promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench +through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the +undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter +opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small, +white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended. +Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of +black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth. +He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her testify on her own +behalf. + +She was completely satisfied, however, as she listened to Henry +Selden's presentation of her case. Tall and commanding, he stood +before the court with nobility and kindness in his face and eyes, +bringing to mind a handsome cultured Lincoln. So logical, so just was +his reasoning, so impressive were his citations of the law that it +seemed to her they must convince the jury and even the expressionless +judge on the bench. + +Pointing out that the only alleged ground of the illegality of Miss +Anthony's vote was that she was a woman, Henry Selden declared, "If +the same act had been done by her brother under the same +circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent and laudable, +but honorable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a +crime.... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has +been arraigned in a criminal court, merely on account of her +sex."[305] He claimed that Miss Anthony had voted in good faith, +believing that the United States Constitution gave her the right to +vote, and he clearly outlined her interpretation of the Fourteenth and +Fifteenth Amendments, declaring that she stood arraigned as a criminal +simply because she took the only step possible to bring this great +constitutional question before the courts. + +After he had finished, Susan followed closely for two long hours the +arguments of the district attorney, Richard Crowley, who contended +that whatever her intentions may have been, good or bad, she had by +her voting violated a law of the United States and was therefore +guilty of crime. + +At the close of the district attorney's argument, Judge Hunt without +leaving the bench drew out a written document, and to her surprise, +read from it as he addressed the jury. "The right of voting or the +privilege of voting," he declared, "is a right or privilege arising +under the constitution of the State, not of the United States.[306] + +"The Legislature of the State of New York," he continued, "has seen +fit to say, that the franchise of voting shall be limited to the male +sex.... If the Fifteenth Amendment had contained the word 'sex,' the +argument of the defendant would have been potent.... The Fourteenth +Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting of Miss +Anthony was in violation of the law.... + +"There was no ignorance of any fact," he added, "but all the facts +being known, she undertook to settle a principle in her own person.... +To constitute a crime, it is true, that there must be a criminal +intent, but it is equally true that knowledge of the facts of the case +is always held to supply this intent...." + +Then hesitating a moment, he concluded, "Upon this evidence I suppose +there is no question for the jury and that the jury should be directed +to find a verdict of guilty." + +Immediately Henry Selden was on his feet, addressing the judge, +requesting that the jury determine whether or not the defendant was +guilty of crime. + +Judge Hunt, however, refused and firmly announced, "The question, +gentlemen of the jury, in the form it finally takes, is wholly a +question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, +in the first place, that under the Fourteenth Amendment which Miss +Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. + +"And I have decided also," he continued, "that her belief and the +advice which she took does not protect her in the act which she +committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your +part of guilty, and therefore I direct that you find a verdict of +guilty." + +Again Henry Selden was on his feet. "That is a direction," he +declared, "that no court has power to make in a criminal case." + +The courtroom was tense. Susan, watching the jury and wondering if +they would meekly submit to his will, heard the judge tersely order, +"Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk." + +"Gentlemen of the jury," intoned the clerk, "hearken to your verdict +as the Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of +the offense whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all." + +Claiming exception to the direction of the Court that the jury find a +verdict of guilty in this a criminal case. Henry Selden asked that the +jury be polled. + +To this, Judge Hunt abruptly replied, "No. Gentlemen of the jury, you +are discharged." + + * * * * * + +That night Susan recorded her estimate of Judge Hunt's verdict in her +diary in one terse sentence, "The greatest outrage History ever +witnessed."[307] + +The New York _Sun_, the Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_, and the +Canandaigua _Times_ were indignant over Judge Hunt's failure to poll +the jury. "Judge Hunt," commented the _Sun_, "allowed the jury to be +impanelled and sworn, and to hear the evidence; but when the case had +reached the point of rendering the verdict, he directed a verdict of +guilty. He thus denied a trial by jury to an accused party in his +court; and either through malice, which we do not believe, or through +ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a +judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the +Constitution of the United States.... The privilege of polling the +jury has been held to be an absolute right in this State and it is a +substantial right ..."[308] + +Claiming that the defendant had been denied her right of trial by +jury. Henry Selden the next day moved for a new trial. Judge Hunt +denied the motion, and, ordering the defendant to stand up, asked her, +"Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be +pronounced."[309] + +"Yes, your honor," Susan replied, "I have many things to say; for in +your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every +vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, +my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored...." + +Impatiently Judge Hunt protested that he could not listen to a +rehearsal of arguments which her counsel had already presented. + +"May it please your honor," she persisted, "I am not arguing the +question but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice +be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is +the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial +of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my +right to a trial by a jury of my peers ..." + +"The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on," interrupted Judge +Hunt; but Susan, ignoring his command to sit down, protested that her +prosecutors and the members of the jury were all her political +sovereigns. + +Again Judge Hunt tried to stop her, but she was not to be put off. She +was pleading for all women and her voice rang out to every corner of +the courtroom. + +"The Court must insist," declared Judge Hunt, "the prisoner has been +tried according to established forms of law." + +"Yes, your honor," admitted Susan, "but by forms of law all made by +men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and +against women...." + +"The Court orders the prisoner to sit down," shouted Judge Hunt. "It +will not allow another word." + +Unheeding, Susan continued, "When I was brought before your honor for +trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the +Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United +States citizens under its protecting aegis--that should declare +equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or +naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this +justice--failing, even, to get a trial by a jury _not_ of my peers--I +ask not leniency at your hands--but rather the full rigors of the +law." + +Once more Judge Hunt tried to stop her, and acquiescing at last, she +sat down, only to be ordered by him to stand up as he pronounced her +sentence, a fine of $100 and the costs of prosecution. + +"May it please your honor," she protested, "I shall never pay a dollar +of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 +debt, incurred by publishing my paper--_The Revolution_ ... the sole +object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have +done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of +law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them +the right of representation in the government.... I shall earnestly +and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical +recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny +is obedience to God.'" + +Pouring cold water on this blaze of oratory. Judge Hunt tersely +remarked that the Court would not require her imprisonment pending the +payment of her fine. + +This shrewd move, obviously planned in advance, made it impossible to +carry the case to the United States Supreme Court by writ of habeas +corpus. + + * * * * * + +That same afternoon, Susan was on hand for the trial of the three +election inspectors. This time Judge Hunt submitted the case to the +jury but with explicit instructions that the defendants were guilty. +The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the inspectors, denied a +new trial, were each fined $25 and costs. Two of them, Edwin F. Marsh +and William B. Hall, refused to pay their fines and were sent to jail. +Susan appealed on their behalf to Senator Sargent in Washington, who +eventually secured a pardon for them from President Grant. He also +presented a petition to the Senate, in January 1874, to remit Susan's +fine, as did William Loughridge of Iowa to the House, but the +judiciary committees reported adversely. + +Because neither of these cases had been decided on the basis of +national citizenship and the right of a citizen to vote, Susan was +heartsick. To have them relegated to the category of election fraud +was as if her high purpose had been trailed in the dust. Wishing to +spread reliable information about her trial and the legal questions +involved, she had 3,000 copies of the court proceedings printed for +distribution.[310] + +It was hard for her to concede that justice for women could not be +secured in the courts, but there seemed to be no way in the face of +the cold letter of the law to take her case to the Supreme Court of +the United States. This would have been possible on writ of habeas +corpus had Judge Hunt sentenced her to prison for failure to pay her +fine, but this he carefully avoided. + +Even that intrepid fighter, John Van Voorhis, could find no loophole, +and another of her loyal friends in the legal profession, Albert G. +Riddle, wrote her, "There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the +courts and just as little from the politicians. They will never take +up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never--till the thing +is done.... The trouble is that man can govern alone, and that, though +woman has the right, man wants to do it, and if she wait for him to +ask her, she will never vote.... Either man must be made to see and +feel ... the need of woman's help in the great field of human +government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as +she never has, and take her place."[311] + +The case of Virginia Minor of St. Louis still held out a glimmer of +hope. She had brought suit against an election inspector for his +refusal to register her as a voter in the presidential election of +1872, and the case of Minor vs. Happersett reached the United States +Supreme Court in 1874. An adverse decision, on March 29, 1875, +delivered by Chief Justice Waite, a friend of woman suffrage, was a +bitter blow to Susan and to all those who had pinned their faith on a +more liberal interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth +Amendments. + +Carefully studying the decision, Susan tried to fathom its reasoning, +so foreign to her own ideas of justice. "Sex," she read, "has never +been made of one of the elements of citizenship in the United +States.... The XIV Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women +any more than it did of men.... The direct question is, therefore, +presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters."[312] + +She read on: "The Constitution does not define the privileges and +immunities of citizens.... In this case we need not determine what +they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It +certainly is nowhere made so in express terms.... + +"When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the +several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had Constitutions +of their own.... We find in no State were all citizens permitted to +vote.... Women were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by +the express provision of their constitutions and laws ... No new State +has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of +suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered valid +objection to her admission. On the contrary ... the right of suffrage +was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey, +without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to +prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have +been reorganized under a requirement that, before their +Representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress, they must have +adopted new Constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these +Constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States +have all been restored to their original position as States in the +Union ... Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, +this is one.... + +"Our province," concluded Chief Justice Waite, "is to decide what the +law is, not to declare what it should be.... Being unanimously of the +opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the +right of suffrage upon any one, and that the Constitutions and laws of +the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are +not necessarily void, we affirm the judgment of the Court below." + +"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored +it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration +which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal +control over the rights and privileges of citizens. If the +Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage, she asked herself, +why does it define the qualifications of those voting for members of +the House of Representatives? How about the enfranchisement of Negroes +by federal amendment or the enfranchisement of foreigners? Why did +the federal government interfere in her case, instead of leaving it in +the hands of the state of New York? + +Like most abolitionists, Susan had always regarded the principles of +the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as +the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation +of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of +harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also +contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, Sir Edward +Coke, who said, "Whenever the question of liberty runs doubtful, the +decision must be given in favor of liberty."[313] + +In the face of such a ruling by the highest court in the land, she was +helpless. Women were shut out of the Constitution and denied its +protection. From here on there was only one course to follow, to press +again for a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[304] Ms., Diary, April 26, 1873. + +[305] _Trial_, p. 17. + +[306] _Ibid._, pp. 62-68. + +[307] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1873. + +[308] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1873, Library of Congress. + +[309] _Trial_, pp. 81-85. + +[310] This booklet also included the speeches of Susan B. Anthony and +Matilda Joslyn Gage, delivered prior to the trial, and a short +appraisal of the trial, _Judge Hunt and the Right of Trial by Jury_, +by John Hooker, the husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker. The Rochester +_Democrat and Chronicle_ called the booklet "the most important +contribution yet made to the discussion of woman suffrage from a legal +standpoint." The _Woman's Suffrage Journal_, IV, Aug. 1, 1873, p. 121, +published in England by Lydia Becker, said: "The American law which +makes it a criminal offense for a person to vote who is not legally +qualified appears harsh to our ideas." + +[311] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 455-456. + +[312] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 737-739, 741-742. + +[313] _Trial_, p. 191. + + + + +SOCIAL PURITY + + +Militancy among the suffragists continued to flare up here and there +in resistance to taxation without representation. Abby Kelley Foster's +home in Worcester was sold for taxes for a mere fraction of its worth, +while in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Abby and Julia Smith's cows and +personal property were seized for taxes. Both Dr. Harriot K. Hunt in +Boston and Mary Anthony in Rochester continued their tax protests. +Much as Susan admired this spirited rebellion, she recognized that +these militant gestures were but flames in the wind unless they had +behind them a well-organized, sustained campaign for a Sixteenth +Amendment, and this she could not undertake until _The Revolution_ +debt was paid. Nor was there anyone to pinch-hit for her since +Ernestine Rose had returned to England and Mrs. Stanton gave all her +time to Lyceum lectures. + +At the moment the prospect looked bleak for woman suffrage. In +Congress, there was not the slightest hope of the introduction of or +action on a Sixteenth Amendment. In the states, interest was kept +alive by woman suffrage bills before the legislatures, and year by +year, with more people recognizing the inherent justice of the demand, +the margin of defeat grew smaller. Whenever these state contests were +critical, Susan managed to be on hand, giving up profitable lecture +engagements to speak without fees; in Michigan in 1874 and in Iowa in +1875, she made new friends for the cause but was unable to stem the +tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in +Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor, +drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then +the other extreme, every narrow, selfish religious bigot."[314] + +A new militant movement swept the country in 1874, starting in small +Ohio towns among women who were so aroused over the evil influence of +liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in +front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to +reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising, +the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next +few years was organized into a powerful reform movement by a young +schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard. + +A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the +conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly +temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women. +Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who +organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she +felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to +show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. +You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which +is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil +until you have votes."[315] + +As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what +she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment, +speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the +Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a +week, which she applied to the _Revolution_ debt. + +Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their +popularity,--particularly in the West, where in the little towns +scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters, +and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met +the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and +children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons +to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card, +for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost +everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise, +discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe. +She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her +dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but +frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to +them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple +conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious +oratory of other lecturers. + +Continuous travel in all kinds of weather was difficult. Branch lines +were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by +blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel +by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits in dingy +dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy, +reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on +any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister +Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood +public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel +rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only +occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of +coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her +unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too +generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their +services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and +arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could +be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.[317] + +Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and +Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously +she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in +despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she +reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy +a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done +until the _Revolution_ debt was paid, for some of her creditors were +becoming impatient. + + * * * * * + +As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her +family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her +illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to +take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for +her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that +Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas. + +These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a +great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George +Eliot's _Middlemarch_ and Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_ of particular +interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions +which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case, +now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest +developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends. +She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in +whose home she had so often visited and toward whom she felt a warm +motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose +help and loyalty during the difficult days of _The Revolution_ she +never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose +quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he +had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same +was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to +say a good word for woman's rights. + +Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before, +Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and +Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs. +Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in +1872 had revived her _Weekly_ for a crusade on what she called "the +social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton +Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined +by merciless publicity. + +The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable +people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward +Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young +parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by +Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials +continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The +whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward +Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him. +Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote +Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike +anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"[318] + +When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a +suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the +alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news +throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published +anything and everything even remotely connected with the case. +Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the +West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding +them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force +her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry +Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she steadfastly +refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who +astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her +in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice +quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton, +who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the +New York _Graphic_ without Susan's consent published her letter to +Mrs. Hooker. + +The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher, +whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher, +whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word +carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could +not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a +sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that +the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his +side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes +influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church +real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, _Christian Union_, +and from his book the _Life of Christ_, now in preparation and for +which he had already been paid $20,000. + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular +side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own +defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her +to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew +far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or +Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press +campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman +Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their +previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as +were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in _The +Revolution_ six years before. + +Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole +doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the +husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second +marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I +consider the marriage relation."[319] + +Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or +innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to +her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding +the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an +impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have +a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul +becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain +and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more +demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie +which denies it."[320] + +Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she +could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her +reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the +New York _Sun_, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by +those who know anything of her character." The Rochester _Democrat and +Chronicle_ had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite +revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be +received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence +of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the +country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."[321] + +She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of +trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a +verdict. + + * * * * * + +Realizing that many taboos were being broken down by the lurid +nation-wide publicity on the Beecher-Tilton case and that as a result +people were more willing to consider subjects which hitherto had not +been discussed in polite society, Susan began to plan a lecture on +"Social Purity." + +She was familiar with the public protest Englishwomen under the +leadership of Josephine Butler were making against the state +regulation of vice. Following with interest and admiration their +courageous fight for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which +placed women suspected of prostitution under police power, Susan found +encouragement in the support these reformers had received from such +men as John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright. Such legislation, she +resolved, must not gain a foothold in her country, because it not only +disregarded women's right to personal liberty but showed a dangerous +callousness toward men's share of responsibility for prostitution. + +She was awake to the problems prostitution presented in cities like +New York and Washington, its prevalence, the police protection it +received, the political corruption it fostered and the reluctance of +the public to face the situation, the majority of men regarding it as +a necessity, and most women closing their eyes to its existence. + +During the winter of 1875, while the Beecher-Tilton case was being +tried in Brooklyn, she delivered her speech on "Social Purity" at the +Chicago Grand Opera House, in the Sunday dime-lecture course, facing +with trepidation the immense crowd which gathered to hear her. Even +the daring Mrs. Stanton had warned her that she would never be asked +to speak in Chicago again, and with this the manager of the Slayton +Lecture Bureau agreed. But they were wrong. The people were hungry for +the truth and for a constructive policy. In the past they had heard +the "social evil" described and denounced in vivid thunderous words by +eloquent men and by the dramatic Anna E. Dickinson. Now an earnest +woman with graying hair, one of their own kind, talked to them without +mincing matters, calmly and logically, and offered them a remedy. + +Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and +breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of +abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these +evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them +successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics, +revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a +foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence +rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously +mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against +England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for +New York and Washington and which she described as licensed +prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social +corruption. + +Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as +the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more +statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work +formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually +taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a +living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were +supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet +their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and +comfortable shelter into an immoral life. + +Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who +now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell +themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she +told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of +financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. +Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women +like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322] + +"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals. +Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees, +legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there +must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers, +doctors--that wherever women go to seek counsel--spiritual, legal, +physical--there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest +of their own sex to minister to them." + +Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a +necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will +cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the +equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions." + +She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make +the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise, +rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them, +have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges, +jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our +courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married +woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence. + +Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity +presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause +was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott, +fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling +approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott +declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, +truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323] + +She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas, +and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the +issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed +by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper +observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the +sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the +subject."[324] + + * * * * * + +Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief +turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her +message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw +justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the +East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new. +Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had +brought to lonely bleak western towns--better homes, cleanliness, +comfort, then schools, churches, law and order--and many of them were +willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to +translate that willingness into law. + +As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her +family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending +to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she +recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have +paid the last dollar of the _Revolution_ debt."[325] + +Even the press took notice, the Chicago _Daily News_ commenting, "By +working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could +earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors +of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan +B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[314] Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874. + +[315] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her stand for +woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876. + +[316] Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877. + +[317] To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection. + +[318] New York _Graphic_, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker believed her +half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, assuring him +she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." Kenneth R. +Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. Rumors that +Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated. + +[319] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 463. + +[320] _Ibid._ Only a few entries relating to the Beecher-Tilton case +remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the Library of +Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there. + +[321] _Ibid._, p. 462. + +[322] _Ibid._, II, pp. 1007-1009. + +[323] _Ibid._, I, p. 468. + +[324] _Ibid._, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing for nine +weeks to nurse her brother Daniel after he had been shot by a rival +editor in Leavenworth. + +[325] _Ibid._, p. 472. + +[326] _Ibid._, p. 473. + + + + +A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT + + +Like everyone else in the United States in 1876, Susan now turned her +attention to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which was +proclaiming to the world the progress this new country had made. Susan +pointed out, however, that one hundred years after the signing of the +Declaration of Independence, women were still deprived of basic +citizenship rights. + +As an afterthought, a Woman's Pavilion had been erected on the +exposition grounds and exhibited here she found only women's +contribution to the arts but nothing which would in any way show the +part women had played in building up the country or developing +industry. She longed to explain so that all could hear how the skilled +work of women had contributed to the prosperous textile and shoe +industries, to the manufacture of cartridges and Waltham watches, and +countless other products. Could she have had her way, she would have +made the Woman's Pavilion an eloquent appeal for equal rights, but +unable to do this, she established a center of rebellion for the +National Woman Suffrage Association at 1431 Chestnut Street, in +parlors on the first floor. Here she spent many happy hours directing +the work, often sleeping on the sofa so that she could work late and +save money for the cause. + +Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott. +Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a +comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs. +Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in +June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary, +"Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."[327] + +Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national +conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of +enfranchising women in this centennial year. But no woman suffrage +plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. +Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a +document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed +for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for +presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in +Independence Square. + +Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made +plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as +reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth _Times_. Mrs. +Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so +indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the +Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First +Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan +by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of +her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah +Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they +pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that +bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the +platform. + +By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting +Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony. +Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made +one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for +permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather +than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her +four friends on the platform. + +"We ... sat there waiting ..." reported Mrs. Blake. "The heat was +frightful.... Amid such a throng it was difficult to hear anything ... +We decided that our presentation should take place immediately after +Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the +Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, +and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was +exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice +was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' +and cried, 'Now is the time.' + +"We all four rose, Miss Anthony first, next Mrs. Gage, bearing our +engrossed Declaration, and Mrs. Spencer and myself following with +hundreds of printed copies in our hands. There was a stir in the +crowd just at the time, and General Hawley who had been keeping a wary +eye on us, had relaxed his vigilance for a moment, as he signed to the +band to resume playing. He did not see us advancing until we reached +the Vice President's dais. There Miss Anthony, taking the parchment +from Mrs. Gage, stepped forward and presented it to Mr. Ferry, saying, +'I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of +the United States.'"[328] + +Nonplussed, Mr. Ferry bowed low and received the Declaration without a +word. Then the four intrepid women filed out, distributing printed +copies of their declaration while General Hawley boomed out, "Order! +Order!" + +Leaving the square and mounting a platform erected for musicians in +front of Independence Hall, they waited until a curious crowd had +gathered around them. Then while Mrs. Gage held an umbrella over Susan +to shield her from the hot sun, she read the Women's Declaration in a +loud clear voice that carried far. + +"We do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of +self-government," she began. "Our faith is firm and unwavering in the +broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as +abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot +forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and +clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of +citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the +degradation of disfranchisement."[329] + +Then she enumerated women's grievances and the crowd applauded as she +drove home point after point. + +"Woman," she continued, "has shown equal devotion with man to the +cause of freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense. +Together they have made this country what it is.... We ask our rulers, +at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges.... We ask +justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights +that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us +and our daughters forever." + +Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which +eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her +four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager +audience awaited their report and hailed their courage. + +[Illustration: Aaron A. Sargent] + +The New York _Tribune_, commenting on Susan's militancy, prophesied +that it foreshadowed "the new forms of violence and disregard of order +which may accompany the participation of women in active partisan +politics."[330] + + * * * * * + +Nor was Congress impressed by Susan's centennial publicity demanding a +federal woman suffrage amendment. She had gathered petitions from +twenty-six states with 10,000 signatures which were presented to the +Senate in 1877. The majority of the Senators found these petitions +uproariously funny, and Susan in the visitors' gallery at the time of +their presentation was infuriated by the mirth and disrespect of these +men. "A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity +and without comment," reported the popular journalist, Mary Clemmer, +in her weekly Washington column, "but the majority seemed intensely +conscious of holding something unutterably funny in their hands.... +The entire Senate presented the appearance of a laughing school +practicing sidesplitting and ear-extended grins." After a few humorous +and sarcastic remarks the petitions were referred to the Committee on +Public Lands. Only one Senator, Aaron A. Sargent of California, was +"man enough and gentleman enough to lift the petitions from this +insulting proposition.... He ... demanded for the petition of more +than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be given any +other."[331] + +Although his words did not deter the Senators, Susan was proud of this +tall vigorous white-haired Californian and grateful for his +spontaneous support in this humiliating situation. He had been a +trusted friend and counselor ever since she had shared with him and +his family the long snowy journey from Nevada in 1872. She looked +forward to the time when woman suffrage would have more such advocates +in the Congress and when she would find there new faces and a more +liberal spirit. + +Disappointment only drove Susan into more intensive activity. Between +lectures she now nursed her sister Hannah who was critically ill in +Daniel's home in Leavenworth. After Hannah's death in May 1877, Susan +worked off her grief in Colorado, where the question of votes for +women was being referred to the people of the state. + +The suffragists in Colorado were headed by Dr. Alida Avery, who had +left her post as resident physician at the new woman's college, +Vassar, to practice medicine in Denver. Making Dr. Avery's home her +headquarters, Susan carried her plea for the ballot to settlements far +from the railroads, traveling by stagecoach over rough lonely roads +through magnificent scenery. Holding meetings wherever she could, she +spoke in schoolhouses, in hotel dining rooms, and even in saloons, +when no other place was available, and always she was treated with +respect and listened to with interest. Occasionally only a mere +handful gathered to hear her, but in Lake City she spoke to an +audience of a thousand or more from a dry-goods box on the court-house +steps. She was equal to anything, but the mining towns depressed her, +for they were swarming with foreigners who had been welcomed as +naturalized, enfranchised citizens and who almost to a man opposed +extending the vote to women. This precedence of foreign-born men over +American women was not only galling to her but menaced, she believed, +the growth of American democracy. + +Woman suffrage was defeated in Colorado in 1877, two to one. With the +Chinese coming into the state in great numbers to work in the mines, +the specter that stalked through this campaign was the fear of putting +the ballot into the hands of Chinese women. + +From Colorado, Susan moved on to Nebraska with a new lecture, "The +Homes of Single Women." Although she much preferred to speak on "Woman +and the Sixteenth Amendment" or "Bread and the Ballot," she realized +that, in order to be assured of return engagements, she must +occasionally vary her subjects, but she was unwilling to wander far +afield while women's needs still were so great. By means of this new +lecture she hoped to dispel the widespread, deeply ingrained fallacy +that single women were unwanted helpless creatures wholly dependent +upon some male relative for a home and support. Aware that this +mistaken estimate was slowly yielding in the face of a changing +economic order, she believed she could help lessen its hold by +presenting concrete examples of independent self-supporting single +women who had proved that marriage was not the only road to security +and a home. She told of Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose home in New York +City was a rendezvous for writers, artists, musicians, and reformers; +of Dr. Clemence Lozier, the friend of women medical students; of Mary +L. Booth, well established through her income as editor of _Harper's +Bazaar_; and of her beloved Lydia Mott, whose home had been a refuge +for fugitive slaves and reformers.[332] + +In Nebraska, she made a valuable new friend for the cause, Clara +Bewick Colby, whose zeal and earnest, intelligent face at once +attracted her. Within a few years, Mrs. Colby established in Beatrice, +Nebraska, a magazine for women, the _Woman's Tribune_, which to +Susan's joy spoke out for a federal woman suffrage amendment. + +Because Susan's contract with the Slayton Lecture Bureau allowed no +break in her engagements, she was obliged to leave the Washington +convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in the hands of +others in 1878. It was much on her mind as she traveled through +Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, and she sent a check for $100 +to help with the expenses of the convention. Particularly on her mind +was a federal woman suffrage amendment, for since 1869 when a +Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women had been introduced in +Congress and ignored, no further efforts along that line had been +made. Now good news came from Mrs. Stanton, who had attended the +convention. She had persuaded Senator Sargent to introduce in the +Senate, on January 10, 1878, a new draft of a Sixteenth Amendment, +following the wording of the Fifteenth. It read, "The right of +citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged +by the United States or by any State on account of sex."[333] + +[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby] + + * * * * * + +During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway, +although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking +the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging +as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of +several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return +Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a +newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs. +Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the +refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the +vote because it would wreck marriage and the home. + +Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure for +the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the +American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William +Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts +for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement +into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man +who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery. +Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right +track--the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you, +though between you and me, I still think the individual States must +lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State. +But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."[334] + +The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state +method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for +experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced +the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increasing number of naturalized +immigrants, who had little understanding of democratic government or +sympathy with the rights of women. A federal amendment, on the other +hand, depending for its adoption upon Congress and ratifying +legislatures, was in the hands of a far more liberal, intelligent, and +preponderantly American group. "We have puttered with State rights for +thirty years," she sputtered, "without a foothold except in the +territories."[335] + +Year by year she continued her Washington conventions, convinced that +these gatherings in the national capital could not fail to impress +Congressmen with the seriousness of their purpose. As women from many +states lobbied for the Sixteenth Amendment, reporting a growing +sentiment everywhere for woman suffrage, as they received in the press +respectful friendly publicity, Congressmen began to take notice. At +the large receptions held at the Riggs House, through the generosity +of the proprietors, Jane Spofford and her husband, Congressmen became +better acquainted with the suffragists, finding that they were not +cranks, as they had supposed, but intelligent women and socially +charming. + +Mrs. Stanton's poise as presiding officer and the warmth of her +personality made her the natural choice for president of the National +Woman Suffrage Association through the years. Her popularity, now well +established throughout the country after her ten years of lecturing +on the Lyceum circuit, lent prestige to the cause. To Susan, her +presence brought strength and the assurance that "the brave and true +word" would be spoken.[336] A new office had been created for Susan, +that of vice-president at large, and in that capacity she guided, +steadied, and prodded her flock. + +The subjects which the conventions discussed covered a wide field +going far beyond their persistent demands for a federal woman suffrage +amendment. Not only did they at this time urge an educational +qualification for voters to combat the argument that woman suffrage +would increase the ignorant vote, but they also protested the counting +of women in the basis of representation so long as they were +disfranchised. They criticized the church for barring women from the +ministry and from a share in church government. They took up the case +of Anna Ella Carroll,[337] who had been denied recognition and a +pension for her services to her country during the Civil War, and they +urged pensions for all women who had nursed soldiers during the war. +They welcomed to their conventions Mormon women from Utah who came to +Washington to protest efforts to disfranchise them as a means of +discouraging polygamy. + +Susan injected international interest into these conventions by +reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from +Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's +son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in +Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women. Occasionally +foreign-born women, now making new homes for themselves in this +country, joined the ranks of the suffragists, and a few of them, like +Madam Anneke and Clara Heyman from Germany contributed a great deal +through their eloquence and wider perspective. These contacts with the +thoughts and aspirations of men and women of other countries led Susan +to dream of an international conference of women in the not too +distant future.[338] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[327] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1876. + +[328] Katherine D. Blake and Margaret Wallace, _Champion of Women, The +Life of Lillie Devereux Blake_ (New York, 1943), pp. 124-126. + +[329] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, pp. 31, 34. The Woman's +Journal surprised Susan with a friendly editorial, "Good Use of the +Fourth of July," written by Lucy Stone, July 15, 1876. + +[330] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 43. The Philadelphia +_Press_ praised the Declaration of Rights and the women in the +suffrage movement. The report of the New York _Post_ was patronizingly +favorable, pointing out the indifference of the public to the subject. + +[331] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 485-486. + +[332] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[333] This amendment was re-introduced in the same form in every +succeeding Congress until it was finally passed in 1919 as the +Nineteenth Amendment. It was ratified by the states in 1920, 14 years +after Susan B. Anthony's death. When occasionally during her lifetime +it was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by those who wished to +honor her devotion to the cause, she protested, meticulously giving +Elizabeth Cady Stanton credit for making the first public demand for +woman suffrage in 1848. She also made it clear that although she +worked for the amendment long and hard, she did not draft it. After +her death, during the climax of the woman suffrage campaign, these +facts were overlooked by the younger workers who made a point of +featuring the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, both because they wished to +immortalize her and because they realized the publicity value of her +name. + +[334] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 484. + +[335] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 66. + +[336] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 544. + +[337] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 153; II, pp. 3-12, 863-868; +Sarah Ellen Blackwell, _A Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella Carroll +of Maryland_ (Washington, D.C., 1891), I, pp. 153-154. + +[338] "Woman Suffrage as a Means of Moral Improvement and the +Prevention of Crime" by Alexander Dumas, _History of Woman Suffrage_, +III, p. 190. Theodore Stanton, foreign correspondent for the New York +_Tribune_, now lived in Paris. + + + + +RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY + + +Recording women's history for future generations was a project that +had been in the minds of both Susan and Mrs. Stanton for a long time. +Both looked upon women's struggle for a share in government as a +potent force in strengthening democracy and one to be emphasized in +history. Men had always been the historians and had as a matter of +course extolled men's exploits, passing over women's record as +negligible. Susan intended to remedy this and she was convinced that +if women close to the facts did not record them now, they would be +forgotten or misinterpreted by future historians. Already many of the +old workers had died, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott, whom Susan had +nursed in her last illness, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison. +There was no time to be lost.[339] + +In the spring of 1880, Susan's mother died, and it was no longer +necessary for her to fit into her schedule frequent visits in +Rochester. Her sister Mary, busy with her teaching, was sharing her +home with her two widowed brothers-in-law and two nieces whose +education she was supervising.[340] Mrs. Stanton had just given up the +strenuous life of a Lyceum lecturer and welcomed work that would keep +her at home. Susan, who had managed to save $4,500 out of her lecture +fees, felt she could afford to devote at least a year to the history. + +She now shipped several boxes of letters, clippings, and documents to +the Stanton home in Tenafly, New Jersey.[341] As they planned their +book, it soon became obvious that the one volume which they had hoped +to finish in a few months would extend to two or three volumes and +take many years to write. They called in Matilda Joslyn Gage to help +them, and the three of them signed a contract to share the work and +the profits. + +The history presented a publishing problem as well as a writing +ordeal, and Susan, interviewing New York publishers, found the subject +had little appeal. Finally, however, she signed a contract with Fowler +& Wells under which the authors agreed to pay the cost of composition, +stereotyping, and engravings; and as usual she raised the necessary +funds.[342] + +[Illustration: Matilda Joslyn Gage] + +Returning to Tenafly as to a second home, Susan usually found Mrs. +Stanton beaming a welcome from the piazza and Margaret and Harriot +running to the gate to meet her. The Stanton children were fond of +Susan. It was a comfortable happy household, and Susan, thoroughly +enjoying Mrs. Stanton's companionship, attacked the history with +vigor. Sitting opposite each other at a big table in the sunny tower +room, they spent long hours at work. Susan, thin and wiry, her graying +hair neatly smoothed back over her ears, sat up very straight as she +rapidly sorted old clippings and letters and outlined chapters, while +Mrs. Stanton, stout and placid, her white curls beautifully arranged, +wrote steadily and happily, transforming masses of notes into readable +easy prose.[343] + +Having sent appeals for information to colleagues in all parts of the +country, Susan, as the contributions began to come in, struggled to +decipher the often almost illegible, handwritten manuscripts, many of +them careless and inexact about dates and facts. To their request for +data about her, Lucy Stone curtly replied, "I have never kept a diary +or any record of my work, and so am unable to furnish you the required +dates.... You say 'I' must be referred to in the history you are +writing.... I cannot furnish a biographical sketch and trust you will +not try to make one. Yours with ceaseless regret that any 'wing' of +suffragists should attempt to write the history of the other."[344] + +The greater part of the writing fell upon Mrs. Stanton, but Matilda +Joslyn Gage contributed the chapters, "Preceding Causes," "Women in +Newspapers," and "Women, Church, and State." Susan carefully selected +the material and checked the facts. She helped with the copying of the +handwritten manuscript and with the proofreading. Believing that +pictures of the early workers were almost as important for the +_History_ as the subject matter itself, she tried to provide them, but +they presented a financial problem with which it was hard to cope, for +each engraving cost $100.[345] + +When the first volume of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ came off the +press in May 1881, she proudly and lovingly scanned its 878 pages +which told the story of women's progress in the United States up to +the Civil War. + +She was well aware that the _History_ was not a literary achievement, +but the facts were there, as accurate as humanly possible; all the +eloquent, stirring speeches were there, a proof of the caliber and +high intelligence of the pioneers; and out of the otherwise dull +record of meetings, conventions, and petitions, a spirit of +independence and zeal for freedom shone forth, highlighted +occasionally by dramatic episodes. As Mrs. Stanton so aptly expressed +it, "We have furnished the bricks and mortar for some future architect +to rear a beautiful edifice."[346] + +The distribution of the book was very much on Susan's mind, for she +realized that it would not be in great demand because of its cost, +bulk, and subject matter. Nor could she at this time present it to +libraries, as she wished, for she had already spent her savings on the +illustrations. "It ought to be in every school library," she wrote +Amelia Bloomer, "where every boy and girl of the nation could see and +read and learn what women have done to secure equality of rights and +chances for girls and women...."[347] + +So much material had been collected while Volume I was in preparation +that both Susan and Mrs. Stanton felt they should immediately +undertake Volume II. After a summer of lecturing to help finance its +publication, Susan returned to Tenafly to the monotonous work of +compilation. "I am just sick to death of it," she wrote her young +friend Rachel Foster. "I had rather wash or whitewash or do any +possible hard work than sit here and go there digging into the dusty +records of the past--that is, rather _make_ history than write +it."[348] + +Yet she never entirely gave up making history, for she was always +planning for the future and Rachel Foster was now her able lieutenant, +relieving her of details, doing the spade work for the annual +Washington conventions, and arranging for an occasional lecture +engagement. Susan would not leave Tenafly for a lecture fee of less +than $50. + +She took this intelligent young girl to her heart as she had Anna E. +Dickinson in the past. Rachel, however, had none of Anna's dramatic +temperament or love of the limelight, but in her orderly businesslike +way was eager to serve Susan, whom she had admired ever since as a +child she had heard her speak for woman suffrage in her mother's +drawing room. + +While Susan was pondering the ways and means of financing another +volume of the _History_, the light broke through in a letter from +Wendell Phillips, announcing the astonishing news that she and Lucy +Stone had inherited approximately $25,000 each for "the woman's cause" +under the will of Eliza Eddy, the daughter of their former benefactor, +Francis Jackson. Although the legacy was not paid until 1885 because +of litigation, its promise lightened considerably Susan's financial +burden and she knew that Volumes II and III were assured. Her +gratitude to Eliza Eddy was unbounded, and better still, she read +between the lines the good will of Wendell Phillips who had been Eliza +Eddy's legal advisor. That he, whom she admired above all men, should +after their many differences still regard her as worthy of this trust, +meant as much to her as the legacy itself. + +In May 1882 she had the satisfaction of seeing the second volume of +the _History of Woman Suffrage_ in print, carrying women's record +through 1875. Volume III was not completed until 1885. + +Women's response to their own history was a disappointment. Only a few +realized its value for the future, among them Mary L. Booth, editor of +_Harper's Bazaar_. The majority were indifferent and some even +critical. When Mrs. Stanton offered the three volumes to the Vassar +College library, they were refused.[349] Nevertheless, every time +Susan looked at the three large volumes on her shelves, she was happy, +for now she was assured that women's struggle for citizenship and +freedom would live in print through the years. To libraries in the +United States and Europe, she presented well over a thousand copies, +grateful that the Eliza Eddy legacy now made this possible. + + * * * * * + +In 1883, Susan surprised everyone by taking a vacation in Europe. Soon +after Volume II of the _History_ had been completed, Mrs. Stanton had +left for Europe with her daughter Harriot.[350] Her letters to Susan +reported not only Harriot's marriage to an Englishman, William Henry +Blatch, but also encouraging talks with the forward-looking women of +England and France whom she hoped to interest in an international +organization. Repeatedly she urged Susan to join her, to meet these +women, and to rest for a while from her strenuous labors. The +possibility of forming an international organization of women was a +greater attraction to Susan than Europe itself, and when Rachel Foster +suggested that she make the journey with her, she readily consented. + +"She goes abroad a republican Queen," observed the Kansas City +_Journal_, "uncrowned to be sure, but none the less of the blood +royal, and we have faith that the noblest men and women of Europe will +at once recognize and welcome her as their equal."[351] + +In London, Susan met Mrs. Stanton, "her face beaming and her white +curls as lovely as ever." Then after talking with English suffragists +and her two old friends, William Henry Channing and Ernestine Rose, +now living in England, Susan traveled with Rachel through Italy, +Switzerland, Germany, and France, where a whole new world opened +before her. She thoroughly enjoyed its beauty; yet there was much that +distressed her and she found herself far more interested in the +people, their customs and living conditions than in the treasures of +art. "It is good for our young civilization," she wrote Daniel, "to +see and study that of the old world and observe the hopelessness of +lifting the masses into freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and +integrity. How any American, any lover of our free institutions, based +on equality of rights for all, can settle down and live here is more +than I can comprehend. It will only be by overturning the powers that +education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The +hope of the world is indeed our republic...." To a friend she +reported, "Amidst it all my head and heart turn to our battle for +women at home. Here in the old world, with ... its utter blotting out +of women as an equal, there is no hope, no possibility of changing her +condition; so I look to our own land of equality for men, and partial +equality for women, as the only one for hope or work."[352] + +Back in London again, she allowed herself a few luxuries, such as an +expensive India shawl and more social life than she had had in many a +year, and she longed to have Mary enjoy it all with her. She visited +suffragists in Scotland and Ireland as well as in England and +occasionally spoke at their meetings.[353] Here as in America +suffragists differed over the best way to win the vote, and even the +most radical among them were more conservative and cautious than +American women, but she admired them all and tried to understand the +very different problems they faced. Gradually she interested a few of +them in an international conference of women, and before she sailed +back to America with Mrs. Stanton in November 1883, she had their +promise of cooperation. + +The newspapers welcomed her home. "Susan B. Anthony is back from +Europe," announced the Cleveland _Leader_, "and is here for a winter's +fight on behalf of woman suffrage. She seems remarkably well, and has +gained fifteen pounds since she left last spring. She is sixty-three, +but looks just the same as twenty years ago. There is perhaps an extra +wrinkle in her face, a little more silver in her hair, but her blue +eyes are just as bright, her mouth as serious and her step as active +as when she was forty. She would attract attention in any crowd."[354] + +Susan came back to an indifferent Congress. "All would fall flat and +dead if someone were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to +us," she wrote a friend at this time, and to her diary she confided, +"It is perfectly disheartening that no member feels any especial +interest or earnest determination in pushing this question of woman +suffrage, to all men only a side issue."[355] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[339] The only such history available was the _History of the National +Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty Years_ (New York, 1871), written by +Paulina Wright Davis to commemorate the first national woman's rights +convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. This brief record, +ending with Victoria Woodhull's Memorial to Congress, was inadequate +and placed too much emphasis on Victoria Woodhull who had flashed +through the movement like a meteor, leaving behind her a trail of +discord and little that was constructive. + +[340] Aaron McLean, Eugene Mosher, his daughter Louise, Merritt's +daughter, Lucy E. Anthony from Fort Scott, Kansas, and later Lucy's +sister "Anna O." + +[341] Mrs. Stanton moved to the new home she had built in Tenafly, New +Jersey, in 1868. + +[342] Fowler & Wells furnished the paper, press work, and advertising +and paid the authors 12-1/2% commission on sales. They did not look +askance at such a controversial subject, having published the Fowler +family's phrenological books. In addition the women of the family were +suffragists. + +[343] In 1855, at the instigation of her father. Miss Anthony began to +preserve her press clippings. She now found them a valuable record, +and she hired a young girl to paste them in six large account books. +Thirty-two of her scrapbooks are now in the Library of Congress. + +[344] Aug. 30, 1876, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington +Library. The history of the American Woman Suffrage Association was +compiled for Volume II from the _Woman's Journal_ and Mary Livermore's +_The Agitator_ by Harriot Stanton. + +[345] Nov. 30, 1880, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls Historical +Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y. + +[346] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 531. The _History_ received friendly +and complimentary reviews, the New York _Tribune_ and _Sun_ giving it +two columns. + +[347] June 28, 1881, Amelia Bloomer Papers, Seneca Falls Historical +Society, Seneca Falls, N. Y. The cost of a cloth copy of the _History_ +was $3. + +[348] Dec. 19, 1880, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. +Rachel Foster's mother was a life-long friend of Elizabeth Cady +Stanton and sympathetic to her work for women. The widow of a wealthy +Pittsburgh newspaperman, she was now active in Pennsylvania suffrage +organizations. Her daughters, Rachel and Julia, early became +interested in the cause. + +[349] E. C. Stanton to Laura Collier, Jan. 21, 1886, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton Papers, Vassar College Library. Mary Livermore criticized the +_History_ as poorly edited. + +[350] After her marriage in 1882, to William Henry Blatch of +Basingstoke, Harriot made her home in England for the next 20 years. + +[351] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 549. + +[352] _Ibid._, pp. 553, 558, 562. Miss Anthony spent a week with her +old friends, Ellen and Aaron Sargent in Berlin where Aaron was serving +as American Minister to Germany. In Paris she visited Theodore Stanton +and his French wife. + +[353] Lydia Becker, Mrs. Jacob Bright, Helen Taylor, Priscilla Bright +McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd, and Elizabeth Pease +Nichol. A bill to enfranchise widows and spinsters was pending in +Parliament. Only a few women were courageous enough to demand votes +for married women as well. + +[354] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 582. + +[355] _Ibid._, pp. 591, 583. + + + + +IMPETUS FROM THE WEST + + +"My heart almost stands still. I hope against hope, but still I hope," +Susan wrote in her diary in 1885, as she waited for news from Oregon +Territory regarding the vote of the people on a woman suffrage +amendment.[356] Woman suffrage was defeated in Oregon; and in +Washington Territory, where in 1883 it had carried, a contest was +being waged in the courts to invalidate it. In Nebraska it had also +been defeated in 1882. Since the victories in Wyoming and Utah in 1869 +and 1870, not another state or territory had written woman suffrage +into law. + +In spite of these setbacks, Susan still saw great promise in the West +and resumed her lecturing there. She knew the rapidly growing young +western states and territories as few easterners did, and she +understood their people. Here women were making themselves +indispensable as teachers, and state universities, now open to them, +graduated over two thousand women a year. The Farmers' Alliance, the +Grange, and the Prohibition party, all distinctly western in origin, +admitted women to membership and were friendly to woman suffrage. +School suffrage had been won in twelve western states as against five +in the East, and Kansas women were now voting in municipal elections. +In a sense, woman suffrage was becoming respectable in the West, and a +woman was no longer ostracized by her friends for working with Susan +B. Anthony. + +Still critical of her own speaking, Susan was often discouraged over +her lectures, but her vitality, her naturalness, and her flashes of +wit seldom failed to win over her audiences. Her nephew, Daniel Jr., a +student at the University of Michigan, hearing her speak, wrote his +parents, "At the beginning of her lecture, Aunt Susan does not do so +well; but when she is in the midst of her argument and all her +energies brought into play, I think she is a very powerful +speaker."[357] + +On these trips through the West, she kept in close touch with her +brothers Daniel and Merritt in Kansas, frequently visiting in their +homes and taking her numerous nieces to Rochester. She valued +Daniel's judgment highly, and he, well-to-do and influential, was a +great help to her in many ways, investing her savings and furnishing +her with railroad passes which greatly reduced her ever-increasing +traveling expenses. + +Everywhere she met active zealous members of the Women's Christian +Temperance Union. Since the Civil War, temperance had become a +vigorous movement in the Middle West, doing its utmost to counteract +the influence of the many large new breweries and saloons. Through the +Prohibition party, organized on a national basis in 1872, temperance +was now a political issue in Kansas, Iowa, and the Territory of +Dakota, and through the W.C.T.U. women waged an effective +total-abstinence campaign. Brought into the suffrage movement by +Frances Willard under the slogan, "For God and Home and Country," +these women quickly sensed the value of their votes to the temperance +cause. Nor was Susan slow to recognize their importance to her and her +work, for they represented an entirely new group, churchwomen, who +heretofore had been suspicious of and hostile toward woman's rights. +Through them, she anticipated a powerful impetus for her cause. + +With admiration she had watched Frances Willard's career.[358] This +vivid consecrated young woman was a born leader, quick to understand +woman's need of the vote and eager to lead women forward. It was a +disappointment, however, when she joined the American rather than the +National Woman Suffrage Association. The reasons for this, Susan +readily understood, were Frances Willard's warm friendship with Mary +Livermore and her own preference for the American's state-by-state +method, similar to that she had so successfully followed in her +W.C.T.U. Yet Frances Willard, whenever she could, cooperated with +Susan whom she admired and loved; and through the years these two +great leaders valued and respected each other, even though they +frequently differed over policy and method. + +Susan, for example, was often troubled because women suffrage and +temperance were more and more linked together in the public mind, thus +confusing the issues and arousing the hostility of those who might +have been friendly toward woman suffrage had they not feared that +women's votes would bring in prohibition. She did her best to make it +clear to her audiences that she did not ask for the ballot in order +that women might vote against saloons and for prohibition. She +demanded only that women have the same right as men to express their +opinions at the polls. Such an attitude was hard for many temperance +women to understand and to forgive. + +Over women's support of specific political parties, Susan and Frances +Willard were never able to agree. Susan had never been willing to ally +herself with a minority party. Therefore, to Frances Willard's +disappointment, she withheld her support from the Prohibition party in +1880, although their platform acknowledged woman's need of the ballot +and directed them to use it to settle the liquor question, and in 1884 +when they recommended state suffrage for women. Finding women eager to +support the Prohibitionists in gratitude for these inadequate planks, +Susan even issued a statement urging them to support the Republicans, +who held out the most hope to them even if woman suffrage had not been +mentioned in their platform. Her experience in Washington had proved +to her the friendliness and loyalty of individual Republicans, and she +was unwilling to jeopardize their support. + +Her judgment was confirmed during the next few years when friendly +Republicans spoke for woman suffrage in the Senate, and when in 1887 +the woman suffrage amendment was debated and voted on in the Senate. +In the Senate gallery eagerly listening, Susan took notice that the +sixteen votes cast for the amendment were those of Republicans.[359] + +Still hoping to win Susan's endorsement of the Prohibition party in +1888, Frances Willard asked her to outline what kind of plank would +satisfy her. + +"Do you mean so satisfy me," Susan replied, "that I would work, and +recommend to all women to work ... for the success of the third party +ticket?... Not until a third party gets into power ... which promises +a larger per cent of representatives, on the floor of Congress, and in +the several State legislatures, who will speak and vote for women's +enfranchisement, than does the Republican, shall I work for it. You +see, as yet there is not a single Prohibitionist in Congress while +there are at least twenty Republicans on the floor of the United +States Senate, besides fully one-half of the members of the House of +Representatives who are in favor of woman suffrage.... I do not +propose to work for the defeat of the party which thus far has +furnished nearly every vote in that direction."[360] + +Nor was she lured away when, in 1888, the Prohibition party endorsed +woman suffrage and granted Frances Willard the honor of addressing its +convention and serving on the resolutions committee. + + * * * * * + +The temperance issue also cropped up in the annual Washington +conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association, preparations +for which Susan now left to Rachel Foster, May Wright Sewall, a +capable young recruit from Indiana, and Jane Spofford. However, she +still supervised these conventions, prodding and interfering, in what +she called her most Andrew Jackson-like manner. She always returned to +Washington with excitement and pleasure, and with the hope of some +outstanding victory, and the suite at the Riggs House, given her by +generous Jane Spofford, was a delight after months of hard travel in +the West. "I shall come both ragged and dirty," she wrote Mrs. +Spofford in 1887. "Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the +mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little +milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who +will patch me together so that I shall be presentable."[361] + +Open to all women irrespective of race or creed, the National Woman +Suffrage Association attracted fearless independent devoted members. +They welcomed Mormon women into the fold, and when the bill to +disfranchise Mormon women as a punishment for polygamy was before +Congress in 1887, they did their utmost to help Mormon women retain +the vote, but were defeated. + +They welcomed as well many temperance advocates. A few delegates, +however, among them Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Colby, scorned +what they called the "singing and praying" temperance group and +protested that temperance and religion were getting too strong a hold +on the organization. Abigail Duniway from Oregon contended that +suffragists should not join forces with temperance groups and blamed +the defeat of woman suffrage in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, in +1887, on men's fear that women would vote for prohibition. + +Often Susan was obliged to act as arbiter between the temperance and +nontemperance groups. She did not underestimate the momentum which the +well-organized W.C.T.U. had already given the suffrage cause, +particularly in states where the National Association had only a few +and scattered workers. She needed and wanted the help of these +temperance women and of Frances Willard's forceful and winning +personality. She also saw the importance of breaking down with Frances +Willard's aid the slow-yielding opposition of the church. + +Occasionally enthusiastic workers undertook projects which to her +seemed unwise. She told them frankly how she felt and left it at that, +but most of them had to learn by experience. When Belva Lockwood, one +of her most able colleagues in Washington, accepted the nomination for +President of the United States, offered her by the women of California +in 1884 and by the women of Iowa in 1888 through their Equal Rights +party, she did not lend her support or that of the National +Association, but followed her consistent policy of no alignment with a +minority party. Nevertheless, she heartily believed in women's right +and ability to hold the highest office in the land. + + * * * * * + +Ever since her trip to Europe in 1883, Susan had been planning for an +international gathering of women. Interest in this project was kept +alive among European women by Mrs. Stanton during her frequent visits +with her daughter Harriot in England and her son Theodore in France. +It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the +National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an +international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate +the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten +thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all +parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as +well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and +an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference +and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of +Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the +enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide +contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many +and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy +development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her _Woman's +Tribune_ in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's _Tribune_, +established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had since then met in a +measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she +welcomed its transfer to Washington.[362] + +Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House +in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which +opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted +entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the +pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national +organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England, +France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada. + +Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record +attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and +Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in +Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening +thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel +not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and +demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training +in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal +suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their +responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education +and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were +listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White +House by President and Mrs. Cleveland. + +Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress +with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine +of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore _Sun_, "daily +grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good +works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of +press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of +doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the +parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without +murmur or dissent."[363] + +A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five +years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as +president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed +as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as +vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral +reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as +Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international +movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn +by experience. + +Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women, +two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and +overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American +Woman Suffrage Associations. + +Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary +Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she assumed, was a narrow Methodist +minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman +in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience +spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm +personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a +matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan +and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled +as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met. + +Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her +indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the +hardships and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary +Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her +way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School, +from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two +Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist +Episcopal church because of her sex. Eventually she was ordained by +the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied +medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker +was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups. +Through the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she met an +inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances +Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave +the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage +movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the +Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was placed at the head +of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she +met Susan B. Anthony. + +[Illustration: Anna Howard Shaw] + +The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the +feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant +vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her, +seemed particularly well fitted to assist Susan in the arduous +campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure +take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western +tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's +promise that she would lecture for the National Association. + +One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after +meeting her at the International Council. A warm friendship quickly +developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years +they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and +planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester +through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home +and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and +devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker +nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her +tasks, though less spectacular, were important and freed both Susan +and Anna from many details. + +Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard +Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman +Suffrage Association, just so it clarified the opinions of other young +women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of +both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups +should not work together in one large strong organization, and this +seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other +countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the +personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had +caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the +difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they +press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt +themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked +forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together, +but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had +made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by +surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American Association proposed +that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union. + + * * * * * + +The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous +partisans, and in the _Woman's Journal_, the _Woman's Tribune_, and +elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the +twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the +tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the +past aroused little interest. + +The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most +difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton, +nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed +for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for +Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger +members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were +chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's +favor. Her popularity in the National Association was tremendous. +Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and +admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she +now spent so much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many +who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go +to Susan, who was always on the job. + +[Illustration: Harriot Stanton Blatch] + +Most of the American Association regarded Susan as safer and less +radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path +of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election. + +Susan did not want the presidency. She wanted it for Mrs. Stanton, who +had headed the National Association so ably for so many years. She +pleaded earnestly with the delegates of the National Association: "I +will say to every woman who is a National and who has any love for the +old Association, or for Susan B. Anthony, that I hope you will not +vote for her for president.... Don't you vote for any human being but +Mrs. Stanton.... When the division was made 22 years ago it was +because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too +radical.... And now ... if Mrs. Stanton shall be deposed ... you +virtually degrade her.... I want our platform to be kept broad enough +for the infidel, the atheist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian.... +These are the broad principles I want you to stand upon."[364] + +When the two organizations met in February 1890 to effect formal union +as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Elizabeth Cady +Stanton was elected president by a majority of 41 votes, while Susan +was the almost unanimous choice for vice-president at large. With Lucy +Stone chosen chairman of the executive committee, Jane Spofford +treasurer, and Rachel Foster and Alice Stone Blackwell +secretaries,[365] the new organization was well equipped with able +leaders for the work ahead. It was dedicated to work for both state +and federal woman suffrage amendments and its official organ would be +the _Woman's Journal_. + +Susan now faced the future with gratitude that a strong unified +organization could be handed down to the younger women who would +gradually take over the work she had started, and her confidence in +these young women grew day by day. Working closely with Rachel Foster +and May Wright Sewall, she knew their caliber. Anna Howard Shaw and +Alice Stone Blackwell showed great promise, and Harriot Stanton Blatch +was living up to her expectations. In England where Harriot had made +her home since her marriage in 1882, she was active in the cause, and +on her visits to her mother in New York, she kept in touch with the +suffrage movement in the United States. She took part in the union +meeting, and in her diary, Susan recorded these words of commendation, +"Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy of her mother +and her mother's lifelong friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment +for me."[366] + +To such she could entrust her beloved cause. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[356] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 592. + +[357] _Ibid._, p. 658. + +[358] Miss Anthony first met Frances Willard in 1875 when she lectured +in Rochester. Invited to sit on the platform, by her side, she +thoughtfully refused, adding "You have a heavy enough load to carry +without me." Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 472. When Frances Willard took +her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876, Miss Anthony +wrote her, "Now you are to go forward. I wish I could see you and make +you feel my gladness." Mary Earhart, _Frances Willard_ (Chicago, +1944), p. 153. + +[359] During the debate, Frances Willard rendered valuable aid with a +petition for woman suffrage, signed by 200,000 women. This +counteracted in a measure the protests against woman suffrage by +President Eliot of Harvard and 200 New England clergymen. + +[360] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 622-623. + +[361] _Ibid._, p. 612. + +[362] So successful was Mrs. Colby's Washington venture that she +continued to publish her _Woman's Tribune_ there for the next 16 years + +[363] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 637. + +[364] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 22, 1890. + +[365] The credit for achieving union after two years of patient +negotiation goes to Rachel Foster Avery, secretary of the National +Association, and to Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, +secretary of the American Association. + +[366] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 675. + + + + +VICTORIES IN THE WEST + + +New western states were coming into the Union, North and South Dakota, +Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, and in Susan's opinion it was +highly important that they be admitted as woman suffrage states, for +she had not forgotten that disturbing line of the Supreme Court +decision in the Virginia Minor case which read, "No new State has ever +been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage +on women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her +admission."[367] Susan wanted to start a new trend. + +Opposition to Wyoming's woman suffrage provision was strong in +Congress in spite of the fact that it had the unanimous approval of +Wyoming's constitutional convention. To Susan in the gallery of the +House of Representatives, listening anxiously to the debate on the +admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in +the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wishing to +block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman +suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment +offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment, +however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming +legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of +the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman +suffrage."[368] After this, the House voted to admit Wyoming, 139 to +127, but the Senate delayed, renewing the attack on the woman suffrage +provision. Not until July 1890, while she was speaking to a large +audience in the opera house at Madison, South Dakota, did the good +news of the admission of Wyoming reach her. Jubilant as she commented +on this great victory, she spoke as one inspired, for she saw this as +the turning point in her forty long years of uphill work. + +Neither North Dakota nor South Dakota had wanted to risk their +chances of statehood by incorporating woman suffrage in their +constitutions.[369] Yet public opinion in both states was friendly, +South Dakota directing its first legislature to submit the question to +the voters. It was this that brought Susan to South Dakota in 1890. +Sentiment for woman suffrage in South Dakota had previously been +created almost entirely by the W.C.T.U., and this had linked woman +suffrage and prohibition together. Now, the liquor interests made +prohibition an issue in this woman suffrage campaign, as they rallied +their forces for the repeal of prohibition which had been adopted when +South Dakota was admitted to statehood. Through the propaganda of the +liquor interests the 30,000 foreign-born voters became formidable +opponents, and newly naturalized Russians, Scandinavians, and Poles, +given the vote before American women, wore badges carrying the slogan, +"Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."[370] Both Republicans +and Democrats cultivated these foreign-born voters, turning a cold +shoulder to the woman suffrage amendment and refusing to endorse it in +their state conventions. Even the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of +Labor, previously friendly to woman suffrage, now joined with the +Prohibitionists to form a third political party which also failed to +endorse the woman suffrage amendment. On top of all this, +anti-suffragists from Massachusetts, calling themselves Remonstrants, +flooded South Dakota with their leaflets. + +It now seemed to Susan as if every clever politician had lined up +against women. During these trying days, Anna Howard Shaw joined her, +and together they covered the state, hoping by the truth and sincerity +of their statements to quash the propaganda against woman suffrage. +Often they traveled in freight cars, as transportation was limited, or +drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat +was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything +they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately +poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress +could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these +honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an investigating +commission.[371] + +Occasionally Susan and Anna spent the night in isolated sod houses +where ingenious pioneer women cooked their scant meals over burning +chips of buffalo bones gathered on the prairie. Glorying in the +valiant spirit of these women, who in loneliness and hardship played +an important but unheralded role in the conquest of this new country, +Susan was generous with her praise. To them her words of commendation +were like a benediction, and few of them ever forgot a visit from +Susan B. Anthony. + +By this time life on the frontier was an old story to her, for she had +campaigned under similar conditions in Kansas and in the far West. +Nonetheless, the hardships were trying. Yet this plucky woman of +seventy wrote friends in the East, "Tell everybody that I am perfectly +well in body and in mind, never better, and never doing more work.... +O, the lack of modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with +it better than any of the young folks.... I shall push ahead and do my +level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally.... +I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of +the good people everywhere...."[372] + +Young vigorous Anna Howard Shaw proved to be a campaigner after +Susan's own heart, tireless, uncomplaining, and good-tempered, an +exceptional speaker, witty and quick to say the right word at the +right time. It was a joy to find in Anna the same devotion to the +cause that she herself felt, the same crusading fervor and +reliability. During the long drives over the prairie, she talked to +Anna of the work that must be done, of what it would mean to the women +of the future, and she fired Anna's soul "with the flame that burned +in her own."[373] + +Another young western woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, also attracted +Susan's attention at this time. She had volunteered for the South +Dakota campaign, after attending her first national woman suffrage +convention; and Susan, meeting her in Huron, South Dakota, to map out +a speaking tour for her, found a tall handsome confident young woman +ready to attack the work and see it through, in spite of the hardships +which confronted her. + +Carrie Lane, a graduate of Iowa State College, had briefly studied law +and taught school before her marriage to Lee Chapman. Now, four years +after his death, she had married George W. Catt of Seattle, a +promising young engineer and a former fellow-student at Iowa State +College. What particularly impressed Susan was that Carrie, in spite +of her marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota. +She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every +difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and +planned for the future. In Carrie's report of her work there was a +ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's +approval. Here was a young woman to watch and to keep in the work. + +[Illustration: The Anthony home, Rochester, New York] + +The visible result of six months of campaigning was defeat, with the +vote 22,972 for woman suffrage and 45,632 opposed, and as Susan +remembered the maneuvers of the politicians, the trading of votes for +the location of the state capital, and the scheming of the liquor +interests, she felt she was championing a lonely cause. + + * * * * * + +From now on Susan hoped to turn over to the younger women much of the +lecturing and organizing in the West, and she needed an anchorage, a +home of her own from which she could direct the work. Her mother had +willed 17 Madison Street to Mary, who had rented the first floor and +was living on the second where there was a room for Susan. Now that +Susan planned to spend more time at home and Mary had retired from +teaching, they decided to take over the whole house, modernize and +redecorate it, and enjoy it the rest of their lives. Mary as usual +took charge, but Susan had definite ideas about what should be done. +Mary, who had learned to be cautious and frugal, was more willing +than Susan to make old furnishings do, but their friends came to the +rescue, showering them with gifts. + +Freshly painted and papered, with new rugs on the floor, lace curtains +at the windows, easy chairs and new furniture here and there, the +house was all Susan had wished for, and everywhere were familiar +touches, such as her mother's spinning wheel by the fireplace in the +back parlor. + +She spent most of her time in her study on the second floor. Here she +hung her pictures of the reformers she admired and loved; and right +over her desk, looking down at her, was the comforting picture of her +dearest friend, Mrs. Stanton. Hour after hour, she sat at this desk, +writing letters, hurriedly dashing off one after another, writing just +as the thoughts came, as if she were talking, bothering little with +punctuation, using dashes instead, and vigorously underlining words +and phrases for emphasis. Instructions to workers in all parts of the +country, letters of friendship and sympathy, answers to the many +questions which came in every mail, these were signed and sealed one +after another, and slipped into the mail box when she took a brisk +walk before going to bed. + +She started each day with the morning newspaper, stepping out on the +front veranda to pick it up, taking a deep breath of fresh air, and +enjoying the green grass and the tall graceful chestnut trees in front +of the house. Then sitting down in the back parlor beside the big +table covered with magazines and mail, she carefully read her paper +before beginning the work at her desk, for she must keep up-to-date on +the news. + +Rochester was important to her. It was her city, and she was on hand +with her colleagues whenever there was an opportunity for women to +express interest in its government, progress, or welfare. Not only did +she encourage women to make use of their newly won right to vote in +school elections, she also urged municipal suffrage for women. +Appealing to the governor to appoint a woman to fill a vacancy on the +board of trustees of Rochester's State Industrial School, she herself +received the appointment which the _Democrat and Chronicle_ called "a +fitting recognition of one of the ablest and best women in the +commonwealth."[374] + +One of her first acts as trustee was a practical one for the girls. +"Spent entire day at State Industrial School," she wrote in her diary, +"getting the laundry girls--who had always washed for the entire +institution by hand and ironed that old way--transferred to the boys' +laundry room to use its machinery--am sure it will work well--girls 12 +of them delighted."[375] She also taught the boys to patch and darn, +and later asked for coeducation. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at her desk] + + * * * * * + +Susan looked forward to welcoming Mrs. Stanton at 17 Madison Street +when she returned to this country in 1891, particularly because she +had sold her home in Tenafly after her husband's death, in 1887, and +now had no home to go to. Susan hoped that as they again worked +together she could persuade Mrs. Stanton to concentrate on more +serious writing than the chatty reminiscences she had just published +and which Susan felt were "not the greatest" of herself.[376] When she +heard that Mrs. Stanton seriously contemplated living in New York with +two of her children, she begged her to reconsider, writing, "This is +the first time since 1850 that I have anchored myself to any +particular spot, and in doing it my constant thought was that you +would come here ... and stay for as long, at least, as we must be +together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to +posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for +myself, but is for the one by the side of whom I have wrought these +forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences ... has been +the delight of my life."[377] + +Mrs. Stanton decided to make her home in New York, but first she +visited Susan who found her as stimulating as ever and brimful of +ideas. They plotted and planned as of old and managed to stir up +public opinion on the question of admitting women to the University of +Rochester. With women enrolled at the University of Michigan since +1870, and at Cornell since 1872, and with Columbia University yielding +at last to women's entreaties by establishing Barnard College in 1889, +they felt it their duty to awaken Rochester, and although their +agitation produced no immediate results, it did start other women +thinking and made news for the press. The cartoons on the subject +delighted them both.[378] + +Susan soon realized that the writing she had planned for Mrs. Stanton +would never be done, for Mrs. Stanton had already made up her mind to +write for magazines and newspapers on new and controversial subjects, +feeling this was the best contribution she could make to the cause. +Susan also found it increasingly difficult to hold her old friend to +the straight path of woman suffrage, Mrs. Stanton insisting that too +much concentration on this one subject was narrowing and left women +unprepared for the intelligent use of the ballot. Women, Mrs. Stanton +argued, needed to be stirred up to think, and this they would not do +as long as their minds were dominated by the church, which, she +believed, had for generations hampered their development by +emphasizing their inferiority and subordination. She was determined to +analyze and rebel, and Susan could in no way divert her. Completely +absorbed in trying to prove that the Bible, accurately translated and +interpreted, did not teach the inferiority or the subordination of +women, she was writing a book which she called _The Woman's Bible_, +chapters of which were already appearing in the _Woman's Tribune_. + +Susan was not unsympathetic to Mrs. Stanton's ideas, but she opposed +this excursion into religious controversy because she was sure it +would stir up futile wrangles among the suffragists and keep Mrs. +Stanton from giving her best to the cause. Her lack of interest then +and her frank disapproval as _The Woman's Bible_ progressed were a +great disappointment to Mrs. Stanton, and these two old friends began +to grow somewhat apart as they took different roads to reach their +goal, the one intent on freeing women's minds, the other determined to +establish their citizenship. Yet their friendship endured. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton] + +In 1892 Susan reluctantly consented to Mrs. Stanton's retirement as +president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. +Stanton's request that she be followed by Susan won unanimous +approval, and Anna Howard Shaw was moved up to second place, +vice-president at large. For forty years, Susan had watched Mrs. +Stanton preside with a poise, warmth, and skill which few could equal. +She knew she would miss her dynamic reassuring presence at the +conventions. Yet she was obliged to admit to herself that it was more +than fitting that she should at last head the ever-growing +organization which she had built up. This was the last convention +which Mrs. Stanton attended, and it was the last for Lucy Stone who +died the next year. Susan appreciated the eager young women who now +took their places, but she did not yet feel completely at home with +them. "Only think," she wrote an old-time colleague, "I shall not have +a white-haired woman on the platform with me, and I shall be alone +there of all the pioneer workers. Always with the 'old guard' I had +perfect confidence that the wise and right thing would be said. What a +platform ours then was of self-reliant strong women! I felt sure of +you all.... I can not feel quite certain that our younger sisters will +be equal to the emergency, yet they are each and all valiant, earnest, +and talented, and will soon be left to manage the ship without even +me."[379] + +In 1892, the year of the presidential election, Susan hopefully +attended the national political conventions. Again the Republicans +made their proverbial excuses, explaining that they not only faced a +formidable opponent in Grover Cleveland but also the threat of a new +People's party. The familiar ring of their alibis, which they had +repeated since Reconstruction days, made Susan wonder when and if ever +the Republicans would feel able to bear the strain of woman suffrage. +Their platform remembered the poor, the foreign-born, and male +Negroes, but it still ignored women. Yet hope for the future stirred +in her heart as she saw at the convention two women serving as +delegates from Wyoming. Here was the entering wedge. + +The Democrats as usual were silent on woman suffrage, but undismayed +by them or by the Prohibitionists, who this year failed to endorse +votes for women, Susan moved on to Omaha with Anna Howard Shaw for the +first national convention of the new People's party. Here she met +representatives of the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of Labor, +both friendly to woman suffrage, and men from other groups, critical +of the two major political parties for their failure to solve the +pressing economic problems confronting the nation. Susan was +sympathetic with many of the aims of the People's party, having seen +with her own eyes the plight of debt-burdened, hard-working farmers +and having crusaded in her own paper, _The Revolution_, for the rights +of labor and for the control of industrial monopoly. However, she +still viewed minor, reform parties with a highly critical eye. The +People's party gave her no woman suffrage plank and she found them +"quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as +either of the old parties...."[380] + +With the election of Grover Cleveland, whose opposition to woman +suffrage was well known, and with the Democrats in the saddle for +another four years, Congressional action on the woman suffrage +amendment was blocked. Nevertheless, the cause moved ahead in the +states; Colorado was to vote on the question in 1893 and Kansas in +1894, and New York was revising its constitution. In addition, the +World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 offered endless opportunities to bring +the subject before the people. + + * * * * * + +As soon as plans for the World's Fair were under way, Susan began to +work indirectly through prominent women in Washington and Chicago for +the appointment of women to the board of management. "Lady Managers" +were appointed, 115 strong, who proved to be very much alive under the +leadership of Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer. Susan found Mrs. Palmer +almost as determined as she to secure equality of rights for women at +the World's Fair, and nothing that she herself might have planned +could have been more effective than the series of world congresses in +which both men and women took part, or than the World's Congress of +Representative Women. + +[Illustration: Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and +Susan B. Anthony] + +Two of Susan's "girls," as she liked to call them, Rachel Foster +Avery[381] and May Wright Sewall, were appointed by Mrs. Palmer to +take charge of the World's Congress of Representative Women, and they +arranged a meeting of the International Council of Women as a part of +this Congress. + +Convening soon after the opening of the World's Fair, the Congress of +Representative Women drew record crowds at its eighty-one sessions. +Twenty-seven countries and 126 organizations were represented. Here +Susan, to her joy, heard Negroes, American Indians, and Mormons tell +of their progress and their problems, and saw them treated with as +much respect as American millionaires, English nobility, or the most +virtuous, conservative housewife. Watching these women assemble, +talking with them, and listening to their well-delivered speeches, she +felt richly rewarded for the lonely work she had undertaken forty +years before, when scarcely a woman could be coaxed to a meeting or be +persuaded to express her opinions in public. Although only one session +of the congress was devoted to the civil and political rights of +women, it was gratifying to her that women's need of the ballot was +spontaneously brought up in meeting after meeting, showing that +women, whatever their cause or whatever their organization, were +recognizing that only by means of the vote could their reforms be +achieved. + +Speaking on the subject to which she had dedicated her life, Susan +gave credit to the pioneering suffragists for the change which had +taken place in public opinion regarding the position of women. She +urged women's organizations to give suffrage their wholehearted +support and pointed out the great power of some of the newer +organizations, such as the W.C.T.U. with its membership of half a +million and the young General Federation of Women's Clubs of 40,000 +members. Confessing that her own National American Woman Suffrage +Association in comparison was poor in numbers and limited in funds, +she added, "I would philosophize on the reason why. It is because +women have been taught always to work for something else than their +own personal freedom; and the hardest thing in the world is to +organize women for the one purpose of securing their political liberty +and political equality."[382] Even so, the vital woman's rights +organizations, she concluded, drew the whole world to them in spirit +if not in person. + +Her very presence among them without her words, in fact her very +presence on the fair grounds, advertised her cause, for in the mind of +the public she personified woman suffrage. This tall dignified woman +with smooth gray hair, abundant in energy and spontaneous +friendliness, was the center of attraction at the World's Congress of +Representative Women. In her new black dress of Chinese silk, +brightened with blue, and her small black bonnet, trimmed with lace +and blue forget-me-nots, she was the perfect picture of everyone's +grandmother, and the people took her to their hearts.[383] She was the +one woman all wanted to see. Curious crowds jammed the hall and +corridors when she was scheduled to speak, and often a policeman had +to clear the way for her. At whatever meeting she appeared, the +audience at once burst into applause and started calling for her, +interrupting the speakers, and were not satisfied until she had +mounted the platform so that all could see her and she had said a few +words. Then they cheered her. After years of ridicule and +unpopularity, she hardly knew what to make of all this, but she +accepted it with happiness as a tribute to her beloved cause. Many +who had been critical and wary of her newfangled notions began to +reverse their opinions after they saw her and heard her words of good +common sense. Even those who still opposed woman suffrage left the +World's Fair with a new respect for Susan B. Anthony. + +She stayed on in Chicago for much of the summer and fall, for she was +in demand as a speaker at several of the world congresses and had five +speeches to read for Mrs. Stanton, who felt unable to brave the heat +and the crowds. She felt at home in this bustling, rapidly growing +city which for so many years had been the halfway station on her +lecture and campaign trips through the West. Here she had always found +a warm welcome, first from her cousins, the Dickinsons, then from the +ever-widening circle of friends she won for her cause. Now she was +literally swamped with hospitality.[384] She rejoiced that such great +numbers of everyday people were able to enjoy the beauty of the fair +grounds and the many interesting exhibits, and when a group of +clergymen urged Sunday closing, she took issue with them, declaring +that Sunday was the only day on which many were free to attend. Asked +by a disapproving clergyman if she would like to have a son of hers +attend Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on Sunday, she promptly and +bluntly replied, "Of course I would, and I think he would learn far +more there than from the sermons in some churches!"[385] + +Hearing of this, Buffalo Bill offered her a box at his popular Wild +West Show, and she appeared the next day with twelve of her "girls." +Dashing into the arena on his spirited horse while the band played and +the spotlight flashed on him, Buffalo Bill rode directly up to Susan's +box, reined his horse, and swept off his big western hat to salute +her. Quick to respond, she rose and bowed, and beaming with pleasure, +waved her handkerchief at him while the immense audience applauded and +cheered. + +She returned home early in November 1893, with happy memories of the +World's Fair and to good news from Colorado. "Telegram ... from +Denver--said woman suffrage carried by 5000 majority," she recorded in +her diary.[386] This laconic comment in no way expressed the joy in +her heart. + +Her diaries, written hurriedly in small fine script, year after year, +in black-covered notebooks about three inches by six, were a brief +terse record of her work and her travels. Only occasionally a line of +philosophizing shone out from the mass of routine detail, or an +illuminating comment on a friend or a difficult situation, but she +never failed to record a family anniversary, a birthday, or a death. + +The Colorado victory, referred to so casually in her diary, was +actually of great importance to her and her cause, for it carried +forward the trend initiated by the admission of Wyoming as a woman +suffrage state in 1890. Colorado also proved to her that her "girls" +could take over her work. So busy had she been winning good will for +the cause at the World's Fair that she had left Colorado in the +capable hands of the women of the state and of young efficient Carrie +Chapman Catt, to whom she now turned over the supervision of all state +campaigns. + +Encouragement also came from another part of the world, from New +Zealand, where the vote was extended to women. This confirmed her +growing conviction that equal citizenship was best understood on the +frontier and that in her own country victory would come from the West. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[367] Minor vs. Happersett, _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. +741-742. North and South Dakota, Washington and Montana were admitted +in 1889, Wyoming and Idaho in 1890. + +[368] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 999-1000. + +[369] North Dakota's constitution provided that the legislature might +in the future enfranchise women. + +[370] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 556. + +[371] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 690. + +[372] _Ibid._, p. 688. + +[373] Anna Howard Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_ (New York, 1915), p. +202. + +[374] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 731. + +[375] Ms., Diary, Feb. 28, April 18, 1893. + +[376] Published first in the _Woman's Tribune_, then as a book in 1898 +under the title, _Eighty Years and More_. + +[377] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 712. + +[378] During this visit the young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson, modeled +busts of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton which later were chiseled in +marble and were exhibited with the bust of Lucretia Mott at the +World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. They are now in the Capitol in +Washington. + +[379] To Clarina Nichols. Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 544. Miss Anthony +wrote in her diary, Oct. 18, 1893, "Lucy Stone died this evening at +her home--Dorchester, Mass. aged 75--I can but wonder if the spirit +now sees things as it did 25 years ago!" The wound inflicted by Lucy's +misunderstanding of her motives had never healed. + +[380] _Ibid._, p. 727. + +[381] Rachel Foster was married in 1888 to Cyrus Miller Avery. + +[382] May Wright Sewall, Editor, _The World's Congress of +Representative Women_ (Chicago, 1894), p. 464. + +[383] Statement by Lucy E. Anthony, Una R. Winter Collection. + +[384] Miss Anthony's diary, 1893, mentions visiting "dear Mrs. +Coonley" (Lydia Avery Coonley) in her beautiful, friendly home. May +Wright Sewall, and devoted Emily Gross. Her sister Mary, Daniel, +Merritt, and their families joined her at the Fair for a few weeks. + +[385] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 205-207. + +[386] Ms., Diary, Nov. 8, 1893. + + + + +LIQUOR INTERESTS ALERT FOREIGN-BORN VOTERS AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE + + +"I am in the midst of as severe a treadmill as I ever experienced, +traveling from fifty to one hundred miles every day and speaking five +or six nights a week,"[387] Susan wrote a friend in 1894, during the +campaign to wrest woman suffrage from the New York constitutional +convention. She was now seventy-four years old. Political machines and +financial interests were deeply intrenched in New York, and although +two governors had recommended that women be represented in the +constitutional convention and a bill had been passed making women +eligible as delegates, neither Republicans nor Democrats had the +slightest intention of allowing women to slip into men's stronghold. +It was obvious to Susan that without representation at the convention +and without power to enforce their demands, women's only hope was an +intensive educational campaign which she now directed with vigor. +Whenever she could, she conferred with Mrs. Stanton, whose judgment +she valued, and there was zest in working together as they had during +the previous constitutional convention in 1867. + +The women of New York were aroused as never before. Young able +speakers went through the state, piling up signatures on their +petitions, but they had few influential friends among the delegates. +Anti-suffragists were active, encouraged by Bishop Doane of the +Protestant Episcopal church and Mrs. Lyman Abbott, whose name carried +the prestige and influence of her husband's popular magazine, _The +Outlook_. + +With the election of Joseph Choate of New York as president of the +convention, Susan knew that woman suffrage was doomed, for Choate had +political aspirations and was not likely to let his sympathies for an +unpopular cause jeopardize his chances of becoming governor. While he +gave women every opportunity to be heard, at the same time he arranged +for the defeat of woman suffrage by appointing men to consider the +subject who were definitely opposed, and they submitted an adverse +report. Here was a situation similar to that in 1867, when her +one-time friend, Horace Greeley, had deserted women for political +expediency. + +"I am used to defeat every time and know how to pick up and push on +for another attack," she wrote as she now turned her attention to +Kansas.[388] + + * * * * * + +The Republicans in Kansas had sponsored school and municipal suffrage +for women and had passed a woman suffrage amendment to be referred to +the people in 1894. Yet they proved to be as great a disappointment to +Susan as they were in 1867, when as a last resort she had been obliged +to campaign with the Democrats and George Francis Train. + +The population of Kansas had changed with the years, as immigrants +from Europe had come into the state, and Susan was again confronted +with the powerful opposition of foreign-born voters for whose support +the political parties bargained. The liquor interests were also +active, and the Republicans, who had brought prohibition to Kansas, +now left the question discreetly alone, even making a deal with German +Democrats for their votes by promising to ignore in their platform +both prohibition and woman suffrage. Prohibition and woman suffrage +were synonymous in the minds of voters, because women had generally +voted for enforcement in municipal elections, and no matter how hard +Susan tried, she found it impossible to have woman suffrage considered +on its own merits. + +Watching the straws in the wind, she saw Republican supremacy +seriously threatened by the new Populist party. Convinced that she +could no longer count on help from Kansas Republicans, she turned to +the Populist party, ignoring the pleas of Republican women who warned +her she would hurt the cause by association with such a radical group. +The Populists were generally regarded as the party of social unrest, +of a regulated economy, and unsound money, and they were looked upon +with suspicion. To many they represented a threat to the American +free-enterprise system, and they were blamed for the labor troubles +which had flared up in the bloody Homestead strike in the steel mills +of Pennsylvania and in the Pullman strike, defying the powerful +railroads. Susan was never afraid to side with the underdog, and she +could well understand why western farmers, in the hope of relief, were +eagerly flocking into the Populist party when their corn sold for ten +cents a bushel and the products they bought were high-priced and their +mortgage interest was never lower than 10 per cent. + +To the Populist convention, she declared, "I have labored for women's +enfranchisement for forty years and I have always said that for the +party that endorsed it, whether Republican, Democratic, or Populist, I +would wave my handkerchief."[389] + +"We want more than the waving of your handkerchief, Miss Anthony," +interrupted a delegate, who then asked her, "If the People's party put +a woman suffrage plank in its platform, will you go before the voters +of this state and tell them that because the People's party has +espoused the cause of woman suffrage, it deserves the vote of every +one who is a supporter of that cause?" + +"I most certainly will," she replied, adding as the audience cheered +her wildly, "for I would surely choose to ask votes for the party +which stood for the principle of justice to women, though wrong on +financial theories, rather than for the party which was sound on +questions of money and tariff, and silent on the pending amendment to +secure political equality to half of the people." + +"I most certainly will" was the phrase which was remembered and was +flashed through the country, and as a result, the Republican press and +Susan's Republican friends harshly criticized her for taking her stand +with the radicals. + +Like all political parties, the Populists found it hard to comprehend +justice for women, but after a four-hour debate, the convention +endorsed the woman suffrage amendment, absolving, however, members who +refused to support it. The rank and file rejoiced as if each and every +one of them were heart and soul for the cause. They cheered, they +waved their canes, they threw their hats high in the air, and then +swarmed around Susan and Anna Shaw to shake their hands and welcome +them into the Populist party. + +With woman suffrage at last a political issue in Kansas, Susan left +the field to her "girls." Her homecoming brought reporters to 17 +Madison Street for the details about her alignment with the Populist +party. "I didn't go over to the Populists," she told them. "I have +been like a drowning man for a long time, waiting for someone to throw +a plank in my direction. I didn't step on the whole platform, but just +on the woman suffrage plank.... Here is a party in power which is +likely to remain in power, and if it will give its endorsement to our +movement, we want it."[390] + +This explanation, however, did not satisfy her critics, and as the +Republican press circulated false stories about her enthusiasm for the +Populist party, letters of protest poured in, among them one from +Henry Blackwell. To him, she replied, "I shall not praise the +Republicans of Kansas, or wish or work for their success, when I know +by their own confessions to me that the rights of the women of their +state have been traded by them in cold blood for the votes of the +lager beer foreigners and whisky Democrats.... I never, in my whole +forty years work, so utterly repudiated any set of politicians as I do +those Republicans of Kansas.... I never was surer of my position that +no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a +party that ignores her political rights."[391] + +The contest in Kansas was close and bitter. Kansas women carried on an +able campaign with the help of Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman +Catt. When Susan returned to the state in October, she not only found +that the Democrats had entered the fight with an anti-suffrage plank +but the Populists had noticeably lost ground since the Pullman strike +riots, the court injunction against the strikers, and the arrest of +Eugene V. Debs. Again this prairie state, from which she had hoped so +much, refused to extend suffrage to women. Impulsively she recommended +a little "Patrick Henryism" to the women of Kansas, suggesting that +they fold their hands and refuse to help men run the churches, the +charities, and the reform movements.[392] + + * * * * * + +California was the next state to demand Susan's attention. A +Republican legislature had submitted a woman suffrage amendment to be +voted on by the people in 1896, and the women of California asked for +her help. She toured the state in the spring of 1895 with Anna Howard +Shaw, and everywhere she won friends. The continuous travel and +speaking, however, taxed her far more than she realized, and soon +after her return to the East, she collapsed. As this news flashed over +the wires, letters poured in from her friends, begging her to spare +herself. Two of these letters were especially precious. One in bold +vigorous script was from her good comrade, Parker Pillsbury, now +eighty-six, who had been an unfailing help during the most difficult +years of her career and whom she probably trusted more completely than +any other man. The other from her dearest friend, Elizabeth Stanton, +read, "I never realized how desolate the world would be to me without +you until I heard of your sudden illness. Let me urge you with all the +strength I have, and all the love I bear you, to stay at home and rest +and save your precious self."[393] + +She now realized that rest was imperative for a time, but it troubled +her that people thought of her as old and ill, and she wrote Clara +Colby never to mention anyone's illness in her _Woman's Tribune_, +adding, "It is so dreadful to get public thought centered on one as +ill--as I have had it the last two months."[394] + +She had no intention of retiring from the field. She knew her own +strength and that her life must be one of action. "I am able to endure +the strain of daily traveling and lecturing at over three-score and +ten," she observed, "mainly because I have always worked and loved +work.... As machinery in motion lasts longer than when lying idle, so +a body and soul in active exercise escapes the corroding rust of +physical and mental laziness, which prematurely cuts off the life of +so many women."[395] + +Yet she did slow up a little, refusing an offer from the Slayton +Lecture Bureau for a series of lectures at $100 a night, and she +engaged a capable secretary, Emma B. Sweet, to help her with her +tremendous correspondence. "Dear Rachel" had given her a typewriter, +and now instead of dashing off letters at her desk late at night, she +learned to dictate them to Mrs. Sweet at regular hours. As requests +came in from newspapers and magazines for her comments on a wide +variety of subjects, she answered those that made possible a word on +the advancement of women. + +Bicycling had come into vogue and women as well as men were taking it +up, some women even riding their bicycles in short skirts or bloomers. +What did she think of this? "If women ride the bicycle or climb +mountains," she replied, "they should don a costume which will permit +them the use of their legs." Of bicycling she said, "I think it has +done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I +rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a +feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her +seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood."[396] + +[Illustration: Ida Husted Harper] + + * * * * * + +Susan returned to California in February 1896. Through the generosity +and interest of two young Rochester friends, her Unitarian minister, +William C. Gannett, and his wife, Mary Gannett, she was able to take +her secretary with her. Making her home in San Francisco with her +devoted friend, Ellen Sargent, she at once began to plan speaking +tours for herself and her "girls," many of whom, including her niece +Lucy, had come West to help her. She appealed successfully to Frances +Willard to transfer the national W.C.T.U. convention to another state, +for she was determined to keep the issue of prohibition out of the +California campaign. + +With the press more than friendly and several San Francisco dailies +running woman suffrage departments, she realized the importance of +keeping newspapers fed with readable factual material and enlisted the +aid of a young journalist, Ida Husted Harper, whom she had met in 1878 +while lecturing in Terre Haute, Indiana, and who was in California +that winter. When the San Francisco _Examiner_, William Randolph +Hearst's powerful Democratic paper, offered Susan a column on the +editorial page if she would write it and sign it, she dictated her +thoughts to Mrs. Harper, who smoothed them out for the column, helping +her as Mrs. Stanton had in the past, for writing was still a great +hardship. Grateful to Mrs. Harper, she sang her praises: "The moment I +give the idea--the point--she formulates it into a good +sentence--while I should have to haggle over it half an hour."[397] + +California women had won suffrage planks from Republicans, Populists, +and Prohibitionists, and the prospects looked bright. Rich women came +to their aid, Mrs. Leland Stanford, with her railroad fortune, +furnishing passes for all the speakers and organizers, and Mrs. Phoebe +Hearst contributing $1,000 to their campaign. What warmed Susan's +heart, however, was the spirit of the rank and file, the seamstresses +and washerwomen, paying their two-dollar pledges in twenty-five-cent +installments, the poorly clad women bringing in fifty cents or a +dollar which they had saved by going without tea, and the women who +had worked all day at their jobs, stopping at headquarters for a +package of circulars to fold and address at night. The working women +of California made it plain that they wanted to vote. + +Susan insisted upon carrying out what she called her "wild goose +chase" over the state.[398] People crowded to hear her at farmers' +picnics in the mountains, in schoolhouses in small towns, and in +poolrooms where chalked up on the blackboard she often found "Welcome +Susan B. Anthony." She was at home everywhere and ready for anything. +The men liked her short matter-of-fact speeches and her flashes of +wit. Her hopes were high that the friendly people she met would not +fail to vote justice to women. + +She grew apprehensive, however, when the newspapers, pressured by +their advertisers, one by one began to ignore woman suffrage. The +Liquor Dealers' League had been sending letters to hotel owners, +grocers, and druggists, as well as to saloons, warning that votes for +women would mean prohibition and would threaten their livelihood. Word +was spread that if women voted not one glass of beer would be sold in +San Francisco. As in Kansas, liquor interests had persuaded +naturalized Irish, Germans, and Swedes to oppose woman suffrage, so +now in California, they appealed to the Chinese. + +On election day Susan was in San Francisco with Anna Howard Shaw and +Ellen Sargent, watching and anxiously waiting for the returns. Telling +the story of those last tense hours when women's fate hung in the +balance, Anna Howard Shaw reported, "I shall always remember the +picture of Miss Anthony and the wife of Senator Sargent wandering +around the polls arm in arm at eleven o'clock at night, their tired +faces taking on lines of deeper depression with every minute, for the +count was against us.... When the final counts came in, we found that +we had won the state from the north down to Oakland and from the south +up to San Francisco; but there was not sufficient majority to overcome +the adverse votes of San Francisco and Oakland. In San Francisco the +saloon element and the most aristocratic section ... made an equal +showing against us.... Every Chinese vote was against us."[399] + +In spite of defeat in California, Susan had the joy of marking up two +more states for woman suffrage in 1896. Utah was granted statehood +with a woman suffrage provision in its constitution and Idaho's +favorable vote, though contested in the courts, was upheld by the +State Supreme Court. Now women in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah +were voters. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[387] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 763. + +[388] To Elizabeth Smith Miller, July 25, 1894, Elizabeth Smith Miller +Papers, New York Public Library. + +[389] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 788. + +[390] _Ibid._, p. 791. + +[391] _Ibid._, p. 794. + +[392] To Clara Colby, July 22, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. +Huntington Library. + +[393] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 842. + +[394] N.d., Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[395] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 843. + +[396] _Ibid._, pp. 844, 859. + +[397] Ms., Diary, July 10, 1896. + +[398] Sept. 8, 1896, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[399] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 274-275. + + + + +AUNT SUSAN AND HER GIRLS + + +The future of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was +much on Susan's mind. This organization which she had conceived and +nursed through its struggling infancy had grown in numbers and +prestige, and she understood, as no one else could, the importance of +leaving it in the right hands so that it could function successfully +without her. + +The young women now in the work, many of them just out of college, +were intelligent, efficient, and confident, and yet as she compared +them with the vivid consecrated women active in the early days of the +movement, she observed in her diary, "[Clarina] Nichols--Paulina +Davis--Lucy Stone--Frances D. Gage--Lucretia Mott & E. C. +Stanton--each without peer among any of our college graduates--young +women of today."[400] + +Even so, she appreciated the "young women of today" whom she +affectionately called her girls or her adopted nieces, but she still +held the reins tightly, although they often champed at the bit. +Recognizing, however, that she must choose between personal power and +progress for her cause, she characteristically chose progress. Quick +to appreciate ability and zeal when she saw it, she seldom failed to +make use of it. When Carrie Chapman Catt presented a detailed plan for +a thorough overhauling of the mechanics of the organization, she gave +her approval, remarking drily, "There never yet was a young woman who +did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the +beginning, the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just +that way when I was young."[401] + +On four of her adopted nieces, Rachel Foster Avery, Anna Howard Shaw, +Harriet Taylor Upton, and Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan felt that the +greater part of her work would fall and be "worthily done."[402] Yet +she feared that in their enthusiasm for efficient organization they +might lose the higher concepts of freedom and justice which had been +the driving force behind her work. Not having learned the lessons of +leadership when the cause was unpopular, they lacked the discipline of +adversity, which bred in the consecrated reformer the wisdom, +tolerance, and vision so necessary for the success of her task. What +they did understand far better than the highly individualistic +pioneers was the value of teamwork, which grew in importance as the +National American Association expanded far beyond the ability of one +person to cope with it. + +[Illustration: Rachel Foster Avery] + +Probably first in her affections was Rachel Foster Avery, who had been +like a daughter to her since their trip to Europe together in 1883. +The confidence she felt in their friendship was always a comfort. +Rachel's intelligent approach to problems made her an asset at every +meeting, and Susan relied much on her judgment. + +In Anna Howard Shaw, ten years older than Rachel, Susan had found the +hardy campaigner and orator for whom she had longed. Anna expressed a +warmth and understanding that most of the younger women lacked, and +best of all she loved the cause as Susan herself loved it. Because of +her close friendship with Susan's niece Lucy, she was regarded as one +of the family, and whenever possible between lectures she stopped over +in Rochester for a good talk with "Aunt Susan." + +Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren, Ohio, had enlisted in the ranks in +the 1880s when her father was a member of Congress. Because of her +influence in Washington and Ohio, Harriet was invaluable, and Susan +speedily brought her into the official circle of the National American +Association as treasurer, even thinking of her as a possible +president.[403] Harriet's jovial irrepressible personality readily won +friends, and Susan found her a refreshing and comfortable companion, +able to see a bit of humor in almost every situation. When differences +of opinion at meetings threatened to get out of hand, Harriet could +always be relied on to break the tension with a few witty remarks. + +[Illustration: Harriet Taylor Upton] + +Carrie Chapman Catt gave every indication of developing into an +outstanding executive. Not another one of Susan's "girls" could so +quickly or so intelligently size up a situation as Carrie, nor could +they so effectively put into action well-thought-out plans. Not as +popular a speaker as the more emotional Anna Howard Shaw, she held her +audiences by her appeal to their intelligence. Tall, handsome, and +well dressed, she never failed to leave a favorable impression. Only +her name irked Susan, and as Susan wrote Clara Colby, "If Catt it must +be then I insist, she should keep her own father's name--Lane--and +not her first husband's name--Chapman,"[404] but the three Cs +intrigued Carrie and she continued to be known as Carrie Chapman Catt. +Now living in the East because her husband's expanding business had +brought him to New York, she was easily accessible, and from her +beautiful new home at Bensonhurst, a suburb of Brooklyn, she carried +on the rapidly growing work of the organization committee until a New +York City office became imperative. In Carrie, Susan recognized +qualities demanded of a leader at this stage of the campaign when +suffragists must learn to be as keen as politicians and as well +organized. + + * * * * * + +"Spring is not heralded in Washington by the arrival of the robin," +commented a Washington newspaper, "but by the appearance of Miss +Anthony's red shawl." Susan was still the dominating figure at the +annual woman suffrage conventions. Everyone looked eagerly for the +tall lithe gray-haired woman with a red shawl on her arm or around her +shoulders. Once when Susan appeared on the platform with a new white +crepe shawl, the reporters immediately registered their displeasure by +putting down their pencils. This did not escape her, and always on +good terms with the newsmen and informal with her audiences, she +called out, "Boys, what is the matter?"[405] + +"Where is the red shawl?" one of them asked. "No red shawl, no +report." + +Enjoying this little by-play, she sent her niece Lucy back to the +hotel for the red shawl, and when Lucy brought it up to the platform +and put it about her shoulders, the audience burst into applause, for +the red shawl, like Susan herself, had become the well-loved symbol of +woman suffrage. + +Susan was convinced that the annual national convention should always +be held in Washington, where Congress could see and feel the growing +strength and influence of the movement. Her "girls," on the other +hand, wanted to take their conventions to different parts of the +country to widen their influence. Not as certain as Susan that work +for a federal amendment must come first, many of them contended that a +few more states won for woman suffrage would best help the cause at +this time. The southern women, now active, were firm believers in +states' rights and supported state work.[406] Susan's experience had +taught her the impracticability of direct appeal to the voters in the +states, now that foreign-born men in increasing numbers were arrayed +against votes for women. In spite of her arguments and her pleas, the +National American Association voted in 1894 to hold conventions in +different parts of the country in alternate years. Disappointed, but +trying her best graciously to follow the will of the majority, she +traveled to Atlanta and to Des Moines for the conventions of 1895 and +1897. + +Nor did the younger women welcome the messages which Mrs. Stanton, at +Susan's insistence, sent to every convention. Susan herself often +wished her good friend would stick more closely to woman suffrage +instead of introducing extraneous subjects, such as "Educated +Suffrage," "The Matriarchate," or "Women and the Church," but +nevertheless she proudly read her papers to successive conventions. +Insisting that the conventions were too academic, Mrs. Stanton urged +Susan to inject more vitality into them by broadening their platform. +Susan, however, had come to the conclusion that concentration on woman +suffrage was imperative in order to unite all women under one banner +and build up numbers which Congressmen were bound to respect. With +this her "girls" agreed 100 per cent. While all of them were convinced +suffragists, they were divided on other issues, and few of them were +wholehearted feminists, as were Susan and Mrs. Stanton. + + * * * * * + +With the publication of _The Woman's Bible_ in 1895, Mrs. Stanton +almost upset the applecart, stirring up heated controversy in the +National American Woman Suffrage Association. _The Woman's Bible_ was +a keen and sometimes biting commentary on passages in the Bible +relating to women. It questioned the traditional interpretation which +for centuries has fastened the stigma of inferiority upon women, and +pointed out that the female as well as the male was created in the +image of God. To those who regarded every word of the Bible as +inspired by God, _The Woman's Bible_ was heresy, and both the clergy +and the press stirred up a storm of protest against it. Suffragists +were condemned for compiling a new Bible and were obliged to explain +again and again that _The Woman's Bible_ expressed Mrs. Stanton's +personal views and not those of the movement. + +Susan regarded _The Woman's Bible_ as a futile, questionable +digression from the straight path of woman suffrage. To Clara Colby, +who praised it in her _Woman's Tribune_, she wrote, "Of all her great +speeches, I am always proud--but of her Bible commentaries, I am not +proud--either of their spirit or letter.... I could cry a heap--every +time I read or think--if it would undo them--or do anybody or myself +or the cause or Mrs. Stanton any good--they are so entirely unlike her +former self--so flippant and superficial. But she thinks I have gone +over to the enemy--so counts my judgment worth nothing more than that +of any other narrow-souled body.... But I shall love and honor her to +the end--whether her _Bible_ please me or not. So I hope she will do +for me."[407] + +She was, however, wholly unprepared for the rebellion staged by her +"girls" at the Washington convention of 1896, when, led by Rachel +Foster Avery, they repudiated _The Woman's Bible_ and proposed a +resolution declaring that their organization had no connection with +it. This was clear proof to Susan that her "girls" lacked tolerance +and wisdom. Listening to the debate, she was heartsick. Anna Howard +Shaw and Mrs. Catt as well as Alice Stone Blackwell spoke for the +resolution. Only a few raised their voices against it, among them her +sister Mary, Clara Colby, Mrs. Blake, and a young woman new to the +ranks, Charlotte Perkins Stetson. + +Susan was presiding, and leaving the chair to express her opinions, +she firmly declared, "To pass such a resolution is to set back the +hands on the dial of reform.... We have all sorts of people in the +Association and ... a Christian has no more right on our platform than +an atheist. When this platform is too narrow for all to stand on, I +shall not be on it.... Who is to set up a line? Neither you nor I can +tell but Mrs. Stanton will come out triumphant and that this will be +the great thing done in woman's cause. Lucretia Mott at first thought +Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of woman's rights by insisting on +the demand for woman suffrage, but she had sense enough not to pass a +resolution about it....[408] + +"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she +asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when +you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create +and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman +on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance +and bigotry." + +Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted +will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in +intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a +century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in +regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of +women."[409] + +When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in +her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to +resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs. +Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both +resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women +to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this +step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely +reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them +they were setting up an inquisition. + +Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning +and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it +my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the +next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."[410] + +To a reporter who wanted her views on _The Woman's Bible_, she made it +plain that she had no part in writing the book, but added, "I think +women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to +their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to +theirs. It was written by men, and therefore its reference to women +reflects the light in which they were regarded in those days. In the +same way the history of our Revolutionary War was written, in which +very little is said of the noble deeds of women, though we know how +they stood by and helped the great work; it is so with history all +through."[411] + + * * * * * + +For some years, Susan's girls had been urging her to write her +reminiscences, spurred on by the fact that Mrs. Stanton, Mary +Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe were writing theirs. There were also +other good reasons for putting her to work at this task. Writing would +keep her safely at home and away from the strenuous work in the field +which they feared was sapping her strength. It would keep her well +occupied so that they could develop the work and the conventions in +their own way. + +Susan put off this task from month to month and from year to year, +torn between her desire to leave a true record of her work and her +longing to be always in the thick of the suffrage fight. Finally she +began looking about for a collaborator, convinced that she herself +could never write an interesting line. Ida Husted Harper, with her +newspaper experience and her interest in the cause, seemed the logical +choice, and in the spring of 1897, she came to 17 Madison Street to +work on the biography.[412] + +The attic had been remodeled for workrooms and here Susan now spent +her days with Mrs. Harper, trying to reconstruct the past. She had +definite ideas about how the book should be written, holding up as a +model the biography of William Lloyd Garrison recently written by his +children. Mrs. Harper also had high standards, and influenced by +the formalities of the day, edited Susan's vivid brusque +letters--hurriedly written and punctuated with dashes--so that they +conformed with her own easy but more formal style. To this Susan +readily consented, for she always depreciated her own writing ability. +On one point, however, she was adamant, that her story be told without +dwelling upon the disagreements among the old workers. + +The household was geared to the "bog," as they called the biography. +Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework +with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had +recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their +hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young girl, +Genevieve Hawley from Fort Scott, Kansas, was employed to help with +the endless copying, sorting of letters, and pasting of scrapbooks, +and with the current correspondence which piled up and diverted Susan +from the book.[413] Through 1897 and 1898, they worked at top speed. + +_The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, A Story of the Evolution of +the Status of Women_, in two volumes, by Ida Husted Harper, was +published by the Bowen Merrill Company of Indianapolis just before +Christmas 1898. Happy as a young girl out of school, Susan inscribed +copies for her many friends and eagerly watched for reviews, pleased +with the favorable comments in newspapers and magazines throughout +this country and Europe.[414] + + * * * * * + +By this time the Cuban rebellion was crowding all other news out of +the papers, and Susan followed it closely, for this struggle for +freedom instantly won her sympathy. She hoped that Spain under +pressure from the United States might be persuaded to give Cuba her +independence, but the blowing up of the battleship _Maine_ and the war +cries of the press and of a faction in Congress led to armed +intervention in April 1898. Always opposed to war as a means of +settling disputes, she wrote Rachel, "To think of the mothers of this +nation sitting back in silence without even the power of a legal +protest--while their sons are taken without a by-your-leave! Well all +through--it is barbarous ... and I hope you and all our young women +will rouse to work as never before--and get the women of the Republic +clothed with the power of control of conditions in peace--or when it +shall come again--which Heaven forbid--in war."[415] + +Not only did she express these sentiments in letters to her friends, +but in a public meeting, where only patriotic fervor and flag-waving +were welcome, she dared criticize the unsanitary army camps and the +greed and graft which deprived soldiers of wholesome food. "There +isn't a mother in the land," she declared, "who wouldn't know that a +shipload of typhoid stricken soldiers would need cots to lie on and +fuel to cook with, and that a swamp was not a desirable place in which +to pitch a camp.... What the government needs at such a time is not +alone bacteriologists and army officers but also women who know how to +take care of sick boys and have the common sense to surround them with +sanitary conditions."[416] At this her audience, at first hostile, +burst into applause. + +More and more disturbed by the inefficient care of the wounded and the +feeding of enlisted men, she wrote Rachel, "Every day's reports and +comments about the war only show the need of women at the front--not +as employees permitted to be there because they begged to be--but +there by right--as managers and dictators in all departments in which +women have been trained--those of feeding and caring for in health and +nursing the sick."[417] + +The war over, the problem of governing the Philippines, Puerto Rico, +and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the +enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. +She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the +world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male +oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she +wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise +your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod--or +cremated and floating in the air--I shall have to stir you and others +up. How can you not be all on fire?"[418] + +The unwillingness of her "girls" to relate woman suffrage to +contemporary public affairs such as this, repeatedly disappointed her. +Yet she was well aware that the younger generation would never see the +work through her eyes, or exactly follow her pattern. + + * * * * * + +Disappointed that her National American Woman Suffrage Association did +not attract members as did the W.C.T.U. or the General Federation of +Women's Clubs, she confessed to Clara Colby, "It is the disheartening +part of my life that so very few women will work for the emancipation +of their own half of the race."[419] Watching women flock into these +other organizations and contributing to all sorts of charities, she +was obliged to admit that "very few are capable of seeing that the +cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and +to men also, lies in the subjection of women, and therefore the +important thing is to lay the ax at the root."[420] + +She also discovered that it was one thing to build up a large +organization and another to keep women so busy with pressing work for +the cause that they did not find time to expend their energies on the +mechanics of organization. Not only did she chafe at the red tape most +of them spun, but she often felt that they were too prone to linger in +academic by-ways, listening to speeches and holding pleasant +conventions. Since the California campaign of 1896, only one state, +Washington, had been roused to vote on a woman suffrage amendment, +which was defeated and only one more state Delaware had granted women +the right to vote for members of school boards. + +Again and again she warned her "girls" that some kind of action on +woman suffrage by Congress every year was important. A hearing, a +committee report, a debate, or even an unfavorable vote would, she was +convinced, do more to stir up the whole nation than all the speakers +and organizers that could be sent through the country. + +Such thoughts as these, relative to the work which was always on her +mind, she dashed off to one after another of her young colleagues. +"Your letters sound like a trumpet blast," wrote Anna Howard Shaw, +grateful for her counsel. "They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the +Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage."[421] + +At seventy-eight, Susan realized that the time was approaching when +she must make up her mind to turn over to a younger woman the +presidency of the National American Association, and during the summer +of 1898 she announced to her executive committee that she would retire +on her eightieth birthday in 1900. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[400] Ms., Diary, Nov. 7, 1895 + +[401] Mary Gray Peck, _Carrie Chapman Catt_ (New York, 1944), p. 84. + +[402] Ms., Diary, Nov. 27, 1895. + +[403] To Mrs. Upton, Sept. 5, 1890, University of Rochester Library, +Rochester, New York. + +[404] Feb. 10, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[405] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1113. + +[406] Miss Anthony's first attempt to win Southern women to suffrage +was at the time of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. Because of her +reputation as an abolitionist, she had much resistance to overcome in +the South. + +[407] Dec. 18, 1895, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[408] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 1, 1896. + +[409] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 264. + +[410] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 855. The action of the National +American Woman Suffrage Association on the Woman's Bible was never +reversed. + +[411] _Ibid._, p. 856. + +[412] Susan thought seriously of Clara Colby as a collaborator but +concluded she was too involved with the _Woman's Tribune_. Susan +agreed to share royalties with Mrs. Harper on the biography and any +other work on which they might collaborate. On her 75th birthday +Susan's girls had presented her with an annuity of $800 a year. This +made it possible for her to give up lecturing and concentrate on her +book. + +[413] Genevieve Hawley left an interesting record of these years in +letters to her aunt, many of which are preserved in the Susan B. +Anthony Memorial Collection in Rochester, New York. + +[414] Both the New York _Herald_ and Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ gave the +book full-page reviews. A third volume was published in 1908. + +[415] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[416] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1121. + +[417] Aug. 10, 1898, Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. + +[418] Dec. 17, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. +Clara Colby, making her headquarters in Washington, kept Susan +informed on developments and they carried on an animated, voluminous +correspondence during these years. + +[419] March 12, 1894, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[420] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 920. + +[421] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 924. + + + + +PASSING ON THE TORCH + + +The last year of Susan's presidency was particularly precious to her. +In a sense it represented her farewell to the work she had carried on +most of her life, and at the same time it was also the hopeful +beginning of the period leading to victory. Yet she had no illusion of +speedy or easy success for her "girls" and she did her best to prepare +them for the obstacles they would inevitably meet. She warned them not +to expect their cause to triumph merely because it was just. +"Governments," she told them, "never do any great good things from +mere principle, from mere love of justice.... You expect too much of +human nature when you expect that."[422] + +The movement had reached an impasse. The temper of Congress, as shown +by the admission of Hawaii as a territory without woman suffrage, was +both indifferent and hostile. That this attitude did not express the +will of the American people, she was firmly convinced. It was due, she +believed, to the political influence of powerful groups opposed to +woman suffrage--the liquor interests controlling the votes of +increasing numbers of immigrants, machine politicians fearful of +losing their power, and financial interests whose conservatism +resisted any measure which might upset the status quo. How to +undermine this opposition was now her main problem, and she saw no +other way but persistent agitation through a more active, more +effective, ever-growing woman suffrage organization, reaching a wider +cross section of the people. She herself had established a press +bureau which was feeding interesting factual articles on woman +suffrage to newspapers throughout the country, for as she wrote Mrs. +Colby, the suffrage cause "needs to picture its demands in the daily +papers where the unconverted can see them rather than in special +papers where only those already converted can see them."[423] + +Of greatest importance to her was winning the support of organized +labor. Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of +Labor, had already shown his friendliness toward equal pay and votes +for women and was putting women organizers in the field to speed the +unionization of women. Even so she was surprised at the enthusiasm +with which she was received at the American Federation of Labor +convention in 1899, when the four hundred delegates by a rising vote +adopted a strong resolution urging favorable action on a federal woman +suffrage amendment. + +So far as possible she had always established friendly relations with +labor organizations, first in 1869 with William H. Sylvis's National +Labor Union and then with the Knights of Labor and their leader, +Terrence V. Powderly.[424] When Eugene V. Debs, president of the +American Railway Union, was arrested during the Pullman strike in 1894 +for defying a court injunction, she did not rate him, as so many did, +a dangerous radical, but as an earnest reformer, crusading for an +unpopular cause. They had met years before in Terre Haute, where at +his request she had lectured on woman suffrage, and immediately they +had won each other's sympathy and respect. She did not see indications +of anarchy in the Pullman and Homestead strikes or in the Haymarket +riot, but regarded them as an unfortunate phase of an industrial +revolution which in time would improve the relations of labor and +capital. + +That women would be effected by this industrial revolution was obvious +to her, and she wanted them to understand it and play their part in +it. For this reason she saw the importance of keeping the National +American Woman Suffrage Association informed on all developments +affecting wage-earning women and to her delight she found three young +suffragists wide awake on this subject. One of them, Florence Kelley, +had joined forces with that remarkable young woman, Jane Addams, in +her valuable social experiment, Hull House, in the slums of Chicago, +and was now devoting herself to improving the working conditions of +women and children. She represented a new trend in thought and +work--social service--which made a great appeal to college women and +set in motion labor legislation designed to protect women and +children. Another young woman of promise, Gail Laughlin, pioneering as +a lawyer, approached the subject from the feminist viewpoint, seeking +protection for women not through labor legislation based on sex, but +through trade unions, the vote, equal pay, and a wider recognition of +women's right to contract for their labor on the same terms as men. +Her survey of women's working conditions, presented at a convention of +the National American Association was so valuable and attracted so +much attention that she was appointed to the United States Labor +Commission. Harriot Stanton Blatch also understood the significance of +the industrial revolution and woman's part in it, and she too opposed +labor legislation based on sex. Coming from England occasionally to +visit her mother in New York, she brought her liberal viewpoint into +woman suffrage conventions with a flare of oratory matching that of +her gifted parents. "The more I see of her," Susan remarked to a +friend, "the more I feel the greatness of her character."[425] + + * * * * * + +Although it was Susan's intention to hew to the line of woman suffrage +and not to comment publicly on controversial issues, she could not +keep silent when confronted with injustice. Religious intolerance, +bigotry, and racial discrimination always forced her to take a stand, +regardless of the criticism she might bring on herself. + +The treatment of the Negro in both the North and the South was always +of great concern to her, and during the 1890s, when a veritable +epidemic of lynchings and race riots broke out, she expressed herself +freely in Rochester newspapers. She noted the dangerous trend as +indicated by new anti-Negro societies and the limitation of membership +to white Americans in the Spanish-American War veterans' organization. +Whenever the opportunity presented itself, she put into practice her +own sincere belief in race equality. During every Washington +convention, she arranged to have one of her good speakers occupy the +pulpit of a Negro church, and in the South she made it a point to +speak herself in Negro churches and schools and before their +organizations, even though this might prejudice southerners. In her +own home, she gladly welcomed the Negro lecturers and educators who +came to Rochester. This seeking out of the Negro in friendliness was a +religious duty to her and a pleasure. She demanded of everyone +employed in her household, respectful treatment of Negro guests. She +rejoiced when she saw Negroes in the audience at woman suffrage +conventions in Washington, and it gave her great satisfaction to hear +Mary Church Terrell, a beautiful intelligent Negro who had been +educated at Oberlin and in Europe, making speeches which equaled and +even surpassed those of the most eloquent white suffragists. + + * * * * * + +Susan did not fail to keep in touch with the international feminist +movement, and in the summer of 1899, when she was seventy-nine years +old, she headed the United States delegation to the International +Council of Women, meeting in London. Visiting Harriot Stanton Blatch +at her home in Basingstoke, she first conferred with the leading +British feminists, bringing herself up to date on the progress of +their cause. In England as in the United States, the burden of the +suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to +their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for +the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons. + +Moving on to London, she was acclaimed as she had been at the World's +Fair in Chicago. "The papers here have been going wild over Miss +Anthony, declaring her to be the most unaggressive woman suffragist +ever seen," reported a journalist to his newspaper in the United +States. + +From China, India, New Zealand, and Australia, from South Africa, +Palestine, Persia, and the Argentine, as well as from Europe and the +United States, women had come to London to discuss their progress and +their problems, and Susan, pointing out to them the goal toward which +they must head, declared with confidence, "The day will come when man +will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside but in the +councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the +perfect comradeship ... between the sexes that shall result in the +highest development of the race."[426] + +She had hoped that Queen Victoria would receive the delegates at +Windsor Castle, thus indicating her approval of the International +Council. She longed to talk with this woman who had ruled so long and +so well. That a queen sat on the throne of England, this in itself was +important to her and she wanted to express her gratitude, although she +was well aware that the Queen had never used her influence for the +improvement of laws relating to women. She had hoped to convince her +of the need of votes for women, but Queen Victoria never gave her the +opportunity. All that influential Englishwomen were able to arrange +was the admission of the delegates to the courtyard of Windsor Castle +to watch the Queen start on her drive and to tea in the banquet room +without the Queen. + +[Illustration: Carrie Chapman Catt] + + * * * * * + +Returning home late in August 1899, Susan began at once to make +definite plans to turn over the presidency of the National American +Woman Suffrage Association to a younger woman. Although she well knew +that the choice of her successor was actually in the hands of the +membership, it was her intention to do what she could within the +bounds of democratic procedure to insure the best possible leadership. +To fill the office, she turned instinctively to Anna Howard Shaw whom +she loved more dearly as the years went by and whose selfless devotion +to the cause she trusted implicitly. Yet Anna, in spite of her many +qualifications, lacked a few which were exceptional in Carrie Chapman +Catt--creative executive ability, diplomacy, a talent for working with +people, directing them, and winning their devotion. With growing +admiration, Susan had been watching Mrs. Catt's indefatigable work in +the states where she had been building up active branches. Her flare +for raising money was outstanding, and Susan realized, as few others +did, the crying need of funds for the campaigns ahead. In addition +Mrs. Catt had no personal financial worries, for her husband, +successful in business, was sympathetic to her work. Anna, on the +other hand, would have to support herself by lecturing and carry as +well the burden of the presidency of a rapidly growing organization. + +Anna made the decision for Susan. She urged the candidacy of Mrs. +Catt, although her highest ambition had always been to succeed her +beloved Aunt Susan. As she later confessed to Susan, this was a +personal sacrifice which cost her many a heartache, but she "honestly +felt that Mrs. Catt was better fitted ... as well as freer to go into +an unpaid field."[427] Susan therefore approached Mrs. Catt through +Rachel and Harriet Upton, and was relieved when she consented to stand +for election. + +Rumors of Susan's retirement aroused ambitions in Lillie Devereux +Blake, who from the point of seniority and devoted work in New York +was regarded as being next in line for the presidency by Mrs. Stanton +and Mrs. Colby. Unable to visualize Mrs. Blake as the leader of this +large organization with its diverse strong personalities, Susan +nevertheless conceded her right to compete for the office. Although +she appreciated Mrs. Blake's valuable work for the cause, there never +had been understanding or sympathy between them. Temperamentally the +blunt stern New Englander with untiring drive had little in common +with the southern beauty turned reformer. + +A change in the presidency needed wise and patient handling as +personal ambitions, prejudices, and misunderstandings reared their +heads. When there were murmurings of secession among a small group if +Mrs. Catt were elected, Susan wrote Mrs. Colby that such talk was +"very immature, very despotic, very undemocratic," and she hoped she +was not one of the malcontents.[428] + +Another problem was the future of the organization committee which +under Mrs. Catt's chairmanship had carried on a large part of the +work. Its influence was considerable and could readily develop so as +to conflict with that of the officers, thus threatening the unity of +the whole organization. To dissolve the committee seemed to Susan and +her closest advisors the wisest procedure. Mary Garrett Hay, who had +worked closely with Mrs. Catt on the organization committee, opposed +this plan, but after earnest discussion the officers, including Mrs. +Catt, agreed to dissolve the organization committee. + + * * * * * + +As Susan appeared on the platform at the opening session of the +Washington convention in February 1900, there was thunderous applause +from an audience tense with emotion at the thought of losing the +leader who had guided them for so many years. The tall gray-haired +woman in black satin, with soft rich lace at her throat and the +proverbial red shawl about her shoulders, had become the symbol of +their cause. Now, as she looked down upon them with a friendly smile +and motherly tenderness, tears came to their eyes, and they wanted to +remember always just how she looked at that moment. Then she broke the +tension with a call to duty, a summons to press for the federal +amendment, and one more plea that they always hold their annual +conventions in the national capital. + +Difficult and sad as this official leave-taking was, she had made up +her mind to carry if through with good cheer. Tirelessly she presided +at three sessions daily. With the pride of a mother, she listened to +the many reports and with particular satisfaction to that of the +treasurer which showed all debts paid and pledges amounting to $10,000 +to start the new year. Susan herself had made this possible, raising +enough to pay past debts and securing pledges so that the new +administration could start its work free from financial worries. + +"I have fully determined to retire from the active presidency of the +Association," she announced when the reports and speeches were over. +"I am not retiring now because I feel unable, mentally or physically, +to do the necessary work, but because I wish to see the organization +in the hands of those who are to have its management in the future. I +want to see you all at work, while I am alive, so I can scold if you +do not do it well. Give the matter of selecting your officers serious +thought. Consider who will do the best work for the political +enfranchisement of women, and let no personal feelings enter into the +question."[429] + +Watching developments with the keen eye of a politician, she was +confident that Mrs. Catt would be elected to succeed her, although +Mrs. Blake's candidacy was still being assiduously pressed and +circulars recommending her, signed by Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Russell Sage +and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, were being widely distributed. Just before +the balloting, however, Mrs. Blake withdrew her name in the interest +of harmony. This left the field to Mrs. Catt, who received 254 votes +of the 278 cast. + +A burst of applause greeted the announcement of Mrs. Catt's election. +Then abruptly it stopped, as the realization swept over the delegates +that Aunt Susan was no longer their president. Walking to the front of +the platform, Susan took Mrs. Catt by the hand, and while the +delegates applauded, the two women stood before them, the one showing +in her kind face the experience and wisdom of years, the other young, +intelligent, and beautiful, her life still before her. There were +tears in Susan's eyes and her voice was unsteady as she said, "I am +sure you have made a wise choice.... 'New conditions bring new +duties.' These new duties, these changed conditions, demand stronger +hands, younger heads, and fresher hearts. In Mrs. Catt, you have my +ideal leader. I present to you my successor."[430] + + * * * * * + +Susan's joyous confidence in the new administration was rudely jolted +as controversy over the future of the organization committee flared up +during the last days of the convention. Under strong pressure from +Mary Garrett Hay, Mrs. Catt had counseled with Henry Blackwell, and at +one of the last sessions he had slipped in a motion authorizing the +continuance of the organization committee.[431] + +Stunned by this development and looking upon it as a threat to the +harmony of the new administration, Susan, supported by Harriet Upton +and Rachel, prepared to take action, and the next morning, at the +first post-convention executive committee meeting at which Mrs. Catt +presided, Susan proposed that the national officers, headed by Mrs. +Catt, take over the duties of the organization committee. This +precipitated a heated debate, during which Henry Blackwell and his +daughter, Alice, called such procedure unconstitutional, and Mary Hay +resigned. As the discussion became too acrimonious, Mrs. Catt put an +end to it by calling up unfinished business, and thus managed to +steer the remainder of the session into less troubled waters. The next +day, however, Susan brought the matter up again, and on her motion the +organization committee was voted out of existence with praise for its +admirable record of service. + +Here were all the makings of a factional feud which, if fanned into +flame, could well have split the National American Association. Not +only had the old organization interfered with the new, indirectly +reprimanding Mrs. Catt, but Susan, by her own personal influence and +determination, had reversed the action of the convention. As a result, +Mrs. Catt was indignant, hurt, and sorely tempted to resign, but after +sending a highly critical letter to every member of the business +committee, she took up her work with vigor. + +Disappointed and heartsick over the turn of events, Susan searched for +a way to re-establish harmony and her own faith in her successor. +Realizing that a mother's cool counsel and guiding hand were needed to +heal the misunderstandings, and convinced that unity and trust could +be restored only by frank discussion of the problem by those involved, +she asked for a meeting of the business committee at her home. "What +can we do to get back into trust in each other?" she wrote Laura Clay. +"That is the thing we must do--somehow--and it cannot be done by +letter. We must hold a meeting--and we must have you--and every single +one of our members at it."[432] + +Impatient at what to her seemed unnecessary delay, she kept prodding +Mrs. Catt to call this meeting. Fortunately both Susan and Mrs. Catt +were genuinely fond of each other and placed the welfare of the cause +above personal differences. Both were tolerant and steady and +understood the pressures put on the leader of a great organization. +Anxious and troubled as she waited for this meeting, Susan appreciated +Anna Shaw's visits as never before, marking them as red-letter days on +her calender. + +Late in August 1900, all the officers finally gathered at 17 Madison +Street, and Susan listened to their discussions with deep concern. She +was confident she could rely completely on Harriet Upton, Rachel, and +Anna and could count on Laura Clay's "level head and good common +sense."[433] She never felt sure of Alice Stone Blackwell and knew +there was great sympathy and often a working alliance between her, her +father, and Mrs. Catt. Of the latest member of the official family, +Catharine Waugh McCulloch, she had little first-hand knowledge. Mrs. +Catt, whom she longed to fathom and trust, was still an enigma. During +those hot humid August days, misunderstandings were healed, unity was +restored, and Susan was reassured that not a single one of her "girls" +desired "other than was good for the work."[434] + + * * * * * + +Susan had always been a champion of coeducation, speaking for it as +early as the 1850s at state teachers' meetings and proposing it for +Columbia University in her _Revolution_. In 1891, she and Mrs. Stanton +had agitated for the admission of women to the University of +Rochester. Seven years later the trustees consented to admit women +provided $100,000 could be raised in a year, and Susan served on the +fund-raising committee with her friend, Helen Barrett Montgomery. +Because the alumni of the University of Rochester opposed coeducation +and the city's wealthiest men were indifferent, progress was slow, but +the trustees were persuaded to extend the time and to reduce by one +half the amount to be raised. + +With so much else on her mind in 1900, including the sudden death of +her brother Merritt, she had given the fund little thought until the +committee appealed to her in desperation when only one day remained in +which to raise the last $8,000. Immediately she went into action. +Remembering that Mary had talked of willing the University $2,000 if +it became coeducational, she persuaded her to pledge that amount now. +Then setting out in a carriage on a very hot September morning, she +slowly collected pledges for all but $2,000. As the trustees were in +session and likely to adjourn any minute, she appealed to Samuel +Wilder, one of Rochester's prominent elder citizens who had already +contributed, to guarantee that amount until she could raise it. To +this he gladly agreed. Reaching the trustees' meeting with Mrs. +Montgomery just in time, with pledges assuring the payment of the full +$50,000, she was amazed at their reception. Instead of rejoicing with +them, the trustees began to quibble over Samuel Wilder's guarantee of +the last $2,000 because of the state of his health. When she offered +her life insurance as security, they still put her off, telling her +to come back in a few days. Even then they continued to quibble, but +finally admitted that the women had won. Disillusioned, she wrote in +her diary, "Not a trustee has given anything although there are +several millionaires among them."[435] Only her life insurance policy +and her dogged persistence had saved the day. + +This effort to open Rochester University to women, on top of a very +full and worrisome year, was so taxing and so disillusioning that she +became seriously ill. When she recovered sufficiently for a drive, she +asked to be taken to the university campus and afterward wrote in her +diary, "As I drove over the campus, I felt 'these are not forbidden +grounds to the girls of the city any longer.' It is good to feel that +the old doors sway on their hinges--to women! Will the vows be kept to +them--will the girls have equal chances with the boys? They promised +well--the fulfilment will be seen--whether there shall not be some +hitch from the proposed to a separate school."[436] + + * * * * * + +Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, +Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first +annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an +"entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss +Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan +was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency +that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the +proceedings.[437] + +Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well +satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume +of the _History of Woman Suffrage_ on which she and Mrs. Harper had +been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late +in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than +satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her +happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom +saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by +letter. + +In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and +planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's +eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It +is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through +every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of +women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a +century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle +to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to +know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, +with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in +public--all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These +strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and +complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a +handful...."[438] + +Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a +telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. +Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, +trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy +which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself +at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to +speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to +describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439] + +From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in +anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved +to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. +Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am +all at sea--but the Laws of Nature are still going on--with no shadow +or turning--what a wonder it is--it goes right on and on--no matter +who lives or who dies."[440] + + * * * * * + +National woman suffrage conventions were still red-letter events to +Susan and she attended them no matter how great the physical effort, +traveling to New Orleans in 1903. Of particular concern was the 1904 +convention because of Mrs. Catt's decision at the very last moment not +to stand for re-election on account of her health. Looking over the +field, Susan saw no one capable of taking her place but Anna Howard +Shaw. Not to be able to turn to Mrs. Stanton's capable daughter, +Harriot Stanton Blatch, at this time was disappointing, but Harriot's +long absence in England had made her more or less of a stranger to the +membership of the National American Association, and for some reason +she did not seem to fit in, lacking her mother's warmth and +appeal.[441] + +[Illustration: Quotation in the handwriting of Susan B. Anthony] + +"I don't see anybody in the whole rank of our suffrage movement to +take her [Mrs. Catt's] place but you," Susan now wrote Anna Howard +Shaw. "If you will take it with a salary of say, $2,000, I will go +ahead and try to see what I can do. We must not let the society down +into _feeble_ hands.... Don't say _no_, for the _life_ of _you_, for +if Mrs. Catt _persists_ in going out, we shall simply _have_ to +_accept it_ and we must _tide over_ with the _best material_ that we +have, and _you are the best_, and would you have taken office _four +years ago_, you would have been elected over-whelmingly."[442] + +Anna could not refuse Aunt Susan, and when she was elected with Mrs. +Catt as vice-president, Susan breathed freely again. + +It warmed Susan's heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth +birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called +her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There +now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more +appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she +presided and which gave irrefutable evidence of the success of woman +suffrage in that state. There was rejoicing too over Australia, where +women had been voting since 1902 and over the new hope in Europe, in +Denmark, where women had chosen her birthday to stage a demonstration +in favor of the pending franchise bill. + +For the last time, she spoke to a Senate committee on the woman +suffrage amendment. Standing before these indifferent men, a tired +warrior at the end of a long hard campaign, she reminded them that she +alone remained of those who thirty-five years before, in 1869, had +appealed to Congress for justice. "And I," she added, "shall not be +able to come much longer. + +"We have waited," she told them. "We stood aside for the Negro; we +waited for the millions of immigrants; now we must wait till the +Hawaiians, the Filipinos, and the Puerto Ricans are enfranchised; then +no doubt the Cubans will have their turn. For all these ignorant, +alien peoples, educated women have been compelled to stand aside and +wait!" Then with mounting impatience, she asked them, "How long will +this injustice, this outrage continue?"[444] + +Their answer to her was silence. They sent no report to the Senate on +the woman suffrage amendment. Yet she was able to say to a reporter of +the New York _Sun_, "I have never lost my faith, not for a moment in +fifty years."[445] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[422] Rachel Foster Avery, Ed., _National Council of Women_, 1891 +(Philadelphia, 1891), p. 229. + +[423] Dec. 1, 1898, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. +Mrs. Elnora Babcock of New York was in charge of the press bureau. + +[424] Miss Anthony was enrolled as a member of the Knights of Labor +and invited this organization to send delegates to the International +Council of Women in 1888. + +[425] To Ellen Wright Garrison, 1900, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith +College. + +[426] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1137. A few years later, militant +suffragists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, were active in London. Mrs. +Pankhurst heard Miss Anthony speak in Manchester in 1904. + +[427] Ida Husted Harper Ms., Catharine Waugh McCulloch Papers, +Radcliffe Women's Archives. + +[428] Nov. 20, 1899, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[429] _History of Woman Suffrage_, IV, p. 385. Miss Anthony was "moved +up," as she expressed it, to Honorary President. + +[430] Peck, Catt, p. 107, Washington _Post_ quotation. + +[431] To Laura Clay, April 15, 1900, University of Kentucky Library, +Lexington, Kentucky. + +[432] _Ibid._, March 15, 1900. + +[433] _Ibid._ + +[434] _Ibid._, Sept. 7, 1900. + +[435] Ms., Diary, Nov. 10, 1900. + +[436] _Ibid._, Sept. 26, 1900. A separate woman's college was +established at the University of Rochester and not until 1952 were the +men's and women's colleges merged. + +[437] May 20, 1901, Note, Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, +Rochester, New York. + +[438] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, pp. 741-742. + +[439] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1263. + +[440] Oct. 28, 1902, Anthony Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library. + +[441] Oct. 27, 1904, Elizabeth Smith Miller Collection, New York +Public Library. A few years later, Mrs. Blatch made a vital +contribution to the cause through the Women's Political Union which +she organized and which brought more militant methods and new life +into the woman suffrage campaign in New York State. + +[442] Jan. 27, 1904, Lucy E. Anthony Collection. Mrs. Blake who had +been a candidate in 1900 had by this time formed her own organization, +the National Legislative League. + +[443] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, p. 99. + +[444] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1308. + +[445] _Ibid._ + + + + +SUSAN B. ANTHONY OF THE WORLD + + +Susan was on the ocean in May 1904 with her sister Mary and a group of +good friends, headed for a meeting of the International Council of +Women in Berlin. What drew her to Berlin was the plan initiated by +Carrie Chapman Catt to form an International Woman Suffrage Alliance +prior to the meetings of the International Council. This had been +Susan's dream and Mrs. Stanton's in 1883, when they first conferred +with women of other countries regarding an international woman +suffrage organization and found only the women of England ready to +unite on such a radical program. Now that women had worked together +successfully in the International Council for sixteen years on other +less controversial matters relating to women, she and Mrs. Catt were +confident that a few of them at least were willing to unite to demand +the vote. + +Chosen as a matter of course to preside over this gathering of +suffragists in Berlin, Susan received an enthusiastic welcome. For her +it was a momentous occasion, and eager to spread news of the meeting +far and wide, she could not understand the objections of many of the +delegates to the presence of reporters who they feared might send out +sensational copy. + +"My friends, what are we here for?" she asked her more timid +colleagues. "We have come from many countries, travelled thousands of +miles to form an organization for a great international work, and do +we want to keep it a secret from the public? No; welcome all reporters +who want to come, the more, the better. Let all we say and do here be +told far and wide. Let the people everywhere know that in Berlin women +from all parts of the world have banded themselves together to demand +political freedom. I rejoice in the presence of these reporters, and +instead of excluding them from our meetings let us help them to all +the information we can and ask them to give it the widest +publicity."[446] + +This won the battle for the reporters, who gave her rousing applause, +and the news flashed over the wires was sympathetic, dignified, and +abundant. It told the world of the formation of the International +Woman Suffrage Alliance by women from the United States, Great +Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Norway, and +Denmark, "to secure the enfranchisement of women of all nations." It +praised the honorary president, Susan B. Anthony, and the American +women who took over the leadership of this international venture, +Carrie Chapman Catt, the president, and Rachel Foster Avery, +corresponding secretary. + +To celebrate the occasion, German suffragists called a public mass +meeting, and Susan, eager to rejoice with them, was surprised to find +members of the International Council disgruntled and accusing the +International Woman Suffrage Alliance of stealing their thunder and +casting the dark shadow of woman suffrage over their conference. To +placate them and restore harmony, she stayed away from this public +meeting, but she could not control the demand for her presence. + +"Where is Susan B. Anthony?" were the first words spoken as the mass +meeting opened. Then immediately the audience rose and burst into +cheers which continued without a break for ten minutes. Anna Howard +Shaw there on the platform and deeply moved by this tribute to Aunt +Susan, later described how she felt: "Every second of that time I +seemed to see Miss Anthony alone in her hotel room, longing with all +her big heart to be with us, as we longed to have her.... Afterwards, +when we burst in upon her and told her of the great demonstration, the +mere mention of her name had caused, her lips quivered and her brave +old eyes filled with tears."[447] + +The next morning her "girls" brought her the Berlin newspapers, +translating for her the report of the meeting and these heart-warming +lines, "The Americans call her 'Aunt Susan.' She is our 'Aunt Susan' +too." + +This was but a foretaste of her reception throughout her stay in +Berlin. To the International Council, she was "Susan B. Anthony of the +World," the woman of the hour, whom all wanted to meet. Every time she +entered the conference hall, the audience rose and remained standing +until she was seated. Every mention of her name brought forth cheers. +The many young women, acting as ushers, were devoted to her and eager +to serve her. They greeted her by kissing her hand. Embarrassed at +first by such homage, she soon responded by kissing them on the +cheek. + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of eighty-five] + +The Empress Victoria Augusta, receiving the delegates in the Royal +Palace, singled out Susan, and instead of following the custom of +kissing the Empress's hand, Susan bowed as she would to any +distinguished American, explaining that she was a Quaker and did not +understand the etiquette of the court. The Empress praised Susan's +great work, and unwilling to let such an opportunity slip by, Susan +offered the suggestion that Emperor William who had done so much to +build up his country might now wish to raise the status of German +women. To this the Empress replied with a smile, "The gentlemen are +very slow to comprehend this great movement."[448] + +When the talented Negro, Mary Church Terrell, addressing the +International Council in both German and French, received an ovation, +Susan's cup of joy was filled to the brim, for she glimpsed the bright +promise of a world without barriers of sex or race. + + * * * * * + +The newspapers welcomed her home, and in her own comfortable sitting +room she read Rochester's greeting in the _Democrat and Chronicle_, +"There are woman suffragists and anti-suffragists, but all Rochester +people, irrespective of opinion ... are Anthony men and women. We +admire and esteem one so single-minded, earnest and unselfish, who, +with eighty-four years to her credit, is still too busy and useful to +think of growing old."[449] + +Her happiness over this welcome was clouded, however, by the serious +illness of her brother Daniel, and she and Mary hurried to Kansas to +see him. Two months later he passed away. Now only she and Mary were +left of all the large Anthony family. Without Daniel, the world seemed +empty. His strength of character, independence, and sympathy with her +work had comforted and encouraged her all through her life. A fearless +editor, a successful businessman, a politician with principles, he had +played an important role in Kansas, and proud of him, she cherished +the many tributes published throughout the country. + +Courageously she now picked up the threads of her life. Her precious +National American Woman Suffrage Association was out of her hands, but +she still had the _History of Woman Suffrage_ to distribute, and it +gave her a great sense of accomplishment to hand on to future +generations this record of women's struggle for freedom.[450] + +Missing the stimulous of work with her "girls," she took more and more +pleasure in the company of William and Mary Gannett of the First +Unitarian Church, whose liberal views appealed to her strongly. She +liked to have young people about her and followed the lives of all her +nieces and nephews with the greatest interest, spurring on their +ambitions and helping finance their education. The frequent visits of +"Niece Lucy" were a great joy during these years, as was the nearness +of "Niece Anna O,"[451] who married and settled in Rochester. The +young Canadian girl, Anna Dann, had become almost indispensable to her +and to Mary, as companion, secretary, and nurse, and her marriage left +a void in the household. Anna Dann was married at 17 Madison Street by +Anna Howard Shaw with Susan beaming upon her like a proud grandmother. + + * * * * * + +Longing to see one more state won for suffrage, Susan carefully +followed the news from the field, looking hopefully to California and +urging her "girls" to keep hammering away there in spite of defeats. +Her eyes were also on the Territory of Oklahoma, where a constitution +was being drafted preparatory to statehood. "The present bill for the +new state," she wrote Anna Howard Shaw, in December 1904, "is an +insult to women of Oklahoma, such as has never been perpetrated +before. We have always known that women were in reality ranked with +idiots and criminals, but it has never been said in words that the +state should ... restrict or abridge the suffrage ... on account of +illiteracy, minority, _sex_, conviction of felony, mental condition, +etc.... We must fight this bill to the utmost...."[452] + +The brightest spot in the West was Oregon, where suffrage had been +defeated in 1900 by only 2,000 votes. In June 1905, when the National +American Association held its first far western convention in Portland +during the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Susan could not keep away, +although she had never expected to go over the mountains again. As she +traveled to Portland with Mary and a hundred or more delegates in +special cars, she recalled her many long tiring trips through the West +to carry the message of woman suffrage to the frontier. In +comparison, this was a triumphal journey, showing her, as nothing else +could, what her work had accomplished. Greeted at railroad stations +along the way by enthusiastic crowds, showered with flowers and gifts, +she stood on the back platform of the train with her "girls," shaking +hands, waving her handkerchief, and making an occasional speech. + +Presiding over the opening session of the Portland convention, +standing in a veritable garden of flowers which had been presented to +her, she remarked with a droll smile, "This is rather different from +the receptions I used to get fifty years ago.... I am thankful for +this change of spirit which has come over the American people."[453] + +On Woman's Day, she was chosen to speak at the unveiling of the statue +of Sacajawea, the Indian woman who had led Lewis and Clark through the +dangerous mountain passes to the Pacific, winning their gratitude and +their praise. In the story of Sacajawea who had been overlooked by the +government when every man in the Lewis and Clark expedition had been +rewarded with a large tract of land, Susan saw the perfect example of +man's thoughtless oversight of the valuable services of women. Looking +up at the bronze statue of the Indian woman, her papoose on her back +and her arm outstretched to the Pacific, Susan said simply, "This is +the first statue erected to a woman because of deeds of daring.... +This recognition of the assistance rendered by a woman in the +discovery of this great section of the country is but the beginning of +what is due." Then, with the sunlight playing on her hair and lighting +up her face, she appealed to the men of Oregon for the vote. "Next +year," she reminded them, "the men of this proud state, made possible +by a woman, will decide whether women shall at last have the rights in +it which have been denied them so many years. Let men remember the +part women have played in its settlement and progress and vote to give +them these rights which belong to every citizen."[454] + + * * * * * + +Reporters were at Susan's door, when she returned to Rochester, for +comments on ex-President Cleveland's tirade against clubwomen and +woman suffrage in the popular _Ladies' Home Journal_. "Pure +fol-de-rol," she told them, adding testily, "I would think that Grover +Cleveland was about the last person to talk about the sanctity of the +home and woman's sphere." This was good copy for Republican newspapers +and they made the most of it, as women throughout the country added +their protests to Susan's. A popular jingle of the day ran, "Susan B. +Anthony, she took quite a fall out of Grover C."[455] + +Susan, however, had something far more important on her mind than +fencing with Grover Cleveland--an interview with President Theodore +Roosevelt. Here was a man eager to right wrongs, to break monopolies, +to see justice done to the Negro, a man who talked of a "square deal" +for all, and yet woman suffrage aroused no response in him. + +In November 1905, she undertook a trip to Washington for the express +purpose of talking with him. The year before, at a White House +reception, he had singled her out to stand at his side in the +receiving line. She looked for the same friendliness now. Memorandum +in hand, she plied him with questions which he carefully evaded, but +she would not give up. + +"Mr. Roosevelt," she earnestly pleaded, "this is my principle request. +It is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you +leave the Presidential chair recommend to Congress to submit to the +Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, +and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great +emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without +doing this."[456] + +To this he made no response, and trying once more to wring from him +some slight indication of sympathy for her cause, she added, "Mr. +President, your influence is so great that just one word from you in +favor of woman suffrage would give our cause a tremendous impetus." + +"The public knows my attitude," he tersely replied. "I recommended it +when Governor of New York." + +"True," she acknowledged, "but that was a long time ago. Our enemies +say that was the opinion of your younger years and that since you have +been President you have never uttered one word that could be construed +as an endorsement." + +"They have no cause to think I have changed my mind," he suavely +replied as he bade her good-bye. In the months that followed he gave +her no sign that her interview had made the slightest impression. + +One of the most satisfying honors bestowed on Susan during these last +years was the invitation to be present at Bryn Mawr College in 1902 +for the unveiling of a bronze portrait medallion of herself. Bryn +Mawr, under its brilliant young president, M. Carey Thomas, herself a +pioneer in establishing the highest standards for women's education, +showed no such timidity as Vassar where neither Susan nor Elizabeth +Cady Stanton had been welcome as speakers. At Bryn Mawr, Susan talked +freely and frankly with the students, and best of all, became better +acquainted with M. Carey Thomas and her enterprising friend, Mary +Garrett of Baltimore, who was using her great wealth for the +advancement of women. She longed to channel their abilities to woman +suffrage and a few years later arranged for a national convention in +their home city, Baltimore, appealing to them to make it an +outstanding success.[457] + +Arriving in Baltimore in January 1906 for this convention, Susan was +the honored guest in Mary Garrett's luxurious home. Frail and ill, she +was unable to attend all the sessions, as in the past, but she was +present at the highlight of this very successful convention, the +College Evening arranged by M. Carey Thomas. With women's colleges +still resisting the discussion of woman suffrage and the Association +of Collegiate Alumnae refusing to support it, the College Evening +marked the first public endorsement of this controversial subject by +college women. Up to this time the only encouraging sign had been the +formation in 1900 of the College Equal Suffrage League by two young +Radcliffe alumnae, Maud Wood Park and Inez Haynes Irwin. Now here, in +conservative Baltimore, college presidents and college faculty gave +woman suffrage their blessing, and Susan listened happily as +distinguished women, one after another, allied themselves to the +cause: Dr. Mary E. Woolley, who as president of Mt. Holyoke was +developing Mary Lyons' pioneer seminary into a high ranking college; +Lucy Salmon, Mary A. Jordan, and Mary W. Calkins of the faculties of +Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley; Eva Perry Moore, a trustee of Vassar and +president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, with whom she +dared differ on this subject; Maud Wood Park, representing the younger +generation in the College Equal Suffrage League; and last of all, the +president of Bryn Mawr, M. Carey Thomas. After expressing her +gratitude to the pioneers of this great movement, Miss Thomas turned +to Susan and said, "To you, Miss Anthony, belongs by right, as to no +other woman in the world's history, the love and gratitude of all +women in every country of the civilized globe. We your daughters in +spirit, rise up today and call you blessed.... Of such as you were the +lines of the poet Yeats written: + + 'They shall be remembered forever, + They shall be alive forever, + They shall be speaking forever, + The people shall hear them forever.'"[458] + +During the thundering applause, Susan came forward to respond, her +face alight, and the audience rose. "If any proof were needed of the +progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight," +she said simply. "The presence on the stage of these college women, +and in the audience of all those college girls who will someday be the +nation's greatest strength, tell their story to the world. They give +the highest joy and encouragement to me...."[459] + +During her visit at the home of Mary Garrett, Susan spoke freely with +her and with M. Carey Thomas of the needs of the National American +Association, particularly of the Standing Fund of $100,000 of which +she had dreamed and which she had started to raise. Now, like an +answer to prayer, Mary Garrett and President Thomas, fresh from their +successful money-raising campaigns for Johns Hopkins and Bryn Mawr, +offered to undertake a similar project for woman suffrage, proposing +to raise $60,000--$12,000 a year for the next five years. + +"As we sat at her feet day after day between sessions of the +convention, listening to what she wanted us to do to help women and +asking her questions," recalled M. Carey Thomas in later years, "I +realized that she was the greatest person I had ever met. She seemed +to me everything that a human being could be--a leader to die for or +to live for and follow wherever she led."[460] + +Immediately after the convention, Susan went to Washington with the +women who were scheduled to speak at the Congressional hearing on +woman suffrage. In her room at the Shoreham Hotel, a room with a view +of the Washington Monument which the manager always saved for her, she +stood at the window looking out over the city as if saying farewell. +Then turning to Anna Shaw, she said with emotion, "I think it is the +most beautiful monument in the whole world."[461] + +That evening she sat quietly through the many tributes offered to her +on her eighty-sixth birthday, longing to tell all her friends the +gratitude and hope that welled up in her heart. Finally she rose, and +standing by Anna Howard Shaw who was presiding, she impulsively put +her hand on her shoulder and praised her for her loyal support. Then +turning to the other officers, she thanked them for all they had done. +"There are others also," she added, "just as true and devoted to the +cause--I wish I could name everyone--but with such women consecrating +their lives--" She hesitated a moment, and then in her clear rich +voice, added with emphasis, "Failure is impossible."[462] + + * * * * * + +In Rochester, in the home she so dearly loved, she spent her last +weeks, thinking of the cause and the women who would carry it on. +Longing to talk with Anna Shaw, she sent for her, but Anna, feeling +she was needed, came even before a letter could reach her. With Anna +at her bedside, Susan was content. + +"I want you to give me a promise," she pleaded, reaching for Anna's +hand. "Promise me you will keep the presidency of the association as +long as you are well enough to do the work."[463] + +Deeply moved, Anna replied, "But how can I promise that? I can keep it +only as long as others wish me to keep it." + +"Promise to make them wish you to keep it," Susan urged. "Just as I +wish you to keep it...." + +After a moment, she continued, "I do not know anything about what +comes to us after this life ends, but ... if I have any conscious +knowledge of this world and of what you are doing, I shall not be far +away from you; and in times of need I will help you all I can. Who +knows? Perhaps I may be able to do more for the Cause after I am gone +than while I am here." + +A few days later, on March 13, 1906, she passed away, her hand in +Anna's. + + * * * * * + +Asked, a few years before, if she believed that all women in the +United States would ever be given the vote, she had replied with +assurance, "It will come, but I shall not see it.... It is inevitable. +We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half +our people than we could keep the Negro forever in bondage. It will +not be wrought by the same disrupting forces that freed the slave, but +come it will, and I believe within a generation."[464] + +[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1905] + +She had so longed to see women voting throughout the United States, to +see them elected to legislatures and Congress, but for her there had +only been the promise of fulfillment in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and +Idaho, and far away in New Zealand and Australia. + +"Failure is impossible" was the rallying cry she left with her "girls" +to spur them on in the long discouraging struggle ahead, fourteen more +years of campaigning until on August 26, 1920, women were enfranchised +throughout the United States by the Nineteenth Amendment. + +Even then their work was not finished, for she had looked farther +ahead to the time when men and women everywhere, regardless of race, +religion, or sex, would enjoy equal rights. Her challenging words, +"Failure is impossible," still echo and re-echo through the years, as +the crusade for human rights goes forward and men and women together +strive to build and preserve a free world. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[446] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1325. + +[447] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, p. 210. + +[448] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1319. + +[449] _Ibid._, p. 1336. + +[450] Miss Anthony also carefully prepared her scrapbooks, her books, +and bound volumes of _The Revolution_, woman's rights and antislavery +magazines for presentation to the Library of Congress, inscribing each +with a note of explanation. + +[451] Ann Anthony Bacon. + +[452] _New York Suffrage Newsletter_, Jan., 1905. + +[453] _History of Woman Suffrage_, V, p. 122. + +[454] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1365. The statue of Sacajawea, +presented to the Exposition by the clubwomen of America, was the work +of Alice Cooper of Denver. Woman suffrage was again defeated in Oregon +in 1906. + +[455] Harper, _Anthony_, III, pp. 1357, 1359. + +[456] _Ibid._, pp. 1376-1377. + +[457] The medallion, the work of Leila Usher of Boston, was +commissioned by Mary Garrett. + +[458] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1395. + +[459] _Ibid._, pp. 1395-1396. + +[460] Sept., 1935, Statement, Una R. Winter Collection. + +[461] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1409. + +[462] _Ibid._ + +[463] Shaw, _The Story of a Pioneer_, pp. 230-232. + +[464] Harper, _Anthony_, III, p. 1259. + + + + +NOTES + +[Transcriber's Note: All footnotes for the book were located here, on +pages 311-326. They have been relocated to immediately follow the +chapter where they are referenced.] + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS + +American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts: + Abby Kelley Foster Papers. + +Lucy E. Anthony and Ann Anthony Bacon Papers: + Susan B. Anthony Diaries, Letters, and Speeches. + +Boston Public Library, Manuscript Division: + Antislavery, Garrison, and Higginson Papers. + +Matilda Joslyn Gage Collection. + +Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, +San Marino, California, Manuscript Division: + Ida Husted Harper Collection. + Anthony Collection. + +Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas: + Anthony Papers. + +Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Division: + Susan B. Anthony Papers, including Diaries. + Anna E. Dickinson Papers. + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. + +Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Rare Book Room: + Susan B. Anthony Scrapbooks. + +Alma Lutz Collection. + +Anna Dann Mason Collection. + +Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New York: + Anthony Collection. + +New York Public Library, Manuscript Division: + Susan B. Anthony Papers. + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. + Elizabeth Smith Miller Papers. + +Ohio State Library, Columbus, Ohio: + Ohioana Library Collection. + +Seneca Falls Historical Society, Seneca Falls, New York: + Amelia Bloomer Papers. + +Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts: + Sophia Smith Collection. + +Edna M. Stantial Collection: + Blackwell Papers. + +Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, 17 Madison Street, +Rochester, New York. + +Radcliffe Women's Archives, Radcliffe College, +Cambridge, Massachusetts. + +University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California: + Susan B. Anthony Papers. + Keith Papers. + +University of Kentucky Library, Lexington, Kentucky: + Laura Clay Papers. + +University of Rochester Library, Rochester, New York: + Susan B. Anthony Papers. + +Vassar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York: + Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers. + Margaret Stanton Lawrence Papers. + +Una R. Winter Collection. + + +PUBLISHED MATERIAL + +Abbott, Mrs. Lyman. _Mrs. Lyman Abbott on Woman Suffrage._ Pamphlet. +New York, n.d. + +Albree, John (ed.). _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll._ Salem, +Mass., 1911. + +Altrocchi, Julia Cooley. _The Spectacular San Franciscans._ New York, +1949. + +_An Account of the Proceedings of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the +Charge of Illegal Voting._ Rochester, N. Y., 1874. + +Ames, Mary Clemmer. _A Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary._ New York, +1873. + +Andrews, Kenneth. _Nook Farm._ Cambridge, Mass., 1950. + +Anthony, Charles L. _Genealogy of the Anthony Family from 1495 to +1904._ Sterling, Ill., 1904. + +Anthony, Katharine. _Susan B. Anthony, Her Personal History and Her +Era._ New York, 1954. + +Anthony, Susan B. "Woman's Half Century of Evolution," _North American +Review_, December 1902. + +----. "Educating Husbands for the Twentieth Century," _McClure's +Syndicate_, 1901. + +----. 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Oxford, +England, 1910. + +Powderly, Terrence V. _The Path I Trod._ New York, 1940. + +_Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Convention Held at Syracuse, +September 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1852._ Pamphlet. + +Quarles, Benjamin. _Frederick Douglass._ Washington, D.C., 1948. + +_Report of the International Council of Women, 1888._ Washington, +D.C., 1888. + +Richards, Caroline Cowles. _Village Life in America._ New York, 1913. + +Richardson, Albert D. _Beyond the Mississippi._ Hartford, Conn., 1867. + +Robinson, Sara T. D. _Kansas, Its Interior and Exterior._ Lawrence, +Kansas, 1899. + +Rosenberger, Jesse Leonard. _Rochester, The Making of a University._ +Rochester, N.Y., 1927. + +Ross, Ishbel. _Angel of the Battlefield._ New York, 1956. + +----. _Ladies of the Press._ New York, 1936. + +Rourke, Constance. _Trumpets of Jubilee._ New York, 1927. + +Sachs, Emanie. _The Terrible Siren._ New York, 1928. + +Sanborn, F. 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Peterboro, N.H., 1855. + +Smith, Julia. _Abby Smith and Her Cows, With a Report of the Law Case +Decided Contrary to Law._ Pamphlet. Hartford, Conn., 1877. + +Smith, Matthew Hale. _Sunshine and Shadow in New York._ Hartford, +Conn., 1869. + +Sprague, William F. _Women and the West._ Boston, 1940. + +Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. _Address to the Legislature of New York, +February, 1854._ Pamphlet. Albany, 1854. + +----. _Bible and Church Degrade Women._ Pamphlet. Chicago, 1884. + +----. _The Christian Church and Women._ Pamphlet reprinted from _The +Index_ (Boston), n.d. + +----. "The Degradation of Disfranchisement," _National Bulletin_, +March 1891. Pamphlet. + +----. _Eighty Years and More._ New York, 1898. + +----. _The Slave's Appeal._ Pamphlet. Albany, 1860. + +----. _Significance and History of the Ballot._ Pamphlet. Washington, +D.C., 1898. + +----. _The Solitude of Self._ Pamphlet. Washington, D.C., 1892. + +----. _Suffrage, a Natural Right._ Pamphlet. Chicago, 1894. + +----. _The Woman's Bible._ New York, 1898. + +Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B., and Gage, Matilda Joslyn. +_History of Woman Suffrage_, Vols. I, II, III. New York and Rochester, +1881, 1882, 1886. + +Stanton, Theodore. _The Woman Question in Europe._ New York, 1884. + +Stanton, Theodore, and Blatch, Harriot Stanton (Ed.). _Elizabeth Cady +Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary, and Reminiscences_, New +York, 1922. + +Stevens, G. A., _New York Typographical Union No. 6._ Albany, 1913. + +Strachey, Ray. _Struggle._ New York, 1930. + +Ten Broek, Jacobus. _The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth +Amendment._ Berkeley, Calif., 1951. + +Terrell, Mary Church. _A Colored Woman in a White World._ Washington, +D.C., 1940. + +Thornton, Willis. _The Nine Lives of Citizen Train._ New York, 1948. + +Tilton, Theodore. _Biography of Victoria C. Woodhull._ (Golden Age +Tract No. 3.) Pamphlet. New York, 1871. + +Tracy, George A. _History of the Typographical Union._ Indianapolis, +1913. + +Train, George Francis. _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas._ +Pamphlet. Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867. + +----. _My Life in Many States and Foreign Lands._ New York, 1902. + +----. _Train's Union Speeches._ Pamphlet. Philadelphia, 1862. + +Trowbridge, Lydia Jones. _Frances Willard of Evanston._ Chicago, 1938. + +True, Charles H. _Ten Years of Woman Suffrage in Wyoming._ Pamphlet. +Rochester, N.Y., 1879. + +Waite, Charles B. "Who Were the Voters in the Early History of this +Country?" _Chicago Law Times_, October 1888. + +Willard, Frances. _Glimpses of Fifty Years._ Chicago, 1889. + +Willard, Frances E., and Livermore, Mary A. _A Woman of the Century._ +New York, 1893. + +Williams, Blanche Colton. _Clara Barton._ New York, 1941. + +Whitney, Janet. _Abigail Adams._ Boston, 1947. + +Woodhull, Victoria C. _The Argument for Women's Electoral Rights under +Amendments XIV and XV of the Constitution of the United States._ +London, 1887. + +Woody, Thomas. _A History of Women's Education in the United States._ +New York, 1929. + + +NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS + +Adams (Mass.) _Freeman_ +_The Agitator_ +_Antislavery Standard_ +Chicago Daily _Tribune_ +Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ +_The Golden Age_ +_Harper's Weekly_ +_The Independent_ +_Ladies' Home Journal_ +_The Liberator_ +_The Lily_ +New York _Daily Graphic_ +New York _Herald_ +New York _Post_ +New York _Suffrage News Letter_ +New York _Sun_ +New York _Times_ +New York _Tribune_ +New York _World_ +Philadelphia _Press_ +_The Revolution_ +_Rochester History_ +San Francisco _Examiner_ +_The Una_ +_Woman's Campaign_ +_Woman's Journal_ +_Woman's Tribune_ +_Woman's Suffrage Journal_ (London, England) +_Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ + + + + +INDEX + +Adams, Abigail, 3, 311 + +Addams, Jane, 286 + +Alcott, Bronson, 117, 224, 225 + +American Antislavery Society, 58, 60, 112, 118-19 + +American Equal Rights Association, 118-20, 125, 137, 145-46, 161, 164 + +American Federation of Labor, 285-86 + +American Woman Suffrage Association, 172-73, 177, 233, 247, 249-50, + 318, 322, 323 + +Anneke, Madam, 175, 234 + +Anthony, Ann O. _See_ Bacon, Ann Anthony. + +Anthony, Anna Osborne, 108-09, 315 + +Anthony, Daniel (father), 1, 4-13, 15-16, 18, 20-24, 56, 58, 93, 98, + 104, 311, 316, 322 + +Anthony, Daniel Jr. (nephew), 241 + +Anthony, Daniel Read (brother), 7, 12, 15, 22, 45-46, 56, 58, 93, + 108-12, 135, 141, 171, 179, 219, 227, 230, 239, 241-42, 302, 315, + 321, 324 + +Anthony, Eliza, 9 + +Anthony, Guelma. _See_ McLean, Guelma Anthony. + +Anthony, Hannah. _See_ Mosher, Hannah Anthony. + +Anthony, Hannah Latham, 4, 18 + +Anthony, Humphrey, 5, 6 + +Anthony, Jacob Merritt, 9, 15, 22, 46, 56, 58, 93, 98, 191, 219, 241, + 294, 302, 324 + +Anthony, Lucy E., 235, 248, 271, 275, 277, 303, 322 + +Anthony, Lucy Read, 1-2, 5-6, 8-9, 11-12, 16, 18, 20-21, 62, 98, 103, + 108, 129, 190, 219, 235, 311, 316 + +Anthony, Mary Luther, 46, 93, 108 + +Anthony, Mary S., 7, 15, 21, 24, 58, 62, 64, 98, 103, 108, 171, 190, + 199, 217, 219, 235, 240, 248, 255, 279, 281, 294, 299, 303, 316, 324 + +Anthony, Sarah Burtis, 21 + +Anthony, Susan B., birth of, 1; + ancestry of, 4, 6, 311; + her school days, 7-8, 10-11; + as teacher, 9, 11, 13-14, 17-22; + her first temperance speech, 19; + her interest in books, 52, 94; + her interest in outdoor work, 67, 93; + her opinions on marriage, 73-74, 80, 221, 224, + on women's support of political parties, 243, + on woman as president, 245; + her first appeal for Congressional action on woman suffrage, 117; + 50th birthday celebration of, 176; + arrest and trial of, 201-03, 209-13; + diaries of, 264-65; + retirement of, 283; + 84th birthday celebration of, 297; + last illness and death of, 308; + prophecy of, 310 + +Aurora Leigh, 74-76 + +Avery, Dr. Alida, 230 + +Avery, Rachel Foster, 238-39, 244-45, 251, 262, 270, 274-75, 279-80, + 282, 290, 292-93, 300, 322-23 + + +Bacon, Ann Anthony, 303, 322, 326 + +Barton, Clara, 99, 176 + +Becker, Lydia, 174, 320, 322 + +Beecher, Henry Ward, 79, 101, 103, 118, 125, 129, 134, 137, 169, + 173-74, 220-22 + +Beecher-Tilton case, 219, 220, 222-23, 321 + +Bickerdyke, Mother, 100, 130 + +Bingham, Anson, 77, 79 + +Bingham, John A., 122 + +Blackwell, Alice Stone, 72, 251, 279, 292, 294, 323 + +Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, 33, 41, 44, 50, 52, 69, 71-72, 76, 81, + 102, 314 + +Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 99 + +Blackwell, Ellen, 52, 53 + +Blackwell, Henry, 50, 125, 128, 145, 162, 250, 269, 292, 294 + +Blackwell, Samuel, 50 + +Blake, Lillie Devereux, 166, 194, 200, 227, 279, 290, 292, 326 + +Blatch, Harriot Stanton, 67, 100, 236, 239, 245, 250-51, 287-88, 296, + 322, 325 + +Blatch, William Henry, 239, 322 + +Bloomer, Amelia, 26, 170, 237, 312 + +Bloomer Costume, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 312 + +Booth, Mary L., 231, 238 + +Bradwell, Myra, 170, 199, 207-08 + +Bright, Jacob, 176, 222 + +Brown, Antoinette. _See_ Blackwell, Antoinette Brown. + +Brown, B. Gratz, 123, 196 + +Brown, John, 46, 56, 63-66, 115, 201, 313 + +Brown, Olympia, 128, 137, 175, 197 + +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 23, 55, 74-76, 94 + +Bryn Mawr College, 306-07 + +Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody), 264 + +Bullard, Laura Curtis, 166, 172, 178-79, 194 + +Burnham, Carrie S., 198 + +Butler, Benjamin F., 183, 193, 200, 208 + + +Caldwell, Margaret Read, 17, 21 + +California campaign, 269, 271-73, 283, 303 + +Carroll, Ella Anna, 100, 234 + +Cary, Alice, 127, 142, 166, 174, 231 + +Cary, Phoebe, 142, 166, 231 + +Catt, Carrie Chapman, 254-55, 265, 269, 274, 276-77, 279-80, 289-94, + 295-97, 299, 300 + +Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 226-28 + +Channing, William Henry, 41, 47, 239, 312 + +Chase, Salmon P., 141, 208 + +Child, Lydia Maria, 118 + +Claflin, Tennessee, 181-82 + +Clay, Laura, 293 + +Clemmer, Mary, 229 + +Cleveland, Grover, 246, 260-61, 304-05 + +Coeducation, 37-38, 67-68, 70, 258, 294 + +Colby, Clara Bewick, 231, 244-45, 270, 276, 279, 283, 285, 290, 323-25 + +College Equal Suffrage League, 306 + +College Evening, the, Baltimore, Maryland, 307 + +Conkling, Roscoe, 122, 209 + +Conway, Moncure D., 126 + +Corbin, Hannah Lee, 4 + +Couzins, Phoebe, 175, 227 + +Cowles, Caroline. _See_ Richards, Caroline Cowles. + +Crittenden, Alexander P., 188, 319 + +Curtis, George William, 79, 103, 125-26, 129, 169 + + +Dall, Caroline H., 316 + +Dann, Anna. _See_ Mason, Anna Dann. + +Daughters of Temperance, 18, 24-25, 30 + +Davis, Paulina Wright, 33, 165, 167, 172, 182-85, 191, 195, 274 + +Debs, Eugene V., 269, 286 + +De Garmo, Rhoda, 16, 23, 199 + +Democrats, 88, 98, 106, 118, 123, 130-31, 133, 135-36, 138, 140-41, + 143, 146-48, 193, 196-97, 200, 226, 232, 253, 261, 266-69, 272 + +Demorest, Mme. Louise, 129, 318 + +Dickinson, Albert, 109, 263 + +Dickinson, Anna E., 94-95, 104, 106-07, 112, 138, 144-45, 148, 156, + 177, 196, 223, 238, 315, 318 + +Divorce, 32, 80-83, 174, 224 + +Dix, Dorothea, 99 + +Douglas, Stephen A., 62, 83 + +Douglass, Frederick, 23-24, 63, 88, 103, 106, 112, 145, 162-63, 200, + 312 + +Duniway, Abigail Scott, 189, 244 + + +Eddy, Eliza J., 52, 238-39, 313 + +Emancipation Proclamation, 98-99, 101-02 + +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 53, 65, 94, 117, 150 + + +Fair, Laura, 188-89, 319 + +Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 246 + +Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment, 160-62, 164, 166, 172-73, 193, + 216-18, 226, 229, 231-34, 286, 291, 298, 305, 310, 321 + +Fifteenth Amendment, 160, 162-65, 169, 181, 192-93, 198-200, 203, + 205, 210, 214, 232 + +First National Woman's Rights convention, 1850, 25 + +First Woman's Rights convention, 1848, 20 + +Foster, Abby Kelley, 25, 30, 59, 61, 77, 217 + +Foster, Rachel. _See_ Avery, Rachel Foster. + +Foster, Stephen S., 25, 59, 87, 145, 161 + +Fourteenth Amendment, 115-16, 120-22, 125, 142, 159, 180-82, 188, + 190, 192-93, 198-200, 203, 205, 207-08, 210-11, 214, 316, 320 + +Fremont, Jessie Benton, 103, 175 + +Fremont, John C., 57, 93 + + +Gage, Frances D., 53-54, 274, 316 + +Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 33, 165, 175, 196, 200, 204, 209, 227-28, 235, + 237, 244, 320 + +Gannett, Mary Lewis, 271, 303 + +Gannett, William C., 271, 303 + +Garrett, Mary, 306-07, 326 + +Garrison, William Lloyd, 16, 23, 25-26, 44-47, 52, 60-63, 71, 77, 82, + 84-87, 89, 90-92, 95, 104-05, 111-12, 134, 137, 139, 143, 169, 184, + 233, 235, 281, 312 + +General Federation of Women's Clubs, 263, 283 + +Gibbons, Abby Hopper, 90, 146 + +Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, 279 + +Godbe, William S., 186 + +Gompers, Samuel, 285 + +Gough, John B., 24, 136 + +Grant, Ulysses S., 112, 146-47, 201, 213, 227, 315 + +Greeley, Horace, 25, 28, 47, 57, 80-81, 85, 98, 101, 103-04, 123, + 126-27, 132, 134, 137, 141-42, 174, 176, 196-97, 267 + +Greeley, Mary Cheney, 126, 146 + +Greenwood, Grace, 159 + +Grimke Sisters, 30, 102, 312 + + +Hallowell, Mary, 23, 77, 314 + +Hamilton, Gail, 101 + +Harper, Ida Husted, 271-72, 281, 295-96, 324 + +Hawley, Genevieve, 281, 325 + +Hay, Mary Garrett, 290-92 + +Hearst, Phoebe, 272 + +Hearst, William Randolph, 272 + +Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 52, 59, 60, 63, 67, 145-46, 169, 172 + +History of Woman Suffrage, 236-39, 295, 302 + +Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 167-68, 172, 174-75, 180-83, 185, 191, + 194-95, 320-21 + +Hooker, John, 221, 320 + +Hovey, Charles F., 51, 77, 79 + +Hovey Fund, 77, 79, 102, 117, 123, 128 + +Howe, Julia Ward, 162, 169, 171, 173, 175, 207, 280 + +Howe, Samuel G., 63 + +Hoxie, Hannah Anthony, 4, 19 + +Hunt, Dr. Harriot K., 32, 217 + +Hunt, Judge Ward, 209-14 + +Hutchinson Family Singers, 102, 128, 317 + + +International Council of Women, 234, 245-49, 288-89, 299-300, 302, 325 + +International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 299-300 + +Irwin, Inez Haynes, 306 + + +Jackson, Francis, 52, 53, 61, 75, 76, 79, 238, 313 + +Jackson Fund, 75, 79, 117, 127 + +Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam, 292 + +Johnson, Adelaide, 323 + +Johnson, Andrew, 111, 113, 120, 140-41 + +Julian, George W., 140, 159-60, 180, 196 + + +Kansas campaigns, 127-38, 261, 267-69 + +Kelley, Abby. _See_ Foster, Abby Kelley. + +Kelley, Florence, 286 + +Knights of Labor, 253, 261, 286, 325 + +Lane, Carrie. _See_ Catt, Carrie Chapman. + +Lapham, Anson, 171, 318, 320 + +Laughlin, Gail, 286 + +Lawrence, Margaret Stanton, 67, 100, 236, 257 + +Lewis and Clark Exposition, 303-04 + +_Liberator, The_, 16, 23, 63, 85-86, 92, 105, 112, 139 + +_Lily, The_, 26, 32 + +Lincoln, Abraham, 62, 64, 84-85, 87-88, 92-93, 97-98, 100, 102, 104-06, + 111, 113, 145, 209, 305 + +Livermore, Mary, 161, 164, 169, 173, 196, 207, 242, 247, 280, 322 + +Lockwood, Belva, 195, 245, 314 + +Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 66, 109 + +Longfellow, Samuel, 79, 83, 314 + +Lozier, Dr. Clemence, 157, 167, 231 + +Luther, Mary. _See_ Anthony, Mary Luther. + +Lyceum Lecture Tours, 177 + +Lyon, Mary, 7, 306 + + +Married Women's Property Law, 19-20, 38-39, 54, 78, 95, 101 + +Mason, Anna Dann, 281, 303 + +May, Samuel J., 23, 31, 41, 87-88, 92, 124, 176 + +May, Samuel Jr., 58, 62 + +Mayo, Rev. A. D., 82-83 + +McCulloch, Catharine Waugh, 294 + +McFarland, Daniel, 174 + +McFarland, Mrs. _See_ Richardson, Abby Sage. + +McLean, Aaron, 13-14, 20, 62, 108, 235, 316, 322 + +McLean, Ann Eliza, 108 + +McLean, Guelma Anthony, 1, 7, 9-15, 18, 46, 62, 108, 129, 190, 199, 219 + +McLean, Judge John, 7-8, 13 + +Melliss, David M., 138-39 + +Mill, Harriet Taylor, 71 + +Mill, John Stuart, 71, 128-29, 222 + +Miller, Elizabeth Smith, 26, 33, 146, 165-66, 205, 312 + +Minor, Francis, 180, 198, 200 + +Minor, Virginia, 175, 180, 200, 214, 216, 252 + +Mitchell, Maria, 207 + +Monroe County Lectures, 204-07 + +Montgomery, Helen Barrett, 294 + +Mormons, 186-87, 234, 244, 262 + +Mosher, Eugene, 235, 311, 316, 322 + +Mosher, Hannah Anthony, 1, 7-9, 12, 15, 18, 46, 108, 190, 199, 209, + 219, 230, 311, 316 + +Mosher, Louise, 235, 322 + +Mott, James, 33-34, 124 + +Mott, Lucretia, 18, 20-21, 25, 27, 33-34, 44-45, 54, 73-74, 83, 88, + 95, 112, 117, 124, 165, 170, 177, 183, 226-27, 274, 279, 319, 323 + +Mott, Lydia, 10, 18, 30, 40, 73, 76-77, 89, 93, 95-96, 112, 117, 170, + 203, 231, 235 + +Moulson, Deborah, 9-11, 18, 20, 24 + + +National American Woman Suffrage Association, 251, 260, 263, 274-78, + 283-87, 289-93, 295-97, 302-03, 307-08 + +National Council of Women, 246 + +National Labor Union Congress, 149-52, 155-56 + +National Woman Suffrage Association, 165, 173, 175, 177, 183, 185, + 191-95, 221, 226, 233, 242, 245-51, 318, 323 + +Negro slavery, 4, 7, 23, 43-46, 58, 60, 62, 71, 82, 84-86, 88-90, + 96-98, 102-03, 109, 111-13, 162, 311 + +Negro suffrage, 102, 105, 110-14, 116-18, 120-25, 127, 131-33, 135, + 140-42, 145, 148, 159-63, 165-66, 192, 215 + +New York constitutional conventions, 125-27, 266-67, 317 + +New York State Industrial School, Rochester, New York, 256 + +New York State Teachers' convention, 36-37, 67-70 + +Nichols, Clarina, 32, 274, 316 + +Nightingale, Florence, 99 + +Nineteenth Amendment, 310, 321 + + +Oberlin College, 28, 33, 70 + +Occupations, Women's, 36, 37, 69, 70-71, 247 + +Oklahoma campaign, 303 + +Oregon campaigns, 189-90, 303-04, 326 + +Owen, Robert Dale, 80, 101, 115, 120 + + +Palmer, Bertha Honore, 261-62 + +Pankhurst, Emmeline, 325 + +Park, Maud Wood, 306 + +Parker, Theodore, 52, 73, 129 + +Phelps, Dr. Charles Abner, 89-91 + +Phelps, Mrs. Charles Abner, 89-91, 315 + +Phelps, Elizabeth, 160, 194, 318 + +Phillips, Wendell, 23, 25, 46-47, 49, 52, 59-61, 65, 76-77, 81-82, 87, + 90-92, 95, 103, 105-06, 112-17, 120, 124, 127, 134-35, 137, 141, 184, + 233, 238, 312, 318 + +Pillsbury, Parker, 23, 25, 47, 49, 59, 61, 65-66, 77, 92, 94, 105, 112, + 115, 117, 123, 135, 138, 140, 143, 167, 171, 177-78, 184, 224, 269 + +Pomeroy, Senator S. C., 123, 137, 140, 159-60 + +Post, Amy, 23, 199 + +Purvis, Robert, 124 + + +Quakers, 4-5, 8-9, 12-14, 16-18, 20-21, 23-25, 33, 44, 49, 53, 92, 171, + 311, 314-15 + + +Read, Daniel, 1, 6, 15, 311 + +Read, Joshua, 11, 15, 17, 20, 45-46 + +Read, Susannah Richardson, 6, 311 + +Republicans, 52, 60, 64, 84, 86, 88, 92, 103, 114-15, 118, 122-24, + 130-32, 135-36, 141, 143, 146-48, 159, 169, 173, 183, 193, + 196-97, 200, 215, 226, 232, 243, 253, 260, 266-69, 272, 305, 318 + +_Revolution, The_, 134, 137-46, 148-49, 152-55, 157-58, 160-62, + 165-67, 169, 171-74, 177-80, 188-89, 198, 205, 213, 217, 219, 220-21, + 225, 261, 280, 294, 318, 320, 326 + +Richards, Caroline Cowles, 48 + +Richardson, Abbie Sage, 174-75 + +Richardson, Albert D., 174 + +Ricker, Marilla, 198 + +Riddle, Albert G., 181, 200, 214 + +Robinson, Charles, 130, 135 + +Rochester, University of, 225, 258, 294-95 + +Rogers, Dr. Seth, 51-52 + +Roosevelt, Theodore, 305 + +Rose, Ernestine, 32, 41-44, 48, 51, 71, 81, 102, 124, 165, 217, 239, 246 + + +Sacajawea, 304, 326 + +Sage, Mrs. Russell, 292 + +Sanborn, Frank, 63, 117 + +Sargent, Aaron A., 191, 213, 230, 232, 322 + +Sargent, Ellen Clark, 191, 271, 273, 322 + +Selden, Judge Henry R., 200, 202-03, 207, 209-12 + +Sewall, May Wright, 244-45, 251, 262, 324 + +Seward, William H., 62-64, 87 + +Seymour, Horatio, 30, 98, 146-47 + +Shaw, Anne Howard, 247-49, 251, 253-54, 260-61, 268-69, 273-76, 279-80, + 284, 289-90, 293, 296-97, 300, 303, 308 + +Sixteenth Amendment, 160-62, 164, 166, 172-73, 193, 216-17, 231-33 + +Smith, Abby and Julia, 217 + +Smith, Elizabeth Oakes, 33-34 + +Smith, Gerrit, 33, 57, 63, 84, 88, 103, 125, 146, 170, 312 + +South Dakota campaign, 253-55 + +Spanish-American War, 282-83 + +Spencer, Sarah Andrews, 198, 227 + +Spofford, Jane, 233, 244, 251 + +Stanford, Leland, 187 + +Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 272 + +Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 21, 26-29, 31-36, 39-41, 49-50, 57, 67-74, + 77-84, 87, 94-95, 99-102, 104, 109-112, 114-30, 135-38, 140, 142-43, + 146, 150, 159-62, 165-67, 169-71, 174-77, 179-80, 183, 185-91, + 193-97, 199-200, 217, 220-21, 223, 226-27, 233-40, 244-45, 248-51, + 256-58, 260, 264, 266, 270, 279-80, 287, 290, 292, 294-96, 299, 306, + 314, 317-18, 321-23 + +Stanton, Harriot. _See_ Blatch, Harriot Stanton. + +Stanton, Henry B., 27, 57, 70, 84, 94, 98-99, 104, 112, 257 + +Stanton, Margaret. _See_ Lawrence, Margaret Stanton. + +Stanton, Theodore, 234, 245, 322 + +Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. _See_ Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson. + +Stevens, Thaddeus, 118, 121, 316 + +Stone, Lucy, 25, 28-30, 33, 40-41, 50-52, 54, 58, 62, 69-72, 76, 80-81, + 83, 99, 102, 117, 119, 124-25, 127-28, 131, 137, 144-45, 163-65, + 169-73, 196, 207, 236-38, 247, 249, 251, 274, 313, 319, 321, 323 + +Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 42, 174 + +Sumner, Charles, 52, 101, 117-18, 120, 175, 314 + +Sweet, Emma B., 270 + +Sylvis, William H., 150, 155, 286 + + +Taylor, Harriet. _See_ Mill, Harriet Taylor. + +Terrell, Mary Church, 287-88, 302 + +Thirteenth Amendment, 101, 104-05, 109, 111, 114, 118, 205, 215 + +Thomas, M. Carey, 306-07 + +Tilton, Elizabeth, 166, 219-21 + +Tilton, Theodore, 101, 118, 120, 141, 143, 166, 185, 196, 219-21 + +Train, George Francis, 131-33, 135-39, 143, 161, 169, 178, 185, 267, 317 + +Tubman, Harriet, 93, 315 + + +Unitarians, 21, 23-24, 41, 44, 227, 228, 271, 303 + +Upton, Harriet Taylor, 274-76, 280, 290, 292, 297 + + +Van Voorhis, John, 202-03, 207, 209, 214 + +Vassar College, 79, 230, 239, 306 + +Vaughn, Hester, 156-57, 165 + +Victoria, Queen, 288 + +Victoria Augusta, Empress, 302 + + +Wade, Senator Benjamin, 123, 140-41, 319 + +Wages, Women's, 37, 70, 138, 149, 150-56, 247, 285-86 + +Waite, Chief Justice, 214-15 + +Walker, Dr. Mary, 99 + +Weed, Thurlow, 30-31, 86 + +Weld, Theodore, 25 + +Whittier, John G., 124 + +Willard, Emma, 7, 37 + +Willard, Frances E., 218, 242-43, 245-47, 271, 321, 323 + +Wilson, Senator Henry, 123, 140, 159-60, 197 + +Wollstonecraft, Mary, 142 + +Woman Suffrage, in Australia, 297, 310; + in Colorado, 230-31, 261, 264, 273, 297, 310; + in Great Britain, 55, 71, 176, 198, 288, 322-23; + in Idaho, 273, 310; + in New Zealand, 265, 310; + in Utah, 176, 186, 241, 273, 310; + in Wyoming, 176, 186, 198, 241, 252, 261, 273, 310 + +Woman Suffrage Conventions, 159, 169-73, 175-76, 180-81, 183-85, 191-95, + 204, 225, 233-34, 251, 277-78, 287, 295-96, 303-04, 306-07 + +_Woman's Bible_, The, 258-60, 278-80 + +_Woman's Journal_, 173, 175, 179, 207, 249, 319, 321 + +Woman's Rights Conventions, Seneca Falls, 20; + Rochester, 21; + Syracuse, 31-32; + Albany, 39-41; + Philadelphia, 44; + Saratoga, 50-51; + New York, 70-71, 79-82 + +Woman's State Temperance Society, 32, 35-36 + +Woman's Suffrage Association of America, 146, 159 + +_Woman's Tribune_, 231, 245, 249, 258, 270, 279, 323-24 + +Women's Christian Temperance Union, 217-18, 242, 244, 247, 253, 263, + 271, 283 + +Women's National Loyal League, 101-03, 105, 315 + +Woodhull, Victoria C., 180-86, 191-95, 220-21, 319, 322 + +Woolley, Dr. Mary E., 306 + +Workingwomen's Association, 149-53, 155-57, 317 + +World's Fair, Chicago, 261-62, 288, 323-24 + +World's Temperance Convention, 35 + +Wright, Frances, 52, 80, 142 + +Wright, Martha C., 33, 54, 88, 95, 124, 144, 165, 175, 185, 235 + + +[Transcriber's Notes: + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other +inconsistencies. The transcriber made the following changes to the +text to correct obvious errors: + + 1. p. 14, Footnote #5 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "ancestory" changed to "ancestry" + 2. p. 14, Footnote #12 in Chapter "Quaker Heritage" + "Dairy" changed to "Diary" + 3. p. 19, "responsibiity" changed to "responsibility" + 4. p. 31, "Presbysterian" changed to "Presbyterian" + 5. p. 53, "litle" changed to "little" + 6. p. 56, "Osawatamie" changed to "Osawatomie" + 7. p. 66, "marytrdom" changed to "martyrdom" + 8. p. 70, "newpaper" changed to "newspaper" + 9. p. 71, "Westminister" changed to "Westminster" +10. p. 84, "betwen" changed to "between" +11. p. 91, "fredom" changed to "freedom" +12. p. 99, "marshall" changed to "marshal" +13. p. 141, "Greley" changed to "Greeley" +14. p. 143, "Garrion" changed to "Garrison" +15. p. 154, "indepedence" changed to "independence" +16. p. 155, rat office" changed to "rat office" +17. p. 157, "Eourope" changed to "Europe" +18. p. 162, "betwen" changed to "between" +19. p. 164, at their side. (Removed ending quote) +20. p. 169, Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...." (Added ending quote) +21. p. 175, "Griffing" changed to "Griffin" +22. p. 184, "Victorial" changed to "Victoria" +23. p. 186, "senusous" changed to "sensuous" +24. p. 195, "Wodhull" changed to "Woodhull" +25. p. 203, "womanhoood" changed to "womanhood" +26. p. 209, "againt" changed to "against" +27. p. 231, "ben" changed to "been" +28. p. 234, "discused" changed to "discussed" +29. p. 235, "Josyln" changed to "Joslyn" +30. p. 236, "Cage" changed to "Gage" +31. p. 253, "politican" changed to "politician" +32. p. 265, "suffage" changed to "suffrage" +33. p. 265, Footnote #367 in Chapter "Victories in the West" + "Happerset" changed to "Happersett" +34. p. 274, "ue" changed to "use" +35. p. 298, "contine" changed to "continue" +36. p. 298, Footnote #426 in Chapter "Passing the Torch" + "yater" changed to "later" +37. p. 306, "Byrn" changed to "Bryn" +38. p. 308, "farwell" changed to "farewell" +39. p. 329, "Thoguhts" changed to "Thoughts" +40. p. 335, "phophecy" changed to "prophecy" + +All footnotes for the book were located on pages 311-326 and have been +relocated to immediately follow the chapter where they are referenced. + +End of Transcriber's Notes] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Susan B. Anthony, by Alma Lutz + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY *** + +***** This file should be named 20439.txt or 20439.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/4/3/20439/ + +Produced by Mark C. Orton, Richard J. Shiffer and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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