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