The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony
(Volume 1 of 2), by Ida Husted Harper
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Title: The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2)
Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her
Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Author: Ida Husted Harper
Release Date: March 1, 2005 [EBook #15220]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSAN B. ANTHONY ***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson and the PG Online
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[Illustration HW: Susan B. Anthony]
THE LIFE AND WORK
OF
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
INCLUDING PUBLIC ADDRESSES, HER OWN LETTERS
AND MANY FROM HER CONTEMPORARIES
DURING FIFTY YEARS
BY
IDA HUSTED HARPER
A Story of the evolution of the Status of Woman
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, PICTURES OF HOMES, ETC.
INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY
THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY
1899
TO WOMAN, FOR WHOSE FREEDOM
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
HAS GIVEN FIFTY YEARS OF NOBLE ENDEAVOR
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
PREFACE.
A biography written during the lifetime of the subject is unusual, but
to the friends of Miss Anthony it seemed especially desirable because
the reform in which she and her contemporaries have been engaged has
not been given a deserved place in the pages of history, and the
accounts must be gleaned very largely from unpublished records and
personal recollections. The wisdom of this course often has been
apparent in the preparation of these volumes. In recalling how many
times an entirely different interpretation of letters, scenes and
actions would have been made from that which Miss Anthony declared to
be the true one, the author must confess that hereafter all biographies
will be read by her with a certain amount of skepticism--a doubt
whether the historian has drawn correct conclusions from apparent
premises, and a disbelief that one individual can state accurately the
motives which influenced another.
Most persons who have attained sufficient prominence to make a record
of their lives valuable are too busy to prepare an autobiography, but
there is only one other way to go down to posterity correctly
represented, and that is to have some one else write the history while
the hero still lives. If we admit this self-evident proposition, then
the question is presented, should it be published during his lifetime?
A reason analogous to that which justifies the writing, demands also
the publication, in order that denials or attacks may be met by the
person who, above all others, is best qualified to defend the original
statement. It seems a pity, too, that he should be deprived of knowing
what the press and the people think of the story of his life, since
there is no assurance that he will meet the book-reviewers in the next
world.
These volumes may claim the merit of truthfully describing the
principal events of Miss Anthony's life and presenting her opinions on
the various matters considered. She has objected to the eulogies, but
the writer holds that, as these are not the expressions of a partial
biographer but the spontaneous tributes of individuals and newspapers,
no rule of good taste is violated in giving them a place. It is only
justice that, since the abuse and ridicule of early years are fully
depicted, esteem and praise should have equal prominence; and surely
every one will read with pleasure the proof that the world's scorn and
repudiation have been changed to respect and approval. Many letters of
women have been used to disprove the assertion so often made, that
women themselves do not properly estimate the labors of Miss Anthony in
their behalf. It can not be expected that the masses should understand
or appreciate her work, but the written evidence herein submitted will
demonstrate that the women of each decade most prominent in
intellectual ability, in philanthropy, in reform, those who represent
the intelligence and progress of the age, have granted to it the most
cordial and thorough recognition.
There has not been the slightest attempt at rhetorical display, but
only an endeavor to tell in plain, simple language the story of the
life and work of one who was born into the simplicity and
straightforwardness of the Society of Friends and never departed from
them. The constant aim has been to condense, but it has not been an
easy task to crowd into limited space the history of nearly eighty
busy, eventful years, comprising a revolution in social and legal
customs. If the reader discover some things omitted which to him seem
vital, or others mentioned which appear unimportant, it is hoped he
will attribute them to an error of judgment rather than to an intention
to minimize or magnify unduly any person or action.
The fact should be kept in mind that this is not a history of woman
suffrage, except in so far as Miss Anthony herself has been directly
connected with it. A number of women have made valuable contributions
to this movement whose lives have not come in contact with hers,
therefore they have not been mentioned in these pages, which have been
devoted almost exclusively to her personal labors and associations.
Many of those even who have been her warm and faithful friends have had
to be omitted for want of space. No one can know the regret this has
caused, or the conscientious effort which has been made to render exact
justice to Miss Anthony's co-workers. It was so difficult for her to
select the few pictures for which room could be spared that she was
strongly tempted to exclude all. Personal controversies have been
omitted, in the belief that nothing could be gained which would justify
handing them down to future generations. Where differences have existed
in regard to matters of a public nature, only so much of them has been
given as might serve for an object lesson on future occasions.
In preparing these volumes over 20,000 letters have been read and,
whenever possible, some of them used to tell the story, especially
those written by Miss Anthony herself, as her own language seemed
preferable to that of any other, but only a comparatively small number
of the latter could be obtained. She kept copies of a few important
official letters, and friends in various parts of the country kindly
sent those in their possession. Every letter quoted in these volumes
was copied from the original, hence there can be no question of
authenticity. The autographs reproduced in fac-simile were clipped from
letters written to Miss Anthony. Her diaries of over fifty years have
furnished an invaluable record. The strict financial accounts of all
moneys received and spent, frequently have supplied a date or incident
when every other source had failed. A mine of information was found in
her full set of scrap-books, beginning with 1850; the History of Woman
Suffrage; almost complete files of Garrison's Liberator, the
Anti-Slavery Standard, and woman's rights papers--Lily, Una,
Revolution, Ballot-Box, Woman's Journal, Woman's Tribune. The reader
easily can perceive the difficulty of condensation, with Miss Anthony's
own history so closely interwoven with the periods and the objects
represented by all these authorities.
The intent of this work has been to trace briefly the evolution of a
life and a condition. The transition of the young Quaker girl, afraid
of the sound of her own voice, into the reformer, orator and statesman,
is no more wonderful than the change in the status of woman, effected
so largely through her exertions. At the beginning she was a chattel in
the eye of the law; shut out from all advantages of higher education
and opportunities in the industrial world; an utter dependent on man;
occupying a subordinate position in the church; restrained to the
narrowest limits along social lines; an absolute nonentity in politics.
Today American women are envied by those of all other nations, and
stand comparatively free individuals, with the exception of political
disabilities.
During the fifty years which have wrought this revolution, just one
woman in all the world has given every day of her time, every dollar of
her money, every power of her being, to secure this result. She was
impelled to this work by no personal grievance, but solely through a
deep sense of the injustice which, on every side, she saw perpetrated
against her sex, and which she determined to combat. Never for one
short hour has the cause of woman been forgotten or put aside for any
other object. Never a single tie has been formed, either of affection
or business, which would interfere with this supreme purpose. Never a
speech has been given, a trip taken, a visit made, a letter written, in
all this half-century, that has not been done directly in the interest
of this one object. There has been no thought of personal comfort,
advancement or glory; the self-abnegation, the self-sacrifice, have
been absolute--they have been unparalleled.
There has been no desire to emphasize the hardships and unpleasant
features, but only to picture in the fewest possible words the many
consecutive years of unremitting toil, begun amidst conditions which
now seem almost incredible, and continued with sublime courage in the
face of calumny and persecution such as can not be imagined by the
women of today. Nothing has been concealed or mitigated. In those years
of constant aggression, when every step was an experiment, there must
have been mistakes, but the story would be incomplete if they were left
untold. No effort has been made to portray a perfect character, but
only that of a woman who dared take the blows and bear the scorn that
other women might be free. Future generations will read these pages
through tears, and will wonder what manner of people those were who not
only permitted this woman to labor for humanity fifty years, almost
unaided, but also compelled her to beg or earn the money with which to
carry on her work. If certain opinions shall be found herein which the
world is not ready to accept, let it be remembered that, as Miss
Anthony was in advance of public sentiment in the past, she may be
equally so in the present, and that the radicalism which we reject
today may be the conservatism at which we will wonder tomorrow.
Those who follow the story of this life will confirm the assertion that
every girl who now enjoys a college education; every woman who has the
chance of earning an honest living in whatever sphere she chooses;
every wife who is protected by law in the possession of her person and
her property; every mother who is blessed with the custody and control
of her own children--owes these sacred privileges to Susan B. Anthony
beyond all others. This biography goes to the public with the earnest
hope that it may carry to every man a conviction of his imperative duty
to secure for women the same freedom which he himself enjoys; and that
it may impress upon every woman a solemn obligation to complete the
great work of this noble pioneer.
[Autograph: Ida Husted Harper]
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
ANCESTRY, HOME AND CHILDHOOD. (1550-1826.), 1-15
Berkshire Hills; noted persons born there; Anthony and Read genealogy;
military record; religious beliefs; education; marriage of father and
mother of Susan B. Anthony; her birth and childhood; characteristics of
mother; first factory built.
CHAPTER II
GIRLHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE. (1826-1838.), 17-31
Removal to Battenville, N.Y.; manufacturing business; temperance and
labor questions; new house; Susan's factory experience; Quaker
discipline; the home school; first teaching; boarding-school life;
Susan's letters and journals.
CHAPTER III.
FINANCIAL CRASH--THE TEACHER. (1838-1845.), 33-46
The panic; father's letters; teaching at Union Village; the home
sacrificed; life at Center Falls; more Quaker discipline; teaching at
New Rochelle; Miss Anthony's letters on slavery, temperance, medical
practice, Van Buren, etc.; teaching at Center Falls, Cambridge and Fort
Edward; proposals of marriage; removal to Rochester, N. Y.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FARM HOME--END OP TEACHING. (1845-1850.), 47-55
Journey to Rochester; the farm home and life; teaching in Canajoharie;
a devotee of fashion; death of Cousin Margaret; weary of the
school-room; early temperance work; first public address; return home;
end of teaching.
CHAPTER V.
ENTRANCE INTO PUBLIC LIFE. (1850-1852.), 57-80
Conditions leading to a public career; her home the center of
reformers; temperance festival; first meeting with the Fosters, Mrs.
Stanton, Mrs. Bloomer, Lucy Stone, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley;
women silenced in men's temperance meeting at Albany, hold one of their
own; advice from Greeley and Mrs. Stanton; first Woman's State
Temperance Convention; men's State Temperance Convention in Syracuse
rejects women delegates; Rev. Samuel J. May and Rev. Luther Lee stand
by the women; Miss Anthony as temperance agent; her appeal to women;
attends her first Woman's Rights Convention at Syracuse; criticises
decollete dress; letters and speeches of Stanton, Mayo, Stone, Brown,
Nichols, Rose, Gage, Gerrit Smith, etc.; Bible controversy; vicious
comment of Syracuse Star, N.Y. Herald, Rev. Byron Sunderland, etc.;
platform of Human Rights.
CHAPTER VI.
TEMPERANCE AND TEACHERS' CONVENTIONS. (1852-1853.), 81-105
Women's first appearance before Albany Legislature; Miss Anthony, Rev.
Antoinette Brown and Mrs. Bloomer speak in New York and Brooklyn by
invitation of S.P. Townsend and make tour of State; attack of Utica
Telegraph; phrenological chart; visit at Greeley's; women insulted and
rejected at temperance meeting in Brick Church, New York; abusive
speeches of Wood, Chambers, Barstow and others; Greeley's defense;
attack of N.Y. Commercial-Advertiser, Sun, Organ and Courier; first
annual meeting Women's State Temperance Society; letters from Gerrit
Smith and Neal Dow; right of Divorce; men control meeting; Mrs. Stanton
and Miss Anthony withdraw from Society; Samuel F. Gary declines to
attend Temperance Convention; characteristic advice from Greeley; Miss
Anthony attends State Teachers' Convention and raises a commotion;
Professor Davies' speech; disgraceful scene at World's Temperance
Convention in New York; Woman's Rights Convention mobbed; Cleveland
Convention; Miss Anthony and Rev. W.H. Channing call Woman's Rights
Convention in Rochester.
CHAPTER VII.
PETITIONS--BLOOMERS--LECTURES. (1854.), 107-122
Development of character; securing petitions for better laws; Woman's
Rights Convention at Albany; ridiculous report of Representative
Burnett; Miss Anthony's speech; canvassing the State and raising the
funds; history of the Bloomer Costume, with interesting letters;
lecture trip to Washington; opinions on slavery; hard experiences;
conventions at Saratoga and Philadelphia; preparing to canvass New York
State.
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST COUNTY CANVASS--THE WATER CURE. (1855.), 123-136
Winter canvass of New York; extract from Rondout Courier; letter from
Greeley on Woman Suffrage; another proposal; applying the "water cure;"
hot meal for husbands, cold bite for wives; marriages of Lucy Stone and
Antoinette Brown; speaking at birthplace; Saratoga Convention; goes to
Worcester Hydropathic Institute; her letters from Boston and Worcester;
first Republican meeting; treatment at "water cure;" letter from Dr.
Rogers on marriage; takes out life insurance.
CHAPTER IX.
ADVANCE ALONG ALL LINES. (1856.), 137-148
Invited to act as agent for American Anti-Slavery Society; second
canvass of New York; her letters describing hardships of journey,
position of wives, etc.; Senator Foote's insolent report on petitions;
advice to a wife; preparing speech on Co-Education; its reception in
Troy; letter from Mary L. Booth on injustice to women teachers; meeting
at Saratoga; the raid at Osawatomie; letter to brother Merritt
regarding it; pathetic letter from Mary L. Booth; Greeley provoked;
Gerrit Smith on woman's dress; New York Convention; words of confidence
from Anti-Slavery Committee.
CHAPTER X.
CAMPAIGNING WITH THE GARRISONIANS. (1857-1858.), 149-166
Political conditions; Miss Anthony's band of speakers; Abolition
meetings; Remond's speech; letter from Garrison; notes of her speeches;
Maria Weston Chapman; lecture trip to Maine; stormy State Teachers'
Convention at Binghamton; Mrs. Stanton's comment; letter of Miss
Anthony on family affection: the "raspberry experiment;" the "good old
times;" "health food cranks;" New York Convention in hands of mob;
stirring up teachers at Lockport; mass meeting at Rochester in
opposition to capital punishment; gift of Francis Jackson.
CHAPTER XI.
CONDITIONS PRIOR TO THE WAR. (1859.), 167-184
Scheme for Free Church; letter from Geo. Wm. Curtis on Woman's Rights;
Miss Anthony's letters on pecuniary independence, denial of human
rights, woman's individuality; criticism of Curtis; six weeks'
legislative work in Albany; convention in New York under difficulties;
extract from Tribune; Memorial to Legislatures; lecturing at New York
watering places; journey on boat to Poughkeepsie; anecdote of waiter at
hotel; incident of Quaker meeting in Easton; married women too busy to
help in fall canvass; letter of Rev. Thomas K. Beecher; incident at
Gerrit Smith's--the Solitude of Self; John Brown meeting; letters
regarding it from Pillsbury and Mrs. Stanton; Hovey Legacy;
correspondence with Judge Ormond, of Alabama; "We are your enemies!"
CHAPTER XII.
RIFT IN COMMON LAW--DIVORCE QUESTION. (1860.), 185-205
Early Woman's Rights meetings not Suffrage conventions; Legal Status of
Woman outlined by David Dudley Field; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as
co-workers and writers; Tilton's description of the two; before the
N.Y. Legislature; Married Woman's Property Law; woman's debt to Susan
B. Anthony; Emerson on Lyceum Bureau; letters from Mary S. Anthony on
injustice to school-teachers; Beecher's lecture on Woman's Rights;
convention at Cooper Institute; Mrs. Stanton on Divorce; Phillips'
objections; Mrs. Dall's proper convention in Boston; battle renewed at
Progressive Friends' meeting; Miss Anthony's home duties; letter from
her birthplace; Anti-Slavery depository at Albany; Agricultural address
at Dundee; Miss Anthony's defiance of the law giving child to father.
CHAPTER XIII.
MOB EXPERIENCE--CIVIL WAR. (1861-1862.), 207-224
Difference between Republicans and Abolitionists; Miss Anthony arranges
series of Garrisonian meetings; mobbed in every city from Buffalo to
Albany; Mayor Thacher preserves the peace at State capital; last
Woman's Rights Convention before the War; Miss Anthony's views on
motherhood; Phillips declares for War; letters on this subject from
Beriah Green and Miss Anthony; opinion on "Adam Bede;" letter on Rosa
Bonheur and Harriet Hosmer; N.Y. Legislature repeals laws recently
enacted for women; letters from Anna Dickinson and Greeley on the War;
Miss Anthony's opinion of private schools; attends her last Teacher's
Convention; in the Anti-Slavery lecture field; death of father.
CHAPTER XIV.
WOMEN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE. (1863-1864.), 225-240
Disbelief that the War would lead to Woman Suffrage; letters from
Tilton on Proclamation and Henry B. Stanton on condition of country;
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton issue appeal to women to form National
Loyal League; organization in Church of the Puritans; Miss Anthony's
speech; they prepare eloquent Address to President Lincoln;
headquarters opened in Cooper Institute; petitions and letters sent out
by Miss Anthony; description of draft riots; letters regarding her
father and the sale of the home; lively note from Tilton; raising money
for League; almost 400,000 names secured; Sumner presents petitions in
Senate; letter from Sumner; merry letter from Phillips; first
anniversary of the League; Amendment XIII submitted by Congress;
closing of League headquarters; failure of the government to recognize
its distinguished women.
CHAPTER XV.
MALE IN THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. (1865.), 241-253
Death of niece Ann Eliza McLean; letters on the loss of loved ones;
trip to Kansas; work among refugees and in brother's newspaper office;
appeals to return to the East; letters on division in Anti-Slavery
Society; Ottumwa speech on Reconstruction; an unpleasant night; address
to colored people at Leavenworth; Republicans object to a mention of
Woman Suffrage; Miss Anthony learns of motion for Amendment to Federal
Constitution to disfranchise on account of Sex, and immediately starts
eastward; confers with Mrs. Stanton and they issue appeal to women of
country to protest against proposed Fourteenth Amendment; Miss Anthony
holds meetings at Concord, Westchester and many other places; N.Y.
Independent supports women's demands.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE NEGRO'S HOUR. (1866.), 255-270
Reconstruction period; Anti-Slavery Society declines coalition with
Woman's Rights Society; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton issue strong call
for the reassembling in New York of Woman's Rights forces; Robert
Purvis and Anna Dickinson approve; convention meets in Dr. Cheever's
church; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton present ringing Address to
Congress; Miss Anthony's speech for union of the two organizations;
Equal Rights Association formed; controversy of Phillips, Tilton,
Anthony, Stanton in Standard office; Standard's offer of space
rejected; Miss Anthony's speech at Equal Rights meeting in Albany;
abusive article from N.Y. World; mass meetings held and petitions
circulated to have women included in Fourteenth Amendment; Republicans
refuse to recognize their claims; Democrats favor them to defeat the
negroes; Miss Anthony complains of Standard's treatment; words from
friends and foes.
CHAPTER XVII.
CAMPAIGNS IN NEW YORK AND KANSAS. (1867.), 271-294
Canvass of New York to secure Woman Suffrage Amendment to new State
Constitution; scurrilous comment of Buffalo Commercial; praise of Troy
Times; Miss Anthony rebukes selfish woman; always assumes the drudgery;
Beecher can not work in organizations; Lucy Stone's letters from Kansas
on action of Republicans; Beecher's speech in New York on Woman
Suffrage; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton prepare Memorial to Congress;
Miss Anthony and Greeley break lances at Albany; Curtis stands by the
women; Mrs. Greeley's petition used to checkmate her husband; Anna
Dickinson's indignation; Kansas Republican Committee fights Woman
Suffrage; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton go to Kansas; hardships of the
campaign; Mrs. Starrett's description of Miss Anthony; negroes oppose
woman suffrage; George Francis Train comes to the rescue; Suffrage
Amendment defeated; Leavenworth Commercial pays tribute; Miss Anthony,
Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Train make lecture tour from Omaha to Boston;
persecution by former friends.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ESTABLISHING THE REVOLUTION. (1868.), 295-311
Mr. Train and David M. Melliss furnish funds for starting Woman
Suffrage newspaper, The Revolution; comments of press; Mr. Train in
Dublin jail; Mrs. Stanton defends The Revolution; how women were
sacrificed; bright description of paper and editors; Equal Rights
Association divided between claims of woman and negro; Miss Anthony and
Mrs. Stanton delegates to Democratic National Convention at Tammany
Hall; their reception; Miss Anthony represents Workingwomen's
Association at National Labor Congress in New York; her suffrage
resolution rejected; her advice to women typesetters; sad case of
Hester Vaughan; S. C. Pomeroy and George W. Julian present Woman
Suffrage Amendments in Senate and House of Representatives.
CHAPTER XIX.
AMENDMENT XV--FOUNDING OF NATIONAL SOCIETY. (1869.), 313-336
First National Convention in Washington; colored men object to Woman
Suffrage; first hearing before Congressional Committee; descriptive
letter from Grace Greenwood; Miss Anthony arraigns Republicans at
Chicago; Mrs. Livermore's tribute to Miss Anthony; speech at N.Y. Press
Club on woman's "proposing;" Fifteenth Amendment submitted; criticism
by The Revolution; Train withdraws from paper; Woman's Bureau; letters
from Mrs. Livermore, Anna Dickinson, Gail Hamilton; stormy session of
Equal Rights Association; Miss Anthony's speech against Amendment XV;
William Winter defends her; discussion of "free love" resolution; Equal
Rights platform too broad; founding of National Woman Suffrage
Association; forming of American Woman Suffrage Association; Miss
Anthony secures testimonial for Mrs. Rose; conventions at Saratoga and
Newport; Miss Anthony protests against paying taxes; Mr. and Mrs. Minor
claim woman's right to vote under Fourteenth Amendment; Miss Anthony
speaks at Dayton, O., on laws for married women; Mrs. Hooker's
description of her; Miss Anthony's speech at Hartford Convention;
anecdote of Beecher; Mrs. Hooker's account; letters from Dr. Kate
Jackson and Sarah Pugh; division in suffrage ranks.
CHAPTER XX.
FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY--END OF EQUAL RIGHTS SOCIETY. (1870.), 337-350
Washington Convention; Miss Anthony's speech on striking "male" from
District of Columbia Bill; descriptions by Mrs. Fannie Howland, Hearth
and Home, Mrs. Hooker, Mary Clemmer; Fiftieth Birthday celebration and
comments of N.Y. Press; Phoebe Gary's poem; Miss Anthony's letter to
mother; begins with Lyceum Bureau; Robert G. Ingersoll comes to her
assistance; attack by Detroit Free Press; tribute of Chicago Legal
News; efforts to unite the two National Suffrage organizations; Union
Suffrage Society formed; end of Equal Rights Association.
CHAPTER XXI.
END OF REVOLUTION--STATUS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE. (1870.), 351-370
McFarland-Richardson trial; letter from Catharine Beecher on Divorce;
financial struggle; touching letters; Mrs. Hooker offers to help; Alice
and Phoebe Gary; prospectus of The Revolution; giving up of the paper;
Miss Anthony's letter regarding it; in the lecture field; the little
Professor; Miss Anthony's strong summing-up of the Status of Woman
Suffrage; rejected by National Labor Congress in Philadelphia; attack
of Utica Herald; Second Decade Meeting in New York; Mrs. Davis' History
of the Movement for Twenty Years; death of nephew Thomas King McLean;
meeting with Phillips.
CHAPTER XXII.
MRS. HOOKER'S CONVENTION--THE LECTURE FIELD. (1871.), 371-385
Mrs. Hooker undertakes Washington Convention; amusing letters from
Anthony, Stanton, Hooker, Wright; first appearance of Mrs. Woodhull;
accounts by Philadelphia Press, Washington Daily Patriot and National
Republican; resolution by Miss Anthony claiming right to vote under
Fourteenth Amendment; Declaration signed by 80,000 women; Catharine
Beecher and Mrs. Woodhull; Mrs. Stanton rebukes men who object to Mrs.
Woodhull; hard life of a lecturer; Mrs. Griffing, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs.
Hooker on political party attitude; Phoebe Couzins pleads for the
National Association; Mrs. Woodhull at New York May Anniversary; charge
of "free love" refuted; forcible letter from Miss Anthony declaring for
one Moral Standard.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIRST TRIP TO THE PACIFIC COAST. (1871.), 387-408
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton cross the continent; newspaper comment;
Miss Anthony's letters from Salt Lake City; hostile treatment by San
Francisco press; description of trip to Yosemite; journey by boat to
Oregon; her letters on lecture experiences in Oregon and Washington;
ridicule of Portland Bulletin; misrepresentation of Territorial
Despatch; "cards" in papers of British Columbia; account of stage ride
back to San Francisco; banquet at Grand Hotel; journey eastward with
Sargent family; snowbound among the Rockies.
CHAPTER XXIV.
REPUBLICAN SPLINTER--MISS ANTHONY VOTES. (1872.), 409-429
National Convention declares women enfranchised under Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments; Miss Anthony sustains this position before Senate
Judiciary Committee; friends in Rochester present testimonial; she
reads in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly call to form New Party under
auspices of National Suffrage Association; her indignant remonstrance;
hastens to New York and prevents coalition; Liberal Republican
Convention at Cincinnati refuses to adopt Suffrage resolution; Miss
Anthony's comment; Republican Convention at Philadelphia makes first
mention of Woman; Mr. Blackwell's and Miss Anthony's letters regarding
this; Democratic Convention at Baltimore ignores Woman; Hon. John
Cochran tells how not to do it; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage urge women
to support Republican ticket; Miss Anthony states her Political
Position; her delight and Mrs. Stanton's doubts; letter from Henry
Wilson; Republican Committee summons her to Washington; she arranges
series of Republican rallies; sustains party only on Suffrage plank;
Miss Anthony Votes; newspaper comment; she is arrested; examination
before U.S. Commissioner; Judge Henry R. Selden and Hon. John Van
Voorhis undertake her case; Rochester Express defends her; letter on
case from Benjamin F. Butler.
CHAPTER XXV.
TRIAL FOR VOTING UNDER FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. (1873.), 431-448
Miss Anthony's speech at Washington Convention; she appears before U.S.
District-Judge at Albany and bail is increased to $1,000; addresses
State Constitutional Commission; indicted by grand jury; becomes
unconscious on lecture platform at Ft. Wayne; votes again; call for
Twenty-fifth Suffrage Anniversary; Miss Anthony delivers her great
Constitutional Argument in twenty-nine post office districts in Monroe
Co.; District-Attorney moves her trial to another county; she speaks at
twenty-one places and Mrs. Gage at sixteen in that county; Rochester
Union and Advertiser condemns her; trial opens at Canandaigua; masterly
argument of Judge Selden; Justice Ward Hunt delivers Written Opinion
without leaving bench; declines to submit case to Jury or to allow it
to be polled; refuses new trial; spirited encounter between Miss
Anthony and Judge; newspaper comment; trial of Inspectors; Judge
refuses to allow Counsel to address Jury; opinion of Mr. Van Voorhis;
contributions sent to Miss Anthony by friends; death of sister Guelma
McLean; Miss Anthony's letter of grief to mother; generous gift of
Anson Lapham.
CHAPTER XXVI.
NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO JURY OR FRANCHISE. (1874.), 449-465
Appeal to Congress to remit fine and declare Right to Trial by Jury;
report from House Committee for and against, by Butler and Tremaine;
from Senate Committee for and against, by Carpenter and Edmunds; pardon
of Inspectors by President Grant; Supreme Court decision in suit of
Virginia L. Minor against Inspectors for refusing her vote;
Representative Butler and Senator Lapham on Woman Suffrage; President
Grant's opinion; letter of Judge A.G. Riddle on chief obstacles; death
of Sumner; Miss Anthony's speech and letter on Women's Temperance
Crusade; lying telegram and N.Y. Herald's truthful report of
convention; letter by Miss Anthony, "honesty best policy;" suffrage
campaign in Michigan; Beecher-Tilton case.
CHAPTER XXVII.
REVOLUTION DEBT PAID--WOMEN'S FOURTH OF JULY. (1875-1876.), 467-482
Miss Anthony's annual struggle to hold Washington Convention; speech in
Chicago on Social Purity; comment of St. Louis Democrat and other
papers; hard lecture tour in Iowa; shooting of brother Daniel R.;
Revolution debt paid; commendation of press; Centennial Resolutions at
Washington Convention; establishing Centennial headquarters at
Philadelphia; Republicans again recognize Woman in National platform;
Miss Anthony and others present Woman's Declaration of Independence at
Centennial celebration; eloquent description; History of Woman Suffrage
begun; writes articles for Johnson's Encyclopedia.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
COLORADO CAMPAIGN--POLITICAL ATTITUDE. (1877-1878.), 483-498
Advocates of Woman Suffrage compelled to return to former policy of
demanding Sixteenth Amendment to Federal Constitution; letters from
Garrison and Phillips on this subject; descriptions by Mary Clemmer and
Washington papers of presenting Suffrage petitions in Congress; Lyceum
Bureau circular with comment of Forney; death of sister Hannah Mosher;
friendship of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton; tribute of Annie McDowell;
campaigning in Colorado; speaking in saloons; writing "Homes of Single
Women" in Denver; prayer-meeting in Capitol at Washington; Miss Anthony
urged not to miss another National Convention; Thirtieth Suffrage
Anniversary at Rochester; letter from J.H. Hayford relative to Woman
Suffrage in Wyoming; Miss Anthony defines her attitude in regard to
Political Parties.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE REPORTS--COMMENT. (1879-1880.), 499-513
Vigorous resolutions at National Convention; Senator Morton's position
on Woman Suffrage; Senator Wadleigh scored by Mary Clemmer; first
favorable Senate Committee report; advance in public sentiment;
extracts from Indiana papers; bitter attacks of Richmond (Ky.) Herald
and Grand Rapids (Mich.) Times; interview in Chicago Tribune on Woman's
need of ballot for Temperance legislation; convention in St. Louis and
Miss Anthony's response to floral offering; death of Wm. Lloyd
Garrison; desire for a woman's paper; new workers; Washington
Convention; hospitality of Riggs House; death of mother.
LIST OF AUTOGRAPHS.
ANTHONY, SUSAN B.
ANTHONY, HUMPHREY
ANTHONY, DANIEL
ANTHONY, LUCY READ
ANTHONY, COLONEL D.R.
ANTHONY, MARY S.
ANTHONY, SENATOR HENRY B.
A. BRONSON ALCOTT
AVERY, RACHEL FOSTER
BARTON, CLARA
BEECHER, HENRY WARD
BIGGS, CAROLINE ASHURST
BLACKWELL, ALICE STONE
BLACKWELL, REV. ANTOINETTE BROWN
BLACKWELL, DR. ELIZABETH
BLAIR, SENATOR HENRY W.
BLAKE, LILLIE DEVEREUX
BLOOMER, AMELIA
BOOTH, MARY L.
BRIGHT, URSULA M.
BROWN, SENATOR B. GRATZ
BROWNE, THOMAS M., M.C.
BUTLER, GENERAL BENJAMIN F.
BUTLER, JOSEPHINE E.
CAREY, SENATOR JOSEPH M.
CARY, ALICE
CARY, PHOEBE
CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN
CHANNING, REV. WILLIAM HENRY
CHAPIN, REV. E.H.
CHAPMAN, MARIA WESTON
CHEEVER, REV. GEORGE B.
CHILD, LYDIA MARIA
CLAY, LAURA
CLEMMER, MARY
COBBE, FRANCES POWER
COBDEN, JANE
COLBY, CLARA BEWICK
COOPER, SARAH B.
CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM
DAVIS, PAULINA WRIGHT
DICKINSON, ANNA E.
DIGGS, ANNIE L.
DOLPH, SENATOR J.N.
DOUGLASS, FREDERICK
DOW, NEAL
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO
FAWCETT, MILLICENT GARRETT
FIELD, KATE
FORNEY, COLONEL JOHN W.
FOSTER, ABBY KELLY
FOSTER, STEPHEN S.
FOULKE, HON. WM. DUDLEY
FROTHINGHAM, REV. O.B.
GAGE, MATILDA JOSLYN
GARFIELD, PRESIDENT JAMES A.
GARRISON, WM. LLOYD
GIBBONS, ABBY HOPPER
GOODRICH, SARAH KNOX
GRANT, MRS. U.S.
GREELEY, HORACE
GREENWOOD, GRACE
HAMILTON, GAIL
HARPER, IDA HUSTED
HEARST, PHOEBE A.
HOAR, SENATOR GEORGE F.
HOOKER, ISABELLA BEECHER
HOSMER, HARRIET
HOWELL, MARY SEYMOUR
JACOBI, DR. MARY PUTNAM
JACKSON, FRANCIS
JULIAN, GEORGE W., M.C.
KELLEY, WILLIAM D., M.C.
KING, REV. THOMAS STARR
LAPHAM, SENATOR ELBRIDGE G.
LOGAN, MRS. JOHN A.
LOZIER, DR. CLEMENCE S.
LUCAS, MARGARET BRIGHT
MARTINEAU, HARRIET
McCULLOCH, SECRETARY HUGH
McLAREN, PRISCILLA BRIGHT
MERRICK, CAROLINE E.
MINOR, VIRGINIA L.
MITCHELL, MARIA
MORTON, SENATOR OLIVER P.
MOTT, LUCRETIA
NICHOL, ELIZABETH PEASE,
OWEN, ROBERT DALE,
PALMER, BERTHA HONORÉ,
PALMER, SENATOR THOMAS W.,
PARKER, REV. THEODORE,
PHILLIPS, WENDELL,
PILLSBURY, PARKER,
POMEROY, SENATOR S.C.,
POST, AMY,
PURVIS, HARRIET,
PURVIS, ROBERT,
REED, SPEAKER THOMAS B.,
RIDDLE, JUDGE A.G.,
ROSE, ERNESTINE L.,
SARGENT, SENATOR A.A.,
SARGENT, ELLEN CLARK,
SEWALL, MAY WRIGHT,
SHAW, REV. ANNA HOWARD,
SIMPSON, BISHOP MATTHEW,
SMITH, GERRIT,
SOMERSET, LADY HENRY,
SPOFFORD, JANE H,
STANFORD, JANE L.,
STANFORD, SENATOR LELAND,
STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY,
STEVENS, THADDEUS,
STONE, LUCINDA HINSDALE,
STONE, LUCY,
SUMNER, CHARLES,
SWIFT, MARY WOOD,
TAYLOR, EZRA B., M.C.,
TAYLOR, HELEN,
TAYLOR, MENTIA (MRS. PETER),
THOMPSON, GEORGE, M.P.,
TILTON, THEODORE,
TODD, ISABELLA M.S.,
TRAIN, GEORGE FRANCIS,
TYNG, REV. STEPHEN H.,
UPTON, HARRIET TAYLOR,
WADE, SENATOR BENJAMIN F.,
WALLACE, ZERELDA G.,
WARREN, SENATOR FRANCIS E.,
WHITE, SENATOR JOHN D.,
WHITING, LILIAN,
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF,
WILLARD, FRANCES E.,
WILSON, VICE-PRESIDENT HENRY,
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. I.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, at the age of 76
"THE OLD HIVE," birthplace of father
of SUSAN B. ANTHONY
HOME OF LUCY READ, mother of SUSAN B. ANTHONY
WEST END OF KITCHEN IN OLD HOMESTEAD
BIRTHPLACE OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY
TEMPORARY HOME AT BATTENVILLE, N.Y.
THE BATTENVILLE HOME
HOME AT CENTER FALLS, N. Y.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY at the age of 28
AUNT HANNAH, the Quaker preacher
SUSAN B. ANTHONY at the age of 32
HUMPHREY ANTHONY at the age of 95
SUSAN B. ANTHONY at the age of 36
THE FARM-HOME NEAR ROCHESTER
ERNESTINE L. ROSE
FATHER AND MOTHER OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY
LUCRETIA MOTT
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
SUSAN B. ANTHONY at the age of 48
SUSAN B. ANTHONY at the age of 50,
from photograph by Sarony
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER
DR. CLEMENCE S. LOZIER
VIRGINIA L. MINOR
JANE H. SPOFFORD
CHAPTER I.
ANCESTRY, HOME AND CHILDHOOD.
1550-1826.
Among the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts is a very beautiful place in
which to be born. It is famed in song and story for the loveliness of
its scenery and the purity of its air. It has no lofty peaks, no great
canyons, no mighty rivers, but it is diversified in the most
picturesque manner by the long line of Green Mountains, whose lower
ranges bear the musical name of "Berkshire Hills;" by rushing streams
tumbling through rocky gorges and making up in impetuosity what they
lack in size; by noble forests, gently undulating meadows, quaint
farmhouses, old bridges and bits of roadway which are a never-ending
delight to the artist. Writers, too, have found inspiration here and
many exquisite descriptions in prose and verse commemorate the beauties
of this region.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick, the first woman in America to make a literary
reputation on two continents, was born at Stockbridge, and her stories
and sketches were located here. That old seat of learning, Williams
College, is situated among these foothills. In his summer home at
Pittsfield, Longfellow wrote "The Old Clock on the Stairs"; at
Stockbridge, Hawthorne builded his "House of the Seven Gables"; and
Lydia Sigourney poetically told of "Stockbridge Bowl" with "Its foot of
stone and rim of green." It was at Lenox that Henry Ward Beecher
created "Norwood" and "Star Papers." Here Charlotte Cushman and Fanny
Kemble came for many summers to rest and find new life. Harriet Hosmer
had her first dreams of fame at the Sedgwick school. The Goodale
sisters, Elaine and Dora, were born upon one of these mountainsides and
both embalmed its memory in their poems. Dora lovingly sings:
Dear Berkshire, dear birthplace, the hills are thy towers,
Those lofty fringed summits of granite and pine;
No valley's green lap is so spangled with flowers,
No stream of the wildwood so crystal as thine.
Say where do the March winds such treasures uncover,
Such maple and arrowwood burn in the fall,
As up the blue peaks where the thunder-gods hover
In cloud-curtained Berkshire who cradled us all?
Henry Ward Beecher said:
This county of valleys, lakes and mountains is yet to be as
celebrated as the lake district of England and the hill country of
Palestine.... Here is such a valley as the ocean would be if, when
its waves were running tumultuous and high, it were suddenly
transformed and solidified.... The endless variety never ceases to
astonish and please.... It is indeed like some choice companion, of
rich heart and genial imagination, never twice alike in mood, in
conversation, in radiant sobriety or half-bright sadness; bold,
tender, deep, various.
One has but to come into the midst of these hills to fall a victim to
their fascination, while to those who were born among them there is no
spot on earth so beautiful or so beloved. They have sent forth
generations of men and women, whose fame is as imperishable as the
marble and granite which form their everlasting foundations. Among the
noted men who have gone out from the Berkshire region are William
Cullen Bryant, Cyrus W. Field and brothers, Jonathan Edwards, Mark and
Albert Hopkins, Senator Henry L. Dawes, Governor Edwin D. Morgan, of
New York, George F. Root, the musical composer, Governor George N.
Briggs, of Massachusetts, Governor and Senator Francis E. Warren, of
Wyoming, the Deweys, the Barnards, a list too long for quoting. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, whose grandfather was a Berkshire man, wrote:
Berkshire has produced a race which, for independent thought,
daring schemes and achievements that have had world-wide
consequences, has not been surpassed. We claim, also, that more of
those first things that draw the chariot of progress forward so
that people can see that it has moved, have been planned and
executed by the inhabitants of the 950 square miles that constitute
the territory of Berkshire than can be credited to any other tract
of equal extent in the United States.
Of late years the world of wealth and fashion has invaded the Berkshire
country and there are no more magnificent summer homes than those of
Lenox, Stockbridge, Great Barrington and the neighboring towns.
The first of the Anthony family of whom there is any record was
William, born in Cologne, Germany, who came to England during the reign
of Edward the Sixth and was made Chief Graver of the Royal Mint and
Master of the Scales, holding this office through the reigns of Edward
and Mary and part of that of Elizabeth. His crest and coat of arms are
entered in the royal enumeration. His son Derrick was the father of Dr.
Francis Anthony, born in London, 1550. According to the Biographia
Britannica, he was graduated at Cambridge with the degree of Master of
Arts and became a learned physician and chemist. Although a man of high
character and generous impulses, he was intolerant of restraint and in
continual conflict with the College of Physicians. He died in his
seventy-fourth year, and was buried in the church of St. Bartholomew
the Great, where his handsome monument still remains. He left a
daughter and two sons, both of the latter distinguished physicians.
From John, the elder, sprung the American branch of the family. His
son, John, Jr., born in Hempstead, England, sailed to America in the
ship Hercules, from that port, April 16, 1634, when he was twenty-seven
years old. He settled in Portsmouth, R.I., and became a land-owner, an
innkeeper and an office-holder. His five children who survived infancy
left forty-three children. One of these forty-three, Abraham, had
thirteen children, and his son William fourteen, his son, William, Jr.,
four, his son David nine.
It was just before the beginning of the Revolution that this David
Anthony, with his wife, Judith Hicks, moved from Dartmouth, Mass., to
Berkshire and settled near Adams at the foot of Greylock, the highest
peak in the mountain range. This was considered the extreme West, as
little was known of all that lay beyond. They brought two children with
them and seven more were born here in the shadow of the mountains.
Humphrey, the second son, born at Dartmouth, February 2, 1770, married
Hannah Lapham, who was born near Adams (then called East Hoosac),
November 11, 1773; and here, also, January 27, 1794, was born the first
of their nine children, Daniel, father of Susan B. Anthony.
On the maternal side the grandfather, Daniel Read, was born at
Rehobeth, Mass., and said to be a lineal descendant and entitled to the
coat of arms of Sir Brianus de Rede, A.D. 1075; but he had too much of
the sturdy New England spirit to feel any special interest in the pomp
and pride of heraldry, and the family tree he prized most was found in
the grand old grove which shaded his own dooryard. Susannah Richardson,
his wife, was born at Scituate, Mass., and her family were among the
most wealthy and respected of that locality during the eighteenth
century. Both Reads and Richardsons removed to Cheshire, Mass., before
1770, and Daniel and Susannah were married there. It was but a few
months after this marriage when the first gun was fired at Lexington
and the whole country was ablaze with excitement. At the close of the
sermon, on a bright spring morning, the old minister, his voice
trembling with patriotic fervor, asked every man who was ready to
enlist in the Continental army to stand forth, and Daniel Read was the
first to step out into the aisle of the little meeting-house. Leaving
the girl-bride he entered the service and soon became conspicuous for
his bravery. He was one of the memorable expedition against Quebec
under Arnold, in 1775, and of the party commanded by Ethan Allen at the
capture of Ticonderoga. He was among that brave band from Cheshire
(Stafford's Hill) who fought under Colonel Stafford at Bennington. On
the 19th of October, 1780, he took part in the fatal fight of Stone
Arabia, under Col. John Brown, and served with honor throughout the
war. It was several years after peace had been declared and he had
returned home and settled down to the quiet life of a New England
farmer that, December 2, 1793, was born Lucy, the mother of Susan B.
Anthony.
[Illustration: THE "OLD HIVE," ADAMS, MASS.
BIRTHPLACE OF DANIEL, FATHER OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY.]
Daniel Read was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1814 and
was elected to various public offices. He was a Whig in politics and
adhered always to staunch republican principles, but rose above
partisanship and was universally respected. Daniel and Susannah were
thrifty New England Puritans, leading members of the Baptist
denomination and parishioners of the widely known Elder Leland. The
cooking for Sunday always was done on Saturday, and the greater part of
every Sunday, regardless of weather, was spent at church. They and
their children sat through a service of two hours in the morning, ate a
generous lunch at the noon intermission, and were ready for another two
hours' sermon in the afternoon, through all the heat of summer and the
terrible cold of New England winter.
Susannah Read remained always a devout and consistent Baptist, but
Daniel became, in later years, a thorough Universalist. Murray, the
founder of this church in England, had come to the Colonies before the
Revolutionary War, and by the close of the century the Universalists
were organized as a sect, holding general conventions and sending
itinerants among the people in the villages and country. Some of these
doubtless had penetrated to Adams and converted Daniel Read, who was
always liberal in his belief. He was an inveterate reader and pored
over a vast amount of theological discussion which attracted so much
attention in his day. The family moved from Cheshire to a suburb of
Adams called Bowen's Corners. Near their house was the tavern, its
proprietor known to all the people roundabout as "Uncle Sam" Bowen. He
and Daniel Read never wearied in setting forth the merits of "free
salvation." They were the only two persons in all that section of the
country who did not believe in a literal hell. It was the common
sentiment then that only those disbelieved in endless punishment who
had reason to be afraid of it, and, since both these men were exemplary
in every other respect, it was impossible for their friends to
understand their aberration. Susannah Read, in the language of that
time, "wore the skin off her knees," praying night and day that God
would bring her husband back into the fold, but her prayers never were
answered. Every Sunday regularly he accompanied her to church, and
faithfully contributed to the support of the preacher, but he died, at
the ripe old age of eighty-four, firm in his Universalist faith.
Susannah was the care-taker of the family and looked after the farm,
inheriting the Richardson energy and thrift. Daniel was genial,
good-natured and very intelligent, but his health being impaired from
army service, he was willing she should take the lead in business
matters. The farm was one of only a hundred acres, but was carefully
and economically managed and, at their death, the Reads left about
$10,000, which was then considered a snug little fortune. Lucy, one of
seven children, was born into a home of peace and comfort and had a
happy and uneventful childhood. She attended the district school, was a
fair writer and speller and, like her father very fond of reading. She
learned to cook and sew, make butter and cheese, spin and weave, and
was very domestic in all her tastes. The Reads and Anthonys were near
neighbors, and although differing widely in religious belief, a subject
of much prominence in those days, they were on terms of intimate
friendship even before the ties were made still closer by marriage
between the two families.
Both Anthonys and Laphams were Quakers as far back as the sect was in
existence. Both were families of wealth and influence, and when
Humphrey and Hannah were married she received from her parents a house
and thirty acres of land, which were entailed on her children. Silver
spoons are still in the family, which were part of her dowry more than
a century ago. Hannah Lapham Anthony was a most saintly woman and,
because of her beautiful religious character was made an elder and
given an exalted position on the "high seat."[1]
[Illustration: HOME OF LUCY READ, ADAMS, MASS.]
She was a very handsome brunette and was noted for the beauty and
elegance of her Quaker attire, her bonnets always being made in New
York. Humphrey never attained the "high seat;" he was too worldly. His
ambition was constantly to add more to his broad acres, to take a
bigger drove of cattle to Boston than any of his neighbors, and to get
a higher price for his own than any other Berkshire cheese would bring.
He had a number of farms and a hundred cows, while his wife made the
best cheese and was the finest housekeeper in all that part of the
country. The fame of her coffee and biscuits, apple dumplings and
chicken dinners, spread far and wide. Their kitchen was forty feet
long. One end was used for the dining-room, with the table seating
twenty persons, and in the other were the sink and the "penstock,"
which brought water from a clear, cold spring high up in the mountains.
Here also were the huge fire-place, the big brick oven and the large
pantry. Then there were the spacious "keeping" or sitting-room, with
the mother's bedroom opening out of it, the great weaving-room with its
wheels and loom, and two bed-rooms for the "help" down stairs, while
above were the children's sleeping-rooms. Opening out of the kitchen
was a room containing the cheese press and the big "arch" kettle, and
near by was a two-story building where the cheese was stored. Up in the
grove was the saw-mill, and at the foot of the hill was the blacksmith
shop, where nails were made, horses shod, wagons and farm implements
mended and, later, scythes manufactured. On all the farms were fine
orchards of apples, plums, pears, cherries and quinces, among which
stood long rows of beehives with their wealth of honey.
Here Daniel, father of Susan B. Anthony, grew to manhood in the midst
of comfort and abundance and in an atmosphere of harmony and love. The
Anthonys were broad and liberal in religious ideas, and in 1826, when
bitter dissensions regarding the divinity of Christ arose among the
Quakers, they followed Elias Hicks and were henceforth known as
"Hicksite Friends." This controversy divided many families, and on
account of it the orthodox brother, Elihu Anthony, insisted on removing
their aged father to his home in Saratoga, N.Y., to the great grief of
Humphrey, who claimed that the old gentleman was too childish to know
whether he was orthodox or Hicksite and ought not to be taken to "a new
country" in his declining years Hannah Anthony was ambitious for her
children and insisted that they should be placed where they might have
better educational facilities than in the little school at home.
Humphrey thought the boys could manage a farm and the girls weave good
cloth and make fine cheese without a boarding-school education. He
finally yielded, however, and Daniel and two daughters were sent to the
"Nine Partners," that famous Quaker boarding-school in Dutchess county,
N.Y. At the end of a year, Daniel, who was about nineteen, had made
such rapid progress that he was appointed teacher. The quaint
certificate given him by his associate teachers is still in existence
and reads:
This may apprize the friends & relatives of D. Anthony, that,
during his residence with us, he has been an affectionate consort,
excellent, consistant in the School, of steady deportment and
conversation, being an example for us to follow when we are
separated. We sincerely wish his preservation in all things
laudable and believe we can with propriety hereunto set our names.
Elihu Marshall, Charles Clement, John Taber, Stephen Willitz, Henry
Cox, Frederick A. Underhill, William Seamen.
There is a still more highly valued testimonial from the principal, the
noble and dignified Richard F. Mott, who was held in loving reverence
by all the distinguished Quaker families that confided their sons and
daughters to his wise and tender care:
Daniel Anthony has been an assistant here & we can aprise his
friends that he has faithfully discharged his duty in that
particular, has been a very agreeable companion & his conduct
remarkably correct & exemplary, which, joined to his pleasant &
obliging disposition, has gained him our esteem & affection.
We sincerely wish his prosperity, spiritually & temporally, & shall
gratefully remember him and his services.
On behalf of the sitting-room circle, R.F. MOTT.
Boarding School, 4 M., 1 D., 1814.
The profession of teacher did not appeal to hard-headed Humphrey
Anthony, and when Daniel came back with his brain full of ambitious
projects and with a thorough distaste for farming, and his sisters,
with many airs and graces and a feeling of superiority over the girls
in the neighborhood, Father Anthony declared that no more children of
his should go away to boarding-school. The fact that young Daniel was
skilled in mechanics and mathematics, able to superintend intelligently
all the work on the farm and to make a finer scythe than any man in the
shop, did not modify the father's opinion. When John, the next boy, was
old enough and the mother began to urge that he be sent to school, the
father offered him his choice to go or to stay at home and work that
year for $100. This was a large sum for those days, it out-weighed the
mother's arguments, John remained at home and regretted it all the rest
of his life.
[Illustration: WEST END OF KITCHEN IN OLD HOMESTEAD.]
The Anthony and Read farms were adjoining a mile east of Adams, and lay
upon the first level or "bench" of the Green mountains. From their
door-yards the ascent of the mountains began, and only the Hoosac in a
deep ravine separated them from the base of "Old Greylock." The crops
were raised on the "intervale" and the cattle pastured on the mountain
side. Adams was then a sleepy New England village, and the Hoosac was a
lovely stream, whose waters were used for the flocks and for the grist
and saw-mills; but in later years the village became a manufacturing
center and the banks of the pretty river were lined for miles with
great factories.
In early times wealthy Quakers had a school in their home or door-yard
for their own children. Those of the neighborhood were allowed to
attend at a certain price, and in this way undesirable pupils could be
kept out. At the Anthony residence this little school-house stood
beneath a great weeping willow beside the front gate, and among the
pupils was Lucy Read. She was the playmate of the sisters, and young
Dan was the torment of their lives, jumping out at them from unexpected
corners, eavesdropping to learn their little secrets and harassing them
in ways common to boys of all generations, and she never hesitated to
inform him that he was "the hatefullest fellow she ever knew." When
Daniel returned from boarding-school with all the prestige of several
years' absence, and was made master of the little home-school, one of
his pupils was this same Lucy Read, now a tall, beautiful girl with
glossy brown hair, large blue eyes and a fine complexion, the belle of
the neighborhood. The inevitable happened, childish feuds were
forgotten, and teacher and pupil decided to become husband and wife.
Then arose a formidable difficulty. The Anthonys were Quakers, the
Reads were Baptists, and a Quaker was not permitted to "marry out of
meeting." Love laughed at rules and restrictions eighty years ago, just
as it does to-day, and Daniel refused to let the Society come between
him and the woman of his choice, but Lucy had many misgivings. Thanks
to her father's ideas she had been brought up in a most liberal manner,
allowed to attend parties, dance and wear pretty clothes to her heart's
content, and it was a serious question with her whether she could give
up all these and adopt the plain and severe habits of the Quakers. She
had a marvelous voice, and, as she sang over her spinning-wheel, often
wished that she might "go into a ten-acre lot with the bars down" so
that she could let her voice out to its full capacity. The Quakers did
not approve of singing, and that pleasure also would have to be
relinquished. That the husband could give up his religious forms and
accept those of the wife never had been imagined.
Love finally triumphed, and the young couple were married July 13,
1817. A few nights before the wedding Lucy went to a party and danced
till four o'clock in the morning, while Friend Daniel sat bolt upright
against the wall and counted the days which should usher in a new
dispensation. A committee was sent at once to deal with Daniel, and
Lucy always declared he told them he "was sorry he married her," but he
would say, "No, my dear, I said I was sorry that in order to marry the
woman I loved best, I had to violate a rule of the religious society I
revered most." The matter was carefully talked over by the elders, and
as he had said he was sorry he had to violate the rule, and as the
family was one of much influence, and as he was their most highly
educated and cultivated member, it was unanimously decided not to turn
him out of meeting.[2] Lucy learned to love the Friends' religion and
often said she was a much more consistent Quaker than her husband, but
she never became a member of the Society, declaring she was "not good
enough." She did not use the "plain language," though she always
insisted that her husband should do so in addressing her; nor did she
adopt the Quaker costume, but she dressed simply and wore little
"cottage" straw bonnets with strings tied demurely under her chin and
later had them made of handsome shirred silk, the full white cap-ruche
showing inside. She sang no more except lullabies to the babies when
they came, and then the Quaker relatives would laugh and ask her why
she did it. Her long married life was very happy, notwithstanding its
many hardships, and she never regretted accepting her Quaker lover.
The previous summer Daniel had helped his father prepare the lumber and
build a large two-story addition to his house, and in return he gave to
his son the lumber for a new home, on a beautiful tract of ground
presented to the young couple by Father Read adjoining his own. While
this was being built they lived at the Read homestead, and the loom was
kept busy preparing the housekeeping outfit. In those days this was
made of linen, bleached and spun and woven by the women of the
household. Cotton was just coming into use, and Lucy Anthony was
considered very fortunate because she could have a few sheets and
pillow-cases which were half cotton.
The manufacture of cotton becoming a prominent industry in New England
at this time, the alert mind of Daniel Anthony conceived the idea of
building a factory and using the waters of Tophet brook and of a rapid
little stream which flowed through the Read farm. This was done, and
proved a success from the beginning. A document is still in existence
by which "D. Read agrees to let D. Anthony have as much water from the
brook on his farm as will run through a hole six inches in diameter."
This was conveyed by an aqueduct, made from hollow logs, to the factory
where it turned the over-shot wheel and furnished power to the
twenty-six looms. The factory hands for the most part came down from
the Green mountain regions, glad of an opportunity never before enjoyed
of earning wages and supporting themselves. They were girls of
respectability, and, as was the custom then, boarded with the families
of the mill-owners. Those of the Anthony factory were divided between
the wife and Hannah Anthony Hoxie, a married sister. Lucy Anthony soon
became acquainted with the stern realities of life. Her third baby was
born when the first was three years and two months old. That summer she
boarded eleven factory hands, who roomed in her house, and she did all
the cooking, washing and ironing, with no help except that of a
thirteen-year-old girl, who went to school and did "chores" night and
morning. The cooking for the family of sixteen was done on the hearth
in front of the fire-place and in a big brick oven at the side. Daniel
Anthony was a generous man, loved his wife and was well able to hire
help, but such a thing was not thought of at that time. No matter how
heavy the work, the woman of the household was expected to do it, and
probably would have been the first to resent the idea that assistance
was needed.
During the first seventeen years of this marriage eight children were
born. One died at birth and one at the age of two years. The eldest,
born July 1, 1818, was named for the wife of William Penn, who married
a member of the Anthony family, Gulielma Penn, which was contracted to
Guelma. Susan was the second child, born February 15, 1820, and named
for an aunt, Susan Anthony Brownell. She herself adopted the initial
"B" when older, but never claimed or liked the full name.[3]
[Illustration:
BIRTHPLACE OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ADAMS, MASS.
(BORN IN ROOM SHADED BY TREE.)]
Lucy Read Anthony was of a very timid and reticent disposition and
painfully modest and shrinking. Before the birth of every child she was
overwhelmed with embarrassment and humiliation, secluded herself from
the outside world and would not speak of the expected little one even
to her mother. That mother would assist her overburdened daughter by
making the necessary garments, take them to her home and lay them
carefully away in a drawer, but no word of acknowledgment ever passed
between them. This was characteristic of those olden times, when there
were seldom any confidences between mothers and daughters in regard to
the deepest and most sacred concerns of life, which were looked upon as
subjects to be rigidly tabooed. Susan came into the world in a cold,
dreary season. The event was looked forward to with dread by the
mother, but when the little one arrived she received a warm and loving
welcome. She was born into a staid and quiet but very comfortable home,
where great respect and affection existed between father and mother.
William Cullen Bryant, whose birth-place was but twenty miles distant,
wrote of this immediate locality:
I stand upon my native hills again,
Broad, round and green, that in the summer sky,
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards and beechen forests, basking lie;
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen.
Each night in early childhood she watched the sun set behind the great
dome of "Old Greylock," that noble mountain-peak so famed in the
literature of Berkshire, from whose lofty summit one looks across four
States. "It lifts its head like a glorified martyr," said Beecher, and
Julia Taft Bayne wrote:
Come here where Greylock rolls
Itself toward heaven; in these deep silences,
World-worn and fretted souls,
Bathe and be clean.
To the child's idea its top was very close against the sky, and its
memory and inspiration remained with her through life.
Susan was very intelligent and precocious. At the age of three she was
sent to the grandmother's to remain during the advent of the fourth
baby at home, and while there was taught to spell and read. Her memory
was phenomenal, and she had an insatiable ambition, especially for
learning the things considered beyond a girl's capacity.
The mother was most charitable, always finding time amidst her own
family cares to go among the sick and poor of the neighborhood. One of
Susan's childish grievances, which she always remembered, was that the
"Sunday-go-to-meeting" dresses of the three little Anthony girls were
lent to the children of a poor family to wear at the funeral of their
mother, while she and her sisters had to wear their old ones. She
thought these were good enough to lend. She had no toys or dolls except
of home manufacture, but her rag baby and set of broken dishes afforded
just as much happiness as children nowadays get from a roomful of
imported playthings.
To go to school the children had to pass Grandmother Read's, and they
were always careful to start early enough to stop there for a fresh
cheese curd and a drink of "coffee," made by browning crusts of rye and
Indian bread, pouring hot water over them and sweetening with maple
sugar. Then in the evening they would stop again for some of the
left-over, cold boiled dinner, which was served on a great pewter
platter, a big piece of pork or beef in the center and, piled all
round, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, beets, carrots, etc. The story runs
that, when the mother remonstrated with the children for bothering the
grandmother for what they could have at home, Susan replied, "Why,
grandma's potato peelings are better than your boiled dinners." The
Anthonys and Reads used white flour and real coffee on state occasions,
but very few families could afford such luxuries.
One of the recollections of Grandmother Anthony's house is of the
little closet under the parlor stairs, where was set the tub of maple
sugar, and, while the elders were chatting over neighborhood affairs,
the children would gather like bees around this tub and have a feast.
Always when they left, they were loaded down with apples, doughnuts,
caraway cakes and other toothsome things which little ones love. Along
the edges of the pantry shelves hung rows of shining pewter porringers,
and the pride of the children's lives was to eat "cider toast" out of
them. This was made by toasting a big loaf of brown bread before the
fire, peeling off the outside, toasting it again, and finally pouring
over these crusts hot sweetened water and cider. The dish, however,
which was relished above all others was "hasty pudding," cooked slowly
for hours, then heaped upon a platter in a great cone, the center
scooped out and filled with sweet, fresh butter and honey or maple
syrup.
In those days every sideboard was liberally supplied with rum, brandy
and gin, and every man drank more or less, even the elders and
preachers. When the farmers came down the mountain road with their
loads of wood or lumber, they always stopped at Grandfather Read's for
a slice of bread and cheese and a drink of hard cider, but the elders
and preachers were regaled with something stronger. This was the
custom, and criticism would have been considered fanatical.
The little factory nourished and produced many yards of excellent
cotton cloth. A store was opened in one corner of the house to supply
the wants of the employes and neighbors, and the Anthonys enjoyed a
plenty and prosperity somewhat unusual where small incomes and close
economy were the rule.
[Footnote 1: Her oldest daughter, Hannah, became a famous Quaker
preacher.]
[Footnote 2: A wedding trip was taken to Palatine Bridge, Deerfield,
Union Springs, Farmington, Rochester and other points in New York
State, to visit relatives of both families, all the long journey being
made in a light one-horse wagon, many miles of it over corduroy roads.]
[Footnote 3: Hannah was born September 15, 1821; Daniel Read, named for
father and grandfather, was born August 22, 1824; Mary S., April 2,
1827; Eliza Tefft, April 22, 1832, and Jacob Merritt, April. 19, 1834.
At the present writing, 1897, Susan, Daniel, Mary and Merritt still
survive, aged seventy-seven, seventy-three, seventy and sixty-three,
all remarkably vigorous in mind and body; a family of few words, quiet,
undemonstrative and yet knit together with bonds of steel, loyal to
each other in every thought and each ready to make any sacrifice for
the others.]
CHAPTER II.
GIRLHOOD AND SCHOOL-LIFE.
1826--1838.
By 1826, Daniel Anthony had become so well-known for business
management that he received an offer from Judge John McLean, of
Battenville, Washington county, N.Y., who already had built a factory
there, to go into cotton manufacturing on an extensive scale, the judge
to furnish capital, Mr. Anthony executive ability. There was much
opposition from the two older families to having their children go so
far away (forty-four miles) and Lucy Anthony's heart was almost broken
at the thought of leaving her aged father and mother, but Daniel was
too good a financier to lose such an opportunity. So on a warm, bright
July morning the goods were started and the judge and his grandson,
Aaron McLean, came with a big green wagon and two fine horses to take
the family to Battenville. Young Aaron little thought as he lifted the
eight-year-old Guelma into the wagon that he was taking with him his
future wife. The new home was in a pretty village nestled among the
hills on the Battenkill. The first year the Anthonys lived in part of
Judge McLean's house, where were two slaves not yet manumitted, and the
children saw negroes for the first time and were dreadfully frightened.
Afterwards the family moved into an old but comfortable
story-and-a-half house where they remained several years.
Meanwhile a great deal of expensive machinery had been put into the
factory and a large brick store erected. For a long time Daniel Anthony
had been very much interested in the temperance cause. At Adams he had
sold liquor, like every other merchant, but when a man was found by the
roadside frozen to death with an empty jug which told the story,
although Mr. Anthony had not sold him the rum, he resolved, as this was
only one of many distressing cases, to sell no more. He was the first
in that locality to put intoxicating liquors out of his store.
He had not thought to discuss this question with Judge McLean when
their contract was made, and had gone to Troy and selected goods for
the store. The judge looked on while they were being unloaded and
finally asked, "Why, Anthony, where are the rum barrels?" "There aren't
any," he answered. "You don't expect to keep store without rum, do you?
If you don't 'treat,' nobody will trade with you," said the judge.
"Well, then I'll close the store," was the reply. It was opened; the
farmers would come in, look around, peer behind the counter, finally go
down cellar and make a search, and then declare they would not trade at
a temperance store; but, as they found here the best goods and lowest
prices, with square dealing, they could not afford to go elsewhere and
the store soon enjoyed a large business.
When it was decided to build a number of tenement houses, the judge
said, "The men will not come to the 'raising' unless they can have
their gin." "Then the houses will not be raised," replied Mr. Anthony,
and sent out the invitations. His wife made great quantities of
lemonade, "training-day" gingerbread, doughnuts and the best of tea and
coffee. Everybody came, things went off finely, not an accident during
the day and all went home sober, having learned, for the first time,
that there could be a house-raising without liquor.
[Illustration:
TEMPORARY HOME OF THE ANTHONYS, BATTENVILLE, N.Y., 1826
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1897. SUSAN AND MERRITT IN FOREGROUND.]
But the battle had to be fought continually. A saw-mill and a
grist-mill were built and no man was employed who drank to excess. The
tavern keeper, who had expected to reap a rich harvest from the
factory, was very indignant at the temperance regulations. He put every
temptation in the way of the mill-hands, but Daniel Anthony remained
firm. Among his papers are found several letters of repentance and
pledges from his men who had fallen from grace and wanted another
trial. He organized a temperance society, composed almost entirely of
his men and women employes. The pledge, as was the custom, required
"total abstinence from distilled liquor," but allowed wine and cider.
He also established an evening school for them, many never having had
any chance for an education, and it became unpopular not to attend.
This was in session also a few hours on Sunday. It was taught by Mr.
Anthony himself or his own family teacher without expense to the
pupils. Everything about the factory was conducted with perfect system
and order. Each man had a little garden around his house. Mr. Anthony
looked upon his employes as his family and their mental and moral
culture as a duty. Even thus early he was so strong an opponent of
slavery that he made every effort to get cotton for his mills which was
not produced by slave labor.
The only persons ever allowed to smoke or drink intoxicants in the
Anthony home were Quaker preachers. The house was half-way between
Danby, Vt., and Easton, N.Y., where the Quarterly Meetings were held
and the preachers and elders stopped there on their way. In a closet
under the stairs were a case of clay pipes, a paper of tobacco and
demijohns of excellent gin and brandy, from which the "high seat"
brothers were permitted to help themselves. It is not surprising to
find in the annals that a dozen or more would drop in to get one of
Mrs. Anthony's good dinners and the refreshments above mentioned.
In the spring of 1832 a brick-kiln was burned in preparation for the
new house. Mrs. Anthony boarded ten or twelve brick-makers and some of
the factory hands, with no help but that of her daughters Guelma, Susan
and Hannah, aged fourteen, twelve and ten. When the new baby came,
these three little girls did all the work, cooking the food and
carrying it four or five steps up from the kitchen to the mother's room
to let her see if it were nicely prepared and if the dinner-pails for
the men were properly packed.
Soon after this, Mr. Anthony remarked that one of the "spoolers" was
ill and there was no one to do her work. Susan and Hannah had spent
many hours watching the factory girls, and at once raised a clamor to
take the place of the sick "spooler." The mother objected, but the
father, who always encouraged his children in their independent ideas,
interceded and finally they were allowed to draw straws to decide which
should go, the winner to divide her wages with the loser. The lot fell
to Susan, who worked faithfully every day for two weeks and received
full wages, $3. Hannah, with her $1.50, bought a green bead bag, then
considered the crowning glory of a girl's wardrobe. Susan purchased
half a dozen pale-blue coffee cups and saucers, which she had heard her
mother wish for, and presented them to her with a happy heart.
The next summer the house was built, the finest in that part of the
country, a two-and-a-half-story brick with fifteen rooms and all the
conveniences then known. Quakers never celebrate Christmas, but the
Anthonys, having lived now for seven years in a Presbyterian
neighborhood, decided to give the children a Christmas party in the new
home. The walls had a beautiful hard finish, the woodwork was tinted
light green and the new flag-bottomed chairs were painted black.
Between the rough boots of the country youths and the chairs pushed or
tipped against the wall, both woodwork and plastering were almost
ruined, and the new house carried a lasting reminder of the
festivities.
About this time Daniel Anthony was again brought under Quaker
criticism. On one of his journeys to New York he had bought a camlet
cloak with a big cape, as affording the best protection for the long,
cold rides he had to take. The Friends declared this to be "out of
plainness" and insisted that he leave off the cape and cease wearing a
brightly colored handkerchief about his neck and ears. Daniel, who was
beginning to be rather restive under these restraints, refused to
comply, but, as he was a valuable member, it was finally decided here
also to condone his offense.
Through all those years Lucy Anthony went to Quaker meeting with her
husband. After public services were over, however, and the shutters
pulled up between the men's and the women's sides of the house for
business meeting, she was rigidly barred out. She would take her
children and walk about in the grave-yard outside while she waited for
Daniel, but, as the graves were all in a row without even a headstone
to distinguish them, this was not a very interesting pastime and the
wait was long and tedious. When the little girls went with the father
they also were shut out of the executive session where such momentous
questions were discussed as, "Are Friends careful to keep themselves
and their children from attending places of diversion?" "Are Friends
careful to refrain from tale-bearing and detraction?" "Are Friends
careful to send their children to school, and all children in their
employ?"
One cold day, the mother being detained at home, ten-year-old Susan
received permission to go with her father. When the business meeting
began, she curled up quietly in a corner by the stove, thinking to
escape detection, but was spied out by one of the elders, a woman with
green spectacles, who tip-toed down from the "high seat" and said, "Is
thee a member?" "No, but my father is," replied Susan. "That will not
do, thee will have to go out." "My mother told me to stay in." "Thy
mother doesn't manage things here." "But my father told me to stay in."
"Neither thy father nor thy mother can say what thee shall do here;
thee will have to go out;" and taking the child by the arm she led her
into the cold vestibule. After remaining there until almost frozen,
Susan decided to go to the nearest neighbor's. When she opened the gate
a big dog sprung fiercely upon her. Her screams brought out the family
and she was taken into the house, where it was found the only injury
was a large piece bitten out of the new Scotch plaid cloak which she
had gone to meeting on purpose to exhibit. The affair created
considerable excitement, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony were very indignant, and
it ended in the father's making a "request" that his children be made
members of the Society, which was done.
Daniel Anthony was by nature a broad, progressive man, and his family
were not brought up according to the strictest and narrowest
requirements of Quaker doctrine; while his wife, remembering the
liberal teachings of her Universalist father and her own girlish love
of youthful pastimes, went still further in making life pleasant for
the children. Through her influence the daughters secured many a pretty
article of wearing apparel, and, when there was a party whose hours
were later than the father approved, the mother managed to have them
spend the night with girls in the neighborhood.
When the family first moved to Battenville the children went to the
little old-fashioned district school taught by a man in winter and a
woman in summer. None of the men could teach Susan "long division" or
understand why a girl should insist upon learning it. One of the women
maintained discipline by means of her corset-board used as a ferule. As
soon as Mr. Anthony finished the brick store he set apart one room
upstairs for a private school, employed the best teachers to be had and
admitted only such children as he wished to associate with his own.
When the new house was built a large room was devoted to school
purposes. This was the first in that neighborhood to have a separate
seat for each pupil, and, although only a stool without a back, it was
a vast improvement on the long bench running around the wall, the same
height for big and little. The girls were taught sewing as carefully as
reading and spelling, and Susan was noted for her skill with the
needle. A sampler is still in existence which she made at the age of
eleven, a fine specimen of needle-work with the family record
surrounded by a wreath of strawberries all carefully wrought in
crewels. There is also a bedquilt, the pieces sewed together with the
fine "over-and-over" stitch, and there are ruffles hemmed with stitches
so tiny they scarcely can be distinguished. An early teacher was a
cousin, Nancy Howe,[4] who was followed by another cousin, Sarah
Anthony, a graduate of Rensselaer Quaker boarding-school. Among the
teachers was Mary Perkins, just graduated from Miss Grant's seminary at
Ipswich, Mass., and a pupil of Mary Lyon, founder of Mt. Holyoke. She
was their first fashionably educated teacher and taught them to recite
poems in concert, introduced school books with pictures, little black
illustrations of Old Dog Tray, Mary and Her Lamb, etc., and gave them
their first idea of calisthenics. She loved music, and wished to attend
the village singing-school. Lucy Anthony sympathized with this desire
and interceded for her, but Daniel decided it would be setting a bad
example to the children and they would be wanting to sing.[5]
Into this commodious home Lucy Anthony brought her aged father and
mother, and carefully tended them until the death of both within the
same year, aged eighty-four. In May, 1834, came the first great sorrow,
the death of little Eliza, aged two years, and the mother was
heart-broken. Her life was centered in her children, and she could not
be reconciled to giving up even one. After her own death, nearly fifty
years later, in her box of most sacredly guarded keepsakes, was found a
little faded pink dress of the dear child's which many times had been
moistened with the mother's tears.
The children continued to attend this private school, and as Guelma and
Susan reached the age of fifteen, each in turn was installed as teacher
in summer when there were only young pupils. The factory now was at the
height of prosperity; there was only one larger in all that part of the
country, and Daniel Anthony was looked upon as a wealthy man. He was
much criticised for allowing his daughters to teach, as in those days
no woman worked for wages except from pressing necessity; but he was
far enough in advance of his time to believe that every girl should be
trained to self-support. In 1837, writing to Guelma at boarding-school,
he urges her to accept the offer of the principal to remain through the
winter as an assistant:
I am fully of the belief that shouldst thou never teach school a
single day afterwards, thou wouldst ever feel to justify thy
course.... Thou wouldst seem to me to be laying the foundation for
thy far greater usefulness. Thy remaining through the winter, must,
however, be left solely to thyself, as it would be of little avail
for thee to stay and not be contented. Thy home, Guelma, is just
the same as when thou left it, and shouldst thou decide to spend
the winter months away, we will try to keep it the same until thy
return in the spring. Let me know if thou canst be content to
remain away a few months longer from thy mother's kitchen.
[Autograph:
Thy Father
Daniel Anthony]
In the winter of 1837, at the age of seventeen, Susan taught in the
family of Doris and Huldah Deliverge, at Easton, a few miles from
Battenville, for $1 a week and board. The next summer she taught a
district school at the neighboring village, Reid's Corners, for $1.50 a
week and "boarded round," and proud was she to earn what was then
considered excellent wages for a woman. In the fall she joined Guelma
at boarding-school. The little circular, yellow with age, reads:
DEBORAH MOULSON, having obtained an agreeable location in the
pleasant village of Hamilton, in the vicinity of Philadelphia,
intends, with the assistance of competent Teachers, to open
immediately a Seminary for Females....
Terms, $125 per annum, for boarding and tuition....
The inculcation of the principles of Humility, Morality and a love
of Virtue, will receive particular attention.
[Illustration:
THE BATTENVILLE HOME, BUILT IN 1833.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1897]
This was Susan's first long absence from home, and her letters and
journals give a good idea of the thoughts and feelings of a girl at
boarding-school in those days. She developed then the "letter-writing
habit," which has clung to her through life. The letters of that time
were laborious affairs, often consuming days in the writing, commencing
even to children, "Respected Daughter," or "Son," and rarely exceeding
one or two pages. They were written with a quill pen on foolscap paper,
and almost wholly devoted to the weather and the sickness in the
family. The amount of the latter would be appalling to modern
households. The women's letters were written in infinitesimal
characters, it being considered unladylike to write a large hand. The
Anthonys were exceptional letter-writers. It cost eighteen cents to
send a letter, but Daniel Anthony was postmaster at Battenville, and
his family had free use of the mails. If he had had postage to pay on
all of homesick Susan's epistles it would have cost him a good round
sum. The rules of the school required these to be written on the slate,
submitted to the teacher and then carefully copied by the pupil, so it
is not unusual to find that a letter was five or six days in
preparation. For the same reason it is impossible to tell how much
sincerity there is in the frequent references to the "dear teacher" and
the "most excellent school." The "stilted" style of Susan's letters is
most amusing.[6] A few extracts will illustrate:
I regret that Brothers and Sisters have not the privilege of
attending a school better adapted to their improvement, both in
Science and Morality; surely a District School (unless they have
recently reformed) is not an appropriate place for the cultivation
of the latter, although in the former they may make some partial
progress. Deborah has not determined to relinquish this school,
although she has not yet ascertained whether the income from it
will be equal to the expenditures; but if it should continue I
shall have a wish for Hannah and Mary to attend; as I think another
one can not be named so agreeable on all accounts as is Deborah
Moulson's at Hamilton.
[Autograph:
Much love to all the dear ones
I am your
Lucy Anthony]
One may imagine that Susan got several credit marks when her teacher
corrected this on the slate. The lecturer on philosophy and science
came up from Philadelphia, and Susan tells her parents that "he is
quite an interesting man," and that "his lecture on Philosophy was far
more entertaining than I had dared to anticipate." Of the science
lecture she says:
He had a microscope through which we had the pleasure of viewing
the dust from the wings of a butterfly, each minute particle of
which appeared as large as a common fly. He mentioned several very
interesting circumstances; but I must defer particularizing them
until I can have the privilege of verbally communicating them to my
dear friends at Battenville. Guelma joins with me in wishing love
distributed to all.
Again she writes:
Beloved Parents: The second Seventh day of my short stay in
Hamilton arrives and finds me scarcely capable of informing you how
the intervening moments have been employed; but I hope they have
not passed without some improvement. Indeed, we should all improve,
perceptibly too, were we to attend to the instructions which are
here given, for the advancement both of moral and literary
pursuits. May I improve in both; but it is far easier for us to
perceive where others should reform, than to observe and correct
our own imperfections, while perhaps our failings are completely
disgusting in the sight of others. I find it very difficult leaving
off old habits so as to have a vacuum for the formation of those
which are new and more advantageous.
My letter will be short this week and I can assign no other cause
than that my ideas do not freely flow. The difference in weather is
quite material between this and our northern clime. Snow commenced
falling about 12 o'clock to-day and continued till evening; but,
Father, it was not such a storm as the one in which we travelled
during the second day of our journey to the beautiful and
sequestered shades of Hamilton. The cause of my neglecting to write
last week was not the absence of this mind from home, but that it
is obliged to occupy every moment in studies.
A fire in Philadelphia gives her an opportunity for this bit of
description:
I was requested, 5th day evening last, about 7 o'clock, by one of
the scholars, to step out and view the Aurora Borealis, which she
said was extremely brilliant and beautiful. When there I looked
towards the north, but discovered no light, and then to the zenith,
which was indeed very magnificent; "but," said I, "that does not
look like the Aurora, it is more like the light from a fire," and
upon investigation we found it so to be. The light appeared in the
east, we walked in that direction, when we beheld the flames
bursting forth in stupendous grandeur. Not a bell was heard, all
was calm, with the exception of the minds of some of the scholars
whose parents resided in the city. The scene indeed would have been
to the eye extremely pleasing, were it not for the reflection that
some of our fellow-beings were about being deprived of a home, and
perhaps lives also. We learned a few minutes after witnessing this
phenomena that the fire was occasioned by the conflagration of a
large board yard near Market Street Bridge.
After many affectionate messages, she says:
I have not had but one real homesick fit and that was one week from
the night Father left us. I felt then as if I were taking leave of
him again; in fact the tears have come into my eyes as I write that
last sentence; but do not suppose I carry a gloomy countenance all
the time, far be it from that, yet oft I think seriously of home
and the endearing ties which bind us together. Father, we will look
at the sentiments, and not the Orthography and Grammar of thy
letters, in which I did discover some errors.
She frequently admits that her sister admonishes her, "Susan, thee
writes too much; thee should learn to be concise," but she delights in
letter-writing and says:
Most of the girls are taking a walk this First day afternoon, but I
did not feel like enjoying myself by accompanying them as well as
in holding sweet communion in writing with those inestimable
friends I so dearly love, and arranging those thoughts in a manner
congenial to our feelings.... The query naturally arises, at least
to the thoughtful mind, How has our time since the last Annual
revolution of the Earth been employed? Have our minds become
improved from passing occurences, or do they remain in that
dormant-like state which so often degrades the human soul?
She comes down from her lofty heights far enough to add, "It would have
afforded us the greatest pleasure imaginable to have dined on that
Goose in company with you on New Year's day." It is Susan's diary,
however, which affords the most satisfactory glimpses of her true
character, serious, devotional, deeply conscientious and strong in
affection:
Five weeks have been spent in Hamilton and to what purpose? Has my
mind advanced either in Virtue or Literature? I fear that every
moment has not been profitably spent. O, may this careless mind be
more watchful in the future! O, may the many warnings which we
every day receive, tend to make me more attentive to what is right!
We were cautioned by our dear Teacher to-day to beware of
self-esteem and of all signs that would indicate an untruth. We
were referred to the condition of Ananias and Sapphira, who
intended to deceive the Apostle. Would that I were wholly free from
that same Evil Spirit which tempted those persons in ancient times.
The Spirit of Truth must have dominion in the mind in order to
attain a state of happiness.
* * * * *
Resolves and resolves fill up my time. I resolve at night to do
better on the morrow, and when the morrow comes and I mingle with
my companions all the resolutions are obliterated.... In the
afternoon of Seventh day Deborah accompanied the scholars to Town
and visited the Academy of Arts and Sciences; beautiful indeed was
the sight. Nature, how bounteous and varied are thy works! On
beholding the splendid scene I was ready to exclaim, "O, Miracle of
Miracles," with the celebrated Naturalist when speaking of the
metamorphoses of insects.
Her eyes troubled her then, as all through life, and in grieving over
it she says: "Often does their non-conformance mortify this frail heart
when attempting to read in class.... I arose at half-past five this
morning. [January 15.] I find it so much more advantageous." But the
next day she sleeps till half-past six and laments the fact.
Received a severe reproof from Deborah this evening on account of
the listlessness which prevailed in the school, also the immorality
of some of the pupils' minds. O, that I could feel perfectly clear
of all the deviations which have been enumerated. O, Morality, that
I could say I possessed thy charms! O, the happiness of an innocent
mind, would that I could say mine was so, but it is too far from
it. I think so much of my resolutions to do better that even my
dreams are filled with these desires.
The sin thus bitterly bewailed consisted in neglecting to use "thee"
and "thou" in addressing her schoolmates. She would wake up in the
night and mourn over it. One would judge from Deborah's continual
lectures that the school was made up of a lot of desperately wicked
girls sent her to be reformed, instead of a band of demure and saintly
little Quaker maidens. On the 31st Susan writes:
Our class has not recited in Philosophy, Chemistry or Physiology,
nor have we read, since the 20th of this month, for the reason of
there being such a departure among the scholars from the paths of
rectitude.
Later she records that a new teacher has arrived "to relieve Deborah of
some of her bodily labors," that "he is a stern-looking man," and that
she was "somewhat mortified that she could not give him the desired
definition of compendiums."
The woman who sells molasses candy has been here, but when she
leaves she does not carry the confusion with her which she
causes.... Deborah requested eight of us larger girls to remain
last evening, for the purpose of reproving us. The cause was the
levity and mirthfulness which were displayed on Third day of the
week previous. She compared us to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his
master with a kiss. She said there were those amongst us who would
surely have to suffer deep affliction for not attending to the
manifestations of truth within.--I have been guilty of much levity
and nonsensical conversation and have also permitted thoughts to
occupy my mind which should have been far distant, but I do not
consider myself as having committed any wilful offence. Perhaps the
reason I can not see my own defects is because my heart is
hardened. O, may it become more and more refined until nothing
shall remain but perfect purity.
* * * * *
2nd mo. 11th day.--First day evening Deborah came down and sat with
us. In a few moments she called for her Bible, and in a short time
she read, "Jesus wept;" and then, after a long pause, she said,
"There are those present who, if they do not attend to what has
been said to them, will have their strings shortened, even as short
as this verse." This she said after having inquired on what subject
Abraham Loire preached in the morning and none of us was able to
tell.
* * * * *
2nd mo. 12th day.--Deborah came down in the afternoon to examine
our writing. She looked at M.'s and gave her a severe reproof; she
then looked at C.'s and said nothing. I, thinking I had improved
very much, offered mine for her to examine. She took it and pointed
out some of the best words as those which were not well written,
and then she asked me the rule for dotting an i, and I acknowledged
that I did not know. She then said it was no wonder she had
undergone so much distress in mind and body, and that her time had
been devoted to us in vain. This was like an Electrical shock to
me. I rushed upstairs to my room where, without restraint, I could
give vent to my tears. She said the same as that I had been the
cause of the great obstruction in the school. If I am such a vile
sinner, I would that I might feel it myself. Indeed I do consider
myself such a bad creature that I can not see any who seems
worse.--And we had a new scholar to witness this scene!
Think of causing all this anguish and humiliation to a young girl
because she did not know the rule for dotting an i!
2nd mo. 15th day.--This day I call myself eighteen. It seems
impossible that I can be so old, and even at this age I find myself
possessed of no more knowledge than I ought to have had at twelve.
Dr. Allen, a Phrenologist, gave us a short lecture this morning and
examined a few heads, mine among them. He described only the good
organs and said nothing of the bad. I should like to know the whole
truth.
Susan relates with a good deal of satisfaction that she has written a
letter to a schoolmate at home, without putting it on the slate for the
teacher to see. A few days later Deborah sends for her. She "went down
with cheerfulness," but what was her astonishment to see Deborah with
the intercepted letter open in her hand! Susan closes her account of
the interview by saying, "Little did I think, when I was writing that
letter, that I was committing such an enormous crime."
Learning that a young friend had married a widower with six children,
she comments in her diary, "I should think any female would rather live
and die an old maid." She has a cold and cough for which Deborah gives
her a "Carthartick," followed by some "Laudanum in a silver spoon."
"The beautiful spring weather," she says, "inhales me with fresh
vigor." She sees some spiderwebs in the schoolroom and, her domestic
habits asserting themselves, gets a broom and mounts the desks to sweep
them down, "little thinking of the mortification and tears it was to
occasion." Finally she steps upon Deborah's desk and breaks the hinges
on the lid. That personage is informed by an assistant teacher and
arrives on the scene:
"Deborah, I have broken your desk." She appeared not to notice me,
walked over, examined the desk and asked the teacher who broke it.
"What! Susan Anthony step on my desk! I would not have set a child
upon it," she said, and much more which I can not write. "How came
you to step on it?" she asked, but I was too full to speak and
rushed from the room in tears. That evening, after we read in the
Testament, she said that where there was no desire for moral
improvement there would be no improvement in reading. There was one
by the side of her who had not desired moral improvement and had
made no advancement in Literature.
This deliberate cruelty to one whose heart was bursting with sorrow and
regret! "Never will this day be forgotten," says the diary. In speaking
of this incident Miss Anthony said: "Not once, in all the sixty years
that have passed, has the thought of that day come to my mind without
making me turn cold and sick at heart."
On one occasion when a composition had been severely criticised, Susan
blazed forth the inquiry why she always was censured and her sister
praised. "Because," was the reply, "thy sister Guelma does the best she
is capable of, but thou dost not. Thou hast greater abilities and I
demand of thee the best of thy capacity." Throughout this little record
are continual expressions of the pain of separation from the dear home,
of keen disappointment if the expected letter fails to come, and most
affectionate references to the beloved parents, brothers and sisters.
Even the austere Deborah is mentioned always with respect and kindness
for, notwithstanding her frequent censure, she inspired the girls with
love and reverence.
Subsequent events show that this lady was failing rapidly with
consumption. Among the old letters, one from an assistant teacher to
Daniel Anthony, dated 1839, a year after Susan left school, says: "The
tender chord that so long confined our beloved Deborah to this world
was broken on the 25th day of the 4th month, and we trust her happy
spirit took its flight to realms of eternal felicity." Deborah Moulson
was a cultured and estimable woman, but she represented the spirit of
that age toward childhood, one of chilling severity and constant
repression, when reproof was as liberally administered as praise was
conscientiously withheld.
[Footnote 4: Sixty-five years later, this cousin, Nancy Howe Clark,
aged eighty-seven, wrote Miss Anthony:
"The year I spent at your father's was the happiest of my whole long
life. How well I remember the sweet voices saying 'Cousin Nancy,' and
the affectionate way in which I was received by your dear father and
mother. It had never been my fortune before to live in a household with
an educated man at its head, and I felt a little shy of your father but
soon found there was no occasion. Although it was a period of great
financial depression, he always found time to be social and kindly in
his family. He seemed to have an eye for everything, his business, the
school and every good work. I considered your father and mother a model
husband and wife and found it hard to leave such a loving home."]
[Footnote 5: In later years the younger children were instructed on
piano and violin, and he enjoyed nothing better than listening to
them.]
[Footnote 6: In reading them over, sixty years afterwards, she said
mournfully, "That has been the way all my life. Whenever I take a pen
in hand I always seem to be mounted on stilts." To those who are
acquainted with her simple, straightforward style of speaking, this
will seem hardly possible, yet it is probably one of the reasons which
led her, very early in her public career, to abandon all attempts at
written speeches.]
CHAPTER III.
FINANCIAL CRASH--THE TEACHER.
1838--1845.
The prosperous days of the Anthonys were drawing to a close. All
manufacturing industries of the country were in a ruinous state. The
unsound condition of the banks with their depreciated and fluctuating
currency had created financial chaos. Overproduction of cotton goods on
a credit basis, inordinate speculation, reduction of duties on
importations, produced the inevitable result, and the commercial world
began to totter on its foundations. The final ruin is foreshadowed in
the letters of Daniel Anthony. In one to his brother September 2, 1837,
he says:
I am going next week on a tour of the eastern cities and when I
return shall be prepared to face the situation. My goods at present
will not sell for the actual cost of manufacturing. Van Buren's
message has just made its appearance. It is opposed to banks and
may operate unfavorably to business, but how it can be worse I
don't know.
He writes from Washington to his wife, September 11:
I arrived last evening--came in R. Road cars from Baltimore, 39
miles, in two hours, over a barren and almost uncultivated tract of
country. The public buildings and one street called Pennsylvania
Avenue are all that are worth mention in this place.... As a
specimen of some of the big finery in the town, I will name one
room in Martin's [Van Buren's] house, 90 ft. by 42, the furniture
of which cost $22,000.... Our Congressmen are some like other
folks, they look out first for themselves. They have spent most of
this day in debating whether _they_ shall be paid in _specie_....
There are Black Folks in abundance here, but they don't act as if
they were even under the pressure of hard times, much less the
cruelties that we hear of slaves having to bear.
From New York he writes his brother:
Such times in everything that pertains to business never were known
in this land before. To-day I have passed through Pine street and
have not seen one single box or bale of goods of any kind whatever.
Last year at this time a person could scarcely go through the
street without clambering over goods of all descriptions. A truck
cart loaded with merchandise is now a rare object. A bale of goods
can not be sold at any price. The countenances of all our best
business men are stretched out in a perpendicular direction and
when the times will let them come back into human shape not even
the wisest pretend to guess. Those that are out of all speculative
and ever-changing business may consider themselves in a Paradismal
state.
In the spring of 1838 he writes to Guelma and Susan, at that time
twenty and eighteen years of age, to know if they feel that they
possibly can go alone from Philadelphia to New York, where he will join
them and bring them home; but evidently they decide they can not, for
Susan's journal speaks of "the happy moment when they run to the gate
to meet him." On the journey he tells them that his business is ruined,
they can not return to school and will have to give up their beautiful
and beloved new home. In recalling those times Miss Anthony says that
never in all her long life did she see such agony as her father passed
through during the dreadful days which followed. All that he had
accumulated in a lifetime of hard work and careful planning was swept
away, and there was scarcely a spot of solid ground upon which he could
plant his feet to begin the struggle once more.
In her diary, speaking of an aunt who sympathizes with them and says it
will be hard to give up going with the people they have been accustomed
to, Susan observes, "I do not think that losing our property will cause
us ever to mingle with low company." She is now somewhat uncertain
about taking up teaching permanently, fearing she will "lose the habit
of using the plain language;" but May 22, 1838, she writes at Union
Village, now Greenwich:
On last evening, which was First day, I again left my home to
mingle with strangers, which seems to be my sad lot. Separation was
rendered more trying on account of the embarrassing condition of
our business affairs. I found my school small and quite disorderly.
O, may my patience hold out to persevere without intermission.
In the summer of 1838 the factory, store, home and much of the
furniture had to be given up to the creditors. Not an article was
spared from the inventory. All the mother's wedding presents, the
furniture and the silver spoons given her by her parents, the wearing
apparel of the family, even the flour, tea, coffee and sugar, the
children's school books, the Bible and the dictionary, were carefully
noted. On this list, still in existence, are "underclothes of wife and
daughters," "spectacles of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony," "pocket-knives of
boys," "scraps of old iron"--and the law took all except the bare
necessities. In this hour of extremity the guardian angel appeared in
the person of Joshua Read, a brother of Mrs. Anthony, from Palatine
Bridge, N.Y., who bid in all which the family desired to keep and
restored to them their possessions, making himself their lenient
creditor.
The winter of 1839 Susan attended the home school, taught by Daniel
Wright, a fine scholar and remarkably successful teacher. This ended
her school days, and in her journal she says: "I probably shall never
go to school again, and all the advancement which I hereafter make must
be by my own exertions."
In March, 1839, the family moved to Hardscrabble, a small village two
miles further down the Battenkill. They went on a cold, blustering day,
and one may imagine the feelings of Daniel and Lucy Anthony and their
older children as they turned away from their big factory, their
handsome home and the friends they had learned to love. Mrs. Anthony's
heart was overflowing with sorrow, for in less than five years she had
lost by death her little daughter, her father and mother, and now was
swept away her home hallowed by their beloved memories.
In his prosperous days Daniel Anthony had built a satinet factory and a
grist-mill at Hardscrabble and, although these were mortgaged heavily,
he hoped to weather the financial storm and through them to build up
again his fallen fortunes. The family were soon comfortably established
in a large house which had been a hotel or tavern in the days when
lumber was cut in the Green mountains and floated down the river, an
immense building, sixty feet square, with wide hall and broad piazza.
They did not keep a hotel, but people were in the habit of stopping
here, as it was a half-way house to Troy, and they found themselves
obliged to entertain a number of travelers.
Those were busy days for the family. Susan's journal contains many
entries such as, "Did a large washing to-day.... Spent to-day at the
spinning-wheel.... Baked 21 loaves of bread.... Wove three yards of
carpet yesterday.... Got my quilt out of the frame last 5th day.... The
new saw-mill has just been raised; we had 20 men to supper on 6th day,
and 12 on 7th day." But there were quilting-bees and apple-parings and
sleighing parties and many good times, for the elastic temperament of
youth rallies quickly from grief and misfortune. Susan went to
Presbyterian church one Sunday, and the gray-robed Quaker thus writes:
To see them partake of the Lord's supper, as they call it, was
indeed a solemn sight, but the dress of the communicants bespeaks
nothing but vanity of heart--curls, bows and artificials displayed
in profusion about most of them. They say they can dress in the
fashion without fixing their hearts on their costume, but surely if
their hearts were not vain and worldly, their dress would not be.
The attic in this old house was finished off for a ball-room; it was
said that great numbers of junk bottles had been laid under the floor
to give especially nice tone to the fiddles. The young people of the
village came to Daniel Anthony for permission to hold their
dancing-school here but, with true Quaker spirit, he refused. Finally
the committee came again and said: "You have taught us that we must not
drink or go about places where liquor is sold. The only other
dancing-hall in town is in a disreputable tavern, and if we can not
come here we shall be obliged to go there." So Mr. Anthony called a
council of his wife and elder daughters. The mother, remembering her
own youth and also having a tender solicitude for the moral welfare of
the young people, advised that they should have the hall. Mr. Anthony
at last agreed on condition that his own daughters should not dance. So
they came, and Susan, Guelma and Hannah sat against the wall and
watched, longing to join them but never doing it. They danced every two
weeks all winter; Mrs. Anthony gave them some simple refreshments, they
went home early, there was no drinking and all was orderly and
pleasant.
[Illustration:
THE HOME AT CENTER FALLS, N. Y., BUILT IN 1810.
THE PORCH LONG SINCE FALLEN AWAY.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1897. SUSAN, DANIEL, MARY, AND MERRITT IN
FOREGROUND.]
The Quakers at once had Daniel Anthony up before the committee, there
was a long discussion, and finally they read him out of meeting
"because he kept a place of amusement in his house." Reuben Baker, one
of the old Quakers, said: "It is with great sorrow we have to disown
friend Anthony, for he has been one of the most exemplary members in
the Society, but we can not condone such an offense as allowing a
dancing-school in his house."
Mr. Anthony felt this very keenly. He said: "For one of the best acts
of my life I have been turned out of the best religious society in the
world;" but he had kept his wife, his cloak and his ideas of right, and
was justified by his conscience. He continued to attend Quaker meeting
but grew more liberal with every passing year and, long before his
death, had lost every vestige of bigotry and believed in complete
personal, mental and spiritual freedom. In early life he had
steadfastly refused to pay the United States taxes because he would not
give tribute to a government which believed in war. When the collector
came he would lay down his purse, saying, "I shall not voluntarily pay
these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocket-book, thee can do so."
But he lived to do all in his power to support the Union in its
struggle for the abolition of slavery and, although too old to go to
the front himself, his two sons enlisted at the very beginning of the
war.
Mr. Anthony had the name Hardscrabble changed to Center Falls, and was
made postmaster. Susan and Hannah secured schools, and Daniel R., then
not sixteen, went into the mill with his father. Susan had several
schools offered her and finally accepted one at New Rochelle. She went
down the Hudson by the steamboat American Eagle, her father going with
her as far as Troy. She speaks in her journal of several Louisiana
slaveholders being on board, the discussion which took place in the
evening and her horror at hearing them uphold the institution of
slavery. The pages of this little book show that this question and
those of religion and temperance were the principal subjects of
conversation in these days. One entry reads: "Spent the evening at Mr.
Burdick's and had a good visit with them, our chief topic being the
future state." Then she comments: "Be the future what it may, our
happiness in the present is far more complete if we live an upright
life." From the time she was seventeen is constantly expressed a
detestation of slavery and intemperance. Her life from the beginning
seems to have had a serious purpose. When asked, during the writing of
this biography, why her journals were not full of "beaux," as most
girls' were, she replied: "There were plenty of them, but I never could
bring myself to put anything about them on paper." There are many
references to their calling, escorting her to parties, etc., but
scarcely any expression of her sentiments toward them. One, of whom she
says: "He is a most noble-hearted fellow; I have respected him highly
since our first acquaintance," goes to see a rival, and she writes: "He
is at ----'s this evening. O, may he know that in me he has found a
spirit congenial with his own, and not suffer the glare of beauty to
attract both eye and heart."
Again she says: "Last night I dreamed of being married, queerly enough,
too, for it seemed as if I had married a Presbyterian priest, whom I
never before had seen. I thought I repented thoroughly before the day
had passed and my mind was much troubled." This modest Quaker maiden
writes of receiving a newspaper from a young man: "Its contents were
none of the most polite; a piece of poetry on Love and one called
'Ridin' on a Rail,' and numerous little stories and things equally as
bad. What he means I can not tell, but silence will be the best
rebuke." Another who comes a-wooing she describes as "a real
soft-headed old bachelor," and remarks: "These old bachelors are
perfect nuisances to society." A friend marries a man of rather feeble
intellect, and she comments: "Tis strange, 'tis passing strange, that a
girl possessed of common sense should be willing to marry a
lunatic--but so it is."
Miss Anthony went to New Rochelle as assistant in Eunice Kenyon's
boarding-school, but the principal being ill most of the time, she has
to take entire charge, and the responsibility seems to weigh heavily on
the nineteen-year-old girl. She speaks also of watching night after
night, with only such rest as she gets lying on the floor. She gives
some idea of the medical treatment of those days: "The Doctor came and
gave her a dose of calomel and bled her freely, telling me not to faint
as I held the bowl. Her arm commenced bleeding in the night and she
lost so much blood she fainted. Next day the Doctor came, applied a
blister and gave her another dose of calomel."
She meets some colored girls from the school at Oneida and writes home:
"A strict Presbyterian school it is, but they eat, walk and associate
with the white people. O, what a happy state of things is this, to see
these poor, degraded sons of Afric privileged to walk by our side." On
Sunday she hears Stephen Archer, the great Quaker preacher, who was at
the head of a large Friends' boarding-school at Tarrytown, and says:
He is a much younger man than I expected to see, and wears a sweet
smile on his face.... The people about here are anti-Abolitionist
and anti-everything else that's good. The Friends raised quite a
fuss about a colored man sitting in the meeting-house, and some
left on account of it. The man was rich, well-dressed and very
polite, but still the pretended meek followers of Christ could not
worship their God and have this sable companion with them. What a
lack of Christianity is this! There are three colored girls here
who have been in the habit of attending Friends' meeting where they
have lived, but here they are not allowed to sit even on the back
seat. One long-faced elder dusted off a seat in the gallery and
told them to sit there. Their father was freed by his master and
left $60,000, and these girls are educated and refined.
Aaron McLean, who is soon to marry her sister Guelma, writes in answer
to this: "I am glad to hear that the people where your lot is cast for
the present are sensible and reasonable on that exciting subject. I
entreat you to be prudent in your remarks and not attempt to
'niggerize' the good old Friends about you. Above all, let them know
that you are about the only Abolitionist in _this_ vicinity." This
severe letter does not seem to have affected her very deeply for, on
the next day after receiving it, she writes her parents: "Since school
to-day I have had the unspeakable satisfaction of visiting four colored
people and drinking tea with them. Their name is Turpin, and Theodore
Wright of New York is their stepfather. To show this kind of people
respect in this heathen land affords me a double pleasure." Mr. McLean
evidently did not believe in woman preachers, for the radical Susan
writes him:
I attended Rose street meeting in New York and heard the strongest
sermon on "The Vices of the City," that has been preached in that
house very lately. It was from Rachel Barker, of Dutchess county. I
guess if you could hear her you would believe in a woman's
preaching. What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual
and moral faculties sufficient for anything but domestic concerns!
She does not hesitate to write to an uncle, Albert Dickinson, and
reprove him for drinking ale and wine at Yearly Meeting time. It seems
that then, as now, girls had a habit of writing on the first page of a
sheet, next on the third, then vertically on a page, etc. Uncle Albert
retorts:
Thy aunt Ann Eliza says to tell thee we are temperate drinkers and
hope to remain so. We should think from the shape of thy letter
that thou thyself hadst had a good horn from the contents of the
cider barrel, a part being written one side up and a part the other
way, and it would need some one in nearly the same predicament to
keep track of it. We hope thy cranium will get straightened when
the answer to this is penned, so that we may follow thy varied
thoughts with less trouble. A little advice perhaps would be good
on both sides, and they that give should be willing to receive. See
to it that thou payest me down for this.
This letter also gives an insight into the medical practice of the good
old times. A niece, Cynthia, is being treated for the dropsy by
"drinking copiously of a decoction made by charring wormwood in a close
vessel and putting the ashes into brandy, and every night being
subjected to a heavy sweat." It recommends plenty of blue pills and
boneset for the ague. Later, Susan writes of a friend who is "under the
care of both Botanical and Apothecary doctors." For hardening of wax in
the ear she sends an infallible prescription: "Moisten salt with
vinegar and drop it in the ear every night for six weeks; said to be a
certain cure."
The staid and puritanical young woman is much disturbed at the
enthusiastic reception given President Van Buren at New Rochelle, and
writes home:
We had quite a noise last Fifth day on the occasion of Martin's
passing through this village. A band of splendid music was sent for
from the city, and large crowds of people called to look at him as
if he were a puppet show. Really one would have thought an angelic
being had descended from heaven, to have heard and seen the
commotion. The whole village was in an uproar. Here was a mother
after her children to go and gaze upon the great man, and there was
a teacher rushing with one child by the hand and half a dozen
running after. Where was I? Why I, by mustering a little
self-government, concluded to remain at home and suffer the
President to pass along in peace. He was to dine at Washington
Irving's, at Tarrytown, and then proceed to the Capitol.
Her extreme animosity is explained in a subsequent letter to Aaron
McLean:
I regret to hear that the people of Battenville are possessed of so
little sound sense as to go 20 miles to shake hands with the
President at Saratoga Springs; merely to look at a human being who
is possessed of nothing more than ordinary men and therefore should
not be worshipped more than any mortal being, nor even so much as
many in the humble walks of life who are devoted to their God. Let
us look at his behavior and scan its effects on society. One day
while in New York was spent in riding through the streets preceded
by an extravagant number of military men and musicians, who were
kept in exercise on that and succeeding days of the week until all
were completely exhausted. On the next day, while he and his party
were revelling in their tents on luxuries and the all-debasing
Wine, many poor, dear children were crying for food and for water
to allay their thirst. On Friday evening he attended Park Theater
and on Monday Bowery Theater. Yes, he who is called by the majority
as most capable of ruling this republic, may be seen in the Theater
encouraging one of the most heinous crimes or practices with which
our country is disgraced.[7] Yes, and afterwards we find him
rioting at the Wine Table, the whole livelong night. Is it to be
wondered that there are such vast numbers of our population who are
the votaries of Vice and Dissipation? No, certainly not, and I do
not believe there ever will be less of this wickedness while a man
practising these abominable vices (in what is called a gentlemanly
manner) is suffered to sit at the head of our Government.
The future orator and reformer is plainly foreshadowed in this burst of
indignation, to which Mr. McLean replies in part:
I was agreeably disappointed in Van Buren's personal appearance.
From what I had heard of him as a little, smooth, intriguing
arch-magician, I expected his looks would bear that out but it was
far to the contrary. He is quite old and gray, very grave and
careworn. His dress was perfectly plain, not the least sign of
jewelry save his watch seal which was solid gold. I saw him drink
no wine, although there was plenty about him, nor did your father
and mother who saw him dine at the United States Hotel. If you do
not like him because he tastes wine, how can you like Henry Clay
who drinks it freely? Mr. Webster drinks wine also. At a Whig
festival got up in Boston in his honor, at which he and 1,200 other
Whigs were present, there were drunk 2,300 bottles of champagne,
two bottles to each man. Mr. Clay attended balls at the Springs. He
had a slave with him to wait on him and hand him water to clear out
his throat while he was speaking; and this while he was preaching
liberty and declaring what a fine thing this freedom is!
While at New Rochelle Susan becomes greatly interested in the culture
of silk-worms, upon which the principal was experimenting. She writes
home full descriptions and urges them to ascertain if black mulberry
trees grow about there; she herself knew of one. She insists that the
sisters can teach school and take care of the silk-worms at the same
time, but evidently receives no encouragement as no more is heard of
the project. She retains the keenest interest in every detail of the
life at home. She sends some cherry stones to be planted because the
cherries were the largest and best she ever ate. A box of shells is
carefully gathered for brother Merritt, and sent with a grass linen
handkerchief for sister Mary. She sends back her mother's shawl for
fear she may need it more than herself. In the currant season she
writes that nothing in the world would taste so good as one of mother's
currant pies. She urges them to send her part of the family sewing to
do outside of school hours. She frequently walks down to Long Island
sound, a mile and a half away, and says at one time:
The sun was passing toward the western horizon, and all seemed calm
and tranquil save the restless wash of the waves against the beach.
A gentle breeze from the water refreshed our tired bodies. To one
unaccustomed to such scenes it was like a glimpse into another
world. In the distance one could see the villages of Long Island,
but I could think only of that village called home, and I longed
every moment to be there.
Her school commenced May 23 and closed September 6, a term of fifteen
weeks, for which she received $30, and she expresses her grief that,
after having paid for necessary clothes and incidentals, she has only
enough left to take her home. She reaches Center Falls in time to
assist in the final preparations for the wedding, on September 19,
1839, of her sister Guelma to Aaron McLean, a prosperous merchant at
Battenville.
Susan's next school was in her home district at Center Falls, where she
was very successful. One incident is on record in regard to the "bully"
of the school. After having tried every persuasive method at her
command to compel obedience, she proceeded to use the rod. He fought
viciously, but she finally flogged him into complete submission and
never had any further trouble with him or the other boys. She was,
however, very tender-hearted toward children and animals.
Among the outings enjoyed by the young people were excursions to
neighboring villages. There were no railroads, but every young man
owned his horse and buggy, and in pleasant weather a procession of
twenty vehicles often might be seen, each containing a happy couple on
their way to a supper and dance. On one occasion, according to the
little diary, the night was so dark they did not dare risk the ten-mile
drive home, as much of the road lay beside the river, so they continued
the festivities till daylight. Once a party went to Saratoga Springs,
and, to Miss Anthony's grief, her favorite young man invited another
girl, and she had a long, dreary drive trying to be agreeable to one
while her thought was with another. To add to the unpleasantness her
escort took this opportunity to ask her to give up teaching and preside
over a home for him.
One winter was spent with relatives at Danby, Vt., and here, with the
assistance of a cousin, Moses Vail, who was a teacher, she made a
thorough study of algebra. Later, when visiting her irrepressible
brother-in-law, Aaron McLean, she made some especially nice cream
biscuits for supper, and he said, "I'd rather see a woman make such
biscuits as these than solve the knottiest problem in algebra." "There
is no reason why she should not be able to do both," was the reply.
There are many references in the old letters to "Susan's tip-top
dinners."
She taught one summer in Cambridge, and then, for two years, in the
home of Lansing G. Taylor, at Fort Edward. Mrs. Taylor was the daughter
of Judge Halsey Wing. The journals of that date either were abandoned
or have been lost in the half century since then, and there is but one
letter in existence written during this very pleasant period. In it,
July 11, 1844, she says:
As the week draws toward its close my mind travels to the dear home
roof. It seems to fly far hence to that loved father and mingle
with his spirit while he is wandering in the wilds of Virginia, and
it raises to the throne of grace an ardent wish for his safe
return. Oh, that he may make no change of land except for the
better! Then do my thoughts rest with my dear mother, toiling
unremittingly through the long day and at eve, seated in her
arm-chair, wrapt in solemn stillness, and later reclining on her
lonely pillow. How often, when I am enjoying the sweet hour of
twilight, do I think of the sadness that has so long o'ershadowed
her brow, and ardently entreat the God of love and mercy to give
her that peace which is found only in a resignation to his just and
holy will. How numerous are our favors! We have a comfortable
subsistence and health to relish it; but, more than this, we, as a
family, are bound together by the strongest ties of affection that
seem daily to grow stronger....
I arose this morning at half-past four. Two ladies from Albany are
visiting here, the beautiful Abigail Mott, a Friend and a
thorough-going Abolitionist and reformer, and Mrs. Worthington, a
strict Methodist. Mr. Taylor took eight of us to the Whig
convention at Sandy Hill yesterday, and I attended my first
political meeting. I enjoyed every moment of it.
She also relates how Miss Mott would come to her room and expound to
her most beautifully the doctrine of Unitarianism, and then Mrs.
Worthington would come and pray with her long and earnestly to
counteract the pernicious effect of Miss Mott's heresies. While she was
accustomed to the liberal theology of the Hicksite Quakers, this was
the first time she ever had heard the more scholarly interpretation of
the Unitarian church.
From 1840 to 1845 Susan and Hannah taught almost continuously,
receiving only $2 or $2.50 a week and board, but living with most rigid
economy and giving the father all they could spare to help pay interest
on the mortgage which rested on factory, mills and home. He gave his
notes for every dollar and, years afterwards, when prosperity came,
paid all of them with scrupulous exactness. It was in these early days
of teaching that Miss Anthony saw with indignation the injustice
practiced towards women. Repeatedly she would take a school which a
male teacher had been obliged to give up because of inefficiency and,
although she made a thorough success, would receive only one-fourth of
his salary. It was the custom everywhere to pay men four times the
wages of women for exactly the same amount of work, often not so well
done.
Mr. Anthony went into his mills and performed the manual labor. In
partnership with Dr. Hiram Corliss he employed a number of men to cut
timber, going into the woods in the depths of winter personally to
superintend them. His wife would cook great quantities of provisions,
bake bread and cake, pork and beans, boil hams and roast chickens, and
go to the logging camp with him for a week at a time, and she used to
say that notwithstanding all the labor and anxiety of those days they
were among the happiest recollections of her life.
At home the loom and spinning-wheel were never idle. The mill-hands
were boarded, transient travelers cared for, and every possible effort
made to enable the father to secure another foothold, but all in vain.
The manufacturing business was dead, there was no building to call for
lumber, people had no money, and, after a desperate struggle of five
years, the end came and all was lost. Mr. Anthony then spent months in
looking for a suitable location to begin life anew. He went to Virginia
and to Michigan, but found nothing that suited him. He and his wife
made a trip through New York, visiting a number of relatives on the
way, and were persuaded to examine a farm for sale near Rochester. It
proved to be more satisfactory than anything they had seen, and they
decided to take it. Joshua Read who, during all these years, had
carefully protected the portion which his sister, Mrs. Anthony, had
inherited from their father, took this to make the first payment on the
farm.[8] They then returned to Center Falls and began preparations for
what in those times was a long journey.
One warm day in the summer of 1845, several Quaker elders had stopped
to dine at the Anthony home on their way to Quarterly Meeting. Hannah
and Susan were in the large, cool parlor working on the wonderful quilt
which was to be a part of Hannah's wedding outfit, when one of the
elders, a wealthy widower from Vermont, asked Susan to get him a drink.
He followed her out to the well and there made her an offer of
marriage, which she promptly refused. He pictured his many acres, his
fine home, his sixty cows, told her how much she looked like his first
wife, begged her to take time to consider and he would stop on his way
back to get her answer. She assured him that it would be entirely
unnecessary, as she was going with her father and mother to their new
home and did not want to marry. He could scarcely understand a woman
who did not desire matrimony, but was finally persuaded to gather up
his slighted affections and go on to Quarterly Meeting.
On September 4, Hannah was married to Eugene Mosher, a merchant at
Easton. Daniel R. was now clerking at Lenox, Mass., so there were only
Susan, Mary and Merritt to go with the father and mother. All the
relatives bade them good-by as if forever, and the leave-taking was
very sorrowful, for it was the first permanent separation of the
family.
[Footnote 7: In after years Miss Anthony greatly enjoyed attending a
good play.]
[Footnote 8: In 1848, when the law was enacted allowing a married woman
to hold property, it was put in her name and she retained it till her
death.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE FARM HOME--END OF TEACHING.
1845--1850.
On November 7, 1845, the parents and three children took the stage for
Troy, and from there went by railroad to Palatine Bridge for a short
visit to Joshua Read. The journey from here to Rochester was made by
canal on a "line boat" instead of a "packet," because it was cheaper
and because they wanted to be with their household goods. At Utica they
found two cousins, Nancy and Melintha Howe, waiting for the packet to
go west, but when they saw their relatives they gladly boarded the line
boat. Mrs. Anthony did the cooking for the entire party, in the
spotless little kitchen on the boat, and the young people, at least,
had a merry journey.
The family arrived in Rochester late in the afternoon of November 14.
They landed at Fitzhugh street and went to the National Hotel. The
father had just ten dollars, and it was out of the question to remain
there over night; so he took the old gray horse and the wagon off the
boat, with a few necessary articles, and with his family started for
the farm, three miles west of the city. The day was cold and cheerless,
the roads were very muddy, and by the time they reached their
destination it was quite dark. An old man and his daughter had been
left in charge and had nothing in the way of food but cornmeal and
milk. Mrs. Anthony made a kettle of mush which her husband pronounced
"good enough for the queen." The only bed was occupied by Mr. and Mrs.
Anthony, and the rest slept on the floor. Next day the household goods
were brought from the city and all were soon busy putting the new home
in order. That was a long and lonesome winter. The closest neighbors
were the DeGarmos, and there were a number of other Quaker families in
the city. These called at once and performed every friendly office in
their power, but the hearts of the exiles were very sad and home-sick.
The cause of human freedom was then uppermost in many minds, and the
Anthonys found here congenial spirits in their strong anti-slavery
convictions, and numerous little "abolition" meetings were held during
that winter at their home and in those of their new friends.
When spring opened, the surroundings began to assume a more cheerful
aspect. The farm was a very pretty one of thirty-two acres. The house
stood on an elevation, the long walk that led up to it was lined on
both sides with pinks, there were many roses and other flowers in the
yard, and great numbers of peach, cherry and quince trees and currant
and goose-berry bushes. The scenery was peaceful and pleasant, but they
missed the rugged hills and dashing, picturesque streams of their
eastern home. Back of the house were the barn, carriage-house and a
small blacksmith shop. Mrs. Anthony used to say that her happiest hours
were spent on Sunday mornings, when her husband would heat the little
forge and mend the kitchen and farm utensils, while she sat knitting
and talking with him, Quakers making no difference between Sunday and
other days of the week. He had learned this kind of work in boyhood on
his father's farm and always enjoyed the relaxation it afforded from
the cares and worries which crowded upon him in later years.
Mr. Anthony put into his farm the energy and determination
characteristic of the man. He rose early; he ploughed and sowed and
reaped; he planted peach and apple orchards, and improved the property
in many ways, but it was unprofitable work. It seemed very small to him
after the broad acres of his early home, and he was accustomed to refer
to it as his "sixpenny farm." His life had been too large and too much
among men of the great business world to make it possible for him to be
content with the existence of a farmer. While he retained his farm
home, he very soon went into business in Rochester, connecting himself
with the New York Life Insurance Company, then just coming into
prominence, and used to say he made money enough out of that to afford
the luxury of keeping the farm. He was very successful, and continued
with this company the remainder of his life.
On April 25, 1846, Miss Anthony received this invitation:
At a meeting of the Trustees of the Canajoharie Academy held this
day, it was unanimously Resolved to offer you the Female Department
upon the terms which have heretofore been offered to the teachers
of that department, viz:--the tuition money of the female
department less 12-1/2 per cent., the teachers collecting their
tuition bills. Should these terms meet your views, please favor us
with an answer by return mail. The next term commences on the first
Monday of May proximo.
We are Very Respectfully Yours,
JOSHUA READ, LIVINGSTON SPEAKER, GEORGE G. JOHNSON.
Miss Anthony accepted in a carefully worded and finely written letter,
and arrived at the home of her uncle Joshua Saturday morning, May 2. He
had lived many years at Palatine Bridge, just across the river, was
school trustee, bank director, one of the owners of the turnpike, the
toll bridge and the stage line, and also kept a hotel. His two
daughters were well married, and Miss Anthony boarded with them during
all of her three years' teaching in Canajoharie. She found her uncle
very ill and being treated by the doctor "with calomel, opium and
morphine." In a conversation he told her that "her success would depend
largely upon thinking that she knew it all." Although there was now no
postmaster in the family, letter postage had been reduced to five
cents, and a voluminous correspondence is in existence covering the
period from 1846 to 1849. The school commenced with forty boys and
twenty-five girls, and the tuition was $5 per annum. The principal was
Daniel B. Hagar, a man whom Miss Anthony always loved to remember,
highly educated, a gentleman in deportment, kind, thoughtful, and
always ready to help and encourage the young teacher.[9]
Here Miss Anthony was for the first time entirely away from Quaker
surroundings and influences, and her letters soon show the effects of
environment. The "first month, second day," expressions are dropped and
the "plain language" is wholly abandoned. She has more money now than
ever before and is at liberty to use it for her own pleasure. A love of
handsome clothes begins to develop. "I have a new pearl straw gypsy
hat," she writes, "trimmed in white ribbon with fringe on one edge and
a pink satin stripe on the other, with a few white roses and green
leaves for inside trimming." The beaux hover around; a certain
"Dominie," a widower with several children, is very attentive; another
widower, a lawyer, visits the school so often as to set all the gossips
in a flutter; a third is described as "very handsome, sleek as a ribbon
and the most splendid black hair I ever looked at." She takes many
drives with still another, "through a delightful country variegated
with hill and valley, past fields of newly-mown grass, splendid forests
and gently winding rivulets, with here and there a large patch of
yellow pond lilies." In writing to a relative she urges her to break
herself of "the miserable habit of borrowing trouble, which saps all
the sweets of life." At another time she writes: "I have made up my
mind that we can expect only a certain amount of comfort wherever we
may be, and that it is the disposition of a person, more than the
surroundings, that creates happiness."
Her first quarterly examination, to be held in the presence of
principal, trustees and parents, is a cause of great anxiety. She
writes that her nerves were on fire and the blood was ready to burst
from her face, and she slept none the night previous. She wore a new
muslin gown, plaid in purple, white, blue and brown, two puffs around
the skirt and on the sleeves at shoulders and wrists, white linen
undersleeves and collarette; new blue prunella gaiters with
patent-leather heels and tips; her cousin's watch with a gold chain and
pencil. Her abundant hair was braided in four long braids, which cousin
Margaret sewed together and wound around a big shell comb. Everybody
said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful," and "many fears were expressed
lest _some one_ should be so smitten that the school would be deprived
of a teacher." The pupils acquitted themselves with flying colors, and
the teacher then went to spend her vacation with her married sisters at
Easton and Battenville. They had "long talks and good laughs and cries
together," but she writes her parents that if they will make one visit
to this old home they will go back to Rochester thoroughly satisfied
with the new one.
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
AT THE AGE OF 28, FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE.]
For the winter she buys a broche shawl for $22.50, a gray fox muff for
$8, a $5.50 white ribbed-silk hat, "which makes the villagers stare,"
and a plum-colored merino dress at $2 a yard, "which everybody admits
to be the sweetest thing entirely;" and she wonders if her sisters "do
not feel rather sad because they are married and can not have nice
clothes." Miss Anthony may be said to have been at this time at the
height of her fashionable career.
In the spring her pupils give an "exhibition" which far surpasses
anything ever before seen in Canajoharie. She writes: "Can you begin to
imagine my excitement? The nights seemed lengthened into days; the
hopes, the fears that filled my mind are indescribable. Who ever
thought that Susan Anthony could get up such an affair? I am sure I
never did, but here I was; it was sink or swim, I made a bold effort
and won the victory."[10]
In June she attends her first circus, "Sands, Lent & Co., Proprietors."
About this time she writes of being invited to a military ball and
says: "My fancy for attending dances is fully satiated. I certainly
shall not attend another unless I can have a total abstinence man to
accompany me, and not one whose highest delight is to make a fool of
himself." She says in this letter: "The town election has just been
held and the good people elected a distiller for supervisor and a
rumseller for justice of the peace."
In 1848 she shows the first signs of growing tired of teaching and
wonders if she is to follow it for a lifetime. She says: "I don't know
whether I am weary of well-doing, but oh, if I could only unstring my
bow for a few short months, I think I could take up my work with
renewed vigor." She is very homesick, after the two years' absence, and
so makes a visit to Rochester in August. For this she gets "a drab silk
bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk
made over, half low-necked." She has "a beautiful green delaine and a
black braise [barége] which are very becoming." She wants a fancy hat,
a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny
herself, but afterwards writes: "There is not a mantilla in town like
mine."
In March, 1849, her beloved cousin Margaret, with whom she has been
living for the past two years, gives birth to a child and she remains
with her through the ordeal. In a letter to her mother immediately
afterwards, she expresses the opinion that there are some drawbacks to
marriage which make a woman quite content to remain single. She quotes
a little bit of domestic life: "Joseph had a headache the other day and
Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks. 'Oh,' said the
husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine pain, yours is a sort of
natural consequence.'" For seven weeks she is at Margaret's bedside
every moment when out of school, and also superintends the house and
looks after the children. There are a nurse and a girl in the kitchen,
but the invalid will eat no food which Cousin Susan does not prepare;
there is no touch so light and gentle as hers; her very presence gives
rest and strength. At the end of this time Margaret dies, leaving four
little children. Susan's grief is as intense as if she had lost a
sister, and she decides to remain no longer in Canajoharie. She writes:
"I seem to shrink from my daily tasks; energy and stimulus are wanting;
I have no courage. A great weariness has come over me." In all the
letters of the past ten years there has not been one note of discontent
or discouragement, but now she is growing tired of the treadmill. At
this time the California fever was at its height, hundreds of young men
were starting westward, and she writes: "Oh, if I were but a man so
that I could go!"
Soon after coming to Canajoharie Miss Anthony joined the society of the
Daughters of Temperance and was made secretary. Her heart and soul were
enlisted in this cause. She realized the immense task to be
accomplished, and, even then, saw dimly the power that women might
wield if they were properly organized and given full authority and
sanction to work. As yet no women had spoken in public on this
question, and they had just begun to organize societies among
themselves, called Daughters' Unions, which were a sort of annex to the
men's organizations, but they were strongly opposed by most women as
being unladylike and entirely out of woman's sphere.
On March 1, 1849, the Daughters of Temperance gave a supper, to which
were invited the people of the village, and the address of the evening
was made by Miss Anthony. She thus describes the occasion in a letter:
I was escorted into the hall by the Committee where were assembled
about 200 people. The room was beautifully festooned with cedar and
red flannel. On the south side was printed in large capitals of
evergreen the name of "Susan B. Anthony!" I hardly knew how to
conduct myself amidst so much kindly regard. They had an elegant
supper. On the top of one pyramid loaf cake was a beautiful
bouquet, which was handed to the gentleman who escorted me (Charlie
Webster) and by him presented to me.
The paper is interesting as the first platform utterance of a woman
destined to become one of the noted speakers of the century. While it
gives no especial promise of the oratorical ability which later
developed, it illustrates the courage of the woman who dared read an
address in public, when to do so provoked the severest criticism. The
following extracts are taken verbatim from the original MS.:
Welcome, Gentlemen and Ladies, to this, our Hall of Temperance. We
feel that the cause we have espoused is a common cause, in which
you, with us, are deeply interested. We would that some means were
devised, by which our Brothers and Sons shall no longer be allured
from the _right_ by the corrupting influence of the fashionable
sippings of wine and brandy, those sure destroyers of Mental and
Moral Worth, and by which our Sisters and Daughters shall no longer
be exposed to the vile arts of the gentlemanly-appearing, gallant,
but really half-inebriated seducer. Our motive is to ask of you
counsel in the formation, and co-operation in the carrying-out of
plans which may produce a radical change in our Moral
Atmosphere....
But to the question, what good our Union has done? Though our Order
has been strongly opposed by ladies professing a desire to see the
Moral condition of our race elevated, and though we still behold
some of our thoughtless female friends whirling in the giddy dance,
with intoxicated partners at their side and, more than this, see
them accompany their reeling companions to some secluded nook and
there quaff with them from that Virtue-destroying cup, yet may we
not hope that an influence, though now unseen, unfelt, has gone
forth, which shall tell upon the future, which shall convince us
that our weekly resort to these meetings has not been in vain, and
which shall cause the friends of humanity to admire and
respect--nay, venerate--this now-despised little band of Daughters
of Temperance?...
We count it no waste of time to go forth through our streets, thus
proclaiming our desire for the advancement of our great cause. You,
with us, no doubt, feel that Intemperance is the blighting mildew
of all our social connections; you would be most happy to speed on
the time when no Wife shall watch with trembling heart and tearful
eye the slow, but sure descent of her idolized Companion down to
the loathsome haunts of drunkenness; you would hasten the day when
no Mother shall have to mourn over a darling son as she sees him
launch his bark on the circling waves of the mighty whirlpool.
How is this great change to be wrought, who are to urge on this
vast work of reform? Shall it not be women, who are most aggrieved
by the foul destroyer's inroads? Most certainly. Then arises the
question, how are we to accomplish the end desired? I answer, not
by confining our influence to our own home circle, not by centering
all our benevolent feelings upon our own kindred, not by caring
naught for the culture of any minds, save those of our own
darlings. No, no; the gratification of the _selfish_ impulses
_alone_, can never produce a desirable change in the Moral aspect
of Society....
It is generally conceded that it is our sex that fashions the
Social and Moral State of Society. We do not presume that females
possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day;
but we do believe that were they en masse to discountenance the use
of wine and brandy as beverages at both their public and private
parties, not one of the opposite Sex, who has any claim to the
title of gentleman, would so insult them as to come into their
presence after having quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true
delicacy and refinement.
I am not aware that we have any inebriate females among us, but
have we not those, who are fallen from _Virtue_, and who claim our
efforts for their reform, equally with the inebriate? And while we
feel it our duty to extend the hand of sympathy and love to those
who are wanderers from the path of Temperance, should we not also
be zealous in reclaiming those poor, deluded ones, who have been
robbed of their most precious Gem, Virtue, and whom we blush to
think belong to our Sex?
Now, Ladies, all we would do is to do all in our power, both
individually and collectively, to harmonize and happify our Social
system. We ask of you candidly and seriously to investigate the
Matter, and decide for yourselves whether the object of our Union
be not on the side of right, and if it be, then one and all, for
the sake of erring humanity, come forward and _speed_ on the right.
If you come to the conclusion that the end we wish to attain is
right, but are not satisfied with the plan adopted, then I ask of
you to devise means by which this great good may be more speedily
accomplished, and you shall find us ready with both heart and hand
to co-operate with you. In my humble opinion, all that is needed to
produce a complete Temperance and Social reform in this age of
Moral Suasion, is for our Sex to cast their United influences into
the balance.
Ladies! there is no Neutral position for us to assume. If we
sustain not this noble enterprise, both by precept and example,
then is our influence on the side of Intemperance. If we say we
love the Cause, and then sit down at our ease, surely does our
action speak the lie. And now permit me once more to beg of you to
lend your aid to this great Cause, the Cause of God and all
Mankind.
The next day on the streets, so the letters say, everybody was
exclaiming, "Miss Anthony is the smartest woman who ever has been in
Canajoharie." Soon afterwards the school closed and, after spending the
summer visiting eastern relatives and friends, Miss Anthony returned to
Rochester in the autumn of 1849. The thing she remembers most vividly
is how she reveled in fruit. All the young orchards her father had
planted were now bearing, including a thousand peach trees, and for the
first time in her life she had all the peaches she wanted, and "lived
on them for a month."
The years of 1850 and 1851 Daniel Anthony conducted his insurance
business in Syracuse and Susan remained at home, taking entire charge
of the farm, superintending the planting of the crops, the harvesting
and the selling. She also did most of the housework, as her mother was
in delicate health, her sister was teaching school and both brothers
were away. In the winter of 1852, she went into a school in Rochester
as supply for three months. She found, however, that her taste for
teaching was entirely gone, her work was without inspiration, her
interest and sympathy had become enlisted in other things. She longed
to take an active part in the two great reforms of temperance and
anti-slavery, which now were absorbing public attention; she could not
endure the narrow and confining life of the school-room, and so, in the
spring, she abandoned teaching forever, after an experience of fifteen
years.
[Footnote 9: Nearly fifty years afterwards, when Mr. Hagar was at the
head of the Girls' High School, in Salem, Mass., Miss Anthony visited
him and was most cordially invited to address his pupils "on any
subject she pleased, even woman suffrage."]
[Footnote 10: The play for this occasion was written by James Arkell,
father of W.J. Arkell, proprietor of the Judge. He was a pupil in the
boys' department of the old academy.]
CHAPTER V.
ENTRANCE INTO PUBLIC LIFE.
1850--1852.
Ill the conditions were such as to make it most natural for Miss
Anthony, when she reached the age of maturity, to adopt a public career
and go actively into reform work, and especially to enter upon that
contest to secure equal rights for those of her own sex, which she was
to wage unceasingly for half a century. Her father's mother and sister
were "high seat" Quakers, the latter a famous preacher. Her mother's
cousin, Betsey Dunnell White, of Stafford's Hill, was noted as the only
woman in that locality who could "talk politics," and the men used to
come from far and near to get her opinion on the political situation.
She was brought up in a society which recognizes the equality of the
sexes and encourages women in public speaking. In her own home the
father believed in giving sons and daughters the same advantages, and
in preparing the latter as well as the former for self-support. The
daughters were taught business principles, and invested with
responsibility at an early age. Two of them married, and the third was
of a quiet and retiring disposition; but in Susan he saw ability of a
high order and that same courage, persistence and aggressiveness which
entered into his own character, enabling him to make his way in the
business world and rally from his losses and defeats. He encouraged her
desire to go into the reforms which were demanding attention, gave her
financial backing when necessary, moral support upon all occasions, and
was ever her most interested friend and faithful ally. She received
also the sympathy and assistance of her mother, who, no matter how
heavy the domestic burdens, or how precarious her own health, was never
willing that she should take any time from her public work to give to
the duties of home, although she frequently insisted upon doing so.
During Miss Anthony's stay at Canajoharie she went often to Albany and
there made the intimate acquaintance of Abigail Mott and her sister
Lydia, whose names are now a blessed memory with the leaders of the
abolition movement that still remain. Their modest home was a rallying
center for the reformers of the day, and here Miss Anthony met many of
the noted men and women with whom she was to become so closely
associated in the future. She reached home in 1849 to find a hot-bed of
discussion and fermentation. The first rift had been made in the old
common law, which for centuries had held women in its iron grasp, by
the passage, in April, 1848, of the Property Bill allowing a married
woman to hold real estate in her own name in New York. Previous to this
time all the property which a woman owned at marriage and all she might
receive by gift or inheritance passed into the possession of the
husband; the rents and profits belonged to him, and he could sell it
during his lifetime or dispose of it by will at his death except her
life interest in one-third of the real estate. The more thoughtful
among women were beginning to ask why other unjust laws should not also
be repealed, and the whole question of the rights of woman was thus
opened.
In 1848, Spiritualism may be said to have had its birth, and the
remarkable manifestations of the Fox sisters brought numbers of people
to Rochester, where they had-removed as soon as they began to be widely
known. This form of religious belief soon acquired a large following,
causing much controversy and great excitement.
The Society of Friends had divided on the slavery issue and Miss
Anthony found her family attending the Unitarian church, which soon
afterwards called William Henry Channing to its pulpit. Both he and
Samuel J. May, the father of Unitarianism in Syracuse, became her
steadfast friends and never-failing support in all the great work which
was developed in later years.
[Illustration:
AUNT HANNAH, THE QUAKER PREACHER.
FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE.]
In July, 1848, the first Woman's Rights Convention had been held in
Seneca Falls and adjourned to meet in Rochester August 2. Miss
Anthony's father, mother and sister Mary had attended and signed the
declaration demanding equal rights for women, and she found them
enthusiastic upon this subject and also over Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia
Mott and other prominent women who had taken part. Her cousin, Sarah
Anthony Burtis, had acted as secretary of the convention.
In 1849 Mrs. Mott published her admirable Discourse on Woman in answer
to a lyceum lecture by Richard H. Dana ridiculing the idea of civil and
political rights for women. In 1847 Frederick Douglass had brought his
family to Rochester and established his paper, the North Star. As soon
as Miss Anthony reached home she was taken by her father to call on
Douglass, and this was the beginning of another friendship which was to
last a lifetime.
The year 1849 saw the whole country in a state of great unrest and
excitement. Eighty thousand men had gone to California in search of
gold. Telegraphs and railroads were being rapidly constructed, thus
bringing widely separated localities into close communication. The
unsettled condition of Europe and the famine in Ireland had turned
toward America that tremendous tide of immigration which this year had
risen to 300,000. The admission of Texas into the Union had
precipitated the full force of the slavery question. Old parties were
disintegrating and sectional lines becoming closely drawn. New
territories were knocking at the door of the Union and the whole nation
was in a ferment as to whether they should be slave or free. Threats of
secession were heard in both the North and the South. A spirit of
compromise finally prevailed and deferred the crisis for a decade, but
the agitation and unrest continued to increase. The Abolitionists were
still a handful of radicals, repudiated alike by the Free Soil Whigs
and Free Soil Democrats. Slavery, as an institution, had not yet become
a political issue, but only its extension into the territories.
Such, in brief, was the situation at the beginning of 1850. It was a
period of grave apprehension on the part of older men and women, of
intense aggressiveness with the younger, who were eager for action. It
is not surprising then that an educated, self-reliant, public-spirited
woman who had just reached thirty should chafe against the narrow
limits of a school-room and rebel at giving her time and strength to
the teaching of children, when all her mind and heart were drawn toward
the great issues then filling the press and the platform and even
finding their way into the pulpit. Miss Anthony's whole soul soon
became absorbed in the thought, "What service can I render humanity;
what can I do to help right the wrongs of society?" At this time the
one and only field of public work into which women had dared venture,
except in a few isolated cases, was that of temperance. Miss Anthony
had brought her credentials from the Daughters' Union at Canajoharie
and presented them at once to the society in Rochester; they were
gladly accepted and she soon became a leader. In these days John B.
Gough was delivering his magnificent lectures throughout the country,
and Philip S. White, of South Carolina, was winning fame as a
temperance orator.
The year 1850 was for her one of transition. A new world opened out
before her. The Anthony homestead was a favorite meeting place for
liberal-spirited men and women. On Sunday especially, when the father
could be at home, the house was filled and fifteen or twenty people
used to gather around the hospitable board. Susan always superintended
these Sunday dinners, and was divided between her anxiety to sustain
her reputation as a superior cook and her desire not to lose a word of
the conversation in the parlor. Garrison, Pillsbury, Phillips, Channing
and other great reformers visited at this home, and many a Sunday the
big wagon would be sent to the city for Frederick Douglass and his
family to come out and spend the day. Here were gathered many times the
Posts, Hallowells, DeGarmos, Willises, Burtises, Kedzies, Fishes,
Curtises, Stebbins, Asa Anthonys, all Quakers who had left the society
on account of their anti-slavery principles and were leaders in the
abolition and woman's rights movements. Every one of these Sunday
meetings was equal to a convention. The leading events of the day were
discussed in no uncertain tones. All were Garrisonians and believed in
"immediate and unconditional emancipation." In 1850 the Fugitive Slave
Law was passed and all the resources of the federal government were
employed for its enforcement. Its provisions exasperated the
Abolitionists to the highest degree. The house of Isaac and Amy Post
was the rendezvous for runaway slaves, and each of these families that
gathered on Sunday at the Anthony farm could have told where might be
found at least one station on the "underground railroad."
Miss Anthony read with deep interest the reports of the woman's rights
convention held at Worcester, Mass., October, 1850, which were
published in the New York Tribune.[11] She sympathized fully with the
demand for equal rights for women, but was not yet quite convinced that
these included the suffrage. This, no doubt, was largely because Quaker
men did not vote, thinking it wrong to support a government which
believed in war. Even so progressive and public-spirited a man as
Daniel Anthony, much as he was interested in all national affairs,
never voted until 1860, when he became convinced it was only by force
of arms that the question of slavery could be settled.
In 1851, the License Law having been arbitrarily repealed a few years
before, there was practically no regulation of the liquor business, nor
was there any such public sentiment against intemperance as exists at
the present day. Drunkenness was not looked upon as an especial
disgrace and there had been little agitation of the question. The wife
of a drunkard was completely at his mercy. He had the entire custody of
the children, full control of anything she might earn, and the law did
not recognize drunkenness as a cause for divorce. Although woman was
the greatest sufferer, she had not yet learned that she had even the
poor right of protest. Oppressed by the weight of the injustice and
tyranny of ages, she knew nothing except to suffer in silence; and so
degraded was she by generations of slavish submission, that she
possessed not even the moral courage to stand by those of her own sex
who dared rebel and demand a new dispensation.
The old Washingtonian Society of the first half of the nineteenth
century, composed entirely of men, because reformed drunkards only
could belong to it, was succeeded by the Sons of Temperance, and these
had permitted the organization of subordinate lodges called Daughters
of Temperance, which, as subsequent events will show, were entitled to
no official recognition. It was in one of these, the only organized
bodies of women known at this time,[12] that Miss Anthony first
displayed that executive ability which was destined to make her famous.
During 1851 she was very active in temperance work and organized a
number of societies in surrounding towns. She instituted in Rochester a
series of suppers and festivals to raise the funds which she at once
saw were necessary before any efficient work could be done. An old
invitation to one of these, dated February 21, 1851, and signed by
Susan B. Anthony, chairman, reads: "The entertainment is intended to be
of such a character as will meet the approbation of the wise and good;
Supper, Songs, Toasts, Sentiments and short speeches will be the order
of-the evening; $1 will admit a gentleman and a lady" A newpaper
account says:
The five long tables were loaded with a rich variety of provisions,
tastefully decorated and arranged. Mayor Samuel Richardson presided
at the supper table. After the repast was over, Miss Susan B.
Anthony, Directress of the Festival and President of the
Association, introduced these highly creditable sentiments, which
were greatly applauded by the assemblage:
"The Women of Rochester--Powerful to fashion the customs of
society, may they not fail to exercise that power for the speedy
and total banishment of all that intoxicates from our domestic and
social circles, and thus speed on the day when no young man, be he
ever so _genteelly_ dressed or of ever so _noble_, origin, who
pollutes his lips with the touch of the drunkard's cup, shall
presume to seek the favor of any of our precious daughters.
"Our Cause--May each succeeding day add to its glory and every hour
give fresh impetus to its progress...."
Many other toasts were proposed which space forbids quoting, but the
following by one of the gentlemen deserves a place:
The Daughters--Our characters they elevate,
Our manners they refine;
Without them we'd degenerate
To the level of the swine.
It is curious how willing men have been, through all the centuries, to
admit that only the influence of women saves them from being brutes and
how anxious to confine that influence to the narrowest possible limits.
[Autograph:
Very truly and affectionately
Abby K. Foster]
In the winter of 1851 Miss Anthony attended an anti-slavery meeting in
Rochester, conducted by Stephen and Abby Kelly Foster. This was her
first acquaintance with Mrs. Foster, who had been the most persecuted
of all the women taking part in the anti-slavery struggle. She had been
ridiculed, denounced and mobbed for years; and, for listening to her on
Sunday, men and women had been expelled from church. Her strong and
heroic spirit struck an answering spark in Miss Anthony's breast. She
accompanied the Fosters for a week on their tour of meetings in
adjoining counties, and was urged by them to go actively into this
reform.
The following May she went to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary in Syracuse.
This convention had been driven out of New York by Rynders' mob in 1850
and did not dare go back. On the way home she stopped at Seneca Falls,
the guest of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, to hear again Wm. Lloyd Garrison and
George Thompson, the distinguished Abolitionist from England, who had
stirred her nature to its depths. Here was fulfilled her long-cherished
desire of seeing Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their meeting is best
described in that lady's own words: "Walking home with the speakers,
who were my guests, we met Mrs. Bloomer with Miss Anthony on the corner
of the street waiting to greet us. There she stood with her good,
earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the
same color relieved with pale-blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness
and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly from the beginning." Both Mrs.
Stanton and Mrs. Bloomer on this occasion wore what is known as the
Bloomer costume. In the summer Miss Anthony went to Seneca Falls to a
meeting of those interested in founding the People's College. Horace
Greeley, Lucy Stone and herself were entertained by Mrs. Stanton. The
three women were determined it should be opened to girls as well as
boys. Mr. Greeley begged them not to agitate the question, assuring
them that he would have the constitution and by-laws so framed as to
admit women on the same terms as men, and he did as he promised, making
a spirited fight. Before the college was fairly started, however, it
was merged into Cornell University.
This was Miss Anthony's first meeting with Lucy Stone and may be called
the commencement of her life-long friendship with Mrs. Stanton. These
women who sat at the dinner-table that day were destined to be recorded
in history for all time as the three central figures in the great
movement for equal rights. There certainly was nothing formidable in
the appearance of the trio: Miss Anthony a quiet, dignified Quaker
girl; Mrs. Stanton a plump, jolly, youthful matron, scarcely five feet
high; and Lucy Stone a petite, soft-voiced young woman who seemed
better fitted for caresses than for the hard buffetings of the world.
Miss Anthony's public life may be said to have fairly begun in 1852.
The Sons of Temperance had announced a mass meeting of all the
divisions in the state, to be held at Albany, and had invited the
Daughters to send delegates. The Rochester union appointed Susan B.
Anthony. Her credentials, with those of the other women delegates, were
accepted and seats given them in the convention, but when Miss Anthony
rose to speak to a motion she was informed by the presiding officer
that "the sisters were not invited there to speak but to listen and
learn." She and three or four other ladies at once left the hall. The
rest of the women had not the courage to follow, but called them "bold,
meddlesome disturbers," and remained to bask in the approving smiles of
the Sons. They sought advice of Lydia Mott, who said the proper thing
was to hold a meeting of their own; so they secured the lecture-room of
the Hudson street Presbyterian church, and then went to the office of
the Evening Journal, edited by Thurlow Weed, to talk the situation over
with him. He told them they had done exactly right, and in his paper
that evening he announced their meeting and related their treatment by
the men.
The night was cold and snowy. The little room was dark, the stove
smoked and the pipe fell down during the exercises, but the women were
sustained by their indignation and sense of justice and would not allow
themselves to be discouraged. Rev. Samuel J. May, who was in the city
attending the "Jerry Rescue" trials, seeing the notice of their
meeting, came to offer his assistance, accompanied by David Wright,
husband of Martha C. Wright and brother-in-law of Lucretia Mott. These
two, with a reporter, were the only men present at this little
assemblage of women who had decided that they could do something better
for the cause of temperance than being seen and not heard.
Mr. May opened the meeting with prayer, and then showed them how to
organize. Mary C. Vaughn, of Oswego, was made president; Miss Anthony,
secretary; Lydia Mott, chairman of the business committee. Mrs. Vaughn
gave an address. A letter had been received from Mrs. Stanton so
radical that most of the ladies objected to having it read, but Miss
Anthony took the responsibility. She read, also, letters from Clarina
Howard Nichols and Amelia Bloomer, which had been intended for the
Sons' meeting. Mrs. Lydia F. Fowler, who happened to be lecturing in
Albany, spoke briefly, and Mr. May paid high tribute to the valuable
work of women in temperance and anti-slavery, declaring their influence
as indispensable to the state and the church as to the home. Miss
Anthony then said their treatment showed that the time had come for
women to have an organization of their own; and the final outcome was
the appointment of a committee, with herself as chairman, to call a
Woman's State Temperance Convention.
She at once wrote to all parts of the State urging the unions to send
delegates, and received many encouraging replies. Horace Greeley wrote
as follows:
I heartily approve the call of the Woman's Temperance Convention,
and hope it may result in good. To this end I would venture to
suggest:
1st. Hold an informal and private meeting before you attempt to
meet in public. There select your officers, your business
committees, etc., so that there shall be no jarring when you
assemble in public.
2d. Have your addresses and resolves carefully prepared beforehand.
Make them very short and pointed. Have them in type so that they
may appear promptly and simultaneously in the daily papers. If you
will send us a copy of them the night before we will endeavor to
print them with our proceedings of the meeting received by
telegraph.
3d. Be sure that your strongest thinkers speak and that the weaker
forbear, and that extraneous matters, so far as possible, are let
alone.
It will be seen that by adopting these shrewd political methods there
would not be much left for the convention proper to do except listen to
the speeches, but it would be hard to compress into smaller space more
sensible advice. Mrs. Nichols wrote her: "It is most invigorating to
watch the development of a woman in the work for humanity: first,
anxious for the cause and depressed with a sense of her own inability;
next, partial success of timid efforts creating a hope; next, a faith;
and then the fruition of complete self-devotion. Such will be your
history." From Mrs. Stanton came cheering words: "I will gladly do all
in my power to help you. Come and stay with me and I will write the
best lecture I can for you. I have no doubt a little practice will make
you an admirable speaker. Dress loosely, take a great deal of exercise,
be particular about your diet and sleep enough. The body has great
influence upon the mind. In your meetings, if attacked, be cool and
good-natured, for if you are simple and truth-loving no sophistry can
confound you. As for my own address, if I am to be president it ought
perhaps to be sent out with the stamp of the convention, but as
anything from my pen is necessarily radical no one may wish to share
with me the odium of what I may choose to say. If so, I am ready to
stand alone. I never write to please any one. If I do please I am
happy, but to proclaim my highest convictions of truth is always my
sole object."
After weeks of hard work, writing countless letters, taking numerous
trips to various towns, and making almost without assistance all the
necessary arrangements, the convention assembled in Corinthian Hall,
Rochester, April 20, 1852. The morning audience was composed entirely
of women, 500 being in attendance. Miss Anthony opened the meeting,
read the call, which had been widely circulated, and in a clear,
forcible manner set forth the object of the convention. The call urged
the women to "meet together for devising such associated action as
shall be necessary for the protection of their interests and of society
at large, too long invaded and destroyed by legalized intemperance." It
was signed by Daniel Anthony, William R. Hallowell and a number of
well-known men and women, many of whom were present and took part in
the discussions. Letters were read from distinguished persons and
strong resolutions adopted, among them one thanking the New York
Tribune for the kindness with which it had uniformly sustained women in
their efforts for temperance. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected
president; Mrs. Gerrit Smith, Mrs. E.C. Delavan, Antoinette L. Brown
and nine others, vice-presidents; Susan B. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer,
secretaries. In accepting the presidency, Mrs. Stanton made a powerful
speech, certain parts of which acted as a bombshell not only at this
meeting, but in press, pulpit and society. The two points which aroused
most antagonism were:
1st. Let no woman remain in the relation of wife with a confirmed
drunkard. Let no drunkard be the father of her children.... Let us
petition our State government so to modify the laws affecting
marriage and the custody of children, that the drunkard shall have
no claims on wife or child.
2d. Inasmuch as charity begins at home, let us withdraw our mite
from all associations for sending the Gospel to the heathen across
the ocean, for the education of young men for the ministry, for the
building up of a theological aristocracy and gorgeous temples to
the unknown God, and devote ourselves to the poor and suffering
around us. Let us feed and clothe the hungry and naked, gather
children into schools and provide reading-rooms and decent homes
for young men and women thrown alone upon the world. Good schools
and homes, where the young could ever be surrounded by an
atmosphere of purity and virtue, would do much more to prevent
immorality and crime in our cities than all the churches in the
land could ever possibly do toward the regeneration of the
multitude sunk in poverty, ignorance and vice.
The effect of such declarations on the conservatism of half a century
ago hardly can be pictured. At this time the principal outlet for
women's activities was through foreign missionary work, and even in
this they were allowed no official responsibility. None of the many
charitable organizations which are now almost wholly in the hands of
women were in existence. In scarcely one State was drunkenness
recognized as cause for divorce, and yet when Mrs. Stanton made these
demands, the women throughout the country joined with the men in
denouncing them. Only a few of the broader and more progressive, who
were ahead of their age, sustained her. Among these were Miss Anthony,
Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Frances D. Gage and
Martha C. Wright.
After six enthusiastic sessions and the forming of a strong
organization, the convention adjourned. Thus the first Woman's State
Temperance Society ever formed was due almost entirely to Susan B.
Anthony, because of her courage in demanding independent action and her
successful efforts in calling the convention which inaugurated it. The
executive committee met in May and appointed her State agent, "with
full power and authority to organize auxiliary societies, collect
moneys, issue certificates of membership and do all things which she
may judge necessary and expedient to promote the purposes for which our
society has been organized."
The Men's State Temperance Society had issued an official call for a
convention to be held at Syracuse in June, containing these words:
"Temperance societies of every name are invited to send delegates."
Acting upon this invitation, the executive committee of the Woman's
State Temperance Society appointed Gerrit Smith, Susan B. Anthony and
Amelia Bloomer as delegates. Mr. Smith was not able to attend and,
after their experience at Albany, there were serious doubts in the
minds of the women whether they would be received. They were much
encouraged, however, by the receipt of a letter from Rev. Samuel J.
May, written June 14, saying: "The local committee are now in session.
I have just read your letter to them, and every member has expressed
himself in favor of receiving the delegates of the Woman's State
Temperance Society, just as the delegates of any other society, and
allowing them to take their own course, speak or not speak, as they
choose."
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Bloomer went to Syracuse, and on the morning of
the convention received a call from Mr. May. He came to inform them
that their arrival had caused great excitement among the clergy, who
comprised a large portion of the delegates and threatened to withdraw
if the women were admitted. Their action had alarmed the other
delegates, who feared a disturbance in the convention, and they had
requested Mr. May, as probably having the most influence, to call upon
the ladies and urge them not to ask for recognition. When they told him
they should go to the meeting and present their credentials, he
expressed great satisfaction and said that was just the decision he had
hoped they would make. They quietly entered the hall and took seats
with other ladies at one side of the platform. Immediately Rev.
Mandeville, of Albany, turned his chair around with back to the
audience and, facing them, attempted to stare them out of countenance.
William H. Burleigh, secretary, read the annual report, which closed,
"We hail the formation of the Woman's State Temperance Society as a
valuable auxiliary." This precipitated the discussion. Rev. Mandeville
sprung to his feet and moved to strike out the last sentence. His
speech was filled with such venom and vulgarity as the foulest-mouthed
politician would hesitate to utter. He denounced the Woman's State
Temperance Society and all women publicly engaged in temperance work,
declared the women delegates to be "a hybrid species, half man and half
woman, belonging to neither sex," and announced finally that if this
sentence were not struck out he would dissolve his connection with the
society.
A heated debate followed. Mr. Havens, of New York, offered an amendment
recognizing "the right of women to work in their proper sphere--the
domestic circle." Rev. May, of the Unitarian church, Rev. Luther Lee,
of the Wesleyan Methodist, Hon. A.N. Cole, a leading Whig politician,
and several others, defended the rights of the women in the most
eloquent manner, but were howled down. Miss Anthony made only one
attempt to speak and that was to remind them that over 100,000 of the
signers to a petition for a Maine Law, the previous winter, were women,
but her voice was drowned by Rev. Fowler, of Utica, shouting, "Order!
Order!" Herman Camp, of Trumansburg, the president, ruled that she was
not a delegate and had no right to speak. Amid great confusion the
question was put to vote and the decision of the chair sustained. As no
delegates had yet been accredited, everybody in the house was allowed
to vote, but the secretary, J.T. Hazen, announced that he did not count
the votes of the women!
Rev. Luther Lee at once offered his church to the ladies for an evening
meeting. They had a crowded house, fine speeches and good music, while
the convention was practically deserted, not over fifty being present.
After a masterly speech by Mr. May and stirring remarks from Mr. Lee,
Mrs. Bloomer and others, Miss Anthony made the address of the evening,
which she had prepared for the men's convention, a strong plea for the
right of women to work and speak for temperance. Soon afterwards she
wrote her father: "I feel there is a great work to be done which none
but women can do. How I wish I could be daily associated with those
whose ideas are in advance of my own, it would enable me to develop so
much faster;" and then, notwithstanding all her rebuffs, she signed
herself, "Yours cheerily."
The anti-slavery convention this year was held in Rochester, and Miss
Anthony had as a guest her dear friend, Lydia Mott, and again met
Garrison, Phillips, May, the Fosters, Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright and
others of that glorious band who together had received the baptism of
fire. Although intensely interested in the anti-slavery question she
did not dare think she had the ability to take up that work, but she
did resolve to give all her time and energy to the temperance cause.
The summer of 1852 was spent in traveling throughout the State with
Mrs. Vaughn, Mrs. Attilia Albro and Miss Emily Clark. They canvassed
thirty counties, organizing societies and securing 28,000 signatures to
a petition for the Maine Law. Miss Anthony sent out a strong appeal,
saying:
Women, and mothers in particular, should feel it their right and
duty to extend their influence beyond the circumference of the home
circle, and to say what circumstances shall surround children when
they go forth from under the watchful guardianship of the mother's
love; for certain it is that, if the customs and laws of society
remain corrupt as they now are, the best and wisest of the mother's
teachings will soon be counteracted....
Woman has so long been accustomed to non-intervention with
law-making, so long considered it man's business to regulate the
liquor traffic, that it is with much cautiousness she receives the
new doctrine which we preach; the doctrine that it is her right and
duty to speak out against the traffic and all men and institutions
that in any way sanction, sustain or countenance it; and, since she
can not vote, to duly instruct her husband, son, father or brother
how she would have him vote, and, if he longer continue to
mis-represent her, take the right to march to the ballot-box and
deposit a vote indicative of her highest ideas of practical
temperance.
It will be seen by this that already she had taken her stand on the
right of woman to the franchise.
While at Elmira she happened into a teachers' convention and heard
Charles Anthony, of the Albany academy, a distant relative, make an
address on "The Divine Ordinance of Corporal Punishment." It was a
severe and cruel justification of the unlimited use of the rod, but,
although more than three-fourths of the teachers present were women,
not a word was uttered in protest. Throughout the proceedings not a
woman's voice was heard, none was appointed on committees or voted on
any question, and they were as completely ignored as so many outsiders.
Miss Anthony made up her mind that here also was a work to be done, and
that henceforth she would attend the State teachers' conventions every
year and demand for women all the privileges now monopolized by men.
On September 8, 1852, she went to her first Woman's Rights Convention,
which was held at Syracuse. She had read with avidity the accounts of
the Ohio, Massachusetts, Indiana and Pennsylvania conventions, but this
was her first opportunity of attending one. At the preliminary meeting,
held the night before, she was made a member of the nominating
committee with Paulina Wright Davis, of Providence, R.I., chairman.
Mrs. Davis had come with the determination of putting in as president
her dear friend Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a fashionable literary woman of
Boston. Both attended the meeting and the convention in short-sleeved,
low-necked white dresses, one with a pink, the other with a blue
embroidered wool delaine sack with wide, flowing sleeves, which left
both neck and arms exposed. At the committee meeting next morning,
Quaker James Mott nominated Mrs. Smith for president, but Quaker Susan
B. Anthony spoke out boldly and said that nobody who dressed as she did
could represent the earnest, solid, hard-working women of the country
for whom they were making the demand for equal rights. Mr. Mott said
they must not expect all women to dress as plainly as the Friends; but
she held her ground, and as all the committee agreed with her, though
no one else had had the courage to speak, Mrs. Smith's name was voted
down. This is but one instance of hundreds where Miss Anthony alone
dared say what others only dared think, and thus through all the years
made herself the target for criticism, blame and abuse. Others escaped
through their cowardice; she suffered through her bravery.
Lucretia Mott was made president, and the Syracuse Standard said: "It
was a singular spectacle to see this Quaker matron presiding over a
convention with an ease, grace and dignity that might be envied by the
most experienced legislator in the country."[13] Susan B. Anthony and
Martha C. Wright were the secretaries. Delegates were present from
Canada and eight different States. Letters were received from Angelina
Grimké Weld, William Henry Channing and others; Horace Greeley sent
much good advice; Garrison wrote: "You have as noble an object in view,
aye and as Christian a one too, as ever was advocated beneath the sun.
Heaven bless all your proceedings." Rev. A.D. Mayo said in a long
letter:
I have never questioned what I believed to be the central principle
of the reform in which you are engaged. I believe that every mature
soul is responsible directly to God, not only for its faith and
opinions, but for its details of life. The assertion that woman is
responsible to man for her belief or conduct, in any other sense
than man is responsible to woman, I reject, not as a believer in
any theory of "woman's rights," but as a believer in that religion
which knows neither male nor female in its imperative demand upon
the individual conscience.
George W. Johnson, of Buffalo, chairman of the State committee of the
Liberty party, sent $10 and these vigorous sentiments: "Woman has,
equally with man, the inalienable right to education, suffrage, office,
property, professions, titles and honors--to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. False to our sex, as well as her own, and false
to herself and her God, is the woman who approves, or who submits
without resistance or protest, to the social and political wrongs
imposed upon her in common with her sex throughout the world." Mrs.
Stanton's letter, read with hearty approval by Miss Anthony, raised the
usual breeze in the convention. She suggested three points:
Should not all women, living in States where they have the right to
hold property, refuse to pay taxes so long as they are
unrepresented in the government?... Man has pre-empted the most
profitable branches of industry, and we demand a place at his side;
to this end we need the same advantages of education, and we
therefore claim that the best colleges of the country be opened to
us.... In her present ignorance, woman's religion, instead of
making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great
principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more
certain and lasting, her degradation more helpless and complete.
In the course of her argument Lucy Stone said:
The claims we make at these conventions are self-evident truths.
The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their
persons and earnings. Is not that self-evident? Yet the common law,
which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and is modified
only in a few instances by the statutes, gives the "custody" of the
wife's person to the husband, so that he has a right to her even
against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what
weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them
for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal
property, which he may will entirely away from her, also the use of
her real estate, and in some of the States married women, insane
persons and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will;
so that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common
with the pauper, the right of maintenance. Indeed, when she has
taken the sacred marriage vows, her legal existence ceases. And
what is our position politically? The foreigner, the negro, the
drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men
politically higher than their own mothers, wives, sisters and
daughters! The woman who, seeing this, dares not maintain her
rights is the one to hang her head and blush. We ask only for
justice and equal rights--the right to vote, the right to our own
earnings, equality before the law; these are the Gibraltar of our
cause.
Rev. Antoinette Brown, the first woman ever ordained to preach,
declared:
Man can not represent woman. They differ in their nature and
relations. The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed
by man. The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the
masculine standpoint of observation, to the thoughts, feelings and
biases of man. The law then can give us no representation as women,
and therefore no impartial justice, even if the law-makers were
honestly intent upon this, for we can be represented only by our
peers.... When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her
advocates, all are men; and yet there may have been temptations and
various palliating circumstances connected with her peculiar nature
as woman, such as man can not appreciate. Common justice demands
that a part of the law-makers and law-executors should be of her
own sex. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests
dearer than life, both parties in the compact are entitled to an
equal voice.
Mrs. Nichols said in discussing the laws:
If a wife is compelled to get a divorce on account of the
infidelity of the husband, she forfeits all right to the property
which they have earned together, while the husband, who is the
offender, still retains the sole possession and control of the
estate. She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless
by decree of law, and he, the criminal, retains the home and
children by favor of the game law. A drunkard takes his wife's
clothing to pay his rum bills, and the court declares that the
action is legal because the wife belongs to the husband.
Hon. Gerrit Smith here made his first appearance upon the woman
suffrage platform, although he had written many letters expressing
sympathy and encouragement, and made a grand argument for woman's
equality. He closed by saying: "All rights are held by a precarious
tenure if this one right to the ballot be denied. When women are the
constituents of men who make and administer the laws they will pay due
consideration to woman's interests, and not before. The right of
suffrage is the great right that guarantees all others." Here also was
the first public appearance of Matilda Joslyn Gage, the youngest woman
taking part in the convention, who read an excellent paper urging that
daughters should be educated with sons, taught self-reliance and
permitted some independent means of self-support. A fine address also
was made by Paulina Wright Davis, who had managed and presided over the
two conventions held in 1850 and 1851 at Worcester, Mass.[14]
The queen of the platform at this time was Ernestine L. Rose, a Jewess
who had fled from Poland to escape religious persecution. She was
beautiful and cultured, of liberal views and great oratorical powers.
Her lectures on "The Science of Government" had attracted wide
attention. Naturally, she took a prominent part in the early woman's
rights meetings. On this occasion she presented and eloquently
advocated the following resolution:
We ask for our rights not as a gift of charity, but as an act of
justice; for it is in accordance with the principles of
republicanism that, as woman has to pay taxes to maintain
government, she has a right to participate in the formation and
administration of it; that as she is amenable to the laws of her
country, she is entitled to a voice in their enactment and to all
the protective advantages they can bestow; that as she is as liable
as man to all the vicissitudes of life, she ought to enjoy the same
social rights and privileges. Any difference, therefore, in
political, civil and social rights, on account of sex, is in direct
violation of the principles of justice and humanity, and as such
ought to be held up to the contempt and derision of every lover of
human freedom.
During the debate Rev. Junius Hatch, a Congregational minister from
Massachusetts, made a speech so coarse and vulgar that the president
called him to order. As he paid no attention to her, the men in the
audience choked him off with cries of "Sit down! Shut up!" His idea of
woman's modesty was that she should cast her eyes down when meeting
men, drop her veil when walking up the aisle of a church and keep her
place at home. Miss Anthony arose and stated that Mr. Hatch himself was
one of the young ministers who had been educated through the efforts of
women, and she had always noticed those were the ones most anxious for
women to keep silence in the churches. This finished Mr. Hatch.
A young teacher by the name of Brigham also attempted to define the
spheres of Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton[15] and the other great advocates of
woman's freedom and declared: "Women ought to be keepers at home and
mind domestic concerns; he had no doubt the true object of this meeting
was not so much to acquire any real or supposed rights as to make the
speakers and actors conspicuous; he wished to urge upon them to claim
nothing masculine for women, for even in animals the spheres were
different. He had no objections to woman's voice being heard, but let
her seek out the breathing-holes of perdition to do her work." Mr.
Brigham was badly worsted in the argument which followed, and at the
next session he sent in a protest, declaring he had not had "justice."
He evidently did not see the satire of this complaint, since he himself
had been loudest in his refusal to do justice to woman.
A heated discussion was called out by a resolution offered by Rev.
Antoinette L. Brown declaring that "the Bible recognizes the rights,
privileges and duties of woman as a public teacher, as in every way
equal with those of man; that it enjoins upon her no subjection that is
not enjoined upon him; and that it truly and practically recognizes
neither male nor female in Christ Jesus." Mrs. Rose closed the
discussion by saying:
I can not object to any one's interpreting the Bible as he or she
thinks best; but I do object that such interpretation go forth as
the doctrine of this convention, because it is a mere
interpretation and not even the authority of the Book; it is the
view of Miss Brown only, which is as good as that of any other
minister, but that is all. For my part I reject both
interpretations. Here we claim human rights and freedom, based upon
the laws of humanity, and we require no written authority from
Moses or Paul, because those laws and our claim are prior even to
these two great men.
Miss Brown's resolution was not adopted. Susan B. Anthony spoke briefly
but earnestly in behalf of the People's College and also of the Woman's
State Temperance Society, for which she asked their endorsement. She
then read the resolutions sent by Mrs. Stanton, all but one of which
were adopted. The Syracuse Journal commented: "Miss Anthony has a
capital voice and deserves to be made clerk of the Assembly." The
Syracuse Standard said of this convention: "It was attended by not less
than 2,000 persons. The discussions were characterized by a degree of
ability that would do credit to any deliberative body." The Journal
said: "No person can deny that there was a greater amount of talent in
the woman's rights convention than has characterized any public
gathering in this city during the last ten years, if ever before. The
appearance of all the ladies was modest and unassuming, though prompt,
energetic and confident. Business was brought forward, calmly
deliberated upon and discussed with unanimity and in a spirit becoming
true women, which would add an unknown dignity to the transactions of
public associations of the 'lords.'" The Syracuse Star, however, took a
different view:
The women of the Tomfoolery Convention, now being held in this
city, talk as fluently of the Bible and God's teachings in their
speeches as if they could draw an argument from inspiration in
maintenance of their woman's rights stuff.... The poor creatures
who take part in the silly rant of "brawling women" and Aunt Nancy
men are most of them "ismizers" of the rankest stamp, Abolitionists
of the most frantic and contemptible kind and Christian (?)
sympathizers with such heretics as Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Parker
Pillsbury, O.C. Burleigh and S.S. Foster. These men are all woman's
righters and preachers of such damnable doctrines and accursed
heresies as would make demons of the pit shudder to hear. We have
selected a few appropriate passages from God's Bible for the
consideration of the infuriated gang at the convention.
The New York Herald, under the elder Bennett, which from the beginning
of the demand had been the inveterate foe of equal rights for women,
contained the following editorial, September 12, 1852:
The farce at Syracuse has been played out. We publish today the
last act, in which it will be seen that the authority of the Bible,
as a perfect rule of faith and practice for human beings, was voted
down, and what are called the laws of nature set up instead of the
Christian code. We have also a practical exhibition of the
consequences that flow from woman leaving her true sphere, where
she wields all her influence, and coming into public to discuss
morals and politics with men. The scene in which Rev. Mr. Hatch
violated the decorum of his cloth and was coarsely offensive to
such ladies present as had not lost that modest "feminine element"
on which he dwelt so forcibly, is the natural result of the conduct
of the women themselves who, in the first place, invited discussion
about sexes, and, in the second place, so broadly defined the
difference between the male and the female as to be suggestive of
anything but purity to the audience. The women of the convention
have no right to complain, but for the sake of his clerical
character, if no other motive influenced him, he ought not have
followed so bad an example. His speech was sound and his argument
conclusive, but his form of words was not in the best taste. The
female orators were the aggressors, but to use his own language he
ought not to have measured swords with a woman, especially when he
regarded her ideas and expressions as bordering upon the obscene.
But all this is the natural result of woman placing herself in a
false position. As Rev. Mr. Hatch observed, if she ran with horses
she must expect to be betted upon. The whole tendency of these
conventions is by no means to increase the influence of woman, to
elevate her condition or to command the respect of the other
sex....
How did woman first become subject to man, as she now is all over
the world? By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always
will be to the end of time, inferior to the white race and,
therefore, doomed to subjection; but she is happier than she would
be in any other condition, just because it is the law of her
nature....
What do the leaders of the woman's rights convention want? They
want to vote and to hustle with the rowdies at the polls. They want
to be members of Congress, and in the heat of debate subject
themselves to coarse jests and indecent language like that of Rev.
Mr. Hatch. They want to fill all other posts which men are
ambitious to occupy, to be lawyers, doctors, captains of vessels
and generals in the field. How funny it would sound in the
newspapers that Lucy Stone, pleading a cause, took suddenly ill in
the pains of parturition and perhaps gave birth to a fine bouncing
boy in court! Or that Rev. Antoinette Brown was arrested in the
pulpit in the middle of her sermon from the same cause, and
presented a "pledge" to her husband and the congregation; or that
Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, while attending a gentleman patient for a fit
of the gout or fistula in ano found it necessary to send for a
doctor, there and then, and to be delivered of a man or woman
child--perhaps twins.[16] A similar event might happen on the floor
of Congress, in a storm at sea or in the raging tempest of battle,
and then what is to become of the woman legislator?
For months after this convention the discussions and controversies were
kept up through press and pulpit. The clergymen in Syracuse and
surrounding towns rang the changes on the cry of "infidel" as the
surest way of neutralizing its influence. Rev. Byron Sunderland, a
Congregational minister of Syracuse and afterwards chaplain of the
United States Senate, preached a sermon on the "Bloomer Convention."
Rev. Ashley, of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Syracuse, also preached a
sermon against equality for woman, which was put into pamphlet form and
scattered throughout the State. It called forth many protests, some
from the women of his own church. The clergymen selected the Star, the
most disreputable paper in the city, for the publication of their
articles. Rev. Sunderland was ably answered by Matilda Joslyn Gage over
the signature of "M." and replied in the Star: "If the author should
turn out to be a man, I should have no objection to point out his
inaccuracies through your columns, but if the writer is a lady, why,
really, I don't know what I shall do. If I thought she would consent to
a personal interview, I should like to see her." Some man, signing
himself "A Reader," having criticised him in a perfectly respectful
manner for making the above distinction, the reverend gentleman replied
to him through the Star: "His impertinence is quite characteristic. He
probably knows as much about the Bible as a wild ass' colt, and is
requested at this time to keep a proper distance. When a body is trying
to find out and pay attention to a lady, it is not good manners for 'A
Reader' to be thrust in between us." In all the speeches and articles
in favor of woman's rights there was not one which was not modest,
temperate and dignified. Almost without exception those in opposition
were vulgar, intemperate and abusive.
No more brilliant galaxy of men and women ever assembled than at this
Syracuse convention, and the great question of the rights of woman was
discussed from every conceivable standpoint. Hundreds equally able have
been held during the last half century, and these extensive quotations
have been made simply to show that fifty years ago the whole broad
platform of human rights was as clearly defined by the leading
thinkers, and in as logical, comprehensive and dignified a manner, as
it is today. There was as much opposition among the masses of both men
and women against _all_ that they advocated as exists today against
their demand for the ballot, perhaps more; yet the close of the century
finds practically all granted except the ballot; the full right to
speak in public; nearly the same educational and industrial
opportunities; in many States almost equal legal rights, and not one
State now wholly under the English common law, which everywhere
prevailed at that time. The prejudice against all these innovations is
rapidly disappearing but it still lingers in regard to the yielding of
the suffrage, except in the four States where this also has been given.
In not one instance have these concessions been made in response to the
"voice of the people," but only because of the continued agitation and
unceasing efforts of a few of the more advanced and progressive
thinkers of each generation.
[Footnote 11: The Tribune, at this time, was the only paper in New
York, and, with few exceptions, the only large newspaper in the
country, which treated the question of woman's rights in any but a
contemptuous, abusive manner.]
[Footnote 12: They may have been preceded by the Moral Reform Societies
for the Rescue of Fallen Women, which originated in New York City, and
by a few Female Anti-Slavery Societies.]
[Footnote 13: At the first Woman's Rights Convention in 1848, Mrs. Mott
and Mrs. Stanton were so opposed to having a woman for chairman that
they came near leaving the hall. Four years later Mrs. Mott is herself
the presiding officer.]
[Footnote 14: Several of the speakers had weak, piping voices which did
not reach beyond a few of the front seats and, after one of these had
finished, Miss Anthony said: "Mrs. President, I move that hereafter the
papers shall be given to some one to read who can be heard. It is an
imposition on an audience to have to sit quietly through a long speech
of which they can not hear a word. We do not stand up here to be seen,
but to be heard." Then there was a protest. Mrs. Davis said she wished
it understood that "ladies did not come there to screech; they came to
behave like ladies and to speak like ladies." Miss Anthony held her
ground, declaring that the question of being ladylike had nothing to do
with it; the business of any one who read a paper was to be heard. Mr.
May, always the peacemaker, said Miss Anthony was right; there was not
a woman that had spoken in the convention who if she had been in her
own home would not have adjusted her voice to the occasion. "If your
boy were across the street you would not go to the door, put your head
down and say in a little, weak voice, 'Jim, come home;' but you would
fix your eye on him and shout, 'Jim, come home!' If the ladies, instead
of looking down and talking to those on the front seats, would address
their remarks to the farthermost persons in the house, all between
would hear."]
[Footnote 15: Mrs. Mott was the mother of six and Mrs. Stanton of seven
children. Both were devoted mothers and noteworthy housekeepers.]
[Footnote 16: No one of these ladies was married.]
CHAPTER VI.
TEMPERANCE AND TEACHERS' CONVENTIONS.
1852--1853.
Miss Anthony came away from the Syracuse convention thoroughly
convinced that the right which woman needed above every other, the one
indeed which would secure to her all others, was the right of suffrage.
She saw that it was by the ballot men emphasized their opinions and
enforced their demands; she realized that without it women exercised
small influence upon law-makers and had no power to reward friends or
punish enemies. A sense of the terrible helplessness of being utterly
without representation came upon her with crushing force. The first
great cause of the injustice which pressed upon women from every point
was clearly revealed to her and she understood, as never before, that
any class which is compelled to be legislated for by another class
always must be at a disadvantage. She went home with these thoughts
burning in her soul, and again took up her work for temperance, but
much of her enthusiasm was gone. She felt that she was dealing with
effects only and was shut out from all influence over causes. She still
was loyal to her State society but the desire was growing strong for a
larger field.
In January, 1853, she arranged for a meeting to be held in Albany to
secure a hearing before the Legislature and present petitions for a
Maine Law. Lucy Stone, whom she urged to make an address, wrote: "I
can't in conscience speak in favor of the Maine Law. It does not seem
to me to be based upon sound philosophy. Such a law will not amount to
much so long as there is not a temperance public sentiment behind it.
God bless your earnest and faithful spirit, Susan. I am glad the
temperance cause has so devoted and judicious a friend." She then
invited Rev. Antoinette Brown, who gave several reasons why she did not
think best to deliver the address and concluded: "But there is a better
way; you yourself must come to the rescue. You will read the appeal,
you can fit the address to it and you will do it grandly. Don't
hesitate but, in the name of everything noble, go forward and you shall
have our warmest sympathy."
It was very hard to coax Miss Anthony into a speech in those days and
she finally persuaded the Reverend Antoinette to make the address.
There was a mass-meeting of all the temperance organizations in the
State at Albany, January 21, and as the women made no attempt to take
part in the men's meetings there was no disturbance. History is silent
as to what the men did at that time, but the women held crowded
sessions in the Baptist church, and in the Assembly chamber at night,
Miss Anthony presiding, and a number of fine addresses were made. The
rules were suspended one morning and the ladies invited to the
speaker's desk. Mrs. Vaughn read Mrs. Stanton's eloquent appeal praying
the Legislature to do one of two things: either give women a vote on
this great evil of intemperance, or else truly represent them by
enacting a Prohibitory Law. It was accompanied by the petition of
28,000 names which had been collected by a few women at immense labor
and expense during the past year.
This was the first time in the history of New York that a body of women
had appeared before the Legislature, and in their innocence they had
full confidence that their request would be granted in a very short
time.[17] While they were still in Albany their petition was discussed
and a young member made a long speech against it, declared that women
were "out of their sphere" circulating petitions and coming before the
Legislature, and closed by saying, "Who are these asking for a Maine
Law? Nobody but women and children!" Miss Anthony then and there made a
solemn resolve that it should be her life work to make a woman's name
on a petition worth as much as a man's.
S.P. Townsend, who had made a fortune in the manufacture of
sarsaparilla, happening to be at the Capitol, called upon the ladies
and invited them to come to New York and hold a meeting, offering to
advertise and entertain them. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Brown
accepted his invitation and were entertained at his elegant home, and
also by Professor and Mrs. L.N. Fowler. He engaged Metropolitan Hall
(where Jenny Lind sang) for February 7, and the ladies spoke to an
audience of 3,000 at twenty-five cents admission. Mrs. Fowler presided,
and on the platform were Horace Greeley, who made a strong address,
Mrs. Greeley, Abby Hopper Gibbons and others. The Tribune and Post were
very complimentary, saying it was the first time a woman had spoken
within those walls and the meeting would compare favorably with any
ever held in the building. After it was over Mr. Townsend divided the
net proceeds among the three women. He also arranged for them to speak
in Broadway Tabernacle and in Brooklyn Academy of Music, each of which
was crowded to its capacity.
During March and April they made a successful tour of the principal
cities in the State, Miss Anthony assuming the management and financial
responsibility. They went to Sing Sing, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Troy,
Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and other places, greeted
everywhere with large and attentive audiences attracted by the unusual
spectacle of women speaking in public. They lectured chiefly on
temperance, but asked incidentally for equal civil and political
rights. While they received from most of the papers respectful
treatment, they were sometimes viciously assailed. The Utica Evening
Telegraph gave the following false and malicious report:
Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY AND REV. A.L. BROWN ON THE STUMP.--Mechanics'
Hall was tolerably well filled last evening by persons wishing to
hear the above-named ladies "spout" about temperance. Seven-eighths
of the audience was composed of women, and there was noticeable an
absence of all rank, fashion and wealth. The _ladies_ proper of
Utica don't seem desirous of giving countenance to the silly
vagaries disseminated by these strong-minded women. We conceived a
very unfavorable opinion of this _Miss_ Anthony when she performed
in this city on a former occasion, but we confess that, after
listening attentively to her discourse last evening, we were
inexpressibly disgusted with the impudence and impiety evinced in
her lecture. Personally repulsive, she seems to be laboring under
feelings of strong hatred towards male men, the effect, we presume,
of jealousy and neglect. She spent some hour or so to show the
evils endured by the mothers, wives and daughters of drunkards. She
gravely announced that the evil is a great one, and that no remedy
might hopefully be asked from licentious statesmen nor from
ministers of the gospel, who are always well fed and clothed and
don't care for oppressed women. Prominent among the remedies which
she suggested for the evils which she alleges to exist, are
complete enfranchisement of women, allowing them the run of the
legislative halls, ballot-box, etc. With a degree of impiety which
was both startling and disgusting, this shrewish _maiden_ counseled
the numerous wives and mothers present to separate from their
husbands whenever they became intemperate, _and particularly not to
allow the said husbands to add another child to the family_
(probably no _married_ advocate of woman's rights would have made
this remark). Think of such advice given in public by one who
claims to be a _maiden_ lady!
Miss Anthony may be a very respectable lady, but such conversation
is certainly not calculated to enhance public regard for her....
She announced quite confidently that wives don't de facto love
their husbands if they are dissipated. Everyday observation proves
the utter falsity of this statement, and if there is one
characteristic of the sex which more than another elevates and
ennobles it, it is the _persistency_ and intensity of woman's love
for man. But what does Miss Anthony know of the thousand delights
of married life; of the sweet stream of affection, of the golden
ray of love which beams ever through life's ills? Bah! Of a like
disgusting character was her advice to mothers about not using
stimulants, even when prescribed by physicians, for the benefit of
the young. What in the name of crying babies does Miss Anthony know
about such matters?
In our humble judgment, it is by no means complimentary to wives
and mothers to be found present at such discourses, encouraging
such untruthful and pernicious advice. If Miss Anthony's ideas were
practically applied in the relations of life, women would sink from
the social elevation they now hold and become the mere _appendages_
of men. Miss Anthony concluded with a flourish of trumpets, that
the woman's rights question could not be put down, that women's
souls were beginning to expand, etc., after which she gathered her
short skirts about her tight pants, sat down and wiped her
spectacles.
A letter written to Miss Anthony by her father during this tour shows
that even thus early he recognized the utter inability of women to
effect great reforms without a vote: "I see notices of your meetings in
multitudes of papers, all, with a few exceptions, in a rejoicing mood
that woman at last has taken hold in earnest to aid in the reformation
of the mighty evils of the day. Yet with all this 'rejoicing' probably
not one of these papers would advocate placing the ballot in the hands
of woman as the easiest, quickest and most efficient way of enabling
her to secure not only this but other reforms. They are willing she
should talk and pray and 'flock by herself in conventions and tramp up
and down the State, footsore and weary, gathering petitions to be
spurned by legislatures, but not willing to invest her with the only
power that would do speedy and efficient work."
At this time interest in the study of phrenology was at its height and
while Miss Anthony was in New York she had an examination made of her
head by Nelson Sizer (with Fowler & Wells) who, blindfolded, gave the
following character sketch:
You have a finely organized constitution and a good degree of
compactness and power. There is such a balance between the brain
and the body that you are enabled to sustain mental effort with
less exhaustion than most persons. You have an intensity of emotion
and thought which makes your mind terse, sharp, spicy and clear.
You always work with a will, a purpose and a straightforwardness of
mental action. You seldom accomplish ends by indirect means or
circuitous routes, but unfurl your banner, take your position and
give fair warning of the course you intend to pursue. You are not
naturally fond of combat, but when once fairly enlisted in a cause
that has the sanction of your conscience and intellect, your
firmness and ambition are such, combined with thoroughness and
efficiency of disposition, that all you are in energy and talent is
enlisted and concentrated in the one end in view.
You are watchful but not timid, careful to have everything right
and safe before you embark; but when times of difficulty and danger
arrive, you meet them with coolness and intrepidity. You have more
of the spirit of acquisition than of economy; you would rather make
new things than patch the old. Your continuity is not large enough.
You find it at times difficult to bring the whole strength of your
mind to bear upon a subject and hold it there patiently in writing
or speaking. You are apt to seize upon fugitive thoughts and
wander, unless it be a subject on which you have so drilled your
intellect as to become master of it.
You have a full development of the social group. I judge that in
the main you have your father's character and talents and your
mother's temperament. You have the spirit of her nature, but the
framework in the main is like the father. You have large
benevolence, not only in the direction of sympathy but of
gratitude. You have frankness of character, even to sharpness, and
you are obliged to bridle your tongue lest you speak more than is
meet. You have mechanical ingenuity, the planning talent, and the
minds of others are apt to be used as instruments to accomplish
your objects. For instance, if you were a lawyer, you would arrange
the testimony and the mode of argument in such a way that the best
final result would be achieved. You judge correctly of the fitness
and propriety, as well as of the power, of the means you have to be
employed. You would plan a thing better than you could use the
tools to make it. Your reasoning organs are gaining upon your
perceptions. At fifteen your mind was devoted to facts and
phenomena; of late years you have been thinking of principles and
ideas. You are a keen critic, especially if you can put wit as a
cracker on your whip; you can make people feel little and mean if
they are so, and when you are vexed can say very sharp things.
You are a good judge of character. You have a full development of
language devoted rather to accuracy and definiteness of meaning
than volubility; and yet I doubt not you talk fast when
excited--that belongs to your temperament. Your intellect is active
and your mind more naturally runs in the channel of intellect than
of feeling. It seeks an intellectual development rather than to be
developed through the affections merely. You have fair veneration
and spirituality but are nothing remarkable in these respects. Your
chief religious elements are conscience and benevolence; these are
your working religious organs, and a religion that does not gratify
them is to you "as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
Those who know Miss Anthony intimately will readily testify to the
accuracy of this analysis. It seems remarkable in view of the fact that
the examiner was in utter ignorance of the subject, and that, even if
he had known her name, she had not, at the age of thirty-three,
developed the characteristics which are now so familiar to the general
public.
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
AT THE AGE OF 32, FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE.]
On this trip Miss Anthony was invited to spend an evening with Mr. and
Mrs. Greeley and met for the first time Charles A. Dana, Alice and
Phoebe Gary, Elizabeth F. Ellet, with a number of other literary men
and women of New York. Mr. Greeley himself opened the door for them and
sent them hunting through the house for a place to lay their wraps.
After awhile Mrs. Greeley came down stairs with a baby in her arms. She
had put her apron over its face and would not let the visitors look at
it "because their magnetism might affect it unfavorably." During the
evening she rang a bell and a man-servant came in. After a few words
with her he retired and presently brought in a big dish of cake, one of
cheese and a pile of plates, set them on the table and went out. There
was a long pause and Mr. Greeley said, "Well, mother, shall I serve the
cake?" "Yes, if you want to." So he went over to the table, took a
piece of cake and one of cheese in his fingers, putting them on a plate
and carrying to each, until all were served. The guests nibbled at them
as best they could and after a long time the man brought in a pitcher
of lemonade and some glasses and left the room. Mr. Greeley again
asked, "Well, mother, shall I serve the lemonade?" "Yes, if you want
to," she replied, so he filled the glasses, carried to each separately,
and then gathered them up one at a time, instead of all together on a
waiter. Both Mr. and Mrs. Greeley were thoroughly cordial and
hospitable, both intellectually great, but utterly without social
graces. Yet the conversation at their receptions was so brilliant that
the most elegantly served refreshments would have been an unwelcome
interruption.
At another time, when Miss Anthony was visiting them, she asked Mrs.
Greeley if she would marry the same man again if she were single.
"Yes," said she, "if I wanted a worthy father for my children, but for
personal comfort I should prefer one who did not put his feet where I
fell over them every time I went into the room, who knew how to eat,
when to go to bed and how to wear his clothes."
A World's Temperance Convention had been called to meet in New York
September 6 and 7, 1853, and a preliminary meeting was held May 12 in
Dr. Spring's old Brick Church on Franklin Square, where the Times
building now stands. The call invited "all friends of temperance" to be
present. After attending the Anti-Slavery Anniversary in New York, Miss
Anthony and Emily Clark went as representatives of the New York Woman's
Temperance Society, and Abby Kelly Foster and Lucy Stone were sent from
Massachusetts. The meeting was organized with Hon. A.C. Barstow, mayor
of Providence, chairman; Rev. R.C. Crampton, of New York, and Rev.
George Duffield, of Pennsylvania, secretaries. It was opened with
prayer, asking God's blessing on the proceedings about to take place. A
motion was made that all the gentlemen present be admitted as
delegates. Dr. Trail, of New York City, moved that the word "ladies" be
inserted, as there were delegates present from the Woman's State
Temperance Society. The motion was carried, their credentials received,
and every man and woman present became members of the convention. A
business committee of one from each State was appointed and a motion
was made that Susan B. Anthony, secretary of the Woman's Temperance
Society, be added to the committee. This opened the battle with the
opposition and one angry and abusive speech followed another. Abby
Kelly Foster, the eloquent anti-slavery orator, tried to speak, but
shouts of "order" drowned her voice and, after holding her position for
ten minutes, she finally was howled down.
Almost the entire convention was composed of ministers of the Gospel.
Hon. Bradford R. Wood, of Albany, moved that, as there was a party
present determined to introduce the question of woman's rights and run
it into the ground, the convention adjourn sine die. He finally was
persuaded to withdraw this and substitute a motion that a committee be
appointed to decide who were members of the convention, although this
had been settled at the opening of the meeting by the accepting of
credentials. This committee consisted of Mr. Wood, Rev. John Chambers,
a Presbyterian clergyman of Philadelphia, and Rev. Condit, of New
Jersey. They were out fifteen minutes and reported that, as in their
opinion the call for this meeting was not intended to include female
delegates, and custom had not sanctioned the public action of women in
similar situations, their credentials should be rejected. And this
after they already had been accepted!
Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pastor of the Unitarian church in
Worcester, Mass., at once resigned from the business committee and
withdrew from the meeting, as did also the women delegates and such
gentlemen, including several ministers, as thought the ladies had been
unjustly treated. They met at Dr. Trail's office and decided to call a
Whole World's Temperance Convention which should not exclude one-half
the world, and that the half which was doing the most effective work
for temperance.
After they left the Brick Church meeting there were many speeches made
condemning the action of women in taking public part in any reforms,
led by Rev. Fowler, of Utica, Rev. Hewitt, of Bridgeport, Conn., and
Rev. Chambers. The last said he rejoiced that the women were gone, as
they were "now rid of the scum of the convention." Mayor Barstow, who
had threatened to resign rather than put the motion that Miss Anthony
should be on the business committee, made a speech which the press
declared too indecent to be reported. It must be remembered that this
entire discussion was founded on the mere proposal to place Miss
Anthony on a committee of a temperance meeting. Horace Greeley handled
these men without gloves in an article in the Tribune beginning:
Rev. John! We have allowed you to be heard at full length; now you
and your set will be silent and hear us. Very palpably your palaver
about Mr. Higginson's motion is a dodge, a quirk, a most
contemptible quibble, reluctant as we are to speak thus
irreverently of the solemn utterances of a Doctor of Divinity.
Right well do you know, reverend sir, that the particular form or
time or fashion in which the question came up is utterly
immaterial, and you interpose it only to throw dust in the eyes of
the public. Suppose a woman had been nominated at the right time
and in the right way, according to your understanding of
punctilios, wouldn't the same resistance have been made and the
same row got up? You know right well that there would. Then what is
all your pettifogging about technicalities worth? The only question
that anybody cares a button about is this, "Shall woman be allowed
to participate in your World's Temperance Convention on a footing
of perfect equality with man?" If yea, the whole dispute turns on
nothing, and isn't worth six lines in the Tribune. But if it was
and is the purpose of those for whom you pettifog to keep woman off
the platform of that convention and deny her any part in its
proceedings except as a spectator, what does all your talk about
Higginson's untimeliness and the committee's amount to? Why not
treat the subject with some show of honesty?
The women and their friends held a grand rally in the Broadway
Tabernacle the second day afterwards. Every foot of sitting and
standing room was crowded, although there was an admission fee of a
shilling. Miss Anthony presided and there was the strongest enthusiasm,
but perfect order was maintained. The following comment was made by the
New York Commercial-Advertiser:
THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES.--On Saturday evening the Broadway
Tabernacle reverberated with the shrill, defiant notes of Miss Lucy
Stone and her "sisters," who have thrown down the gauntlet to the
male friends of temperance and declared not literally "war to the
knife" but conflict with tongues.... Henceforth the women's rights
ladies--including among them the misses, Lucy herself, Emily Clark,
Susan B. Anthony, Antoinette Brown, some Harriets and Angelinas,
Melissas and Hannahs, with a Fanny too (and more's the pity for it
is a sweet name) and sundry matrons whose names are _household_
words in _newspapers_--are to be in open hostility to the regularly
constituted temperance agencies, under cover of association with
whom they have contrived to augment their notoriety. The delegates
at the Brick Church, who took the responsibility of knocking off
these parasites, deserve the thanks of the temperance friends the
Union through.... Such associations would mar any cause. Left to
themselves such women must fall into contempt; they have used the
temperance cause for a support long enough, and we are glad that
the seeming alliance has been thus formally disowned by the
temperance delegates.
The New York Sun, Moses Beach, editor, said:
The quiet duties of daughter, wife or mother are not congenial to
those hermaphrodite spirits who thirst to win the title of champion
of one sex and victor over the other. What is the love and
submission of one manly heart to the woman whose ambition it is to
sway the minds of multitudes as did a Demosthenes or a Cicero? What
are the tender affections and childish prattle of the family
circle, to women whose ears itch for the loud laugh and boisterous
cheer of the public assembly?...
Could a Christian man, cherishing a high regard for woman and for
the proprieties of life feel that he was promoting woman's
interests and the cause of temperance by being introduced to a
temperance meeting by Miss Susan B. Anthony, her ungainly form
rigged out in bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to
laughter and ridicule by her very motions upon the platform? Would
he feel that he was honoring the women of his country by accepting
as their representatives women whom they must and do despise? Will
any pretend to say that women, whose tongues have dishonored their
God and their Savior, while uttering praise of infidels and infidel
theories, are worthy to receive the suffrages of their Christian
sisters?...
We were much pleased with the remark made a few days since by one
of the most distinguished as well as refined and polished men of
the day on this very subject: "What are the rights which women
seek, and have not?" said he; and answering his own question, he
replied, "The right to do wrong! that alone is denied to them--that
is the only right appropriated exclusively by men, and surely no
true woman would seek to divide or participate in such a right."
The Organ, the New York temperance paper, had this to say:
The harmony and pleasantness of the meeting were disturbed by an
evidently preconcerted irruption of certain women, who have
succeeded beyond doubt in acquiring notoriety, however much they
may have failed in winning respect. The notorious Abby Kelly, the
Miss Stone whose crusade against the Christian doctrine on the
subject of marriage has shocked the better portion of society, and
several other women in pantaloons were present insisting upon their
right to share in the deliberations of the convention.
We wish our friends abroad to understand that the breeze got up
here is nothing but an attempt to ride the woman's rights theory
into respectability on the back of Temperance. And what absurd,
infidel and licentious follies are not packed up under the general
head of woman's rights, it would puzzle any one to say. While,
however, we approve the act excluding the women at the Brick
Church, we feel bound to say that we regretted what seemed to us an
unnecessary acerbity on the part of some of the gentlemen opposing
them. What a load of extraneous, foolish and crooked people and
things the temperance cause has been burdened with during the years
of its progress! To our mind this conspiracy of women to crush the
cause by making it the bearer of their woman's rights absurdities,
is the saddest of all the phenomena of the reform.
The New York Courier, James Watson Webb, editor, gave its readers the
following Sunday article:
Anniversary week has the effect of bringing to New York many
strange specimens of humanity, masculine and feminine. Antiquated
and very homely females made themselves ridiculous by parading the
streets in company with hen-pecked husbands, attenuated
vegetarians, intemperate Abolitionists and sucking clergymen, who
are afraid to say "no" to a strong-minded woman for fear of
infringing upon her rights. Shameless as these females--we suppose
they _were_ females--looked, we should really have thought they
would have blushed as they walked the streets to hear the
half-suppressed laughter of their own sex and the remarks of men
and boys. The Bloomers figured extensively in the anti-slavery
amalgamation convention, and were rather looked up to, but their
intemperate ideas would not be tolerated in the temperance meeting
at the Brick Chapel....
A scene of the utmost confusion prevailed and there was a perfect
warfare of tongues; but, singular to _say_, the women were
compelled to hold their tongues and depart, followed by a number of
male Betties and subdued husbands, wearing the apparel of manhood,
but in reality emasculated by strong-minded women....
So the Bloomers put their credentials in their breeches pockets and
assembled at Dr. Trail's Cold Water Institute, where the men and
Bloomers all took a bath and a drink together.
These sentiments were echoed by the newspapers, great and small, of the
entire country. Not a word in regard to "women's rights" had been
uttered at the Brick Church meeting except the right to have their
credentials from regularly-organized temperance societies accepted, and
the same privileges as other delegates granted. The continual reference
to the "warfare of tongues" is rather amusing in face of the fact that
no woman was allowed to speak and the talking was entirely monopolized
by men. Is it a matter of surprise that only a very limited number of
women had the courage to ally themselves with a movement which called
down upon them and their families such an avalanche of ridicule and
condemnation?
Miss Anthony, on reaching home, immediately began active preparations
for the first annual meeting of the Woman's State Temperance Society,
which was to be held in Rochester. As usual she wrote hundreds of
letters, raised the money, printed and circulated the call, looked
after the advertising, engaged the speakers and took the whole
responsibility. The convention assembled in Corinthian Hall, June 1,
1853, with a large attendance. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the president,
after stating that the society had over 2,000 members, and was in a
most flourishing condition, said:
It has been objected that we do not confine ourselves to the
subject of temperance, but talk too much about woman's rights,
divorce and the church.... We have been obliged to preach woman's
rights because many, instead of listening to what we had to say on
temperance, have questioned the right of woman to speak on any
subject. In courts of justice and legislative assemblies, if the
right of any person to be there is questioned, all business waits
until that point is settled. Now, it is not settled in the minds of
the masses that woman has any right to stand on an even pedestal
with man, look him in the face as an equal and rebuke the sins of
her day and generation. Let it be clearly understood then that we
are a Woman's Rights Society; that we believe it is woman's duty to
speak whenever she feels the impression to do so; that it is her
right to be present in all the councils of Church and State.
Continuing, she took firm ground in favor of the right of a woman to be
divorced from an habitual drunkard, a position which brought upon her a
storm of censure from press, pulpit and society. She was strongly
supported, however, by the most prominent women of the day and received
many letters of approval, among them one from Lucy Stone, saying: "On
the divorce question, I am on your side, for the reason that
drunkenness so depraves a man's system that he is not fit to be a
father." Gerrit Smith wrote to the convention:
I know not why it is not as much the duty of your sex as of mine to
establish newspapers, write books and hold public meetings for the
promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea that modesty
should hold women back from such services is nonsense and
wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might
never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty
and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different
standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and
corrupt.... The Quakers are the best people I have ever known, the
most serious and chaste and yet the most brave and resisting; but
there are no other people who are so little concerned lest women
get out of their sphere. None make so little difference between man
and woman. Others appear to think that the happiness and safety of
the world consist in magnifying the difference. But when reason and
religion shall rule, there will be no difference between man and
woman, in respect to the intellect, the heart or the manners.
[Autograph:
Very respectfully
your friend
Gerrit Smith]
A stirring letter was sent by Neal Dow, expressing his great pleasure
that women were taking active and decided measures for the suppression
of intemperance, and closing: "It is absurd, therefore, to argue that
the community has no power to control this great evil; that any citizen
has the right to inflict it upon society, or that society should
hesitate to exercise its right and power of self-protection against
it."
Many other letters were read from friends, among them Abby Kelly
Foster, who said to Miss Anthony: "So far as separate organizations for
women's action in the temperance cause are concerned, I consider you
the center and soul, without whom nothing could have been done
heretofore and I doubt whether anything would be done now." Strong
addresses were made by Rev. Channing, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone,
Mrs. Nichols, Antoinette Brown, Mrs. Bloomer and others.
When this association was formed a clause was placed in the
constitution allowing men to become members and to speak in all
meetings but making them ineligible to office. There were two reasons
for this: it was desired to throw the full responsibility on woman,
compelling her to learn to preside and to think, speak and act for
herself, which she never would do if men were present to perform these
duties for her; and it was feared that, on account of long habit, men
would soon take matters into their own hands and gain control of the
society, possibly to the extent of forbidding women to speak at the
meetings. Many of the ladies, however, objected to this clause, among
them Antoinette Brown, who refused to join the society on account of
it. So, yielding to the pressure, Mrs. Stanton, on this first
anniversary, said "as this seemed to many a violation of men's rights,
and as the women had now learned to stand alone, it might perhaps be
safe to admit men to all the privileges of the society, hoping,
however, that they would modestly permit woman to continue the work she
had so successfully begun."
[Autograph:
Very respectfully yours
Neal Dow]
Miss Anthony, chairman of the committee on revising the constitution,
brought in a report in favor of admitting the men, which was vigorously
discussed. Before the close of this meeting the serious mistake of such
action was apparent. The men present monopolized the floor, tried to
have the name changed to the People's League, insisted that the society
should have nothing to do with any phase of woman's rights, and showed
their hand so plainly that Miss Anthony at once took the alarm and in
an indignant speech declared the men were trying to drive the women
from their own society.
There was a strong undercurrent of opposition to Mrs. Stanton on
account of her radical views in regard to equal rights, divorce for
drunkenness and the subjection of woman to Bible authority, but those
opposing her being wholly inexperienced did not know how to prevent her
re-election. As the majority of the men, for obvious reasons, agreed
with them in wishing to get rid of Mrs. Stanton, they proceeded to
teach them political tactics, got out a printed opposition ticket and
defeated her for president by three votes. She was chosen
vice-president but emphatically declined. Miss Anthony was almost
unanimously re-elected secretary but refused to serve, stating that
"the vote showed they would not accept the principle of woman's rights
and, as she believed thoroughly in standing for the equality of woman,
she could not act as officer of such a society; besides, Mrs. Vaughn,
the newly elected president, had openly declared that 'principle must
sometimes be sacrificed to expediency.' She herself would never admit
this; her doctrine was, 'Do right, and leave the consequences with
God.'" Frederick Douglass and a number of others urged her in the most
earnest manner to remain, paying high tribute to her services and
pointing out how much they were needed, but in vain.
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton at once severed all connection with the
organization they had founded; it passed into the hands of a body of
conservative women, who believed they could accomplish by prayer what
these two knew never could be done except through legislation with a
constituency of women behind it. The society had a precarious existence
of one or two years and finally went to pieces. There was not another
strong, concerted movement of women in the cause of temperance for
twenty years.[18] Miss Anthony, although a total abstainer all her
life, was never again connected with a temperance organization. She has
steadfastly held to the opinion that the vital work for women is to
secure for themselves the ballot which, above all other agencies, will
make them an effective power for dealing not only with this but with
all moral questions.
Relieved from her onerous duties in connection with the State society,
she at once set about working up the Whole World's Temperance
Convention in New York, for which she felt a personal responsibility.
Many of those who had seceded from the Brick Church meeting, including
Mr. Higginson himself, were beginning to doubt the propriety of holding
a separate convention. Miss Anthony was strongly in favor of it and
wrote Lucy Stone:
We have not the slightest reason for supposing that we shall be
received at the World's Convention to be held September 5. The same
men that controlled the Brick Church meeting are to be the leading
spirits there. Not one of them, so far as I can learn, has
expressed a regret that the women-delegates were excluded last May;
how then can we entertain a hope that they will act differently in
September? We may pretend to go in good faith but there will be no
faith in us. If it is not too late I beg of you to see that the
call is issued and for the very day that the Old Fogies hold their
convention.
Lucy Stone agreed with her and, through their efforts, the committee
were persuaded to send out the call. It was decided, however, to hold
the meeting September 1 and 2, just before the other, and then, while
the great crowds from all parts of the country were in the city, to
have a regular Woman's Rights Convention on the same date as that of
Rev. John Chambers et al. Miss Anthony received many cordial replies to
her numerous letters, and some not so cordial. Samuel F. Gary wrote in
his characteristic style: "You ask whether I will speak at a Whole
World's Temperance Convention to be held in New York during the World's
Fair. You will have observed that my humble name is signed to a call
for such a convention at that time and place, together with Chancellor
Walworth's and others of like distinction. Providence favoring, it is
my purpose to participate in the deliberations of that meeting and I
see no sufficient reason for another convention having the same object
in view." Possibly if Mr. Gary and "others of like distinction" had
been refused permission to speak a word or even to serve on a
committee, they might have been able to see "sufficient reason for
another convention." Horace Greeley sent the following:
I may not be able to write you a long letter, as you request, but I
will give you a little confidential advice. All I know on
temperance (pretty nearly) I put into a tract which was long ago
printed at the Organ office.... Now, as to tracts: Make it your
first rule to Be Thorough. Most of our temperance tracts are too
short and flimsy and not calculated to convince reasoning beings.
Let each tract take up some one aspect of the question and exhaust
it, none of your fly-away five or six pages but from twelve to
thirty-two, the whole case presented in all its aspects and proved
up. Nothing less than this will do much good.
Now as to church matters: The short and safe way is simply to set
them aside. If those who have outgrown the church do not introduce
the subject by treading on the old lady's corns, they can
effectually resist all interposition of shibboleths by the
followers of Pusey in all sects. Do not make the reform movement a
pretext for assaulting the church. In short, the whole question
with regard to the woman's movement is best solved by those engaged
in it going quietly and effectively on with their work. That will
soonest stop the mouths of gainsayers. "It does move, though," is
the true answer to all cavils.
I can't be at your convention, and Mrs. Greeley is overwhelmed with
moving and babies.
[Autograph:
Yours,
Horace Greeley]
While Miss Anthony was thus engaged, the State Teachers' Convention was
held in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, August 3, 1853, and true to her
resolve made the year previous she put aside everything else in order
to attend. According to the rules any one paying a dollar was entitled
to all the rights and privileges of the convention; so she paid her
dollar and took her seat. There were over 500 teachers in attendance,
two-thirds at least being women. For two entire days Miss Anthony sat
there, and during that time not a woman spoke; in all the deliberations
there was not the slightest recognition of their presence, and they did
not vote on any question, though all had paid the fee and were members
of the association. In a letter describing the occasion Miss Anthony
said: "My heart was filled with grief and indignation thus to seethe
minority, simply because they were men, presuming that in them was
vested all wisdom and knowledge; that they needed no aid, no counsel
from the majority. And what was most humiliating of all was to look
into the faces of those women and see that by far the larger proportion
were perfectly satisfied with the position assigned them."
Toward the close of the second day's session the subject under
discussion was, "Why the profession of teacher is not as much respected
as that of lawyer, doctor or minister?" After listening for several
hours, Miss Anthony felt that the decisive moment had come and, rising
in her seat, she said, "Mr. President." A bombshell would not have
created greater commotion. For the first time in all history a woman's
voice was heard in a teachers' convention. Every neck was craned and a
profound hush fell upon the assembly. Charles Davies, LL. D., author of
Davies' text books and professor of mathematics at West Point, was
president. In full-dress costume with buff vest, blue coat and brass
buttons, he was the Great Mogul. At length recovering from the shock of
being thus addressed by a woman, he leaned forward and asked with
satirical politeness, "What will the lady have?" "I wish to speak to
the question under discussion," said Miss Anthony calmly, although her
heart was beating a tattoo. Turning to the few rows of men in front of
him, for the women occupied the back seats, he inquired, "What is the
pleasure of the convention?" "I move she shall be heard," said one man;
this was seconded by another, and thus was precipitated a debate which
lasted half an hour, although she had precisely the same right to speak
as any man who was taking part in the discussion.
She stood during all this time, fearing to lose the floor if she sat
down. At last a vote was taken, men only voting, and it was carried in
the affirmative by a small majority. Miss Anthony then said: "It seems
to me you fail to comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you
complain. Do you not see that so long as society says woman has not
brains enough to be a doctor, lawyer or minister, but has plenty to be
a teacher, every man of you who condescends to teach, tacitly admits
before all Israel and the sun that he has no more brains than a
woman?"--and sat down. She had intended to draw the conclusion that the
only way to place teaching upon a level with other professions was
either to admit woman to them or exclude her from teaching, but her
trembling limbs would sustain her no longer.
The convention soon adjourned for the day and, as Miss Anthony went out
of the hall, many of the women drew away from her and said audibly:
"Did you ever see such a disgraceful performance?" "I never was so
ashamed of my sex." But a few of them gathered about her and said: "You
have taught us our lesson and hereafter we propose to make ourselves
heard."
The next day, at the opening of the morning session, President Davies,
who had evidently spent the night in preparing the greatest effort of
his life, arose in all his majesty and was delivered of the following:
I have been asked why no provisions have been made for female
lecturers before this association and why ladies are not appointed
on committees. I will answer: "Behold this beautiful hall! Mark
well the pilaster, its pedestal, its shaft, its rich entablature,
the crowning glory of this superb architecture, the different
parts, each in its appropriate place, contributing to the strength,
beauty and symmetry of the whole! Could I aid in bringing down this
splendid entablature from its proud elevation and trailing it in
the dust and dirt that surround the pedestal? No, never!"
To quote further from Miss Anthony's letter: "Many of the ladies
readjusted their ribbons and laces and looked at each other as much as
to say, 'Beautiful, perfectly beautiful!' But a few there were whose
faces spoke scorn and utter contempt, and whose flashing eyes said:
'Such flattery as this adds insult to injury upon those of us who,
equally qualified with men, are toiling side by side with them for
one-half the salary. And this solely because of our sex!'"
The women had no desire to pull down the building, entablature and all,
about the head of the magnificent Davies, but some of them were aroused
to the injustice with which they had so long been treated. To the
astonishment of the professor and his following, these resolutions were
presented by Mrs. Northrop, a teacher in the Rochester schools:
_Resolved_, That this association recognizes the right of female
teachers to share in all the privileges and deliberations of this
body.
_Resolved_, That female teachers do not receive an adequate and
sufficient compensation, and that, as salaries should be regulated
only according to the amount of labor performed, this association
will endeavor by judicious and efficient action to remove this
existing evil.
An attempt was made to smother them, and when Mrs. Northrop asked why
they had not been read, the president blandly replied that he regretted
they could not be reached but other order of business preceded them.
Mrs. Northrop, having found her voice, proceeded to speak strongly on
the discrimination made against women in the matter of salaries, and
was ably supported by her sister, Mrs. J.R. Vosburg. J. D. Fanning, of
New York, recording secretary, asked that the resolutions be read,
which was done. Miss Anthony then made a forcible speech in their favor
and they were passed unanimously, to the utter amazement and
discomfiture of President Davies.
She went home well satisfied with her work, and completed preparations
for the Whole World's Temperance Convention, which was held in New
York, September 1 and 2. Her zeal is amusingly illustrated by her
proposal to invite Victor Hugo and Harriet Martineau to speak. It was a
splendid assemblage, addressed by the leading men and women of the day,
the large hall packed at every session, the audience sitting hour after
hour, orderly but full of earnestness and enthusiasm. The New York
Tribune said of it: "This has been the most spirited and able meeting
on behalf of temperance that ever was held."
The men's convention has a different record. New York, in the month of
September, 1853, was in a whirlwind of excitement. The first World's
Fair of the United States was in progress and people had gathered from
all parts of this and other countries. In order to reach these crowds,
many conventions had been called to meet in this city, among them the
two Temperance, the Anti-Slavery and the Woman's Rights. The Whole
World's Temperance and the Anti-Slavery closed just in time for the
opening of the World's Temperance and the Woman's Rights meetings. Rev.
Antoinette Brown was appointed a delegate from two different societies
to the World's Temperance Convention and, although they had every
reason to believe that no woman would be received, it was decided to
make the attempt in order to show their willingness to co-operate with
the men's associations in temperance work.
Wendell Phillips accompanied her to Metropolitan Hall, where she handed
her credentials to the secretary and, after they were passed upon, the
president, Neal Dow, informed her that she was a member of the
convention. Later, when she arose to speak to a motion, he invited her
to the platform and then pandemonium broke loose. There were cries of
"order," "order," hisses, shouts of "she shall not speak," and above
all the voice of Rev. John Chambers, who, pointing his finger at her,
cried over and over, "Shame on the woman!" Miss Brown stood an hour and
a half on the platform, in the midst of this bedlam, not because she
was anxious to speak, but to establish the principle that an accredited
delegate to a world's convention should not be denied the right of
speech on account of sex; but she was finally compelled to leave the
hall.
Win. Lloyd Garrison said: "I have seen many tumultuous meetings in my
day, but on no occasion have I ever seen anything more disgraceful to
our common humanity." Samuel F. Gary led in the opposition to Miss
Brown, offering a resolution that "women be not allowed to speak," and
afterwards declaring in his paper that he did it "because she tried to
force the question of woman's rights upon the convention." To this Rev.
William Henry Channing replied in a public address: "If any man says
that, _he lies_. She stood there simply asking her privilege as a
delegate." The New York Tribune said: "This convention has completed
three of its four business sessions and the results may be summed up as
follows: First day--Crowding a woman off the platform; second
day--Gagging her; third day--Voting that she shall stay gagged. Having
thus disposed of the main question, we presume the incidentals will be
finished this morning."
This was not an exaggerated statement, as practically nothing was done
during the three days of the convention except to fight over the
question of allowing Miss Brown, an accepted delegate, an ordained
minister, a young, beautiful and modest woman, to stand upon their
platform and speak on the subject of temperance. Miss Anthony was a
witness to these proceedings, her Quaker blood rose to the boiling
point and she registered anew a solemn vow within herself that she
never would relax her efforts for one single day, if it took a
lifetime, until woman had the right of speech on every platform in the
land.
The mob which had begun with the anti-slavery and gathered strength at
the temperance meeting, now turned its attention to the Woman's Rights
Convention in Broadway Tabernacle. The president was that lovely
Quaker, Lucretia Mott, and the speakers were among the greatest men and
women in the nation: Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Rev.
Channing, Rev. John Pierpont, Mrs. Rose, Lucy Stone, Frances D. Gage,
Miss Brown, Mrs. Nichols. In Miss Anthony's address she reviewed the
action of the recent teachers' convention at Rochester and closed by
saying: "A woman principal in that city receives $250, while a man
principal, doing exactly the same work, receives $650. In this State
there are 11,000 teachers and of these four-fifths are women. By the
reports it will be seen that of the annual State fund of $800,000,
two-thirds are paid to men and one-third to women; that is to say,
two-thirds are paid to one-fifth of the laborers, and the other
four-fifths are paid with the remaining one-third of the fund!" This
was the first appearance of Madame Mathilde Anneke, a highly-educated
German of noble family, a political exile from Hungary, and a friend of
Kossuth. That wonderful colored woman, Sojourner Truth, also was
present.
The resolutions were, in effect, that "each human being should be the
judge of his or her sphere and that human rights should be recognized."
There never were, there never will be, grander speeches than those
which were made on this occasion, and yet the entire convention was in
the hands of a mob. The women, as well as the men, were greeted with
cries of "shut up," "sit down," "get out," "bow-wow," "go it, Susan,"
and their voices drowned with hisses and cat-calls. The uproar was
indescribable, with shouting, yelling, screaming, bellowing, stamping
and every species of noise that could be made. Horace Greeley went down
among the crowd and tried to quiet them. The police were appealed to in
vain, and the meeting finally closed in the midst of tumult and
confusion. The Tribune under the management of Greeley, and the Evening
Post under that of William Cullen Bryant, condemned the rioters with
the greatest severity, but the other leading dailies of New York
sustained the mob spirit and made the ladies a target for ridicule and
condemnation.
After leaving New York, Miss Anthony went to the Fourth National
Woman's Rights Convention at Cleveland, O., which was one of the
largest and most enthusiastic that had been held. It was attended by
many noted people, among them Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, always a
consistent advocate of woman's rights, and the proceedings were marked
with perfect order and propriety. Miss Anthony was continued at the
head of the finance committee, as it was found that no one could raise
so much money. The three weeks following she traveled through the
southern counties in New York and spoke in a number of villages. A year
before she had gone over the same ground and organized woman's
temperance societies. She found that, with the exception of one at
Elmira, none of these was in existence. The explanation in every
instance was that they had no money to secure lecturers, or to do any
practical work and, as all the members were wives and housekeepers,
they were not in a position to earn any. Miss Anthony makes this entry
in her journal:
Thus as I passed from town to town was I made to feel the great
evil of woman's utter dependence on man for the necessary means to
aid reform movements. I never before took in so fully the grand
idea of pecuniary independence. Woman must have a purse of her own,
and how can this be so long as the law denies to the wife all right
to both the individual and the joint earnings? Reflections like
these convince me that there is no true freedom for woman without
the possession of equal property rights, and that these can be
obtained only through legislation. If this is so, then the sooner
the demand is made, the sooner it will be granted. It must be done
by petition, and this, too, of the very next legislature. How can
the work be started? We must hold a convention and adopt some plan
of united action.
With her, to think was always to act. She reached Rochester on the
morning of election day, and went at once to the home of William and
Mary Hallowell, that home whose doors never were closed to her, where
for more than fifty years she was welcome day or night, where she
always turned for advice, assistance and sympathy and ever found them
in the fullest measure. She explained to them her idea of calling a
meeting in Rochester for the specific purpose of starting a petition
for more extended property rights to women. They encouraged the
project, and she then turned toward her other Mecca, the home of Maria
G. Porter. Three of the Porter sisters kept a private school in this
city for thirty years, while the eldest, Maria, made a home for them
and also took a select class of boarders. This was a literary center,
she often invited Miss Anthony to meet her distinguished guests, and
ever encouraged and sustained her public work. Mr. Channing was
boarding here, and when Miss Anthony unfolded her plan, he exclaimed,
"Capital! Capital!" and at once prepared an eloquent call for the
convention. This meant for her the writing of letters to scores of
influential people asking their signatures, which were almost
invariably given, and was followed by all the drudgery necessary for
every meeting of this kind.
[Autograph:
W. H. Channing]
The convention opened Nov. 30 at Corinthian Hall, Rev. May presiding
and Rev. Channing the leading spirit. Two forms of the petition were
adopted, one for the just and equal rights of women in regard to wages
and children; the other for the right of suffrage. Miss Anthony was
appointed one of the lecturers, and also put in charge of the
petitions. Sixty women began circulating these, and she herself
canvassed her own city, lectured in a number of towns, and at the same
time made arrangements for a State suffrage convention to be held in
Albany February 14 and 15. At this time Parker Pillsbury wrote to Lydia
Mott:
Is there work down among you for Susan to do? Any shirt-making,
cooking, clerking, preaching or teaching, indeed any honest work,
just to keep her out of idleness! She seems strangely
unemployed--almost expiring for something to do, and I could not
resist the inclination to appeal to you, _as a person of particular
leisure_, that an effort be made in her behalf. At present she has
only the Anti-Slavery cause for New York, the "Woman's Rights
Movement" for the world, the Sunday evening lectures for Rochester
and other lecturing of her own from Lake Erie to the "Old Man of
Franconia mountains;" private cares and home affairs and the
various et ceteras of _womanity_. These are about all so far as
appears, to occupy her seven days of twenty-four hours each, as the
weeks rain down to her from Eternal Skies. Do pity and procure work
for her if it be possible!
[Footnote 17: From 1840 to 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine L.
Hose, Lydia Mott and Paulina Wright (afterwards Davis), circulated
petitions for a Married Woman's Property Law and, in presenting them,
addressed a legislative committee several times.]
[Footnote 18: The W.C.T.U. was organized in 1874 and the temperance
work passed almost entirely into the hands of women.]
CHAPTER VII.
PETITIONS----BLOOMERS----LECTURES.
1854.
Considerable space has been given to detailed accounts of these early
conventions to illustrate the prejudice which existed against woman's
speaking in public, and the martyrdom suffered by the pioneers to
secure the right of free speech for succeeding generations. From this
time until the merging of all questions into the Civil War, such
conventions were held every year, producing a great revolution of
sentiment in the direction of an enlarged sphere for woman's activities
and a modification of the legal and religious restraints that so long
had held her in bondage. They have been fully described also in order
to indicate some of the causes which operated in the development of the
mind and character of Susan B. Anthony, transforming her by degrees
from a, quiet, domestic Quaker maiden to a strong, courageous,
uncompromising advocate of absolute equality of rights for woman.
Brought into close association with the most advanced men and women of
the age, seeing on every hand the injustice perpetrated against her sex
and hearing the magnificent appeals for the liberty of every human
being, her soul could not fail to respond; and having passed the age
when women are apt to consecrate themselves to love and marriage, it
was most natural that she should dedicate her services to the struggle
for the freedom of woman. She did not realize then that this would
reach through fifty years of exacting and unending toil, but even had
she done so, who can doubt that she freely would have given up her life
to the work?
In the ten weeks before the State convention at Albany, 6,000 names
were secured for the petition that married women should be entitled to
the wages they earned and to the equal guardianship of their children,
and 4,000 asking for the suffrage. Miss Anthony herself trudged from
house to house during that stormy winter, many of the women slamming
the door in her face with the statement that they "had all the rights
they wanted;" although at this time an employer was bound by law to pay
the wife's wages to the husband, and the father had the power to
apprentice young children without the mother's consent, and even to
dispose of them by will at his death. One minister, in Rochester, after
looking her over carefully, said: "Miss Anthony, you are too fine a
physical specimen of woman to be doing such work as this. You ought to
marry and have children." Ignoring the insult, she replied in a
dignified manner: "I think it a much wiser thing to secure for the
thousands of mothers in this State the legal control of the children
they now have, than to bring others into the world who would not belong
to me after they were born."
The State convention met in Association Hall, Albany, February 14,
1854. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, president, delivered a magnificent
address which Miss Anthony had printed and laid upon the desk of every
member of the Legislature; she also circulated 50,000 of these
pamphlets throughout the State. The convention had been called for two
days, but so great was the interest aroused and so popular were the
speakers in attendance that evening meetings were held for two weeks;
the questions under consideration were taken up by the newspapers of
Albany and the discussion spread through the press of the State,
finding able defenders as well as bitter opponents. A peculiar
illustration of the uncertain disposition of an audience was here
given. While in other places women had been prevented from speaking,
now they would not hear any but women, and whenever Mr. Channing or Mr.
May attempted to speak he was at once cried down in a good-natured but
effective manner. The women were greatly distressed at this, as these
men had been their strongest allies, their leaders, their educators;
but their appeals to the audience to listen to masculine eloquence were
made in vain.
The petitions with their 10,000 names were presented in the Assembly,
and strongly advocated by Mr. Peters, and Mr. D. P. Wood, of Onondaga
county, but vehemently opposed by Mr. Burnett, of Essex. In his speech
against the petition asking only that married women might possess their
own wages and have equal guardianship of their children, he said:
I hope before even this motion is put, gentlemen will be allowed to
reflect upon the important question whether these individuals
deserve any consideration at the hands of the Legislature. Whatever
may be their pretensions or their sincerity, they do not appear
satisfied with having unsexed themselves, but they desire to unsex
every female in the land and to set the whole community ablaze with
unhallowed fire. I trust, sir, the House may deliberate before we
suffer them to cast their firebrand into our midst. True, as yet,
there is nothing officially before us, but it is well known that
the object of these unsexed women is to overthrow the most sacred
of our institutions, to set at defiance the divine law which
declares man and wife to be one, and establish on its ruins what
will be in fact and in principle but a species of legalized
adultery.
It is, therefore, a matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our
consciences, to our constituents and to God, who is the source of
all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and deliberately
before we shall even seem to countenance a movement so unholy as
this. Are we, sir, to give the least countenance to claims so
preposterous, disgraceful and criminal as are embodied in this
address? Are we to put the stamp of truth upon the libel here set
forth, that men and women in the matrimonial relation are to be
equal? We know that God created man as the representative of the
race; that after his creation, his Creator took from his side the
material for woman's creation; and that, by the institution of
matrimony, woman was restored to the side of man, and they became
one flesh and one being, he the head....
But we are now asked to have the ordinance of matrimony based on
jealousy and distrust; and, as in Italy, so in this country, should
this mischievous scheme be carried out to its legitimate results,
we, instead of reposing safe confidence against assaults upon our
honor in the love and affection of our wives, shall find ourselves
obliged to close the approaches to those assaults by the padlock.
The petitions were referred to a select committee of the Senate and the
Assembly, which Miss Anthony addressed. The Albany Argus reported her
speech as follows:
Miss Anthony said that she appeared on behalf of the signers of the
petitions and tendered to the Legislature thanks for the courteous
manner in which they had been received. They asked that husband and
wife should be tenants in common of property, but with a partition
upon the death of one; that a wife should be competent to discharge
trusts and powers, the same as a single woman; that the statute in
respect to married women's property should be made effectual, and
the wife's property descend as though she had been unmarried; that
married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary
and of administration; that they should have power to make
contracts and transact business; that they should be entitled to
their own earnings, subject to their proportionate liability for
support of children; that post nuptial acquisitions should belong
equally to husband and wife; that married women should stand on the
same footing with single as parties or witnesses in legal
proceedings; that they should be equal guardians of their minor
children; that the homestead should be inviolable and inalienable
for widows and their children; that laws in relation to divorce
should be revised, and habitual drunkenness be made cause of
absolute divorce; that the preference of males in descent of real
estate should be abolished; that women should exercise the right of
suffrage, be eligible to all offices, occupations and professions,
entitled to act as jurors, eligible to employment in public
offices; that a law should be passed extending the masculine
designation in all statutes to females.
The committee, James L. Angle, of Monroe county, chairman, presented a
dignified and respectful report, denying the petition for suffrage but
recommending that the laws be so changed as to allow the wife to
collect and control her own earnings if the family were neglected by
the husband, and to require the written consent of the mother to the
apprenticeship of her children. The Legislature, however, refused to
pass such a bill, as did all succeeding Legislatures until 1860.
There was nothing but to go to work again, for Miss Anthony and her
co-laborers were determined not to relax their efforts until the
obnoxious laws against women were repealed. It was at this rallying of
the forces and renewing of the attack that Mr. Channing declared Miss
Anthony to be "the Napoleon of the movement," a title so appropriate
that it has clung to her to the present day. She had now thoroughly
systematized the work in New York and was appointed general agent. It
was decided to hold a series of conventions throughout the state for
the purpose of rolling up mammoth petitions to present to the
Legislature every session until they should be granted. Two strong
appeals, one written by Mrs. Stanton and one by Mr. Channing, were
widely circulated and a large corps of able speakers was engaged. All
this work the State committee assigned to Miss Anthony, but did not
provide her with one dollar to pay expenses.
For many years thereafter she canvassed the State annually; held
meetings, organized societies and secured thousands of signatures,
without any guaranteed fund. Not only did she give all her time and
perform far greater labor than any other person engaged in this
movement, but she also took the whole financial responsibility. The
anxiety of this hardly can be imagined, but she was seldom discouraged,
never daunted. Her father had repaid the few hundred dollars she had
loaned him from her slender earnings as teacher in the days of his
adversity, and these she used freely without expectation of replacing
them. She never hesitated because she had not money but went boldly
forward, trusting to collections and contributions to pay expenses.
Sometimes she came out even, sometimes behind. In the latter case she
sent at once to her father who supplied the necessary funds, which were
repaid when there was a surplus. Had she waited to have the money in
hand, had she feared to take the chances, her work never would have
been done; and unless some one else had been developed who could and
would assume the risk and manage the business part of the State
campaigns, the progress of woman, slow as it has been, would have been
still longer delayed. The one ruling characteristic of her life ever
has been courage, moral and physical. There never have been hardships
which she feared to endure, never scorn, ridicule or abuse which she
did not dare face. While she might have risen to a high position and
commanded a large salary as teacher, or have lived at home in restful
comfort, she voluntarily chose the hardest field of work the world
offered, one shadowed with obloquy, holding out no prospect of money or
fame and no hope of success except through long and bitter conflict.
Soon after the Albany convention Lucy Stone wrote: "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.... Does not Channing
deserve the blessing of all the race for his fidelity to the cause of
women? I believe he understands better than any others, unless it be
Higginson and Phillips, just what we need. Give my love and best wishes
to the household of faith." Channing, when she wanted him to preside at
a meeting, answered facetiously: "Napoleon will not be surprised that a
corporal of an awkward squad hesitates to appear in command where the
general-in-chief is present."
[Autograph:
Affectionately
Lucy Stone]
It was at the close of this Albany convention that Miss Anthony decided
to abandon the Bloomer costume. The subject had been occupying her
sleeping and waking hours for some time, and it was only after a long
and agonizing struggle that she persuaded herself to take the step. In
order to show how very serious a question this had been with the women,
it will be necessary to go into a somewhat detailed account of this
first movement toward dress reform.
The costume consisted of a short skirt and a pair of Turkish trousers
gathered at the ankle or hanging straight, and was made of ordinary
dress materials. It was first introduced at the various "water cures"
to relieve sick and delicate women, often rendered so by their
unhealthful mode of dress, and was strongly recommended in the "water
cure" journals. When women began to go into public work, they could not
fail to recognize the disadvantages of the unyielding corsets, heavy,
quilted and stiffly-starched petticoats, five or six worn at one time
to hold out the long, voluminous dress skirts; and to feel that to be
consistent they must give freedom to the body. The proprietors of the
"water cures" were, for the most part, in touch with all reform
movements and their hospitality was freely extended to those engaged in
them. In this way the women had an opportunity to see the comfort which
the patients enjoyed in their loose, short garments, and began to ask
why they also should not adopt what seemed to them a rational dress.
Hon. Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, N.Y., the wealthy and influential
reformer and philanthropist, became an earnest advocate of this
costume, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, a beautiful and
fashionable woman, was the first to put it on. In Washington she wore
it, made of the most elegant materials, during all her father's term in
Congress. She was soon followed by his cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
and with this social sanction it was adopted in 1851 and '52 by a small
number, including Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, Dr. Harriet Austin, Celia
Burleigh, Charlotte Wilbour, the Grimké sisters, probably less than one
hundred in the whole country. In order to be entirely relieved from the
care of personal adornment, they also cut off their hair. Miss Anthony
was the very last to adopt the style. In May, 1852, she wrote Lucy
Stone that Mrs. Stanton had offered to make her a present of the
costume, but she would not wear it. In December she wrote again, dating
her letter from Mrs. Stanton's nursery, "Well, at last I am in short
skirt and trousers!" At this time she also sacrificed her abundant
brown tresses.
The world was not ready for this innovation. There were no gymnasiums
or bicycles to plead for the appropriateness of the costume and it was
worn chiefly by women who preached doctrines for which the public was
no better prepared than for dress reform. The outcry against it
extended from one end of the country to the other; the press howled in
derision, the pulpit hurled its anathemas and the rabble took up the
refrain. On the streets of the larger cities the women were followed by
mobs of men and boys, who jeered and yelled and did not hesitate to
express their disapproval by throwing sticks and stones and giving
three cheers and a tiger ending in the loudest of groans.[19] Sometimes
these demonstrations became so violent that the women were obliged to
seek refuge in a store and, after the mob had grown tired of waiting
and dispersed, they would slip out of the back door and find their way
home through the alleys. Their husbands and children refused to be seen
with them in public, and they were wholly ostracized by other women.
Mrs. Bloomer was at this time publishing a paper called the Lily, which
was the organ for the reforms of the day. Its columns were freely used
to advocate the short dress, the paper thus became the target of attack
and, because the costume had no distinctive name, it was christened
with that of the editor, much to her grief. Later a substitute for the
trousers was adopted, consisting of high shoes with buttoned gaiters
fitting in the tops and extending up over the leg, and an effort was
made to change the name to the "American costume," but the people would
not have it and "Bloomer" it will remain for all time. An extract from
one of her unpublished letters will show how all the women felt on this
subject. After protesting against connecting it with the question of
woman's rights, she says:
It is only one of our rights to dress comfortably. Many have put on
the short dress who have never taken any part in the woman's rights
movement and who have no idea they are going to be any less womanly
by such a change. I feel no more like a man now than I did in long
skirts, unless it be that enjoying more freedom and cutting off the
fetters is to be like a man. I suppose in that respect we are more
mannish, for we know that in dress, as in all things else, we have
been and are slaves, while man in dress and all things else is
free. I admit that we have "got on the pantaloons," but I deny that
putting them on is going to make us any the less womanly or any the
more masculine and immodest. On the contrary, I feel that if all of
us were less slaves to fashion we would be nobler women, for both
our bodies and minds are now rendered weak and useless from the
unhealthy and barbarous style of dress adopted, and from the time
and thought bestowed in making it attractive. A change is demanded
and if I have been the means of calling the attention of the public
to it and of leading only a few to disregard old customs and for
once to think and act for themselves, I shall not trouble myself
about the false imputations that may be cast upon me.
[Autograph: Amelia Bloomer]
Mrs. Bloomer wore the costume eight years, but very few held out
one-fourth of that time. With the exception of Gerrit Smith, all the
prominent men, Garrison, Phillips, Channing, May, were bitterly opposed
to the short dress and tried to dissuade the women from wearing it by
every argument in their power. The costume, however, was adopted as a
matter of principle, and for it they suffered a martyrdom which would
have made burning at the stake seem comfortable. It requires far more
heroism to bear jibes and jeers for one's personal appearance than for
one's opinions. No pen can describe what these women endured for the
two or three years in which they tried to establish this principle,
through such sacrifices as only a woman can understand. So long as they
were upheld by the belief that they were giving strength to the cause
they loved, they bravely submitted to the persecution, but when they
realized that they were injuring instead of helping it, endurance
reached its limit. Mrs. Stanton was the first to capitulate, and as she
had tried to induce the others to wear the costume so she endeavored to
persuade them to abandon it. She wrote to Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone:
"I know what you must suffer in consenting to bow again to the tyranny
of fashion, but I know also what you suffer among fashionable people in
wearing the short dress; and so, not for the sake of the cause, nor for
any sake but your own, take it off! We put it on for greater freedom,
but what is physical freedom compared with mental bondage?" In agony of
spirit as to whether the cause was helped or hindered by wearing it,
and ready to put aside all personal feeling in the matter, Miss Anthony
appealed to Lucy Stone, who answered:
Now, Susan, it is all fudge for anybody to pretend that a cause
which deserves to live is impeded by the length of your skirt. I
know, from having tried through half the Union, that audiences
listen and assent just as well to one who speaks truth in a short
as in a long dress; but I am annoyed to death by people who
recognize me by my clothes, and when I travel get a seat by me and
bore me for a whole day with the stupidest stuff in the world. Then
again, when I go to each new city a horde of boys pursue me and
destroy all comfort. I have bought a nice new dress, which I have
had a month, and it is not made because I can't decide whether to
make it long or short. Not that I think any cause will suffer, but
simply to save myself a great deal of annoyance and not feel when I
am a guest in a family that they are mortified if other persons
happen to come in. I was at Lucretia Mott's a few weeks ago, and
her daughters took up a regular labor with me to make me abandon
the dress. They said they would not go in the street with me, and
when Grace Greenwood called and others like her, I think it would
have been a real relief to them if I had not been there. James and
Lucretia defended me bravely.
This was received by Miss Anthony while at the Albany convention, and
she wrote:
Your letter caused a bursting of the floods, long pent up, and
after a good cry I went straight to Mrs. Stanton and read it to
her. She has had a most bitter experience in the short dress, and
says she now feels a mental freedom among her friends that she has
not known for two years past. If Lucy Stone, with all her power of
eloquence, her loveliness of character, who wins all that hear the
sound of her voice, can not bear the martyrdom of the dress, who
can? Mrs. Stanton's parting words were, "Let the hem out of your
dress to-day, before to-morrow night's meeting." I have not obeyed
her but have been in the streets and printing offices all day long,
had rude, vulgar men stare me out of countenance and heard them say
as I opened the door, "There comes my Bloomer!" O, hated name! I
have been compelled to attend to all the business here, as at
Rochester. There every one knew me, knew my father and brother, and
treated me accordingly, but here I am known only as one of the
women who ape men--coarse brutal men! Oh, I can not, can not bear
it any longer.
To this Lucy Stone replied:
I am sure you are all worn out or you would not feel so intensely
about the dress. I never shed a tear over it in my life or came
within a thousand ages of martyrdom on account of it; and to be
compelled to travel in rain and snow, mud and dirt, in a long dress
would cost me more in every respect than the short dress ever did.
I don't think I can abandon it, but I will have two skirts. I have
this feeling: Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great
hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them
pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can
be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is
it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance,
that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their
garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work
out her own emancipation?... It is a part of the "mint, anise and
cumin," and the weightier matters of justice and truth occupy my
thoughts more.
She did abandon the costume, however, before the year was ended, as did
most of the others. The establishment of gymnasiums and the
encouragement of athletic sports among women eventually made a short
dress an acknowledged necessity, and the advent of the bicycle so
thoroughly swept away the old prejudice that the word "Bloomers" no
longer strikes terror to the heart, nor does the wearing of a short
skirt ostracise a woman and destroy her good works. Miss Anthony wore
hers a little over a year. It was not very different from the bicycle
dress of the present day, the skirt reaching almost to the shoe tops
and made of satin or heavy merino, and yet for years afterwards she was
described as attending meetings in "the regulation bombazine Bloomers,"
and it was impossible to convince people to the contrary until they had
seen her with their own eyes. She herself said in regard to it: "I felt
the need of some such garments because I was obliged to be out every
day in all kinds of weather, and also because I saw women ruined in
health by tight lacing and the weight of their clothing; and I hoped to
help establish the principle of rational dress. I found it a physical
comfort but a mental crucifixion. It was an intellectual slavery; one
never could get rid of thinking of herself, and the important thing is
to forget self. The attention of my audience was fixed upon my clothes
instead of my words. I learned the lesson then that to be successful a
person must attempt but one reform. By urging two, both are injured, as
the average mind can grasp and assimilate but one idea at a time. I
have felt ever since that experience that if I wished my hearers to
consider the suffrage question I must not present the temperance, the
religious, the dress, or any other besides, but must confine myself to
suffrage." With the exception of that one year, Miss Anthony always has
been particular to follow, in a modified and conservative form, the
prevailing styles, and has fought strenuously the repeated efforts to
graft any kind of dress reform on the suffrage movement.
In March, 1854, after getting back into long skirts, Miss Anthony
decided to go to Washington with Mrs. Rose, and see how the propaganda
of equal rights would be received at the capital of the nation. This
was her first visit to that city and she enjoyed it, but the meetings
were not a financial success. Great prejudice existed against Mrs. Rose
on account of her alleged infidelity, there was no interest in the
question of woman's rights, and Washington was not a good field for
lectures of any sort, Congress furnishing all the oratory for which the
public cared. The papers were kind about publishing notices, but with
the exception of the Star, gave no reports. Chaplain Milburn refused to
let them have the Representative chamber for a Sunday lecture, "because
Mrs. Rose was not a member of any church." Miss Anthony replied that
"our country stood for religious as well as civil liberty." He
acknowledged the truth of this but still refused the use of the room.
Then they applied to Professor Henry for permission to speak in the
hall of the Smithsonian Institute, and he told them that "it was
necessary to avoid the discussion of any exciting questions there, and
it would disturb the harmony of feeling for a woman to speak, so he
hoped they would not ask permission of the board of regents." They had
several good audiences, however, while in the city, made many warm
friends and were handsomely entertained at the home of Gerrit Smith,
then in Congress.
They went to Alexandria and to Baltimore, where they had much better
houses, but everywhere were warned not to touch on the question of
slavery. Miss Anthony was terribly disgusted with the general
shiftlessness she saw about the hotels and boarding-houses, and was in
a state of pent-up indignation to see on every hand the evils of
slavery and not be allowed to lift her voice against them, but later
writes in her journal: "This noon I ate my dinner without once asking
myself, 'Are these human beings who minister to my wants slaves who can
be bought and sold?' Yes, even I am growing accustomed to slavery; so
much so that I cease to think of its accursed influence and calmly eat
from the hands of the bondman without being mindful that he is such. O,
Slavery, hateful thing that thou art thus to blunt the keen edge of
conscience!" The landlord failing to have her called in time for the
train, she complains:
There is no promptness, no order, no system down here. The
institution of slavery is as ruinous to the white man as to the
black.... Three northern servants, engineered by a Yankee
boarding-house keeper, would do more work than a dozen of these
slaves. The free blacks, who receive wages, do no more than the
others. Such is the effect of slavery upon labor. I can understand
why northern men make the most exacting overseers; they require an
amount of work from the slave equal to what they would from the
paid white laborer of the north.
From Baltimore Miss Anthony went to Philadelphia, where she found
herself among friends, and as wherever two or three were gathered
together in those days they always decided to hold a woman's rights
meeting, James Mott sallied forth to arrange for one in the Quaker
city, and she comments in her diary: "O, how good it seems to have some
one take the burden off my shoulders!" They visited, made excursions,
attended anti-slavery meetings and also spiritual seances, which were
then attracting great attention. Of the many discussions which arose as
to existence or non-existence after death, she writes: "The negative
had reason on their side; not an argument could one of us bring, except
an intuitive feeling that we should not cease to exist. If it be true
that we die like the flower, what a delusion has the race suffered,
what a vain dream is life!"
Miss Anthony went from here to New York, Brooklyn and Albany, and then
to her old home at Battenville, stopping with relatives and friends at
each place and speaking in the interest of the petitions. An example of
the courage required to go into a strange town and arrange for a
meeting may be given by an extract from one of many similar letters:
I speak in this village to-morrow night; had written a gentleman
but he was away, so I had all the work to do myself. I first called
on the Methodist minister to get his church. I stated my business
and he asked: "What are you driving at? Do you want to vote and be
President?" I answered that I did not personally aspire to the
presidency, but when the nation decided a woman was most competent
for that office, I would be willing she should fill it. "Well,"
said he, "if the Bible teaches anything, it is that women should be
quiet keepers at home and not go gadding round the country;" and
much more. In all my traveling, in short or long skirts, I have
never been treated so contemptuously, so insultingly, as by this
same wretch of a minister. He is void of the first spark of
reverence for humanity, therefore must be equally so for God. Just
now his pious church bell is ringing for prayer-meeting; I have
half a mind to go, to see if he warns his flock to beware of my
heresies. From him I went to the Wesleyan Methodist minister, and
what a contrast! He thought I wanted the church for to-night and
said: "We have our prayer-meeting, but will adjourn it for you."
This kindness made me so weak, the tears came in spite of me, and I
explained the rowdy treatment of the other minister. I have had a
varied experience ever since I left Easton. Verily, I am embarked
in an unpopular cause and must be content to row up stream.
In May she went to the great Anti-Slavery Anniversary in New York. In
August she attended the State Teachers' Convention at Oswego. Victor M.
Rice, of Buffalo, was president and accorded her every courtesy and
encouragement. The question of woman's right to speak had been settled
at the Rochester convention the previous year and never again was
disputed, so she turned her attention to the right of women to hold
office in the association and to fill the position of principal in the
public schools, which called forth vigorous discussion. She secured the
election of a woman as one of the vice-presidents. The Oswego press
declared: "Miss Anthony made the speech of the convention; in grace of
oratory and in spirit and style of thought it fully vindicated her
claim to woman's right to speak in public. Her arguments were good, her
speaking talents of the first order, and we hope that when men answer
such pleas as she made, they will do it in a manly and generous
spirit."
She saw at this time that a Temperance and also an Anti-Nebraska
Convention were to be held this month at Saratoga Springs, and at once
conceived the idea of calling a woman's rights meeting for the same
week. The time was short but she wrote urgent letters to Lucy Stone,
Antoinette Brown, Ernestine Rose and Lucretia Mott. At the appointed
time, every one failed to come. Each, supposing all the rest would be
there, had allowed some other duty to keep her away. The meeting had
been advertised and Miss Anthony was in despair. Judge William Hay, of
Saratoga, always her faithful friend, had made the arrangements and he
encouraged her to go ahead. In those days she had no faith in herself
as a speaker. She was accustomed to raise the money, marshal the
forces, then take the onerous position of secretary and let the orators
come in and carry off all the glory. She spoke only when there was
nobody else who could or would do so. In the present emergency she
could utilize her one written speech and she was fortunate enough to
find at the hotel Matilda Joslyn Gage and Sarah Pellet, a graduate of
Oberlin, who consented to help her out. St. Nicholas Hall was crowded
at both sessions. Twenty-five cents admission was charged, many tracts
were sold, she paid all expenses, gave each of her speakers $10 and had
a small balance left. She needed it, for while at Saratoga her purse
had been stolen with $15, all she possessed.
In 1854 the Missouri Compromise had been repealed, trouble in Kansas
had reached its height, the Know Nothing party was at its zenith, the
Whigs were demoralized and the Free Soilers were gaining the
ascendency. This anti-Nebraska meeting at Saratoga may be said to have
witnessed the birth of the Republican party. It possessed an additional
interest for Miss Anthony, who attended all its sessions, from the fact
that her brother, Daniel R., made on this occasion his first political
speech. He had just returned from Kansas and could describe from
personal observation the outrages perpetrated in that unhappy
territory. After leaving Saratoga, Miss Anthony spoke in many places on
the way to Rochester, among them Canajoharie, the scene of her last
teaching. Her experience here is described in a letter home:
The trustees of the Methodist church said I could have it for my
meeting, but the minister protested and put the key into his
saintly pocket. Brown Stafford said to him, "Keep that key, if you
dare! I guess Uncle Read and Uncle John Stafford and I have done
enough to build and sustain that church to warrant us in having our
say about it full as much as you, sir;" and he was compelled to
give up the key. Uncle Read went to aunt and said: "I have not
thought of going to an evening meeting in a long time, but I will
go tonight if it kills me." So they went, also the very best of the
folks from both sides of the river, and I seldom have spoken
better. Uncle seemed very much pleased, and when Aunt Mary and the
trustees urged me to take the school again, he said: "No, some one
ought to go around and set the people thinking about the laws and
it is Susan's work to do this."
Miss Anthony reached home, October 1, after seven months' constant
travel and hard work, and on the 17th went to the National Woman's
Rights Convention at Philadelphia and gave the report for New York. It
was through her determined efforts, overcoming the objection that she
was an atheist and declaring that every religion or none should have an
equal right on their platform, that Mrs. Rose was made president. She
met here for the first time Anna and Adeline Thomson, Sarah Pugh and
Mary Grew, and was the guest of James and Lucretia Mott, who
entertained twenty-four visitors in their hospitable house during all
the convention. This is the quaint invitation sent her by Mrs. Mott:
"It will give us pleasure to have thy company at 338 Arch street, where
we hope thou wilt make thy home. We shall of course be crowded, but we
expect thee and shall prepare accordingly. We think such as thyself,
devoted to good causes, should not have to seek a home." Wm. Lloyd
Garrison sat at her right hand at table and Miss Anthony at her left.
At the conclusion of each meal she had brought in to her a little cedar
tub filled with hot water and washed the silver, glass and fine china,
Miss Anthony drying them with the whitest of towels, while the
brilliant conversation at the table went on uninterrupted.
At the close of 1854, Miss Anthony decided to make a thorough canvass
of every county in New York in the interest of the petitions to the
Legislature, a thing no woman ever had dreamed of doing. Most of the
papers responded cordially to her request that they publish her
notices. Mr. Greeley wrote: "I have your letter and your programme,
friend Susan. I will publish the latter in all our editions, but return
your dollars. To charge you full price would be too hard and I prefer
not to take anything." As she had not a dollar of surplus left from her
year's work she went in debt, with her father as security, for the
hand-bills which she had printed to announce her meetings. These were
folded and addressed by her brother Merritt and a young relative, Mary
Luther, his future wife, and under the direction of her father were
sent two weeks in advance to sheriff and postmaster, accompanied by a
letter from Miss Anthony requesting that they be put up in a
conspicuous place. She then wrote Wendell Phillips asking if any funds
were available from the Philadelphia convention, and he replied "no,"
but sent a personal check for $50. With this money in her pocket, and
without the promise of another dollar, she started out alone, at the
beginning of winter, to canvass the great State of New York.
[Footnote 19: At the top of their voices they shouted such doggerel as
this:
"Heigh ho,
Thro' sleet and snow,
Mrs. Bloomer's all the go.
Twenty tailors take the stitches,
Plenty of women wear the breeches,
Heigh ho,
Carrion crow!"
And this:
"Gibbery, gibbery gab,
The women had a confab
And demanded the rights
To wear the tights.
Gibbery, gibbery gab."
*/]
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST COUNTY CANVASS----THE WATER CURE.
1855.
Miss Anthony left home on Christmas Day, 1854, and held her first
meeting at Mayville, Chautauqua Co., the afternoon and evening of the
26th. On her expense account is the item: "56 cents for four pounds of
candles to light the courthouse." The weather was cold and damp and the
audiences small, although people were present from eight towns,
attracted by curiosity to hear a woman. At the evening session a "York
shilling" admittance fee was charged. At Sherman, the next evening,
there was a large audience and the diary says: "I never saw more
enthusiasm on the subject; even the orthodox churches vied with each
other as to which should open its doors."
The plan adopted was to hold these meetings every other day, allowing
for the journey from place to place; but whenever distances would
permit, one was held on the intervening day. Occasionally Miss Anthony
had the assistance of another speaker, but more than half the meetings
were conducted with the little local help she could secure. In the
afternoon she would read half of her one and only speech and try to
form a society, but there was scarcely a woman to be found who would
accept the presidency. In the evening she would read the other half,
sell as many tracts as possible and secure names to the petitions. In
almost every instance she found the sheriff had put up her posters,
inserted notices in the papers, had them read in the churches and
prepared the courthouse for her. From only one of the sixty counties
did she receive an insulting reply to her letters, and this was from
Schoharie. The postmasters also pasted her hand-bills in a conspicuous
place, and they were a source of much amusement and comment. Most of
the towns never had been visited by a woman speaker, and wagon-loads of
people would come from miles around to see the novelty. The audiences
were cold but respectful and, as a rule, she was treated decently by
the county papers. Occasionally a smart editor would get off the joke
about her relationship to Mark Antony, which even then had become
threadbare, and invariably the articles would begin, "While we do not
agree with the theories which the lady advocates." Most of them,
however, paid high tribute to her ability as a speaker and to the
clearness, logic and force of her arguments. A quotation from the
Rondout Courier will illustrate:
At the appointed hour a lady, unattended and unheralded, quietly
glided in and ascended the platform. She was as easy and
self-possessed as a lady should always be when performing a plain
duty, even under 600 curious eyes. Her situation would have been
trying to a non-self-reliant woman, for there was no volunteer
co-operator. The custodian of the hall, with his stereotyped
stupidity, had dumped some tracts and papers on the platform. The
unfriended Miss Anthony gathered them up composedly, placed them on
a table disposedly, put her decorous shawl on one chair and a very
exemplary bonnet on another, sat a moment, smoothed her hair
discreetly, and then deliberately walked to the table and addressed
the audience. She wore a becoming black silk dress, gracefully
draped and made with a basque waist. She appears to be somewhere
about the confines of the fourth luster in age, of pleasing rather
than pretty features, decidedly expressive countenance, rich brown
hair very effectively and not at all elaborately arranged, neither
too tall nor too short, too plump nor too thin--in brief one of
those juste milieu persons, the perfection of common sense
physically exhibited. Miss Anthony's oratory is in keeping with all
her belongings, her voice well modulated and musical, her
enunciation distinct, her style earnest and impressive, her
language pure and unexaggerated.
Judging from other friendly notices this must be an accurate
description of Miss Anthony at the age of thirty-five. The experiment
of a woman on the platform was too new, however, and the doctrines she
advocated too unpopular for it to be possible that she should receive
fair treatment generally, and there were few papers which described her
in as unprejudiced a manner as the one quoted. A letter from her father
during this trip said: "Would it not be wise to preserve the many and
amusing observations by the different papers, that years hence, in your
more solitary moments, you and maybe your children can look over the
views of both the friends and opponents of the cause?" This was the
beginning of the scrap books carefully kept up for nearly half a
century.
The journal for that year gives a detailed account of the hardships of
this winter, one of the coldest and snowiest on record. Many towns were
off the railroad and could be reached only by sleigh. After a long ride
she would be put for the night into a room without a fire, and in the
morning would have to break the ice in the pitcher to take that sponge
bath from head to foot which she never omitted. All that she hoped from
a financial standpoint was to pay the expenses of the trip, and had she
desired fame or honor, she would not have sought it in these remote
villages. The diary relates:
At Olean, not a church or schoolhouse could be obtained for the
lecture and it would have had to be abandoned had not the landlord,
Mr. Comstock, given the use of his dining-room....
At Angelica, nine towns represented; crowded house, courtroom
carpeted with sawdust. A young Methodist minister gave his name for
the petition, but one of his wealthy parishioners told him he
should leave the church unless it was withdrawn....
At Corning, none of the ministers would give the notice of our
meeting, which so incensed some of the men that they went to the
printing office, struck off handbills and had boys standing at the
door of the churches as the people passed out. Who was responsible
for the Sabbath breaking?...
At Elmira, took tea at Mrs. Holbrook's with Rev. Thomas K. Beecher.
His theology, as set forth that evening, is a dark and hopeless
one. He sees no hope for the progress of the race, does not believe
that education even will improve the species. I find great apathy
wherever the clergy are opposed to the advancement of women.
In February Miss Anthony suspended her canvass long enough to go to
Albany to the State convention and present the petitions. In response
to her request to be present Horace Greeley wrote: "You know already
that I am thoroughly committed to the principle that woman shall decide
for herself whether she shall have a voice and vote in legislation or
shall continue to be represented and legislated for exclusively by man.
My own judgment is that woman's presence in the arena of politics would
be useful and beneficent but I do not assume to judge for her. She must
consider, determine and act for herself. Moreover, when she shall in
earnest have resolved that her own welfare and that of the race will be
promoted by her claiming a voice in the direction of civil government,
as I think she ultimately will do, then the day of her emancipation
will be very near. That day, I will hope yet to see."
Her mission accomplished, Miss Anthony plunged again into the ice and
snow of northern New York. At Albany a wealthy and cultured Quaker
gentleman had been an attentive and interested listener, and when she
took the stage a few days later at Lake George, she found not only that
he was to be her fellow-passenger, but that he had a thick plank
heated, which he asked permission to place under her feet. Whenever the
stage stopped he had it re-heated, and in many ways added to the
comfort of her journey. At the close of the next meeting to her
surprise she found his fine sleigh waiting filled with robes and drawn
by two spirited gray horses, and he himself drove her to his own
beautiful home presided over by a sister, where she spent Sunday. In
this same luxurious conveyance she was taken to several towns and,
during one of these trips, was urged in the most earnest manner to give
up the hard life she was leading and accept the ease and protection he
could offer. But her heart made no response to this appeal while it did
urge her strongly to continue in her chosen work.
All through the Schroon Lake country the snow was over the fences and
the weather bitterly cold. At Plattsburg, Miss Anthony was a guest at
Judge Watson's. Before leaving Rochester she had had a pair of high
boots made to protect her from the deep snows, which were so much
heavier than she was accustomed to that they almost ruined her feet.
She was at that time an ardent convert to the "water cure" theories
and, after suffering tortures from one foot especially, she came home
from the afternoon meeting, put it under the "penstock" in the kitchen
and let the cold water run over it till it was perfectly numb, then
Crapped it up in flannels. That evening it did not hurt her a particle,
and concluding that what was good for one foot must be good for two,
she put both under the "penstock" till they were almost congealed. In
the morning she scarcely could get out of bed, all the pain having
settled in her back, but in spite of protests from the family she
resumed her journey. All the way to Malone, she had to hold fast to the
seat in front of her to relieve as much as possible the motion of the
cars. She managed to conduct her afternoon and evening meetings, and
then went on to Ogdensburg, where she stopped with a cousin. The next
morning she hardly could move and the women of the family had to help
her make her toilet. Nothing they could say would persuade her to
remain; she was advertised to speak at Canton and proposed to do it if
she were alive, so she was carried out, put into a sleigh and driven
seventeen miles actually doubled up with her head on her knees. She
finished the two meetings and then resolved on heroic measures. Arising
at 4 A.M. she rode in a stage to within ten miles of Watertown, took
the cars to that city and went to a hotel. Here she ordered the
chambermaid to bring several buckets of ice water into her room and,
sitting down in a tub, she had them poured on her back, then wrapping
up in hot blankets went to bed. The next morning she was apparently
well and held her meetings.
At Auburn, Mrs. Stanton came over from Seneca Falls to assist and they
were entertained by Martha C. Wright. As a usual thing Miss Anthony
stopped at a hotel but after the first session some one in her audience
would be so pleased with her that she was sure to be invited into a
comfortable home for the rest of her stay. One cold spring day she was
to speak at Riverhead, L.I. Reaching the courthouse, at 1 o'clock, she
found it swept and garnished and a good fire but not a person in sight
except the janitor; so she sat down and waited and finally one man
after another dropped in, until there were perhaps a dozen. Not at all
discouraged, she began her speech. Presently the door opened a little
and she saw a woman's bonnet peep in but it was quickly withdrawn. This
was repeated a number of times but not one ventured in. Whether each
woman saw her own husband and was afraid to enter, or whether she did
not dare face the other women's husbands, there was not one in the
audience. The men heard her through, bought her tracts and signed the
petition. Having decided there was nothing dangerous about her, they
came back in the evening, bringing their wives and neighbors.
She closed her campaign May 1, having made a thorough canvass of
fifty-four counties, during which she sold 20,000 pamphlets. The total
receipts for the four months were $2,367, and the expenses were $2,291,
leaving a balance of $76. Out of this she sent Mr. Phillips the $50 he
had advanced, but he returned it saying he thought she had earned it.
The diary relates that it was the common practice in those days for the
husband, upon coming to an eating station, to go in and get a hot
dinner, while the wife sat in the car and ate a cold lunch. It tells of
an old farmer who came with his wife to her lecture and went into the
dining-room for the best meal the tavern afforded, while the wife sat
in the parlor and nibbled a little food she had brought with her. Miss
Anthony and her companions were the only women who dared go out when
the train stopped, to walk up and down for air and exercise, and they
were considered very bold for so doing.
In 1855, to Miss Anthony's great regret, Lucy Stone and Antoinette
Brown were married. Both were very active in the reforms of the day,
and there was such a dearth of effective workers she felt that they
could ill be spared. Their semi-apologetic letters and her
half-sorrowful, half-indignant remonstrances are both amusing and
pathetic. They assure her that marriage will make no difference with
their work, that it will only give them more power and earnestness. She
knew from observation that the married woman who attempts to do public
work must neglect either it or home duties, and that the advent of
children necessarily must compel the mother to withdraw practically
from outside occupation. She was not opposed to marriage per se, but
she felt that such women as Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown might make
a sacrifice and consecrate themselves to the great needs of the world
which were demanding the services of the ablest women.
In May Miss Anthony went as usual to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary. In
regard to this her father wrote: "Were I in your place I should like to
attend these anniversaries. The women are soon to have their rights and
should there be any slavery left in the world after they are liberated,
it should be your business to help clear it out." Very few of those who
were actively engaged in the effort to secure equal rights for women
had the slightest conception of the half century and more of long and
steady work before them. To their minds the demand seemed so evident,
so just and so forcible, that prejudice and opposition must yield in a
short time and the foundation principles of the government be
established in fact as well as in theory.
From New York she went to her birthplace, Adams, Mass., and spoke in
the Baptist church. Just as she began, to her amazement, her Quaker
grandfather eighty-five years old came up the aisle and sat down on the
pulpit steps. While he had been very anxious that she should speak and
that her lecture should be well advertised she had not expected him to
be present, as he was not in the habit of entering an orthodox church.
She stopped at once, gave him her hand and assisted him to a seat in
the pulpit, where he listened with deep interest. When she finished he
said: "Well, Susan, that is a smart talk thee has given us tonight."
After Miss Anthony returned home, outraged nature asserted itself and
at every moment the pain in her back was excruciating. She went to a
doctor for the first time in her life and was given a fly-blister and
some drugs to put in whiskey. The last two she threw away but applied
the blister, which only increased her misery. She suffered terribly all
summer but was busy every moment writing a new speech and sending out
scores of letters for a second woman's rights convention which had been
called to meet at Saratoga in August. Most of the replies were
favorable. T.W. Higginson wrote: "With great pleasure will I come to
Saratoga Springs on August 15 and 16. It is a capital idea to have a
convention there, coax in some curious fashionables and perhaps make
those who come to scoff, remain to pray." Lucretia Mott sent a letter
full of good cheer. From Mrs. Stanton, overwhelmed with the cares of
many little children, came this pathetic message: "I can not go. I have
so many drawbacks to all my efforts for women that every step is one of
warfare, but there is a good time coming and I am strong and happy in
hope. I long to see you, dear Susan, and hear of your wanderings."
Paulina Wright Davis said, in discussing the convention; "I get almost
discouraged with women. They will work for men, but a woman must ride
in triumph over everything before they will give her a word of aid or
cheer; they are ready enough to take advantage of every step gained,
but not ready to help further steps. When will they be truer and
nobler? Not in our day, but we must work on for future generations."
Lucy Stone, enjoying her honeymoon at the Blackwell home near
Cincinnati, wrote in a playful mood: "When, after reading your letter,
I asked my husband if I might go to Saratoga, only think of it! He did
not give me permission, but told me to ask Lucy Stone. I can't get him
to govern me at all.... The Washington Union, noticing our marriage,
said: 'We understand that Mr. Blackwell, who last fall assaulted a
southern lady and stole her slave, has lately married Miss Lucy Stone.
Justice, though sometimes tardy, never fails to overtake her victim.'
They evidently think him well punished. With the old love and good will
I am now and ever,
LUCY STONE (only)."
[Illustration: H Anthony
AT THE AGE OF 95, IN HIS OWN ROOM AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD.]
On the way to Saratoga Miss Anthony stopped at Utica for the State
Teachers' Convention and was appointed to read a paper at the next
annual meeting on "Educating the Sexes Together." This action showed
considerable advance in sentiment during the two years since this same
body at Rochester debated for half an hour whether a woman should be
allowed to speak to a motion. She called the Woman's Rights Convention
to order in Saratoga, August 15, 1855, and Martha C. Wright was made
president. The brilliant array of speakers addressed cultured audiences
gathered from all parts of the country at this fashionable resort. The
newspapers were very complimentary; the Whig, however, declared, "The
business of the convention was to advocate woman's right to do wrong."
It was here that Mary L. Booth, afterwards for many years editor of
Harper's Bazar, made her first public appearance, acting as secretary.
She decided to go for a while to the Worcester Hydropathic Institute
conducted by her cousin, Dr. Seth Rogers, and she found here complete
change and comparative rest, although occupying a great deal of her
time in sending out tracts and petitions. Her account-books show the
purchase of 600 one-cent stamps, each of which meant the addressing of
an envelope with her own hand, and her letters to her father are full
of directions for printing circulars, etc. She was, however, enabled to
take some recreation, a thing almost unknown in her busy life. On
September 18 she attended the Massachusetts Woman's Rights Convention,
and wrote home:
I went into Boston with Lucy Stone and stopped at Francis
Jackson's, where we found Antoinette Brown and Ellen Blackwell, a
pleasant company in that most hospitable home. As this was my first
visit to Boston, Mr. Jackson took us to see the sights; and then we
dined with his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, returning in the afternoon.
In the evening, we attended a reception at Garrison's, where we met
several of the literati, and were most heartily welcomed by Mrs.
Garrison, a noble, self-sacrificing woman, loving and loved,
surrounded with healthy, happy children in that model home. Mr.
Garrison was omnipresent, now talking with and introducing guests,
now soothing some child to sleep, and now, with his wife, looking
after the refreshments. There we met Caroline H. Dall, Elizabeth
Peabody, Mrs. McCready, the Shakespearian reader, Caroline M.
Severance, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Charles F. Hovey, Wendell Phillips,
Sarah Pugh and others. Having worshipped these distinguished people
afar off, it was a great satisfaction to meet them face to face.
Saturday morning, with Mr. and Mrs. Garrison and Sarah Pugh, I
visited Mount Auburn. What a magnificent resting-place! We could
not find Margaret Fuller's monument, which I regretted. I spent
Sunday with Charles Lenox Remond at Salem, and we drove to Lynn
with his matchless steeds to hear Theodore Parker preach a sermon
which filled our souls. We discussed its excellence at James
Buffum's where we all dined. Monday Mr. Garrison escorted me to
Charlestown; we stood on the very spot where Warren fell and
mounted the interminable staircase to the top of Bunker Hill
Monument. Then we called on Theodore Parker; found him up three
nights of stairs in his library which covers that whole floor of
his house; the room is lined with books to the very top--16,000
volumes--and there at a large table in the center of the apartment
sat the great man himself. 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, 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.
Returning to Worcester, I attended the Anti-Slavery Bazaar. I
suppose there were many beautiful things exhibited, but I was so
absorbed in the conversation of Mr. Higginson, Samuel May, Jr.,
Sarah Earle, cousin Seth Rogers and Stephen and Abby Foster, that I
really forgot to take a survey of the tables. The next day Charles
F. Hovey drove with me out to the home of the Fosters where we had
a pleasant call.[20]
[Autograph: Theodore Parker]
Miss Anthony visited a baby show but she considered it "a sad
exhibition, unless it may be the crude and rude beginning of arousing
an interest in the laws which govern the production of strong, healthy,
beautiful children." She heard Mr. Higginson preach every Sunday, and
of one sermon on the "Secret Springs of True Greatness" she writes
home:
The minister read from the Book of Esdras in the Apocrypha. It is
astonishing that such a beautiful and forcible exemplification of
the governing principle of life should have been cast aside as
doubtful by those who presumed to sit in judgment upon the revealed
will of the Almighty. That they did fail to perceive in this the
divine stamp, proves all the more conclusively to me that we, who
have the experience of all past generations to enlighten our
understanding and deepen our convictions, are infinitely more
competent to discern between the good and evil in that wonderful
book than were any king-appointed councils of olden times.
During Mr. Higginson's absence his place was filled by Rev. David A.
Wasson, who was temporarily a resident of the "water cure." His sermons
and his daily companionship were a revelation to Miss Anthony of a
higher intellectual and spiritual life than she had known before, and
she records in her diary: "It is plain to me now that it is not sitting
under preaching that I dislike, but the fact that most of it is not of
a stamp that my soul can respond to." While in Worcester she went to
her first Republican meeting and heard John P. Hale. Her cousin
escorted her to a seat on the platform and Mr. Hale gave her a cordial
welcome. She was the only woman present, although several peeped in at
the door but had not the courage to enter. She also heard Henry Wilson,
Charles Sumner and Anson Burlingame, and writes: "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 but noble band whose motto is 'No Union with Slaveholders.'"
She was at this time becoming deeply interested in politics but had not
dreamed that she herself ever would enter the ranks of political
speakers. In October she complains of her restlessness and her anxiety
to go home, but she is not strong and knows it would be impossible to
keep up the treatment there, so she says: "Because of this, and because
of my great desire to be able to do what now seems my life work, I have
decided to stay awhile longer." But in this same letter she adds: "If
Merritt is sick and needs me I will go to him at once. My waking and
sleeping thoughts are with him." This young brother had insisted upon
going West to seek his fortune and was taken ill in Iowa. At one time
when he asked for some money he had saved, and his father, thinking he
was too young to be trusted, did not let him have it, Miss Anthony
wrote: "It is too bad to treat him like a child. Let him make a blunder
even; it will do much more to develop him than the judgment of father,
mother and all the brothers and sisters. He ought to have the
privilege, since it is clearly his right, to invest his money exactly
as he pleases and I hope he will yet be trusted at least with his own
funds."
To a woman who is publishing a paper and complains that her efforts are
neither helped nor appreciated, she replies: "Every individual woman
who launches into a work hitherto monopolized by men, must stand or
fall in her own strength or weakness. Whatever we manufacture we must
study to make it for the interest of the community to purchase. If we
fail in this, we must improve the work.... Each of us individually has
her own duties to perform and each of us alone must work out her life
problem."
In October the National Woman's Rights Convention was held in
Cincinnati but she was unable to attend. It was the only one she missed
from 1852 until the breaking out of the war, when they were abandoned
for a number of years, and she felt so distressed that she wrote to
Rochester and persuaded her sister Mary to get leave of absence from
school and go in her place. We know she has a very pretty bonnet this
fall, for she says: "It is trimmed with dark green ribbon, striped with
black and white, and for face trimming, lace and cherry and green
flowers with the least speck of blue." She grieves because her married
sisters never have time to write her, and says:
But so it is; every wife and mother must devote herself wholly to
home duties, washing and cleaning, baking and mending--these are
the must be's; the culture of the soul, the enlargement of the
faculties, the thought of anything or anybody beyond the home and
family are the may be's. When society is rightly organized, the
wife and mother will have time, wish and will to grow
intellectually, and will know that the limits of her sphere, the
extent of her duties, are prescribed only by the measure of her
ability.
Her daily treatment at the "water cure" is thus described: "First thing
in the morning, dripping sheet; pack at 10 o'clock for forty-five
minutes, come out of that and take a shower, followed by a sitz bath,
with a pail of water at 75° poured over the shoulders, after which dry
sheet and then, brisk exercise. At 4 P.M. the programme repeated, and
then again at 9 P.M. My day is so cut up with four baths, four
dressings and undressings, four exercisings, one drive and three
eatings, that I do not have time to put two thoughts together." Miss
Anthony recovered her health, either as a result of the treatment or of
the rest and the long rides which she took daily with her cousin as he
made his round of visits. While he was indoors she sat in the chaise
enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and reading some interesting book.
The journal shows that during the fall she read Sartor Resartus,
Consuelo, bits from Gerald Massey, Villette, Gaskell's Life of
Charlotte Bronte, Corinne, and a number of other works. Dr. Rogers, the
intimate friend of Thoreau and Emerson, was a cultured gentleman,
liberal in his views, strong in his opinions, yet tender, sympathetic
and companionable. Many of his beautiful letters to Miss Anthony have
been preserved. In speaking of political cowardice and corruption, he
says: "Were it not for the thunder and lightning of the Garrisonians to
purify the moral atmosphere, we would all sink into perdition
together." His love of liberty is thus expressed:
I believe in the absolute freedom of every human being so long as
the rights of others are left undisturbed. Conformity too often
cuts down our stature and makes us Lilliputians, no longer units
but unities. Help me to stand alone and I will help you to right
the universe. Better, a thousand times better, that societies,
friendships even, never were formed, that we all were Robinson
Crusoes, than that the terrible tragedy of soul-annihilation
through conformity be so conspicuous in the drama of human life.
How many wives do you see who are not acting this tragedy? How many
husbands who do not applaud? Hence degeneracy after marriage, more
directly of the wife than the husband, but too often of both.
As soon as Miss Anthony reached home, the last of November, she began
preparing for another winter campaign in the interest of the petitions,
and also for a course of lectures to be given in Rochester by the
prominent men of the day. Lucy Stone wrote her at this time: "Your
letter full of plans reaches me here. I wish I lived near enough to
catch some of your magnetism. For the first time in my life I feel, day
after day, completely discouraged. When my Harry sent your letter to me
he said, 'Susan wants you to write a tract, and I say, Amen.' When I go
home I will see whether I have any faith in nay power to do it....
Susan, don't you lecture this winter on pain of my everlasting
displeasure. I am going to retire from the field; and if you go to work
too soon and kill yourself, the two wheelhorses will be gone and then
the chariot will stop."
Arguments were of no avail, however, when the field was waiting and the
workers few, and while Miss Anthony was ever ready to excuse others,
she never spared herself. She decided before starting to take out a
policy in the New York Life Insurance Company. The medical certificate
given on December 18, 1855, by Dr. Edward M. Moore, the leading surgeon
of western New York, read as follows: "Height, 5 ft. 5 in.; figure,
full; chest measure 38 in.; weight, 156 lbs.; complexion, fair; habits,
healthy and active; nervous affections, none; character of respiration,
clear, resonant, murmur perfect; heart, normal in rhythm and valvular
sound; pulse 66 per minute; disease, none. The life is a very good
one." And so it has proved to be, as she has paid her premiums for over
forty years.[21]
Just before she was ready to start on her long lecture tour in the
interest of educational, civil and political rights for women, she
received a letter, which was an entire surprise and added a new feature
to the work to which she was devoting her time and energy.
[Footnote 20: At this Boston convention Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a
flowery description of the changed condition when women should vote and
the polls would be in a beautiful hall decorated with paintings,
statuary, etc. The women were very much worried, fearing that the
politicians would be frightened at the idea of so much respectability.]
[Footnote 21: The president of the company, John A. McCall, in a
personal letter, written December 21, 1897, just forty-two years
afterwards, says: "That you may be spared for many, many years to your
numerous friends and admirers is the wish of this company and its
officials."]
CHAPTER IX.
ADVANCE ALONG ALL LINES.
1856.
The letter which Miss Anthony received with so much pleased surprise
was from Samuel May, Jr., cousin of Rev. S.J. May. He was secretary of
the American Anti-Slavery Society, which had its headquarters in
Boston; Wm. Lloyd Garrison was its president, and among its officers
were Wendell Phillips, Francis Jackson, Charles Hovey, Stephen and Abby
Kelly Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Maria Weston Chapman, the most
distinguished Abolitionists of the day. This letter read:
The executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society desire
to engage you as an agent, for such time between now and the first
of May next as you may be able to give. Will you let us know what
your engagements are, and, if you can enter into this agency, when
you will be ready to commence? The committee passed no vote as to
compensation. We would like to be informed what would be
acceptable. It is quite probable that your field of service at
first would be western and central New York. An early answer will
much oblige.
A previous chapter has told how Miss Anthony longed to take part in
anti-slavery work, and behold here was the coveted opportunity! And
then to have such a recognition of her ability by this body of men and
women, who represented the brains and conscience of this period of
reforms, was the highest compliment she could receive. The salary, even
though small, would relieve her from the pressing anxiety of making
each day's work pay its own expenses, and while she should be laboring
in a reform in which she was greatly interested, she could at the same
time even more effectually advance the cause which lay nearest to her
heart. But the woman's rights meetings already announced by posters,
what should be done in regard to them? She finally decided to hold them
during January with Frances D. Gage, initiate her and then leave her to
fill the remainder of the winter's engagements. So she accepted Mr.
May's offer and at his request planned a route and arranged meetings
for a number of speakers. Stephen S. Foster wrote, "I shall give myself
entirely into your power, only stipulating for the liberty of speech."
[Autograph: Stephen S. Foster]
Miss Anthony started with Mrs. Gage January 4, 1856. As many of their
meetings were off the railroad, there was a hard siege ahead of them.
The diary says: "January 8: Terribly cold and windy; only a dozen
people in the hall; had a social chat with them and returned to our
hotel. Lost more here at Dansville than we gained at Mount Morris. So
goes the world.... January 9: Mercury 12° below zero but we took a
sleigh for Nunda. Trains all blocked by snow and no mail for several
days, yet we had a full house and good meeting." Extracts from one or
two letters written home will give some idea of this perilous journey:
HALL'S CORNERS, January 11, 8-1/2 o'clock.
Just emerged from a long line of snowdrifts and stepped at this
little country tavern, supped and am now roasting over a hot stove.
Oh, oh, what an experience! No trains running and we have had a
thirty-six mile ride in a sleigh. Once we seemed lost in a drift
full fifteen feet deep. The driver went on ahead to a house, and
there we sat shivering. When he returned we found he had gone over
a fence into a field, so we had to dismount and plough through the
snow after the sleigh; then we reseated ourselves, but oh, the poor
horses!...
WENDTE'S STATION, January 14, 12-1/2 o'clock P. M.
Well, well, good folks at home, these surely are the times that try
women's souls. After writing you last, the snows fell and the winds
blew and the cars failed to go and come at their appointed hours.
We could have reached Warsaw if the omnibus had had the energy to
come for us. The train, however, got no farther than Warsaw, where
it stuck in a snowdrift eleven feet deep and a hundred long, but we
might have kept that engagement at least. Friday morning we went to
the station; no trains and no hope of any, but a man said he could
get us to Attica in time for an evening meeting, so we agreed to
pay him $5. He had a noble pair of greys and we floundered through
the deepest snowbanks I ever saw, but at 7 o'clock were still
fourteen miles from Attica.
We stopped at a little tavern where the landlady was not yet twenty
and had a baby fifteen months old. Her supper dishes were not
washed and her baby was crying, but she was equal to the occasion.
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
bedroom to sleep in, and on a row of pegs hung the loveliest
embroidered petticoats and baby clothes, all the work of that young
woman's fingers, while on a rack was her ironing perfectly done,
wrought undersleeves, baby dresses, embroidered underwear, etc. She
prepared a 6 o'clock breakfast for us, fried pork, mashed potatoes,
mince pie, and for me, at my especial request, a plate of delicious
baked sweet apples and a pitcher of rich milk. Now for the moral of
this story: 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 hand
to lighten that woman's burdens, but had sat and talked with the
men in the bar room, not even caring for the baby, 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.
Here where I am writing is a similar case. The baby is very sick
with the whooping cough; the wife has dinner to get for all the
boarders, and no help; husband standing around with his hands in
his pockets. She begs him to hold the baby for just ten minutes,
but before the time is up he hands it back to her, saying, "Here,
take this child, I'm tired." Yet when we left he was on hand to
receive the money and we had to give it to him. We paid a man a
dollar to take us to the station, and saw the train pull out while
we were stuck in a snowdrift ten feet deep, with a dozen men trying
to shovel a path for us; so we had to come back. In spite of this
terrible weather, people drive eight and ten miles to our meetings.
On January 20, Mrs. Gage was called home by illness in her family,
leaving Miss Anthony to finish the campaign alone. This destroyed all
plans for her work with the anti-slavery committee, as no inducement
could have been offered which would cause her to abandon these woman's
rights meetings after having advertised them. She requested Mr. May to
release her and he did so, stipulating however that she should inform
him as soon as she was at liberty. She begged various speakers to
assist her but received no favorable replies. Lucy Stone wrote, "I wish
you had a good husband; it is a great blessing." Her intense desire for
help may be judged by a letter to Martha C. Wright in regard to a
meeting which had been announced for Auburn: "Mrs. Gage has gone; now,
dear Mrs. Wright, won't you give an address? Be brave and make this
beginning. You can speak so much better, so much more wisely, so much
more everything than I can; do rejoice my heart by consenting. I wish I
could see you tonight; I'm sure I could prevail upon you. Yours
beseechingly." She got no aid from any quarter, and went on alone
through the dreary winter. To those who were to advertise her meetings
she said: "I should like a particular effort made to call out the
teachers, seamstresses and wage-earning women generally. It is for them
rather than for the wives and daughters of the rich that I labor."
In February she returned to Rochester to look after Mr. Garrison's
lecture and entertained him at her home. As it had been decided not to
hold a convention at Albany she took this opportunity to go there and
present the petitions to the Legislature. They were referred to the
Senate Judiciary Committee, Samuel G. Foote, chairman. Mr. Foote was a
lawyer, prominent in society, the father of daughters, and yet reported
as follows on the petition asking that a woman might control her wages
and have the custody of her children:
The committee is composed of married and single gentlemen. The
bachelors, with becoming diffidence, have left the subject pretty
much to the married gentlemen. They have considered it with the aid
of the light they have before them and the experience married life
has given them. Thus aided, they are enabled to state that the
ladies always have the best place and choicest titbit at the table.
They have the best seat in the cars, carriages and sleighs; the
warmest place in winter and 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 (the bachelors being silent for the reason mentioned, and
also probably for the further reason that they are still suitors
for the favors of the gentler sex) 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.
On the whole, the committee have concluded to recommend no measure,
except that they have observed several instances in which husband
and wife have both signed the same petition. In such case, they
would recommend the parties to apply for a law authorizing them to
change dresses, so that the husband may wear petticoats, and the
wife breeches, and thus indicate to their neighbors and the public
the true relation in which they stand to each other.
The Albany Register said "this report was received with roars of
laughter." Judge Hay, Lydia Mott and a number of Miss Anthony's friends
wrote her not to be discouraged at this insult, but it may be imagined
that she took up the work again with a heart filled with resentment and
indignation. She had many peculiar experiences during her travels and
had to listen to many a chapter of family history which was far from
harmonious. On one occasion a friend was pouring into her ears an
account of the utter uncongeniality between herself and husband,
largely because he was wholly unappreciative of her higher thoughts and
feelings. As an example she related that when they visited Niagara
Falls and her soul was soaring into the seventh heaven of glory,
majesty and sublimity, he exclaimed, "What a magnificent water power
this would be, if utilized;" and that he did it on purpose to shock her
sensibilities. Miss Anthony finally said: "Now, my dear, the trouble is
you fail to recognize that your husband is so constituted that he sees
the practical while you feel only the sentimental. He does not jar your
feelings any more by his matter-of-fact comments than you jar his by
flying off into the realms of poetry on every slight provocation." She
then recalled a number of similar instances which the wife had detailed
as illustrating the husband's cruelty, impressing upon her that they
were born with different temperaments and neither had any right to
condemn the other. At the end of this conversation, the woman, weeping,
put her arms around Miss Anthony and said: "You have taught me to
understand my husband better and love and respect him more than I had
learned to do in all my long years of living with him."
In March Garrison wrote, thanking her and her family for their generous
hospitality, concluding, "Nowhere do I visit with more real
satisfaction." He told her that he had had to give up his lecture
engagements on account of the heavy snows, but she had gone straight
through with hers. She now closed her series of meetings and went home
to arrange for Theodore Parker's lecture. Antoinette Brown Blackwell
wrote her: "I hear a certain bachelor making a number of inquiries
about Susan B. Anthony. This means that we shall look for another
wedding in our sisternity before the year ends. Get a good husband,
that's all, dear."
On Miss Anthony's return from the May anti-slavery meeting in New York,
she received a reminder from the president of the State Teachers'
Association that she would be expected to read her paper on
"Co-Education" before that body in August. This recollection had been
keeping her awake nights for some time. It had been an easy thing to
present a resolution or make a five-minute speech, but it was quite
another to write an hour's lecture to be delivered before a most
critical audience. As was always her custom in such a dilemma, she
turned to Mrs. Stanton, who responded:
Your servant is not dead but liveth. Imagine me, day in and day
out, watching, bathing, dressing, nursing and promenading the
precious contents of a little crib in the corner of my room. I pace
up and down these two chambers of mine like a caged lioness,
longing to bring nursing and housekeeping cares to a close. 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. Let Antoinette and Lucy
rest in peace and quietness thinking great thoughts. It is not well
to be in the excitement of public life all the time, so do not keep
stirring them up or mourning over their repose. You, too, must
rest, Susan; let the world alone awhile. We can not bring about a
moral revolution in a day or a year. Now that I have two daughters,
I feel fresh strength to work for women. It is not in vain that in
myself I feel all the wearisome care to which woman even in her
best estate is subject.
Together they ground out the address, taking turns at writing and baby
tending, and then she went home. It seemed to her that in order to
prove the absolute equality of woman with man she ought to present this
as an oration instead of reading it as an essay; so she labored many
weary hours to commit it to memory, pacing from one end of the house to
the other, and when these confines became too small rushing out into
the orchard, but all in vain. It was utterly impossible for her, then
or ever, to memorize the exact words of anything.
The lecture, occupying an entire evening, was given before a large
audience in Rand's Hall, Troy, and cordially received. At its close Mr.
L. Hazeltine of New York, president of the association, took Miss
Anthony by the hand, saying: "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." Superintendent
Randall, of the city schools of New York, over-hearing the
conversation, said: "Father Hazeltine, I fully agree with the first
part of your remark but dissent entirely from the latter. I should be
proud if I had a wife or daughter capable of either writing or reading
that paper as Miss Anthony has done." She was invited by the
Massachusetts teachers who were present to come to their State
convention at Springfield and give the address, which she did. It was
afterwards delivered at a number of teachers' institutes. Mary L. Booth
had written her:
I am glad that you will represent us at the Troy gathering. You
will bear with you the gratitude of very many teachers whose hearts
are swelling with repressed indignation at the injustice which you
expose, but who have not grown strong enough yet to give open
utterance to words which would jeopardize the positions on which
they depend for support. There is not a female principal in
Brooklyn or New York whose salary exceeds the half of that of the
male principals. Each female principal and assistant is required to
attend the normal school under penalty of loss of position, while
male teachers are excused from such attendance. There are plenty of
indignation meetings among us.
In August Miss Anthony planned a meeting at Saratoga and, as on a
previous occasion, every speaker failed her, nor could she find among
the visitors one who could help her out. As she was not in the habit of
giving up what she undertook, she went through the meeting alone,
making the speeches herself. Her faithful friend Judge Hay[22] came to
her rescue with a donation of $20 and she was just able to pay
expenses.
The public was not in a mood for woman's conventions. The presidential
campaign was at its height, with three tickets in the field, and the
troubles in Kansas were approaching a crisis. In September came the
news of the raid at Osawatomie and that thirty out of the fifty
settlers had been killed by the "border ruffians." This brought
especial gloom to the Anthony homestead, as the dispatches also stated
that the night before the encounter, John Brown had slept in the cabin
of the young son Merritt, and for weeks they were unable to learn
whether he were among the thirty who died or the twenty who lived. At
last the welcome letters came which related how the coffee was just
ready to be put on the table in the cabin when the sound of firing was
heard, and how without waiting to drink it, John Brown and his little
band rushed to the conflict. The old hero gave strict orders to Merritt
not to leave the house, as he had been very ill, but as soon as they
were out of sight he seized his gun, staggered down to the bank of the
Marais du Cygne and was soon in the thick of the fight. When it was
over he crawled on his hands and knees back to his cabin, where he lay
ill for weeks, entirely alone and uncared for. A letter from Miss
Anthony to this brother shows the tender, domestic side of her nature,
which the public is seldom permitted to see:
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
AT THE AGE OF 36. FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE.]
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 can not 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....
Wednesday night, Mr. Mowry, who was in the battle, arrived in town.
Like wild fire the news flew. D.R. was in pursuit of him when
father reached his office. He thought you were not hurt. Mother
said that night, "I can go to sleep now there is a hope that
Merritt still lives;" but father said: "I suppose I shall sleep
when nature is tired out, but the hope that my son has survived
brings little solace to my soul while the cause of all this
terrible wrong remains untouched."...
Your fish pole never caught so luscious a basketful as it has this
afternoon. I made a march through the peach orchard with pole in
hand to fish down the soft Early Crawfords that had escaped even
the keen eyes of father and mother when they made their last
detour. As the pole reached to the top-most bough and down dropped
the big, fat, golden, red-cheeked Crawfords, thought went away to
the owner of the rod, how he in days gone by planted these little
trees, pruned them and nursed them and now we were enjoying the
fruits of his labor, while he, the dear boy, was away in the
prairie wilds of Kansas. I thought of many things as I walked
between the rows to spy out every ambushed, not enemy but friend of
the palate. With the haul made I filled the china fruit dish and
then hallooed for Mary L. and Ann Eliza to see what I had found,
and down they came for a feast. I shall send Aaron and Guelma the
nicest ones and how I wish my dearest brother could have some to
cool his fevered throat.
Evening.--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.
Later.--Your letter is in to-day's Democrat, and the Evening
Advertiser says there is "another letter from our dear brother in
this morning's Shrieker for Freedom." The tirade is headed
"Bleeding Kansas." The Advertiser, Union and American all ridicule
the reports from Kansas, and even say your letters are gotten up in
the Democrat office for political effect. I tell you, Merritt, we
have "border ruffians" here at home--a little more refined in their
way of outraging and torturing the lovers of freedom, but no less
fiendish.
Miss Anthony was busy through September and October securing speakers
for the national convention. She still believed that her chief strength
lay in her executive ability. Having written Lucy Stone that she could
not and would not speak, the latter answered: "Why do you say the
people won't listen to you, when you know you never made a speech that
was not attentively heard? All you need is to cultivate your power of
expression. Subjects are so clear to you that you can soon make them as
clear to others." In response to an invitation to the Hutchinson family
to sing at the convention, Asa wrote: "The time is coming, I hope, when
we can do something for the glorious cause which you are so nobly
advocating." John added: "It would rejoice my heart to be at the
convention and help along, with the one talent God has given me, the
greatest reform ever attempted by lovers of the human race." Miss
Anthony asked Mary L. Booth, at that time just beginning to attract
attention by her fine translations, to speak at the coming convention
and received this touching response:
The hope of yet aiding the cause is the polar star which guides all
my efforts. If it were possible I would do this directly, but the
fashion of the times has made me a dependant and home aid would
scarcely be extended to me in this. I am trying to make myself
independent. Fortune now promises favorable things. If I succeed,
count on me. All that I can do, I will, to rescue my sex from the
fetters which have chafed me so bitterly, from the evils of the
giant system which makes woman everywhere a satellite. I have drank
of the cup which is offered as the wine of woman's life, and have
found the draught frothy and unsatisfactory. Now am I willing, if
successful, to give all to purchase her a purer aliment. I have
faith enough in the cause to move mountains, but if I speak at
present I forfeit all claims on my home forever.
Lucy Stone when appealed to with the intimation that she was losing
interest in the work, replied: "Now that I occupy a legal position in
which I can not even draw in my own name the money I have earned or
give a valid receipt for it when it is drawn or make any contract, but
am rated with fools, minors and madmen, and can not sign a legal
document without being examined separately to see if it is by my own
free will, and even the right to my own name questioned, do you think
that, in the grip of such pincers, I am likely to grow remiss?... I am
not at all sanguine of the success of the convention. However much I
hope, or try to hope, the old doubt comes back. My only trust is in
your great, indomitable perseverance and your power of work."
That the answers were not always favorable and that the women
constantly found themselves between two fires, the following letters
will show. Horace Greeley, who heretofore had been so friendly, wrote:
The only reason why I can not publish your notices in our news
columns is that my political antagonists take advantage of such
publications to make the Tribune responsible for the anti-Bible,
anti-Union, etc., doctrines, which your conventions generally put
forth. I do not desire to interfere with your "free speech." I
desire only to secure for myself the liberty of treating public
questions in accordance with my own convictions, and not being made
responsible for the adverse convictions of others. I can not,
therefore, print this programme without being held responsible for
it. If you advertise it, that is not in my department, nor under my
control.[23]
From Gerrit Smith came these emphatic opinions:
You invite me to attend the woman's convention in New York. It will
not be in my power to do so. You suggest that I write a letter in
case I can not attend, but so peculiar and offensive are my views
of the remedy for woman's wrongs, that a letter inculcating them
would not be well received. Hence, I must not write it. I believe
that poverty is the great curse of woman, and that she is powerless
to assert her rights, because she is poor. Woman must go to work to
get rid of her poverty, but that she can not do in her present
disabling dress, and she seems determined not to cast it aside. She
is unwilling to sacrifice grace and fashion, even to gain her
rights; albeit, too, that this grace is an absurd conventionalism
and that this fashion is infinite folly. Were woman to adopt a
rational dress, a dress that would not hinder her from any
employment, how quickly would she rise from her present degrading
dependence on man! How quickly would the marriage contract be
modified and made to recognize the equal rights of the parties to
it! And how quickly would she gain access to the ballot-box.
Thus one man refused to assist the cause because its advocates were too
radical, and another because they were not radical enough; or, in other
words, each wanted the women to be and to do according to his own
ideas.
The Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention met in the Broadway
Tabernacle, New York, November 25 and 26. Lucy Stone presided and
Wendell Phillips was one of the prominent speakers. The election was
over, the mob spirit temporarily quieted, and the convention was not
disturbed except when certain of the men attempted to make long
speeches or introduce politics. The audience had come to hear women
plead their own cause and insisted that this should be the program.
In this fall of 1856 Miss Anthony renewed her engagement with the
anti-slavery committee, writing Mr. May: "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_." The committee answered: "We put all New
York into your control and want your name to all letters and your hand
in all arrangements. We like your form of posters; by all means let 'No
Union with Slaveholders' be conspicuous upon them." An extract from a
letter received from Mr. May, the secretary, dated October 22, shows
the estimate placed upon her services by the committee:
The Anti-Slavery Society wants you in the field. I really think the
efficiency and success of our operations in New York this winter
will depend more on your personal attendance and direction than
upon that of any other of our workers. We need your earnestness,
your practical talent, your energy and perseverance to make these
conventions successful. The public mind will be sore this winter,
disappointment awaits vast numbers, dismay will overtake many. We
want your cheerfulness, your spirit--in short, yourself.
[Footnote 22: In 1854 Judge William Hay brought out a new edition of
his romance, Isabel D'Avalos, the Maid of Seville, with a sequel, The
Siege of Granada, dedicated as follows:
TO
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
whose earnestness of purpose, honesty of intention,
unintermitted industry, indefatigable perseverance,
and extraordinary business-talent,
are surpassed only by the virtues which have illustrated her life,
devoted, like that of Dorothea Dix,
TO THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.
In a letter to her he said: "I have placed in my will a bequest to you,
the only person to whose care I would willingly entrust them, that at
my death the manuscripts and plates of this work are to be your
absolute property. I sincerely desire and faintly hope that you may
derive some pecuniary benefit from them."]
[Footnote 23: Three years before Mr. Greeley had written to the
suffrage convention at Cleveland: "I recognize most thoroughly the
right of woman to choose her own sphere of activity and usefulness If
she sees fit to navigate vessels, print newspapers, frame laws and
select her rulers, I know no principle that justifies man in placing
any impediment to her doing so." The letter used above shows, however,
that not even so great a paper as the Tribune could endure the
misrepresentation heaped upon every one who advocated the unpopular
doctrine of woman's rights.]
CHAPTER X.
CAMPAIGNING WITH THE GARRISONIANS.
1857--1858.
One scarcely could imagine a more unfavorable time than the winter of
1857 for a campaign under the Garrisonian banner of "No Union with
Slaveholders." The anti-slavery forces were divided among themselves,
but were slowly crystallizing into the Republican party. The triumph of
the Democrats over Republicans, Know Nothings and Whigs at the recent
presidential election had warned these diverse elements that it was
only by uniting that they could hope to prevent the further extension
of slavery. The "Dred Scott decision" by the Supreme Court of the
United States, declaring "slaves to be not persons but property" and
the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional and void, had roused a
whirlwind of indignation throughout the Northern States. Those who were
seeking to prevent the extension of slavery into the Territories were
stigmatized by their opponents as traitors defying the Constitution.
While this supported the claim of the Garrisonians that the
Constitution did sanction slavery and protect the slaveholder, yet the
majority of the anti-slavery people were not ready to accept the
doctrine of "immediate and unconditional emancipation, even at the cost
of a dissolution of the Union." The Republicans had polled so large a
vote as to indicate that further extension of slavery could be
prevented through that organization, and they were excessively hostile
toward any element which threatened to antagonize or weaken it. Thus
into whatever town Miss Anthony took her little band, the backbone of
the Garrison party, they had to encounter not only the hatred of the
pro-slavery people, but also the enmity of this new and rapidly
increasing Republican element, which at this time did not stand for the
abolition of slavery, but simply for no further extension.
The first year of Mr. Buchanan's administration was marked by a severe
and widespread financial stringency. A decade of unparalleled
prosperity, with its resultant speculation and expansion of business,
was followed by heavy losses, failures and panic. The whole year of
1857 was one continued struggle and vain effort to ward off the
impending crisis. To make the situation still more trying the winter
was one of great severity, so it is not surprising, accustomed though
she was to hardships and disappointments, that Miss Anthony should have
found this series of meetings the most disheartening experience of her
life. She engaged Stephen and Abby Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Aaron M.
Powell, Benjamin and Elizabeth Jones, Charles Remond and his sister
Sarah, the last two educated and refined colored people; marked out
routes, planned the meetings, kept three companies of speakers
constantly employed, and spared herself no labor, no exposure, no
annoyance. She found that envy, jealousy and other disagreeable traits
were not confined to one sex, but that it required quite as much tact
and judgment to deal with men as with women. She had the usual
experience of a manager, speakers complaining of their routes, refusing
to go where sent, falling ill at the most critical times, and continual
fault-finding from the people who stayed at home and did nothing.
She had been working for the public long enough to expect all this, but
was distressed beyond measure because she could not make the meetings
pay for themselves. For reasons already mentioned the audiences were
small and collections still smaller. At her woman's rights lectures she
had encountered indifference and ridicule; now she was met with open
hostility. In every town a few friends rallied around and extended
hospitality and support, but the ordeal was of that kind which leaves
ineffaceable marks on the soul. For all this she was paid $10 a week
and expenses; not through any desire to be unjust, but because the
committee were having a hard struggle to secure the necessary funds to
carry on their vast work. Her last woman's rights campaign had left her
in debt and she could not provide herself with a new wardrobe for this
tour, but records in her diary at the beginning of winter: "A
double-faced merino, which I bought at Canajoharie ten years ago, I
have had colored dark green and a skirt made of it. I bought some green
cloth to match for a basque, and it makes a handsome suit. With my
Siberian squirrel cape I shall be very comfortable."
Lucy Stone wrote: "I know how you feel with all the burden of these
conventions and it is not just that you should bear it. There is not a
man in the whole anti-slavery ranks who could do it. I wish I could
help you but I can not. You are one of those who are sufficient unto
themselves and I thank God every day for you. Antoinette can not come
because she is so busy with that baby!" From Mr. May came these
comforting words: "We sympathize in all your trials and hope that
fairer skies will be over your head before long. Garrison says, 'Give
my love to Susan, and tell her I will do for her what I would hardly do
for anybody else.' I hope from that he means to attend your Rochester
and Syracuse conventions.... You must be dictator to all the agents in
New York; when you say, 'Go,' they must go, or 'Come,' they must come,
or 'Do this,' they must do it. I see no other way of getting along, and
I am sure to your gentle and wholesome rule they will cheerfully defer.
God bless you all; and if you don't get pay in money from your
audiences, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you have given
them the hard, solid truth as they never had it before."
These meetings often took the form of debates between the speakers and
the audience, and frequently lasted till midnight. Of one place Miss
Anthony says in her diary, "All rich farmers, living in princely style,
but no moral backbone;" at another time: "I spoke for an hour, but my
heart fails me. Can it be that my stammering tongue ever will be
loosed? I am more and more dissatisfied with my efforts." The diary
shows that they had many delightful visits among friends and many good
times sandwiched between the disagreeable features of their trip, and
that everywhere they roused the community to the highest pitch on the
slavery question. She gives a description of one of these gatherings at
Easton:
That Sunday meeting was the most impressive I ever attended. Aaron
and I had spoken, Charles Remond followed, picturing the contumely
and opprobrium everywhere heaped upon the black man and all
identified with him, the ostracism from social circles, etc. At the
climax he exclaimed: "I have a fond and loving mother, as true and
noble a woman as God ever made; but whenever she thinks of her
absent son, it is that he is an outcast." He sank into his seat,
overwhelmed with emotion, and wept like a child. In a moment, while
sitting, he said: "Some may call this weak, but I should feel
myself the less a man, if tears did not flow at a thought like
that." The whole audience was in sympathy with him, all hearts were
melted and many were sobbing. When sufficiently composed he rose
and related, in a subdued and most impressive manner, his
experience at the last village we visited where not one roof could
be found to shelter him because he had a black face. At the close
of his speech several men came up, handed us money and left the
house because they could not bear any more, while others crowded
around and assured him that their doors were open to him and his
sister.
From the home of her dear friend Elizabeth Powell,[24] where she had
gone for a few days' rest, she writes: "At Poughkeepsie, Parker
Pillsbury spoke grandly for freedom. I never heard from the lips of man
such deep thoughts and burning words. 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.
Now while the people worship the prophets of that time, they stone
those of their own." Mr. Garrison wrote her:
I seize a moment to thank you for your letter giving an account of
your anti-slavery meetings and those of the Friends of Progress. I
am highly gratified to learn that the latter followed the example
of the Progressive Friends at Longwood in favor of a dissolution of
our blood-stained American Union. I meant to have sent to you in
season some resolutions or "testimony" on the subject, but
circumstances prevented. I felt perfectly satisfied however that
all would go right with you and Aaron and Oliver Johnson present to
enforce the true doctrine. You must have had a soul-refreshing
time, even though there appear to have been present what Emerson
calls "The fleas of the convention."... On Wednesday, there was a
great popular demonstration here to inaugurate the statue of
Warren. Think of Mason, of Virginia, the author of the Fugitive
Slave Bill, being one of the speakers on Bunker Hill!
[Autograph:
Yours for the triumph of liberty,
Wm. Lloyd Garrison]
On this great tour Miss Anthony became so thoroughly aroused that she
could no longer confine herself to written addresses, which seemed cold
and formal and utterly unresponsive to the inspiration of the moment.
She threw them aside and used them thereafter only on rare occasions.
Her speeches from that time were made from notes or headings and among
those used during the winter of 1857 are the following:
Object of meeting; to consider the fact of 4,000,000 slaves in a
Christian and republican government.... Everybody is anti-slavery,
ministers and brethren. There are sympathy, talk, prayers and
resolutions in ecclesiastical and political assemblies. Emerson
says "Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be
executed;" so anti-slavery prayers, resolutions and speeches avail
nothing without action.... Our mission is to deepen sympathy and
convert it into right action; to show that the men and women of the
North are slave-holders, those of the South slave-owners. The guilt
rests on the North equally with the South, therefore our work is to
rouse the sleeping consciences of the North.... No one is ignorant
now. You recognize the facts which we present. 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. The politician demands it because its existence
produces poverty and discord in the nation and imposes taxes on
free labor for its support, since the government is dominated by
southern rule.... We preach revolution; the politicians reform. We
say disobey every unjust law; the politician says obey them, and
meanwhile labor constitutionally for repeal.
Accompaning these notes are many special incidents illustrating the
evils of slavery. With Miss Anthony's strong, rich voice, her powerful
command of language and her intensity of feeling in regard to her
subject, it may be imagined that her speeches were eloquent appeals and
roused to action both her friends and her enemies. Some meetings were
successful financially, others failures, and her report to the
committee in the spring showed that she lacked $1,000 of having paid
the total expenses, including salaries of speakers. A few of the
committee were inclined to the opinion that meetings should not have
been held in places where they would not pay, but that noble woman,
Maria Weston Chapman, said: "My friends, if all you say is true,
regarding this young woman's business enterprise, practical sagacity
and platform ability, I think $1,000 expended in her education and
development for this work is one of the best investments that possibly
could have been made." At the unanimous request of the committee Miss
Anthony remained in office and during the year canvassed the entire
state with her speakers. Mr. May wrote: "We cheerfully pay your
expenses and want to keep you at the head of the work."
[Autograph:
Yours in affectionate remembrance,
MW Chapman"]
In March she was invited to go to Bangor, Me., and speak on woman's
rights, in a course which included Henry Wilson, Gough, Phillips,
Beecher and other notables. For this she was paid $50 and expenses, the
first large sum she had received for a lecture, and it gave her much
hope and courage. While in Maine she spoke a number of times, going
from point to point in sleigh or wagon through snow, slush and mud. The
press was very complimentary.[25]
In August Miss Anthony attended the State Teachers' Convention at
Binghamton, and here created another commotion by introducing the
following:
_Resolved_, That the exclusion of colored youth from our public
schools, academies, colleges and universities is the result of a
wicked prejudice.
_Resolved_, That the expulsion of Miss Latimer from the normal
school at Albany, when after six months of successful scholarship
it was discovered that colored blood coursed in her veins, was mean
and cruel.
_Resolved_, That a flagrant outrage was perpetrated against the
teachers and pupils of the colored schools of New York City, in
that no provision was made for their attendance at the free
concerts given to the public schools.
_Resolved_, That the recent exclusion of the graduates of the
colored normal school of New York City, from the public diploma
presentation at the Academy of Music, was a gross insult to their
scholarship and their womanhood.
_Resolved_, That all proscription from educational advantages and
honors, on account of color, is in perfect harmony with the
infamous decision of Judge Taney--"that black men have no rights
which white men are bound to respect."
After considerable uproar these were referred to a select committee on
which were placed two ladies, Mary L. Booth and Julia A. Wilbur, both
strong supporters of Miss Anthony. The committee brought in a majority
report in favor of the resolutions but this make-shift minority report
was adopted: "In our opinion the colored children of the State should
enjoy equal advantages of education with the white." Miss Anthony then
proceeded to throw another bomb by presenting this resolution:
Since the true and harmonious development of the race demands that
the sexes be associated together in every department of life;
therefore
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of all our schools, colleges and
universities to open their doors to woman and to give her equal and
identical educational advantages side by side with her brother man.
This opened the flood gates. Motions to lay on the table, to refer to a
committee, etc., were voted down. A few strong speeches were made in
favor, but most of them were in opposition and very bitter, insisting
that "it was sought to uproot the theory and practice of the whole
world." The antique Professor Davies was in his element. He declared:
"Here is an attempt to introduce a vast social evil. I have been trying
for four years,[_i.e._ ever since Miss Anthony's first appearance at a
teachers' convention] to escape this question, but if it has to come,
let it be boldly met and disposed of. I am opposed to anything that has
a tendency to impair the sensitive delicacy and purity of the female
character or to remove the restraints of life. These resolutions are
the first step in the school which seeks to abolish marriage, and
behind this picture I see a monster of social deformity."
Another speaker, whose name is lost in oblivion, said in tones which
would melt a heart of stone: "Shall an oak and a rose tree receive the
same culture? Better to us is the clear, steady, softened, silvery
moonlight of woman's quiet, unobtrusive influence, than the flashes of
electricity showing that the true balance of nature is destroyed. Aye,
better a thousand times is it than the glimmering ignus fatuus rising
from decayed hopes and leading the deluded follower to those horrible
quagmires of social existence--amalgamation and Mormonism."
Prof. John W. Buckley, of Brooklyn, opposed the resolution in coarse
and abusive language. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Henry
H. Van Dyck demolished its last hope when he demanded with outstretched
arm and pointed finger: "Do you mean to say you want the boys and girls
to room side by side in dormitories? To educate them together can have
but one result!"
The Binghamton Daily Republican said: "Miss Anthony vindicated her
resolutions with eloquence, force, spirit and dignity, and showed
herself a match, at least, in debate for any member of the convention.
She was equal if not identical. Whatever may be thought of her notions
or sense of propriety in her bold and conspicuous position, personally,
intellectually and socially speaking, there can be but one opinion as
to her superior energy, ability and moral courage; and she may well be
regarded as an evangel and heroine by her own sex."
The woman who advocated co-education in those days was indeed in a
"bold and conspicuous position." The resolutions were lost by a large
majority. Even if every man present had voted against them, there were
enough women to have carried them had they voted in the affirmative.
The Republican said: "If the lady members had voted so as to be heard
we know not what would have been the result; but their voices, to say
the least, have not been ordained by the Creator to be equal or
identical with man's, and are drowned by his louder sounds." Mrs.
Stanton's opinion can best be learned by an extract from a letter:
I see by the papers that you have once more stirred that pool of
intellectual stagnation, the educational convention. What an
infernal set of fools those schoolmarms must be! Well, if in order
to please men they wish to live on air, let them. The sooner the
present generation of women dies out, the better. We have idiots
enough in the world now without such women propagating any more....
The New York Times was really quite complimentary. Mr. Stanton
brought every item he could find about you. "Well, my dear," he
would say, "another notice of Susan. You stir up Susan, and she
stirs the world." I was glad you went to torment those devils. I
guess they will begin to think their time has come. I glory in your
perseverance. O, Susan, I will do anything to help you on. You and
I have a prospect of a good long life. We shall not be in our prime
before fifty, and after that we shall be good for twenty years at
least. If we do not make old Davies shake in his boots or turn in
his grave, I am mistaken.
The proceedings of the convention were published in full in the New
York Tribune, and Miss Anthony received letters of commendation from
Judge William Hay, Charles L. Reason, superintendent of the New York
city colored schools, and many others. William Marvin, of Binghamton,
wrote: "The sympathy of the people here, during the teachers'
association, was decidedly with you. A vote from the audience would
have carried any one of your resolutions."
In the autumn the anti-slavery meetings were resumed, and Miss Anthony
was unsparing of herself and everybody else. Parker Pillsbury
complained: "What a task-mistress our general agent is proving herself.
I expect as soon as women get command, an end will have come to all our
peace. We shall yet have societies for the protection of men's rights,
in the cause of which many of us will have to be martyrs." Her brother,
Daniel R., was sending frequent letters from Kansas containing graphic
descriptions of the terrible condition of affairs in that unhappy
territory, and scathing denunciations of the treachery of northern
"dough faces," thus fanning the fires of patriotism that glowed in her
breast and filling her with renewed zeal for the cause to which she was
giving her time and strength. During these days she wrote a cherished
sister:
Though words of love are seldom written or spoken by one of us to
the other, there must ever remain the abiding faith that the heart
still beats true and fond. Our family is now so widely separated
that our enjoyment must consist in soul communing. Indeed, I almost
believe in the power of affection to draw unto itself the yearning
heart of the absent one. What the modern Spiritualist tells of
feeling the presence of departed friends and enjoying their loving
ministrations, I sometimes imagine to be true, not of the spirits
of those gone hence, but of those still in the body who are
separated from us. I often pass blessed moments in these sweet,
silent communings.... Every day brings to me new conceptions of
life and its duties, and it is my constant desire that I may be
strong and fearless, baring my arm to the encounter and pressing
cheerfully forward, though the way is rough and thorny.
I have just returned from the hardest three weeks' tour of
anti-slavery meetings I have had yet, so cold and disheartening.
The masses seem devoid of conscience and looking only for some new
expedient to accomplish the desired good; but in every town there
are some true spirits who walk in God's sunlight and do what is
right, trusting results to the great Immutable Law.... I wish all
the dear ones would write me more often. Though I am sure of their
affection, yet when the soul is burdened and one is surrounded by
strangers, a letter from a loved one brings healing to the spirit,
and I need it more than I can tell.
There is scarcely a letter to her own family, in the large number
preserved, which does not express a longing for love and sympathy, a
craving that no public career, no devotion to any cause, however
absorbing, ever eradicates from the human soul.
Although so fully occupied, Miss Anthony did not neglect the beloved
cause of woman. This year, however, when she attempted to arrange for
the annual convention, she found to her dismay that every one of the
speakers whom she always depended upon was unable to be present because
of maternal duties. Some were anticipating an event, others had very
young infants, and the older women were kept at home by expected or
recently arrived grandchildren. She was used to overcoming obstacles,
but the conditions on this occasion were too much for her and, with
feelings which can not well be put into language, she was obliged to
give up the national convention, the only one omitted from 1850 to
1861.
Amidst the hard work and many disappointments of the year, there is one
gleam of humor in what was known to the family as "Susan's raspberry
experiment." During her wanderings she visited her friend Sarah Hallock
who had made a great success of raspberry culture, selling 40,000
baskets during the season, and she did not see why she could not do
quite as well. She unfolded her plan to her father, who supported her
in that as in everything and gave her as much ground as she desired.
While at home for a short time she had this underdrained and prepared,
$100 worth of raspberry plants set out and staked; then went away and
left the family to look after them. The father was in the city all day
attending to business, the sister Mary teaching school, the mother was
not well and there was no one else but the hired man, who knew nothing
about the culture of raspberries and was otherwise occupied; so the
bushes took their chances.
The fame of the experiment, however, spread far and wide, the
newspapers announced that Miss Anthony had bought a large farm and
stocked it with raspberries; that she had abandoned the platform and
taken up fruit culture. She received scores of letters asking
information as to the best plants and most successful methods, others
begging her not to give up public work, and many from friends who had
no end of fun at her expense. The bushes grew and bore fruit enough to
give the family a number of delicious meals. Then a very cold winter
followed and there was no one to care for the tender plants. In
December came a letter from the irrepressible brother-in-law, Aaron
McLean: "As to your raspberry 'spec,' I regret to tell you it has 'gone
up.' The poor, little, helpless things expired of a bad cold about two
weeks since. Do you remember that text of Scripture, which says, 'She
who by the plow would thrive, herself must either hold or drive'? It
has cost you $200 to learn the truth of it." Her sister Mary wrote: "I
hope, Susan, when you get a husband and children, you will treat them
better than you did your raspberry plants, and not leave them to their
fate at the beginning of winter."
It was a deep regret to Miss Anthony that she could not give the
necessary time and care to make this experiment a success, as she was
anxious to encourage women to go into the pursuit of agriculture,
horticulture, floriculture, anything which would take them out of
doors. In a letter to Mr. Higginson she says: "The salvation of the
race depends, in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their
hothouse 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?" This is one of the many instances
where Miss Anthony foreshadowed reforms and improvements which have
been fulfilled in the present generation.
In 1858 is presented same routine of unremitting work which
characterized so many previous years. The winter was given up to
anti-slavery meetings with their attendant hardships. Miss Anthony has
great scorn for those who talk regretfully of the "good old days." She
thinks one lecture season under the conditions which then existed would
be an effectual cure to any longing for them one might have. The
conveniences of modern life, bathrooms with plenty of hot water,
toiletrooms, steam-heated houses, gas and hundreds of comforts so
common at the present time that one scarcely can realize they have not
always existed, were comparatively unknown. One of the greatest trials
these travellers had to endure was the wretched cooking which was the
rule and not exception among our much-praised foremothers. In one of
the old diaries is this single ejaculation, "O, the crimes that are
committed in the kitchens of this land!" In those days the housewife
could not step around the corner and buy for two cents a cake of yeast
which insured good bread, but the process of yeast-making was long and
difficult and not well understood by the average housekeeper, so a
substitute was found in "salt risings," and a heavy indigestible mass
generally resulted. White flour was little used and was of a poor
quality. Baking powder was unknown and all forms of cakes and warm
bread were made with sour milk and soda, easily ruined by too much or
too little of the latter. In no particular did the table compare
favorably with that of modern families.
[Illustration: THE FARM-HOME NEAR ROCHESTER, N.Y., 1845-65.]
The anti-slavery and woman's rights lecturers always accepted private
hospitality when offered, for reasons of economy and, as many of the
people who favored these reforms were seeking light in other directions
also, they were very apt to find themselves the guests of "cranks" upon
the food question and were thus made the subject of most of the
experiments in vogue at that period. On one occasion Miss Anthony,
Aaron Powell and Oliver Johnson were entertained by prominent and
well-to-do people in a town near New York, who had not a mouthful for
any of the three meals except nuts, apples and coarse bran stirred in
water and baked. At the end of one day the men ignominiously fled and
left her to stay over Sunday and hold the Monday meeting. She lived
through it but on Tuesday started for New York and never stopped till
she reached Delmonico's, where she revelled in a porterhouse steak and
a pot of coffee.
During these winter meetings all of the men broke down physically and
their letters were filled with complaints of their heads, their backs,
their lungs, their throats and their eyes. Garrison wrote at one time:
"I hope to be present at the meeting but I can not foresee what will be
my spinal condition at that time, and I could not think of appearing as
a 'Garrisonian Abolitionist' without a backbone." Miss Anthony never
lost a day or missed an engagement, although it may be imagined that
she had many hours of weariness when she would have been glad to drop
the burden for a while. On March 17 she writes: "How happy I am to lay
my head on my own home pillow once more after a long four months,
scarcely stopping a second night under one roof." Mr. May wrote in
behalf of the committee: "We rejoice with you in the success of your
meetings and in all your hopes for the upspringing of the good seed
sown by the faithful joint labors of you and your gallant little band.
We have made the following a committee of arrangements for the annual
meeting: Garrison, Phillips, Quincy, Johnson and Susan B. Anthony."
So she at once girded on her armor and began to prepare for the May
anniversary and, being determined the National Woman's Rights
Convention should not be omitted this year, she conducted also an
extensive correspondence in regard to that. Referring to all this
drudgery Lucy Stone urged: "Don't do it; quit common work such as a
common worker could do; and don't mourn over us and our babies. We are
growing workers. I know you are tired with your four months' work, but
it is not half so hard as taking care of a child night and day. I shall
not assume any responsibility for another convention till I have had my
ten daughters." But Miss Anthony knew that this "common work," this
hiring halls, raising money and advertising meetings was just what
nobody else could or would do. She understood also that while the other
women were at home "growing workers," somebody must be in the field
looking after the harvest.
Abby Hutchinson, the only sister in the famous family of singers, wrote
from their Jersey home, Dawnwood: "I want so much to help you; I have
longed to do some good with my voice but public life wears me out very
fast." Nevertheless she came and sang for them. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs.
Brown Blackwell brought new babies into the world a few weeks before
the convention, to Miss Anthony's usual discomfiture. She wrote to the
latter: "Mrs. Stanton sends her love to you and says if you are going
to have a large family, go right on and finish up as she has done. She
has only devoted eighteen years out of the very heart of her existence
to this great work. But I say, stop now."
The convention in Mozart Hall followed close upon the Anti-Slavery
Anniversary, Miss Anthony presided and there were the usual
distinguished speakers, Phillips, Pillsbury, Garrison, Douglass,
Higginson, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Rose, and, for the first
time, George William Curtis spoke on the woman's rights platform.
Notwithstanding this array of talent, the convention through all its
six sessions was threatened with a mob, encouraged by the Herald and
other New York papers. The disturbance at times was so great the
speakers could not be heard, even Curtis was greeted with hisses and
groans, but Miss Anthony stood at the helm unterrified through all and
did not leave her post until the last feature of the program was
completed and the convention adjourned. She was growing accustomed to
mobs.
In August, 1858, she attended the teachers' convention at Lockport. The
sensational feature of this meeting was the reading by Professor Davies
of the first cablegram from England, a message from the Queen to the
President. The press reports show that she took a prominent part in the
proceedings and possibly merited the name which some one gave her of
"the thorn in the side of the convention." These annual gatherings were
very largely in the nature of mutual admiration societies among the
men, who consumed much of the time in complimenting each other and the
rest of it in long-winded orations. During this one Miss Anthony arose
and said that, as all members had the same right to speak, she would
suggest that speeches should be limited so as to give each a chance.
She made some of the men furious by stating that they spoke so low they
could not be heard.
At another time she suggested that, as there were only a few hours left
for the business of the convention, they should not be frittered away
in trifling discussions, saying, "if she were a man she would be
ashamed to consume the time in telling how much she loved women and in
fulsome flattery of other men." She moved also that they set aside the
proposed discussion on "The Effects of High Intellectual Culture on the
Efficiency and Respectability of Manual Labor," and take up pressing
questions. When one man was indulging in a lot of the senseless twaddle
about his wife which many of them are fond of introducing in their
speeches, she called him to order saying that the kind of a wife he
had, had nothing to do with the subject. She introduced again the
resolution demanding equal pay for equal work without regard to sex. A
friend wrote of this occasion: "She arraigned those assembled teachers
for their misdemeanors as she would a class of schoolboys, in perfect
unconsciousness that she was doing anything unusual. We women never can
be sufficiently thankful to her for taking the hard blows and still
harder criticisms, while we reaped the benefits."
The press reports said: "Miss Anthony has gained in the estimation of
the teachers' convention, and is now listened to with great attention."
She gave her lecture on "Co-Education" to a crowded house of Lockport's
prominent citizens, introduced by President George L. Farnham, of
Syracuse, always her friend in those troublous days. By this time more
than a score of the eminent educators of the day had become her
steadfast friends, and they welcomed her to these conventions, aiding
her efforts in every possible manner. Rev. Samuel J. May, who had
delivered an address, upon his return home wrote: "You are a great
girl, and I wish there were thousands more in the world like you. Some
foolish old conventionalisms would be utterly routed, and the legal and
social disabilities of women would not long be what they are." Miss
Anthony herself, writing to Antoinette Blackwell, said: "I wish I had
time to tell you of my Lockport experience; it was rich. I never felt
so cool and self-possessed among the plannings and plottings of the few
old fogies, and they never appeared so frantic with rage. They
evidently felt that their reign of terror is about ended."
October, 1858, brought another crucial occasion. In Rochester, a young
man, Ira Stout, had been condemned to be hung for murder. A number of
persons strongly opposed to capital punishment believed this a suitable
time to make a demonstration. It was not that they doubted the guilt of
Stout, but they were opposed to the principle of what they termed
judicial murder. As the Anthonys and many of the leading Quaker
families, Frederick Douglass and a number of Abolitionists shared in
this opinion, it was not surprising that Miss Anthony undertook to get
up the meeting. In a cold rain she made the round of the orthodox
ministers but none would sign the call. The Universalist minister, Rev.
J.H. Tuttle, agreed to be present and speak. She secured thirty or
forty signatures, engaged the city hall and advertised extensively. The
feeling against Stout was very strong and there was a determination
among certain members of the community that this meeting should not be
held. Huge placards were posted throughout the city, urging all opposed
to the sentiments of the call to be out in force, a virtual invitation
to the mob.
When the evening arrived, October 7, the hall was filled with a crowd
of nearly 2,000, a large portion of whom only needed the word to break
into a riot. Miss Anthony called the assemblage to order and Frederick
Douglass was made chairman, but when he attempted to speak, his voice
was drowned with groans and yells. Aaron M. Powell, William C. Bloss
and others tried to make themselves heard but the mob had full sway.
Miss Anthony was greeted with a perfect storm of hisses. Finally the
demonstrations became so threatening that she and the other speakers
were hurried out of the hall by a rear door, the meeting was broken up
and the janitor turned out the lights. No attempt was made by the mayor
or police to quell the disturbance and mob law reigned supreme.
The brightest ray of sunshine in the closing days of 1858 was the
following letter from Mr. Phillips: "I have had given me $5,000 for the
woman's rights cause; to procure tracts on that subject, publish and
circulate them, pay for lectures and secure such other agitation of the
question as we deem fit and best to obtain equal civil and political
position for women. The name of the giver of this generous fund I am
not allowed to tell you. The only condition of the gift is that it is
to remain in my keeping. You, Lucy Stone and myself are a committee of
trustees to spend it wisely and efficiently." The donor proved to be
Francis Jackson, the staunch friend of the emancipation of woman as
well as the negro.
[Autograph:
With much respect and esteem,
Francis Jackson"]
[Footnote 24: Now Elizabeth Powell Bond, dean of Swarthmore College for
many years.]
[Footnote 25: The Bangor Jeffersonian said: "Miss Anthony is far from
being an impracticable enthusiast. Dignity, conscientiousness and
regard for the highest welfare of her sex, are the impressions which
one receives of her. Doubtless all (if any there were) who went to
scoff, remained to pray for the success of the doctrine she advocated.
Personally she is good-looking, of symmetrical figure and modest and
ladylike demeanor."
The Bangor Whig was equally favorable. The Ellsworth American said:
"Her enunciation is very clear and remarkably distinct, yet there is
nothing in it of the unfeminine character and tone which people had
been led to expect from the usual criticisms of the press. The lecture
itself, as an intellectual effort, was satisfactory as well to those
who dissented as to those who sympathized with its positions and
arguments. It was fruitful in ideas and suggestions and we doubt not
many a woman, and man too, went home that night, with the germ of more
active ideas in their heads than had gathered there for a twelvemonth
before."]
CHAPTER XI.
CONDITIONS PRIOR TO THE WAR.
1859.
Among Miss Anthony's many schemes for regenerating the world was one to
have a Free church in Rochester, after the manner of Theodore Parker's
in Boston, similar to an ethical society, where no doctrines should be
preached and all should be welcome, contributing what they chose. This
was in her mind for years, and at the beginning of 1859 she engaged
Corinthian Hall for Sunday evenings, her good friend, William A.
Reynolds, as usual making her a reduced rate; and here Antoinette Brown
Blackwell and Parker Pillsbury each preached for a month. She tried to
engage Mrs. Stanton for a year and also Aaron M. Powell, but the
financial support was too uncertain and the project had to be
abandoned. All her life, however, Miss Anthony cherished the hope of
seeing this Free church established and sustained. She arranged a
series of lectures for this winter. George William Curtis accepted her
invitation in this characteristic letter:
I think of no title for your course, but why have any? Why not say
simply, "A Course of Independent Lectures?" To call them woman's
rights would damn them in advance, so strong is prejudice. The only
one I have at all suited to your purpose is "Fair Play for
Women."[26] I hate the words "woman's rights," nor do they properly
describe my treatment of the question which, in my mind, is not one
of sex but of humanity. My lecture is a plea for the recognition of
the equal humanity of women and an assertion that they have rights
not as women but as human beings. In respect to terms, I leave it
with you. I usually receive $50, but you will understand that I
should prefer to pay the expenses myself rather than that you or
any one interested should expend a penny; so if you can not justly
give me anything, I shall be content.
[Autograph:
Yours very faithfully
George William Curtis]
Miss Anthony always came out of these lecture courses in debt, but she
would call upon her friends or borrow from sister or father enough to
make up the deficit, and replace the loan out of her scanty earnings.
She persisted in having them to educate the public on the progressive
questions of the day. At this time the long, severe mental and physical
strain of years began to be felt in her one weak spot, and the old
trouble with her back asserted itself. From every quarter came urgent
appeals for her assistance. At first she answered: "If New York calls a
constitutional convention for next spring, this will be a capital
winter to strike heavy blows for freedom and equality such as we shall
not have for a long time to come. I am ready just as soon as the armies
can be marshaled and equipped." But later she wrote:
It is being forced upon me that nature orders me to stay quietly at
home this winter and it may be that it is to enable me to get a
greater literary culture than I possibly could, amidst the hurry
and bustle of continual meetings. Somehow I can not philosophize
away a shrinking from going into active work. I can not get up a
particle of enthusiasm or faith in the success, either financial or
spiritual, of another series of conventions. For the past five
years I have gone through this routine and something within me
keeps praying to be spared from more of it. There has been such a
surfeit of lecturing, the people are tired of it. Then I never was
so poor in purse and I fear to end another campaign with a heavy
debt to still further encroach upon my small savings. I can not
bear to make myself dependent upon relatives for the food I eat and
the clothes I wear; I never have done it and hope I may never have
to. Perhaps I may feel a renewed faith in myself and my work but
the past years have brought me so much isolation and spiritual
loneliness, although in the midst of crowds, that I confess to a
longing to stay for awhile among my own people.
The commands of the physician were imperative that she should avoid all
fatigue and nervous excitement, but her pen was not idle, and the time
which she hoped to devote to the reading of many books was occupied in
sending out letters, petitions, appeals and the various documents
necessary to keep the work going. In answer to an invitation from the
Friends of Human Progress she wrote:
To be esteemed worthy to speak for woman, for the slave, for
humanity, is ever grateful to me, and I regret that I can not be
with you at your annual gathering to get for myself a fresh
baptism, a new and deeper faith. I would exhort all women to be
discontented with their present condition and to assert their
individuality of thought, word and action by the energetic doing of
noble deeds. Idle wishes, vain repinings, loud-sounding
declamations never can bring freedom to any human soul. What woman
most needs is a true appreciation of her womanhood, a self-respect
which shall scorn to eat the bread of dependence. Whoever consents
to live by "the sweat of the brow" of another human being
inevitably humiliates and degrades herself.... No genuine equality,
no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any
foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a
man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over
a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and
vitiates her whole moral nature.
To her brother Daniel R., in Kansas, who was somewhat skeptical on the
woman question, she sent this strong letter:
Even the smallest human right denied, is large. The fact that the
ruling class withhold this right is prima facie evidence that they
deem it of importance for good or for evil. In either case,
therefore, the human being is outraged. It, perchance, may matter
but little whether Kansas be governed by a constitution made by her
bona fide settlers or by people of another State or by Congress;
but for Kansas to be denied the right to make her own constitution
and laws is an outrage not to be tolerated. So the constitution and
laws of a State and nation may be just as considerate of woman's
needs and wants as if framed by herself, yet for man to deny her
the right to a voice in making and administering them, is
paralleled only by the Lecompton usurpation. For any human being or
class of human beings, whether black, white, male or female, tamely
to submit to the denial of their right to self-government shows
that the instinct of liberty has been blotted out.
You blunder on this question of woman's rights just where thousands
of others do. You believe woman unlike man in her nature; that
conditions of life which any man of spirit would sooner die than
accept are not only endurable to woman but are needful to her
fullest enjoyment. Make her position in church, State, marriage,
your own; everywhere your equality ignored, everywhere made to feel
another empowered by law and time-honored custom to prescribe the
privileges to be enjoyed and the duties to be discharged by you;
and then if you can imagine yourself to be content and happy, judge
your mother and sisters and all women to be.
It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant
that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish
the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with
this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as
to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to
legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the
struggle from love of principle would still work on until the
establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."
She wrote Lydia Mott: "The new encyclopedia is just out and I notice in
regard to Antoinette Brown Blackwell that it gives a full description
of her work up to the time of her marriage, then says: 'She married
Samuel Blackwell and lives near New York.' Not a word of the splendid
work she has done on the platform and in the pulpit since. Thus does
every married woman sink her individuality." This brought from Lydia a
spirited answer:
For my part, when you speak of the individuality of one who is
truly married being inevitably lost, I think you mistake. If there
ever was any individuality it will remain. I don't believe it is
necessary for development that the individual must always force
itself upon us. We naturally fall into the habits and frequently
the train of thought of those we love and I like the expression
"we" rather than "I." I never feel that my interests and actions
can be independent of the dear ones with whom I am surrounded. Even
the one who seems to be most absorbed may, in reality, possess the
strongest soul. This standing alone is not natural and therefore
can not be right. I am sure one of these days you will view this
matter from a different standpoint.
Miss Anthony so far yielded as to reply: "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' never will 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!'"
But later when one woman failed to keep a lecture engagement because
her husband wanted her to go somewhere with him, and another because
her husband was not willing she should leave home, she again poured out
her sorrows to her friend:
There is not one woman left who may be relied on, all have "first
to please their husband," after which there is but little time or
energy left to spend in any other direction. I am not complaining
or despairing, but facts are stern realities. The twain become one
flesh, the woman, "we"; henceforth she has no separate work, and
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 power
of any woman, even of myself, to withstand the mighty matrimonial
maelstrom!
But how did I get into this dissertation? If to you it seems
morbid, pardon the pen-wandering. In the depths of my soul there is
a continual denial of the self-annihilating spiritual or legal
union of two human beings. Such union, in the very nature of
things, must bring an end to the free action of one or the other,
and it matters not to the individual whose freedom has thus
departed whether it be the gentle rule of love or the iron hand of
law which blotted out from the immortal being the individual
soul-stamp of the Good Father. How I do wish those who know
something of the real social needs of our age would rescue this
greatest, deepest, highest question from the present
unphilosophical, unspiritual discussers.
As might be expected, the legacy of $5,000 brought not only a flood of
requests from all parts of the country, but some division of opinion
among those who had it in control. Miss Anthony would use all of it in
the work of propaganda, lectures, conventions, tracts and newspaper
articles. Lucy Stone wished to use part in suits to prove the
unconstitutionality of the law which taxes women and refuses them
representation. Antoinette Blackwell wanted a portion to establish a
church where she could spread the doctrine of woman's rights along with
the gospel. Most of the women lecturers and some of the men wished to
be engaged immediately at a fixed salary. Miss Anthony writes for
advice to Phillips, who replies: "Go ahead with your New York plan as
sketched to me. I am willing to risk spending $1,000 on it. Never
apologize as if you troubled me; it is my business as much as yours,
and I am only sorry to be of so little help." Brief records in the
little diary say:
Sister Mary and I passed New Year's Day, 1859, most quietly and
happily in the dear farm-home. Mother is in the East with sister
Hannah, and father dined in the city with sister Guelma, who sent
us a plate of her excellent turkey.... In the afternoon Mary and I
drove to Frederick Douglass' and had a nice visit; stayed to tea
and listened to a part of his new lecture on "Self-Made Men."...
Father and Mary gone to their work in the city, and I am writing on
my lecture "The True Woman." Ground out four commercial-note pages
in five mortal hours, but they are strong.... Ten degrees below
zero. Mother home; no writing today; all talk about the eastern
folks.... Antoinette Blackwell preached here yesterday, and we have
had a good visit together today. Just helped two fugitive slaves,
perhaps genuine and perhaps not.... Went to the city to hear A.A.
Willit's lecture on "A Plea for Home." Gives woman a place only in
domestic life--sad failure.... Twenty letters written and mailed
today. Took tea with the Hallowells. Am glad to learn that the
money forwarded to the Anti-Slavery Bazar and lost was sent by a
man instead of a woman.... Heard Bayard Taylor on "Life in
Lapland." Hundreds could not gain admittance. Curtis lectured on
"Fair Play for Women"; great success, but I feel that he has not
yet been tried by fire. Afterwards visited with Curtis and Taylor,
and Mr. Curtis said: "Rather than have a radical thinker like Mrs.
Rose at your suffrage conventions, you would better give them up.
With such speakers as Beecher, Phillips, Theodore Parker, Chapin,
Tilton and myself advocating woman's cause, it can not fail."
[Autograph:
Respectfully yours,
E.H. Chapin"]
Miss Anthony did not hesitate to criticise even Mr. Curtis, writing him
in reference to his great lecture, "Democracy and Education": "When all
the different classes of industrial claimants for a voice in the
government were enumerated, there was not one which could be
interpreted to represent womanhood. Hence only the few who know that
with George William Curtis, the words 'man,' 'people,' 'citizens,' are
not, as with the vast majority of lecturers, mere glittering
generalities, can understand that his grand principles of democracy are
intended to be applied to woman equally with man. I listen for the
unthinking masses and pray that every earnest, manly spirit shall help
make women free." In reply Mr. Curtis closed a long and cordial letter
by saying: "Believe me that I have thought of the point you make but
the greater statement must inevitably include the less." She scribbled
a comment on the back of this for her own satisfaction: "Men still the
greater, women the less."
The last of January Miss Anthony went to Albany to attend the
anti-slavery convention and remained six weeks during the legislative
session to work in the interest of the women's petitions and the
Personal Liberty Bill. This was a season of great enjoyment for her,
notwithstanding much tramping about in the rain and snow and many
discouraging experiences with the Legislature. She writes a friend:
"Well, I am a member of the lobby but lacking the two most essential
requisites, for I neither accept money nor have I any to pay out. Dr.
Cheever speaks tonight in the Assembly chamber on 'The Guilt of the
Slave Traffic and of the Legislation by which it is Supported.' I have
been going about all day to collect enough to defray his expenses."
Phillips, Garrison, Pillsbury and all the host were at the convention.
They dined in Lydia Mott's simple little home and had a merry time.
Between the meetings the party visited the Legislature, Geological
Hall, Palmer's studio and other places of interest and managed to get a
bit of holiday recreation. Miss Anthony stayed with her friend Miss
Mott, visited Rev. Mayo, called often on Thurlow Weed, went to Troy to
hear Beecher lecture on "The Burdens of Society," to Hudson to hear
Phillips on "Toussaint L'Ouverture" and, whenever she could spare a day
from her work with the Legislature, held woman's rights meetings in
neighboring towns; thus every hour was filled to overflowing.
In March she finished her lecture, "The True Woman," and plunged into
the preparations for the approaching woman's rights convention. She
also indulged the love for gardening which her busy life so seldom
permitted and, judging from her diary, must have given the hired men
more attention than they ever received before or afterwards:
Uncovered the strawberry and raspberry beds.... Worked with Simon
building frames for the grape vines in the peach orchards.... Set
out eighteen English black currants, twenty-two English
gooseberries and Muscadine grape vines, also Lawton
blackberries.... Worked in the garden all day, then went to the
city to hear Dr. Cheever; few there, but grand lecture. How he
unmasked the church hypocrites!... Wrote reports of the lecture
for Standard and Liberator, and helped father plan the new
kitchen.... Finished setting out the apple trees and the 600
blackberry bushes, then took the 6 o'clock train for Seneca Falls.
Hot and dusty, and I am very, very tired.
[Autograph: Wendell Phillips]
She spoke in various towns all the way to New York where she arrived in
time to attend the Anti-Slavery Anniversary and make final arrangements
for the convention in Mozart Hall, May 12. She had written asking
Lucretia Mott to preside, who answered, "I am sure there needs not a
better presiding officer than thyself," but agreed to come. When the
hour arrived the hall was so packed that it was impossible for Mrs.
Mott to reach the platform and Miss Anthony was obliged to open the
meeting. This convention, like several which preceded it, was greatly
disturbed by noise and interruptions from the audience, until finally
it was turned over to Wendell Phillips who "knew better than any one
else how to play with and lash a mob and thrust what he wished to say
into their long ears." At the end of his speech Miss Anthony
immediately adjourned the convention, to prevent violent
demonstrations. The Tribune said:
The woman's rights meeting last night was well calculated to
advance the cause that the reformers met to plead. The speakers
were comparatively so temperate, while sundry voters were so
intemperate in demonstrating their folly, rudeness, ignorance and
indecency, that almost any cause which the one pleaded and the
other objected to would be likely to find favor with order-loving
people. The presence of a single policeman might have preserved
perfect order, saved the reputation of our city before crowds of
strangers and given hundreds an opportunity to hear. Of course it
being a meeting that women were to address, as "women have no
rights in public which men are bound to maintain," there was no
policeman present.
The disturbances at these conventions were not so much because the mob
objected to the doctrine of woman's rights as that they were addressed
by the leading anti-slavery speakers and therefore had to bear the
odium attached to that hated cause.
A strong memorial, asking for equal social, civil and political rights
for women and based on the guarantees of the Declaration of
Independence, was prepared by a committee consisting of Miss Anthony,
Mr. Phillips and seven others, to be presented to every legislature in
the Union. By the time the legislatures met in 1860, political affairs
had reached a crisis and the country was in a state of unrest and
excitement which made it impossible to secure consideration for this or
any other question outside the vital issues that were pressing,
although it was presented in several States.
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton wrote an eloquent appeal to be circulated
with the petitions to rouse public sentiment. Armed with this the
former began correspondence with speakers in reference to a summer and
fall campaign of the state. The diary shows that she actually found
time to attend a picnic, but as she was called upon for a speech while
there the day was not wholly wasted. There are also references to
"moonlight rides," and one entry records: "Mr. ---- walked home with
me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should
lack the moral spine!"
Out of the Francis Jackson fund Mr. Phillips sent Miss Anthony $1,500
for her extensive campaign. She engaged speakers to come into New York
in different months, and July 13 opened the series with Antoinette
Blackwell at Niagara Falls. From here they made the round of the
watering places, Avon, Clifton, Trenton Falls, Sharon, Saratoga,
Ballston Spa and Lake George, where persons of wealth and prominence
were gathered from all parts of the Union. In some places they spoke in
a grove to thousands of people; at others in hotel parlors, and
everywhere met a friendly spirit and respectful treatment.
Miss Anthony did not forget to go to Poughkeepsie this summer, and stir
up the teachers at their annual meeting. Antoinette Blackwell says of
this trip: "I shall always recollect our journey on the boat with two
or three dozen teachers, and your walking the deck with one and
another, talking about women and their rights, in school and out of
school, in the most matter-of-fact way, although it was plainly evident
that most of them would sooner have listened to a discussion on the
rights of the Hottentots." The teacher who was her chief support at
these conventions was Helen Philleo.[27] There were very few of them in
those days who had the courage to help fight this battle for their own
interests. At the last session she announced a woman's rights meeting
and many remained to attend it.
After the summer resorts were closed the meetings were continued in the
principal towns. Mrs. Blackwell thus describes an incident in the Fort
William Henry hotel: "I remember a rich scene at the breakfast table.
Aaron Powell was with us and the colored waiter pointedly offered him
the bill of fare. Miss Anthony glanced at it and began to give her
order, not to Powell in ladylike modesty, but promptly and
energetically to the waiter. He turned a grandiloquent, deaf ear;
Powell fidgeted and studied his newspaper; she persisted, determined
that no man should come between her and her own order for coffee,
cornbread and beefsteak. 'What do I understand is the full order, sir,
for your party?' demanded the waiter, doggedly and suggestively. Powell
tried to repeat her wishes, but stumbled and stammered and grew red in
the face. I put in a working oar to cover the undercurrent of laughter,
while she, coolly unconscious of everything except that there was no
occasion for a 'middleman,' since she was entirely competent to look
after her own breakfast, repeated her order, and the waiter, looking
intensely disgusted, concluded to bring something, right or wrong."
While at Easton among her old friends Miss Anthony attended Quaker
meeting and the spirit moved her to speak very forcibly, as she relates
in a letter: "A young Quaker preacher from Virginia, who happened to be
there, said: 'Christ was no agitator, but a peacemaker; George Fox was
no agitator; the Friends at the South follow these examples and are
never disturbed by fanaticism.' This was more than I could bear; I
sprung to my feet and quoted: 'I came into the world not to bring peace
but a sword.... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites that
devour widow's houses!' Read the New Testament, and say if Christ was
not an agitator. Who is this among us crying 'peace, peace, when there
is no peace?'--and sat down." It is a matter of regret that she did not
tell what became of the gentleman from Virginia.
Miss Anthony writes to Mary Hallowell, during these days: "I am more
tired than ever before and know that I am draining the millpond too low
each day to be filled quite up during the night, but I am having fine
audiences of thinking men and women. Oh, if we could but make our
meetings ring like those of the anti-slavery people, wouldn't the world
hear us? But to do that we must have souls baptized into the work and
consecrated to it."
Mrs. Blackwell's domestic affairs will not permit any further lecturing
and Miss Anthony says in a letter to her: "O, dear, dear, how I do wish
you could have kept on with me. I can't tell you how utterly awful is
the suspense these other women keep me in: first, they can't, then they
can, then they won't unless things are so and so; and when I think
everything is settled, it all has to be gone over again. The fact is I
am not fit to deal with anybody who is not terribly in earnest." To
this she replies: "Dear child, I'm sorry I can not help you, but pity a
poor married woman and forgive. The ordeal that I have been going
through, four sewingwomen each giving about two days, no end of little
garments to alter and to make, with a husband whose clothes as well as
himself have been neglected for three months, the garden to be covered
up from the frost, shrubs to transplant, winter provisions to lay in
and only one good-natured, stupid servant to help with all. This,
Susan, is 'woman's sphere.'"
As Miss Anthony never approved of a woman's neglecting her household
for any purpose, she urged no more but sought elsewhere for assistance.
There was not one unmarried woman except herself in all the corps of
available speakers and, while some of them could make a trip of a few
weeks, not one could be depended on for steady work. In October she
secured Mrs. Tracy Cutler for awhile, and later Frances D. Gage, J.
Elizabeth Jones and Lucy N. Coleman, but was obliged to hold many
meetings alone. These were continued at intervals through the fall of
1859 and the winter and spring of 1860, and numerous pages of foolscap
are still in existence containing a carefully kept account of the
expenses. Each meeting was made partly to pay for itself, the lecturers
received $12 a week, Miss Anthony herself taking only this sum, and it
may be believed that no more extended and effective propaganda work
ever was accomplished with the same amount of money. While this was
being done, she also assisted Clarina Howard Nichols and Susan E.
Wattles to plan an important campaign in Kansas with money furnished
from the Jackson fund.
She received the following characteristic letter from Rev. Thomas K.
Beecher when she asked for the use of his church in Elmira: "I will
answer for myself and afterwards append the decision of the trustees.
Anybody with good moral character and clean feet is welcome to use our
meeting house, if they like, but were I you I should prefer Holden's
Hall. But, lastly, I should shrink from holding such a meeting. I fear
that you will come to pain of disappointment when your enthusiasm is
chilled and bruised against the stone walls of Elmira apathy. More
people will attend at Holden's Hall than at church. So speaks in brief,
yours with hearty respect."
Mrs. Blackwell writes her teasingly about what she calls her
obtuseness, going straight ahead with her work, never knowing when she
was snubbed or defeated, giving the undiluted doctrine to people
without ever perceiving their frantic efforts to escape, and ignoring
all the humorous features of the campaigns. Miss Anthony retorts: "You
might give some of the funny things at your own expense, but tell just
as many as you please at mine. You see I have always gone with such a
blind rush that I never had time to see the ridiculous, and blessed for
me and my work and my happiness that I did not." Another invariable
habit was never to notice complaints written to her. She always
answered the business points but entirely ignored complainings, charges
against other people and all extraneous matters.
She relates a significant incident which occurred during this summer
campaign when she and Antoinette Blackwell spent a Sunday at Gerrit
Smith's. He had established at Peterboro and was maintaining at his own
expense a Free church. Mrs. Blackwell, under the influence of Theodore
Parker, Chapin and other liberal thinkers, had become very broad in her
doctrines, and was greatly pleased at an opportunity to preach for Mr.
Smith, thinking to find perfect appreciation and sympathy. After church
Miss Anthony went to her room and found her weeping bitterly, but she
begged to be left to herself. When more composed she sent for her and
told how in the midst of her sermon, when she felt herself surpassing
anything she ever had done, she heard a gentle snore, and looking down
beheld Mr. Smith sound asleep! She was terribly disappointed and now
had made up her mind there was but one thing for the human soul, and
that was to live absolutely within itself. There is no friend, no
relative, who can enter into the depths of another individuality. A
husband and wife may be very happy together; in all the little
occurrences which really make up the sum of everyday life, they may be
perfectly congenial; but there will be times when each will feel the
other separated by an immeasurable distance. Henceforth she would enjoy
what solace there was in her religious faith for herself but would
expect no other soul to share it with her. "This was to me a wonderful
revelation," said Miss Anthony, "and I realized, as never before, that
in our most sacred hours we dwell indeed in a world of solitude."
[Autograph: Antoinette Brown Blackwell]
On December 2, 1859, occurred that terrible tragedy in the country's
history, the execution of John Brown for the raid on the United States
arsenal at Harper's Ferry. The nation was shaken as by a great
earthquake. Its dreadful import was realized perhaps by none so
strikingly as by that little band of Abolitionists who never had
wavered in their belief that slavery must ultimately disrupt the Union.
When the country was paralyzed with horror and uncertainty, they alone
dared call public meetings of mourning and indignation. It was natural
that in Rochester they should turn to Susan B. Anthony for leadership.
Without a moment's hesitation for fear of consequences she engaged
Corinthian Hall and set about arranging a meeting for the evening of
that day. Parker Pillsbury wrote:
Can you not make this gathering one of a popular character? What I
mean is will not some sturdy Republican or Gerrit Smith man
preside, another act as secretary and several make addresses? Only
we must not lose the control. I do not believe that any observance
of the day will be instituted outside our ranks. I am without
tidings from the "seat of war" since Tuesday evening; and do not
know what we shall hear next. 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 law, he
dares and is prepared to die and 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.
[Autograph: Parker Pillsbury]
Miss Anthony found that beyond the little band of Abolitionists not a
person dared give her any assistance. Her diary says: "Not one man of
prominence in religion or politics will publicly identify himself with
the John Brown meeting." She went from door to door selling tickets and
collecting money. Samuel D. Porter, a prominent member of the Liberty
party, assisted her, as did that circle of staunch Quaker friends who
never failed her in any undertaking; Frederick Douglass had been
obliged to flee to England. An admission fee of fifty cents kept out
the rabble, and not more than 300 were present. The masses of the
people, even those in full sympathy, were afraid to attend. Rev. Abram
Pryn, a Free church minister, made a fine address, and Parker Pillsbury
spoke as never before. Mr. Porter said: "This was the only occasion
that ever matched Pillsbury's adjectives." Miss Anthony presided and
there was no disturbance. The surplus receipts were sent to John
Brown's family.
Mrs. Stanton wrote shortly afterwards, urging her to come to Seneca
Falls: "Indeed it would do me great good to see some reformers just
now. The death of my father, the worse than death of my dear cousin
Gerrit,[28] the martyrdom of that great and glorious John Brown, all
conspire to make me regret more than ever my dwarfed and perverted
womanhood. In times like these every soul should do the work of a
fullgrown man. When I pass the gate of the celestials and good Peter
asks me where I wish to sit, I will say: 'Anywhere so that I am neither
a negro nor a woman. Confer on me, great angel, the glory of white
manhood, so that henceforth I may feel unlimited freedom.'"
In this year of 1859, Charles F. Hovey, a wealthy merchant of Boston, a
radical in religion and a noted reformer and philanthropist, left
$50,000 to be expended in securing equal rights for women, the
abolition of slavery, and other reforms, at the discretion of Wendell
Phillips, Wm. Lloyd Garrison and the other executors. As slavery was
abolished four years later, a considerable portion of this was used for
the cause of woman.
Early in December the anti-slavery committee insisted that Miss Anthony
should resume the management of their conventions, as they wished to
hold a series throughout the large cities of the State and had been
unable to find any one who could so successfully conduct them. Abby
Kelly Foster, though often critical and censorious, wrote her regarding
one of her speeches: "It is a timely, noble, clear-sighted and fearless
vindication of our platform. I want to say how delighted both Stephen
and myself are to see that you, though much younger than some others in
the anti-slavery school, have been able to appreciate so entirely the
genius of our enterprise." The distinguished George B. Cheever, of the
Church of the Puritans in New York, one of the few orthodox clergymen
who stood with the Abolitionists in those early days, wrote Miss
Anthony: "May God be with you and guide and bless you in your efforts.
That is the strength we all need and must have if we accomplish
anything good and permanent in this terrible conflict."
[Autograph: George B. Cheever]
A single instance will show how closely the question of woman's rights
was connected with that of anti-slavery in the popular mind. When Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Blackwell were at Fort William Henry, at the head of
Lake George, they spoke one evening in the hotel parlors. There were a
number of southerners present and many of them were delighted with the
meeting, whose doctrines were entirely new to them, and made liberal
contributions. The next day the speakers left in the stage with one of
these, Judge John J. Ormond and his two daughters, of Tuscaloosa, Ala.
He told Miss Anthony he had been instrumental in securing many laws
favorable to women in that state and it would be a pleasure to him to
see that their memorial was presented to the Alabama Legislature. When
she reached home she sent it to him with the following letter:
Enclosed is a copy of our woman's rights memorial. Will you give me
a full report of the action taken upon it?... I hope you and your
daughters arrived home safe. Say to the elder I shall be most happy
to hear from her when she shall have fairly inaugurated some noble
life work. I trust each will take to her soul a strong purpose and
that on her tombstone shall be engraved her own name and her own
noble deeds instead of merely the daughter of Judge Ormond, or the
relict of some Honorable or D. D. When true womanhood shall be
attained it will be spoken of and remembered for itself alone. My
kindest regards to them, accompanied with the most earnest desire
that they shall make truth and freedom the polar star of their
lives.
To this Judge Ormond made cordial reply, October 17, 1859:
DEAR MADAM: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your
letter of the 2d inst., with the papers enclosed. The petition to
the Legislature will be presented by the senator from this county
and I will apprise you of the action had upon it. My daughters are
obliged to you for the interest you take in them. To a certain
extent I agree with you as to the duties of woman. I am greatly in
favor of her elevation to her proper sphere as the equal of man as
to her civil rights, the security of her person, the right to her
property and, where there is a separation after marriage, her equal
right with the father to the custody and education of the children.
All this as a legislator I have endeavored to accomplish, making
large innovations upon the ancient common law. If I differ from you
as to her political rights, it is because I think that, from
political as well as moral considerations, she is unfit for, indeed
incapacitated from, the performance of most of the duties which are
now performed by men as members of the body politic; but there are
many avocations and professions now exclusively occupied by men
which women are as well, perhaps better fitted to fill. I hope
these will soon be thrown open to an active competition of both
sexes.
Then came the raid on Harper's Ferry and all its terrible consequences,
and in December Judge Ormond wrote again:
MADAM: In redemption of my promise to tell you the fate of the
woman's rights petition to our Legislature, I have the honor to
inform you that it was virtually rejected, being laid on the table.
I interested a distinguished member of our Senate in its
presentation and, in addition, wrote a letter which under ordinary
circumstances would have insured its respectful consideration. But
after your petition was forwarded came the treasonable and
murderous invasion of John Brown. The atrocity of this act,
countenanced as it manifestly was by a great party at the North,
has extinguished our last spark of fraternal feeling. Whilst we are
all living under a Constitution which secures to us our right to
our slaves, the results of which are in truth more beneficial to
the whole North, and especially to the New England States, than to
us, you are secretly plotting murderous inroads into our peaceful
country and endeavoring to incite our slaves to cut the throats of
our wives and children. Can you believe that this state of things
can last? We now look upon you as our worst enemies and are ready
to separate from you. Measures are in progress as far as
practicable to establish non-intercourse with you and to proscribe
all articles of northern manufacture or origin, including New
England teachers. We can live without you; it remains to be seen
how you will get along without us. You will probably find that
fanaticism is not an element of national wealth or conducive to the
happiness or comfort of the people.
In conclusion, let me assure you this is written more in sorrow
than in anger. I am not a politician and have always been a
strenuous friend of the Union. I am now in favor of a separation,
unless you immediately retrace your steps and give the necessary
guarantees by the passage of appropriate laws that you will
faithfully abide by the compromises of the Constitution, by which
alone the slaveholding States can with honor or safety remain in
the Union. But that this will be done, I have very little hope, as
"madness seems to rule the hour;" and as you have thus constituted
yourselves our enemies, you must not be surprised at finding that
we are yours.
[Footnote 26: A critic said of this: "It is the most faultless
presentation of the question to which I have listened. Mr. Curtis takes
the broadest view of the subject, his logic in its sweep is convincing
as demonstration itself. His satire is cutting, but not bitter; his wit
keen as a Damascus blade. He came out bravely for the suffrage." For
forty years the advocates of equal rights have been using this lecture
as one of their strongest documents.]
[Footnote 27: By an odd coincidence, while this chapter was being
written a letter came to Miss Anthony from Dean M. Jenkins, of Detroit,
which said: "Enclosed please find my check to help on the good work to
which you have devoted your life. You see I have almost pardoned you
for saying, 'I have never quite forgiven you for marrying Helen Philleo
and taking her away from the suffrage work.' In place of one worker you
now have four. Mrs. Jenkins made a convert of me. Our daughter, Mrs.
Spalding, is as earnest a worker for the suffrage cause as her mother,
and our son is a defender of his mother's principles...."]
[Footnote 28: He had become temporarily insane on account of the
persecution he suffered in connection with the John Brown raid.]
CHAPTER XII.
RIFT IN COMMON LAW--DIVORCE QUESTION.
1860.
During the first decade of its history the movement toward securing a
larger liberty for women was known by the comprehensive term "woman's
rights." At its inception, under the English common law which
everywhere prevailed, woman was legally a part of man's belongings, one
of his chattels. Restrained by custom from speaking in public or
expressing herself through the newspapers, she had been silent under
the oppression of ages. When at length she found her voice there were
so many wrongs to be righted that she scarcely knew which first should
receive attention. Those early meetings could not be called woman
suffrage conventions, for many who advocated all the other reforms
which they considered either disbelieved in or were indifferent to the
franchise. It was only the Anthonys, Stantons, Stones, Roses,
Garrisons, Phillips of this great movement for woman's liberty who were
philosophical enough to see that the right of suffrage was the
underlying principle of the whole question; so it was not for many
years, not until practically all other demands had been granted, that
they were finally resolved into a suffrage organization, pure and
simple. At the beginning of 1860 the laws relating to women, as briefly
stated by the great jurist, David Dudley Field, were as follows:
The elective franchise is confined entirely to men. A married woman
can not sue for her services, as all she earns legally belongs to
the husband, whereas his earnings belong to himself, and the wife
legally has no interest in them. Where children have property and
both parents are living, the father is the guardian. In case of the
wife's death without a will, the husband is entitled to all her
personal property and to a life interest in the whole of her real
estate to the entire exclusion of the children, even though this
property may have come to her through a former husband and the
children of that marriage still be living. If the husband die
without a will, the widow is entitled to one-third of the personal
property and to a life interest in one-third only of the real
estate. In case a wife be personally injured, either in reputation
by slander, or in body by accident, compensation must be recovered
in the joint name of herself and her husband, and when recovered it
belongs to him. On the other hand, the wife has no legal claim in a
similar case in regard to the husband. The father may by deed or
will appoint a guardian for the minor children, who may thus be
taken entirely away from the jurisdiction of the mother at his
death. Where both parents are dead, the children shall be given to
the nearest of kin and, as between relatives of the same degree of
consanguinity, males shall be preferred. No married woman can act
as administrator in any case.
One can not but ask why, under such laws, women ever would marry, but
in those days virtually all occupations were closed to them and the
vast majority were compelled to marry for support. In the few cases
where women had their own means, they married because of the public
sentiment which considered it a serious reproach to remain a spinster
and rigorously forbade to her all the pleasures and independence that
are freely accorded to the unmarried woman of today. And they married
because it is natural for women to marry, and all laws and all customs,
all restrictions and all freedom, never will circumvent nature.
On February 3 and 4, 1860, the State Woman's Rights Convention was held
at Albany in Association Hall, an interesting and successful meeting.
At its close, in a letter to Mrs. Wright, Miss Anthony said: "Mr. Anson
Bingham, chairman of the judiciary committee, will bring in a radical
report in favor of all our claims, but previous to doing so he wishes
our strongest arguments made before the committee and says Mrs. Stanton
must come. I wish you would slip over there and make her feel that the
salvation of the Empire State, at least of the women in it, depends
upon her bending all her powers to move the hearts of our law-givers at
this time. I should go there myself this very night but I must watch
and encourage friends here." Mrs. Stanton replied to her urgent appeal:
"I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says
cross the Alps, they are crossed. You must come here and start me on
the right train of thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is
wanted is everything in getting up the right document."
The readers of history never will be able to separate Miss Anthony's
addresses from Mrs. Stanton's; they themselves scarcely could do it.
Some of the strongest ever written by either were prepared without the
assistance of the other, but most of their resolutions, memorials and
speeches were the joint work of both. Miss Anthony always said, "Mrs.
Stanton is my sentence maker, my pen artist." No one can excel Miss
Anthony in logic of thought or vigor of expression; no one is so
thoroughly supplied with facts, statistics and arguments, but she finds
it difficult and distasteful to put them into written form. When,
however, some one else has taken her wonderful stock of material and
reduced it to shape, she is a perfect critic. Her ear is as carefully
attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician
to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a
sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or
phrase needed to give it poise and strength.
Mrs. Stanton had a large house and a constantly increasing family,
making it exceedingly difficult to find time for literary work; so when
a state paper was to be written, Miss Anthony would go to Seneca Falls.
After the children were in bed, the two women would sit up far into the
night arranging material and planning their work. The next day Mrs.
Stanton would seek the quietest spot in the house and begin writing,
while Miss Anthony would give the children their breakfast, start the
older ones to school, make the dessert for dinner and trundle the
babies up and down the walk, rushing in occasionally to help the writer
out of a vortex. Many an article which will be read with delight by
future generations was thus prepared. Mrs. Stanton describes these
occasions in her charming Reminiscences:
It was mid such exhilarating scenes that Miss Anthony and I wrote
addresses for temperance, anti-slavery, educational and woman's
rights conventions. Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals,
petitions, agricultural reports and constitutional arguments, for
we made it a matter of conscience to accept every invitation to
speak on every question, in order to maintain woman's right to do
so. It is often said by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she
has been my good angel, always pushing and guiding me to work. With
the cares of a large family, perhaps I might in time, like too many
women, have become wholly absorbed in a narrow selfishness, had not
my friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary
labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform,
complacently deciding questions in which women had an equal
interest without an equal voice, readily roused me to a
determination to throw a fire-brand in the midst of their assembly.
Thus, whenever I saw that stately Quaker girl coming across my lawn
I knew that some happy convocation of the sons of Adam were to be
set by the ears with our appeals or resolutions. The little
portmanteau stuffed with facts was opened and there we had what
Rev. John Smith and Hon. Richard Roe had said, false interpretation
of Bible texts, statistics of women robbed of their property, shut
out of some college, half-paid for their work, reports of some
disgraceful trial--injustice enough to turn any woman's thoughts
from stockings and puddings. Then we would get out our pens and
write articles for papers, a petition to the Legislature, letters
to the faithful here and there, stir up the women in Ohio,
Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, call on the Lily, the Una, the
Liberator, the Standard, to remember our wrongs. We never met
without issuing a pronunciamento on some question.
In thought and sympathy we were one, and in the division of labor
we exactly complemented each other. In writing we did better work
together than either could do alone. While she is slow and
analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the
better writer, she the better critic. She supplied the facts and
statistics, I the philosophy and rhetoric, and together we made
arguments which have stood unshaken by the storms of nearly fifty
long years.[29]
In 1878 Theodore Tilton gave this graphic description: "These two
women, sitting together in their parlors, have for the last thirty
years been diligent forgers of all manner of projectiles, from
fireworks to thunderbolts, and have hurled them with unexpected
explosion into the midst of all manner of educational, reformatory,
religious and political assemblies, sometimes to the pleasant surprise
and half welcome of the members; more often to the bewilderment and
prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the
gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious
incendiaries in the whole country; nor will they themselves deny the
charge. In fact, this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum
for keeping up what Daniel Webster called 'the rub-a-dub of
agitation.'"
On March 19, 1860, Mrs. Stanton presented her address to a joint
session of the Legislature at Albany, occupying the speaker's desk and
facing as magnificent an audience as ever assembled in the old Capitol.
It was a grand plea for a repeal of the unjust and oppressive laws
relating to women, and it was universally said that its eloquence could
not have been surpassed by any man in the United States. A bill was
then in the hands of the judiciary committee, simply an amendment of
the Property Law of 1848, to which Andrew J. Colvin objected as not
liberal enough. Miss Anthony gave him a very radical bill just
introduced into the Massachusetts Legislature, which he examined
carefully, adding several clauses to make it still broader. It was
accepted by the committee, composed of Messrs. Hammond, Ramsey and
Colvin, reported to the Senate and passed by that body in February. It
was concurred in by the Assembly the day following Mrs. Stanton's
speech, and signed by Governor Edwin D. Morgan.[30] This new law
declared in brief:
Any property, real and personal, which any married woman now owns,
or which may come to her by descent, etc., shall be her sole and
separate property, not subject to control or interference by her
husband.
Any married woman may bargain, sell, etc., carry on any trade or
perform any services on her own account, and her earnings shall be
her sole and separate property and may be used or invested by her
in her own name.
A married woman may buy, sell, make contracts, etc., and if the
husband has willfully abandoned her, or is an habitual drunkard, or
insane, or a convict, his consent shall not be necessary.
A married woman may sue and be sued, bringing action in her own
name for damages and the money recovered shall be her sole
property.
Every married woman shall be joint guardian of her children with
her husband, with equal powers, etc., regarding them.
At the decease of the husband the wife shall have the same property
rights as the husband would have at her death.
This remarkable action, which might be termed almost a legal
revolution, was the result of nearly ten years of laborious and
persistent effort on the part of a little handful of women who, by
constant agitation through conventions, meetings and petitions, had
created a public sentiment which stood back of the Legislature and gave
it sanction to do this act of justice. While all these women worked
earnestly and conscientiously to bring about this great reform, there
was but one, during the entire period, who gave practically every month
of every year to this purpose, and that one was Susan B. Anthony. In
storm and sunshine, in heat and cold, in seasons of encouragement and
in times of doubt, criticism and contumely, she never faltered, never
stopped. Going with her petition from door to door, only to have them
shut in her face by the women she was trying to help; subjecting
herself to the jeers and insults of men whom she need never have met
except for this mission; held up by the press to the censure and
ridicule of thousands who never had seen or heard her; misrepresented
and abused above all other women because she stood in the front of the
battle and offered herself a vicarious sacrifice--can the women of New
York, can the women of the nation, ever be sufficiently grateful to
this one who, willingly and unflinchingly, did the hardest pioneer work
ever performed by mortal?
Miss Anthony divided the winter of 1860 between the anti-slavery and
the woman's cause. As she had very little on hand (!) she arranged
another course of lectures for Rochester, inviting A.D. Mayo, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Thomas Starr King and others. These speakers were in the
employ of the lyceum bureau, but were so restricted by it that they
could give their great _reform_, lectures only under private
management. At the close of Emerson's he said to Miss Anthony that he
had been instrumental in establishing the lyceum for the purpose of
securing a freedom of speech not permitted in the churches, but he
believed that now he would have to do as much to break it up, because
of its conservatism, and organize some new scheme which would permit
men and women to utter their highest thought. She was in the habit of
arranging many of her woman's rights meetings in different towns when
Phillips or others were to be there for a lyceum lecture, thus securing
them for a speech the following afternoon.
[Autograph: Cordially yours, T.S. King]
A letter received this winter from her sister Mary is interesting as
showing that the belief in equal rights for women was quite as strong
in other members of the family. She had been requested by the board of
education to fill the place of one of the principals who was ill, and
gives the following account:
I was willing to do the best I could to help out, so the next
morning, with fear and trembling, I faced the 150 young men and
women, many of whom, like their fathers and mothers before them,
felt that no woman had the ability to occupy such a place. All went
well until it was noised about that I should expect as much salary
as had been paid the principal. To establish such a precedent would
never do, so a man from a neighboring town was sent for post-haste,
but the moment he began his administration the boys rebelled. After
slates and books had been thrown from the window and I had been
obliged to guard him from their snowballs on his way home, he
decided teaching, in that place at least, was not his "sphere" and
refused to return.
Next morning the committee asked me to resume the management. I
answered: "No person can fill the place of a long-tried teacher,
but I in a measure succeeded--yet not one of you would entertain
the idea of paying me as much as the principal. You sent to another
town for a man, who has made an absolute failure, and yet you do
not hesitate to pay him the full salary for the time he was here.
If you will be as just to me, I will resume the work and do my
best--on any other conditions I must decline." They agreed to the
proposition, I finished the term and for the first time on record a
woman received a principal's salary!
A little later Miss Mary continues the story:
You know the principal of Number Ten has been ill nearly two
months. I asked him if Miss Hayden, who took his place, was to
receive his salary. He replied: "Do you think after the money has
been audited to me, I ought to turn around and give it all to her?"
Said I: "If the board are willing to pay you $72 a month while you
are sick and pay her the same, all right; but if only one is to
receive that salary, I say, and most emphatically, she is the one."
He wanted to know if I was not aware that mine was the only case
where such a thing had been done in Rochester. I told him I was
heartily glad I had been the means of having justice done for once,
and was really in hopes other women teachers would follow my
example and suffer themselves no longer to be duped.
Miss Hayden however was obliged to accept $25 a month for doing exactly
the work for which the man received $72 during all his illness. To keep
her from making trouble, the board gave her a small present with the
understanding that it was not to be considered as salary. A short time
afterwards Miss Mary wrote again: "A woman teacher on a salary of $20 a
month has just been ill for a week and another was employed to take her
place; when she recovered, she was obliged to have the supply teacher's
salary deducted from her own. So I posted down to the superintendent's
office and had another decidedly plain talk. He owned that it was
unjust but said there was no help for it."
In the winter of 1860, Henry Ward Beecher delivered his great woman's
rights speech at Cooper Institute, New York. At that time his name was
a power in the whole world and his masterly exposition of the rights of
women is still used as one of the best suffrage leaflets. Miss Anthony
tells in her diary of meeting Tilton and of his amusing account of the
struggle they had to get this speech published in the Independent. Her
little visits to New York and Boston always inspired her with fresh
courage, for here she would meet Theodore Parker, Frothingham, Cheever,
Chapin, Beecher, Greeley, Phillips, Garrison, the great spirits of that
age, and all in perfect sympathy with what she represented.
The Tenth National Woman's Rights Convention assembled in Cooper
Institute, May 10, 1860. Miss Anthony called it to order and read a
full and interesting report of the work and progress of the past year.
The usual eloquent speeches were made by Phillips, Mrs. Rose, Rev.
Beriah Green, Mary Grew, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the poet,
and others. The warmest gratitude was expressed "toward Susan B.
Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and executive ability the
recent laws for women were secured." A hearty laugh was enjoyed at the
expense of the man who shouted from the audience, "She'd a great deal
better have been at home taking care of her husband and children." The
proceedings were pleasant and harmonious, but next morning the whole
atmosphere was changed and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did it with a little
set of resolutions declaring that, under certain conditions, divorce
was justifiable. She supported them by an address which for logic of
argument, force of expression and beauty of diction never has been,
never can be surpassed. No such thoughts ever before had been put into
words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the
wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat
breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, burst into
long-continued applause:
We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past but from the
solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of
the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mold of ages,
no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal
sons and daughters of the great I Am--rightful heirs of the joys of
time and joint heirs of the glories of eternity. If in marriage
either party claim the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother
of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one
long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there
is no Moses, Christ or Paul--no Michael Angelo, Beethoven or
Shakespeare--no Columbus or Galileo--no Locke or Bacon. Behold
those mighty minds so grand, so comprehensive--they themselves are
_our_ great works! Into you, O sons of earth, goes all of us that
is immortal. In you center our very life, our hopes, our intensest
love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing
that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious
resurrection of thought and life.
This speech set the convention on fire. Antoinette Blackwell spoke
strongly in opposition, Mrs. Rose eloquently in favor. Mr. Phillips was
not satisfied even with the motion to lay the resolutions on the table
but moved to expunge them from the journal of the convention, which, he
said, had nothing to do with laws except those that rested unequally
upon women and the laws of divorce did not. It seems incredible that
Mr. Phillips could have taken this position, when by the law the wife
had no legal claim upon either property or children in case of divorce,
and, even though the innocent party, must go forth into the world
homeless and childless; in the majority of States she could not sue for
divorce in her own name nor could she claim enough of the community
property to pay the costs of the suit. Miss Anthony said:
I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion. It would be contrary
to all parliamentary usage that when the speeches which advocated
them are published in the proceedings, the resolutions should not
be. I wholly dissent from the point that this question does not
belong on our platform. Marriage has ever been a one-sided
contract, resting most unequally upon the sexes. Woman never has
been consulted; her wish never has been taken into consideration as
regards the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment
and religion, woman never has been thought of other than as a piece
of property to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. This
very hour, by our statute books, by our so-called enlightened
Christian civilization, she has no voice whatever in saying what
shall be the basis of this relation. She must accept marriage as
man proffers it, or not at all.
And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is
perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we
complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the marriage
laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her children
and make her the slave of the man she marries. I hope, therefore,
the resolutions will be allowed to go out to the public, that there
may be a fair report of the ideas which actually have been
presented here and that they may not be left to the mercy of the
press.
Abby Hopper Gibbons supported Mr. Phillips, but Mr. Garrison favored
the publication of the resolutions. The motion to expunge them from the
minutes was lost.
[Autograph:
Yours affectionately
Ernestine L. Rose]
This discussion stirred the country from center to circumference, and
all the prominent newspapers had editorials favoring one side or the
other. It produced the first unpleasantness in the ranks of those who
had stood together for the past decade. Greeley launched thunderbolts
against the right of divorce under any circumstances, and Mrs. Stanton
replied to him in his own paper. Lucy Stone, who just before the
convention had written to Mrs. Stanton, "That is a great, grand
question, may God touch your lips," now took sides with Phillips. To
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony came letters from far and wide, both
approving and condemning. Mrs. William H. Seward and her sister, Mrs.
Worden, wrote that it not only was a germane question to be discussed
at the convention but that there could be no such thing as equal rights
with the existing conditions of marriage and divorce. From Lucretia
Mott came the encouraging words: "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." Parker Pillsbury sent a breezy note:
"What a pretty kettle of hot water you tumbled into at New York! Your
marriage and divorce speeches and resolutions you must have learned in
the school of a Wollstonecraft or a Sophie Arnaut. You broke the very
heart of the portly Evening Post and nearly drove the Tribune to the
grave."
For the censure of the world at large they did not care, but Phillips'
defection almost broke their hearts. He was their ideal of the brave
and the true and always before they had had his approval and assistance
in every undertaking. Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton: "It is not for
you or for me, any more than for Mr. Phillips, to dictate our platform;
that must be fixed by the majority. He is evidently greatly distressed.
I find my only comfort in that glorious thought of Theodore Parker:
'All this is but the noise and dust of the wagon bringing the harvest
home.' These things must be, and happy are they who see clearly to the
end." And to her friend Amy Post: "It is wonderful what letters of
approval we are receiving, some of them from the noblest women of the
State, not connected in any way with our great movement but
sympathizing fully with our position on the question of divorce. I only
regret that history may not see Wendell Phillips first and grandest in
the recognition of this great truth; but he is a man and can not put
himself in the position of a wife, can not feel what she does under the
present marriage code. And yet in his relations to his own wife he is
the embodiment of chivalry, tenderness and love."
In a letter to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton said: "We are right. My
reason, my experience, my soul proclaim it. Our religion, laws,
customs, all are founded on the idea that woman was made for man. I am
a woman, and I can feel in every nerve where my deepest wrongs are
hidden. The men know we have struck a blow at their greatest
stronghold. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth I have
uttered. One word of thanks from a suffering woman outweighs with me
the howls of Christendom."
Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony wrote Mr. Phillips
for money from the Hovey fund to publish the report of the convention
containing these very resolutions, and he sent it accompanied with a
cordial letter. With his generous disposition he soon recognized the
fact that it was eminently proper to agitate this question of divorce,
in order to make it possible for a woman to secure release from a
habitual drunkard, or a husband who treated her with personal violence
or willfully abandoned her, and to have some claim on their property
and a right to their children, if she were the innocent party. Before
three months he wrote Miss Anthony, "Go ahead, you are doing grandly,"
and he spoke many times afterwards on their platform. During the height
of this discussion Miss Anthony was in Albany and Rev. Mayo, thinking
to annihilate her, said: "You are not married, you have no business to
be discussing marriage." "Well, Mr. Mayo," she replied, "you are not a
slave, suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."
As a result of this agitation a little clique of women in Boston, led
by Caroline H. Dall, announced that they would hold a convention which
should not be open to free discussion but should be "limited to the
subjects of Education, Vocation and Civil Position." They drew to
themselves a small body of conservatives and it was thought might start
a new movement, but the meeting had no permanent results. Parker
Pillsbury said of it: "With the exception of Phillips, no soul kindled
with volcanic fire was permitted a solitary spark. O, such a meeting!
Beautiful as parlor theatricals, but as a bold shriek for freedom or a
protest against tyrant laws, not a sparrow on the housetop could have
been more harmless." Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "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."
In June she and Mrs. Stanton went to a large meeting of Progressive
Friends at Waterloo, where the latter read this same speech on divorce
and then, to quote Miss Anthony's own words, "As usual when she had
fired her gun she went home and left me to finish the battle." In this
case it lasted several days, but Mrs. Stanton knew she could count upon
her friend to defend her to the last ditch. Miss Anthony was always on
the skirmish line. She would interview the married women who could not
leave home and children, get their approval of her plans and then go to
the front. Once or twice a year she would gather her hosts for a big
battle, but the rest of the time she did picket duty, acted as scout
and penetrated alone the enemy's country. Between meetings she would
find her way home, make over her old dresses and on rare occasions get
a new one. This she called "looking after the externals." Then, as her
mother was an invalid, she would clean the house from top to bottom and
do a vast amount of necessary work.
In her diary are many such entries as these: "Washed all the shutters.
Took up the carpet this morning.... Whitewashed the kitchen today....
Helped the girl wash this morning; in the afternoon ironed six shirts,
and started for New York at 4 o'clock. Was a little bit tired." At one
time, with the help of a seamstress, she made fourteen shirts,
stitching by hand all the collars, bosoms and wristbands, and, as this
woman had worked in the Troy laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to
clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long
enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little
journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty
scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom.
Thus the records run:
Crowded house at Port Byron. 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.... Very many Abolitionists have yet to
learn the A B C of woman's rights.... The Boston Congregationalist
has a scurrilous article. Shall write the editor.... It is
discouraging that no man does right for right's sake, but
everything to serve party.... I find such comfort in Aurora Leigh
when I am sorely pressed.... Heard Stephen A. Douglas today; a low
spectacle for both eye and ear.... Gave my lecture on "The True
Woman" at Penn Yan teachers' institute. Some strange gentleman
present supported my plea for physical culture for girls.... Had a
talk with Frederick Douglass. He seems to have no faith in simple
and abstract right.... Lost patience this morning over a lamp and
suffered vastly therefor. Why can I not learn self-control?...
Company came and found me out in the garden picking peas and
blackberries--and hoopless.... A fine-looking young colored man on
train presented me with a bouquet. Can't tell whether he knew me or
only felt my sympathy.... Am reading Buckle's History of
Civilization and Darwin's Descent of Man. Have finished his Origin
of Species. Pillsbury has just given me Emerson's poems....
Miss Anthony did not fail to put aside everything long enough to attend
the State Teachers' Convention at Syracuse. The right of women to take
part had now become so well established that it needed no further
defense, but she still fought for equal pay for equal services, and
equal advantages of education for colored children, and each year found
her views gaining a stronger support from both men and women. After
this convention she continued her meetings, anti-slavery and woman's
rights, and during the summer visited again her birthplace at Adams,
Mass., writing home:
Found grandfather working in the oat field, just think of it,
ninety-and-a-half years old! But in honor of my arrival he remained
home and visited all the afternoon. How hard the women here work,
and how destitute they are of all the conveniences. It is perfectly
barbarous when they have plenty of money. I borrowed a calico dress
and sunbonnet and with the cousins climbed to the very top of Old
Greylock. Later I visited the "Daniel House," as grandfather calls
our old home. I rambled through the orchard, but the spice-apple
tree is dead and the little tree in the corner that we children
loved so well. I visited the old spring up in the pasture, and
thought how many times the tired feet of mother and grandmother had
trod those paths--and the little brook runs over the stones as
merry and beautiful as ever.
From here she went to Boston to attend a meeting of the Hovey fund
committee and urged them to establish a "depository" at Albany with
Lydia Mott in charge, which was done. This depot of supplies of
literature, etc., for the anti-slavery cause, and central meeting place
for its friends, was continued throughout the war. The Mott sisters,
cousins of James, lovely and cultured Quaker women, had a little home
in Maiden Lane and kept a gentlemen's furnishing store, making by hand
the ruffled shirtbosoms and other fine linen. As their home had been so
long the center for the reformers of the day, the committee were glad
to put Lydia in charge of this depository, at a small salary, and she
conducted an extensive correspondence for them during several years.
Miss Anthony stayed with her till everything was arranged and in good
running order. In July she had received the following invitation:
By a unanimous vote of the Union Agricultural Society of Dundee a
resolution was passed to tender you an invitation to deliver the
annual address at our next fair. We know it is a departure from
established usage, but your experience as one of a brave band of
radical reformers will have taught you that only by gradual steps
and continued efforts can the prejudices of custom be overcome and
the rights of humanity maintained. Woman's rights are coming to be
respected more and more every year, and we hope you will aid us in
demonstrating that a woman can deliver as profitable an address at
an agricultural fair as can a lord of creation....
Yours respectfully, WILLIAM HOUSE, _Secretary, per_ D. S. BRUNER.
To refuse such an opportunity was not to be thought of, so she
accepted, and then wrote Mrs. Stanton, who answered: "Come on and we
will grind out the speech. I shall expect to get the inspiration,
thoughts and facts from you, and will agree to dress all the children
you bring."
She found a cordial welcome when she reached Dundee, October 17. It
rained so hard her address was deferred till the next day, as it had to
be delivered out of doors, so she visited the "art" and "culinary"
departments of the fair, and records in her diary: "I have just put an
extra paragraph in my speech on bedquilts and bad cooking." Her stage
was a big lumber wagon, and her desk the melodeon of James G. Clark,
the noted singer and Abolitionist, who held an umbrella over her head
to keep off the rain. The diary says: "More than 2,000 feet were
planted in the mud, but I had a grand listening to the very end." The
speech was a great success and was published in full in the Dundee
Record, occupying the entire front page. It was a fine exposition of
modern methods of farming and a strong plea for beautifying the home,
giving the children books and music and making life so pleasant they
would not want to leave the country for the city. These ideas at that
time were new and attracted much attention and favorable comment. This
was the first instance of a woman's making an address on such an
occasion.
At the close of 1860 an incident occurred which attracted wide
attention and strikingly illustrated Miss Anthony's unflinching courage
and firm persistence when she felt she was right. One evening in
December she was in Albany at the depository with Lydia Mott when a
lady, heavily veiled, entered and in a long, confidential talk told her
story, which in brief was as follows: She was the sister of a United
States senator and of a prominent lawyer, and in her younger days was
principal of the academy and had written several books. She married a
distinguished member of the Massachusetts Senate and they had three
children. Having discovered that her husband was unfaithful to her and
confronted him with the proofs, he was furious and threw her down
stairs, and thereafter was very abusive. When she threatened to expose
him, he had her shut up in an insane asylum, a very easy thing for
husbands to do in those days. She was there a year and a half, but at
length, through a writ of habeas corpus, was released and taken to the
home of her brother. Naturally she longed to see her children and the
husband permitted the son to visit her a few weeks. When she had to
give him up she begged for the thirteen-year-old daughter, who was
allowed to remain for two weeks, and then the father demanded her
return. The mother pleaded for longer time but was refused. She prayed
her brother to interfere but he answered: "It is of no use for you to
say another word. The child belongs by law to the father and it is your
place to submit. If you make any more trouble about it we'll send you
back to the asylum."
Then in her desperation she took the child and fled from the house,
finding refuge with a Quaker family, where she stayed until she learned
that her hiding-place was discovered, and now as a last resort she came
to these women. They assured the unhappy mother that they would help
her and, upon making careful inquiry among her friends, found that,
while all believed her sane, no one was willing to take her part
because of the prominence of her brothers and husband. Finally it was
decided that Miss Anthony should go with the mother and child to New
York and put them in a safe place, so they were directed to disguise
themselves and be at the train on Christmas afternoon. Miss Anthony
went on board and soon saw a woman in an old shawl, dilapidated bonnet
and green goggles, accompanied by a poorly dressed child, and she knew
that so far all was well, but she found the woman in a terrible state
of nervousness. She had met her brother coming out of another car where
he had just placed his young son to return to boarding-school, after a
happy vacation at home, while his sister with her child was fleeing
like a criminal; but fortunately he had not recognized her.
Miss Anthony and her charges reached New York at 10 o'clock at night
and went through snow and slush to a hotel but were refused admittance
because it did not take women "unaccompanied by a gentleman." They made
their weary way to another, only to be met with a similar refusal.
Finally she thought of an acquaintance who had had a wretched
experience with a bad husband and was now divorced, and she felt that
sympathy would certainly impel this woman to give them shelter. When
they reached the house they found her keeping boarders and she said all
would leave if they learned she was "harboring a runaway wife." It was
then midnight. They went in the cold arid darkness to a hotel on
Broadway, but here the excuse was made that the house was full. Miss
Anthony's patience had reached its limit and she declared: "I know that
is not so. You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this
office all night." The clerk threatened to call the police. "Very
well," was the reply, "we will sit here till they come and take us to
the station." At last he gave them a room without a fire, and there,
cold, wet and exhausted, they remained till morning. Then they started
out again on foot, as they had not enough money left to hire a
carriage.
They went to Mrs. Rose but she could not accommodate them; then to Abby
Hopper Gibbons, who sent them to Elizabeth F. Ellet, saying if they
could not find quarters to come back and she would care for them. Mrs.
Ellet was not at home. All day they went from place to place but no one
was willing to accept the responsibility of sheltering them, and at
night, utterly worn out, they returned to Mrs. Gibbons. She promised to
keep the mother and child until other arrangements could be effected,
and Miss Anthony left them there and took the 10 o'clock train back to
Albany. She arrived toward morning, tired out in mind and body, but
soon was made comfortable by the ministrations of her faithful friend
Lydia.
[Autograph: Abby Hopper Gibbons]
It was not long before the family became convinced that Miss Anthony
knew the whereabouts of mother and child and then began a siege of
persecution. She had at this time commenced that never-to-be-forgotten
series of anti-slavery conventions which were mobbed in every town from
Buffalo to Albany. In the midst of all this excitement and danger, she
was constantly receiving threats from the brothers that they would have
her arrested on the platform. They said she had broken the laws and
they would make her pay the penalty; that their sister was an "ugly"
woman and nobody could live with her. To this she replied: "I have
heard there was Indian blood in your family; perhaps your sister has
got a little of it as well as yourselves. I think you would not allow
your children to be taken away from you, law or no law. There is no
reason or justice in a woman's submitting to such outrages, and I
propose to defy the law and you also."
If she had been harassed only by these men, it would have caused her no
especial worry, but letters and telegrams from friends poured in urging
her to reveal the hiding-place and, most surprising of all, both
Garrison and Phillips wrote that she had abducted a man's child and
must surrender it! Mr. Phillips remonstrated: "Let us urge you,
therefore, at once to advise and insist upon this woman's returning to
her relatives. Garrison concurs with me fully and earnestly in this
opinion, thinking that our movement's repute for good sense should not
be compromised by any such mistake." In a letter from Mr. Garrison
covering six pages of foolscap, he argued: "Our identification with the
woman's rights movement and the anti-slavery cause is such that we
ought not unnecessarily involve them in any hasty and ill-judged, no
matter how well-meant, efforts of our own. We, at least, owe to them
this--that if for any act of ours we are dragged before courts we ought
to be able to show that we acted discreetly as well as with good
intentions." Both men spoke kindly and affectionately but they were
unable to view the question from a mother's or even from a woman's
standpoint. Miss Anthony replied to them:
I can not give you a satisfactory statement on paper, but I feel
the strongest assurance that all I have done is wholly right. Had I
turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself. In all those
hours of aid and sympathy for that outraged woman I remembered only
that I was a human being. That I should stop to ask if my act would
injure the reputation of any movement never crossed my mind, nor
will I now 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.
At the anti-slavery convention in Albany Mr. Garrison pleaded with her
to give up the child and insisted that she was entirely in the wrong.
He said: "Don't you know the law of Massachusetts gives the father the
entire guardianship and control of the children?" "Yes, I know it," she
replied, "and 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?" "Yes, I do." "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." It was impossible for even such great men as
Garrison and Phillips to feel for a wronged and outraged woman as they
could for a wronged and outraged black man. Miss Anthony wrote at this
time: "Only to think that in this great trial I should be hounded by
the two men whom I adore and reverence above all others!" Through all
this ordeal her father sustained her position, saying: "My child, I
think you have done absolutely right, but don't put a word on paper or
make a statement to any one that you are not prepared to face in court.
Legally you are wrong, but morally you are right, and I will stand by
you."
Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, author of Women of the Revolution and other
works, cared for and protected the unfortunates, obtained sewing for
the mother and helped her to live in peaceful seclusion for a year. She
was placed in the family of a physician who watched her closely and
testified, as did all connected with her, that she was perfectly sane.
According to her letters still in existence, the husband took
possession of her funds in bank, drew all the money due to her from her
publishers and forbade them to pay her any more from the sale of her
books, as he had a legal right to do. In this extremity one of the
brothers sent her some money through Miss Mott, who stood as firm as
Miss Anthony in the face of threat and persecution. At length, feeling
safe, the mother let the little girl go to Sunday-school alone and at
the door of the church she was suddenly snatched up, put into a close
carriage and in a few hours placed in possession of the father. The
mother and her friends made every effort to secure the child, but the
law was on the side of the father and they never succeeded.
[Footnote 29: At Miss Anthony's request only such speeches are
published in the appendix of this biography as were prepared entirely
without the co-operation of Mrs. Stanton.]
[Footnote 30: In a letter to Miss Anthony regretting that no action was
taken on the suffrage question, Mr. Colvin wrote: "The more reflection
I give, the more my mind becomes convinced that in a republican
government we have no right to deny woman the privileges she claims.
Besides, the moral element which those privileges would bring into
action would, in my judgment, have a powerful influence in perpetuating
our form of government."]
CHAPTER XIII.
MOB EXPERIENCE----CIVIL WAR.
1861--1862.
The beginning of 1861 found the country in a state approaching
demoralization. Lincoln had received a majority of the electoral vote
but far from a majority of the popular vote. The victory was so narrow
that the Republicans did not feel themselves strong enough for
aggressive action, and the party was composed of a number of diverse
elements not yet sufficiently united to agree upon a distinctive
policy. Its one cohesive force was the principle of no further
extension of slavery, but there was no thought among its leaders of any
interference with this institution in the States where it already
existed. They accepted the interpretation of the Constitution which
declared that it sanctioned and protected slavery, but were determined
that the Territories should be admitted into the Union as free States.
While many of them were in favor of emancipation, they expected that in
some way this question would be settled without recourse to extreme
measures, and they feared the effect, not only on the South but on the
North, of the forcible language and radical demands of the
Abolitionists.
The latter were roused to desperation. Never for an instant did they
accept the doctrine that the North should be satisfied merely by the
prevention of any further spread of slavery; they believed the system
should be exterminated root and branch. They were angered at the
reserved and dispassionate language of Lincoln and alarmed at the
threats of the secession of the South, which must result either in
putting it forever beyond the power of the government to interfere with
slavery, or in terrorizing it into making such concessions as would
enable the slave power to intrench itself still more strongly under the
protection of the Constitution.
At this critical moment, therefore, the Abolitionists put forth every
effort to rouse public sentiment to the impending dangers. They
gathered their forces and sent them throughout New England, New York
and the Western States, bearing upon their banners the watchwords, "No
Compromise with Slaveholders. Immediate and Unconditional
Emancipation." One detachment, under the intrepid leadership of Susan
B. Anthony, arranged a series of meetings for New York in the winter of
1861. This party was composed of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rev. Samuel J.
May, Rev. Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell and Stephen S. Foster; but one
after another gave out and went home, while Miss Anthony still remained
at the helm. The series began at Buffalo, January 3, in St. James Hall.
The mob was ready for them and, led by ex-Justice George Hinson and
Birdseye Wilcox, hissed, hooted, yelled and stamped, making it utterly
impossible for the speakers to be heard. Prominent among the disturbers
were young Horatio Seymour and a son of ex-President Fillmore. The
police refused to obey the orders of a Republican mayor and joined in
the efforts of the mob, which held carnival two entire days, finally
crowding upon the platform and taking possession; and in the midst of
the melee the gas was turned off. Miss Anthony stood her ground,
however, until lights were brought in, and then herself declared the
meeting adjourned.
In towns where there were not enough people to create a disturbance,
the meetings passed off quietly, but they were mobbed and broken up in
every city from Buffalo to Albany. Democratic officials encouraged the
mob spirit and where Republicans might have wished to oppose it, they
were too cowardly to do so. The meetings were advertised for three days
in Rochester, beginning January 12, and, as the newspapers occupied
many columns with a discussion as to whether they would be broken up
here as elsewhere, the opposition was thoroughly aroused and the
turbulent elements had time to become fully organized. The board of
aldermen were called together to consider whether means could not be
found to prevent Mr. Reynolds allowing the use of Corinthian Hall,
which had been rented for the occasion, and whether it would not be
wise to issue an order forbidding the owner of any public building to
let it to the Abolitionists; but finally adjourned without action.
The mob, under the lead of Constable Richard L. Swift, fully answered
all expectations. As Miss Anthony stepped forward to open the meeting,
she was greeted with a broadside of hisses and ironical applause. When
Mrs. Stanton began her address her voice was drowned in jeers and
groans and, although she persevered for some time, she was unable to
complete a single sentence. Rev. May attempted to speak and was met by
yells, and stamping of feet. A Southerner in the audience rose and
said: "Well, I may as well go back to Kentucky, for this is ahead of
any demonstration against free speech I ever saw in the South;" but he
was stopped by cries of, "Put him out!" The men kept on their hats,
smoked pipes and cigars, stamped, bellowed, swore, and bedlam reigned.
The acting mayor, sheriff and chief of police were present, but not an
arrest was made. Mrs. Stanton finally left the platform, but Miss
Anthony courageously maintained her position until the chief of police
mounted the rostrum and declared the meeting adjourned. Even then the
rioters refused to go out of the hall, and the speakers were obliged to
leave under protection of the police amid the hooting and howling of
the rabble. All wanted to give up the rest of the meetings, but Miss
Anthony declared they had a right to speak and it was the business of
the authorities to protect them, and persisted in finishing the series
as advertised. On Sunday the only place where they were allowed to hold
services was in Zion's colored church. The house was filled, morning
and evening, and they were left in peace.
At Port Byron the meeting was broken up by the throwing of cayenne
pepper on the stove. When the speakers reached Utica, where Mechanics'
Hall had been engaged, they learned that the board of directors had met
and decided it should not be used, in direct violation of the contract
with Miss Anthony, who had spent $60 on the meeting. They found the
doors locked and a large crowd on the outside. The mayor was among them
and begged her not to attempt to hold a meeting. In reply she demanded
that the doors be opened. He refused but offered to escort her to a
place of safety. She answered: "I am not afraid. It is you who are the
coward. If you have the power to protect me in person, you have also
the power to protect me in the right of free speech. I scorn your
assistance." She declined his proffered arm, but he persisted in
escorting her through the mob. As no hall could be had they held their
meeting at the residence of her host, James C. DeLong, and formed an
anti-slavery organization. The instigator of the opposition in Utica
was ex-Governor Horatio Seymour. Of the meeting at Rome, Miss Anthony
wrote:
Last evening there was a furious organized mob. I stood at the foot
of the stairs to take the admission fee. Some thirty or forty had
properly paid and passed up when a great uproar in the street told
of times coming. It proved to be a closely packed gang of forty or
fifty rowdies, who stamped and yelled and never halted for me. I
said, "Ten cents, sir," to the leader, but he brushed me aside, big
cloak, furs and all, as if I had been a mosquito, and cried, "Come
on, boys!" They rushed to the platform, where were Foster and
Powell who had not yet commenced speaking, seated themselves at the
table, drew out packs of cards, sang the Star-Spangled Banner and
hurrahed and hooted. After some thirty or forty minutes, Mr. Foster
and Aaron came down and I accompanied them back to Stanwix Hotel,
where the gang made desperate efforts to get through the entrance
room in pursuit of the "damned Abolitionists." The Republican paper
called us pestiferous fanatics and infidels, and advised every
decent man to stay away. Were the Republicans true at this crisis,
we not only should be heard quietly, as in past years, but should
have far larger audiences; and yet a hundred unmolested conventions
would not have made us a tithe of the sympathizers this one
diabolical mob has done.
Mr. May was in favor of giving up the conventions and was especially
anxious that one should not be attempted in Syracuse, which city, he
said, had always maintained freedom of speech and he did not want the
record broken; but still, if they insisted upon coming he would do all
in his power to help them. Miss Anthony was firm, replying: "If
Syracuse is capable of maintaining free speech the record will not be
broken; if it is not capable, it has no right to the reputation."
Convention Hall was engaged and Mr. May and Mr. C.D.B. Mills lent every
possible assistance, but the Abolitionists encountered here the worst
opposition of all. The hall was filled with a howling, drunken,
infuriated crowd, headed by Ezra Downer, a liquor dealer, and Luke
McKenna, a pro-slavery Democrat. Even Mr. May, who was venerated by all
Syracuse, was not allowed to speak. Rotten eggs were thrown, benches
broken, and knives and pistols gleamed in every direction. The few
ladies present were hurried out of the room, and Miss Anthony faced
that raging audience, the only woman there. The Republican chief of
police refused to make any effort toward keeping order. The mob crowded
upon the platform and took possession of the meeting, and Miss Anthony
and her little band were forced out of the hall. They repaired to the
residence of Dr. R.W. and Mrs. Hannah Fuller Pease, which was crowded
with friends of the cause. That evening the rioters dragged through the
streets hideous effigies of Susan B. Anthony and Rev. S.J. May, and
burned them in the public square.
Not at all daunted or discouraged, Miss Anthony took her speakers
forthwith into the very heart of the enemy's country, the capital of
the State. Albany had at that time a Democratic mayor, George H.
Thacher. As soon as the papers announced the coming of the
Abolitionists, over a hundred prominent citizens addressed a petition
to the mayor to forbid their meeting for fear of the same riotous
demonstrations which had disgraced the other cities. He replied at
considerable length, saying that he had taken an oath to support the
Constitutions of the United States and the State of New York, that both
guaranteed the right of free speech to all citizens, and while he was
mayor he intended to protect them in that right.
On the day of the convention he called at the Delevan House for Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Stan ton, now reinforced by Lucretia Mott, Martha C.
Wright, Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass, and accompanied them to
Association Hall. They found it packed to the doors. The mayor went on
the platform and announced that he had placed policemen in various
parts of the hall in citizens' clothes, and that whoever made the least
disturbance would be at once arrested. Then he laid a revolver across
his knees, and there he sat during the morning, afternoon and evening
sessions. Several times the mob broke forth, and each time arrests were
promptly made. Toward the close of the evening he said to Miss Anthony:
"If you insist upon holding your meetings tomorrow, I shall still
protect you, but it will be a difficult thing to hold this rabble in
check much longer. If you will adjourn at the close of this session I
shall consider it a personal favor." Of course she willingly acceded to
his request. He accompanied the ladies to their hotel, the mob
following all the way.
This closed the series of conventions. With a Republican mayor in every
other city, there had been no attempt at official protection; and yet
it may be remembered, in extenuation, that it is always easier for the
party out of power than for the one in power to stand for principle;
the former has nothing to lose. The Republicans at this time were
panic-stricken and staggering under the weight of responsibility
suddenly laid upon them; and the Abolitionists, by their radical
demands and scathing criticism, were adding to their difficulties.
There can be no justification, however, for any official who is too
cowardly or too dishonest to fulfill the duties of his office.
Immediately upon the close of this anti-slavery meeting, the State
Woman's Rights Convention was held in Albany, February 7 and 8. Mr.
Garrison, Mrs. Rose, Lucretia Mott and many of the old brilliant galaxy
were among the speakers. They little thought that this was the last
convention they would hold for five years, that a long and terrible war
would cast its shadow over every household before they met again, that
differences would arise in their own ranks, and that never more would
they come together in the old, fraternal spirit that had bound them so
closely and given them strength to bear the innumerable hardships which
so largely had been their portion.
After the Albany meeting, Miss Anthony at once began preparations for
the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York in May. The date was
set, the Tabernacle secured and many of the speakers engaged, but in
the meantime the affairs of the nation had become more and more
complicated; the threatened secession of the Southern States had been
accomplished; the long-expected, long-dreaded crisis seemed close at
hand; the people were uncertain and bewildered in the presence of the
dreadful catastrophe. All thought, all interest, all action were
centered in the new President. The whole nation was breathlessly
awaiting the declaration of Lincoln's policy. To call any kind of
meeting which had an object other than that relating to the
preservation of the Union seemed almost a sacrilege. Letters poured in
upon Miss Anthony urging her to relinquish all idea of a convention,
but she never had learned to give up. Even after the fall of Sumter and
the President's call for troops, the letters were still insisting that
she declare the meeting postponed; but it was not until the abandonment
of the Anti-Slavery Anniversary, which always took place the same week,
and until she found there were absolutely no speakers to be had, that
she finally yielded.
About this time she takes care of a sister with a baby, and writes Mrs.
Stanton: "O this babydom, what a constant, never-ending, all-consuming
strain! We should never ask anything else of the woman who has to
endure it. I realize more and more that rearing children should be
looked upon as a profession which, like any other, must be made the
primary work of those engaged in it. It can not be properly done if
other aims and duties are pressing upon the mother." And yet so great
was her spirit of self-sacrifice that in this same letter she offers to
take entire charge of Mrs. Stanton's seven children while she makes a
three months' trip abroad. At a later date, when caring for a young
niece, she says: "The dear little Lucy engrosses most of my time and
thoughts. A child one loves is a constant benediction to the soul,
whether or not it helps to the accomplishment of great intellectual
feats."
The watchword of the Abolitionists ever had been "Peace." Under the
leadership of Garrison, their policy had been one of non-resistance.
When war actually was precipitated, when the South had fired upon the
stars and stripes and the tread of marching feet resounded through
every northern city, they were amazed and bewildered. Instinctively
they turned to their great leaders for guidance. In Music Hall, Boston,
April 21, 1861, to an audience of over 4,000, Wendell Phillips made
that masterly address, justifying "this last appeal to the God of
Battles," and declaring for War. It was one of the matchless speeches
of all history, and touched the keynote which soon swelled into a grand
refrain from ocean to ocean. But even then there were those who waited
for the declaration of Garrison, the great pioneer of Abolitionism. A
letter written by Rev. Beriah Green to Miss Anthony, May 22, expresses
the sentiment which pervaded the minds of many Abolitionists at this
period:
I looked forward to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary with the keenest
pleasure and hope. I should see luminous faces; I should bear the
voice of wisdom; I should gather strength and courage and return to
my task-garden refreshed and quickened. But when I read the
official notice in the Standard and Liberator of the grounds on
which the meeting was given up, "that nothing should be done at
this solemn crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current
of popular feeling which is now sweeping southward with the
strength and impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras," I was surprised
and puzzled. I have read Phillips' War Speech, marked the tenor and
spirit of the Liberator, seen the stars and stripes paraded in the
Standard, perused James Freeman Clarke's sermon, and I feel more
desolate and solitary than ever. Mrs. Stanton, too, is for War for
the Union, and I say to myself: "How will Susan Anthony and Parker
Pillsbury and all the other old comrades be affected by these signs
of the times?"
Miss Anthony replied in the same strain:
A feeling of sadness, almost of suffocation, has been mine ever
since the first announcement that the anti-slavery meeting was
postponed. I can not welcome the demon of expediency or consent to
be an abettor, by silence any more than by word or act, of wicked
means to accomplish an end, not even for the sake of emancipating
the slaves. 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 time 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."
As the long, hard winter's work had left her very tired she gladly
turned to that haven of refuge, the farm-home. The father, who was
willing always to put the control of affairs into her capable hands,
took this opportunity to make a long-desired trip to Kansas, going the
first of May and returning in September. She assumed the entire
management of the farm, put in the crops, watched over, harvested and
sold them; assisted her mother with the housework and the family sewing
and, by way of variety, pieced a silk quilt and wove twenty yards of
rag carpet in the old loom. She found time, more-over, to go to the
Progressive Friends' meeting at Junius and to attend the State
Teachers' Convention at Watertown. She also managed a large
anti-slavery Fourth of July meeting at Gregory's grove, near Rochester,
securing a number of distinguished speakers. In writing her, relative
to this meeting, Frederick Douglass said: "I rejoice not in the death
of any one, yet I can not but feel that, in the death of Stephen A.
Douglas, a most dangerous person has been removed. No man of his time
has done more than he to intensify hatred of the negro and to
demoralize northern sentiment. Since Henry Clay he has been the King of
Compromise. Yours for the freedom of man and of woman always."
[Autograph: Frederick Douglass]
From her diary may be obtained an idea of the busy life which only
allowed the briefest entries, but these show her restlessness and
dissatisfaction:
Tried to interest myself in a sewing society; but little
intelligence among them.... Attended Progressive Friends' meeting;
too much namby-pamby-ism.... Went to colored church to hear
Douglass. He seems without solid basis. Speaks only popular
truths.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems to be no longer my
calling.... I stained and varnished the library bookcase today, and
superintended the plowing of the orchard.... The last load of hay
is in the barn; all in capital order. Fitted out a fugitive slave
for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman.... The teachers'
convention was small and dull. The woman's committee failed to
report. I am mortified to death for them.... Washed every window in
the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the frame. Commenced
Mrs. Browning's Portuguese Sonnets. Have just finished Casa Guidi
Windows, a grand poem and so fitting to our terrible struggle.... 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. How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington. Good,
stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have
nothing to lose and all to gain for their party. The present
incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but
only wait. To forever blot out slavery is the only possible
compensation for this merciless war.
All through the chroniclings of the monotonous daily life is the cry:
"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."
During these days she reads Adam Bede, and thus writes Mrs. Stanton:
I finished Adam Bede yesterday noon. I can not throw off the
palsied oppression of its finale to poor, poor Hetty--and Arthur
almost equally commands my sympathy. He no more desired to wrong
her or cause her one hour of sorrow than did Adam, but the impulse
of his nature brooked no restraint. Should public sentiment
tolerate such a consummation of love--or passion, if it were not
love? (But I believe it was, only the impassable barrier of caste
forbade its public avowal.) If such a birth could be left free from
odium and scorn, contempt and pity from the world, it would be a
thousand times more holy, more happy, than many of those in legal
marriage. It will not do for me to read romances; they are too real
to shake off. What is the irresistible power so terrifically
pictured in both Hetty and Arthur, which led them on to the very
ill they most would shun?
To crown the result I went to the colored church to hear Sallie
Holley, but she did not come. Mrs. Coleman was in the pulpit and
read a poem of Gerald Massey on Peace, spoke a few minutes and said
she saw Miss Anthony present and hoped she'd occupy the time. Then
rang round the house the appalling cry of "Miss Anthony." There was
no escape, and I staggered up and stammered out a few words and sat
down--dead, killed--thoroughly enraged that I had not spent the
forenoon in making myself ready at least to read something, instead
of poring over Adam Bede.
To this Mrs. Stanton replies: "You speak of the effect of Adam Bede on
you. It moved me deeply, and The Mill on the Floss is another agony.
Such books as these explain why the 'marriage question' is
all-absorbing. O, Susan, are you ever coming to visit me again? It
would be like a new life to spend a day with you. How I shudder when I
think of our awful experience with those mobs last winter, and yet even
now I long for action." Miss Anthony was equally restive in her own
seclusion which, although by no means an idle one, had shut her from
the great outside world that at this hour seemed to cry aloud for the
best service of every man and woman. In January, 1862, she went to Mrs.
Stanton's and together they prepared an address for the State
Anti-Slavery Convention to be held at Albany, February 7 and 8, and
here in the society of Garrison and Phillips, she received fresh
inspiration. Soon after reaching home, at Phillips' request, she
arranged a lecture for him in Rochester. After paying all expenses, she
sent him a check--there is no record of its size--but he returned a
portion, saying:
DEAR SUSAN: Thank you, but you are too generous. I can't take such
an awful big lion's share, even to satisfy your modesty. Put the
enclosed, with my thanks, into your own pocket, as a slight
compensation for all your trouble. Remember and pay my successor
not one cent more than you can afford.... I had to charter a
locomotive all to myself to get back from Oswego in time for
Rondout. Riding in the darkness with the engineer through the snow
gave me time to think of the pleasant group and supper I missed the
night before at the Hallowells. Kind regards to them. Tell Mrs.
Hallowell her lunch tasted good about midnight, as I entered
Syracuse.
Miss Anthony managed the usual series of lectures this winter. When she
sent Mr. Tilton his check he returned this rollicking answer:
DEAR S.B.A.: I received your letter and its enclosure, which latter
has already vanished like April snow, to pay the debts of the
subscriber.... Our morning ride with our good friend Frederick
gives me pleasure whenever I think of it. Those pictures of Mount
Hope and the waterfall were better than any in the Academy of
Design. As to yourself, I have had some talk with Rev. Oliver
Johnson about your "sphere," and we both agree that you are
defrauding some honest man of his just due. I recommend that you
form an acquaintance, with a view to prospective results for life,
with some well-settled, Old-School Presbyterian clergyman, and send
me some of the cake.
[Autograph: Theodore Tilton]
In 1862, as the previous year, Miss Anthony was determined to hold a
National Woman's Rights Convention in New York, but her efforts met
with no favorable response and so, for the second time, she was obliged
to give up the annual protest which seemed to her a sacred duty. She
did not then acknowledge, nor has she ever admitted, that there is any
question of more vital importance than that relating to the freedom of
woman. Defeated here she decided to start out again in the anti-slavery
lecture field, since, as she wrote her friend Lydia: "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-force to resurrect one's soul." In her tour she visited
Adams, accompanied by her loved niece, Ann Eliza McLean, and wrote back
an amusing account of how she lectured the male relatives for requiring
their women folks to use worn-out cook-stoves, broken kitchen utensils
and all sorts of inconvenient things in the household. While there she
went with a large party of relatives over the mountains to see the
wonderful Hoosac Tunnel, now well under way. One day she spoke to an
audience on the very top of the Green mountains. On this trip, having
for a rarity a little leisure, she visited the art galleries of New
York and wrote:
My very heart of hearts has been made to rejoice in the work of two
of earth's noblest women--Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur. Twice
have I visited the Academy of Design and there have I sat in
silent, reverential awe, with eyes intent upon the marble face of
Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci. I have no power to express my
hope, my joy, my renewed faith in womanhood. In the accomplishment
of that grand work of the sculptor's chisel, making that cold
marble breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble
and elevate woman than she possibly could have done by mere words,
it matters not how Godlike; though I would not ignore true words,
for it is these which rouse to action the latent powers of the
Harriet Hosmers.... Even the rude and uncultivated seem awed into
silence when they come into the presence of that sleeping, but
speaking purity. Rosa Bonheur is the first woman who has dared
venture into the field of animal painting, and her work not only
surpasses anything ever done by a woman, but is a bold and
successful step beyond all other artists. Mark another significant
fact: The three greatest productions of art during the past three
years are by women--Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, Rosa
Bonheur's Horse Fair and Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci--and these
triumphs are in three of its most difficult and exalted
departments.
In April she took Mrs. Stanton's four boys from Seneca Falls to New
York, and cared for them while the family were removing to that city.
In May she attended the New York Anniversary and the New England
convention in Boston, and on the Fourth of July the celebration at
Framingham, and during this time gave many addresses on anti-slavery.
When in Boston she had a delightful visit with the Garrisons, and
called on Mrs. Phillips with Mrs. Garrison, one of the few persons
admitted to the invalid's seclusion.
While all the women were giving themselves, body and soul, to the great
work of the war, the New York Legislature, April 10, 1862, finding them
off guard, very quietly amended the law of 1860 and took away from
mothers the lately-acquired right to the equal guardianship of their
children. They also repealed the law which secured to the widow the
control of the property for the care of minor children. Thus at one
blow were swept away the results of nearly a decade of hard work on the
part of women, and wives and mothers were left in almost the same
position as under the old common law. Had one woman been a member of
the Legislature, such an act never would have been possible; but the
little band who for ten years had watched and toiled to protect the
interests of their sex, were in the sanitary commission, the hospitals,
at the front, on the platform in the interest of the Union, or at home
doing the work of those who had gone into the army, and this was their
reward! Miss Anthony's anger and sorrow were intense when she heard of
the repeal of the laws which she had spent seven long years to obtain,
tramping through cold and heat to roll up petitions and traversing the
whole State of New York in the dead of winter to create public
sentiment in their favor. In her anguish she wrote Lydia Mott:
Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that
abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight
hundred bills before it, and hence felt sure it would not come up
this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm.
Well, well; while the old guard sleep the "young devils" are wide
awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense
of justice;" but nothing short of this could rouse our women again
to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic.
All alike say: "Have no conventions at this crisis; wait until the
war excitement abates;" which is to say: "Ask our opponents if they
think we had better speak, or rather if they do not think we had
better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the
world against the wish and will of our best friends. What can we do
now when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship
is voted down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that--a hard
year's work--the law secured--the echoes of our words of gratitude
in the Capitol scarcely died away, and now all is lost!
This year began the acquaintance with Anna Dickinson, whose letters are
as refreshing as a breeze from the ocean:
The sunniest of sunny mornings to you, how are you today? Well and
happy, I hope. To tell the truth I want to see you very much
indeed, to hold your hand in mine, to hear your voice, in a word, I
want _you_--I can't have you? Well, I will at least put down a
little fragment of my foolish self and send it to look up at
you.... I work closely and happily at my preparations for next
winter--no, for the future--nine hours a day, generally; but I
never felt better, exercise morning and evening, and never touch
book or paper after gaslight this warm weather; so all those talks
of yours were not thrown away upon me.
What think you of the "signs of the times?" I am sad always, under
all my folly;--this cruel tide of war, sweeping off the fresh,
young, brave life to be dashed out utterly or thrown back shattered
and ruined! I know we all have been implicated in the "great
wrong," yet I think the comparatively innocent suffer today more
than the guilty. And the result--will the people save the country
they love so well, or will the rulers dig the nation's grave?
Will you not write to me, please, soon? I want to see a touch of
you very much.
[Autograph:
Very Affectionately Yours
Anna E. Dickinson]
Early in September Greeley writes her: "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."
Miss Anthony thus lectures Mrs. Stanton because she has a teacher and
educates her children at home: "I am still of the opinion that whatever
the short-comings of the public schools your children would be vastly
more profited in them, side by side with the very multitude with whom
they must mingle as soon as school days are over. Any and every private
education is a blunder, it seems to me. I believe those persons
stronger and nobler who have from childhood breasted the commonalty. If
children have not the innate strength to resist evil, keeping them
apart from what they must inevitably one day meet, only increases their
incompetency."
In the summer of 1862 Miss Anthony attended her last State Teachers'
Convention, which was held in Rochester, where she began her labors in
this direction. In 1853 she had forced this body to grant her a share
in their deliberations, the first time a woman's voice had been heard.
For ten years she never had missed an annual meeting, keeping up her
membership dues and allowing no engagement to interfere. Year after
year she had followed them up, insisting that in the conventions women
teachers should hold offices, serve on committees and exercise free
speech; demanding that they should be eligible to all positions in the
schools with equal pay for equal work; and compelling a general
recognition of their rights. All these points, with the exception of
equal pay, had now been gained and there was much improvement in
salaries.
Her mission here being ended, she turned her attention to other fields;
but for the privileges which are enjoyed by the women teachers of the
present day, they are indebted first of all to Susan B. Anthony.[31]
After speaking at intervals through the summer, she started on a
regular tour early in the fall, writing Lydia Mott: "I can not feel
easy in my conscience to be dumb in an hour like this. I am speaking
now extempore 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 anti-slavery grounds and on the
new ones thrown up by the war. 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 never can express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you."
A letter from Abby Kelly Foster at this time said: "I am especially
gratified to know that you have entered the field in earnest as your
own speaker, which you ought to have done years ago instead of always
pushing others to the front and taking the drudgery yourself." Miss
Anthony was very successful, each day gaining more courage. Her sole
theme was "Emancipation the Duty-of the Government." A prominent
citizen of Schuyler county wrote her after she had spoken at
Mecklinburg: "There is not a man among all the political speakers who
can make that duty as plain as you have done." Her whole heart was in
the work and she was constantly inspired by the thought that the day of
deliverance for the slave was approaching.
[Illustration:
FATHER AND MOTHER OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
AGED 60, FROM DAGUERREOTYPES]
At the height of her enthusiasm came the heaviest blow it would have
been possible for her to receive. She had come home for a few days, and
the Sunday morning after election was sitting with her father talking
over the political situation. They had been reading the Liberator and
the Anti-Slavery Standard and were discussing the probable effect of
Lincoln's proclamation, when suddenly he was stricken with acute
neuralgia of the stomach. He had not had a day's illness in forty years
and had not the slightest premonition of this attack. He lingered in
great suffering for two weeks and died on November 25, 1862.
No words can express the terrible bereavement of his family. He had
been to them a tower of strength. From childhood his sons and daughters
had carried to him every grief and perplexity and there never had been
a matter concerning them too trivial to receive his careful attention.
In manhood and womanhood they still had turned to him above all others
for advice and comfort, even the grandchildren receiving always the
same loving care. Between husband and wife there ever had been the
deepest, truest affection. He was far ahead of his time in his
recognition of the rights of women. Years before he had written to a
brother: "Take your family into your confidence and give your wife the
purse." He was never willing to enter into any pleasure which his wife
did not share. They tell of him that once the daughters persuaded him
to remain in town on a stormy evening and go to the Hutchinson concert.
As they were driving home he said: "Never again ask me to do such a
thing; I suffered more in thinking of your mother at home alone than
any enjoyment could possibly compensate." A short time before his death
he and his wife went to Ontario Beach one afternoon and did not return
till 10 o'clock. When asked by the daughters what detained them, the
mother answered that they had a fish supper and then strolled on the
beach by moonlight; and on their laughing at her and saying she was
worse than the girls, she replied: "Your father is more of a lover
today than he was the first year of our marriage."
He was a broad, humane, great-hearted man, always mindful of the rights
of others, always standing for liberty to every human being.
Public-spirited, benevolent and genial in disposition, his loss was
widely mourned. The family's devoted friend, Rev. Samuel J. May,
conducted the funeral services, at which Frederick Douglass and several
prominent Abolitionists paid affectionate tribute, expressing "profound
reverence for Mr. Anthony's character as a man, a friend and a
citizen." Many letters of sympathy were received by Miss Anthony, but
nothing brought consolation to her heart; her best and strongest friend
was gone. Parker Pillsbury expressed her sorrow when he wrote: "You
must be stricken sore indeed in the loss of your constant helper in the
great mission to which you are devoted, your counselor, your consoler,
your all that man could be, besides the endearing relation of father.
What or who can supply the loss?"
There had not been a day in her life which had not felt his presence.
She went forth to every duty sustained by his cheery and brave
encouragement. With her father's support she could face the opposition
and calumny of the world, and when these became too great she had but
to turn again to him for the fullest sympathy and appreciation. He had
inspired all she had done and with his wise advice and financial aid
had assisted in the doing. When he passed away she felt the foundations
taken from beneath her feet. For a little while she was stunned and
helpless, and then the old strength came slowly back. The same
spiritual force that had upheld her so many years still spoke to her
soul and bade her once more take up life's duties.
[Footnote 31: A few years after the war, Miss Anthony chancing to be in
Binghamton at the time of a teachers' convention went in. Immediately
the whole body rose to give her welcome, she was escorted to the
platform and, amid great applause, invited to address them.]
CHAPTER XIV.
WOMEN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.
1863--1864.
It was with a sore and heavy heart that Miss Anthony again turned to
her public work, but she was impelled by the thought that it would have
been her father's earnest wish, and also by the feeling that work alone
could give relief to the sorrow which overwhelmed her. She was bitterly
disappointed that the "old guard" persisted in putting the question of
the rights of women in the background, thus losing the vantage points
gained by years of agitation. She alone, of all who had labored so
earnestly for this sacred cause, was not misled by the sophistry that
the work which women were doing for the Union would compel a universal
recognition of their demands when the war was ended. Subsequent events
showed the correctness of her judgment in maintaining that the close of
the war would precipitate upon the country such an avalanche of
questions for settlement that the claims of women would receive even
less consideration than heretofore had been accorded. Next to this
cause, however, that of the slaves appealed to her most strongly and
she willingly continued her labors for them, trusting that the day
might come when Garrison, Phillips, Greeley and the other great spirits
would redeem their pledges and unite their strength in securing justice
for women.
On January 11, 1863, Miss Anthony received this letter from Theodore
Tilton: "Well, what have you to say to the proclamation? Even if not
all one could wish, it is too much not to be thankful for. It makes the
remainder of slavery too valueless and precarious to be worth keeping.
The millenium is on the way. Three cheers for God!... I had the
pleasure of dining yesterday with Wendell Phillips in New York. Shall I
tell you a secret? I happened to allude to one Susan Anthony. 'Yes,'
said he, 'one of the salt of the earth.'" On the 16th came this from
Henry B. Stanton: "I date from the federal capital. Since I arrived
here I have been more gloomy than ever. The country is rapidly going to
destruction. The army is almost in a state of mutiny for want of its
pay and for lack of a leader. Nothing can carry the North through but
the Southern negroes, and nobody can marshal them into the struggle
except the Abolitionists. The country was never so badly off as at this
moment. 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!"
From many prominent men and women came the same cry, and so she did
gird on her armor and go forth. The latter part of February she took up
her abode with Mrs. Stanton in New York. Herculean efforts were being
made at this time by the Republicans, under the leadership of Charles
Sumner, to secure congressional action in regard to emancipation. A
widespread fear existed that the President's proclamation might not
prove sufficient, that some way of overriding it might be found, and
there was much anxiety to secure such an expression of public sentiment
as would justify Congress in submitting an amendment to the United
States Constitution which should forever abolish slavery. This could
best be done through petitions, and here Miss Anthony recognized her
work. An eloquent appeal was sent out, enclosing the following:
CALL FOR A MEETING OF THE LOYAL WOMEN OF THE NATION.
In this crisis it is the duty of every citizen to consider the
peculiar blessings of a republican form of government, and decide
what sacrifices of wealth and life are demanded for its defense and
preservation.... No mere party or sectional cry, no technicalities
of constitutional or military law, no methods of craft or policy,
can touch the heart of a nation in the midst of revolution. A grand
idea of freedom or justice is needful to kindle and sustain the
fires of a high enthusiasm.
At this hour the best word and work of every man and woman are
imperatively demanded. To man, by common consent, are assigned the
forum, camp and field. What is woman's legitimate work and how she
may best accomplish it is worthy our earnest counsel one with
another.... Woman is equally interested and responsible with man in
the final settlement of this problem of self-government; therefore
let none stand idle spectators now. When every hour is big with
destiny and each delay but complicates our difficulties, it is high
time for the daughters of the Revolution in solemn council to
unseal the last will and testament of the fathers, lay hold of
their birthright of freedom and keep it a sacred trust for all
coming generations.
To this end we ask the loyal women of the nation to meet in the
Church of the Puritans, New York, on Thursday, the 14th of May
next. Let the women of every State be largely represented both in
person and by letter.
On behalf of the Woman's Central Committee,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
An immense audience, mostly women, assembled in Dr. Cheever's famous
church. Miss Anthony called the convention to order and nominated Lucy
Stone for president. Stirring addresses were made by Mrs. Stanton and
the veteran anti-slavery speaker, Angelina Grimké Weld, while the
Hutchinson family with their songs added inspiration to the occasion.
Miss Anthony presented a series of patriotic resolutions with the
following spirited address:
There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this shall be made
a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war
which was begun to found an empire upon slavery, and shame on us if
we do not make it one to establish the freedom of the
negro--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and
West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.
Instead of suppressing the real cause of the war, it should have
been proclaimed not only by the people but by the President,
Congress, Cabinet and every military commander. Instead of
President Lincoln's waiting two long years before calling to the
aid of the government the millions of allies whom we have had
within the territory of rebeldom, it should have been the first
decree he sent forth. By all the laws of common sense--to say
nothing of laws military or civil--if the President, as
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, could have devised any
possible means whereby he might hope to suppress the rebellion
without the sacrifice of the life of one loyal citizen, without the
sacrifice of one dollar of the loyal North, it was clearly his duty
to have done so. Every interest of the insurgents, every dollar of
their property, every institution, every life in every rebel State
even, if necessary, should have been sacrificed, before one dollar
or one man should have been drawn from the free States. How much
more then was it the President's duty to confer freedom on the
millions of slaves, transform them into an army for the Union,
cripple the rebellion and establish justice, the only sure
foundation of peace. I therefore hail the day when the government
shall recognize that this is a war for freedom.
We talk about returning to "the Union as it was" and "the
Constitution as it is"--about "restoring our country to peace and
prosperity--to the blessed conditions which existed before the
war!" I ask you what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have
we had? Since the first slave ship sailed up the James river with
its human cargo and there, on the soil of the Old Dominion, it was
sold to the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that
pirate captain landed on the shores of Africa and there kidnapped
the first stalwart negro and fastened the first manacle, the
struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement
of the terrible war in the midst of which we are today. Between the
slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This is but
a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the old
conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union which is a
Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham. By the Constitution
as it is, the North has stood pledged to protect slavery in the
States where it existed. We have been bound, in case of
insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those struggling for
liberty but of the oppressors. It was politicians who made this
pledge at the beginning, and who have renewed it from year to year.
These same men have had control of the churches, the
Sabbath-schools and all religious institutions, and the women have
been a party in complicity with slavery. They have made the large
majority in all the churches throughout the country and have,
without protest, fellowshipped the slaveholder as a Christian;
accepted proslavery preaching from their pulpits; suffered the
words "slavery a crime" to be expurgated from all the lessons
taught their children, in defiance of the Golden Rule, "Do unto
others as you would that others should do unto you." They have
meekly accepted whatever morals and religion the selfish interest
of politics and trade dictated.
Woman must now assume her God-given responsibilities and make
herself what she is clearly designed to be, the educator of the
race. Let her no longer be the mere reflector, the echo of the
worldly pride and ambition of man. Had the women of the North
studied to know and to teach their sons the law of justice to the
black man, they would not now be called upon to offer the loved of
their households to the bloody Moloch of war. Women of the North, I
ask you to rise up with earnest, honest purpose and go forward in
the way of right, fearlessly, as independent human beings,
responsible to God alone for the discharge of every duty. Forget
conventionalisms; forget what the world will say, whether you are
in your place or out of it; think your best thoughts, speak your
best words, do your best works, looking to your own consciences for
approval.
The fourth resolution, asking equal rights for women as well as
negroes, was seriously objected to by several who insisted that they
did not want political rights. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Weld, Mrs. Rose and
Mrs. Coleman made strong speeches in its favor, and Miss Anthony said:
This resolution merely makes the assertion that in a genuine
republic, every citizen must have the right of representation. You
remember the maxim "Governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed." This is the fundamental principle of
democracy, and before our government can be placed on a lasting
foundation, the civil and political rights of every citizen must be
practically established. This is the meaning of the resolution. It
is a philosophical statement, made not because women suffer, not
because slaves suffer, not because of any individual rights or
wrongs--but as a simple declaration of the fundamental truth of
democracy proclaimed by our Revolutionary fathers. I hope the
discussion will no longer be continued as to the comparative rights
or wrongs of one class or another. This is the question before us:
Is it possible that peace and union shall be established in this
country, is it possible for this government to be a true democracy,
a genuine republic, while one-sixth or one-half of the people are
disfranchised?
The resolution was adopted by a large majority. A business meeting was
held in the afternoon to decide upon the practical work, and again the
room was crowded. Miss Anthony was in the chair. There were women of
all ages, classes and conditions, and the assembly was pervaded with
deep and solemn feeling. The following was unanimously adopted: "We,
loyal women of the nation, assembled in convention this 14th day of
May, 1863, hereby pledge ourselves one to another in a Loyal League, to
give support to the government in so far as it makes a war for
freedom." Mrs. Stanton was elected president and Miss Anthony secretary
of the permanent organization. A great meeting was held in Cooper
Institute in the evening. An eloquent address to President Lincoln,
read by Miss Anthony, was adopted and sent to him.[32] Powerful
speeches were made by Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. Antoinette Blackwell,
a patriotic address to the soldiers was adopted, and the convention
closed amid great enthusiasm.
At subsequent meetings it was decided to confine the work of the League
to the one object of securing signatures to petitions to the Senate and
House of Representatives, praying for an act emancipating all persons
of African descent held in involuntary servitude. They set their
standard at a million names. Their scheme received the commendation of
the entire anti-slavery press, and of prominent men and women in all
parts of the country. The first of June headquarters were opened in
Room 20, Cooper Institute, and the great work was begun. Miss Anthony
prepared and sent out thousands of petitions accompanied by this
letter:
THE WOMEN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE TO THE WOMEN OF THE REPUBLIC: We
ask you to sign and circulate this petition for the entire
abolition of slavery. Remember the President's proclamation reaches
only the slaves of rebels. The jails of loyal Kentucky are today
filled with Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama slaves, advertised to
be sold for their jail fees "according to law," precisely as before
the war! While slavery exists anywhere there can be freedom
nowhere. There must be a law abolishing slavery. We have undertaken
to canvass the nation for freedom. Women, you can not 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. Go to the
rich, the poor, the high, the low, the soldier, the civilian, the
white, the black--gather up the names of all who hate slavery, all
who love liberty, and would have it the law of the land, and lay
them at the feet of Congress, your silent but potent vote for human
freedom guarded by law....
Every day and every hour were given to the Loyal League. All through
the hot summer Miss Anthony remained at her post in Cooper Institute,
scattering her letters far and wide, pushing into the field every woman
who was willing to work, sending out lecturers to stir up the people,
directing affairs with the sagacity of an experienced general, sparing
no one who could be pressed into service, and herself least of all. On
July 15, during the New York Draft Riots, she writes home: "These are
terrible times. The Colored Orphan Asylum which was burned was but one
block from Mrs. Stanton's, and all of us left the house on Monday
night. Yesterday when I started for Cooper Institute I found the cars
and stages had been stopped by the mob and I could not get to the
office. I took the ferry and went to Flushing to stay with my cousin,
but found it in force there. We all arose and dressed in the middle of
the night, but it was finally gotten under control."
Miss Anthony had many heartaches during these trying times and longed
more and more for that strength which had been taken from her forever.
Writing to her mother of her brother Daniel R.'s election as mayor of
Leavenworth, Kan., she says: "O, how has our dear father's face flitted
before me as I have thought what his happiness would have been over
this honor. Last night when my head was on my pillow, I seemed to be in
the old carriage jogging homeward with him, while he happily recounted
D.R.'s qualifications for this high post and accepted his election as
the triumph of the opposition to rebels and slaveholders. Every day I
appreciate more fully father's desire for justice to every human being,
the lowest and blackest as well as the highest and whitest, and my
constant prayer is to be a worthy daughter."
On the anniversary of his death she writes again to her mother: "It has
seemed to me last night and today that I must fly to you and with you
sit down _in the quiet_. It is torture here with not one who knew or
cared for the loved one. It is sacrilege to speak his name or tell my
grief to those who knew him not. O, how my soul reaches out in yearning
to his dear spirit! Does he see me, will he, can he, come to me in my
calm, still moments and gently minister and lift me up into nobler
living and working?"
In a letter to her, relative to the sale of the home, the mother uses
these touching words: "If it had been my heart that had ceased to beat,
all might have gone on as before, but now all must go astray. I know I
ought to get rid of this care, and Mary and I should not try to live
here alone, but every foot of ground is sacred to me, and I love every
article bought by the dear father of my children." On this subject Miss
Anthony writes to her sister Mary:
Your letter sent a pang to my very heart's core that the dear old
home, so full of the memory of our father, must be given up. I do
wish it could be best to keep it, and yet I do not think he will be
less with us away from that loved spot, for my experience in the
past months disproves such feeling. Every place, every movement,
almost, suggests him. Last evening, I strolled west on Forty-fifth
street to the Hudson river, a mile or more. There was newly-sawed
lumber there and the smell carried me back, back to the old sawmill
and childhood's days. I looked at the beautiful river and the
schooners with their sails spread to the breeze. I felt alone, but
my mind traversed the entire round of the loved ones. I doubt if
there be any mortal who clings to loves with greater tenacity than
do I. To see mother without father in the old home, to feel the
loneliness of her spirit, and all of us bereft of the joy of
looking into the loved face, listening to the loved tones, waiting
for his sanction or rejection--O, how I could see and feel it all!
The rest of us have our work to engross us and other objects to
center our affections upon, but mother now lives in her children,
and I often feel as if we did too little to lighten her heart and
cheer her path. Never was there a mother who came nearer to knowing
nothing save her own household, her husband and children, whether
high in the world's esteem or crucified, the same still with her
through all. If we sometimes give her occasion to feel that we
prized father more than her, it was she who taught us ever to hold
him thus above all others. Our high respect and deep love for him,
our perfect trust in him, we owe to mother's precepts and vastly
more to her example. And, by and by, when we have to reckon her
among the invisible, we shall live in remembrance of her wise
counsel, tender watching, self-sacrifice and devotion not second to
that we now cherish for the memory of our father--nay, it will even
transcend that in measure, as a mother's constant and ever-present
love and care for her children are beyond those of a father.
A bit of mirth comes into the somber atmosphere with a note from
Theodore Tilton:
To SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ADJUTANT-GENERAL--Since of late you have been
bold in expressing your opinion that the draft should be
strenuously enforced and that the broken ranks of our brave armies
should be supplied with new men, it will serve to show you how
great the difference is between those who _say_ and those who _do_,
if I inform you--as in duty bound I do hereby--that I know a little
lady only half your size who doubles your zeal in all these
respects and who, without waiting for your tardy example, presented
on her own account to the government on Thursday last a new man,
weighing nine pounds, to be enrolled among the infantry of the
United States.
Miss Anthony undertook the great work of this National Loyal League
without the guarantee from any source of a single dollar. The expenses
were very heavy; office rent, clerk hire, printing bills, postage,
etc., brought them up to over $5,000, but as usual she was fertile in
resources for raising money. All who signed the petition were requested
to give a cent and in this way about $3,000 were realized. A few
contributions came in, but the demands were infinite for every dollar
which patriotic citizens could spare, and the league felt desirous of
paying its own way. To assist in this, she arranged a course of
lectures at Cooper Institute. Among those who responded to her call
were Hon. William D. Kelley, Edwin P. Whipple, Theodore D. Weld, Rev.
Stephen H. Tyng, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, George William
Curtis, Frances D. Gage and several others. Most of these donated their
services and others reduced their price. Letters of commendation were
received from editors, ministers, senators and generals. George
Thompson, the British Abolitionist and ex-member of Parliament, gave
hearty sympathy and co-operation.
[Autograph:
Respectfully
Stephen H. Tyng]
Benjamin F. Wade wrote: "You may count upon any aid which I am
competent to bestow to forward the object of your league. As a member
of Congress, you shall have my best endeavors for your success, for a
cause more honorable to human nature or one that promised more benefit
to the world, never called forth the efforts of the patriot or
philanthropist." From Major-General Rosecrans came the message: "The
cause in which you are engaged is sacred, and would ennoble mean and
sanctify common things. You have my best wishes for continued success
in your good work."
[Autograph:
My hearty sympathy
In extreme haste,
Very Sincerely
Geo Thompson]
In December, 1863, Miss Anthony went to Philadelphia to attend the
great meeting which celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the
founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and was strengthened and
encouraged by the lofty and enthusiastic addresses and the renewed
expressions of friendship and fealty to herself.
The work of securing the petitions was rapidly and energetically pushed
during the winter and spring of 1864. Miss Anthony gave all her time to
the office.[33] During the year and a half of her arduous labors, she
received from the Hovey Committee $12 a week. As she boarded with Mrs.
Stanton at a reduced price she managed to keep her expenses within this
limit. She writes home: "I go to a restaurant near by for lunch every
noon. I take always 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 county 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." There is reason to
believe, however, that she often would have been glad to afford a
second dish of strawberries.
The Hovey Committee sent $155, Gerrit Smith $200, Schieffelin Brothers,
Druggists, $100, and Jessie Benton Fremont, $50. In her great need of
funds, Miss Anthony decided to appeal to Henry Ward Beecher and she
relates how, as she was wearily climbing Columbia Heights to his home,
she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard a hearty voice say: "Well,
old girl, what do you want now?" It was Mr. Beecher himself who, the
moment she explained her mission, said: "I'll take up a collection in
Plymouth church next Sunday." The result of this was $200. The
carefully kept books still in existence show that when the accounts of
the league were closed, there was a deficit of $4.72 to settle all
indebtedness, and this Miss Anthony paid out of her own pocket!
In January the brother Daniel R. came East for his beautiful young
bride, and the mother from her quiet farm-nook sends her petition to
New York. She can not manage the "infare" unless Susan comes home and
helps. So she drops the affairs of government long enough to skim
across the State and lend a hand in preparing for this interesting
event, and then back again to her incessant drudgery, made doubly hard
by financial anxiety.
[Autograph:
Faithfully yours,
Robert Dale Owen]
During all this work of the Loyal League, Miss Anthony found her
strongest and staunchest support in Robert Dale Owen, who was then in
New York by appointment of President Lincoln as chairman of the
Freedman's Inquiry Commission. She was also in constant communication
with Senator Charles Sumner, who was most anxious that the work should
be hastened. The blank petitions were sent in great sacks to him at
Washington, and distributed under his "frank" to all parts of the
Union. On February 9, 1864, he presented in the Senate the first
installment. The petitions from each State were tied by themselves in a
large bundle and endorsed with the number of signatures. Two
able-bodied negroes carried them into the Senate chamber, and Mr.
Sumner presented them, saying in part:
These petitions are signed by 100,000 men and women, who unite in
this unparalleled number to support their prayer. They are from all
parts of the country and from every condition of life.... They ask
nothing less than universal emancipation, and this they ask
directly at the hands of Congress. It is not for me to assign
reasons which the army of petitioners has forborne to assign; but I
may not improperly add that, naturally and obviously, they all feel
in their hearts, what reason and knowledge confirm, not only that
slavery is the guilty origin of the rebellion, but that its
influence everywhere, even outside the rebel States, has been
hostile to the Union, always impairing loyalty and sometimes openly
menacing the national government. The petitioners know well that to
save the country from peril, especially to save the national life,
there is no power in the ample arsenal of self-defense which
Congress may not grasp; for to Congress under the Constitution,
belongs the prerogative of the Roman Dictator to see that the
republic receives no detriment. Therefore to Congress these
petitioners now appeal.
After an earnest discussion by the Senate the petition was referred to
the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, whose chairman was Thomas
D. Eliot, of Massachusetts. Immediately afterwards several thousand
more blank petitions were sent out, accompanied by a second appeal
which closed: "Shall we not all join in one loud, earnest, effectual
prayer to Congress, which will swell on its ear like the voice of many
waters, that this bloody, desolating war shall be arrested and ended by
the immediate and final removal by statute law and amended
Constitution, of that crime and curse which alone has brought it upon
us?"
[Autograph: Charles Sumner]
In answer to an invitation to be present at the first anniversary of
the Women's National Loyal League, Senator Sumner wrote:
I can not be with you for my post of duty is here. I am grateful to
your association for what you have done to arouse the country to
insist on the extinction of slavery. Now is the time to strike and
no effort should be spared. The good work must be finished, and to
my mind nothing seems to be done, while anything remains to be
done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No
effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of
_property in man_, which is the corner-stone of the rebel
pretension and the constant assumption of the partisans of slavery,
or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and
there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no
such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the
most execrable feature of slavery itself.
As Miss Anthony herself had asked so many favors of Wendell Phillips,
she thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Stanton invite him to
make an address at this anniversary; but he was not in the least
deceived, as his reply shows:
DEAR MRS. STANTON: Your S.B.A. thinks she is very cunning. As if I
did not see a huge pussy under that meal! She has been so modest,
humble, ashamed, reluctant, apologetic, contrite, self-accusing
whenever the last ten years she has asked me to do anything, go
anywhere, speak on any topic! Now she makes you pull the chestnuts
out of the fire and thinks I do not see her waiting behind. Ah, the
hand is the hand of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob, wicked,
sly, skulking, mystifying Jacob. Why don't "secretaries" write the
official letters? How much they leave the "president" to do!
Naughty idlers, those secretaries! Well, let me thank Miss
Secretary Anthony for her gentle consideration; then let me say
I'll try to speak, as you say, fifteen minutes.... Remember me
defiantly to S.B.A.
In the midst of all this correspondence came a letter from a sweetheart
of her girlhood, now a prominent officeholder in Ohio, stating that he
was a widower but would not long remain one if his old friend would
take pity upon him. It is sincerely to be hoped that the secretary of
the Loyal League found time at least to have one of her clerks answer
this epistle.
The meeting was held in the Church of the Puritans, May 12, 1864, and
soul-stirring speeches were made by Phillips, Mrs. Rose, Lucretia Mott,
George Thompson, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. The report of the
executive committee showed that a debt of $5,000, including $1,000 for
postage alone, had been paid; that 25,000 blank petitions had been sent
out; that the league now numbered 5,000 members, and that branch Loyal
Leagues had been formed in many cities. Strong resolutions were adopted
demanding not only emancipation but enfranchisement for the negroes.
The entire proceedings of the convention illustrated how thoroughly the
leading women of the country understood the political situation, how
broad and comprehensive was their grasp of public affairs, and with
what a patriotic and self-sacrificing spirit they performed their part
of the duties imposed by the great Civil War.
By August, 1864, the signatures to the petitions had reached almost
400,000. Again and again Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson had written
Miss Anthony that these petitions formed the bulwark of their demand
for congressional action to abolish slavery. Public sentiment on this
point had now become emphatic, the Senate had passed the bill for the
prohibition of slavery, and the intention of the House of
Representatives was so apparent that it did not seem necessary to
continue the petitions. The headquarters in Cooper Institute were
closed, and the magnificent work, which from this center had radiated
throughout the country, found its reward in the proposition by
Congress, on February 1, 1865, for Amendment XIII to the Federal
Constitution:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist in the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
The faithful, untiring, persistent chief of this Women's National Loyal
League was Susan B. Anthony, whose only material reminder of that great
achievement for the freedom of the slave is the arm-chair in which, for
the past thirty-five years, she has sat and conducted her vast
correspondence in the interest of liberty for the half of humanity
still in bondage; yet in the blessed thought that her efforts were an
important factor in securing freedom for millions of her
fellow-creatures, she has been rewarded a thousandfold. But what words
can express her sense of humiliation when, at the close of this long
conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully still held
her unworthy a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the
political superiors of all the noble women of the nation, the negro men
just emerged from slavery and not only totally illiterate but also
densely ignorant of every public question?
[Autograph: Elizabeth Blackwell]
There never can be an adequate portrayal of the services rendered by
the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny
that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and
self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison of values is impossible,
but women's labors supplemented those of men, and together they wrought
out the freedom of the slave and the salvation of the Union. Among the
great body of women, a few stand out in immortal light. The plan of the
vital campaign of the Tennessee, one of the great strategic movements
of history, was made by Anna Ella Carroll. The work of Dorothea Dix,
government superintendent of women nurses, with its onerous and
important duties, needs no eulogy. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, fresh from
England and an intimacy with Florence Nightingale, originated the
Sanitary Commission. No name is held in more profound reverence than
that of Clara Barton, for her matchless services upon the battlefield
among the dead and dying. To Josephine S. Griffing belongs the full
credit of founding the Freedmen's Bureau, which played so valuable a
part in the help and protection of the newly emancipated negroes. Who
of all the public speakers rendered greater aid to the Union than the
inspired Anna Dickinson? Yet not one of these ever received the
slightest official recognition from the government. In the cases of
Miss Carroll, Dr. Blackwell and Mrs. Griffing, the honors and the
profits all were absorbed by men. Neither Dorothea Dix nor Clara Barton
ever asked for a pension. All of these women at the close of the war
appealed for the right of suffrage, a voice in the affairs of
government; but such appeals were and still are treated with
contemptuous denial. The situation was thus eloquently summed up by
that woman statesman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
The lessons of the war were not lost on the women of this nation;
through varied forms of suffering and humiliation, they learned
that they had an equal interest with men in the administration of
the government, alike enjoying its blessings or enduring its
miseries. When in the enfranchisement of the black men they saw
another ignorant class of voters placed above their heads, and
beheld the danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever
involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and
demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that
woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be
expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man
had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died
for his country.
[Footnote 32: See Appendix for this address.]
[Footnote 33: She was assisted from time to time by Mrs. Stanton, Lucy
Stone, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mary F. Gilbert,
Frances V. Hallock, Mattie Griffith (Brown), Rebecca Shepard (Putnam),
and Frances M. Russell, all donating their services. The bookkeeper and
the clerks were paid small salaries from the office receipts.]
CHAPTER XV.
"MALE" IN THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
1865.
Soon after closing the league headquarters, Miss Anthony went to Auburn
to attend the wedding of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and Ellen, daughter
of her dear friend Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott, a union
of two families very acceptable to the friends of both. From this scene
of festivity she returned home to meet a fresh sorrow in the sudden
death, almost at the hour of her arrival, of Ann Eliza, daughter of her
eldest sister Guelma and Aaron McLean, the best beloved of all her
nieces. She was twenty-three years old, beautiful and talented, a good
musician and an artist of fine promise. In her Miss Anthony had
centered many hopes and ambitions, and the letters show that she was
always planning and working for her future as she would have done for
that of a cherished daughter. She was laid to rest on the silver
wedding anniversary of her parents. Miss Anthony writes: "She had
ceased to be a child and had become the fullgrown woman, my companion
and friend. I loved her merry laugh, her bright, joyous presence, and
yet my loss is so small compared to the awful void in her mother's life
that I scarcely dare mention it."
Months afterwards she wrote her sister Hannah: "Today I made a
pilgrimage to Mount Hope. The last rays of red, gold and purple fringed
the horizon and shone serenely on the mounds above our dear father and
Ann Eliza. What a contrast in my feelings; for the one a subdued sorrow
at the sudden ending of a life full-ripened, only that we would have
basked in its sunshine a little longer; for the other a keen anguish
over the untimely cutting off in the dawn of existence, with the hopes
and longings but just beginning to take form, the real purpose of life
yet dimly developed, a great nature but half revealed. The faith that
she and all our loved and gone are graduated into a higher school of
growth and progress is the only consolation for death."
At another time she wrote her brother: "This new and sorrowful reminder
of the brittleness of life's threads should soften all our expressions
to each other in our home circles and open our lips to speak only words
of tenderness and approbation. We are so wont to utter criticisms and
to keep silence about the things we approve. I wish we might be as
faithful in expressing our likes as our dislikes, and not leave our
loved ones to take it for granted that their good acts are noted and
appreciated and vastly outnumber those we criticise. The sum of home
happiness would be greatly multiplied if all families would
conscientiously follow this method."
There were urgent appeals in these days from the lately-married brother
and his wife for sister Susan to come to Kansas and, as no public work
seemed to be pressing, she started the latter part of January, 1865.
She stopped in Chicago to visit her uncle Albert Dickinson, was
detained a week by heavy storms, and reached Leavenworth the last day
of the month. Of her journey she wrote home:
I paid a dollar for a ride across the Mississippi on the ice. When
we reached Missouri all was devastation. I asked the conductor if
there were not a sleeper and he replied, "Our sleeping cars are in
the ditch." Scarcely a train had been over the road in weeks
without being thrown off the track. We were nineteen hours going
the 200 miles from Quincy to St. Joe. Twelve miles out from the
latter we had to wait for the train ahead of us to get back on the
rails. I was desperate. Any decent farmer's pigpen would be as
clean as that car. There were five or six families, each with half
a dozen children, moving to Kansas and Nebraska, who had been shut
up there for days. A hovel stood up the bank a little way and
several of the men went there and washed their faces. After
watching them enjoy this luxury for a while I finally rushed up
myself and asked the woman in charge if she would sell me a cup of
coffee. She grunted out yes, after some hesitation, and while she
was making it, I washed my face and hands. When she handed me my
drink she said, "This is no rye; it is real coffee." And so it was
and I enjoyed it, brass spoon, thick, dingy, cracked cup and all.
This was Miss Anthony's first visit to Kansas and she found much to
interest her in Leavenworth--caravans of emigrants long trains of
supplies for the army, troops from the barracks crowds of colored
refugees, the many features of frontier life so totally different from
all she had seen and known in her eastern home. The prominence of her
brother brought many distinguished visitors to his house, she enjoyed
the long carriage drives and the days were filled with pleasant duties,
so that she writes, "I am afraid I shall get into the business of being
comfortable." On her birthday, February 15, the diary shows that she
wagered a pair of gloves with the family physician that it would not
rain before morning, and on the 16th is recorded: "The bell rang early
this morning and a boy left a box containing a pair of gloves with the
compliments of the doctor." In March one entry reads: "The new
seamstress starts in pretty well but she can not sew nicely enough for
the little clothes. We shall have to make those ourselves."
This life of ease proved to be of short duration. Her brother was
renominated for mayor and plunged at once into the thick of a political
campaign, while Miss Anthony went to the office to help manage his
newspaper, limited only by his injunction "not to have it all woman's
rights and negro suffrage." The labor, however, which she most enjoyed
was among the colored refugees. Soon after the slaves were set free
they flocked to Kansas in large numbers, and what should be done with
this great body of uneducated, untrained and irresponsible people was a
perplexing question. She went into the day schools, Sunday-schools,
charitable societies and all organizations for their relief and
improvement. The journal shows that four or five days or evenings every
week were given to this work and that she formed an equal rights league
among them. A colored printer was put into the composing-room, and at
once the entire force went on strike. The diary declares "it is a
burning, blistering shame," and relates her attempts to secure other
work for him. She met at this time Hiram Revels, a colored Methodist
preacher, afterwards United States senator from Mississippi.
During these months she was in constant receipt of letters pressing her
to return to the East. Phillips said: "Come back, there is work for you
here." From Lydia Mott came the pathetic cry: "Our old fraternity is no
more; we are divided, bodily and spiritually, and I seem to grow more
isolated every day." Pillsbury wrote: "We do not know much now about
one another. We called a meeting of the Hovey Committee and only
Whipple and I were present. Why have you deserted the field of action
at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost twenty
centuries? If you watch our papers you must have observed that with you
gone, our forces are scattered until I can almost truly say with him of
old, 'I only am left.' It is not for me to decide your field of labor.
Kansas needed John Brown and may need you. It is no doubt missionary
ground and, wherever you are, I know you will not be idle; but New York
is to revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is
to make the plea for woman?" Mrs. Stanton insisted that she should not
remain buried in Kansas and concluded a long letter:
I hope in a short time to be comfortably located in a new house
where we will have a room ready for you when you come East. I long
to put my arms around you once more and hear you scold me for my
sins and short-comings. Your abuse is sweeter to me than anybody
else's praise for, in spite of your severity, your faith and
confidence shine through all. O, Susan, you are very dear to me. I
should miss you more than any other living being from this earth.
You are intertwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and
all my future plans are based on you as a coadjutor. Yes, our work
is one, we are one in aim and sympathy and we should be together.
Come home.
Miss Anthony's own heart yearned to return, but the workers were so few
in Kansas and so many in the Eastern States. that she scarcely knew
where the call of duty was strongest. At the close of the war her mind
grasped at once the full import of the momentous questions which would
demand settlement and she felt the necessity of placing herself in
touch with those who would be most powerful in moulding public
sentiment. The threatened division in the Abolitionist ranks and the
reported determination of Mr. Garrison to disband the Anti-Slavery
Society, filled her with dismay and she sent back the strongest
protests she could put into words:
How can any one 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. Well, you will be in New York to witness, perhaps, the
disbanding of the Anti-Slavery Society--and I shall be away out
here, waiting anxiously to catch the first glimpse of the spirit of
the meeting. But Phillips will be glorious and genial to the end.
All through this struggle he has stood up against the tide, one of
the few to hold the nation to its vital work--its one necessity,
moral as military--absolute justice and equality for the black man.
I wish every ear in this country might listen to his word.
A letter from Mr. Phillips said: "Thank you for your kind note. I see
you understand the lay of the land and no words are necessary between
you and me. Your points we have talked over. If Garrison should resign,
we incline to Purvis for president for many, many reasons. We (Hovey
Committee) shall aid in keeping our Standard floating till the enemy
comes down." All the letters received by Miss Anthony during May and
June were filled with the story of the dissension in the Anti-Slavery
Society.
It is not a part of this work to go into the merits of that discussion.
In brief, Mr. Garrison and his followers believed that, with the
ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was forever abolished
in the United States and there was no further need of the Anti-Slavery
Society which he himself had founded. Phillips and his following held
that "no emancipation can be effectual and no freedom real, unless the
negro has the ballot and the States are prohibited from enacting laws
making any distinction among their citizens on Account of race or
color." There were minor differences of opinion respecting men and
measures, but the above are the fundamental points which led to the
first breach that had occurred for a quarter of a century in the ranks
of the great anti-slavery leaders, who had borne a persecution never
equalled in the history of our country. It resulted, at the May
Anniversary in New York, in Garrison's declining a re-election to the
presidency of the society, which he had held for thirty-two years, and
in the election of Phillips.
Those most intimately connected with Miss Anthony sustained the
position of Mr. Phillips--Mrs. Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Robert
Purvis, Charles Remond, Stephen Foster, Lucretia and Lydia Mott, Anna
Dickinson, Sarah Pugh--and she herself was his staunchest defender.
Believing as strongly as she did that the suffrage is the very
foundation of liberty, that without it there can be no real freedom for
either man or woman, she could not have done otherwise, and yet, so
great was her reverence and affection for Mr. Garrison, it was with the
keenest regret she found herself no longer able to follow him. She
writes: "I am glad I was spared from witnessing that closing scene. It
will be hard beyond expression to leave him out of our councils, but he
never will be out of our sympathies. I hope you will refrain from all
personalities. Pro-slavery signs are too apparent and too dangerous at
this hour for us to stop for personal adjustments. To go forward with
the great work pressing upon the society, without turning to the right
or the left, is the one wise course."
Parker Pillsbury was made editor of the Standard in place of Oliver
Johnson, and was assisted by George W. Smalley, who had married an
adopted daughter of Wendell Phillips. Mr. Pillsbury wrote Miss Anthony
soon after the anniversary:
We could not see how the colored race were to be risked, shut up in
the States with their old masters, whom they had helped to conquer
and out of whose defeat their freedom had come; so we voted to keep
the machinery in gear until better assurances were given of a free
future than we yet possess. We have offended some by our course. I
am sorry, but it was Mr. Garrison who taught me to be true to
myself. To my mind, suffrage for the negro is now what immediate
emancipation was thirty years ago. If we emancipate from slavery
and leave the European doctrine of serfdom extant, even in the
mildest form, then the colored race, or we, or perhaps both, have
another war in store. And so my work is not done till the last
black man can declare in the full face of the world, "I am a man
and a brother."
In June, as the expected little stranger had arrived safe, Miss Anthony
accepted an invitation to deliver the Fourth of July address at
Ottumwa, and then went through her inevitable agony whenever she had a
speech to prepare. She took the stage for Topeka, finding among her
fellow-passengers her relative, Major Scott Anthony, with Mr.
Butterfield of the Overland Dispatch, and the long, hot, dusty ride was
enlivened by an animated discussion of the political questions of the
day. During this drive over the unbroken prairies, she made the
prediction that, given a few decades of thrift, they would be dotted
with farms, orchards and villages and the State would be a paradise.
Miss Anthony was among the first of the Abolitionists to declare that
the negroes must have the suffrage, one of the most unpopular ideas
ever broached, and she writes: "As fearless, radical and independent as
my brother is, he will not allow my opinions on this subject to go into
his paper." At Topeka she spoke to a large audience in the Methodist
church on this question. In order to reach Ottumwa she had to ride 125
miles by stage in the heat of July, and her expenses were considerable.
No price had been guaranteed for her address, but she learned to her
surprise that she was expected to make it a gratuitous offering, as was
the custom on account of the poverty of the people. They came from
miles around and were enthusiastic over her speech on "President
Johnson's Mississippi Reconstruction Proclamation." The Republicans
insisted that she should put her notes in shape for publication, but
urged her to leave out the paragraph on woman suffrage.[34]
The other speakers were Sidney Clark, M.C., and a professor from
Lawrence University. They were entertained by a prominent official who
had just built a new house, the upper story of which was unfinished. It
was divided into three rooms by hanging up army blankets, and each of
the orators was assigned to one of these apartments. Miss Anthony was
so exhausted from the long stage-ride, the speaking and the heat, that
she scarcely could get ready for bed, but no sooner had she touched the
pillow than she was assailed by a species of animals noted for the
welcome they extended to travellers in the early history of Kansas. Her
dilemma was excruciating. Should she lie still and be eaten alive, or
should she get up, strike a light and probably rouse the honorable
gentlemen on the other side of the army blankets? A few minutes decided
the question; she slipped out of bed, lighted her tallow dip and
reconnoitered. Then she blew out her light, and sat by the window till
morning.
She spoke at Lawrence in the Unitarian and the Congregational churches,
and August 1, the thirty-first anniversary of England's emancipation of
the slaves in the West Indies, she addressed an immense audience in a
grove near Leavenworth. She discussed the changed condition of the
colored people and their new rights and duties, and called their
attention to the fact that not one of the prominent politicians
advertised was there; pointed out that if they possessed the ballot and
could vote these men into or out of office, all would be eager for an
opportunity to address them; and then drew a parallel between their
political condition and that of women. At this time she received a
second intimation of what was to come, when prominent Republicans
called upon her and insisted that hereafter she should not bring the
question of woman's rights into her speeches on behalf of the negro.
A few days afterwards Miss Anthony was seated in her brother's office
reading the papers when she learned to her amazement that several
resolutions had been offered in the House of Representatives
sanctioning disfranchisement on account of sex. Up to this time the
Constitution of the United States never had been desecrated by the word
"male," and she saw instantly that such action would create a more
formidable barrier than any now existing against the enfranchisement of
women. She hesitated no longer but started immediately on her homeward
journey, stopping in Atchison, where she was the guest of ex-Mayor
Crowell. Senator Pomeroy called, accompanied her to church and arranged
for her to address the colored people next day. She lectured also in
St. Joseph, Mo. At Chillicothe one of the editors sent word that if she
would not "lash" him he would print her handbills free of charge. Here
she addressed a great crowd of colored people in a tobacco factory. At
Macon City she spoke to them in an abandoned barracks, and slept in a
slab house. Her night's experience at Ottumwa was repeated here, except
that the army of invaders were fleas. The next day she was invited to
the Methodist minister's home and his church placed at her disposal,
where she addressed a large white audience. Of her speech in St. Louis
she wrote:
Sunday afternoon I spoke to the colored people in an old slave
church in which priests used to preach "Servants, obey your
masters;" and in which slaves never dared breathe aloud their
hearts' deepest prayer for freedom. The church was built by actual
slaves with money they earned working odd hours allowed them by
their masters. The greatest danger for these people now lies in
being duped by the priests and Levites who used to pass them by on
the other side but who, now that they have become popular prey,
wildly run to and fro to do them good--that is, get their money and
give themselves easy, fat posts as superintendents, missionaries,
teachers, etc. The country is full of these soul-sharks, men who
haven't had brains enough to find pulpits or places in the free
States.
As Miss Anthony took the train for Chicago, a woman-thief picked her
pocket but she caught her and, without any appeal to the police,
compelled her to deliver up the stolen goods. At Chicago she lectured
several times, visited the Freedmen's Commission, heard General Howard,
called on General Sherman, went to the board of trade, where she was
greatly shocked at the roaring of the "bulls and bears," and had
pleasant visits with relatives in the city and adjacent towns, speaking
at a number of these places. She lectured at Battle Creek and Ann
Arbor, arriving at Rochester September 23. Pausing only for a brief
visit, she went on to New York to fulfill the purpose which brought her
eastward. She stopped at Auburn to counsel with Mrs. Wright and Mrs.
Worden, but found both very dubious about reviving interest in woman's
rights at this critical moment. After a night of mapping out the
campaign with Mrs. Stanton, she started out bright and early the next
morning on that mission which she was to follow faithfully and
steadfastly, without cessation or turning aside, for the next thirty
years--to compel the Constitution of the United States to recognize the
political rights of woman! The days were spent in hunting up old
friends and supporters of the years before the war and enlisting their
sympathies in the great work now at hand; and the evenings were
occupied with Mrs. Stanton in preparing an appeal and a form of
petition praying Congress to confer the suffrage on women.[35] This was
the first demand ever made for Congressional action on this question.
The Fourteenth Amendment, as proposed, contained in Section 2, to which
the women objected, the word "male" three times, and read as follows:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of
persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the
right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for
president and vice-president of the United States, representatives
in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the
members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the _male_
inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the
number of such _male_ citizens shall bear to the whole number of
_male_ citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
If it had been adopted without this word "male," all women would have
been virtually enfranchised, as men would have let women vote rather
than have them counted out of the basis of representation. Thaddeus
Stevens made a vigorous attempt to have women included in the
provisions of this amendment.
[Autograph: Thaddeus Stevens]
A letter written by Mrs. Stanton to Martha Wright is a sample of
hundreds which were sent to friends in all parts of the country:
I enclose you the proof of the memorial which Susan and I have just
been getting up for Congress. I have been writing to Mr. Garrison
to make some mention of us, "the only disfranchised class now
remaining," in his last Liberator. It is fitting that we should be
recognized in his valedictory. We have now boosted the negro over
our own heads, and we had better begin to remember that
self-preservation is the first law of nature. Will you see if you
can get our petition in your city and county papers? Sign it
yourself and send it to your representatives in Senate and
Congress, and then try to galvanize the women of your district into
life. Some say: "Be still; wait; this is the negro's hour." We
believe this is the hour for everybody to do the best thing for
reconstruction.
Miss Anthony found the leaders among the men so absorbed with their
interest in the male negro that they had given little thought to the
suffrage as related to women; but the Hovey Committee appropriated $500
to begin the petition work. She went to Concord and held a parlor
meeting attended by Emerson, Alcott, Sanborn and other sages of that
intellectual center, stating what the women desired to accomplish.
After she finished, Emerson was appealed to for an opinion but said:
"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide
for me in practical matters." Mrs. Emerson replied without hesitation
that she fully agreed with Miss Anthony in regard to the necessity for
petitioning Congress at once to enfranchise women, either before this
great body of negroes was invested with the ballot or at the same time.
Mr. Emerson and the other gentlemen then assured her of their sympathy
and support.
[Autograph: R. Waldo Emerson]
She presented her claims at the annual anti-slavery meeting in
Westchester and at many other gatherings. She went also to Philadelphia
to visit James and Lucretia Mott and interest Mary Grew and Sarah Pugh
and all the friends in that locality; then back to New York with
tireless energy and unflagging zeal. She wrote articles for the
Anti-Slavery Standard, sent out petitions and left no stone unturned to
accomplish her purpose. The diary shows the days to have been well
filled:
Went to Tilton's office to express regrets at not being able to
attend their tin wedding. He read us his editorial on Seward and
Beecher. Splendid!... Went to hear Beecher, morning and evening.
There is no one like him.... Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and
went with her to Mrs. Bowen's.... Listened to O.B. Frothingham,
"Justice the Mother of Wisdom."... Put some new buttons on my
cloak. This is its third winter.... Excellent audience in Friends'
meeting house, at Milton-on-the-Hudson. Visited the grave of Eliza
W. Farnham.... Went over to New Jersey to confer with Lucy Stone
and Antoinette Blackwell.... Called at Dr. Cheever's, and also had
an interview with Robert Dale Owen.... Went to Worcester to see
Abby Kelly Foster and from there to Boston.... Found Dr. Harriot K.
Hunt ready for woman suffrage work. Took dinner at Garrison's. Saw
Whipple and May, then went to Wendell Phillips'.... Spent the day
with Caroline M. Severance, at West Newton. She is earnest in the
cause of women.... Returned to New York and commenced work in
earnest. Spent nearly all the Christmas holidays addressing and
sending off petitions.
Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton entered heartily into the plans
of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Mr. Tilton proposed that they should
form a National Equal Rights Association, demanding suffrage for
negroes and for women, that Mr. Phillips should be its president, the
Anti-Slavery Standard its official organ; and Mr. Beecher agreed to
lecture in behalf of this new movement. Mr. Tilton came out with a
strong editorial in the Independent, advocating suffrage for women and
paying a beautiful tribute to the efficient services in the past of
those who were now demanding recognition of their political rights:
A LAW AGAINST WOMEN.--The spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing
this creature's mossy legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington
are seeking to fix these upon the Federal Constitution, to make
that instrument walk backward in like style. For instance, the
Constitution has never laid any legal disabilities upon woman.
Whatever denials of rights it formerly made to our slaves, it
denied nothing to our wives and daughters. The legal rights of an
American woman--for instance, her right to her own property, as
against a squandering husband; or her right to her own children as
against a malicious father--have grown, year by year, into a more
generous and just statement in American laws. This beautiful result
is owing in great measure to the persistent efforts of many noble
women who, for years past, both publicly and privately, by pen and
speech, have appealed to legislative committees and to the whole
community for an enlargement of the legal and civil status of their
fellow-countrywomen. Signal, honorable and beneficent have been the
works and words of Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, Paulina Wright
Davis, Abby Kelly Foster, Frances D. Gage, Lucy Stone, Caroline H.
Ball, Antoinette Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and many others. Not in all the land lives a poor woman or
a widow who does not owe some portion of her present safety under
the law to the brave exertions of these faithful laborers.
All forward-looking minds know that, sooner or later, the chief
public question in this country will be woman's claim to the
ballot. The Federal Constitution, as it now stands, leaves this
question an open one for the several States to settle as they
choose. Two bills, however, now lie before Congress proposing to
array the fundamental law of the land against the multitude of
American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a
whole sex. To this injustice we object totally! Such an amendment
is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future
progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted on the most tender
and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics.
If the present Congress is not called to legislate _for_ the rights
of women, let it not legislate _against_ them. Americans now live
who shall not go down into the grave till they have left behind
them a republican government; and no republic is republican that
denies to half its citizens those rights which the Declaration of
Independence and a true Christian democracy make equal to all.
Meanwhile, let us break the legs of the spider-crab.
[Footnote 34: See Appendix for full speech.]
[Footnote 35: As the question of suffrage is now agitating the public
mind, it is the hour for woman to make her demand. Propositions already
have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as
to exclude women from a voice in the government. As this would be to
turn the wheels of legislation backward, let the women of the nation
now unitedly protest against such a desecration of the Constitution,
and petition for that right which is at the foundation of all
government, the right of representation. Send your petition when signed
to your representative in Congress, at your earliest convenience.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, LUCY STONE.]
CHAPTER XVI.
THE NEGRO'S HOUR.
1866.
The reconstruction period of our government was no less trying a time
than the four years of warfare which preceded it. The Union had been
preserved but the disorganization of the Southern States was complete.
Lincoln, whose cool judgment, restraining wisdom and remarkable genius
for understanding and persuading men never had been more needed, was
dead by the hand of an assassin. In his place was a man, rash,
headlong, aggressive, stubborn, distrusted by the party which had
placed him in power. This chief executive had to deal not only with the
great, perplexing questions which always follow upon the close of a
war, but with these rendered still more difficult by the great mass of
bewildered and helpless negroes, ignorant of how to care for
themselves, with no further claims upon their former owners, and yet
destined to live among them. The immense Republican majority in
Congress found itself opposed by a President, southern in birth and
sympathy and an uncompromising believer in State Rights.
The southern legislatures, while accepting the Thirteenth Amendment,
which prohibited slavery, passed various laws whose effect could not be
other than to keep the negro in a condition of "involuntary servitude."
To the South these measures seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence
to retain at least temporary control of a race unfitted for a wise use
of liberty; to the North they appeared a determination to evade the
provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and Congress decided upon more
radical measures. One wing of the old Abolitionists, under the
leadership of Phillips, had steadfastly insisted that there could be no
real freedom without the ballot. Several attempts had been made to
secure congressional action for the enfranchisement of the negro, which
the majority of Republicans had now come to see was essential for his
protection, and these resulted finally in the submission of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Charles Sumner stated that he covered nineteen
pages of foolscap in his effort so to formulate it as to omit the word
"male" and, at the same time, secure the ballot for the negro.
When Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton sounded the alarm, the old leaders
in the movement for woman's rights came at once to their aid, but they
were soon to meet with an unexpected and serious disappointment. In
January Miss Anthony went to the anti-slavery meeting at Boston, full
of the new idea of consolidating the old Anti-Slavery and the Woman's
Rights Societies under one name, that of the Equal Rights Association.
She was warmly supported by Tilton, Lucy Stone, Powell and others, but
to their amazement they found Mr. Phillips very cool and discouraging.
He said this could be done only by amending the constitution of the
Anti-Slavery Society, which required three months' notice. Still they
did not dream of his opposing the proposition and so deputized Mr.
Powell to give the formal notice, in order that it might be acted upon
at the coming May Anniversary. On the way back the New York delegation
discussed this new plan enthusiastically, and Miss Anthony wrote home
that there was a strong wish in the society to widen its object so as
to include universal suffrage, believing this to be the case. The
necessary steps at once were taken for calling a national woman's
rights meeting to convene in New York the same week as the Anti-Slavery
Anniversary, and the following call was issued setting forth its
principal objects:
Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the
deep gulf between our broad theory and our partial legislation; do
not see that our government for the last century has been but a
repetition of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence the
failure is not in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our
part to apply it. The question now is, have we the wisdom and
conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system to
reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis which never yet
has been tried--Equal Rights to All?
From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we
have not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for,
while our representatives at Washington are discussing the right of
suffrage for the black man as the only protection to life, liberty
and happiness, they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman,
by proposing to introduce the word "male" into the Federal
Constitution. In securing suffrage but to another shade of manhood,
while disfranchising 15,000,000 women, we come not one line nearer
the republican idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman and dignity
on her brow, more unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an
American Congress pay less honor to the daughter of a President
than a British Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our
petitions command as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as
a speech of Victoria in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that
here all men and women are nobles--all heirs apparent to the
throne? The fact that this backward legislation has roused so
little thought or protest from the women of the country but proves
what some of our ablest thinkers already have declared, that the
greatest barrier to a government of equality is the aristocracy of
its women; for while woman holds an ideal position above man and
the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry and
distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation
never can realize the divine idea of equality.
To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the
same upheavings we now see in the state; for while our egotism,
selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose
life was a sacrifice, while at the family altar we are taught to
worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is
vain to talk of a republican government. The fair fruits of
liberty, equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud till
cherished in the heart of woman. At this hour the nation needs the
highest thought and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into
every vein and artery of its life; and woman needs a broader,
deeper education such as a pure religion and lofty patriotism alone
can give. From the baptism of this second Revolution should she not
rise up with new strength and dignity, clothed in all those
"rights, privileges and immunities" which shall best enable her to
fulfill her highest duties to humanity, her country, her family and
herself?
On behalf of the National Woman's Rights Central Committee,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_; SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.
Letters both encouraging and discouraging were received. Robert Purvis,
one of the most elegant and scholarly colored men our country has
known, whose father was a Scotchman and mother a West Indian with no
slave blood, sent this noble response: "....I can not agree that this
or any hour is 'especially the negro's.' I am an anti-slavery man
because I hate tyranny and in my nature revolt against oppression,
whatever its form or character. As an Abolitionist, therefore, I am for
the equal rights movement, and as one of the confessedly oppressed
race, how could I be otherwise? With what grace could I ask the women
of this country to labor for my enfranchisement, and at the same time
be unwilling to put forth a hand to remove the tyranny, in some
respects greater, to which they are subjected? Again wishing you a
successful meeting, I am very gratefully yours."
[Autograph: Robert Purvis]
Anna Dickinson, who had come upon the scene of action since the last
woman's rights convention five years before, wrote Miss Anthony that
she should be present but was not sure that she was yet ready to speak:
"I'm a great deal of a Quaker--I don't like to take up any work till I
feel called to it. My personal interest is perhaps stronger in that of
which thee writes me than in any other, but my hands are so full just
now. I see what I shall do in the future, and I hope the near future.
Wait for me a little--forbear, and I honestly believe I'll do thee some
good and faithful service; I don't mean wait for me, but be patient
with me. I write this out of my large love for and confidence in thee.
I will talk to thee more of it by end of the month when I see thee in
Boston and put my mite in thy hands; till then believe me, dear friend,
affectionately and truly thine."
At the business meeting of the anti-slavery convention the proposition
was made by the National Woman's Rights Committee that, as all there
was left for the society to do was to secure suffrage for the negro,
and as the woman's society also was working for universal suffrage,
they should merge the two into one, and in that way the same
conventions, appeals, petitions, etc., would answer for both. To this
Mr. Phillips vigorously objected because the necessary three months'
notice had not been given! As Mr. Powell had been delegated the
previous January to give this, there could be no other conclusion than
that he had refrained from doing so. There was considerable discussion
on the question but, as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr.
Phillips' influence was supreme and the coalition was declined.
The Woman's Rights Convention met in Dr. Cheever's church, May 10,
1866, with a large audience present. It was their first meeting since
before the war, and while it had many elements of gladness, yet it was
not unmixed with sorrow. Mr. Garrison was absent, the first rift had
been made in the love and gratitude in which for many years Mr.
Phillips had been held, and a vague feeling of distrust and alarm was
beginning to creep over the women, lest, after all these years of
patient work, they were again to be sacrificed.
Miss Anthony presented a ringing set of resolutions, and splendid
addresses were given by Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward
Beecher. Mr. Phillips then made a long and eloquent speech which was
rapturously received by the audience, but which filled the leaders with
sadness, because of the skillful evasion of the disputed question which
they never had expected from this staunch friend. Miss Anthony read an
address to Congress[36] which was adopted with unanimous approval. At
the close of the convention a business session was held, at which she
offered a resolution declaring that, since by the act of emancipation
and the Civil Rights Bill, the negro and woman now had the same civil
and political status, alike needing only the ballot, therefore the time
had come for an organization which should demand universal suffrage;
and that hereafter their society should be known as the American Equal
Rights Association. She supported this by an able speech in which she
said:
For twenty years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right
of representation in the government. Each successive year after
1848, conventions were held in different States, until the
beginning of the war. 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, viz.: that taxation and representation must be inseparable;
hence our demand must now go beyond woman--it must extend to the
farthest limit of the principle of the "consent of the governed,"
as the only authorized or just government. We therefore wish to
broaden our woman's rights platform and make it in name what it
ever has been in spirit, a human rights platform. As women we can
no longer claim for ourselves what we do not for others, nor can we
work in two separate movements to get the ballot for the two
disfranchised classes, negroes and women, since to do so must be at
double cost of time, energy and money.... Therefore, that we may
henceforth concentrate all our forces for the practical application
of our one grand, distinctive, national idea--universal suffrage--I
hope we will unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus
resolving ourselves into the American Equal Eights Association.
Notwithstanding the rebuff they had received from the Anti-Slavery
Society, this resolution was unanimously adopted and the Woman's Rights
Society which had existed practically for sixteen years was merged into
the American Equal Rights Association to work for universal suffrage. A
constitution was adopted and officers chosen.[37] Mrs. Stanton thus
describes the last moments of the convention: "As Lucretia Mott uttered
her few parting words of benediction, the fading sunlight through the
stained windows falling upon her pure face, a celestial glory seemed
about her, a sweet and peaceful influence pervaded every heart, and all
responded to Theodore Tilton when he said this closing meeting was one
of the most beautiful, delightful and memorable which any of its
participants ever enjoyed."
A short time thereafter Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Phillips and
Mr. Tilton were in the Standard office discussing the work. Mr.
Phillips argued that the time was ripe for striking the word "white"
out of the New York constitution, at its coming convention, but not for
striking out "male." Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction
to all he had so warmly advocated only a few weeks before, and said
what the women should do was to canvass the State with speeches and
petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the
women to come afterward, presumably twenty years later, when there
would be another revision of the constitution. Mrs. Stanton, entirely
overcome by the eloquence of these two gifted men, acquiesced in all
they said; but Miss Anthony, who never could be swerved from her
standard by any sophistry or blandishments, was highly indignant and
declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the
ballot for the black man and not for woman. After Phillips had left,
she overheard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, "What does ail Susan? She
acts like one possessed." Mrs. Stanton replied, "I can not imagine; I
never before saw her so unreasonable and absolutely rude."
She was obliged to leave immediately to keep an engagement, but as soon
as she was at liberty went straight to Mrs. Stanton's home, and found
her walking up and down the long parlors, wringing her hands. She threw
her arms around Miss Anthony, exclaiming: "I never was so glad to see
you. Do tell me what is the matter with me? I feel as if I had been
scourged from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet!" They sat
down together and went over the whole conversation, and she then saw
and felt most keenly the insult and degradation concealed in the
proposition of the two men, and agreed with Miss Anthony that she would
sacrifice her life before she would accept it.
This incident illustrates one marked difference in these two women,
each so strong in her own characteristics. Mrs. Stanton in the presence
of brilliant intellect and elegant culture at times would seem to be
entirely psychologized, even though the arguments used were in direct
conflict with her own instincts and judgment. On the contrary, no
eloquence, no persuasiveness of manner, no magnetic power could induce
Miss Anthony for one moment to abandon her convictions of truth and
justice. Mrs. Stanton's disposition was one of extreme suavity which
loved to please, while Miss Anthony's nature was rugged, unflinching
and stern in upholding the right without regard to expediency.
On May 31 both the Anti-Slavery Society and the Equal Rights
Association held large meetings in Boston. The latter, in conformity
with its new name, announced that "any member of the audience, man or
woman, was entitled to speak on the topics under debate and would be
made welcome." This had been the rule always in the old woman's rights
conventions, but it was reaffirmed now in order to show the broad and
catholic spirit of the new organization. At this Boston meeting Anna
Dickinson made her first speech for the rights of woman. It was one of
those bursts of inspiration which no pen can reproduce, and was
received by the audience with cheer upon cheer. She gave $100 to the
cause, assuring them of her services henceforth, and Miss Anthony wrote
of her, "She is sound to the heart's core."
The great work of rolling up petitions, not only to Congress but to the
New York Constitutional Convention, was then commenced. The executive
board of the Standard offered to lease to the Equal Rights Association
office-room and a certain amount of space in the paper. These, however,
were put at such a price and placed under such restrictions as it was
thought unwise to accept. All the matter submitted would be subject to
"editorial revision," even though the association paid for the space,
and as Mr. Pillsbury had resigned the editorship and Mr. Powell had
taken it, they decided they could not trust the "editorial revision."
The women had done so vast an amount of gratuitous work for the
Standard in past years, that they felt themselves entitled to more
liberal treatment. The editor had written, only a short time before, of
the excellent service Miss Anthony had rendered in straightening out
the accounts. She also had secured numerous subscribers, sending in as
many as thirty at a time from some of her meetings.
For the purpose of arousing public interest in the approaching New York
Constitutional Convention, an equal rights meeting was held at Albany,
in Tweddle Hall, November 21. To make this a success Miss Anthony spent
many weeks of hard work. The diary notes that, among other things, she
directed and sent out 1200 complimentary tickets.[38] At this Albany
convention political differences began to appear. Mrs. Stanton
complimented the Democrats for the assistance they had rendered;
Frederick Douglass objected to their receiving any credit, branding
their advocacy as a trick of the enemy, and there were frequent sharp
encounters. Miss Anthony made an extended speech, of which there is but
this newspaper report:
She referred to the assertion of Horace Greeley, that while women
had the abstract right to suffrage the great majority of them did
not wish it. So they told us when we said the negro ought to be
free; he did not wish it; he was contented and happy. As we replied
relative to the negro, so do we regarding women. If they do not
desire the right to vote, it is an evidence of the depth to which
they have been degraded by its deprivation. A woman clerk, in the
New York Mercantile Library, told her that during the war the
salaries of the male clerks all had been raised, but not those of
the women, and a man's, who held an inferior position, had been
increased to $300 more than her own. The clerk said that if she had
been a voter she did not believe such injustice would have been
perpetrated. In Rochester the salaries of the male teachers in the
public schools were raised $100 per annum while the small salaries
of the women were still further reduced. In Auburn $200 additional
compensation was voted to the male teachers and $25 to the women,
who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution
thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then
required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult,
and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The
speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician
dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held
the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can
protect herself.
A form of petition was approved asking that women might be members of
the coming Constitutional Convention and vote on the new constitution.
Respectful reports were made by the New York papers with the exception
of the World, which said in a long and abusive article:
Altogether the ablest, most dignified and best-balanced man in the
body is Frederick Douglass, and there is a deep feeling for him for
United States senator in spite of the drift of the convention,
which is evidently in favor of Susan B. Anthony; notwithstanding
which Elizabeth Cady Stanton is likewise a candidate with
considerable strength, favoring as she does the Copperheads, the
Democratic party and other dead and buried remains of alleged
disloyalty. Susan is lean, cadaverous and intellectual, with the
proportions of a file and the voice of a hurdy-gurdy. She is the
favorite of the convention. Mrs. Stanton is of intellectual stock,
impressive in manner and disposed to henpeck the convention which
of course calls out resistance and much cackling.... Susan has a
controlling advantage over her in the fact that she is unencumbered
with a husband. As male members of Congress rarely have wives in
Washington, so female members will be expected to be without
husbands at the capital....
Parker Pillsbury, one of the notabilities of the body, is a
good-looking white man naturally, but has a cowed and sneakish
expression stealing over him, as though he regretted he had not
been born a nigger or one of these females.... Lucy Stone, the
president of the convention, is what the law terms a "spinster."
She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is
wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or
command.... Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic
duties, habits and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic,
dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of
opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated,
oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore Tilton, make
up the less than a hundred members of this caravan, called, by
themselves, the American Equal Rights Association.
On December 6 and 7 a mass meeting was held in Cooper Institute, Miss
Anthony presiding. There were the usual effective speeches and large
and appreciative audiences present at every session. From New York the
speakers went at once to Rochester and held a two days' convention
there. The forces then divided and, under the management of Miss
Anthony, held meetings in a large number of the towns of western and
central New York, to arouse public sentiment in favor of giving women a
representation at the Constitutional Convention.
Meanwhile the petitions asking Congress to include women in the
proposed Fourteenth Amendment were rapidly pushed, and as soon as ten
or twelve thousand names were secured they were sent at once to
Washington, as the resolution was then under discussion. And here came
the revelation which had been for some time foreshadowed--the
Republicans refused to champion this cause! From the founding of the
Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, women had been always its most loyal
supporters, bearing their share of the odium and persecution of early
days. When the Republican party was formed, the leading women of the
country had allied themselves with it and given faithful service during
the long, dark years which followed. All the Abolitionists and
prominent Republicans had upheld the principle of equal rights to all,
and now, when the test came, they refused to recognize the claims of
woman! Some of the senators and representatives declined to present the
petitions sent from their own districts; others offered them merely as
petitions for "universal suffrage," carefully omitting the word "woman"
and trusting that it would be inferred they meant suffrage for the
negro men.
Even Charles Sumner, who so many times had acknowledged his
indebtedness to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and the other women who were
now asking for their rights, presented a petition from Massachusetts,
headed by Lydia Maria Child, with the declaration that he did it under
protest and that it was "most inopportune." Mrs. Child was the first
and one of the ablest editors of the Anti-Slavery Standard, and had
battled long and earnestly for the freedom of the slave at the cost of
her literary popularity; but now when she asked that she might receive
the rights of citizenship at least at the same time they were conferred
upon the freedman, her plea was declared "most inopportune."
The Democrats in Congress, who never had favored or assisted in any way
the so-called woman's rights doctrines, seized upon this opportunity to
harass the Republicans and defeat negro suffrage. They not only
presented the women's petitions but made long and eloquent speeches in
their favor, using with telling force against the Republicans their own
oft-repeated arguments for equal rights to all. In the midst of this
agitation, the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill being under
discussion, Edgar Cowan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, moved to strike out
the word "male," and thus precipitated a debate which occupied three
entire days in the Senate. Among the Republicans Benjamin F. Wade and
B. Gratz Brown made splendid arguments for woman suffrage and announced
their votes in favor of the measure. Senator Wilson, from
Massachusetts, declared himself ready at any and all times to vote for
a separate bill enfranchising women, but opposed to connecting it with
negro suffrage. The vote in the Senate to strike the word "male" from
the proposed bill resulted: yeas, 9; nays, 47; in the House, yeas, 49;
nays, 74--68 not voting. A number of members in both Houses who
believed in woman suffrage voted "no" because they preferred to
sacrifice the women rather than the negroes.[39]
[Autograph: B.F. Wade]
[Autograph: With the respects of B. Gratz Brown]
The Republican press was equally hostile to the proposition to
enfranchise women. Mr. Greeley, who in times past had been so staunch a
supporter of woman's rights, now said in the New York Tribune:
A CRY FROM THE FEMALES,--.... Our heart warms with pity towards
these unfortunate creatures. We fancy that we can see them,
deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted
privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives
away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art
in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of
cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an
accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her
eye! There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern
monarch, that his wife was sovereign of the empire, because she
ruled his little ones and his little ones ruled him. The sure
panacea for such ills as the Massachusetts petitioners complain of,
is a wicker-work cradle and a dimple-cheeked baby.
The New York Post, which under Mr. Bryant's editorship had favored the
enfranchisement of women, also took ground against it now, and this was
the attitude of Republican papers in all parts of the country. The
Democratic press was opposed, except when it could make capital against
the Republicans by espousing it.
In November Miss Anthony went to a great anti-slavery meeting in
Philadelphia. Between the two sessions, Lucretia Mott invited about
twenty of the leading men and women to lunch with her. At her request
Miss Anthony acted as spokesman and, in behalf of the women, begged Mr.
Phillips to reconsider his position and make the woman's and the
negro's cause identical, but here, in the presence of the women who had
stood shoulder to shoulder with him in all his hard-fought battles of
the last twenty years, he again refused, declaring that their time had
not yet come. Miss Anthony sent the most impassioned appeals to the
Joint Committee of Fifteen, with Thaddeus Stevens as chairman, which
had charge of the congressional policy on reconstruction, urging that
if they could not report favorably on the petitions, at least they
would not interpose any new barrier against woman's right to the
ballot; but, although Mr. Stevens had ever been friendly to the claims
of women, he refused to recognize them now. Everywhere they were met by
the cry, "This is the negro's hour!"
It was a long time before the women could believe that the Republicans
and Abolitionists, who had advocated their cause for years, would
forsake them at this critical moment. The letters written during this
period showed the agony of spirit they endured as they beheld one after
another repudiating their demands and setting them aside in favor of
the negro. Not only did the men thus abandon the cause of equal rights
but, by their specious arguments, they persuaded many of the women that
it was their duty to sacrifice their own claims and devote themselves
to securing suffrage for the colored men. This indignant letter from
Mrs. Stanton to one of the "old guard," who at first declined to
circulate petitions, will serve as an example of many which were sent
to the women:
I have just read your letter, and it would have been a wet blanket
to Susan and me were we not sure that we are right. With three
bills before Congress to exclude us from all hope of representation
in the future, I thank God that _two_ women of the nation felt the
insult and decided to rouse the rest to use the only right we have
in the government--the right of petition. If the petition goes with
our names alone, ours be the glory, and the disgrace to all the
rest! We have sent out 1,000 franked by Representative James
Brooks, of the New York Express, and if they come back to us empty,
Susan and I will sign all of them, that every Democratic member may
have one to shame those hypocritical Republicans. When your
granddaughters hear that against such insults you made no protest,
they will blush for their ancestry.
This letter from Lucretia Mott shows that some men remained true to the
woman's cause: "My husband and myself cordially hail this movement. The
negro's hour came with his emancipation from cruel bondage. He now has
advocates not a few for his right to the ballot. Intelligent as these
are, they must see that this right can not be consistently withheld
from women. We pledge $50 toward the necessary funds." At this time
Miss Anthony in a strong and earnest letter showed the injustice of the
Standard's behavior:
How I do wish the good old Standard would preach the whole gospel
of the whole loaf of republicanism; but I am sorry to say the
present indications are that it will extend even less favor to us
than ever before. I gather this from Mr. Powell's announcement to
me last week that henceforth, if I were not going to give my
personal efforts to the Standard, he should not publish notices of
our meetings except at "full advertising rates." I was not a little
startled but answered: "Of course I shall say the Standard is the
truest and best paper for negro suffrage; but I can not say that it
is so for woman suffrage." He said he saw this and hereafter we
must pay for all notices.
[Illustration: Lucretia Mott]
Now, I do complain of this and with just cause, so long as $2,000
of the sainted Hovey's money are sunk annually in the struggle to
keep the Standard afloat, while Mr. Hovey's will expressly says:
"In case chattel slavery should be abolished before the expenditure
of the full amount, the residue shall be applied toward securing
woman's rights," etc. Mr. Pillsbury told the Hovey Committee last
winter, after abolition was proclaimed, that he could not in
conscience accept his salary from them as editor of the Standard
for another year unless it should advocate woman's claims equally
with those of the negro.
In her diary she writes: "Even Charles Sumner bends to the spirit of
compromise and presents a constitutional amendment which concedes the
right to disfranchise law-abiding, tax-paying citizens." Robert Purvis
again expressed his cordial sympathy: "I am heartily with you in the
view 'that the reconstruction of the Union is a work of greater
importance than the restoration of the rebel States;' and that it
should be in accordance with the true republican idea of the personal
rights of all our citizens, without regard to sex or color. If the
settlement of this question upon the comprehensive basis of equal
rights and impartial justice to all should require the postponement of
the enfranchisement of the colored man, I am willing for the delay,
though it should take a decade of years to 'fight it out on that
line.'" Mr. Purvis frequently said in the debates of those days that he
would rather his son never should be enfranchised than that his
daughter never should be, as she bore the double disability of sex and
color and, by every principle of justice, should be the first to be
protected.
As the struggle for the enfranchisement of the negro grew more intense,
and the entire burden of it fell upon the Republican party, its members
became more and more insistent that the women should not jeopardize the
claims of the colored man by pressing their own. Miss Anthony, Mrs.
Stanton and a few others of the stronger and more independent women
declared they would not suffer in silence the injustice and insult of
having this great body of ignorant men granted the political rights
which were denied intelligent women; nor would they submit without
protest to having a million ballots added to the mass which already
were sure to be cast against the enfranchisement of women if ever the
question came to a popular vote. As a result of their stand for
justice, they found themselves utterly deserted by all the great
leaders with whom they had labored so earnestly and harmoniously for
many years--Garrison, Phillips, Greeley, Curtis, Tilton, Higginson,
Douglass, Gerrit Smith. Of all the old Abolitionists only four--Samuel
J. May, Robert Purvis, Parker Pillsbury and Stephen S. Foster--remained
loyal to their standard. There was not one of the men repudiating them
who did not believe thoroughly in the principle of woman's full right
to the ballot. The women simply were sacrificed to political
expediency; set aside without a moment's hesitation in obedience to the
party shibboleth. "This is the negro's hour!"
[Footnote 36: See Appendix for this address.]
[Footnote 37: 'WHEREAS, by the war, society is once more resolved into
its original elements, and in the reconstruction of our government we
again stand face to face with the broad question of natural rights, all
associations based on special claims for special classes are too narrow
and partial for the hour; therefore, from the baptism of a second
Revolution, purified and exalted by suffering, seeing with a holier
vision that the peace, prosperity and perpetuity of the republic rest
on Equal Rights to All, we, today assembled in our Eleventh National
Woman's Rights Convention, bury the woman in the citizen, and our
organization in that of the American Equal Rights Association.
_President_, Lucretia Mott; _vice-presidents_, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Theodore Tilton, Frederick Douglass, Josephine S. Griffing, Frances D.
Gage, Robert Purvis, Martha C. Wright, Rebecca W. Mott; _corresponding
secretaries_, Susan B. Anthony, Caroline M. Severance, Mattie Griffith;
_treasurer_, Ludlow Patton; _recording secretary_, Henry B. Blackwell.]
[Footnote 38: Mr. Beecher was invited to one of the preliminary
meetings held during the summer and thus replied: "I can not come to
Syracuse, much as I should like to, for I am, from the middle of
August, a victim of ophthalmic catarrh, often called hay-fever or hay
cold, which unfits me for any serious duty except that of sneezing and
crying. That which the prophet longed for--that his eyes might become a
fountain of tears--I have, unlonged for, and I am persuaded that
Jeremiah would never have asked for it a second time, if he had but
once tried it. The visit to Gerrit Smith's is tempting but at this,
like many another good thing, I look and pass on."]
[Footnote 39: See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II; p. 103.]
CHAPTER XVII.
CAMPAIGNS IN NEW YORK AND KANSAS.
1867.
The first three months of 1867 were spent by Miss Anthony and a corps
of speakers in a series of conventions throughout the State of New York
in order to secure for women a representation in the Constitutional
Convention. The history of these was that of many which had preceded
them, large crowds and much enthusiasm in some places, small audiences
and chilling receptions at others. The press comments were generally
fair, but occasionally there was a weak attempt at wit or satire. For
instance, the editor of the Buffalo Commercial thus replied through his
columns to a polite note from Miss Anthony enclosing an advertisement
of the convention and requesting that the blank space left be filled
with the names of places where tickets usually were sold, the bill to
be sent to her:
By reference to the notice which we publish elsewhere, it will be
seen that we have complied with the request of Susan, except in
giving the names of places where tickets are to be had. "The bars
of the principal hotels" suggested itself; but then it occurred to
us that perhaps some of our strong-minded female fellow-citizens
might not like to go to these places for cards of admission. Then
we thought of inserting "for freight or passage apply to the
captain on board;" but we did not know whether Susan or Elizabeth
was captain, and a row might have resulted, in which case the
former would probably become "black-eyed Susan." We finally
concluded not to meddle with the matter but to let Susan and
Elizabeth do as the man insisted upon doing who enacted the part of
the king in the play, and who profanely declared that as he _was_
king, he would die just where he d---- pleased. The girls can sell
tickets just where "they've a mind ter." We may not be able to give
the proposed meeting "frequent editorial notice;" still the
probabilities are that we shall allude to it if we live and do
well, and we shan't charge Susan a cent for our services. We would
not have it said, nor would we have you, "O Susan, Susan, lovely
dear," imagine that we are ag'in "the one true basis of a genuine
republic."
And yet, after all this, the freedom-loving General Rufus Saxton had
the courage to preside at the meeting and introduce the speakers. He
subsequently wrote: "I pray that God will bless your noble work and
that, sooner than you think, woman shall be admitted to her proper
place, where God intended she should be, and to exclude her from which
must, like any other great wrong, bring misery and sorrow." The Troy
Times said:
The last time we heard Miss Anthony speak was in 1861, shortly
after the election of Lincoln when, it will be remembered, she was
mobbed from city to city. Since then time and the various
undertakings in which she has engaged have apparently had no effect
upon her, unless to render her more eloquent and more sanguine of
the ultimate righting of all wrongs, and to inspire additional
enthusiasm for a cause to which she has clung with a perseverance
deserving admiration. She is very choice in the selection of words
and phrases, speaks in an earnest, attractive monotone, and really
made one of the most eloquent and sensible speeches for female
suffrage to which we ever listened.
At Fairfield, Herkimer Co., Miss Anthony spoke in the presence of a
large number of students from the academy and, at the close of her
address, there were vigorous calls for the wife of the principal, who
was known to be opposed to any phase of so-called woman's rights. She
finally responded and, in the course of her remarks, said that when she
was a teacher she used to believe that women should receive the same
salary as men, but since she had married and realized the
responsibilities of a man of family, she had been converted to the
belief that men should receive more than women. Miss Anthony at once
retorted: "It would seem then, that so long as you were earning your
own living you wanted a good salary, but so soon as you give your
services to a husband, you want him to receive the value of both your
work and his own, regardless of those women who still have to support
themselves and very often a family." The fact that the lady was her
hostess did not save her from this merited rebuke, which was heartily
appreciated and enjoyed by the students.
In these tours the burden of the preliminary arrangements always was
assumed by Miss Anthony. When Mrs. Stanton and she reached a place
where a meeting was to be held, the former would go at once to bed,
while the latter rushed to the newspaper offices to look after the
advertising, then to the hall to see that all was in readiness, and
usually conducted the afternoon session alone. In the evening Mrs.
Stanton would appear, rested and radiant, and read a carefully written
address, while Miss Anthony, exhausted and having had no time to
prepare a speech, would make a few impromptu remarks as best she could.
Then the papers would comment on the difference between the beautiful
and amiable Mrs. Stanton and the aggressive and jaded Miss Anthony, and
attribute it to the fact that one was a wife and the other a
spinster.[40]
At Albany Miss Anthony arranged with Charles J. Folger, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, for an address by Mrs. Stanton, which was
given January 13, 1867, before the joint committees, in the Assembly
chamber, crowded with men and women. She based her claim on the
assumption that when a new constitution is demanded, the State is
resolved into its original elements and all the people have a right to
a voice in its reconstruction, supporting her position by an imposing
array of legal authorities. Of the discussion by the legislators, which
followed the address, Mr. Pillsbury wrote to the Hallowells: "Their
arguments against universal suffrage Susan could have extinguished with
her thimble."
While Miss Anthony was in Albany she learned that a member from New
York City had presented a bill to license houses of ill-repute, and she
protested to Judge Folger. He told her that this was a subject which
could not be publicly discussed, especially by women. She replied that
if there were any attempt to pass the bill she would arouse the women
and it should be discussed from one end of the State to the other. The
bill never was taken up.
In answer to an invitation to be present at Albany, Mr. Beecher sent
his regrets as follows:
I should certainly come and contribute my share of influence if I
were not tied hand and foot. I am to preside and speak on Wednesday
night in my own church; on Thursday I preside and introduce a
lecturer at the Academy of Music, in Brooklyn; on Friday, at Cooper
Institute, I have a speech to make for the starving people of the
South; and on Saturday, at the same place, a speech for the
Cretans. These are but the punctuations of my main business, which,
just now, is to write a novel for Bonner, at which I am working
every forenoon. I have also a matter of two sermons every week to
prepare. I write these details, because our friend Studwell
intimates to me that you feel I do not care to be identified with
this movement in such a way as to take the unpopularity of the
women chiefly engaged in it. I should be unwilling to have you
think so. I have never belonged even to an anti-slavery society,
Christian or heathen. I am willing to take my stand with anybody on
great issues or objects, but in regard to the organizations and
instruments by which to attain the end, I have always let others
work their way and I mine. I think there is a touch of wildness in
my blood (some of my ancestors must have nursed an Indian breast)
which is impatient of the harness and so I have always worked on my
own hook. I am surprised to see how rapidly the thoughts of
intelligent men and women are ameliorating on this question. It
needs only that women should have a conscience educated to this
duty of suffrage, and it will be yielded.
Early in March the Legislature of Kansas submitted two amendments, one
enfranchising the negroes and one the women. State Senator Samuel N.
Wood wrote Miss Anthony that an equal rights convention had been called
to meet in Topeka, April 2, and urged her to send out the strongest
speakers to canvass the State in behalf of the woman suffrage
amendment. This was the first time the enfranchisement of women ever
had been presented for a popular vote and its advocates were most
anxious that it should be carried. Neither Miss Anthony nor Mrs.
Stanton could go to Kansas at this time, so they appealed to Lucy
Stone, begging her to make the campaign. Since her marriage, twelve
years before, she had been practically out of public work, insisting
that she had lost her power for speaking. Miss Anthony assured her that
if she would take the platform it would come back to her, and Mr.
Blackwell joined in the entreaty. He gave up his business position to
accompany his wife and they made a thorough canvass of that State
during April and May. Mr. Phillips was unwilling that any money from
the Jackson fund should be used for this purpose, as he did not want
the question agitated at this time, but as Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone
constituted a majority of the committee, they appropriated $1,500 for
it. Even thus early in the contest the Republican managers began to
show their hand. Lucy Stone wrote from Atchison May 9:
I should be glad to be with you tomorrow at the equal rights
convention in New York and to know this minute whether Phillips has
consented to take the high ground which sound policy, as well as
justice and statesmanship require. Just now there is a plot here to
get the Republican party to drop the word "male," and canvass only
for the word "white." A call has been signed by the chairman of the
Republican State Central Committee, for a meeting at Topeka on the
15th, to pledge the party to that single issue. As soon as we saw
it and the change of tone in some of the papers, we sent letters to
all those whom we had found true, urging them to be at Topeka and
vote for both words. Till this action of the Republicans is
settled, we can affirm nothing. Everywhere we go, we have the
largest and most enthusiastic meetings and any one of our audiences
would give a majority for women; but the negroes are all against
us. _These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do_
because they will be so much more dead weight to lift.
Again she wrote of the situation in Kansas:
The Tribune and Independent alone, if they would urge universal
suffrage as they do negro suffrage, could carry this whole nation
upon the only just plane of equal human rights. What a power to
hold and not use!.... They must take it up. I shall see them the
very first thing when I get home. At your meeting next Monday
evening, I think you should insist that all of the Hovey fund used
for the Standard and anti-slavery purposes since slavery was
abolished, must be returned with interest to the three causes which
by the express terms of the will were to receive _all_ of the fund
when slavery should be ended. I trust you will not fail to rebuke
the cowardly use of the terms "universal," "impartial" and "equal,"
applied to hide a dark skin and an unpopular client.... I hope not
a man will be asked to speak at the convention. If they volunteer,
very well, but I have been for the last time on my knees to
Phillips, Higginson or any of them. If they help now, they should
ask us and not we them.
On May 9 and 10 the Equal Rights Association held its first anniversary
in New York, at the Church of the Puritans. Cordial and encouraging
letters were received from Lydia Maria Child, Anna Dickinson, Clara
Barton, Mary A. Livermore and many other distinguished women. While
there were the usual number of able speeches, the strongest discussion
was on the following resolution, offered by Miss Anthony: "The proposal
to reconstruct our government on the basis of manhood suffrage, which
emanated from the Republican party and has received the recent sanction
of the American Anti-Slavery Society, is but a continuation of the old
system of class and caste legislation, always cruel and proscriptive in
itself and ending, in all ages, in national degradation and
revolution." Henry Ward Beecher spoke eloquently in its favor, saying
in part:
[Autograph:
Yours truly,
L. Maria Child.]
I am not a farmer, but I know that spring comes but once in the
year. When the furrow is open is the time to put in your seed, if
you would gather a harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot
plowshare of war has opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to
put in the seed. If any say to me, "Why will you agitate the woman
question when it is the hour for the black man?" I answer, it is
the hour for every man and every woman, black or white. The bees go
out in the morning to gather the honey from the morning-glories.
They take it when they are open, for by 10 o'clock they are shut,
never to open again. When the public mind is open, if you have
anything to say, say it. If you have any radical principles to
urge, any higher wisdom to make known, don't wait until quiet times
come, until the public mind shuts up altogether.
We are in the favored hour; and if you have great principles to
make known, this is the time to advocate them. I therefore say
whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this
nation, let it be spoken now--let it be enforced now. The truth
that I have to urge is not that women have the right of
suffrage--not that Chinamen or Irishmen have that right--not that
native born Yankees have it--but that suffrage is the inherent
right of mankind.... I do not put back for a single day the black
man's enfranchisement. I ask not that he should wait. I demand that
this work should be done, not upon the ground that it is
politically expedient now to enfranchise black men; but I propose
that you take expediency out of the way, and put a principle which
is more enduring in the place of it--manhood and womanhood suffrage
for all. That is the question. You may just as well meet it now as
at any other time. You will never have so favorable an occasion, so
sympathetic a heart, never a public reason so willing to be
convinced as today.... I believe it is just as easy to carry the
enfranchisement of all as of any one class, and easier than to
carry it class after class.
[Autograph:
and believe me
very truly yours,
H. W. Beecher]
The resolution was adopted unanimously, as was also a memorial to
Congress, written by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, asking most
earnestly that the negro should be enfranchised, but just as earnestly
that the suffrage should be conferred on woman at the same time. The
leading thought was expressed in these beautiful words:
We believe that humanity is one in all those intellectual, moral
and spiritual attributes out of which grow human responsibilities.
The Scripture declaration is, "So God created man in his own image,
male and female created he them," and all divine legislation
throughout the realm of nature recognizes the perfect equality of
the two conditions; for male and female are but different
conditions. Neither color nor sex is ever discharged from obedience
to law, natural or moral, written or unwritten. The commandments
thou shalt not steal, or kill, or commit adultery, recognize no
sex; and hence we believe that all human legislation which is at
variance with the divine code, is essentially unrighteous and
unjust....
Women and colored men are loyal, liberty-loving citizens, and we
can not believe that sex or complexion should be any ground for
civil or political degradation. Against such outrage on the very
name of a republic we do and ever must protest; and is not our
protest against this tyranny of "taxation without representation"
as just as that thundered from Bunker Hill, when our Revolutionary
fathers fired the shot which shook the world?... We respectfully
and earnestly pray that, in restoring the foundations of our
nationality, all discriminations on account of sex or race may be
removed; and that our government may be republican in fact as well
as form; A GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE; FOR THE
PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE.
This was the last convention ever held in the old historic Church of
the Puritans. It soon passed into other hands, and where once sparkled
and scintillated flashes of repartee and gems of oratory, now glitter
and shine the magnificent jewels in the great establishment of Tiffany.
After this May Anniversary Miss Anthony prepared to go before the New
York Constitutional Convention with speeches and petitions for the
recognition of women in the new constitution. The necessary
arrangements involved an immense amount of labor, and her diary says:
"My trips from Albany to New York and back are like the flying of the
shuttle in the loom of the weaver." At this hearing, June 27, 1867,
after Mrs. Stanton had finished her address she announced that they
would answer any questions, whereupon Mr. Greeley said in his drawling
monotone: "Miss Anthony, you know the ballot and the bullet go
together. If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly she retorted:
"Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the point of
a goose-quill!" After the merriment had subsided, he continued: "When
should this inalienable right of suffrage commence for young men and
foreigners? Have we the right to say when it shall begin?" Miss Anthony
replied: "My right as a human being is as good as that of any other
human being. If you have a right to vote at twenty-one, then I have.
All we ask is that you shall take down the bars and let the women and
the negroes in, then we will settle all these matters." The Tribune
report said this was received with "loud and prolonged applause."
Miss Anthony continued with great vivacity: "Can you show me any class
possessed of the franchise which is shut out of schools or degraded in
the labor market, or any class but women and negroes denied any
privilege they show themselves possessed of capacity to attain? Since
you refuse to grant woman's demand, tell her the reason why. Men sell
their votes; but did any one ever hear of their selling their right to
vote? We demand that you shall recognize woman's capacity to vote." The
newspaper account ended: "She closed by demanding the right to vote for
women as an inalienable one, and predicted that from its exercise would
follow the happiest results to man, to woman, to the country, to the
world at large; and took her seat amidst warm expressions of approval."
In writing to her mother of this occasion she said:
[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
We had to rush up by Wednesday night's boat, without any
preparation, and passed the ordeal last night, members asking
questions and stating objections. At the close the cheerful face
and cordial hand of our good Mr. Reynolds were presented to me. Mr.
Ely also came up to be introduced, saying he knew my father and
brother well, but had never had the pleasure of my acquaintance.
Ah, when my "wild heresies" become "fashionable orthodoxies," won't
my acquaintance be a pleasure to other Rochester people, too?
George William Curtis was delighted--said the impression made upon
the members was vastly beyond anything he had imagined possible. It
is always a great comfort to feel that we have not distressed our
_cultured friends_.
Mrs. Stanton is going to slip out to Johnstown to spend Sunday with
her mother. How I wish I could slip out to Rochester to sit a few
hours in my mother's delightful east chamber, but I must hie me
back to New York by tonight's boat instead.
In a letter from George William Curtis, he declared: "You may count
upon me not to be silent when, whether by my action or another's, this
question comes before the convention." Petitions were presented by
various members, signed by 28,000 men and women, asking that the
constitution be so amended as to secure the right of suffrage to the
women of New York. One of these was headed by Margaret Livingston Cady,
mother of Mrs. Stanton, one by Gerrit Smith, one by Henry Ward Beecher,
and all contained many influential names. Mr. Greeley was chairman of
the committee on suffrage and, as Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton knew he
would seize upon this occasion to repeat his hackneyed remark, "The
best women I know do not want to vote," they wrote Mrs. Greeley to roll
up a big petition in Westchester. So she got out her old chaise and,
with her daughter Ida, drove over the county, collecting signatures.
After all the others had been presented, Mr. Curtis arose and said:
"Mr. Chairman, I hold in my hand a petition signed by Mrs. Horace
Greeley and 300 other women of Westchester asking that the word 'male'
be stricken from the constitution." As Mr. Greeley was about to make an
adverse report, his anger and embarrassment, as well as the amusement
of the audience, may be imagined.[41]
A magnificent argument in behalf of the petitions was made by Mr.
Curtis, and the discussion lasted several days; but the committee
handed in an adverse report, which was sustained by a large majority of
the convention. When this result was announced, Anna Dickinson wrote
Miss Anthony:
My blood boiled, my nerves thrilled, as I read from day to day the
reports of the convention debate. Reasons urged for the
enfranchisement of paupers, of idiots, of the ignorant, the
degraded, the infamous--none for women! The exquisite care with
which men guard their own rights in the most vulnerable of their
sex--the silence, the scorn, the ridicule with which they pass by
or allude to our claims--great God! it is too much for endurance
and patience. Daily I pray for a tongue of flame and inspired lips
to awaken the sleeping, arouse the careless, shake to trembling and
overthrow the insolence of opposition.... After men and women have
alike borne the burden and heat of battle, to mark the absolute
silence with which these men regard the rights of half the race,
while they squabble and wrangle, debate and contend, for exact
justice to the poorest and meanest man--to mark this spectacle is
to be filled with alternate pity and disgust.
Naturally the women felt highly indignant at the treatment they had
received, especially from the Republican party, which was so deeply
indebted for their services and from which they had every reason to
expect recognition and support, and they did not hesitate freely to
express themselves. Soon after their defeat at Albany Mr. Curtis wrote:
"I beg you and your friends to understand that the _real_ support of
this measure, the support from conviction, comes from men who believe
in Republican principles, and not from the Democracy as such." While a
close analysis might prove the truth of this assertion, the women were
not able to find comfort in the fact. As a party, the Republicans were
opposed to their claims, and with the immense majority of its members
completely under the domination of party, the result could be nothing
but defeat. Not only was this the case, but the leaders, who dictated
its policy and directed its action, although avowed believers in the
political rights of women, did not hesitate to sacrifice them for the
success of the party.
Lucy Stone and her husband had returned from Kansas the last of May,
reporting a good prospect for carrying the woman suffrage amendment;
but the Republicans there soon became frightened lest the one
enfranchising the negro should be lost and, in order to lighten their
ship, decided to throw the women overboard. Although the proposition
had been submitted by a Republican legislature and signed by a
Republican governor, the Republican State Committee resolved to remain
"neutral," and then sent out speakers who, with the sanction of the
committee, bitterly assailed this amendment and those advocating it.
Prominent among these were P.B. Plumb, I.S. Kalloch, Judge T.C. Sears
and C.V. Eskridge. The Democratic State Convention vigorously denounced
the amendment. The State Temperance Society endorsed it, and this
aroused the active enmity of the Germans. Eastern politicians warned
those of Kansas not to imperil the negro's chance by taking up the
woman question. Mr. Greeley, who at the beginning of the campaign
warmly espoused woman suffrage in Kansas,[42] soured by his experience
in the New York Constitutional Convention, withdrew the support of the
Tribune and threw his influence against the amendment. Even the
Independent, under the editorship of Tilton, was so dominated by party
that, notwithstanding the appeals of the women, it had not one word of
endorsement. There was scarcely a Republican home in that State which
did not take one or the other of these papers, looking upon its
utterances as inspired, and their influence was so great that their
support alone could have carried the amendment.
Such was the situation when Miss Anthony started with Mrs. Stanton for
Kansas, hoping to turn the tide. She learned, however, to her great
disappointment, that no more money was available from the Jackson or
the Hovey fund. The proposed campaign would call for so large an amount
that any other woman would have given up in despair. Even the stock of
literature had been exhausted and there was nothing left in the way of
tracts or pamphlets. Undaunted, she set forth under a blazing July sun
and tramped up and down Broadway soliciting advertisements for the
fly-leaves of the new literature she meant to have printed.[43] She
then visited various friends who were interested in the woman's cause,
and received such sums as they could spare, but their number was not
large and the demands were numerous. She also sent out many appealing
letters, like this to her friend Mrs. Wright:
Mrs. Stanton and I start for Kansas Wednesday evening, stopping at
Rochester just to look at my mother and my dear sister, sick so
long, and I devoting scarce an hour to her the whole year. How will
the gods make up my record on home affections?
You see our little trust fund--$1,800--of Jackson money is wrenched
from us. The Hovey Committee gave us our last dollar in May, to
balance last year's work, and I am responsible for stereotyping and
printing the tracts, for the New York office expenses, and for Mrs.
Stanton and myself in Kansas, in all not less than $2,000. Not one
of the friends wants the Kansas work to go undone, and to do it,
both tracts and lecturers must be sent out. We need money as never
before. I have to take from my lean hundreds, that never dreamed of
reaching thousands, to pay our travelling expenses. It takes $50
each for bare railroad tickets. We are advertised to speak every
day--Sundays not excepted--from September 2, one week from today,
to November 6. What an awful undertaking it looks to me, for I know
Kansas possibilities in fare, lodging and travelling. I never was
so nearly driven to desperation--so much waiting to be done, and
not a penny but in hope and trust. Oh, if somebody else could go
and I stay here, I could raise the money; but there is no one and I
must go. We must not lose Kansas now, at least not from lack of
work done according to our best ability.
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton left New York August 28, 1867. It was
necessary then to change cars several times to reach Atchison, their
first appointment, and the trains being late they missed connections
and were finally stranded at Macon City over Sunday. They found that
while Mr. Wood had made out a very elaborate plan for their meetings
and had posters printed for each place, these still remained piled up
in the printing office. After making a two weeks' tour of the principal
towns with Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony saw that an entire new program
was necessary, that the meetings must be better advertised and there
must be a central distributing point for tracts, etc., so she stationed
herself at Lawrence. Senators Pomeroy and Ross gave the full use of
their "franking" privilege and the former contributed $50 besides.
The Republicans called a mass meeting at Lawrence, September 5, of
citizens from all parts of the State, "for consultation concerning the
best method for _defeating_ the proposition to strike the word 'male'
from the Constitution of Kansas, and for arranging a canvass of the
State in opposition to this amendment." A newspaper account said:
On motion of Judge G. W. Smith, Messrs. T. C. Sears, Rev. S. E.
McBurney and C. V. Eskridge were appointed a committee on
resolutions, and reported the following, which were unanimously
adopted:
_Resolved_, That we recognize the doctrine of manhood suffrage as a
principle of the Republican party, supported by reason, experience
and justice.
_Resolved_, That we are unqualifiedly opposed to the dogma of
"Female Suffrage," and while we do not recognize it as a party
question, the attempt of certain persons within the State, and from
without it, to enforce it upon the people of the State, demands the
unqualified opposition of every citizen who respects the laws of
society and the well-being and good name of our young commonwealth.
On motion, the executive committee were instructed to open a
campaign based upon the foregoing resolutions; and an Anti-Female
Suffrage Committee appointed of one member from each county.
At the beginning of the campaign, Republican leaders and newspapers
were in favor of woman suffrage, but when it was feared that its
advocacy would hazard the chances of negro suffrage, they repudiated
the amendment. While it was by no means certain that all women when
enfranchised would vote the Republican ticket, there was no doubt
whatever that the negroes would, and so it was party expediency to
sacrifice the women. Notwithstanding the opposition of both Republican
and Democratic politicians, the woman suffrage advocates had large and
friendly audiences and the amendment would have been carried beyond a
doubt, if it had had the continued sanction of Republican leaders. In
October, stung by the reproaches of the women, a number of influential
Republicans from different parts of the country[44] sent out an appeal
which was published in the newspapers of Kansas, but this was wholly
offset by the active opposition of the State Committee.
The hardships of a campaign in the early days of Kansas scarcely can be
described. Much of the travelling had to be done in wagons, fording
streams, crossing the treeless prairies, losing the faintly outlined
road in the darkness of night, sleeping in cabins, drinking poor water
and subsisting on bacon, soda-raised bread, canned meats and
vegetables, dried fruits and coffee without cream or milk, sweetened
with sorghum. The nights offered the greatest trial, owing to a species
of insect supposed to breed in the cotton wood trees. In one of her
letters home Miss Anthony says: "It is now 10 A. M. and Mrs. Stanton is
trying to sleep, as we have not slept a wink for several nights, but
even in broad daylight our tormentors are so active that it is
impossible. We find them in our bonnets, and this morning I think we
picked a thousand out of the ruffles of our dresses. I can assure you
that my avoirdupois is being rapidly reduced. It is a nightly battle
with the infernals.... Twenty-five years hence it will be delightful to
live in this beautiful State, but now, alas, its women especially see
hard times, and there is no poetry in their lives." She was not given
to complaining but again she writes:
It is enough to exhaust the patience of Job, the slip-shod way in
which telegraph, express and postoffices are managed here. It is
almost impossible to arrange for halls or to get literature
delivered at the point where it is sent. We speak in school houses,
barns, sawmills, log cabins with boards for seats and lanterns hung
around for lights, but people come twenty miles to hear us. The
opposition follow close upon our track, but they make converts for
us. The fact is that most of them are notoriously wanting in right
action toward women. Their objections are as low and scurrilous as
they used to be in the East fifteen or twenty years ago. There is a
perfect greed for our tracts, and the friends say they do more
missionary work than we ourselves. If our suffrage advocates only
would go into the new settlements at the very beginning, they could
mould public sentiment, but they wait until the comforts of life
are attainable and then find the ground occupied by the enemy.
Of course they were guests in some beautiful homes, free from all
discomforts, but these were the exceptions. A striking instance of the
first reception usually accorded the two ladies is given by Mrs.
Starrett, in her Kansas chapter in the History of Woman Suffrage:
All were prepared beforehand to do Mrs. Stanton homage for her
talents and fame, but many persons who had formed their ideas of
Miss Anthony from the unfriendly remarks in opposition papers had
conceived a prejudice against her. Perhaps I can not better
illustrate how she everywhere overcame and dispelled this prejudice
than by relating my own experience. A convention was called at
Lawrence, and the friends of woman suffrage were asked to entertain
strangers who might come from abroad. Ex-Governor Robinson asked me
to entertain Mrs. Stanton. We had all things in readiness when I
received a note stating that she had found relatives in town with
whom she would stop, and Miss Anthony would come instead. I hastily
put on bonnet and shawl, saying, "I won't have her and I am going
to tell Governor Robinson so."
At the gate I met a dignified Quaker-looking lady with a small
satchel and a black and white shawl on her arm. Offering her hand
she said, "I am Miss Anthony, and I have been sent to you for
entertainment during the convention."... Half disarmed by her
genial manner and frank, kindly face, I led the way into the house
and said I would have her stay to tea and then we would see what
farther arrangements could be made. While I was looking after
things she gained the affections of the babies; and seeing the door
of my sister's sick-room open, she went in and in a short time had
so won the heart and soothed instead of exciting the nervous
sufferer, entertaining her with accounts of the outside world, that
by the time tea was over I was ready to do anything if Miss Anthony
would only stay with us. And stay she did for over six weeks, and
we parted from her as from a beloved and helpful friend. I found
afterwards that in the same way she made the most ardent friends
wherever she became personally known.
The physical discomforts could have been borne without a murmur, but it
was the treachery of friends, both East and West, which brought the
discouragement and heart-sickness. One of the active opponents who
canvassed the State was Charles Langston, the negro orator, whose
brother John M. had met with much kindness from Miss Anthony and her
family before the war. When one considers how these women had spent the
best part of their lives in working for the freedom of the negro, their
humiliation can be imagined at seeing educated colored men laboring
with might and main to prevent white women from obtaining the same
privileges which they were asking for themselves. It was a bitter dose
and one which women have been compelled to take in every State where a
campaign for woman suffrage has been made.
The Hutchinsons--John, his son Henry and lovely daughter Viola--were
giving a series of concerts, travelling in a handsome carriage drawn by
a span of white horses. As they had one vacant seat, they were carrying
Rev. Olympia Brown, a talented Universalist minister from
Massachusetts, who had been canvassing the State for several months,
and she spoke for suffrage while they sang for both the negro and
woman. Hon. Charles Robinson, the first Free State governor of Kansas,
volunteered to take Mrs. Stanton in his carriage and pay all expenses.
Their hard trip killed a pair of mules and a pair of Indian ponies.
Miss Anthony directed affairs from her post at Lawrence and made
herculean efforts to raise money for the campaign, which thus far was
dependent on the collections at the meetings. There was scarcely a hope
of victory.
On the 7th of October came a telegram from George Francis Train, who
was then at Omaha, largely interested in the Union Pacific railroad. He
had been invited by the secretary and other members of the St. Louis
Suffrage Association to go to Kansas and help in the woman's campaign.
Accordingly he telegraphed that if the committee wanted him he was
ready, would pay his own expenses and win every Democratic vote. Miss
Anthony never had seen Mr. Train; she merely knew of him as very
wealthy and eccentric. The Republicans not only had forsaken the women
but were waging open war upon them. The sole hope of carrying the
amendment was by adding enough Democratic votes to those of Republicans
who would not obey their party orders to vote against it. Every member
of the woman suffrage committee who could be communicated with--Rev.
and Mrs. Starrett, Rev. John S. Brown and daughter Sarah, Judge
Thatcher and others--said that Mr. Train was an eloquent speaker and
advised that he be invited, so the following telegram was sent: "Come
to Kansas and stump the State for equal rights and woman suffrage. The
people want you, the women want you. S. N. Wood, M. W. Reynolds,
Charles Robinson, Mrs. J. H. Lane, E. Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony."
Mr. Train accepted and Miss Anthony at once began laying out a route
for him and telegraphed: "Begin at Leavenworth Monday, October 21. Yes,
with your help we shall triumph. All shall be ready for you." If she
had had any political experience, she would have made his appointments
along the railroad, whose employes were largely Irish, with whom he was
very popular on account of his Fenian affiliations; but in her
ignorance, she arranged for most of the meetings in small towns off the
railroads, where the inhabitants were chiefly Republicans.
Mark W. Reynolds, editor of the Democratic paper at Lawrence, agreed to
accompany him; but when the time arrived, although Mr. Reynolds had
joined in the telegram of invitation, he took to the woods, going on a
buffalo hunt without any excuse or explanation. Mr. Train made his
first speech at Leavenworth, Mayor John A. Halderman presiding, Colonel
D. R. Anthony, Rev. William Starrett and other Republicans on the
platform. Laing's Hall was packed with Irishmen and when he first
mentioned woman suffrage all of them hissed, but after he pointed out
the absurdity of letting the negroes vote and shutting out their own
mothers and wives, the tide turned and they cheered for the women. The
next meeting was at Lawrence, and here Mr. Train objected decidedly to
the route marked out, saying it was too rough a trip for any man, and
as Mr. Reynolds had deserted him he was for giving up the tour. Not so
Miss Anthony; she said: "Your offer and his were accepted in good
faith. The engagements have been made and hand-bills sent to every
post-office within fifty miles of the towns where meetings are to be
held. The next announcement is for Olathe tomorrow night. I shall take
Mr. Reynolds' place. At one o'clock I shall send a carriage to your
hotel. You can do as you please about going. If you decline I shall go
there and to all the other meetings alone." He replied: "Miss Anthony,
you know how to make a man feel ashamed."
The next day when the carriage came to the Starretts, for Miss Anthony,
Mr. Train was in it and, with her heart in her throat, she took her
seat beside him. The situation was entirely unforeseen and decidedly
embarrassing, but she never turned back, never allowed any earthly
obstacle to stand in her way. There was a crowded house at Olathe and
when the meeting closed two young men announced that they had been sent
to take Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Train to Paola, and they would have to
leave at 4 A. M. Miss Anthony was the guest of Rev. and Mrs. J. C.
Beach. Next morning they started on time in a pouring rain, stopping at
a little wayside inn for breakfast at six. The meeting was at eleven,
in the Methodist church.
After it was over the county superintendent of schools, Mr. Bannister,
took them to Ottawa in a lumber wagon. The steady rain had put the
roads in a fearful condition and by the time they reached the river
bottoms it was very dark and pouring in torrents. The driver lost his
way and brought them up against a brush fence. Mr. Train jumped out of
the vehicle, took off his coat so that his white shirtsleeves would
show and thus guided the team back to the road; then he and the county
superintendent took turns walking in front of the horses. The river
finally was crossed and they reached Ottawa at 9 o'clock. Mr. Train was
very fastidious and, no matter how late the hour, never would appear in
public before he had changed his gray travelling suit for full dress
costume with white vest and lavender kid gloves, declaring that he
would not insult any audience by shabby clothes. This evening he made
no exception and so, while he went to the hotel, Miss Anthony, wet,
hungry and exhausted, made her way straight to the hall to see what had
become of their audience.
She found that it had been taken in charge by General Blunt, one of the
Republican campaign orators, and as she entered, he was making a
violent attack on woman suffrage. Her arrival was not noticed and she
concluded to sit quietly down in a corner and let matters take their
course. A stairway led from some lower region up to the platform and,
just as the speaker was declaring, "This man Train is an infernal
traitor and a vile copperhead," Mr. Train appeared at the top of the
stairs. The audience broke into a roar, and in a few moments he had the
general under a scathing fire.
From Ottawa they travelled, still in a lumber wagon, to Mound City and
then to Fort Scott, where they had an immense audience. After the
meeting Train went to the newspaper office and wrote out his speech,
which filled two pages of the Monitor, and Miss Anthony and the friends
spent all of Sunday in wrapping and mailing these papers. From here
they drove to Humboldt in a mail wagon, stopping for dinner at a little
"half-way house," a cabin with no floor. Miss Anthony retains a lively
recollection of this place, for the hostess brought a platter of fried
pork, swimming in grease, and in her haste emptied the contents the
whole length of her light gray travelling dress. They found many people
ill, and Mr. Train always prescribed not a drop of green tea, not a
mouthful of pork, though that was the only meat they could get, plenty
of fruit, though there was none to be had in Kansas, and a thorough
bath every morning, although there was not enough water to wash the
dishes. During this trip he stopped at hotels, but Miss Anthony usually
was invited to stay with families who were either her personal friends
or warm advocates of the cause she represented.
So on they went, to Leroy, Burlington, Emporia, Junction City. It was 9
o'clock when they reached the last and, as usual, Miss Anthony had to
make her speech without change of dress, and a half hour later Mr.
Train stepped on the platform, refreshed and resplendent. His first
words were: "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!" Miss Anthony was
dumbfounded. During the long journey that day, he had asked her why the
equal rights people did not have a paper and she had replied that it
was not for lack of brains but want of money. "Will not Greeley and
Beecher and Phillips and Tilton advance the money?" "No, they say this
is the negro's hour and no time to advocate woman suffrage." "Well,"
said he, "I will give you the money." She had not taken him seriously
and was amazed when he made this public statement, announcing name,
price, editors, motto and everything complete.
[Autograph: Sincerely, Geo. Francis Train]
They spoke at Topeka and Wyandotte and reached Leavenworth the Sunday
previous to election. Mr. Train spent the evening at Colonel Anthony's,
entertaining them in his inimitable manner till midnight, and after he
left the colonel declared that "he knew more about more things than any
man living." Governor Robinson and Mrs. Stanton were to close the
campaign in this city the day before election, and the meeting had been
thoroughly advertised, but at the last moment they telegraphed that
they would be unable to arrive till evening, so it was decided that Mr.
Train should remain at Leavenworth to speak in the afternoon, and Miss
Anthony should keep the engagement at Atchison, announcing Mr. Train
for the evening. This she did, but at night, when a great crowd had
assembled, a telegram brought word that the cars were off the track and
he could not reach that city. There was nothing for her to do but make
a short speech and adjourn the meeting.
Mr. Train had promised Miss Anthony that he really would advance the
money to start a paper and, in addition, had proposed to defray all the
expenses of Mrs. Stanton and herself if they would join him in a
lecture tour of the principal cities on the way eastward. It was
essential, therefore, for her to have a talk with him before she could
make a definite statement to Mrs. Stanton, and her only chance for this
was to cross the Missouri river and wait for the belated train from
Leavenworth. She found the ferryboats had stopped running for the
night, but George Martin, chairman of the suffrage committee of
Atchison, offered to take her across in a skiff. Undaunted, she seated
herself therein and in the dense darkness was safely landed on the
opposite shore. Here she boarded the cars and went to St. Joseph where
she met Mr. Train, made the necessary arrangements and returned to
Leavenworth by the first train.
On election day the Hutchinsons, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, in open
carriages, visited all the polling-places in Leavenworth, where the two
ladies spoke and the Hutchinsons sang. Both amendments were
overwhelmingly defeated, that for negro suffrage receiving 10,843
votes, and that for woman suffrage 9,070, out of a total of about
30,000. These 9,000 votes were the first ever cast in the United States
for the enfranchisement of women. How many of them were Republican and
how many Democratic, and how much influence Mr. Train may have had one
way or another, never can be known; but it is a significant fact that
Douglas county, the most radical Republican district, gave the largest
vote against woman suffrage, and Leavenworth, the strongest Democratic
county, gave the largest majority in its favor.
The Commercial, the Democratic paper of this city, said:
When we consider the many obstacles thrown in the way of the
advocates of this measure, the indifference with which the masses
look upon anything new in government and their indisposition to
change, the degree of success of these advocates is not only
remarkable, but one of which they have a just right to feel proud.
To these two ladies, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
to their indomitable will and courage, to their eloquence and
energy, is due much of the merit of the work performed in the
State.... While in the recent election these ladies were not
successful to the full extent of their wishes, they have the
consciousness of knowing that their work has been commensurate with
the combined efforts of party organization, congressmen, senators,
press and ministers to enfranchise the negro, and that the people
of Kansas are not more averse to giving the franchise to woman than
to the black man.
During the campaign the usual order was for Miss Anthony to speak the
first half hour, making a clear, concise, strong argument for suffrage
as the right of an American citizen, pleading for the negro as well as
for the women, and urging men to vote for both amendments. She then was
followed by Mr. Train, who insisted that it would be one of the
grossest outrages to give suffrage to the black man and not to the
white woman, and pleaded earnestly that the women of Kansas should be
enfranchised. In this he was sincere, as he believed thoroughly that
women ought to have the ballot. He was an inimitable mimic and was
unsparing in his ridicule of those Republicans who had battled so
valiantly for equal rights but now demanded that American women should
stand back quietly and approvingly and see the negro fully invested
with the powers denied to themselves. He had a remarkable memory, an
unequalled quickness of repartee, a peculiar gift of improvising
epigrams and, while erratic, was a brilliant and entertaining speaker.
He was at this time about thirty-five, nearly six feet tall, a handsome
brunette, with curling hair and flashing dark eyes, the picture of
vigorous health. He was exquisitely neat in person and irreproachable
in habits, and had a fine courtliness of bearing toward women which
suggested the old-school gentleman. Miss Anthony often said that all
the severe criticisms made upon him for years had not been able to
impair the respect with which he inspired her during that most trying
campaign. Mrs. Stanton, essentially an aristocrat and severe in her
judgment of men and manners, spoke most highly of Mr. Train in her
Reminiscences.
Some of the friends in Kansas were opposed to the contemplated lecture
tour, and letters were received from the East urging that it be
abandoned. Mrs. Stanton was accustomed to defer to Miss Anthony in such
matters.[45] The latter felt that they had been deserted by their old
friends and supporters and the breach was too wide to be soon healed.
Here was a man of wealth and high personal character, who offered to
arrange a lecture tour of the principal cities of the country, pay all
expenses and at the end of the journey furnish capital for a paper. It
seemed to her she could best serve the cause she placed above all else
by accepting the offer, and she did so.
As time was limited, Miss Anthony had to make arrangements for hall,
etc., by telegraph, which cost Mr. Train $100. The series commenced in
Omaha, November 19, and continued in Chicago, Springfield. St. Louis,
Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse,
Albany, Springfield (Mass.), Worcester, Boston and Hartford, ending
with a great meeting in Steinway Hall, New York, December 14. Mr. Train
engaged the most elegant suites of rooms in the best hotels for the
ladies, secured the finest halls, and this was remembered as the only
luxurious suffrage tour they ever had made. There was a railway wreck
between Louisville and Cincinnati, and he chartered a special train in
order that they might keep their engagement at the latter place. This
trip cost him $3,000.
Where heretofore the Democratic papers had been abusive and some, at
least, of the Republican papers complimentary, the tone was now
completely reversed. Because they had affiliated with Mr. Train, the
former had nothing but praise, and for the same reason the latter were
unsparing in their denunciations, and were bitterly indignant at the
women for accepting from Mr. Train and other Democrats the help which
they themselves had positively refused. They insisted that the
Democrats only used woman suffrage as a club to beat negro suffrage,
which doubtless was true of many, but Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton
claimed the right to accept proffered aid without looking behind it for
the motive. The opposition, however, did not arise alone from the press
and the politicians. From the leading advocates of suffrage came a
vehement protest against any partnership with George Francis Train. The
old associates wrote scores of letters expressing their personal
allegiance, but refusing to attend the meetings and repudiating the
connection of Mr. Train with the woman suffrage movement. Miss Anthony
was made to realize to the fullest extent the feeling which had been
aroused, but the last entry in the diary says: "The year goes out, and
never did one depart that had been so filled with earnest and effective
work; 9,000 votes for woman in Kansas, and a newspaper started! The
Revolution is going to be work, work and more work. The old out and the
new in!"
[Footnote 40: Helen Skin Starrett, in her Kansas reminiscences, says:
"Miss Anthony always looked after Mrs. Stanton's interests and comfort
in the most cheerful and kindly manner. I remember one evening in
Lawrence when the hall was crowded with an eager and expectant
audience. Miss Anthony was there early, looking after everything,
seats, lights, ushers, doorkeepers. Presently Governor Robinson said to
her, 'Where's Mrs. Stanton? It's time to commence.' 'She's at
Mrs.----'s waiting for some of you men to go for her with a carriage,'
was the reply. The hint was quickly acted upon and Mrs. Stanton, fresh,
smiling and unfatigued, was presented to the audience."]
[Footnote 41: His intense feeling on the matter is thus described in
the History of Woman Suffrage:
"A few weeks after this he met Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony at one of
Alice Cary's Sunday evening receptions. As he approached, both arose
and with extended hands exclaimed most cordially, 'Good evening, Mr.
Greeley.' But his hands hung limp by his side, as he said in measured
tones: 'You two ladies are the most maneuvering politicians in the
State of New York. I saw in the manner my wife's petition was
presented, that Mr. Curtis was acting under instructions, and I saw the
reporters prick up their ears.' Turning to Mrs. Stanton, he asked, 'You
are so tenacious about your own name, why did you not inscribe my
wife's maiden name, Mary Cheney Greeley, on her petition?' 'Because,'
she replied, 'I wanted all the world to know that it was the wife of
Horace Greeley who protested against her husband's report.' 'Well,'
said he, 'I understand the animus of that whole proceeding, and I have
given positive instructions that no word of praise shall ever again be
awarded you in the Tribune, and that if your name is ever necessarily
mentioned, it shall be as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton!' And so it has been to
this day."]
[Footnote 42: Womanhood suffrage is now a progressive cause beyond fear
of cavil. It has won a fair field where once it was looked upon as an
airy nothing, and it has gained champions and converts without number.
The young State of Kansas is fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the
signs of the agitation therein hardly allow a doubt that the
citizenship of women will be ere long recognized in its laws. Fourteen
out of twenty of its newspapers are in favor of making woman a
voter.... The vitality of the Kansas movement is indisputable, and
whether defeated or successful in the present contest, it will still
hold strongly fortified ground.--New York Tribune, May 29, 1867.]
[Footnote 43: From the Howe Sewing Machine Co., she got $150; from the
Samuel Browning Washing Machine Co., $100; from Dr. Dio Lewis'
Gymnasium, $100, and from Madame Demorest's Fine Millinery and
Patterns, a considerable sum; besides a donation of $100 from Mr. and
Mrs. E. D. Draper, of Massachusetts, and $150 from Sarah B. Shaw,
mother of Mrs. George Wm. Curtis; and in this way raised partly enough
to print 50,000 tracts.]
[Footnote 44: Charles Robinson, S. N. Wood, Samuel C. Pomeroy, E. G.
Ross, Sidney Clark, S. G. Crawford, _Kansas;_ James W. Nye, _Nevada;_
William Loughridge, _Iowa;_ Robert Collyer, _Illinois;_ George W.
Julian, H. D. Washburn, _Indiana;_ R. E. Trowbridge, John F. Driggs,
_Michigan;_ Benjamin F. Wade, _Ohio;_ J. W. Broomall, William D.
Kelley, _Pennsylvania;_ Henry Ward Beecher, Gerrit Smith, George
William Curtis, _New York;_ Dudley S. Gregory, George Polk, John G.
Foster, James L. Hayes, Z. H. Pangborn, _New Jersey;_ Wm. Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Samuel E. Sewall, Oakes Ames,
_Massachusetts;_ William Sprague, T. W. Higginson, _Rhode Island;_
Calvin E. Stowe, _Connecticut_.]
[Footnote 45: "I take my beloved Susan's judgment against the world, 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. After we discuss any point and
fully agree, our faith in our united judgment is immovable, and no
amount of ridicule and opposition has the slightest influence, come
from what quarter it may."]
CHAPTER XVIII.
ESTABLISHING THE REVOLUTION.
1868.
The first entry in the diary of 1868, January 1, reads: "All the old
friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can
tell, but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."
Immediately after the meeting at Steinway Hall, Mr. Train had brought
with him to call on Miss Anthony, David M. Melliss, financial editor of
the New York World, and they entered into an agreement by which the two
men were to supply the funds for publishing a paper until it was on a
paying basis. It was to be conducted by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton
in the interests of women, and Mr. Train and Mr. Melliss were to use
such space as they desired for expressing their financial and other
opinions. The first number was issued January 8, a handsome quarto of
sixteen pages.
Ten thousand copies were printed and, under the congressional frank of
Representative James Brooks, of New York, were sent to all parts of the
country. The advent of this element in the newspaper world created a
sensation such as scarcely ever has been equalled by any publication.
From hundreds of clippings a few characteristic examples are selected.
The New York Sunday Times said:
THE LADIES MILITANT.--It is out at last. If the women as a body
have not succeeded in getting up a revolution, Susan B. Anthony, as
their representative, has. Her Revolution was issued last Thursday
as a sort of New Year's gift to what she considered a yearning
public, and it is said to be "charged to the muzzle with literary
nitre-glycerine." If Mrs. Stanton would attend a little more to her
domestic duties and a little less to those of the great public,
perhaps she would exalt her sex quite as much as she does by
Quixotically fighting windmills in their gratuitous behalf, and she
might possibly set a notable example of domestic felicity. No
married woman can convert herself into a feminine Knight of the
Rueful Visage and ride about the country attempting to redress
imaginary wrongs without leaving her own household in a neglected
condition that must be an eloquent witness against her. As for the
spinsters, we have always said that every woman has a natural and
inalienable right to a good husband and a pretty baby. When, by
proper "agitation," she has secured this right, she best honors
herself and her sex by leaving public affairs behind her, and
endeavoring to show how happy she can make the little world of
which she has just become the brilliant center.
The New York Independent, the great organ of the Congregationalists,
had this breezy editorial:
The Revolution is the martial name of a bristling and defiant new
weekly journal, the first number of which has just been laid on our
table. When we mention that it is edited by Mr. Parker Pillsbury
and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all the world will immediately
know what to expect from it. Those two writers can never be accused
of having nothing to say, or of backwardness in saying it. Each has
separately long maintained a striking individuality of tongue and
pen. Working together, they will produce a canvas of the Rembrandt
school--Mrs. Stanton painting the high lights and Mr. Pillsbury the
deep darks. In fact, the new journal's real editors are Hope and
Despair. Beaumont and Fletcher were intellectually something alike;
but Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury are totally different. The lady
is a gay Greek, come forth from Athens; the gentleman is a sombre
Hebrew, bound back to Jerusalem. We know of no two more striking,
original, and piquant writers. What keen criticisms, what
knife-blade repartees, what lacerating sarcasms we shall expect
from the one! What solemn, reverberating, sanguinary damnations we
shall hear from the other!
Conspicuous among the new journal's contributors is that great
traveller, hotel-builder, epigrammatist and kite-flyer, Mr. George
Francis Train. So The Revolution, from the start, will arouse,
thrill, edify, amuse, vex and nonplus its friends. But it will
compel attention; it will conquer a hearing. Its business
management is in the good hands of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who has
long been known as one of the most indefatigable, honest,
obstinate, faithful, cross-grained and noble-minded of the famous
women of America. It only remains to add that, as "the price of
liberty is eternal vigilance," so the price of The Revolution is
two dollars a year.
The Cincinnati Enquirer in a complimentary notice said: "Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton's Revolution grows with each additional number more spicy,
readable and revolutionary. It hits right and left, from the shoulder
and overhand, at every body and thing that opposes the granting of
suffrage to females as well as males. The Revolution is mourning over
no lost cause, but is aggressive, bold and determined to win one dear
to its heart." New York's society paper, the Home Journal, commented:
"The Revolution is plucky, keen and wide awake, and although some of
its ways are not at all to our taste, we are glad to recognize in it
the inspiration of the noblest aims, and the sagacity and talent to
accomplish what it desires. It is on the right track, whether it has
taken the right train or not;" while the Chicago Workingman's Advocate
declared: "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor
reform movement." The Boston Commonwealth observed approvingly: "It is
edited by Mrs. E.C. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, whose names are
guarantees of ability and character. Their effusions are able,
pertinent and courageous."
To quote from Mrs. Stanton: "Radical and defiant in tone, it awoke
friends and foes alike to action. Some denounced it, some ridiculed it,
but all read it. It needed just such clarion notes, sounded forth long
and loud each week, to rouse the friends of the movement from the
apathy into which they had fallen after the war." Miss Anthony went to
Washington to introduce the paper and returned with a list of
distinguished subscribers, including President Johnson himself! The
following from Mrs. Stanton will show how criticising letters usually
were answered:
I know that you would feel that we were right if I could talk with
you. If George Francis Train had done for the negro all that he has
done for woman the last three months, the Abolitionists would
enshrine him as a saint. The attacks on Susan and me by a few
persons have been petty and narrow, but we are right and this nine
days' wonder will soon settle itself. Of course, people turn up the
whites of their eyes, but time will bring them all down again. We
have reason to congratulate ourselves that we have shocked more
friends of the cause into life than we ever dreamed we had--persons
who never gave a cent or said a word for our movement are the most
concerned lest Susan and I should injure it. Mr. Train has some
extravagances and idiosyncrasies, but he is willing to devote his
energies to our cause when no other man is, and we should be
foolish not to accept his aid. To think of Boston women holding a
festival to aid the Anti-Slavery Standard, while their own
petitions are ignored in the Senate of the United States! Women
have been degraded so long they have lost all self-respect. If we
love the black man as well as ourselves we shall fulfill the Bible
injunction. The anti-slavery requirement to love him better is a
little too much for human nature.
A few members of the executive board of the Equal Rights Association
made a strong attempt to prevent the editors of The Revolution from
occupying the room at No. 37 Park Row, used for their headquarters.
Miss Anthony soon showed, however, that she had made herself personally
responsible for the rent, that while she was overwhelmed with the work
of the Kansas campaign letters were continually sent her asking if she
could not somehow get the money to pay it, and that as soon as she
returned, she borrowed $100 on her own note and paid it in full. So she
held possession and the committee, after voting itself out at one
session, voted itself back at the next, and finally abandoned the room.
On the very day the first copy of The Revolution appeared, Mr. Train
announced that he was going to England immediately. Miss Anthony says
in her diary: "My heart sank within me; only our first number issued
and our strongest helper and inspirer to leave us! This is but another
discipline to teach us that we must stand on our own feet." Mr. Train
gave her $600 and assured her that he had arranged with Mr. Melliss to
supply all necessary funds during his short absence, but she felt
herself invested with a heavy responsibility. A few days later Mrs.
Stanton said in a letter to a friend:
Our paper has a monied basis of $50,000 and men who understand
business to push it. Train is engaging writers and getting
subscribers in Europe. It will improve in every way when we are
thoroughly started. Just now we are fighting for our life among
reformers; they pitch into us without mercy. We are trying to make
the Democrats take up our question, for that is the only way to
move the Republicans. Subscribers come in rapidly, beyond our most
sanguine expectations. The press in the main is cordial, but looks
askance at a political paper edited by a woman. If we had started a
"Lily" or a "Rosebud" and remained in the region of sentiment, we
should have been eulogized to the skies, but here is something
dangerous.
Instead of Mr. Train's securing writers and subscribers in Europe, he
was arrested for complicity with the Fenians the moment he made his
first speech, and spent the year in a Dublin jail. He wrote that the
finding of fifty copies of The Revolution in his possession was an
additional reason for his arrest, as the officials did not stop to read
a word, the name was sufficient. While Mr. Train continued his
contributions to the paper during his residence in jail, he was not
able to meet his financial obligations to it. Mr. Melliss made heroic
efforts to pay in his quota, but the days were full of anxiety for
everybody connected with The Revolution. Miss Anthony was used to such
care. She had been the financial burden-bearer of every reform with
which she had been connected, but to this crushing weight was added
such a persecution as she never had experienced before, even in the
days of pro-slavery mobs. Then the attacks had been made by open and
avowed enemies, and she had had a host of staunch supporters to share
them and give her courage; now her persecutors were in ambush and were
those who had been her nearest and dearest friends; and now she was
alone except for Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury. Even they were labored
with, and besought to renounce one who seemed to have complete mastery
over them and was leading them to destruction, but nothing could shake
their allegiance. The excuse for this persecution was that the Equal
Rights Association was injured by the publication of The Revolution.
That there should be a paper published in the interest of the rights of
women had been the dream of the advocates for many years. Antoinette
Blackwell had written Miss Anthony several years before: "I wish we had
the contemplated paper for Mrs. Stanton's especial benefit. I am afraid
it will be too late for her when we get it fairly established, which
does not promise to be very soon. Lucy believes her own talents lie in
other directions, and gives no approval to the plan for herself." Lucy
Stone had written: "We must have a paper and dear, brave, sensible Mrs.
Stanton must be the editor." And at another time: "I feel very proud of
Mrs. Stanton, she is so strong and noble. When we have a new paper she
must be the editor."
Mrs. Stanton, with her house and her large family, had no desire for
this position. Miss Anthony herself was not a writer, and many times of
late years had agitated the question of raising money to have Lucy
Stone and her husband at the head of a paper, they having now signified
their willingness to hold such a place. The founding of The Revolution
was totally unexpected and its editors accepted it only because of the
great need of a medium through which the cause of woman might be
thoroughly advocated. There was not the slightest desire to enter into
rivalry with anybody or to antagonize the Republicans. If the latter
had been willing to furnish the money to start a paper, or had allowed
space in their own publications, the favor would have been most gladly
accepted. Had the members of the Equal Rights Association raised a fund
to establish an organ, so much the better, but although the subject had
been talked of for years, the capital had not been forthcoming. There
was no attempt to make the association responsible for the opinions of
The Revolution, as this letter from Mrs. Stanton indicates:
Susan and I, though members of the Equal Rights Association, do
many things outside that body for which no one is responsible. The
idea of starting a paper under its auspices, or as an organ for it,
never entered our minds. We went to Kansas as individuals; personal
friends outside that association gave us money to go and
contributed the funds to start a paper. We object to that
resolution of censure, first, because we were outside its province;
second, because it was an outrage to repudiate Susan and me, who
have labored without cessation for twenty years and had just
returned from a hard three months' campaign. For any one to
question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment
of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better
saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite.
They want to stave off our question until after the presidential
campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They
can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans,
Abolitionists and certain women to crush us and our paper.
In showing how the women were sacrificed, The Revolution said:
Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips,
with one consent, bid the women of the nation stand aside and
behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, "One idea
for a generation," to come up in the order of their importance.
First negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight-hour
movement, then woman suffrage. Three generations hence, woman
suffrage will be in order! What an insult to the women who have
labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he
is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads.
Gerrit Smith, forgetting that our great American idea is
"individual rights," on which Abolitionists have ever based their
strongest arguments for emancipation, says: "This is the time to
settle the rights of races; unless we do justice to the negro we
shall bring down on ourselves another bloody revolution, another
four years' war, but we have nothing to fear from woman, she will
not avenge herself!" Woman not avenge herself? Look at your asylums
for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the insane, and there behold the
results of this wholesale desecration of the mothers of the race!
Woman not avenge herself? Go into the streets of your cities at the
midnight hour, and there behold those whom God meant to be queens
in the moral universe giving your sons their first lessons in
infamy and vice. No, you can not wrong the humblest of God's
creatures without making discord and confusion in the whole social
system.
In regard to the bitter persecution waged upon the two women, Ellen
Wright Garrison said in a letter to Miss Anthony: "This sitting in
judgment upon those whose views differ from our own, pouring vials of
wrath on their heads and calling in the outside and prejudiced public
to help condemn, is unwise and un-Christian." Her mother, Martha
Wright, who at first was inclined to blame, wrote in the spring of
1868: "As regards the paper, its vigorous pages are what we need. I
regret the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Train, as they give occasion to the
sons and daughters of the Philistines to rejoice, and the children of
the uncircumcised only wanted a good excuse to triumph. Shall you be at
the May meeting? I will not be there under any circumstances without
you and Susan and our good friend Parker; so whatever may become of Mr.
Train or of the paper, count me now and ever as your true and
unswerving friend."
The following graphic description, by the correspondent, Nellie
Hutchinson, was published in the Cincinnati Commercial:
There's a peculiarly resplendent sign at the head of the third
flight of stairs, and obeying its directions I march into the north
corridor and enter The Revolution office. Nothing so very terrible
after all. The first face that salutes my vision is a youthful
one--fresh, smiling, bright-eyed, auburn-crowned. It belongs to one
of the employes of the establishment, and its owner conducts me to
a comfortable sofa, then trips lightly through a little door
opposite to inform Miss Anthony of my presence.
I glance about me. What editorial bliss is this! Actually a neat
carpet on the floor, a substantial round table covered by a pretty
cloth, engravings and photographs hung thickly over the clear white
walls. Here is Lucretia Mott's saintly face, beautiful with eternal
youth; there Mary Wollstonecraft looking into futurity with earnest
eyes. In an arched recess are shelves containing books and piles of
pamphlets, speeches and essays of Stuart Mill, Wendell Phillips,
Higginson, Curtis. Two screens extend across the front of the room,
inclosing a little space around the two large windows which give
light, air and glimpses of City Hall park. Glancing around the
corner we see editor Pillsbury seated at his desk by the further
window. Opposite is another desk covered with brown wrappers and
mailing books. Close against the screen stands yet another, at
which sits the bookkeeper, an energetic young woman who ably
manages all the business affairs of The Revolution. There's an
atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy about the place;
everything is refreshingly neat and clean, and suggestive of
reform.
Ah! here comes Susan--the determined--the invincible, the Susan who
is possibly destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State
some of these days! What a delicious thought! I tremble as she
steps rapidly toward me and I perceive in her hand a most
statesmanlike roll of MSS. The eyes scan me coolly and
interrogatively but the pleasant voice gives me a yet pleasanter
greeting. There's something very attractive, even fascinating in
that voice--a faint echo of the alto vibration--the tone of power.
Her smile is very sweet and genial, and lights up the pale, worn
face rarely. She talks awhile in her kindly, incisive way. "We're
not foolishly or blindly aggressive," says she, tersely; "we don't
lead a fight against the true and noble institutions of the world.
We only seek to substitute for various barbarian ideas, those of a
higher civilization--to develop a race of earnest, thoughtful,
conscientious women." And I thought as I remembered various
newspaper attacks, that here was not much to object to. The world
is the better for thee, Susan.
She rises; "Come, let me introduce you to Mrs. Stanton." And we
walk into the inner sanctum, a tiny bit of a room, nicely carpeted,
one-windowed and furnished with two desks, two chairs, a little
table--and the senior editor, Mrs. Stanton. The short, substantial
figure, with its handsome black dress and silver crown of curls, is
sufficiently interesting. The fresh, girlish complexion, the
laughing blue eyes and jolly voice are yet more so. Beside her
stands her sixteen-year-old daughter, who is as plump, as jolly, as
laughing-eyed as her mother. We study Cady Stanton's handsome face
as she talks on rapidly and facetiously. Nothing little or mean in
that face; no line of distrust or irony; neither are there wrinkles
of care--life has been pleasant to this woman.
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
AT THE AGE OF 48.]
We hear a bustle in the outer room--rapid voices and laughing
questions--then the door is suddenly thrown open and in steps a
young Aurora, habited in a fur-trimmed cloak, with a jaunty black
velvet cap and snowy feather set upon her dark clustering curls.
What sprite is this, whose eyes flash and sparkle with a thousand
happy thoughts, whose dimples and rosy lips and white teeth make so
charming a picture? "My dear Anna," says Susan, starting up, and
there's a shower of kisses. Then follows an introduction to Anna
Dickinson. As we clasp hands for a moment, I look into the great
gray eyes that have flashed with indignation and grown moist with
pity before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth
now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws
herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two
pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all
cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing
experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think
over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely
matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, intellectual,
large-hearted, high-souled--a mother of men; the grave, energetic
old maid--an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a
thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for
all, and prophesies like an oracle of old.
May we not hope that America's coming woman will combine these
salient qualities, and with all the powers of mind, soul and heart
vivified and developed in a liberal atmosphere, prove herself the
noblest creature in the world? And so I leave them there--the
pleasant group--faithful in their work, happy in their hopes.
On May 14, 1868, the American Equal Rights Association held its second
anniversary in Cooper Institute. Mrs. Stanton, who had a wholesome
dread of anything disagreeable, was determined not to go, but Miss
Anthony declared that to stay away would be showing the "white feather"
and that, as their enemies had been many weeks working up a sentiment
against them, their presence would prove they had nothing to fear. When
the convention assembled, Lucretia Mott, the president, being absent on
account of the recent death of her husband, Colonel Higginson said to
Miss Anthony: "Now we want everything pleasant and peaceable here, do
we not?" "Certainly," she replied. "Well then, we must have Lucy Stone
open this meeting." "Why so," asked Miss Anthony, "when Mrs. Stanton is
first vice-president? It would be not only an insult to her but a
direct violation of parliamentary usage. I shall never consent to it."
Finding that, nevertheless, there was a scheme to carry out this plan,
she put Mrs. Stanton on the alert and, as the officers filed on the
platform, gave her a gentle push to the front, whereupon she opened the
convention with the utmost suavity.
It was here that these pioneers of the movement for woman suffrage had
the humiliation of hearing Frederick Douglass announce that it was
women's duty to take a back seat and wait till the negro was
enfranchised before they put in their claim. Rev. Olympia Brown and
Lucy Stone both declared the Republican party false to its principles
unless it protected women as well as colored men in their right to
vote, and in his report on the Kansas campaign, Mr. Blackwell, after
speaking of the splendid work of Lucy Stone, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton
and Miss Brown, said: "Their eloquence and determination gave great
promise of success; but, in an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and
others saw fit in the Constitutional Convention to report adversely to
woman suffrage in New York, which influenced the sentiment in the
younger western State and its enterprise was crushed. Even the
Republicans in Kansas set their faces against the extension of suffrage
to women."
Throughout the entire convention there was much resentment on the part
of the women at the manner in which they had been abandoned in favor of
the negro. During the same week, at the anti-slavery meeting in
Steinway Hall, Anna Dickinson, in the midst of an impassioned speech,
declared: "The position of the black woman today is no better than
before her emancipation from slavery. She has simply changed masters
from a white owner to a black husband in many cases." She demanded
freedom and franchise for woman as for man, irrespective of color; and,
while giving Mr. Phillips credit for his years of service in the cause
of woman, took occasion to enter her protest against the tenor of a
portion of his morning address--in effect, that woman's rights must be
set aside until the rights of the black man were fully secured.
As there was so much cavilling and faultfinding on the part of many of
the Equal Rights Association at every forward and radical step taken by
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, they formed an independent committee of
themselves, Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith, Mrs.
Horace Greeley and Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper,
the noted Abolitionist, and wife of a prominent banker. These ladies
sent a memorial to the Republican National Convention, which met in
Chicago and nominated General Grant, but it never saw the light after
reaching there. Snubbed on every hand by the Republicans, they
determined to appeal to the Democrats. On June 27 Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Stanton attended a mass convention addressed by Governor Seymour,
calling out the following editorial from the New York Sun:
The fact that Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony
were the only ladies admitted upon the platform at Cooper
Institute, may be regarded as not only committing them to Governor
Seymour's views, but as committing the approaching Democratic
convention, in whose behalf he spoke, to the doctrine of woman
suffrage. Therefore, whether Miss Anthony is received as a delegate
to the July convention, it is clear that female suffrage must be
incorporated among the planks of the national Democratic platform;
and if Governor Seymour, who is a remarkably fine-looking man, is
nominated, he will receive the undivided support of the women of
the North, which will more than compensate for the loss of the
negro vote of the South.
At the meeting of the Equal Rights Committee, held in New York, a
half-sarcastic resolution was offered by Theodore Tilton and adopted by
the committee declaring that as "Miss Susan B. Anthony, through various
published writings in The Revolution, had given the world to understand
that the hope of the woman's rights cause rests more largely with the
Democratic party than with any other portion of the people; therefore
she be requested to attend the approaching National Democratic
Convention in New York for the purpose of fulfilling this cheerful hope
by securing in the Democratic platform a recognition of woman's right
to the elective franchise."
Miss Anthony ignored the sarcasm, and with Mrs. Stanton at once
prepared a memorial.[46] The convention met and dedicated Tammany Hall
on July 4, 1868. This was the first time since the war that the
southern Democrats had joined with the northern in national convention
and, conservative as they naturally were and separated as they had been
from all the woman's rights agitation which had kept the North stirred
up for the past decade, one can imagine their amazement when Miss
Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and a few other ladies walked into the great hall
and occupied reserved seats at the left of the platform. Their memorial
was sent to the president, Horatio Seymour, and by him handed to the
secretary, who read it amid jeers and laughter. It was then referred to
the resolution committee where it slept the sleep of death. The special
correspondent of the Chicago Republican thus describes the scene when
the memorial was presented:
Susan B. Anthony appeared to the convention like Minerva, goddess
of wisdom. Her advent was with thunders, not of applause, but of
the scorn of a degenerate masculinity. The great Horatio said, with
infinite condescension, that he held in his hand a memorial of the
women of the United States. The name of Miss Anthony was greeted
with a yell such as a Milton might imagine to rise from a conclave
of the damned. "She asked to plead the cause of her sex; to demand
the enfranchisement of the women of America--the only class of
citizens not represented in the government, the only class without
a vote, and their only disability, the insurmountable one of sex."
As these last significant words, with more than significant accent
and modulation, came from the lips of the knightly, the courtly
Horatio, a bestial roar of laughter, swelling now into an almost
Niagara chorus, now subsiding into comparative silence, and again
without further provocation rising into infernal sublimity, shook
the roof of Tammany. Sex--the sex of women--was the subject of this
infernal scorn; and the great Democratic gathering, with yells and
shrieks and demoniac, deafening howls, consigned the memorial of
Susan B. Anthony to the committee on resolutions.
The World, the Herald, the Democratic press generally, spoke of this
incident in satirical and half-contemptuous tones, and the few papers
which treated it seriously declared in effect that, if they had to take
the "nigger," they might as well add woman to the unpalatable dose. A
petition from the Workingmen's Association to this same convention,
demanding a "greenback plank" in the platform, was received with great
respect and the plank put in as requested--offering the very strongest
object lesson of the superiority of an enfranchised over a
disfranchised class. It was not that the convention had more respect
for the workingman, per se, but they feared his vote and so adopted the
greenback plank in order to placate him, and then nominated for
President the most ultra of gold bond-paying advocates.
The Revolution took up with great earnestness the cause of
workingwomen, investigated their condition and published many articles
in regard to it. A meeting was called at the office of The Revolution
and a Workingwoman's Association formed, with officers chosen from the
various occupations represented, which ranged from typesetters to
ragpickers. In September the National Labor Union Congress was held in
Germania Hall, New York, and Miss Anthony was selected to represent
this association. Mr. J. C. C. Whaley, a master workman from the great
iron mills of Philadelphia, presided and she was cordially received. A
committee on female labor was formed with her as chairman, and reported
a strong set of resolutions, urging the organization of women's trades
unions, demanding an eight-hour law and equal pay in all positions, and
pledging support to secure the ballot for women.
After an extended discussion the words "to secure the ballot" were
stricken out, and a resolution adopted that "by accepting Miss Anthony
as a delegate, the Labor Congress did not commit itself to her position
on female suffrage." Here was this great body of men, honestly anxious
to do something to ameliorate the condition of workingwomen, and yet
denying to them the ballot, the strongest weapon which the workingman
possessed for his own protection; unable to see that by placing it in
the hands of women, they would not only give to them immense power but
would double the strength of all labor organizations.
Miss Anthony gave a large amount of time to the cause of workingwomen,
taught them how to organize among themselves, stirred up the newspapers
to speak in their behalf, and interested in them many prominent women
and also "Sorosis," that famous club, which had just been formed. In
addressing women typesetters she said: "The four things indispensable
to a compositor are quickness of movement, good spelling, correct
punctuation and brains enough to take in the idea of the article to be
set up. Therefore, let no young woman think of learning the trade
unless she possesses these requisites. Without them there will be only
hard work and small pay. Make up your minds to take the 'lean' with the
'fat,' and be early and late at the case precisely as 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."
The diary says in October, "Blue days these." Mr. Train was still in
the Dublin jail. Mr. Melliss was doing his part manfully, subscribers
were constantly coming in, but no paper can be sustained by its
subscription-list. Miss Anthony wrote hundreds of letters in its
interests, and walked many a weary mile and had many an unpleasant
experience soliciting advertisements, but the Republicans were hostile
and the Democrats had no use for The Revolution. Invariably the more
liberal-minded men would say: "We advertise in the Tribune and
Independent, and your paper will reach few homes where one or the other
is not taken;" which was true. All the business and financial
management devolved upon Miss Anthony, and she was untrained in this
department. She labored all the day and late into the night over these
details, longing to be in the field and pushing the cause by means of
the platform, as she had been accustomed to do, and yet feeling that
through the paper she could reach a larger audience. Her diary shows
that, notwithstanding past differences, she still visited at Phillips',
Garrison's, Greeley's and very often at Tilton's. In August she tells
of attending the funeral of the baby in the family of the last, the
departure from the usual customs, the house filled with sunshine, the
mother dressed in white, and the inspired words of Mr. Beecher.
She is invited to Flushing, Oswego and various places to address
teachers' institutes and occasionally to give a lyceum lecture and,
regardless of all fatigue, goes wherever a few dollars may be gathered.
Mrs. Stanton finishes her new home at Tenafly, N. J., and Miss Anthony
enjoys slipping over there for a quiet Sunday. Mrs. Stanton did most of
her editorial work at home and Mr. Pillsbury stayed in the office.
The last battle for 1868 was made in what was known as the Hester
Vaughan case. When Anna Dickinson lectured in New York before the
Workingwoman's Association she told the story of Hester Vaughan: A
respectable English girl, twenty years old, married and came to
Philadelphia only to find that the husband had another wife. She then
secured employment at housework and was seduced by a man who deserted
her as soon as he knew she was to become a mother. She wandered about
the streets and finally, in the dead of winter, after being alone and
in labor three days, her child was born in a garret and she lay on the
floor twenty-four hours without fire or food. When discovered the child
was dead and the mother had nearly perished. Circumstances indicated
that she might have killed the child. Four days after its birth, she
was taken to prison, where she was kept for five months, then tried,
found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. She had now been in jail ten
months.
The Revolution and the Workingwoman's Association, headed by Miss
Anthony, took up the case, not so much because of the individual as to
call attention to the wrongs constantly perpetrated against woman. They
created such a public sentiment that a great meeting was held in Cooper
Institute, where Horace Greeley presided and a number of well-known men
and women took part, including Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Rose, Dr. Lozier and
Eleanor Kirk.[47] Speaking briefly but to the point Miss Anthony
submitted resolutions demanding that women should be tried by a jury of
their peers, have a voice in making the laws and electing the officers
who execute them; and declaring for the abolition of capital
punishment. These were adopted with enthusiasm and the meeting, by
unanimous vote, asked the governor of Pennsylvania for an unconditional
pardon for the girl, while over $300 were subscribed for her benefit.
Through Miss Anthony arrangements were made for Mrs. Stanton and
Elizabeth Smith Miller to carry to Governor Geary a memorial from the
Workingwoman's Association in behalf of Hester Vaughan. During their
interview the governor declared emphatically that justice never would
be done in such cases until women were in the jury-box. These efforts,
supplemented by others afterwards made in Philadelphia, resulted in his
granting the pardon, and the girl was assisted back to her home in
England.
Although The Revolution suffered the anxieties inseparable from the
launching of a new paper, it found much reason for encouragement. A
number of prominent men and newspapers, during the year, had come out
boldly in favor of woman suffrage and there seemed to be a considerable
public sentiment drifting in that direction; but there were signs even
more hopeful than these. Immediately upon the assembling of Congress,
in December, 1868, Senator S. C. Pomeroy, of Kansas, presented a
resolution as an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that
"the basis of suffrage in the United States shall be that of
citizenship; and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy the
same rights and privileges of the elective franchise; but each State
shall determine by law the age," etc.
[Autograph:
Very Cordially
& Truly
S.C. Pomeroy]
A few days later George W. Julian, of Indiana, offered a similar
amendment in the House of Representatives, as follows: "The right of
suffrage in the United States shall be based upon citizenship, and
shall be regulated by Congress; and all citizens of the United States,
whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally, without
any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex."
[Autograph: Geo W. Julian]
The last of December Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Mr.
Julian introduced bills to enfranchise women in the District of
Columbia, the latter including also the women in the Territories. A
review of the situation in The Revolution of December 31, said:
In our political opinions, we have been grossly misunderstood and
misrepresented. There never was a time, even in the re-election of
Lincoln, when to differ from the leading party was considered more
inane and treasonable. Because we made a higher demand than either
Republicans or Abolitionists, they in self-defense revenged
themselves by calling us Democrats; just as the church at the time
of its apathy on the slavery question revenged the goadings of
Abolitionists by calling them "infidels." If claiming the right of
suffrage for every citizen, male and female, black and white, a
platform far above that occupied by Republicans or Abolitionists
today, is to be a Democrat, then we glory in the name, but we have
not so understood the policy of modern Democracy. Though The
Revolution and its founders may have been open to criticism in many
respects, all admit that we have galvanized the people into life
and slumbering friends to action on this question.
[Footnote 46: On the Sunday before, the two ladies were invited to
breakfast at the home of Mr. Melliss, with the president of the
National Labor Union and a number of prominent men from Wall street, to
talk over their prospects in the convention.]
[Footnote 47: Dr. Clemence Lozier and Mrs. Eleanor Kirk went to
Moyamensing prison to see the unfortunate girl. In passing the
different cells they noticed many women prisoners and one of the ladies
asked the inspector if he could give any idea of the cause of the
downfall of these women. "Yes," he replied, "faith in men."]
CHAPTER XIX.
AMENDMENT XV--FOUNDING OF NATIONAL SOCIETY.
1869.
Notwithstanding the protests and petitions of the women, the Fourteenth
Amendment had been formally declared ratified July 28, 1868, the word
"male" being thereby three times branded on the Constitution. In the
resolutions of Senator Pomeroy and Mr. Julian, however, they found new
hope and fresh courage. They had learned that the Federal Constitution
could be so amended as to enfranchise a million men who but yesterday
were plantation slaves. Here, then, was the power which must be invoked
for the enfranchisement of women. From the office of The Revolution
went out thousands of petitions to the women of the country to be
circulated in the interests of an amendment to regulate the suffrage
without making distinctions of sex. It was decided that a convention
should be held in Washington in order to meet the legislators on their
own ground. A suffrage association had been formed in that city with
Josephine S. Griffing, founder of the Freedmen's Bureau, president;
Hamilton Willcox, secretary. This was the first ever held in the
capital, and it brought many new and valuable workers into the field.
Clara Barton here made her first appearance at a woman suffrage
meeting, and was a true and consistent advocate of the principle from
that day forward.
The venerable Lucretia Mott presided, and Senator Pomeroy opened the
convention with an eloquent speech, January 19, 1869. A feature of this
occasion was the appearance of several young colored orators, speaking
in opposition to suffrage for women and denouncing them for
jeopardizing the black man's claim to the ballot by insisting upon
their own. One of them, George Downing, standing by the side of
Lucretia Mott, declared that God intended the male should dominate the
female everywhere! Another was a son of Robert Purvis, who was
earnestly and publicly rebuked by his father. Edward M. Davis,
son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, also condemned the women for their
temerity and severely criticised the resolutions, which demanded the
same political rights for women as for negro men.
Miss Anthony called on Senator Harlan, of Iowa, chairman of the
District committee, who readily granted the women a hearing which took
place January 26, when she and Mrs. Stanton gave their arguments. This
was the first congressional hearing ever granted to present the
question of woman suffrage. An appeal was sent to Congress praying that
women should be recognized in the next amendment. In her letter to the
Philadelphia Press, Grace Greenwood thus described the leading spirits
of the convention:
Near Lucretia Mott sat her sister, Martha Wright, a woman of
strong, constant character and rare intellectual culture; Mrs. Cady
Stanton, of impressive and beautiful appearance, in the rich prime
of an active, generous and healthful life; Miss Susan B. Anthony,
looking all she is, a keen, energetic, uncompromising,
unconquerable, passionately earnest woman; Clara Barton, whose name
is dear to soldiers and blessed in thousands of homes to which the
soldiers shall return no more--a brave, benignant-looking woman....
Miss Anthony followed in a strain not only cheerful, but
exultant--reviewing the advance of the cause from its first
despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged, it
commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual
pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time,
and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that
while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement,
and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the "swift, keen intelligence," Miss
Anthony, alert, aggressive and indefatigable, is its nervous
energy--its propulsive force....
To see the three chief figures of this great movement sitting upon
a stage in joint council, like the three Fates of a new
dispensation--dignity and the ever-acceptable grace of scholarly
earnestness, intelligence and beneficence making them prominent--is
assurance that the women of our country, bereft of defenders or
injured by false ones, have advocates equal to the great demands of
their cause.
[Autograph:
Yours affectionately
Grace Greenwood]
Immediately after this convention, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, by
invitation of a number of State suffrage committees, made a tour of
Chicago, Springfield, Bloomington, Galena, St. Louis, Madison,
Milwaukee and Toledo, speaking to large audiences. At St. Louis they
were met by a delegation of ladies and escorted to the Southern Hotel,
and then invited by the president of the State association, Mrs.
Virginia L. Minor, to visit various points of interest in the city. At
Springfield, Ill., the lieutenant-governor presided over their
convention, and Governor Palmer and many members of the legislature
were in the audience. With the Chicago delegation, Mrs. Livermore,
Judge Waite, Judge Bradwell, Mrs. Myra Bradwell, editor of the Legal
News, and others, they addressed the legislature. At Chicago, in Crosby
Music Hall, the meeting was decidedly aggressive. Miss Anthony's
resolutions stirred up the politicians, but she defended them bravely,
according to report:
She stood outside of any party which threw itself across the path
of complete suffrage to woman, and therefore she stood outside of
the Republican party, where all her male relatives and friends were
to be found. Republican leaders had told them to wait; that the
movement was inopportune; but all the time had continued to put up
bars and barriers against its future success. No woman should
belong at present to either party; she should simply stand for
suffrage.... She protested against any Republicans saying that Mrs.
Stanton or herself had laid a straw in the way of the negro.
Because they insisted that the rights of women ought to have equal
prominence with the rights of black men, it was assumed that they
opposed the enfranchisement of the negro. She repelled the
assumption. She arraigned the entire Republican party because they
refused to see that all women, black and white, were as much in
political servitude as the black men.
At this meeting Robert Laird Collyer (not the distinguished Robert
Collyer) made a long address against the enfranchisement of women,
mixing up purity, propriety and pedestals in the usual incoherent
fashion. He was so completely annihilated by Anna Dickinson that no
further defense of the measure was necessary. Suffrage societies were
organized in Chicago, Milwaukee and Toledo. In her account of this
convention, Mrs. Livermore wrote of Miss Anthony:
She is entirely unlike Mrs. Stanton, notwithstanding the twain have
been fast friends and diligent co-laborers for a quarter of a
century.... Miss Anthony is a woman whom no one can know thoroughly
without respect. Entirely honest, fearfully in earnest, energetic,
self-sacrificing, kind-hearted, scorning difficulties of whatever
magnitude, and rigidly sensible, she is the warm friend of the
poor, oppressed, homeless and friendless of her own sex. Her labors
in their behalf are tireless and judicious. You think her plain
until she smiles, and then the worn face lights up so pleasantly
and benignly that you forget to criticise and your heart warms
towards her. Knowing her great goodness, and how she has devoted
her life to hard, unpaid work for the negro slave and for woman, we
can never read jibes and jeers at her expense without a twinge of
pain. Let the press laugh at her as it may, she is a mighty power
among both men and women, and those who really love as well as
respect her are a host.
In this winter of 1869 the Press Club of New York made the startling
innovation of giving a dinner to which ladies were invited. Among the
guests were Phoebe and Alice Gary, Mary L. Booth, Elizabeth Oakes
Smith, Olive Logan, Mary Kyle Dallas and Miss Anthony. J. W. Simonton,
of the Associated Press, was toast-master. Not having had the slightest
intimation that she was expected to speak, Miss Anthony was called upon
to respond to the question, "Why don't the women propose?" Without a
moment's hesitation she arose and said: "Under present conditions, it
would require a good deal of assurance for a woman to say to a man,
'Please, sir, will you support me for the rest of my life?' When all
avocations are open to woman and she has an opportunity to acquire a
competence, she will then be in a position where it will not be
humiliating for her to ask the man she loves to share her prosperity.
Instead of requesting him to provide food, raiment and shelter for her,
she can invite him into her home, contribute her share to the
partnership and not be an utter dependent. There will be also another
advantage in this arrangement--if he prove unworthy she can ask him to
walk out." It will be seen by this original and daring reply that Miss
Anthony could not attend a dinner party even without creating a
sensation.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and the
Fourteenth establishing the citizenship of the negro, did not prove
sufficient to protect him in his right of suffrage and, although Sumner
and other Republican leaders contended that another amendment was not
necessary for this, the majority of the party did not share this
opinion and it became evident that one would have to be added.[48]
Those proposed by Pomeroy and Julian securing universal suffrage were
brushed aside without debate, and the following was submitted by
Congress to the State legislatures, February 27, 1869:
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.
Amendment XIV had settled the status of citizenship. "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." Now came the next measure to protect the citizen's right
to vote, which proposed to guard against any discrimination on account
of race, of color, of previous condition, but by the omission of the
one word "sex," all women still were left disfranchised. At this time
the leading Republicans believed in universal suffrage. Garrison,
Phillips, Greeley, Sumner, Tilton, Wilson, Wade, Stevens, Brown, Julian
and many others had publicly declared their belief in the right of
woman to the ballot, but now driven by party necessity, they repudiated
their principles, and deferred the day of her freedom for generations.
Yet it was not forgotten still carefully to include her in the basis of
representation, fully to make her amenable to the laws, and strictly to
hold her to her share of taxation. In reference to this The Revolution
said:
The proposed amendment for "manhood suffrage" not only rouses
woman's prejudices against the negro, but on the other hand his
contempt and hostility toward her.... Just as the Democratic cry of
a "white man's government" created the antagonism between the
Irishman and the negro, which culminated in the New York riots of
1863, so the Republican cry of "manhood suffrage" creates an
antagonism between black men and all women, which will culminate in
fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern States.
While we fully appreciate the philosophy that every extension of
rights prepares the way for greater freedom to new classes and
hastens the day of liberty to all, we at the same time see that the
immediate effect of class enfranchisement is greater tyranny and
abuse of those who have no voice in the government. Had Irishmen
been disfranchised in this country, they would have made common
cause with the negro in fighting for his rights, but when exalted
above him, they proved his worst enemies. The negro will be the
victim for generations to come, of the prejudice engendered by
making this a white man's government. While the enfranchisement of
each new class of white men was a step toward his ultimate freedom,
it increased his degradation in the transition period, and he
touched the depths when all men but himself were crowned with
citizenship.
Just so with woman, while the enfranchisement of all men hastens
the day for justice to her, it makes her degradation more complete
in the transition state. It is to escape the added tyranny,
persecutions, insults, horrors which will surely be visited upon
her in the establishment of an aristocracy of sex in this republic,
that we raise our indignant protest against this wholesale
desecration of woman in the pending amendment, and earnestly pray
the rulers of this nation to consider the degradation of
disfranchisement. Our Republican leaders see that it is a
protection and defense for the black man, giving him new dignity
and self-respect, and making his rights more sacred in the eyes of
his enemies. It is mockery to tell woman she is excluded from all
political privileges on the ground of _respect_; since the laws and
constitutions for her, in common with all disfranchised classes,
harmonize with the degradation of the position.
In their protest against this discrimination and their insistence that
the word "sex" should be included in the Fifteenth Amendment, Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Stanton stood practically alone. Most of the other
women allowed themselves to be persuaded by the politicians that it was
their duty to step aside and wait till the negro was invested with this
highest attribute of citizenship.
In the first issue of The Revolution for 1869 appeared this letter from
George Francis Train, who had just been released from the Dublin jail
and had returned to America:
....I knew the load I had to carry in the woman question, but you
did not know the load you had to carry in Train. When the poor
man's horse fell and broke his leg, the crowd sympathized. "How
much you pity?" asked the Frenchman; "I pity man $20." I saw that
the theoretical breeching had broken in Kansas, and with voice,
with pen, with time and, what none of your old friends did, with
purse, I threw myself into the battle.
With your remarkable industry and extraordinary executive ability
you have astonished all by your success. You remember I begged you
never to stop to defend me but to push on to victory. Now both
parties are neck and neck to see who shall lead the army of
in-coming negro voters. Woman already begins to creep. Soon she
will walk and legislate. No sneers, no low jokes, no obscene
remarks are now bandied about. The iceberg of prejudice is moving
down the Gulf Stream of a wider liberty and will melt away with the
bigotry of ages. The ball is rolling down the hill. You no longer
need my services. The Revolution is a power. Would it not be more
so without Train? Had you not better omit my name in 1869? Would it
not bring you more subscribers, and better assist the noble cause
of reform? Although the Garrisonians have so ungenerously attacked
me, perhaps they will do as much for you as I have. If so, tell
them, confidentially, the thousands I have devoted to the cause,
and guarantee the haters of Train that his name shall not appear in
The Revolution after January 1. I can not better show my
unselfishness than by asking you to forget my honest exertions for
equal rights and equal pay for women, and to shut me out of The
Revolution in future, in order to bring in again "the apostates."
Although Mr. Train continued to supply funds and to send an occasional
letter for a few months longer, his active connection with the paper
ceased after its first year. In the issue of May 1 it contained the
following editorial comment:
Our readers will find Mr. Train's valedictory in another column.
Feeling that he has been a source of grief to our numerous friends
and, through their constant complaints, an annoyance to us, he
magnanimously retires. He has always said that as soon as we were
safely launched on the tempestuous sea of journalism, he should
leave us "to row our own boat." Our partnership dissolves today.
Now we shall look for a harvest of new subscribers, as many have
written and said to us again and again, if you will only drop
Train, we will send you patrons by the hundred. We hope the fact
that Train has dropped _us_ will not vitiate these promises. Our
generous friend starts for California on May 7, in the first train
over the Pacific road. He takes with him the sincere thanks of
those who know what he has done in the cause of woman, and of those
who appreciate what a power The Revolution has already been in
rousing public thought to the importance of her speedy
enfranchisement.
The heading of the financial department and the column of Wall street
gossip, which had given so much offense, were removed, and the paper
became purely an advocate of the rights of humanity in general and
women in particular. Up to this time the editorial rooms had been in
the fourth story of the New York World building, and the paper was
printed on the fifth floor of another several blocks away, with no
elevator in either. Miss Anthony made the trip from one to the other
and climbed the seven flights of stairs half a dozen times a day for
sixteen months. In 1869, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Phelps, a wealthy and
practical philanthropist of New York City, purchased a large and
elegant house on East Twenty-third street, near the Academy of Design,
which she dedicated as the "Woman's Bureau." She proposed to rent the
rooms wholly for women's clubs and societies and for enterprises
conducted by women. The first floor was taken by The Revolution. The
handsome and spacious parlors above were to be used for receptions,
readings, concerts, etc., and it was Mrs. Phelps' intention to make the
Bureau a center, not only for the women of New York, but for all those
who might visit the city.
Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony did not abate her
labors for the Equal Rights Association and she worked unceasingly for
the success of the approaching May Anniversary in New York, securing,
among other advantages, half fare on all the railroads for delegates.
Hundreds of letters were sent out from The Revolution office to
distinguished people in all parts of the country and cordial answers
were received, showing that the hostility against the paper and its
editors was principally confined to a very small area. A private letter
from Mrs. Stanton says: "We have written every one of the old friends,
ignoring the past and urging them to come. We do so much desire to sink
all petty considerations in the one united effort to secure woman
suffrage. Though many unkind acts and words have been administered to
us, which we have returned with sarcasm and ridicule, there are really
only kind feelings in our souls for all the noble men and women who
have fought for freedom during the last thirty years."
Under date of April 4, Mary A. Livermore wrote Miss Anthony, asking if
she could secure a pass for her over the Erie road, and saying: "I have
written to the New England friends to let bygones be bygones and come
to the May meeting. It seems to me personal feelings should be laid
aside and women should all pull together." After telling of the
excellent prospects of her own suffrage paper, the Agitator, just
started in Chicago, she continues: "It seems as if everybody who does
not like The Revolution is bound to take the Agitator, which is very
well, since they are detachments of the same corps. We must keep up a
good understanding and work together. If you want to let people know
there is no rivalry between us, you can announce that I am to send your
paper fortnightly letters from the West detailing the progress of
affairs here."
A cheery letter from Anna Dickinson says: "Work has run in easy grooves
this winter--not that the travel has not often been exhausting and the
roads wearisome; but that every one in this western world is ablaze
with the grand question. Thank God, and hurrah! I feel in both moods. I
hope you and that adorable cherub, E.C.S., are well, and that
everything is flourishing as it should flourish with two such saints.
As for me, the finger of care touches lightly; furthermore I am in a
doubly delectable condition by reason of having my face set towards
home, and beyond home is a vista of my Susan's countenance. Please, my
dear, can't you meet this sinner at Cortlandt street, and then the
sinner and the saint will have all the afternoon together somewhere,
and that seems almost too good to be true?"
This was the beginning of a correspondence with Gail Hamilton, who
wrote: "I regret to say that I can neither honor nor shame your
anniversary with my presence. I have been out on a sixteen-months'
cruise, fighting single handed for equal rights, and am now hauled up
in dock for repairs. But you, I am sure, will be glad to know that,
though much battered and tempest-tossed, I came into port with all sail
set and every rag of bunting waving victory. This is a private note to
you, and as you are but a landsman yourself, you will never know if my
ropes are not knotted sailor-fashion."
[Autograph:
Very respectfully
Gail Hamilton]
The third aniversary of the Equal Rights Association opened at Steinway
Hall, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Stanton presiding, and proved to be the most
stormy and unsatisfactory meeting ever held. The usual brilliant galaxy
of speakers was present, besides a number of prominent men and women
who were just beginning to be heard on the woman suffrage platform.
Among these were Olive Logan, Phoebe Couzins, Madam D'Hericourt, a
French physician and writer, Rev. Phoebe A. Hanaford, Rev. O.B.
Frothingham, Hon. Henry Wilson, Rev. Gilbert Haven and others. There
were also more delegates from the West, headed by Mrs. Livermore, than
had been present at any previous meeting. The usual number of fine
addresses were made and all promised fair, but Stephen S. Foster soon
disturbed the harmony by suggesting that it was time for Miss Anthony
and Mrs. Stanton to withdraw from the association, as they had
repudiated its principles and the Massachusetts society could no longer
co-operate with them. This called forth indignant speeches from all
parts of the house, and he was soon silenced.[49]
[Autograph:
Yours very truly
O.B. Frothingham]
Frederick Douglass and several other men attempted to force the
adoption of a resolution that "we gratefully welcome' the pending
Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting disfranchisement on account of race and
earnestly solicit the State legislatures to pass it without delay."
Miss Anthony declared indignantly that she protested against this
amendment because it did not mean equal rights; it put 2,000,000
colored men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 colored women,
who until now had been at least the equals of the men at their side.
She continued:
The question of precedence has no place on an equal rights
platform. The only reason it ever forced itself here was because
certain persons insisted that woman must stand back and wait until
another class should be enfranchised. In answer we say: "If you
will not give the whole loaf of justice to the entire people, if
you are determined to extend the suffrage piece by piece, then give
it first to women, to the most intelligent and capable of them at
least. I remember a long discussion with Tilton and Phillips on
this very question, when we were about to carry our petitions to
the New York Constitutional Convention. Mr. Tilton said that we
should urge the amendment to strike out the word 'white,'" and
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." Mr. Phillips also emphasized this
point; but I repudiated this downright insolence, when for fifteen
years I had canvassed the entire State, county by county, with
petition in hand asking for woman suffrage! To think that those two
men, among the most progressive of the nation, should dare look me
in the face and speak of this great principle for which I had
toiled, as a mere intellectual theory!
If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said "black men
first and white women afterwards," he would have seen that it was
only the men. When he tells us that the case of black men is so
perilous, I tell him that even outraged as they are by the hateful
prejudice against color, he himself would not today exchange his
sex and color with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Mr. Douglass--"Will you allow me a question?"
Miss Anthony--"Yes, anything for a fight today."
Mr. Douglass--"I want to inquire whether granting to woman the right of
suffrage will change anything in respect to the nature of our sexes."
Miss Anthony--"It will change the nature of one thing very much, and
that is the dependent condition of woman. It will place her where she
can earn her own bread, so that she may go out into the world an equal
competitor in the struggle for life; so that she shall not be compelled
to take such positions as men choose to accord and then accept such pay
as men please to give.... It is not a question of precedence between
women and black men; the business of this association is to demand for
every man, black or white, and every woman, black or white, that they
shall be enfranchised and admitted into the body politic with equal
rights and privileges."
As everybody in the hall was allowed to vote there was no difficulty in
securing the desired endorsement of an amendment to enfranchise negro
men and make them the political superiors of all women. There never had
been a convention so dominated by men. Although the audience refused to
listen to most of them and drowned their voices by expressions of
disapproval and calls for the women speakers, they practically wrested
the control of the meeting from the hands of the women and managed it
to suit themselves.
This was Mrs. Livermore's first appearance at one of these
anniversaries and she created a commotion by introducing this
resolution: "While we recognize the disabilities which legal marriage
imposes upon woman as wife and mother, and while we pledge ourselves to
seek their removal by putting her on equal terms with man, we
abhorrently repudiate 'free loveism' as horrible and mischievous to
society, and disown any sympathy with it." It was the first time the
subject had been brought before a woman's rights convention and its
introduction was indignantly resented by the "old guard." Lucy Stone
exclaimed: "I feel it is a mortal shame to give any foundation for the
implication that we favor 'free loveism.' I am ashamed that the
question should be raised here. There should be nothing at all said
about it. Do not let us, for the sake of our own self-respect, allow it
to be hinted that we helped to forge a shadow of a chain which comes in
the name of 'free love.' I am unwilling that it should be suggested
that this great, sacred cause of ours means anything but what we have
said it does. If any one says to us, 'Oh, I know what you mean, you
mean free love by this agitation,' let the lie stick in his throat."
Mrs. Rose followed with a strong protest, saying: "I think it strange
that the question of 'free love' should have been brought upon this
platform. I object to Mrs. Livermore's resolution, not on account of
its principles, but on account of its pleading guilty. When a man tries
to convince me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers.
If we pass this resolution that we are not 'free lovers,' people will
say, 'It is true that you are, for you try to hide it.' Lucretia Mott's
name has been mentioned as a friend of 'free love,' but I hurl back the
lie into the faces of those who uttered it. We have been thirty years
in this city before the public, and it is an insult to all the women
who have labored in this cause; it is an insult to the thousands and
tens of thousands of men and women who have listened to us in our
conventions, to say at this late hour, 'We are not free lovers.'"
The charge of "free love" was vigorously repudiated by Miss Anthony
also, who closed the discussion by asserting: "This howl comes from the
men who know that when women get their rights they will be able to live
honestly and not be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in
or out of marriage. There are very few women in the world who would
enter into this relationship with drunkards and libertines provided
they could get their subsistence in any other way. We can not be
frightened from our purpose, the public mind can not long be prejudiced
by this 'free love' cry of our enemies." Olive Logan poured oil upon
the troubled waters in a graceful speech, and the subject was dropped.
At each recurring anniversary the conviction had been growing that the
term "equal rights" was too comprehensive, permitting entirely too much
latitude as to speakers and subjects. Ever themselves having been
repressed and silenced, when at last women made a platform on which
they had a right to stand, they declared first of all for "free
speech." They would not refuse to any human being what so long had been
denied to them and, as a result, fanatics, visionaries and advocates of
all reforms flocked to this platform, delighted to find such audiences.
According to the tenets of the association, all speakers must have
equal rights on their platform and there was no escape. Sometimes it
was nothing more harmful than a man with a map to explain how the
national debt could be paid without money, or a woman with a system of
celestial kites by which she proposed to communicate with the other
world. Occasionally the advocates of various political theories would
secure possession, consuming the time and diverting attention from the
main issue. At the convention just closed, the hobby-riders were
present in greater force than ever before and it seemed imperative that
some means should be adopted to shut them out thereafter. It was
proposed to change the name to Woman Suffrage Association, which would
bar all discussion of a miscellaneous character. There was a strong
objection to this, however, because such action required three months'
notice.
At the close of the convention a reception was held at the Woman's
Bureau, Saturday evening, May 15, 1869, and attended by women from
nineteen States who had come as representatives to the Equal Rights
Association.[50] At their earnest request, it was decided to form a new
organization to be called the National Woman Suffrage Association,
whose especial object should be a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, securing the ballot to the women of the nation on equal
terms with men. A convention of officially appointed delegates was at
that time impracticable, as there were but few local suffrage societies
and still fewer State organizations. It was thought that although it
might not be formed by delegates elected for this specific object, it
would be sufficient for working purposes until the next spring when,
the required three months' notice having been given, a permanent
organization might be effected. Accordingly, a constitution was adopted
and officers elected.[51] The following week at Cooper Institute Anna
Dickinson made her great speech for the rights of women, entitled
"Nothing Unreasonable," to inaugurate the new National Woman Suffrage
Association, and before an immense audience she pleaded for woman with
the same beauty and eloquence as in days past she had pictured the
wrongs of the slave and urged his emancipation.
The association was organized May 15, and on the 17th Mrs. Livermore
wrote Miss Anthony from Boston: "I hope you are rested somewhat. I am
very sorry for you, that you are carrying such heavy burdens. If you
and I lived in the same city, I would relieve you of some of them, for
I believe we might work together, with perhaps an occasional collision.
Now I want you to answer these two questions: 1st.--Did you do anything
in the way of organizing at the Saturday evening reunion, and if so,
what? That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug. 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.
2d.--If Mrs. Stanton will not go West to a series of meetings this fall
and winter, would you dare undertake it with me alone? We must have
strong people of established reputations. 'Only the Stanton, the
Anthony, and the Livermore,' that is what the Chicago Tribune says...."
Later, while still in Boston, she wrote again:
You are mistaken in thinking I exhorted the formation of a national
suffrage association the Saturday night after the New York
convention; I only advised talking it up. All agreed that it ought
to be formed but that a preliminary call should be issued first. I
am for a national organization with Mrs. Stanton, president, and
with you as one of the executive committee, but I want it arrived
at compatibly with parliamentary rules.... And now having asserted
myself, let me say that I sympathize more with your energy and
earnestness which lead you to override forms and rules than I do
with the awfully proper and correct spirit that waits till
everybody consents before it does anything. I have no doubt but we
all shall join the National Association, each State by its elected
members, when we hold our great Western Woman Suffrage Convention
in Chicago next fall. Mrs. Stanton and you must both be present; we
probably shall all vote together then to go into the National
Association. Remember you are to make that series of conventions
with me. I am depending on you.
The next November, in answer to a circular signed by Lucy Stone, Julia
Ward Howe, Caroline M. Severance, T.W. Higginson and George H. Vibbert,
a call was issued resulting in a convention at Cleveland, O., to form
another national suffrage association on the following basis of
representation: "The delegates appointed by existing State
organizations shall be admitted, provided their number does not exceed,
in each case, that of the congressional delegation of the State. Should
it fall short of that number, additional delegates may be admitted from
local organizations, or _from no organization whatever_, provided the
applicants be actual residents of the State they claim to represent."
The American Suffrage Association was thus formed, with twenty-one
States represented; Henry Ward Beecher, president; Henry B. Blackwell,
Amanda Way, recording secretaries; Lucy Stone, chairman executive
committee.
In the midst of her exacting duties and many annoyances, Miss Anthony
found time to write numerous letters and obtain a testimonial for
Ernestine L. Rose, who was about to return with her husband to England,
after having given many years of valuable service to the women of
America. She secured a handsome sum of money and a number of presents
for her, and Mrs. Rose went on board ship laden with flowers and very
happy and grateful. Miss Anthony wrote to Lucretia Mott: "Was it not a
little funny that this unsentimental personage should have suggested
the thing and stirred so many to do the sentimental, and yet could not
even take the time to go to the wharf and say good-by? I spent Sunday
evening with her and it is a great comfort to me that I helped others
contribute to her pleasure." On the back of this letter, which was sent
to her sister, Martha Wright, Mrs. Mott penned: "Think of the
complaints made of Susan when she does so much and puts others up to
doing, and always keeps herself in the background."
In the summer of 1869, under the auspices of the National Association,
large and successful conventions were held at Saratoga and Newport in
the height of the season. Of the former The Revolution said: "That a
woman suffrage convention should have been allowed to organize in the
parlors of Congress Hall, that those parlors should have been filled to
their utmost capacity by the habitual guests of the place, that such
men as ex-President Fillmore, Thurlow Weed, George Opdyke and any
number of clergymen from different parts of the country, should have
been interested lookers-on, are significant facts which may well carry
dismay to the enemies of the cause. That the whole convention was
conducted by women in a dignified, orderly and business-like manner, is
a strong intimation that in spite of all which has been said to the
contrary, women are capable of learning how to manage public affairs."
The following comment was made by Mrs. Stanton on the Newport
convention: "So, obeying orders, we sailed across the Sound one bright
moonlight night with a gay party of the 'disfranchised,' and found
ourselves quartered on the enemy the next morning as the sun rose in
all its resplendent glory. Although trunk after trunk--not of
gossamers, laces and flowers, but of suffrage ammunition, speeches,
petitions, resolutions, tracts, and folios of The Revolution--had been
slowly carried up the winding stairs of the Atlantic, the brave men and
fair women, who had tripped the light fantastic toe until the midnight
hour, slept heedlessly on, wholly unaware that twelve apartments were
already filled with the strong-minded invaders.... The audience
throughout the convention was large, fashionable and as enthusiastic as
the state of the weather would permit."
The Fourth of July was celebrated by the association in a beautiful
grove in Westchester county, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Judge E.D.
Culver and others making addresses. Weekly meetings of as many of its
members as were in New York were held at the Woman's Bureau, a large
number of practical questions relating to women were brought forward,
and there was constant agitation and discussion. A note from the tax
collector called forth this indignant answer from Miss Anthony:
I have your polite note informing me that as publisher of The
Revolution, I am indebted to the United States in the sum of $14.10
for the tax on monthly sales of that journal. Enclosed you will
find the amount, but you will please understand that I pay it under
protest. The Revolution, you are aware, is a journal the main
object of which is to apply to these degenerate times the great
principle for which our ancestors fought, that taxation and
representation should go together. I am not represented in the
United States government, and yet it taxes me; and it taxes me,
too, for publishing a paper the chief purpose of which is to rebuke
the glaring inconsistency between its professions and its
practices. Under the circumstances, the federal government ought to
be ashamed to exact this tax of me....
On September 10 Miss Anthony attended the Great Western Woman Suffrage
Convention at Chicago, where she spoke several times and was cordially
received. She was the guest of Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, founder of the
Fortnightly Club. From here she went to the St. Louis convention,
October 6 and 7, which was especially distinguished because of the
resolutions presented by Francis Minor, a prominent lawyer of that
city, with an argument to prove that, under the Fourteenth Amendment,
women already had a legal right to vote. These were supported by his
wife, Virginia L. Minor, in a strong speech. They were the first thus
to interpret this amendment. Ten thousand extra copies of The
Revolution containing the resolutions and this speech were published,
laid on the desk of every member of Congress, sent to the leading
newspapers and circulated throughout the country. For a number of years
the National Suffrage Association held to this construction of the
amendment, until it was decided to the contrary by the Supreme Court of
the United States.
Conventions were held in Cincinnati and Dayton, O. At the latter Miss
Anthony gave a scathing review of the laws affecting married women, the
control which they allowed the husband over the wife, children and
property, making, however, no attack upon men but only upon laws. Each
of the other speakers, all of whom were married, in turn took up the
cudgel, and proceeded to tell how good her own husband was, and to say
that if Miss Anthony only had a good husband she never would have made
that speech, but each admitted that the men were better than the laws.
In her closing remarks Miss Anthony used their own testimony against
them and created great merriment in the audience. Whenever she
commented on existing conditions or on general principles, individual
men and women were sure to rush into the fray, making a personal
application and waxing highly indignant. The Dayton Herald said of her
evening address: "She made a clear, logical and lawyerlike argument, in
sprightly language, that women being persons are citizens, and as
citizens, voters. We think that none who examine her authorities and
line of discussion can avoid her conclusions, and we are certain that
many of the ablest jurists of the land have the honor (logically and
legally) to coincide in her argument."
In 1869 Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker came actively into the suffrage
work and proved a valuable ally. She had been much prejudiced against
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton by newspaper reports and by the
misrepresentations of some of her acquaintances, and in order to
overcome this feeling Paulina Wright Davis arranged that the three
should visit her for several days at her home in Providence, R.I.,
saying in her invitation: "I once had a prejudice against Susan B.
Anthony but am ashamed of it. I investigated carefully every charge
made against her, and I now know her to be honest, honorable, generous
and above all petty spites and jealousies." Mrs. Hooker was so
delightfully disappointed in the two ladies that she became at once and
forever their staunchest friend and advocate. To Caroline M. Severance
she wrote:
I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week, and I
have taken the testimony of those who have known her intimately for
twenty years, and all are united in this resume of her character:
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 standard of others, but in
right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends. I
confess that after studying her carefully for days, and under the
shadow of ----'s letters against her, and 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, and the truest, womanliest
one of us all. I have spent three days in her company, in the most
intense, heart-searching debate I ever undertook in my life. I have
handled what seemed to me to be her errors without gloves, and the
result is that I love her as well as I do Miss Anthony. I hand in
my allegiance to both as the leaders and representatives of the
great movement.
Mrs. Hooker set about arranging a mass convention at her home in
Hartford, Conn., and upon Miss Anthony's expressing some doubt as to
being present, she wrote: "Here I am at work on a convention intended
chiefly to honor Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and behold the
Quakeress says maybe she can not come! I won't have the meeting if you
are going to flunk. It has been a real consolation to me in this
wearisome business to think you would for once be relieved from all
responsibility and come as orator and guest. Don't fail me."
The convention, which closed October 29, was a great success and a
State society was formed with a distinguished list of officers. The
Hartford Post gave considerable space to Miss Anthony's address,
saying:
Miss Anthony is a resolute, substantial woman of forty or fifty,
exhibiting no signs of age or weariness. Her hair is dark, her head
well formed, her face has an expression of masculine strength. If
she were a man you would guess that she was a schoolmaster, or a
quiet clergyman, or perhaps a business man and deacon. She pays no
special attention to feminine graces, but is not ungraceful or
unwomanly. In speaking her manner is self-possessed without ranting
or unpleasant demonstrations, her tones slightly monotonous. Long
experience has taught her a candid, kindly, sensible way of
presenting her views, which wins the good will of her hearers
whether they accept them or not. She said in part:
"How different is this from the assemblages that used to greet us
who twenty years ago commenced to agitate the enfranchisement of
woman. We begin to see the time, which we shall gladly welcome,
when we shall not be needed at the front of the battle. Of late
years, the country has been occupied in discussing the claim of man
to hold property in his fellow-man, and has decided the question in
the negative. Still another form of slavery remains to be disposed
of; the old idea yet prevails that woman is owned and possessed by
man, to be clothed and fed and cared for by his generosity. All the
wrongs, arrogances and antagonisms of modern society grow out of
this false condition of the relations between man and woman. The
present agitation rises from a demand of the soul of woman for the
right to own and possess herself. It is said that as a rule man
does sufficiently provide for woman, and that she ought to remain
content. The great facts of the world are at war with this
assumption.
"For example, I see in the New York Herald 1,200 advertisements of
people wanting work. Upon examination, 500 of them come from women
and 300 more are from boarding-house keepers; and we may therefore
say that eight of the twelve hundred advertisements are from women
compelled to rely upon their own energies to gain their food and
clothing. Every morning from 6 to 7 o'clock you may see on the
Bowery and other great north and south avenues of New York, troops
of young girls and women, with careworn or crime-stained faces,
carrying their poor lunch half-concealed beneath a scanty shawl. If
the facts were in accordance with the common theory, we should not
see these myriads of women thus thrust out to get their living.
Society must either provide great establishments maintained by
taxation to care for women, or else the doors of all trades and
callings must be thrown wide open to them.... This woman's movement
promises an entire change of the conditions of wages and support.
The status of woman can not be materially changed while the
subsistence question remains as at present."
Miss Anthony was entertained at the home of Governor Jewell, afterwards
Postmaster-General. One morning she went over to Mrs. Hooker's and
found all her guests at the breakfast table, Henry Ward Beecher, Wm.
Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Severance, Mrs. Davis and others. She received a
hearty welcome and Mrs. Hooker insisted she should sit down and have a
cup of tea or coffee. Mr. Beecher joined in the entreaty, saying: "Now,
Miss Anthony, you know you have to make a big speech today. When I want
to be very effective and make people cry, I drink a cup of tea before
speaking; when I want to be very clever and make them laugh, I drink
coffee; but when I want them to cry half the time and laugh the other
half, I take a cup of each."
In a letter to Miss Anthony after she returned home Mrs. Hooker said:
"I am astonished at the praise I receive for my part in the convention,
and humbled too, for I realize how worthy of all these pleasant and
commendatory words you and others have been all these years, and what
have you received--or rather what have you not received? Thank God,
that is all over now and you are to have blue sky and clear sailing. It
must be through suffering we enter the gates of peace." But the peace
was a long way off and the hardest struggle was yet to come! A little
later Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend:
I can't tell you how my heart swells--but there is present within
me one undercurrent of feeling that will come to the surface ever
and anon, viz., the wonderful dignity, strength and purity of the
early workers in this reform. I can't wait for history to do them
justice; I want to make history today, and so far as in me lies I
will do it. I have come in at the death and get a large share of
the glory, and lo, here are these, a great company, who have been
in the field for thirty years, and a whole generation has passed
them by unrecognized. Every one here says, "Our noble friend Susan
has carried the day right over the heads of all of us." Said one of
our editors, Charles Dudley Warner, a man of finest taste and
culture, when he had been praising the dignity and power of the
whole platform: "Susan Anthony is my favorite. She was the only
woman there who never once thought of herself. You could see in her
every motion and in her very silence that the cause was all she
cared for, self was utterly forgotten."
He had indeed struck the key note to Miss Anthony's strongest
characteristic, utter forgetfulness of self, total self-abnegation,
self-sacrifice without a consciousness that it was such. Mrs. Hooker's
statement that she "had come in at the death" shows the strong faith of
most of these early workers that it would be only a brief time until
the rights they claimed would be recognized and granted; but she
herself has labored faithfully yet another thirty years without
breaking down the Chinese Wall of opposition.
One object of Mrs. Hooker in calling this Hartford convention was to
see if she could not bring together what were now becoming known as
"the New York and Boston wings of the suffrage party," but she
comments: "We have decided to give up our attempts at reconciliation;
we have neither time nor strength to spare, and if we had, they would
probably fail."
In December Miss Anthony went to the Dansville Sanitarium for a few
days and after her return, Dr. Kate Jackson, so widely known and loved,
wrote her: "Since your visit here, through which I obtained somewhat of
an insight into your struggles and labors, I have been in special
sympathy with you. I do admire the liberal and comprehensive spirit
which you and Mrs. Stanton show in allowing both sides of a question to
be fairly discussed in your paper, and in giving any woman who does
good work for her race in any field the credit for it, even though she
may not exactly agree with you on all points. The spirit of
exclusiveness is not calculated to push any reform among the masses....
Our house and hearts are always open to you. I want to send you
something more than good wishes and so enclose a little New Year's gift
to you, with my love and earnest prayers for your success."
The lovely Quaker, Sarah Pugh, wrote from Philadelphia:
Dear Susan: Not "Dear Madam," or "Respected Friend," according to
our stately fashion, for my heart yearns too warmly toward thee and
thy work for such formality. Would it were in my power to help thee
more in thy onward way, for it must be onward even though opponents
fill it with stumbling-blocks. Lucretia Mott is firm in her
adherence to New York--not but that she can work, if the way
offers, in all organizations which labor for the same end. My
opinion of The Revolution may be expressed in what was said of
another paper: "It fights no sham battles with enemies already
defeated. It is true, good men and women not a few stumble at it,
object to it and in some cases antagonize it, but nobody despises
it. An affectation of contempt is not contempt."
Scores of similar letters were received from the early workers in the
cause. It is unnecessary to enter further into a discussion of this
division in the ranks of the advocates of woman suffrage. The
conscientious historian must perform some unpleasant duties, hence it
could not be passed without notice. The mass of correspondence on this
question has been carefully sifted and that which would give pain to
others, even though it would magnify the subject of this work, has been
rigorously excluded. Most of the writers and those whom they criticised
have ended their labors and passed from the scene of action. No good
can be accomplished, either to the individuals or to the reform, by
inflicting these personalities upon future generations. Among earnest,
forceful, aggressive leaders of any great movement, there must arise
controversies because of these strong characteristics, but the chief
interest of mankind lies not in the individuals but in the results
which they were able to accomplish. A comparison of the position of
woman today with that which she occupied at the beginning of the
agitation in her behalf, fifty years ago, offers more eloquent
testimony to the efforts of those heroic pioneers than could be put
into words by the most gifted pen.
[Footnote 48: It is claimed, on good authority, that Anna Dickinson was
the first to suggest that such an amendment would be required, as early
as 1866, in a consultation with Theodore Tilton and Frederick Douglass
at the National Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, as the only sure
method of protecting the freedmen. See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.
II, p. 327.]
[Footnote 49: In reference to this unwarranted attack, the noted
writer, William Winter, said in the New York Tribune:
"Noble, virtuous, honorable women are a country's greatest wealth, and
when, from petty envy or jealousy, any one attempts with private
innuendoes or public assaults to blacken a fair name which has long
stood before the nation representing a principle, it is an injury not
only to the individual but to the moral sense of the nation, and all
true people are interested in maintaining its integrity and power.
Susan B. Anthony has stood before this nation twenty years, earnestly
devoted to every good work. As a teacher in the schools of New York for
fifteen years, she bears from superintendents the highest testimonials
to her faithfulness and ability. Her noble labors in the temperance
cause are known throughout the State, and in association with the true
men and women who fought the anti-slavery battle, she was equally
faithful and earnest, finishing her work by getting up a petition for
the black man's freedom of 400,000 names--the largest ever presented in
Congress. For woman's enfranchisement her labors have been unremitting
and unwearied for the last eighteen years. She is a frank, generous,
self-sacrificing woman, of a kind, tender nature, firm principle, great
executive ability, and in every relation of life true as the needle to
the pole. Her motto has ever been, 'Let the weal and the woe of
humanity be everything to me; their praise and their blame of no
effect.'"]
[Footnote 50: Maine 3, Vermont 1, New Hampshire 1, Massachusetts 5,
Rhode Island 2, Connecticut 1, New Jersey 7, Pennsylvania 3, Illinois
3, Ohio 3, Wisconsin 1, Minnesota 1, Missouri 3, Kansas 2, Nebraska 1,
California 5, District of Columbia 3, Washington Territory 1-46. The
remainder of the one hundred members who joined the association that
evening resided in different parts of the State of New York.]
[Footnote 51: _President_, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. _Vice-presidents_,
Elizabeth B. Phelps, N.Y.; Anna Dickinson, Penn.; Kate N. Doggett,
Ill.; Madame Anneke, Wis.; Lucy Elmes, Conn.; Mattie Griffith Brown,
Mass.; Mrs. Nicholas Smith, Kan.; Lucy A. Snow, Maine; Elizabeth B.
Schenck, Cal.; Josephine S. Griffing, D.C.; Paulina Wright Davis, R.I.;
Mary Foote Henderson, Phoebe W. Cousins, Mo. _Corresponding
secretaries_, Laura Curtis Bullard, Ida Greeley, Adelaide Hallock.
_Recording secretaries_, Abby Burton Crosby, Sarah E. Fuller.
_Treasurer_, Elizabeth Smith Miller. _Executive committee_, Ernestine
L. Rose, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Mathilda F. Wendt, Mary F. Gilbert,
Susan B. Anthony. _Advisory counsel_, Matilda Joslyn Gage, N.Y.; Mrs.
Francis Minor, Mo.; Adeline Thomson, Penn,; Mrs. M.B. Longley, Ohio;
Mrs. J.P. Root, Kan.; Lilie Peckham, Wis.]
CHAPTER XX.
FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY--END OF EQUAL RIGHTS SOCIETY.
1870.
Conventions and conventions for fifty years, without a break, planned
and managed by one woman--was there ever a similar record? The year
1870 opened with the Second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in
Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 19. It had been advertised for
two days, but the interest was so great that it was continued through
the third day and evening. Mrs. Stanton was in the chair and the papers
united in praising the beauty, dignity and elegant attire of the women
on the platform. A long table at the Arlington Hotel was reserved for
them, and Miss Anthony relates that as they were all going into the
dining-room one day, Jessie Benton Fremont beckoned to her and when she
went over to the table where the general and she were sitting, she said
in her bright, pretty way: "Now tell me, did you hunt the country over
and pick out a score of the most beautiful women you could find to melt
the hearts of our congressmen?"
Letters of warm approval were read from John Stuart Mill and Helen
Taylor, of England; Professor Homer B. Sprague, of Cornell University;
Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist church; Senator Matthew H. Carpenter,
and many other distinguished persons. A number of senators and
representatives addressed the meetings, as did also Hon. A.G. Riddle,
of the District of Columbia, Rev. Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour,
Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the usual corps of well-known suffrage
speakers. Jennie Collins, the Lowell factory girl, electrified the
audience by discussing the great question from the standpoint of the
workingwomen. All the New York dailies sent women reporters, a
comparatively new feature at conventions.
A hearing was arranged before the joint committees for the District of
Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton
based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the
St. Louis convention a few months before, the first assertion of
woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony
said:
We are here for the express purpose of urging you to present in
your respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the
District of Columbia Suffrage Act and thereby enfranchise the women
of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman suffrage shall
be made here, under the eye of Congress, as was that of negro
suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been the experimental
ground of each step toward freedom. The auction-block was here
first banished, slavery here first abolished, the freedmen here
first enfranchised; and we now ask that women here shall be first
admitted to the ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all
over the country as to the results of negro suffrage, and you
deemed it right and safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you
all remember that three days' discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's
proposition to strike out the word "male." Well do I recollect with
what anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and
how we longed that Congress might then declare for the
establishment in this District of a real republic. But conscience
or courage or something was wanting, and women were bidden still to
wait.
When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first
voted, the success of that election inspired Congress with
confidence to pass the proposition for the Fifteenth Amendment, and
the different States to ratify it, until it has become a fixed fact
that black men all over the nation not only may vote but sit in
legislative assemblies and constitutional conventions. We now ask
Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the
women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may
go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see
that it is possible for women to vote and the republic yet stand.
There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our
demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to
make the experiment. Therefore, we most earnestly urge it, in full
faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed
its beneficial results, they will go forward with a Sixteenth
Amendment which shall prohibit any State from disfranchising any of
its citizens on account of sex.
A letter from Mrs. Fannie Howland in the Hartford Courant thus
describes the hearing:
Senator Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively
the gentlemen of the committee, who took their seats around a long
table. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind
her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group
of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the
intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest
faces. Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but
listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause
of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.
The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women
have often appeared in history--noble, brilliant, heroic women; but
_woman_ collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the
commonwealth--not in virtue of hereditary noblesse--not for any
excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of
her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as
man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch
the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light,
fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which
women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty
and briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning,
the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of everyday
use, held the mind strictly to the actual facts which gave that
group of representative men and women its moral significance, its
severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for
a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new
"Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the
land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen
at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave
them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally
as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and
intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and
good nature.
The Hearth and Home, in Photographs of our Agitators, thus depicts Miss
Anthony on this occasion:
She is the Bismarck; she plans the campaigns, provides the
munitions of war, organizes the raw recruits, sets the squadrons in
the field. Indeed, in presence of a timid lieutenant, she sometimes
heads the charge; but she is most effective as the directing
generalissimo. Miss Anthony is a quick, bright, nervous, alert
woman of fifty or so--not at all inclined to
embonpoint--sharp-eyed, even behind her spectacles. She presides
over the treasury, she cuts the Gordian knots, and when the
uncontrollables get by the ears at the conventions, she is the one
who straightway drags them asunder and turns chaos to order again.
In every dilemma, she is unanimously summoned. As a speaker, she is
angular and rigid, but trenchant, incisive, cutting through to the
heart of whatever topic she touches.
Mrs. Hooker wrote: "There were congratulations without stint; but
Sumner, grandest of all, approaching us said in a deep voice, really
full of emotion: 'I have been in this place, ladies, for twenty years;
I have followed or led in every movement toward liberty and
enfranchisement; but this meeting exceeds in interest anything I ever
have witnessed.'" In her weekly letter to the Independent, Mary Clemmer
wrote of this convention:
I am glad to say that it was not mongrel--in part a dramatic
reading, in part a concert, and in part an organ advertisement; but
wholly a convention whose leaders, in dignity and intellect, were
fully the peers of the men whose councils they besieged and
arraigned. There was Mrs. Stanton--smiling, serene, and
motherly--just the woman whose hand laid upon a young man's arm,
whose voice speaking to him, could do so much to hold him back from
evil. There was Susan Anthony--anxious, earnest and importunate,
sarcastic, funny and unconventional as ever. Among all the company,
"Susan" is the most violently and the most unjustly abused. To be
sure, she can be very provocative of such speech. She sometimes has
a lawless way of talking and acting, which men think wonderfully
fascinating in a belle, but utterly unforgivable in a plain,
middle-aged woman. Moreover, "Susan's" utter abnegation to her
cause, her passion for it, sometimes carries her on to "ways and
means" not altogether tenable--in fine, she will offend your taste
and mine; but this is only the outside and a very small side of
Susan Anthony. A man, and more than a man--a woman who can deny
herself, ignore herself, for a principle, for what she believes to
be the truth, whether we believe it or not, is at least entitled to
our respect.
Susan B. Anthony has a strong, earnest and loving nature; her
devotion to her sex is an utterly absorbing and absolute passion.
Born and nurtured a Quaker, she transgresses no prejudice, even of
education, when she stands forth everywhere and in all places the
unflinching, unwearied, never-to-be-put-down champion of woman. In
the better age, when the woman of the future shall be man's equal
in law, in education, in labor, in labor's rewards; when time shall
have softened the asperities of the present, and the crudeness of
the personal shall be buried forever in the grave, Susan B. Anthony
will live as one of the truest friends that woman ever had.
[Autograph: Mary Clemmer]
Sarah Pugh wrote Miss Anthony to stop over in Philadelphia and visit
Mrs. Mott and herself on her way home from Washington, adding, "We are
true to you." In accepting the invitation, Miss Anthony said: "I pray
every day to keep broad and generous towards all who scatter and
divide, and hope I may hold out to the end. The movement can not be
damaged, though some particular schemes may, by any ill-judged action.
The wheels are secure on the iron rails, and no 'National' or
'American'--no New York or Boston--assumption or antagonism can block
them. Individuals may jump on or off, yet the train is stopped thereby
but for a moment."
A letter to her from the California association declares: "We will
split into a thousand pieces before we will prove false to you, who
have so long borne the heat and burden of the day." The heat and burden
had indeed been great, and one less strong in body and less heroic in
soul would have sunk under them. Although she was still weighed down by
the terrible financial struggle of The Revolution, the storm of
opposition which it had aroused was passing away and the old friends
and many new ones were flocking around the intrepid standard bearer,
whom neither fear nor favor could induce to swerve from the straight
line marked out by her own convictions and conscience. Miss Anthony
would soon complete a half-century, and her friends resolved to
commemorate it in a worthy manner. Handsomely engraved cards were sent
out, reading:
The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on
Tuesday evening, February 15, 1870, to celebrate the Fiftieth
Birthday of Susan B. Anthony. On this occasion her friends will be
afforded an opportunity to testify their appreciation of her twenty
years' service in behalf of woman. ELIZABETH B. PHELPS, ANNA B.
DARLING, CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR.
There had been hard work to persuade Miss Anthony to accept this
testimonial, but she was very happy that evening when the spacious
parlors were crowded with the leading men and women of the day.
Although her opinions and methods had been many times attacked by the
newspapers, they now united in cordial congratulations. The New York
World, in a long account, thus described the affair:
A large number of friends and admirers of the private virtues and
public services of Miss Anthony assembled at the Woman's Bureau in
Twenty-third street last evening to congratulate the lady upon this
auspicious anniversary, and to wish her the customary "many happy
returns of the day." The parlors were dazzling with light, the
atmosphere laden with perfume, the walls covered with beautiful
works of art, and the sweet sounds of women's laughter and silvery
voices filled the apartments. Miss Susan B. Anthony stood at the
entrance of the front parlor to receive her numerous friends. She
wore a dress of rich shot silk, dark red and black, cut square in
front, with a stomacher of white lace and a pretty little cameo
brooch. All female vanities she rigorously discarded--no hoop,
train, bustle, panier, chignon, powder, paint, rouge, patches, no
nonsense of any sort. From her kindly eyes and from her gentle
lips, there beamed the sweetest smiles to all those loving friends
who, admiring her really admirable efforts in the cause of human
freedom, her undaunted heroism amid a dark and gloomy warfare, were
glad to press her hand and show their appreciation of her character
and achievements.
Every daily paper in the city had some pleasant comment, while scores
of loving and appreciative letters were received. Accompanying these
were many beautiful gifts and also checks to the amount of $1,000.[52]
[Illustration:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
AT THE AGE OF 50, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY SARONY.]
After the guests had assembled, Isabella Beecher Hooker announced that
Anna T. Randall would read a poem written for the occasion by Phoebe
Gary.[53] She was followed by Mrs. Hooker, who read some delightfully
humorous verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss
Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher
Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the
recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely
overwhelmed and, after stammering her thanks for the unexpected ovation
of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her
self-control: "If this were an assembled mob opposing the rights of
women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse
people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... I ask you
tonight, as your best testimony to my services, on this, the twentieth
anniversary of my public work, to join me in making a demand on
Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and
then to go with me before the several legislatures to secure its
ratification; and when the Secretary of State proclaims that that
amendment has been ratified by twenty-eight States, then Susan B.
Anthony will stop work--but not before."
When all was over, before she slept, Miss Anthony wrote this
characteristically tender little note to the one who never was absent
from her mind:
MY DEAR MOTHER: It really seems tonight as if I were parting with
something dear--saying good-by to somebody I loved. In the last few
hours I have lived over nearly all of life's struggles, and the
most painful is the memory of my mother's long and weary efforts to
get her six children up into womanhood and manhood. My thought
centers on your struggle especially because of the proof-reading of
Alice Gary's story this week. I can see the old home--the
brick-makers--the dinner-pails--the sick mother--the few years of
more fear than hope in the new house, and the hard years since. And
yet with it all, I know there was an undercurrent of joy and love
which makes the summing-up vastly in their favor. How I wish you
and Mary and Hannah and Guelma could have been here--and yet it is
nothing--and yet it is much.
My constantly recurring thought and prayer now are that the coming
fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness
nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed--that
no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of truth
and right.
Then there is the bare mention of a luncheon a few days before with
Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker. What a treat would
have been a résumé of the conversation of that gifted quintette of
women!
Mrs. Stanton was ill and could not attend the reception, which was a
great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble
that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure.
In the diary at midnight is recorded: "Fiftieth birthday! One
half-century done, one score years of it hard labor for bettering
humanity--temperance--emancipation--enfranchisement--oh, such a
struggle! Terribly stormy night, but a goodly company and many, many
splendid tributes to my work. Really, if I had been dead and these the
last words, neither press nor friends could have been more generous and
appreciative."
This beautiful anniversary was a sweet oasis in the severe monotony of
a life which had been filled always with hard work, criticism and
misrepresentation, although it was only a public expression of the
numerous and strong friendships which had been many times manifested in
private. The birthday celebration served also to disprove the
oft-repeated assertion that all women conceal their age, but though
Miss Anthony made this frank avowal of her fifty years, there was
scarcely a newspaper which did not introduce its comments with the
usual silly and threadbare remarks.
After the people began to recover in a social, intellectual and
financial way from the effects of the Civil War, the lyceum bureau
became a marked feature in literary life. The principal bureaus were in
New York, Boston and Chicago. Their managers engaged the best speakers
and each season marked out a route, made the appointments, advertised
extensively and sent them throughout the country. They paid excellent
prices, assuming all responsibility, and engagements with them were
considered very desirable. Under the management of the New York bureau,
Mrs. Stanton began a tour in November, 1869. Miss Anthony at this time,
while well-known from one end of the country to the other, had not
gained a reputation as a platform orator. She thoroughly distrusted her
own power to make a sustained speech of an entire evening, and at all
conventions had placed others on the program for the principal
addresses, presided herself, if necessary, and kept everything in
motion.
By the winter of 1870, however, the bureau began to receive
applications from all parts of the United States for lectures from her,
and Mrs. Stanton being ill for a month, Miss Anthony went as her
substitute. She proved so acceptable that in February, March and April
she was engaged by the bureau for many places in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, and received a considerable sum for her
services, besides securing a number of subscribers and some liberal
donations for The Revolution. In her journal she speaks of the good
audiences, the enthusiasm and the many prominent callers at most of the
places. At Mattoon she had a day and a night with Anna Dickinson and
wrote: "I found her the most weary and worn I had ever seen her, and
desperately tired of the lecture field. Her devotion to me is
marvelous. She is like my loving and loved child."
At Peoria, the editor of the Democratic paper stated that the laws of
Illinois were better for women than for men. Colonel Robert G.
Ingersoll, whom she never had seen, was in the audience, and sent a
note to the president of the meeting, asking that Miss Anthony should
not answer the editor but give him that privilege. He then took up the
laws, one after another, and, illustrating by cases in his own
practice, showed in his eloquent manner how cruelly unjust they were to
women and proved how necessary it was that women should have a voice in
making them. He also offered the following resolution, which was
unanimously adopted: "We pledge ourselves, irrespective of party, to
use all honorable means to make the women of America the equals of men
before the law."
In Detroit Rev. Justin Fulton occupied one evening in opposition to
woman suffrage, and Miss Anthony replied to him the next. An audience
of a thousand gathered in Young Men's Hall at each meeting. The Free
Press had a most scurrilous review of the debate in which it said:
The speakeress rattled on in this strain until a late hour, saying
nothing new, nothing noble, not a word that would give one maid or
mother a purer or better thought. She drew no pictures of love in
the household--she did not seem to think that man and wife could
even stay under the same roof. She was not content that any woman
should be a bashful, modest woman, but wanted them to be like her,
to think as she thought.... People went there to see Susan B.
Anthony, who has achieved an evanescent reputation by her strenuous
endeavors to defy nature. Not one woman in a hundred cares to vote,
cares aught for the ballot, would take it with the degrading
influences it would surely bring.... Old, angular, sticking to
black stockings, wearing spectacles, a voice highly suggestive of
midnight Caudleism at poor Anthony, if he ever comes around, though
he never will. If all woman's righters look like that, the theory
will lose ground like a darkey going through a cornfield in a light
night. If she had come out and plainly said, "See here, ladies, see
me, I am the result of twenty years of constant howling at man's
tyranny," there would never have been another "howl" uttered in
Detroit. Or, if she had plainly said, in so many words, "I am going
to lecture on bosh, for the sake of that almighty half-dollar per
head--take it as bosh," people would have admired her candor,
though forming the same conclusions without her assistance....
Myra Bradwell, the able editor of the Chicago Legal News, paid the
following tribute: "Miss Anthony is terribly in earnest on this
suffrage question. We fully agree with her that the great battle-ground
in the first instance should be in Congress.... She is now fifty, and
the best years of her life have been devoted solely to the cause of
woman. She has never turned aside from this object but has always been
in the field, defending her principles against all assaults with an
ability which has not only won the admiration of her friends but the
respect of her enemies."
She made many new acquaintances on this tour, and one entry in the
diary is: "Quite a novel feature this--to have people quarrel as to who
shall have the pleasure of entertaining me as their guest!" She
returned to New York on Saturday, April 30, and on Sunday the diary
says: "Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and heard Beecher preach a
splendid sermon on 'Visiting the Sins of the Parents on the Children.'"
Various friends of the woman suffrage cause had decided that something
must be done to unite the two national organizations. An editorial in
the Independent to this effect was followed by a call for a conference
to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, April 6, signed by Theodore Tilton,
Phoebe Cary, Rev. John Chadwick and a number of others. The meeting was
duly held, and the venerable Lucretia Mott, who now rarely left home,
came all the way from Philadelphia to use her influence toward a
reconciliation. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were lecturing in the
West and the former telegraphed: "The entire West demands united
national organization for the Sixteenth Amendment, this very
congressional session, and so does Susan B. Anthony." Mrs. Stanton
wrote to the conference: "I will do all I can for union. If I am a
stumbling-block I will gladly resign my office. Having fought the world
twenty years, I do not now wish to turn and fight those who have so
long stood together through evil and good report. I should be glad to
have all united, with Mr. Beecher or Lucretia Mott for our general....
I am willing to work with any and all or to get out of the way
entirely, that there may be an organization which shall be respectable
at home and abroad."
The representatives of the American Association insisted that they had
offered the olive branch at the time of their organization and it had
been refused. This olive branch had been a suggestion that the National
Association should consider itself a local society and become auxiliary
to the American. After a protracted but fruitless discussion of over
four hours, they withdrew from the room, declining to accept or to
suggest any overtures. The proposition made by the callers of the
conference was that the two associations should merge into one, with a
new constitution embodying the best features of both, and with a board
of officers elected from the two existing organizations. Even the
friendly offices of Lucretia Mott, which never before were disregarded,
failed to effect a union, and the many letters from mutual friends were
equally ineffective. In her regular letter to The Revolution Miss
Anthony said:
There is but one feeling all through this glorious West, and that
is that it is a sin to have a divided front at this auspicious
moment. Since my last I have had splendid meetings in Quincy,
Farmington, Elwood, Mendota, Peru, La-Salle, Batavia, Peoria and
Champaign in Illinois, and in Sturgis and Jonesvine, Michigan. I
can tell you with emphasis that the fields are white unto
harvest--waiting, waiting only the reapers. And it is a shame--it
is a crime--for any of the old or new public workers to halt by the
way to pluck the motes out of their neighbors' eyes. Not one of us
but has blundered; yet if only we are in earnest, each will
forgive, in the faith that the others, like herself, mean right.
How any one can stand in the way of a united national organization
at an hour like this, is wholly inexplicable.
Just before the May Anniversary Mrs. Stanton published the following
card in The Revolution: "It is a great thing for those who have been
prominent in any movement to know when their special work is done, and
when the posts they hold can be more ably filled by others. Having, in
my own judgment, reached that time, at the present anniversary of our
association I must forbid the use of my name for president or any other
official position in any organization whatsoever."
The anniversary had been advertised for Irving Hall, but when it was
found that colored people would not be admitted to that building, it
was changed to Apollo Hall, and opened May 10 with Mrs. Stanton
presiding. At the business meeting in the afternoon, with
representatives present from nineteen States, the proposition of the
conference committee was considered. According to the report in The
Revolution there was much feeling on the part of the younger women
against any organization which did not have Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Stanton at the head, but at their earnest request, made in the interest
of harmony, it was finally voted to accept the name Union Woman
Suffrage Society, and Mr. Tilton for president.
On May 14, 1870, the Saturday after the suffrage convention, a number
of the old Equal Rights Association came together at a called meeting
in New York, which is thus described in The Revolution of May 19:
One of the most interesting as well as important events of the past
week, was the transfer of the American Equal Rights Association to
the new Union Woman Suffrage Society. This was done on Saturday in
the spacious parlors of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester in Gramercy
Place, Mrs. Stanton occupying the chair in the absence of the
president, Lucretia Mott. Henry B. Blackweil presented this
resolution:
"WHEREAS, The American Equal Rights Association was organized in
1866 in order to secure equal rights to all American citizens,
especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or
sex; and, _whereas_, Political distinctions of race are now
abolished by the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments; and _whereas_, Arrangements have been made by the
formation of woman suffrage associations for the advocacy of the
legal and political rights of women as a separate question; and,
_whereas_, An unnecessary multiplication of agencies for the
accomplishment of a common object should always be avoided;
therefore
"_Resolved,_ That we hereby declare the American Equal Eights
Association dissolved and adjourned sine die."
Parker Pillsbury offered the following as a substitute:
"WHEREAS, At a meeting of the executive committee held in Brooklyn,
March 3, 1870, it was voted, on motion of Oliver Johnson, that 'it
is inexpedient to hold any public anniversary of the American Equal
Rights Association, and that in our judgment it is expedient to
dissolve said body; but as we have no authority to effect such
dissolution, an informal business meeting of the association be
held in New York, during the coming anniversary week, to consider
and act upon this subject; and on motion of Lucy Stone, it was
voted that this business meeting be held on Saturday, May 14, 1870,
at 10 A.M., at the home of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester;' therefore
"_Resolved,_ That instead of terminating our existence as an
association, we do hereby transfer it, together with all its books,
records, reports or whatsoever appertains to it, and unite it with
the Union Woman Suffrage Society, organized in New York, May 10,
1870."
A long and earnest discussion succeeded.... At last, after two
hours, the vote was reached by the previous question, with this
result:
For dissolution, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell--2. For transfer,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Susan B. Anthony,
Theodore Tilton, Paulina Wright Davis, Phoebe W. Couzins, Edwin A.
Studwell, Mrs. Studwell, Mrs. John J. Merritt, Mrs. Robert Dale
Owen, Margaret E. Winchester, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Charlotte B.
Wilbour, Eleanor Kirk, Jennie Collins, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Miss
Chichester, Mrs. S.B. Morse--18.
Thus ended the existence of the American Equal Rights Association,
formed in May, 1866, for the purpose of securing to negroes and women
the rights of citizenship. These having been obtained for the negro
men, women were left the only class denied equality, and the question
therefore became simply one of woman's rights.
At the first anniversary of the American Woman Suffrage Association,
the next November, which also was held in Cleveland, this letter was
presented:
FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS: We, the undersigned, a committee appointed
by the Union Woman Suffrage Society in New York, May, 1870, to
confer with you on the subject of merging the two organizations
into one, respectfully announce:
1st. That in our judgment no difference exists between the objects
and methods of the two societies, nor any good reason for keeping
them apart. 2d. That the society we represent has invested us with
full power to arrange with you a union of both under a single
constitution and executive. 3d. That we ask you to appoint a
committee of equal number and authority with our own, to consummate
if possible this happy result.
Yours, in the common cause of woman's enfranchisement, Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Josephine S.
Griffing, Laura Curtis Bullard, Gerrit Smith, Sarah Pugh, Frederick
Douglass, Mattie Griffith Brown, James W. Stillman--Theodore
Tilton, ex officio.
The acceptance of this proposition was strongly urged by Judge
Bradwell, of Chicago, and the committee on resolutions recommended "the
appointment of a committee of conference, of like number with the one
appointed by the Union Suffrage Society with a view to the union of
both organizations." After a spirited discussion, this resolution was
rejected. The National Association, having exhausted all efforts for
reconciliation and union, never thereafter made further overtures. Two
distinct organizations were maintained, and there were no more attempts
at union for twenty years.
[Footnote 52: For selections from newspapers and letters and the list
of presents see Appendix.]
[Footnote 53:
We touch our caps, and place to night
The victor's wreath upon her.
The woman who outranks us all
In courage and in honor.
While others in domestic broils
Have proved by word and carriage,
That one of the United States
Is not the state of marriage,
She, caring not for loss of men,
Nor for the world's confusion,
Hap carried on a civil war
And made a "Revolution."
True, other women have been brave,
When banded or hus-banded,
But she has bravely fought her way
Alone and single-handed.
And think of her unselfish life,
Her generous disposition,
Who never made a lasting prop
Out of a proposition.
She might have chose an honored name,
and none had scorned or hissed it;
Have written Mrs. Jones or Smith,
But, strange to say, she Missed it.
For fifty years to come may she
Grow rich and ripe and mellow,
Be quoted even above "par,"
"Or any other fellow;"
And spread the truth from pole to pole,
and keep her light a-burning
Before she cuts her stick to go
To where there's no returning.
Because her motto grand hath been
The rights of every human
And first and last, and right or wrong,
She takes the part of woman.
"A perfect woman, nobly planned,"
To aid, not to amuse one:
Take her for all in all, we ne'er
Shall see the match of Susan.
*/]
CHAPTER XXI.
END OF REVOLUTION--STATUS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
1870.
Immediately after the Suffrage Anniversary in May, 1870, Miss Anthony
and Mrs. Stanton decided to call a mass meeting of women to discuss the
questions involved in the McFarland-Richardson trial, which had set the
country ablaze with excitement. The case in brief was that McFarland
was a drunken, improvident husband, and his wife, Abby Sage, was
compelled to be the breadwinner for the family, first as an actress and
later as a public reader. She was a woman of education, refinement and
marked ability, and enjoyed an intimate friendship with some of the
best families of New York. Boarding in the same house with her was
Albert D. Richardson, a prominent newspaper man, a stockholder in the
Tribune and a special favorite of Mr. Greeley. He befriended Mrs.
McFarland, protected her against the brutality of her husband and
learned to love her. It was understood among their mutual friends that
when she was legally free they would be married. She secured her
divorce; and a few days later McFarland walked into the Tribune office,
shot and fatally wounded Richardson. Some hours before he died, Mrs.
McFarland was married to him, Revs. Henry Ward Beecher and O.B.
Frothingham officiating, in the presence of Mr. Greeley and several
other distinguished persons. McFarland was tried, acquitted on the
ground of insanity, given the custody of their little son and allowed
to go free.
Press and pulpit were rent with discussions and, although the general
verdict was that if McFarland were insane he should be placed under
restraint and not permitted to retain the child, Mrs. Richardson was
persecuted in the most cruel and unmerciful manner. The women of New
York especially felt indignant at the result of the trial. Miss Anthony
offered to take the responsibility of a public demonstration, with Mrs.
Stanton to make the address. She sent out 3,000 handsome invitations to
the leading women of the city. Before the meeting a number of
cautionary letters were received, of which this from Miss Catharine
Beecher will serve as a sample:
I am anxious for your own sake and for the sake of "our good
cause," that you should manage wisely your very difficult task.
There is a widespread combination undermining the family state, and
we need to protect all the customs as well as the laws that tend to
sustain it. In doing this, we need to discriminate between what is
in bad taste and evil in its tendencies, and what is in direct
violation of a moral law. The custom that requires a man to wait a
year after the death of one wife before he takes another, it is
usually in bad taste and inexpedient to violate, but there are
cases in which such violation is demanded and is lawful.
But the law of marriage demanding that in _no_ case a man shall
seek another wife while his first one lives is always imperative.
Then the question of divorce arises, and here the Lord of morality
and religion, who sees the end from the beginning, has decided that
only one crime can justify it. A woman may separate from her
husband for abuse or drunkenness and not violate this law, but
neither party can marry again without practically saying, "I do not
recognize Jesus Christ as the true teacher of morals and religion."
If Mrs. McFarland were sure she could prove adultery, she was
morally free to marry again; but could she be justified on any
other ground without denying the authority of the Lord Jesus
Christ? Is not here a point where you need to be very cautious and
guarded?
I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you on Tuesday at Apollo
Hall. Very truly and affectionately your friend.
The following account is taken from The Revolution:
On May 17, long before the hour appointed, Apollo Hall was filled.
Ministers had preached and editors written their ambiguous views on
the justice of the McFarland verdict. Reporters had interviewed the
murderer and described (probably from imagination) the conduct and
statements of Mrs. Richardson. John Graham had informed a gaping
public what should be and what was the opinion of every decent
woman in New York in regard to the guilt of this heart-broken
widow, thus making it extremely difficult to feel the actual state
of the public pulse on this all-important subject. Mrs. Stanton's
lecture clearly expressed the convictions of the intelligent and
right-minded. Never before in the annals of metropolitan history
had there been such an assemblage of women, and it was an equally
noticeable fact that they were the earnest, deep-thinking women of
the times.[54]
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were greeted with the heartiest
applause, and as soon as silence was obtained, the former said it
was the first time in her life that she had addressed a public
audience composed exclusively of women, and it was natural that she
should feel somewhat embarrassed under circumstances so peculiar.
This quaint observation brought down the house. After a few more of
her downright and invigorating remarks, she introduced Mrs.
Stanton, who was robed in quiet black, with an elegant lace shawl
over her shoulders and her beautiful white hair modestly ornamented
with a ribbon. Her appearance was very motherly and winning. Great
applause followed her address, and as she took her seat Celia
Burleigh read the resolutions adopted on Monday by Sorosis, which
were heartily reaffirmed by all present. After remarks by Miss
Anthony, Jenny June Croly, Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, Eleanor Kirk and
others, a petition to Governor Hoffman, asking that McFarland be
placed in an insane asylum, was enthusiastically endorsed.
So great was the desire that a similar meeting was held in Brooklyn.
These assemblies threw the newspaper's into convulsions of horror that
modest and shrinking women should dare discuss such questions, advocate
the same moral standard for both sexes, criticise judge, jury and laws,
and demand a different kind of justice from that which men were in the
habit of dealing out. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton came in for their
usual lion's share of censure, but they had so long offered themselves
as a vicarious sacrifice that they had learned to take criticism and
abuse philosophically. For weeks afterwards, however, they received
letters from unhappy wives in all parts of the country, thanking them
for their attitude in this affair, and pouring out the story of their
own wretchedness.
Miss Anthony had little time to think about either the reproof or the
approval, for the next day after this meeting saw the beginning of one
of the most sorrowful tragedies in her life--the giving up of The
Revolution! The favorable financial auspices under which it was
launched have been described, and an imperfect idea given of the storm
of opposition it encountered because of the alliance with Mr. Train. He
put into the paper about $3,000 and severed his connection with it
after sixteen months. Mr. Melliss continued his assistance for nearly
the same length of time, contributing altogether $7,000. He was its
staunch supporter as long as his means would allow, but at length
became apprehensive that it never would reach a paying basis and, as he
was not a man of wealth, felt unable to advance more money.
From a pecuniary point of view things looked very dark for The
Revolution. Every newspaper, in its early days, swallows up money like
a bottomless well. The Revolution had started on an expensive basis;
its office rent was $1,300 per annum; it was printed on the best of
paper, which at that time was very costly; typesetting commanded the
highest prices. Partly as a matter of pride and partly for the interest
of the paper, Miss Anthony was not willing to reduce expenses. At the
end of the first year The Revolution had 2,000, and at the end of the
second year 3,000 bona fide, paying subscribers, but these could not
sustain it without plenty of advertising, and advertisers never lavish
money on a reform paper. Mr. Pillsbury's valuable services were given
at a minimum price, Mrs. Stanton received no salary and Miss Anthony
drew out only what she was compelled to use for her actual expenses.
She was exhausted in mind and body from the long and relentless
persecution of those who once had been her co-workers, but to the world
she showed still the old indomitable spirit. Her letters to friends and
relatives at this time, appealing for funds to carry on the paper, are
heart-breaking. A dearly loved Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, of
Skaneateles, loaned her at different times $4,000. To him she wrote:
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
forty-three subscribers from Illinois and twenty 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 I could
only die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say "amen," but to
live and fail--it would be too terrible to bear.
To Francis G. Shaw, of Staten Island, who sent $100, she wrote: "I
wonder why it is that I must forever feel compelled to take the rough
things of the world. Why can't I excuse myself from the overpowering
and disagreeable struggles? I can not tell, but after such a day as
yesterday, my heart fails me--almost. Then I remember that the promise
is to those only who hold out to the end--and nerve myself to go
forward. I am grateful nowadays for every kind word and every dollar."
On the back is inscribed: "My pride would not let me send this, and I
substituted merely a cordial note of thanks." Her letters home during
this dark period are too sacred to be given to the public. The mother
and sisters were distressed beyond expression at the merciless
criticism and censure with which she had been assailed, and begged her
to withdraw from it all to the seclusion of her own pleasant home, but
when she persisted in standing by her ship, they aided her with every
means in their power. Her sister Mary loaned her the few thousands she
had been able to save by many years' hard work in the schoolroom, and
the mother contributed from her small estate.
Her brother Daniel R., a practical newspaper man, assured her that he
was ready at any time to be one of a stock company to support the
paper, but that it was useless to sink any more money in the shape of
individual subscriptions. He urged her to cut down expenses, make it a
semi-monthly or monthly if necessary, but not to go any more deeply in
debt, saying: "I know how earnest you are, but you stand alone. Very
few think with you, and they are not willing to risk a dollar. You have
put in your all and all you can borrow, and all is swallowed up. You
are making no provision for the future, and you wrong yourself by so
doing. No one will thank you hereafter. Although you are now fifty
years old and have worked like a slave all your life, you have not a
dollar to show for it. This is not right. Do make a change." Her sister
Mary spent all her vacation in New York one hot summer looking after
the business of the paper, while Miss Anthony went out lecturing and
getting subscribers. After returning home she wrote:
You can not begin to know how you have changed, and many times
every day the tears would fill my eyes if I allowed myself a moment
to reflect upon it. I beg of you for your own sake and for ours, do
not persevere in this work unless people will aid you enough to do
credit to yourself as you always have done. Make a plain statement
to your friends, and if they will not come to your rescue, go down
as gracefully as possible and with far less indebtedness than you
will have three months from now. It is very sad for all of us to
feel that you are working so hard and being so misunderstood, and
we constantly fear that, in some of your hurried business
transactions, your enemies will delight to pick you up and make you
still more trouble.
At this time, in a letter to Martha C. Wright, Mr. Pillsbury said:
"Susan works like a whole plantation of slaves, and her example is
scourge enough to keep me tugging also." With her rare optimism, Miss
Anthony never gives up hoping, and on January 1, 1870, writes to Sarah
Pugh: "The year opens splendidly. December brought the largest number
of subscriptions of any month since we began, and yesterday the largest
of any day. So the little 'rebel Revolution' doesn't feel anything but
the happiest sort of a New Year."
A movement was begun for forming a stock company of several wealthy
women, on a basis of $50,000, to relieve Miss Anthony of all financial
responsibility, making her simply the business manager. Paulina Wright
Davis already had given $500, and January 1, 1870, her name appeared as
corresponding editor. Isabella Beecher Hooker took the liveliest
interest in the paper and was very anxious that it should be continued.
She devised various schemes for this purpose and finally decided that
her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and herself would give The
Revolution their personal influence and that of their large circle of
friends, by putting their names on the staff of editors. Early in
December, 1869, she sent the following:
We will give our names as corresponding editors for your paper for
one year and agree to furnish at least six articles apiece and also
to secure an original article from some friend every other week
during the year. We agree to do this without promised compensation,
but on the condition that you will change the name of the paper to
The True Republic, or something equally satisfactory to us; and
that you will pay us equally for this service according to your
ability, you yourself being sole judge of that.
H.B. STOWE, I.B. HOOKER.
This was written while they were in New York City, and on her way home
Mrs. Hooker wrote, while on board the train, an enthusiastic letter
regarding details of the work, ending, after she arrived: "I give you
my hand upon it. I have read the above to my two Mentors, and they
approve in the main." In a few days, she said in a long letter:
I wish Mrs. Stanton's "editorial welcome" to us might be in the
dignified style of her best essays or speeches, not in the least
gossipy or familiar, but stately and full of womanly presence. She
ought to have a copy of Mrs. Stowe's editorial the moment it is
written, for approval and suggestion. If Mr. Pillsbury would stay
for a month or two and initiate Phoebe Cary, and we all work well
as we mean to, I think she might get on.... I shall go to the
Washington convention to work, not to speak. Tilton should be
secured by all means--his wife, too. Our parlor needs her demure,
motherly, angelic sweetness, as much as our platform needs him.
These little, quiet, domestic women are trump cards, nowadays. I
wish we had a whole pack of them.... Mr. Burton will hunt up a
capital motto or heading, and he will write, I am sure. Mrs. Jewell
met me in the street and said, "Is it true that you and Mrs. Stowe
are going to help The Revolution?" I told her what we proposed and
she was much delighted.
In reply to a letter asking her opinion, Mrs. Stanton wrote: "As for
changing the name of The Revolution, I should consider it a great
mistake. We are thoroughly advertised under the present title. There is
no other like it, never was, and never will be. The establishing of
woman on her rightful throne is the greatest of revolutions. It is no
child's play. You and I know the conflict of the last twenty years; the
ridicule, persecution, denunciation, detraction, the unmixed bitterness
of our cup for the last two, when even friends have crucified us. We
have so much hope and pluck that none but the Good Father knows how we
have suffered. A journal called 'The Rose-bud' might answer for those
who come with kid gloves and perfumes to lay immortelle wreaths on the
monuments which in sweat and tears we have hewn and built; but for us,
and that great blacksmith of ours who forges such red-hot thunderbolts
for Pharisees, hypocrites and sinners, there is no name but The
Revolution."
Miss Anthony consulted many newspaper men and all advised against the
proposed change, saying that experience had shown this to be fatal to a
paper. Acting upon this advice, and also upon her own strong
convictions, she decided to retain the original title. Meanwhile,
tremendous pressure had been brought to bear upon Mrs. Hooker and Mrs.
Stowe not to identify themselves with The Revolution. After Mrs.
Stowe's salutatory had been prepared, Mrs. Hooker wrote as follows:
I think the name should not be changed. If you change it in
deference to our wishes and against good advice, it would lay an
obligation on us that we could ill endure. Already I was feeling
uneasy under the thought, and Mrs. Stowe actually said to me that
she should prefer greatly to write as contributor and would do just
as much work as if called editor. She settled down on consenting to
be corresponding editor; and Mrs. Davis and I will be assistant
editors. I will write for The Revolution and work for it just as
hard as I can, sending out a circular through Connecticut asking
contributions to it.
Later--Since reading Mrs. Stanton on the Richardson-McFarland case,
I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I
want to say this very gently; but I have no time for
circumlocution....
[Autograph: Alice Cary]
The promised contributions did not materialize, and The Revolution
received no aid of any description. The struggle was bravely continued
throughout the first five months of 1870. The Cary sisters were devoted
friends of Miss Anthony and deeply interested in the paper, and some of
their sweetest poems had appeared in its columns. Their beautiful home
was just three blocks below The Revolution office, and she spent many
hours with them. These frequent calls, breakfasts and luncheons were
much more delightful to her than their Sunday evening receptions,
although at those were gathered the writers, artists, musicians,
reformers and politicians of New York, besides eminent persons who
happened to be in the city. It was a literary center which never has
been equalled since those lovely and cultured sisters passed away. In
her lecture on "Homes of Single Women," Miss Anthony thus describes one
of her visits:
[Autograph: Phoebe Cary]
I shall never forget the December Sunday morning when a note came
from Phoebe asking, "Will you come round and sit with Alice while I
go to church?" Of course I was only too glad to go; and it was
there in the cheery sick-room, as I sat on a cushion at the feet of
this lovely, large-souled, clear-brained woman, that she told me
how ever and anon in the years gone by, as she was writing her
stories for bread and shelter, her pen would run off into facts and
philosophies of woman's servitude that she knew would ruin her book
with the publishers, but which, for her own satisfaction, she had
carefully treasured, chapter by chapter, as her heart had thus
overflowed. "I am now," she said, "financially free, where I could
write my deepest and best thought for woman, and now I must die. O,
how much of my life I have been compelled to write what men would
buy, not what my heart most longed to say, and what a clog to my
spirit it has been."
As she sat there, reading from those chapters, her sweet face, her
lustrous eyes, her musical voice all aglow as with a live coal from
off the altar, I said: "Alice, I must have that story for The
Revolution!" "But I may never be able to finish it," she objected.
"We'll trust to Providence for that," I replied; and the last five
months of The Revolution carried The Born Thrall to thousands of
responsive hearts. But, alas, nature gave way and she was never
well enough to put the finishing touches to those terribly
true-to-life pictures of the pioneer wife and mother.
The poetry for The Revolution was selected by Mrs. Tilton, who had rare
literary taste and discrimination. The exquisite child articles,
entitled "Dot and I" and signed Faith Rochester, were written by
Francis E. Russell. It had a corps of foreign correspondents, among
them the English philanthropist, Rebecca Moore. The distinguished list
of contributors and the broad scope of The Revolution may be judged
from its prospectus for 1870.[55] The chances of its paying expenses,
however, did not increase, and the hoped-for stock company never was
formed. Mr. Pillsbury had been most anxious for the past year to be
released from his editorial duties, and had remained only because he
could not bear to desert the paper in its distress. Mrs. Stanton,
engaged in the lecture field, had sent only an occasional article, and
now declined to continue her services longer without a salary. One
person who stood by Miss Anthony unflinchingly through all this trying
period was the publisher, R.J. Johnston, who never once failed in
prompt and efficient service, and gave the most conscientious care to
the make-up of the paper. Although her indebtedness to him finally
reached the thousands, he remained faithful up to the printing of the
very last number, and his was the first debt she paid out of the
proceeds of her lyceum lectures.
When Mrs. Phelps had opened the Woman's Bureau and invited The
Revolution to take an office therein, Miss Anthony had warned her that
it might keep other organizations of women away; but she was willing to
take the risk. It resulted as prophesied. Not even the strong-minded
Sorosis would have its clubrooms there, nor would any other society of
women, and after a year's experiment, she gave up her project, rented
the building to a private family and The Revolution moved to No. 27
Chatham street. The generous Anna Dickinson, because of her friendship
for Miss Anthony, presented Mrs. Phelps with $1,000, as a recompense
for any loss she might have sustained through The Revolution. Mrs.
Phelps being very ill that winter, added a codicil to her will giving
Miss Anthony $1,000 to show that she had only the kindest feelings for
her.
At the beginning of 1870, a stock company was formed and the Woman's
Journal established in Boston. Mrs. Livermore merged her Chicago paper,
the Agitator, into this new enterprise (as she had proposed to do into
The Revolution the year previous) removed to Boston and became
editor-in-chief; Lucy Stone was made assistant editor and H.B.
Blackwell business manager. This paper secured the patronage of all
those believers in the rights of women who were not willing to accept
the bold, fearless and radical utterances of The Revolution. The latter
had exhausted the finances of its friends and had no further resources.
The strain upon Miss Anthony, who alone was carrying the whole burden,
was terrible beyond description. Never was there a longer, harder, more
persistent struggle against the malice of enemies, the urgent advice of
friends, against all hope, than was made by this heroic woman. As the
inevitable end approached she wrote of it to Mrs. Stanton, who
answered: "Make any arrangement you can to roll that awful load off
your shoulders. If Anna Dickinson will be sole editor, I say, glory to
God! Leave me to my individual work, the quiet of my home for the
summer and the lyceum for the winter.... Tell our glorious little Anna
if she only will nail her colors to that mast and make the dear old
proprietor free once more, I will sing her praises to the end of time."
Anna Dickinson very wisely concluded that she was not suited for an
editor. Laura Curtis Bullard was much interested in reform work,
possessed of literary ability and very desirous of securing The
Revolution. Theodore Tilton, who was editing the New York Independent
and the Brooklyn Daily Union, promised to assist her in managing the
paper. Miss Anthony at last agreed to let her have it, and on May 22,
1870, the formal transfer was made. She received the nominal sum of one
dollar, and assumed personally the entire indebtedness. She had this
dollar alone to show for two and a half years of as hard work as ever
was performed by mortal, besides all the money she had earned and
begged which had gone directly into the paper. During that time $25,000
had been expended, and the present indebtedness amounted to $10,000
more.
Miss Anthony could not view this giving up of The Revolution so
philosophically as did Mrs. Stanton; she was of very different
temperament. Into this paper she had put her ambition, her hope, her
reputation. The stronger the opposition, the firmer was her
determination not to yield, nor was it a relief to be rid of it. She
would have counted no cost too great, no work too hard, no sacrifice
too heavy, could she but have continued the publication. Not only was
it a terrible blow to her pride, but it wrung her heart. She could bear
the triumph of her enemies far better than she could the giving up of
the means by which she had expected to accomplish a great and permanent
good for women and for all humanity. On the evening of the day when the
paper passed out of her hands forever, she wrote in her diary, "It was
like signing my own death-warrant;" and in a letter to a friend she
said, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a
dear child that she could not support." To the public she kept the same
brave, unruffled exterior, but in a private letter, written a short
time afterwards, is told in a few sentences a story which makes the
heart ache:
My financial recklessness has been much talked of. Let me tell you
in what this recklessness consists: When there was need of greater
outlay, I never thought of curtailing the amount of work to lessen
the amount of cash demanded, but always doubled and quadrupled the
efforts to raise the necessary sum; rushing for contributions to
every one who had professed love or interest for the cause. If it
were 20,000 tracts for Kansas, the thought never entered my head to
stint the number--only to tramp up and down Broadway for
advertisements to pay for them. If to meet expenses of The
Revolution, it was not to pinch clerks or printers, but to make a
foray upon some money-king. None but the Good Father can ever begin
to know the terrible struggle of those years. I am not complaining,
for mine is but the fate of almost every originator or pioneer who
ever has opened up a way. I have the joy of knowing that I showed
it to be possible to publish an out-and-out woman's paper, and
taught other, women to enter in and reap where I had sown.
Heavy debts are still due, every dollar of which I intend to pay,
and I am tugging away, lecturing amid these burning suns, for no
other reason than to keep pulling down, hundred by hundred, that
tremendous pile. I sanguinely hope to cancel this debt in two years
of hard work, and cheerfully look forward to the turning of every
possible dollar into that channel. If you today should ask me to
choose between the possession of $25,000 and the immense work
accomplished by my Revolution during the time in which I sank that
amount, I should choose the work done--not the cash in hand. So,
you see, I don't groan or murmur--not a bit of it; but for the good
name of humanity, I would have liked to see the moneyed men and
women rally around the seed-sowers.
Parker Pillsbury wrote her after he returned home: "No one could do
better than you have done. If any complain, ask them what they did to
help you carry the paper. I am glad you are relieved of a load too
heavy for you to bear. Worry yourself no more. Work of course you will,
but let there be no further anxiety and nervousness. Suffrage is
growing with the oaks. The whirling spheres will usher in the day of
its triumph at just the right time, but your full meed of praise will
have to be sung over your grave."
The motto of The Revolution, "The True Republic--Men, their rights and
nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," was succeeded by
"What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." It was
transformed into a literary and society journal, established in elegant
headquarters at Brooklyn, inaugurated with a fashionable reception, and
conducted by Mrs. Bullard for eighteen months, when she tired of it, or
her father tired of advancing money, and it passed into other hands.
When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that
The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New
York Independent at the end of its first five years. She had just begun
to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at
large prices. The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent
in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300. She always felt
that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time
put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly
increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution
was gaining the confidence of the public. But the experience came too
late and she was driven to the wall--not a single friend would longer
give her money, assistance or encouragement to continue the paper. To
this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers,
touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with
loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned
them are still forever.
Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great
disappointment. In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The
Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went
to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening.
There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone
to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000. Very few of the
advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of
this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been
made entirely in the effort to advance the cause. Miss Anthony worked
unceasingly through winter's cold and summer's heat, lecturing
sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau,
and herself arranging for unengaged nights. As she had all her expenses
to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds
were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before "she could look
the whole world in the face for she owed not any man."
She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas
and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3,
1870. Dr. E.O. Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop)
in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage. At Bloomington she held a
debate with a young professor from the State Normal School. The manager
asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed
on. She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in
making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances. This
was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250. The professor
opposed the enfranchisement of women because they could not fight. As
is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very
diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she
commenced her speech: "The professor talks about the physical
disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on
and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!" Of course
this put the audience in a fine humor.
In every place she was entertained by representative people and
received many social courtesies. She returned to Rochester July 27,
spent just twelve hours at home, then hastened eastward, travelling by
night in order to reach the Saratoga convention on the 28th. This was
held under the auspices of the New York State Association, and managed
by the secretary, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony was paid $100, for
the first time in the history of conventions. Mrs. Gage wrote: "She is
heavily burdened with debt, no one has made so great sacrifices all
these years, and she deserves the money." During the summer she sent to
a friend in England this summing up of the condition of the suffrage
movement in the United States:
The secret of the present inaction is that all our best suffrage
men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its
interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety,
its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling
lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give place to the
Democracy in 1872, it dares not espouse woman suffrage. So our
friends quietly drop our demand on Congress for a Sixteenth
Amendment, since to press that body to a vote would compel the
Republican members to show their hands; and if those who have in
private spoken for woman suffrage should not make a false public
record, the number in favor would commit the majority of their
party to our question; and by so doing give its opponents fresh
opportunity to appeal to the ignorant masses, which must inevitably
throw it out of power. The extension of the ballot to woman is a
question of intelligence and culture, and is sure to have enrolled
against it every narrow, prejudiced, small-brained man in all
classes. This being the state of things, our movement is at a
dead-lock. Practical action, political action, therefore, is almost
hopeless until after the presidential election of 1872; and after
that for still another four years, unless the Republican party
should be defeated and the Democracy come into power.
Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake
themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and
promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of
that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from
the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but
that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means
by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and
hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the
political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and
thereby securing their gratitude and through it their vote to place
and hold that party in power.
Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the
Cleveland movement with all the strategy and maneuvering of its
semi-Republican managers, assented to and accepted by the women in
their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which
seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power. With Mrs.
Stanton's utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and
our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The
Revolution to the new company--we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip
from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus
leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere
politicians. All are lulled into the strictest propriety of
expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican. And unless
that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against
woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of
their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from
suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of
line with the plan and policy of the dominant party. Nothing less
atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro,
can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of
their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to
the Republican politicians associated with them.
So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages,
still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some
terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a
self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation
of their present position; which will force them to break their
yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make
them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable
them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for woman than
could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women are in
chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they
do not realize it. O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give
them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own
freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world
for doing it!
Not another woman possessed this strong grasp of the whole situation,
this deep comprehension of the abject condition of women, the more
hopeless because of their own failure to feel or resent it.
During the summer Miss Anthony attended the National Labor Congress in
Philadelphia. A great strike of bookbinders had been in progress in New
York and she had advised the women to take the vacant places. They were
denied admission to all labor unions and their only chance of securing
work was when the men and their employers disagreed. This gave a
pretext for those who were opposed to a representation of women in
labor conventions, and a bitter fight was made upon accepting her as a
delegate. Charges of every description were preferred against her which
she refuted in a spirited manner, but her credentials were finally
rejected. The newspapers took up the fight on both sides, the
opposition to Miss Anthony being led by the New York Star, always
abusive where the question of woman's rights was concerned. During this
controversy the Utica Herald contained a disgraceful editorial, saying:
Who does not feel sympathy for Susan Anthony? She has striven long
and earnestly to become a man. She has met with some rebuffs, but
has never succumbed. She has never done any good in the world, but
then she doesn't think so. She is sweet in the eyes of her own
mirror, but her advanced age and maiden name deny that she has been
so in the eyes of others. Boldly she marched, and well, into the
presence of 200 horrid male delegates of the Labor Congress, and
took somebody's seat.... Susan felt very much like a grizzly bear
unable to get at its tormentor. She had gone to the length of her
chain and couldn't get her claws into any one's hair. She could
only sit and glare.
At length Susan's case came up for consideration, and the congress
committed the crowning act of rashness and, without a thought of
the consequences, made an everlasting enemy of Susan Anthony by
ruling her out of the convention as a delegate. This was the
unkindest cut of all. "A lone, lorn old critter," with whom
everything "goes contrairie," was denied the solace of being
counted the one-two-hundreth part of a man by a labor convention!
We may well believe that Susan wept with sorrow at the blindness of
man, and our sympathy if not our tears is freely offered. But so
goes the world. This is not the first time that "man's inhumanity
to woman" has made Miss Anthony mourn and, as it is not her first
rebuff, we counsel her to seek admission again to the ranks of her
sex, and cease to cast reproach upon it by struggling to be a man.
When some of the women remonstrated, the editor replied that he had not
supposed there was one woman in Utica who believed in equal rights.
Paulina Wright Davis had been actively arranging for a great convention
in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first woman's
rights convention in Massachusetts, which was held at Worcester, in
October, 1850. That one had been managed almost wholly by Mrs. Davis
and she had presided over its deliberations, therefore it seemed proper
for her to be the central figure in celebrating its second decade. The
New England suffrage people declined to take part in this meeting and,
for some reason, Mr. Tilton's Union Society was decidedly averse to it.
Mrs. Davis finally became ill from anxiety and overwork and joined her
entreaties to Mrs. Stanton's that Miss Anthony should drop her lectures
and come to New York; so she started for that city September 30,
determined that Mrs. Davis' scheme should not be a failure. The entries
in her journal give some idea of her energetic and unwearied action:
As soon as I reached New York I went to Dr. Lozier's for lunch,
then to see Mrs. Phelps. All in despair about the decade meeting.
Went at once to consult Alice and Phoebe Cary; from them to Mrs.
Winchester, found her just home from Europe; then to Julia Brown
Bemis, and thence to Murray street to see Mr. Studwell; then to
Tenafly on the evening train.... Back to New York the next morning,
to Tilton's, to Curtis', to Mrs. Wilbour's, and then to Providence
to see Mrs. Davis. Beached there late at night, woke her up and we
talked till morning. She was terribly distressed at the thought of
giving up the decade and in the morning I telegraphed to New York
that it _must_ go on.... Went there by first train, had all the
newspaper notices of its abandonment countermanded and new ones put
in, and an item sent out by Associated Press. Too late for last
train to Tenafly and had to hire a carriage to take me there.
Her time was then divided between working on speeches with Mrs. Stanton
and rushing over to New York to prepare for this meeting. On October 19
she writes: "Ground out the resolutions, and took the afternoon train
for the city. Met Martha Wright and Mrs. Davis at the St. James Hotel."
There was a great reception the next afternoon in the hotel parlors,
and the convention met at Apollo Hall, October 21, the whole of the
arrangements having been made in three weeks. Mrs. Davis presided,
everybody had been brought into line and it was a notable gathering.
Cordial and approving letters to Mrs. Davis were read from Jacob
Bright, Canon Kingsley, Frances Power Cobbe, Emily Faithfull, Mary
Somerville, Emelie J. Meriman (afterwards the wife of Père Hyacinthe),
and other distinguished foreigners. Miss Anthony spoke strongly against
their identifying themselves with either of the parties until it had
declared for woman suffrage, urging them to accept every possible help
from both but to form no alliance, as had been proposed. The feature of
the occasion was "The History of the Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty
Years," carefully prepared by Mrs. Davis.[56] In addition to this
valuable work, she contributed $300 to the expenses of the meeting. It
was an unqualified success and her letters were full of warmest
gratitude to Miss Anthony.
In November the latter resumed her lecturing tour which was arranged by
Elizabeth Brown, who had been her head clerk in The Revolution office.
The first of December she attended the Northwestern Woman Suffrage
Convention at Detroit. Here she received a telegram to hasten home and
arrived just in time to stand by the death-bed of a dear nephew, Thomas
King McLean, twenty-one years old, brother of the beloved Ann Eliza who
had died a few years before, and only son of her sister Guelma. He was
a senior of brilliant promise in Rochester University. His death was a
heavy blow to all the family and one from which his mother never
recovered.
With her debts pressing upon her and an array of lecture engagements
ahead, Miss Anthony could neither pause to indulge her own grief nor to
console and sympathize with the loved ones. The very night of the
funeral she again set forth. By the New Year she had lessened her debt
$1,600. This trip extended through New York and Pennsylvania, to
Washington and into Virginia. Of the last she writes: "A great work to
be done here but the lectures can not possibly be made to pay
expenses." In Philadelphia she spoke in the Star course, was the guest
of Anna Dickinson and was introduced to her audience by Lucretia Mott,
then seventy-seven years old. The diary relates that Mrs. Mott came
next morning before 8 o'clock to give her $20, saying it was very
little but would show her confidence and affection. The lecture given
on this tour was entitled "The False Theory" and was highly commended
by the press. It never was written and probably never twice delivered
in the same words, Miss Anthony always depending largely upon the
inspiration of the occasion.
The middle of December she slipped back to Rochester to see her
bereaved sister, and speaks of their receiving a letter of sympathy
from Rev. J.K. McLean, which, she says, "is the first philosophical
word that has been spoken." While at home she was invited to the
Hallowells' to see Wendell Phillips, their first meeting since their
sad difference of opinion concerning the Fourteenth Amendment. They had
a cordial interview and she went with him to his lecture in the
evening. The entry in the journal that night closes with the
underscored sentence, "Phillips is matchless."
[Footnote 54: On the platform or in the audience were to be seen the
beloved Quaker, Mrs. John J. Merrit, of Brooklyn, Margaret E.
Winchester, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Edwin A. Studwell, Catharine
Beecher--her plain face illuminated with the fire of indignation--Jenny
June Croly, writing rapidly for the New York World, Cora Tappan, Hannah
Tracy Cutler, president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, Phoebe
Couzins, Mrs. Benjamin F. Butler, Mrs. James Parton, better known as
Fanny Fern, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Elizabeth B. Phelps, two nieces of
Mrs. U. S. Grant, Laura Curtis Bullard. Frances Dietz Hallock, Ella
Dietz Clymer, Anne Lynch Botta, Mary F. Gilbert, Mrs. Moses Beach,
Julia Ward Howe, and many other well-known women.]
[Footnote 55: The demands for woman everywhere today are for a wider
range of employment, higher wages, thorough mental and physical
education, and an equal right before the law in all those relations
which grow out of the marriage state. While we yield to none in the
earnestness of our advocacy of these claims, we make a broader demand
for the enfranchisement of woman, as the only way in which all her just
rights can be permanently secured. By discussing, as we shall
incidentally, leading questions of political and social importance, we
hope to educate women for an intelligent judgment upon public affairs,
and for a faithful expression of that judgment at the polls.
As masculine ideas have ruled the race for six thousand years, we
especially desire that The Revolution shall be the mouth piece of
women, to give the world the feminine thought in politics, religion and
social life; so that ultimately in the union of both we may find the
truth in all things. On the idea taught by the creeds, codes and
customs of the world, that woman was made for man, we declare war to
the death, and proclaim the higher truth that, like man, she was
created by God for individual moral responsibility and progress here
and forever.
Our principal contributors this year are: Anna Dickinson, Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Olive
Logan, Mary Clemmer, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Phoebe
Couzins, Elizabeth Boynton and others; and foreign, Rebecca Moore,
Lydia E. Becker and Madame Marie Goeg.
The Revolution is an independent journal, bound to no party or sect,
and those who write for our columns are responsible only for what
appears under their own names. Hence, if old Abolitionists and
Slaveholders, Republicans and Democrats, Presbyterians and
Universalists, Catholics and Protestants find themselves side by side
in writing on the question, of woman suffrage, they must pardon each
other's differences on all other points, trusting that by giving their
own views strongly and grandly, they will overshadow the errors by
their side.]
[Footnote 56: Frances Wright, from Scotland, in 1828 was the first
woman to speak on a public platform in this country. Ernestine L. Rose,
from Poland, gave political lectures in 1836; Mary S. Gove, of New
York, lectured oil woman's rights in 1837; Sarah and Angelina Grimké,
from South Carolina, commenced their anti-slavery speeches in 1837, and
Abby Kelly, of Massachusetts, in 1839; Eliza W. Farnham, of New York,
lectured in 1843; between 1840 and 1845 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina
Wright (afterwards Davis) and Ernestine L. Rose circulated petitions
for a bill to secure property rights for married women, and several
times addressed committees of the New York Legislature; Margaret Fuller
gave lectures in Massachusetts, in 1845; Lucy Stone spoke for the
rights of women in 1847. The first woman's rights convention was called
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann
McClintock, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848; Susan B. Anthony made her
first speech on temperance in 1849. From 1850 the number of women
speakers rapidly increased.]
CHAPTER XXII.
MRS. HOOKER'S CONVENTION--THE LECTURE FIELD.
1871.
A large correspondence was conducted in regard to the Third National
Convention, which was to be held in Washington in January, 1871.
Isabella Beecher Hooker, who had all the zeal of a new convert, created
some amusement among the old workers by offering to relieve them of the
entire management of the convention, intimating that she would avoid
the mistakes they had made and put the suffrage work on a more
aristocratic basis. To Mrs. Stanton she wrote:
I have proposed taking the Washington convention into my own hands,
expenses and all; arranging program, and presiding or securing help
in that direction, if I should need it. I shall hope to get Robert
Collyer, and a good many who might not care to speak for "the
Union" but would speak for me. I should want from you a pure
suffrage argument, much like that you made before the committee at
Washington last winter. I know you are tired of this branch, but
you are fitted to do a great work still in that direction.... Won't
you promise to come to my convention, without charge save
travelling expenses, provided I have one? I am waiting to hear from
Susan, Mrs. Pomeroy and you, and then shall get Tilton's approval
and the withdrawal of the society from the work, if they have
undertaken it, and go ahead.
Mrs. Stanton consented gladly and wrote the other friends to do
likewise, saying: "I should like to have Susan for president, as she
has worked and toiled as no other woman has, but if we think best not
to blow her horn, then let us exalt Mrs. Hooker, who thinks she could
manage the cause more discreetly, more genteelly than we do. I am ready
to rest and see the salvation of the Lord." On their rounds the letters
came to Martha Wright, the gentle Quaker, who commented with the fine
irony of which she was master: "It strikes me favorably. It would be a
fine thing for Mrs. Hooker to preside over the Washington convention,
while her sister, Catharine Beecher, was inveighing against suffrage,
for the benefit of Mrs. Dahlgren and others. Perhaps she is right in
thinking that Robert Collyer and a good many others who would not care
to speak for 'the Union,' would speak for her--I for one would be glad
to have her try it! If 'Captain Susan' would consent to be placed at
the head of the association, there could not be a more suitable and
just appointment."
Mrs. Stanton wrote that her lecture engagements would not permit her to
go to Washington and she would send $100 instead. Mrs. Hooker replied:
Your offer just suits me, and of myself I should accept $100 with
thankfulness, and excuse you, as you desire, but Susan looked
disgusted and said, "She must appear before the Congressional
committees, at any rate." I had not thought of that, but of course,
if you were in Washington, it would be absurd not to be on our
platform; and so I don't know what to say. You will talk more
forcibly than any one else, and in committee you are invaluable.
Still, I want your money, and I could do without you on the
platform.... I fully expect, to accomplish far more by a convention
devoted to the purely political aspect of the woman question, than
by a woman's rights convention, however well-managed; and this,
because the time has come for this practical work--discussion has
prepared the way, now we must have the thing, the vote itself. It
just occurs to me that you might write an argument for the
committee, which I would read, but of course your presence is most
desirable, and I incline to have you on hand for this last, great
effort; for it does seem to me that _we need not have another
convention_ in Washington, but only a select committee to work
privately every winter, and send for speakers, etc., when the
committees are ready to grant hearings.
It is the part of wisdom to suppress Mrs. Stanton's reply to this, but
she sent it to Martha Wright, who answered her:
You can imagine what success Mrs. Hooker will have with those wily
politicians. She thinks they will come serenely from their seats to
the lobby, when she tries "all the means known to an honest woman."
I fear the means known to _the other sort_ would meet a readier
response. I forget which of the senators it was, last winter, who
said rudely to Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Griffing, "You just call us out
because you like to."... Mrs. Hooker will find it no easy matter to
hook them on to _her_ platform, but she will be wiser after trying.
She is mistaken in considering the cause so nearly won, but it
would be as impossible for her to realize the situation as it was
for Rev. Thomas Beecher to be convinced that Mr. Smith saw more
clearly than he. "Do you mean," said this potentate, "to bring down
the whole Beecher family on your head?" "No," was the reply, "do
you mean to bring the whole Smith family on to yours?"
The following circular letter was sent to Curtis, Phillips and other
prominent men:
A convention has been announced at Washington, for January 11 and
12, to push the Sixteenth Amendment. The management is solely in my
hands, and I alone assume the financial responsibility. I go to
Washington January 1 to spend some days enlisting members of
Congress in this purely political question, and securing short
speeches from them on our platform. I have neither State nor
national society behind me, but am attempting to carry on a
convention with this single aim--to awaken Congress and, through
it, the country, to the fact that a Sixteenth Amendment is needed,
in order to carry out the principles of the Declaration of
Independence; and that we women are tired of petitioning, and would
fain begin to vote without delay. Will you speak for _me_ in the
day or the evening, and much oblige your sincere friend, ISABELLA
B. HOOKER.
Evidently they would not speak, even "for me," and Mrs. Hooker sends
around this note of explanation to the "old guard:" "I know of no
gentlemen outside of members of Congress, that can help us at all, who
can come. Beecher, Collyer, Curtis and Phillips are all unable. If you
think of any one else it would be worth while to invite, please write
me at once. I have such a strong determination that members shall
understand how much we are in earnest at this time, and how we won't
wait any longer, that it does seem to me they will take up a burden of
speech themselves, and work also. Mr. Sewall, of Boston, writes me that
he will urge Mr. Sumner, as I requested, and other members, but thinks
they can not need it."
Miss Anthony, however, declined to be snubbed, subdued or displaced,
and wrote to Mrs. Stanton in the following vigorous style:
Mrs. Hooker's attitude is not in the least surprising. She is
precisely like every new convert in every reform. I have no doubt
but each of the Apostles in turn, as he came into the ranks,
believed he could improve upon Christ's methods. I know every new
one thought so of Garrison's and Phillips'. The only thing
surprising in this case is that you, the pioneer, should drop, and
say to each of these converts: "Yes, you may manage. I grant your
knowledge, judgment, taste, culture, are all superior to mine. I
resign the good old craft to you altogether." To my mind there
never was such suicidal letting go as has been yours these last two
years.
But I am now teetotally discouraged, and shall make no more
attempts to hold you up to what I know is not only the best for our
cause, but equally so for yourself, from the moral standpoint if
not the financial. O, how I have agonized over my utter failure to
make you feel and see the importance of standing fast and holding
the helm of our good ship to the end of the storm. Mr. Greeley's
"On to Richmond" backdown was not more sad to me, not half so sad.
How you can excuse yourself, is more than I can understand.
Mrs. Stanton commented to Mrs. Wright: "For your instruction in the
ways of the world, I send you Susan's letter. You see I am between two
fires all the time. Some are determined to throw me overboard, and she
is equally determined that I shall stand at the masthead, no matter how
pitiless the storm."
Mrs. Hooker found hers was a greater task than she had anticipated and
finally wrote Miss Anthony: "God knows, and you ought to know, that any
one who undertakes a convention has put self-seeking one side and is
nearer to being a martyr, stake, fagots and all, than any of us care to
be unless called by duty with a loud and unmistakable call. I shirked
the labor last year and pitied you because so much fell upon you, and
out of pure love to you and to the cause determined this time to take
all I could on my own shoulders, but you must come and help out."
Mrs. Stanton still persisted in her determination not to go to this
convention but Miss Anthony cancelled eight or ten lecture engagements,
at from $50 to $75 each, in order to be present in person and see that
the affair was properly managed. Mrs. Hooker, however, was fully equal
to the occasion, her convention was a marked success and she proved to
be one of the most valuable acquisitions to the ranks of workers for
woman suffrage. She soon learned that the opposition to be overcome was
far greater than she had imagined, and after nearly thirty years'
effort, not even in her own State have women been able to secure their
enfranchisement. It seems, however, a bit of poetic justice that this
convention, which was to lift the movement for woman suffrage to a
higher plane than it ever before had occupied, should have been the
first to invite to its platform Victoria C. Woodhull, whose advent
precipitated a storm of criticism compared to which all those that had
gone before were as a summer shower to a Missouri cyclone.
[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker]
On December 21, 1870, Mrs. Woodhull had gone to Washington with a
memorial praying Congress to enact such laws as were necessary for
enabling women to exercise the right to vote vested in them by the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This was
presented in the Senate by Harris, of Louisiana, and in the House by
Julian, of Indiana, referred to the judiciary committees and ordered
printed. She had taken this action without consulting any of the
suffrage leaders and they were as much astonished to hear of it as were
the rest of the world. When they arrived at the capital another
surprise awaited them. On taking up the papers they learned that Mrs.
Woodhull was to address the judiciary committee of the House of
Representatives the very morning their convention was to open. Miss
Anthony hastened to confer with Mrs. Hooker, who was a guest at the
home of Senator Pomeroy, and to urge that they should be present at
this hearing and learn what Mrs. Woodhull proposed to do. Mrs. Hooker
emphatically declined, but the senator said: "This is not politics. Men
never could work in a political party if they stopped to investigate
each member's antecedents and associates. If you are going into a
fight, you must accept every help that offers."
Finally they postponed the opening of their convention till afternoon
and, on the morning of January 11, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Hooker, Paulina
Wright Davis and Hon. A. G. Riddle appeared in the judiciary committee
room. None of them had met Mrs. Woodhull, whom they found to be a
beautiful woman, refined in appearance and plainly dressed. She read
her argument in a clear, musical voice with a modest and engaging
manner, captivating not only the men but the ladies, who invited her to
come to their convention and repeat it. Mrs. Hooker and Judge Riddle
also addressed the committee and Miss Anthony closed the proceedings
with a short speech, thus reported by the Philadelphia Press:
She said few women had persecuted Congress as she had done, and she
was glad that new, fresh voices were heard today. "But, gentlemen,"
she continued, "I entreat you to bring this matter before the
House. You let our petition, presented by Mr. Julian last winter,
come to its death. I ask you to grant our appeal so that I can lay
off my armor, for I am tired of fighting. The old Constitution did
not disfranchise women, and we begged you not to put the word
'male' into the Fourteenth Amendment. I wish, General Butler, you
would say _contraband_ for us. But, gentlemen, bring in a report of
some kind, either for or against; don't let the matter die in
committee. Make it imperative that every man in the House shall
show whether he is for or against it." Mrs. Hooker caught the
refrain as Miss Anthony sat down, and said: "Pledge yourselves that
we shall have a hearing before Congress."
The Daily Patriot, of Washington, gave this account of the opening of
the convention:
About 3 o'clock the principal actors came upon the stage in Lincoln
Hall. In the center of the front row was Paulina Wright Davis, a
stately, dignified lady with a full suit of frosted hair. On her
right was Isabella Beecher Hooker, the ruling genius of the
assembly, of commanding voice and look, and evidently at home on
the rostrum. On the left was Josephine S. Griffing, of this city,
wearing the calm, imperturbable expression which is so eminently
her characteristic. Further on was Susan B. Anthony, "the hero of a
hundred fights," but still as eager for the fray as when she first
enlisted under the banner of woman's rights.... Then came the two
New York sensations, Woodhull and Claflin, both in dark dresses,
with blue neckties, short, curly brown hair, and nobby Alpine hats,
the very picture of the advanced ideas they are advocating. All
were fresh from the scene of their contest in the Capitol, wreathed
with smiles, flushed with victory, and evidently determined to let
the world know that the goal of their ambition was nearly reached;
that Congress had virtually surrendered at discretion, and
hereafter they were to be considered part and parcel of that great
body denominated American citizens.
Mrs. Hooker introduced Victoria Woodhull, saying it was her first
attempt at public speaking, but her heart was so in the movement
that she was determined to try. She advanced to the front of the
platform, but was so nervous that she required the assuring arm of
the president and her kindly voice to give her courage to proceed.
When she did, it was with a perceptible tremor in her tones. After
an apology, she read her memorial, which had been presented to the
judiciary committee, reported the result of her interview with
them, and said she had the assurance that it would be favorably
reported, and that the heart of every man in Congress was in the
movement. Thus ended the first effort of the great Wall street
broker as a public speaker.
She was followed by Josephine S. Griffing, Lillie Devereux Blake,
Frederick Douglass and others. Judge Riddle made the address of the
evening. Senator Nye, of Nevada, presided over one evening session;
Senator Warner, of Alabama, over one; and Senator Wilson, of
Massachusetts, over another. The correspondent of the Philadelphia
Press wrote: "Mrs. Woodhull sat sphynx-like during the convention.
General Grant himself might learn a lesson of silence from the pale,
sad face of this unflinching woman. No chance to send an arrow through
the opening seams of her mail.... She reminds one of the forces in
nature behind the storm, or of a small splinter of the indestructible;
and if her veins were opened they would be found to contain ice." The
National Republican thus describes one session:
The attendance yesterday morning clearly demonstrated that the
woman's movement has received an immense addition in numbers,
quality and earnestness.... Miss Anthony, with her face all aglow,
her eyes sparkling with indignation, said that a petition against
suffrage had been presented in the Senate by Mr. Edmunds, signed by
Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren and others. She was
glad the enemies of the movement at last had shown themselves. They
were women who never knew a want, and had no feeling for those who
were less fortunate. They had boasted that if necessary they could
get one thousand more signatures of the best women in the land to
their petition. What are a thousand names, and who are the best
women in the land? In answer to the one thousand the advocates of
suffrage could bring tens, aye, hundreds of thousands of women who
desire the ballot for self-protection. The fight had now commenced
in earnest, and it would not be ended until every woman in this
broad land was vested with the full rights of citizenship.
The tenor of all the speeches was the right of women to vote under the
recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment. There was an absence of the
usual long series of resolutions, and all were concentrated in the
following, presented by Miss Anthony:
Whereas, The Fourteenth Article of the Constitution of the United
States declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United
States are citizens thereof, and of the State wherein they reside,
and as such entitled to the unabridged exercise of the privileges
and immunities of citizens, among which are the rights of the
elective franchise; therefore
_Resolved_, That the Congress of the United States be earnestly
requested to pass an _act declaratory_ of the true extent and
meaning of the said Fourteenth Article.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of American women in the several
States to apply for registration at the proper times and places,
and in all cases when they fail to secure it to see that suits be
instituted in the courts having jurisdiction, and that their right
to the franchise shall secure general and judicial recognition.
In presenting the resolutions she said that if Congress failed to do
what was asked, and if the courts decided that "persons" are not
citizens, then the women had another resource; they could go back to
first principles and push the Sixteenth Amendment. A national woman
suffrage and educational committee of six was formed, herself among the
number; and a large book was opened containing a "Declaration and
Pledge of Women of the United States," written by Mrs. Hooker,
asserting their belief in their right to the suffrage and their desire
to use it. This was signed within a few months by 80,000 women and
presented to Congress. The following spring large numbers attempted to
vote in various parts of the country.
The advent of Mrs. Woodhull on the woman suffrage platform created a
wide-spread commotion. The old cry of "free love" was redoubled, the
enemies exulted loud and long, the friends censured and protested.
Regarding this matter, Mrs. Hooker wrote:
My sister Catharine says she is convinced now that I am right and
that Mrs. Woodhull is a pure woman, holding a wrong social theory,
and ought to be treated with kindness if we wish to win her to the
truth. Catharine wanted me to write her a letter of introduction,
so that when she went to New York she could make her acquaintance
and try to convince her that she is in error in regard to her views
on marriage. I gave her the letter and she is in New York now. When
she sees her she will be just as much in love with her as the rest
of us. Imagine the Dahlgren coterie when they get Catharine to
Washington to fight suffrage and find her visiting Victoria and
proclaiming her sweetness and excellence.
The rest of the story is told in a subsequent letter: "Sister Catharine
returned last night. She saw Victoria and, attacking her on the
marriage question, got such a black eye as filled her with horror and
amazement. I had to laugh inwardly at her relation of the interview and
am now waiting for her to cool down!"
The men especially were exercised over the new convert to suffrage and
flooded the ladies with letters of protest. To one of these Mrs.
Stanton replied:
In regard to the gossip about Mrs. Woodhull I have one answer to
give to all my gentlemen friends: When the men who make laws for us
in Washington can stand forth and declare themselves pure and
unspotted from all the sins mentioned in the Decalogue, then we
will demand that every woman who makes a constitutional argument on
our platform shall be as chaste as Diana. If our good men will only
trouble themselves as much about the virtue of their own sex as
they do about ours, if they will make one moral code for both men
and women, we shall have a nobler type of manhood and womanhood in
the next generation than the world has yet seen.
We have had women enough sacrificed to this sentimental,
hypocritical prating about purity. This is one of man's most
effective engines for our division and subjugation. He creates the
public sentiment, builds the gallows, and then makes us hangmen for
our sex. Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny
Wrights, the George Sands, the Fanny Kembles, of all ages; and now
men mock us with the fact, and say we are ever cruel to each other.
Let us end this ignoble record and henceforth stand by womanhood.
If Victoria Woodhull must be crucified, let men drive the spikes
and plait the crown of thorns.
[Autograph: Lucinda Hinsdale Stone]
Immediately after the Washington convention, Miss Anthony went to fill
a lecture engagement at Kalamazoo, the arrangements made by her friend,
the widely-known and revered Lucinda H. Stone. She spoke also at Grand
Rapids and other points in Michigan. At Chicago she was fortunate
enough to have a day with Mrs. Stanton, also on a lecturing tour, and
then took the train for Leavenworth. At Kansas City the papers said she
made "the success of the lecture season." She spoke in Leavenworth,
Lawrence, Topeka, Paola, Olathe and other places throughout the State.
Although it was very cold and the half-frozen mud knee deep, she
usually had good audiences. At Lincoln, Neb., she was entertained at
the home of Governor Butler and introduced by him at her lecture. At
Omaha her share of the receipts was $100. At Council Bluffs she was the
guest of her old fellow-worker, Amelia Bloomer. Cedar Rapids and Des
Moines gave packed houses. She lectured in a number of Illinois towns,
taking trains at midnight and at daybreak; and, waiting four hours at
one little station, the diary says she was so thoroughly worn-out she
was compelled to lie down on the dirty floor. On the homeward route she
spoke at Antioch College, and was the guest of President Hosmer's
family. According to the infallible little journal: "The president said
he had listened to all the woman suffrage lecturers in the field, but
tonight, for the first time, he had heard an _argument_; a compliment
above all others, coming from an aged and conservative minister."
She spoke also at Wilberforce University, at Dayton, Springfield,
Crestline, and in Columbus before the two Houses of the Legislature. At
Salem she ran across Parker Pillsbury, who was lecturing there. When
she took the train at Columbus "there sat Mrs. Stanton, fast asleep,
her gray curls sticking out." Then again into Michigan she went,
speaking at Jackson, Lansing, Ann Arbor and other cities. Mrs. Stanton
had preceded her and it was many times said that her lecture needed
Miss Anthony's to make it complete. Then to Chicago, where she spoke at
a suffrage matinee in Farwell Hall and at the Cook county annual
suffrage convention, and dined at Robert Collyer's; back to Iowa,
speaking at Burlington, Davenport, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa; over
into Nebraska once more, from there returning to Illinois; into
Indiana, thence to Milwaukee and points in Wisconsin; and once more to
Chicago, where, as was often the case, she was the guest of Mr. and
Mrs. Fernando Jones; from here across to Painesville and other towns in
northern Ohio; then on to numerous places in western New York, and
finally home to Rochester, April 25, having slept scarcely two nights
in the same bed for over three months.
Such is the hard life of the public lecturer, the most exhausting and
exacting which man or woman can experience. During all this long trip
Miss Anthony had met everywhere a cordial welcome and had been
entertained in scores of delightful homes. Her speech on this tour was
entitled "The New Situation," and was a clear and comprehensive
argument to prove that the Fourteenth Amendment gave women the right to
vote. Although composed largely of legal and constitutional references,
it was not written but drawn from the storehouse of her wonderful
memory, aided only by a few notes.
At the close of the Washington convention the advocates of woman
suffrage honestly believed that the battle was almost won. They felt
sure Congress would pass the enabling act, permitting them to exercise
the right that they claimed to be conferred by the Fourteenth
Amendment, in which claim they were sustained by some of the best
constitutional lawyers in the country. The agricultural committee room
in the Capitol was placed at the disposal of the national woman
suffrage committee, who put Josephine S. Griffing in charge. The latter
part of January she wrote:
Our room is thronged. Yesterday and today no less than twelve wives
of members of Congress were here and large numbers of the
aristocratic women of Washington. Blanche Butler Ames assures me
that all her sympathies are with us. President Grant's sister, Mrs.
Cramer, has been here and given her name, saying that Mrs. Grant
sent her regards and sympathized with our movement, and that she
had refused from principle to sign Mrs. Sherman's protest.... The
daily press is on its knees and is publishing long editorials in
our favor. You ask if this is a Republican dodge. I do not know. I
feel as Douglass did, ready to welcome the bolt from heaven or hell
that shivers the chains. If the Republicans hope to save their
lives by our enfranchisement, let them live.
Mrs. Hooker wrote from Washington: "Everything conspires to bring about
the early confirmation of our hopes. Republicans are discovering that
without this new, live issue, they are dead, and once more party
necessity is to be God's opportunity. Let us, who know so many good men
and true who are in this party, be thankful that through it, rather
than through the Democratic, deliverance is to come, for to owe
gratitude to a pro-slavery party would nearly choke my thanksgiving."
To this Mrs. Stanton replied: "That is not the point, but which party,
as a party, has the best record on our question. For four years I have
chafed under the Republican maneuvering to keep us still. Let me call
your attention to my speech on the Fifteenth Amendment, in which I said
'this is a new stab at womanhood, to result in deeper degradation to
her than she has ever known before.'... Sometimes I exclaim in agony,
'Can nothing raise the self-respect of women?' I despise the Republican
party for the political serfdom we suffer today, under the heel of
every foreign lord and lackey who treads our soil. If all of you have
turned to such idols, I will go alone to Jerusalem."
When the judiciary committee made its adverse report[57] which was
merely that Congress had not the power to act, most of the friends were
not discouraged but believed another committee would decide
differently. Mrs. Hooker, however, was at the boiling point of
indignation over the report and reversed her decision in regard to the
Republican party, writing: "Thank God! that party is dead; every one
here knows it, feels it, and is waiting to see what will take its
place. A great labor and woman suffrage party is ready to spring into
life, and a hundred aristocratic Democrats are pledged to the work. You
can have no conception of the new conditions unless you are here in the
midst of things and read the telegrams from all parts of the country.
Early next winter we shall be declared voting citizens." She then
quotes a number of prominent Democratic politicians whom she has
interviewed and who have given her reason for having faith in that
party. But many of the women were fooled then by both political
parties, just as they have continued to be up to the present time.
A letter from Phoebe Couzins expressed the sentiment of numbers which
were received this spring: "We made a grand mistake in giving up the
National. If you and Mrs. Stanton think best, as your fingers are on
the pulse of the people, let us resolve the Union Society into the
National Association. So say Mr. and Mrs. Minor, but whatever is done,
the two grand women who have the qualifications for leadership _must be
at the head_; the cause will languish until you are back in your old
places."
The suffrage anniversary was held in Apollo Hall, New York, May 11 and
12, 1871. Mrs. Griffing read an able report on the work at Washington
the previous winter. There were strong objections by a number of ladies
to sitting on the platform with Mrs. Woodhull, but Mrs. Stanton said
she should be sandwiched between Lucretia Mott and herself and that
surely would give her sufficient respectability. She made a fine
constitutional argument, to which the most captious could not object.
The excitement created by her appearance at the Washington meeting was
mild compared to that in New York City where she was becoming so
well-known. The great dailies headed all reports, "The Woodhull
Convention." The injustice and vindictiveness of the Tribune, that
paper which once had been the champion of woman's cause, were
especially hard to bear. It rang the changes upon the term "free love,"
insisted that, because the women allowed Mrs. Woodhull to stand upon
their platform and advocate suffrage, they thereby indorsed all her
ideas on social questions, and by every possible means it cast odium on
the convention.
There is no doubt that the advocates of "free love," in its usually
accepted sense, did endeavor to insinuate themselves among the suffrage
women and make this movement responsible for their social doctrines,
but every great reform has to suffer from similar parasites. The lives
of Miss Anthony, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and
of all the old and tried leaders in this cause, form the strongest
testimony of their utter repudiation of any such heresy. It was
impossible, however, for the world in general to understand their broad
ground that it was their business to accept valuable services without
inquiring into the private life of the persons who offered them. If
this were a mistake, these pioneers, who fought single-handed such a
battle as the women of later days can not comprehend, had to learn the
fact by experience.
The notorious Stephen Pearl Andrews prepared a set of involved and
intricate resolutions which were read by Paulina Wright Davis, the
chairman, without any thought of their possessing a deeper meaning than
appeared on the surface, but they fell flat on the convention, and were
neither discussed nor voted upon. The papers got possession of them,
nevertheless, declared that they were adopted as part of the platform,
read "free love" between the lines, and used them as the basis of many
ponderous and prophetic editorials.
A national committee was formed of one woman from each State, with Mrs.
Stanton as chairman, of which the New York Standard, edited by John
Russell Young, said: "Miss Susan B. Anthony holds a modest position,
but we can well believe that in any movement for the enfranchisement of
women, like MacGregor, wherever she sits will be the head of the
table." The New York Democrat commented: "She deals with facts, not
theories, but just gets hold of one nail after another and drives it
home.... Her words were to the point, as they always are, and abounded
in telling hits in every direction." Even the Tribune was generous
enough to say: "The ranks of the agitators with whom Captain Anthony is
identified contain no one more indiscreet, more reckless or more
honest. We have no sort of sympathy with the object to which the fair
captain is now devoting her life; but we know no person before the
country more single-minded, sincere and unselfish and, for these
reasons, more honestly entitled to the regard of a public which will
always appreciate upright intentions and disinterested devotion."
In the closing days of May, she wrote to her old paper, The Revolution:
Your "Stand by the Cause," this week, is the timely word to the
friends of woman suffrage. The present howl is an old trick of the
arch-fiend to divert public thought from the main question, viz:
woman's equal freedom and equal power to make and control her own
conditions in the state, in the church and, most of all, in the
home.
Though the ballot is the open sesame to equal rights, there is a
fundamental law which can not be violated with impunity between
woman and man, any more than between man and man; a law stated a
hundred years ago by Alexander Hamilton: "Give to a man a right
over my subsistence, and he has power over my whole moral being."
Woman's subsistence is in the hands of man, and most arbitrarily
and unjustly does he exercise his consequent power, making two
moral codes: one for himself, with largest latitude--swearing,
chewing, smoking, drinking, gambling, libertinism, all winked
at--cash and brains giving him a free pass everywhere; another
quite unlike this for woman--she must be immaculate. One hair's
breadth deviation, even the touch of the hem of the garment of an
_accused_ sister, dooms her to the world's scorn. Man demands that
his wife shall be above suspicion. Woman must accept her husband as
he is, for she is powerless so long as she eats the bread of
dependence. Were man today dependent upon woman for his
subsistence, I have no doubt he would very soon find himself
compelled to square his life to an entirely new code, not a whit
less severe than that to which he now holds her. In moral
rectitude, we would not have woman less but man more.
It is to put an end to such heresies as the following, from the
Rochester Democrat, that all women should most earnestly labor.
That paper begs us not to forget, "that what may be pardonable in a
man, speaking of evils generally, may and perhaps ought to be
unpardonable in one of the presumably better sex; because there can
not and must not be perfect equality between men and women when the
disposition to do wrong is under discussion. Women are permitted to
be as much better than men as they choose; but there ought to be no
law, on or oft the statute books, recognizing their social and
political right to be worse or even as bad as men; and it is
shameful that intelligent women should claim such a right, or even
dare to mention it at all." No human being or class of human beings
would venture to talk thus to equals. It is only because women are
dependent on men that such cowardly impudence can be dished out to
them day after day by puny legislators and editors, themselves
often reeking in social corruption which should banish them forever
from the presence of womanhood. Yours for an even-handed scale in
morals as well as politics, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
[Footnote 57: The committee reported January 30, 1871, John A. Bingham,
of Ohio, chairman. The minority report, signed by Benjamin F. Butler,
of Massachusetts, and William Loughridge, of Iowa, is perhaps the
strongest and most exhaustive argument ever written on woman's right to
vote under the Constitution. It is given in full in the History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 464.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIRST TRIP TO THE PACIFIC COAST.
1871.
At the close of the New York convention Miss Anthony, Rev. Olympia
Brown and Josephine S. Griffing went with Mrs. Hooker to Hartford for a
short visit, which it may be imagined was one protracted "business
session." Then Miss Anthony hastened to her own home to prepare for a
long journey, as she and Mrs. Stanton had decided to make a lecture
tour through California. She left Rochester the last day of May, and
met Mrs. Stanton in Chicago where a reception was given them by the
suffrage club, in its elegant new headquarters. They spoke in a number
of cities en route and attended numerous handsome receptions held in
their honor. At Denver they were entertained by Governor and Mrs.
McCook. Their audiences were large and enthusiastic, the press
respectful and often cordial and appreciative.[58] At Laramie City they
were accompanied to the station by a hundred women whom Mrs. Stanton
addressed from the platform. A letter written by Miss Anthony during
the journey contains these beautiful paragraphs:
We have a drawing-room all to ourselves, and here we are just as
cozy and happy as lovers. We look at the prairie schooners slowly
moving along with ox-teams, or notice the one lone cabin-light on
the endless plains, and Mrs. Stanton will say: "In all that there
is real bliss, if only the two are perfect equals, two loving
people, neither assuming to control the other." Yes, after all,
life is about one and the same thing, whether in the prairie
schooner and sod cabin, or the Fifth Avenue palace. Love for and
faith in each other alone can make either a heaven, and without
these any home is a hell. It is not the outside things which make
life, but the inner, the spirit of love which casteth out all
devils and bringeth in all angels.
Ever since 4 o'clock this morning we have been moving over the soil
that is really the land of the free and the home of the
brave--Wyoming, the Territory in which women are the recognized
political equals of men. Women here can say: "What a magnificent
country is ours, where every class and caste, color and sex, may
find equal freedom, and every woman sit under her own vine and fig
tree." What a blessed attainment at last; and that it should be
here among these everlasting mountains, midway between the Atlantic
and Pacific, seems significant of the true growth of the
individual--the center pure, the heart-beats free and equal.
At Salt Lake City they were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Godbe, and
were presented to their audience by Mayor Wells, who afterward took
them to call on his five wives. The second evening they were introduced
by Bishop Orson Pratt. From here Miss Anthony writes to The Revolution:
If I were a believer in special providences, I should say that our
being in Salt Lake City at the dedication of the New Liberal
Institute was one. On Sunday morning, July 2, this beautiful hall
of the Liberal party--Apostate party, the Saints call it--was well
filled. The services consisted of invocations, hymns and brief
addresses. Messrs. Godbe, Harrison, Lyman and Lawrence seem to be
the advance-guard--the high priests of the new order--and as they
sang their songs of freedom, poured out their rejoicings over their
emancipation from the Theocracy of Brigham, and told of the
beatitudes of soul-to-soul communion with the All-Father, my heart
was steeped in deepest sympathy with the women around me and,
rising at an opportune pause, I asked if a woman and a stranger
might be permitted to say a word. At once the entire circle of men
on the platform arose and beckoned me forward; and, with a Quaker
inspiration not to be repeated, much less put on paper, I asked
those men, bubbling over with the divine spirit of freedom for
themselves, if they had thought whether the women of their
households were today rejoicing in like manner? I can not tell what
I said--only this I know, that young and beautiful, old and
wrinkled women alike wept, and men said, "I wanted to get out of
doors where I could shout."
The transition of this people into the new life is complicated--is
heartrending. Remember that when these men began their rebellion
against Brigham, it was simply a protest against his tyranny--his
exorbitant tithing system--a mere refusal to render tribute unto
him; not at all a disavowal of the Morman religion or of polygamy.
But as bond after bond has burst, this last, strongest and tightest
one of plurality of wives is beginning to snap asunder. To
illustrate: One man, a noble, loving, beautiful spirit--nothing of
the tyrant, nothing of the sensualist--with four lovely wives,
three of whom I have seen, and in the homes of two of whom I have
broken bread, with thirteen loved and loving children--wakes up to
the new idea. Four women's hearts breaking, three sets of children
who must leave their father that the one-wife system may be
realized! I can assure you my heart aches for the man, the women
and the children, and cries, "God help them, one and all."
Where the man is a brutal tyrant, the problem is comparatively
easy. What we have tried to do is to show them that the principle
of the subjection of woman to man is the point of attack; and that
woman's work in monogamy and polygamy is one and the same--that of
planting her feet on the ground of self-support. The saddest
feature here is that there really is nothing by which these women
can earn an independent livelihood for themselves and their
children, no manufacturing establishments, no free schools to
teach. Women here, as everywhere, 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. Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social
life presents itself, the same conclusion comes: "Independent bread
alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man."
I attended the Liberals' Fourth of July celebration. Their
beautiful hall was packed; their souls were on fire with their new
freedom. Never since the first reading of the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, were its great truths responded to with such
real and deep feeling as on this occasion. I did not intrude myself
on them again--but my soul, too, was on fire for freedom for my
sex, as was that of every wife and daughter in that assembly. But
these men have yet to learn to loose the bonds of power over the
women by their side, precisely as have the men in the States and
the world over.
Here is missionary work--not for any "thus saith the Lord" canting
priests or echoing priestesses by divine right, but for great,
Godlike, humanitarian men and women, who "feel for those in bonds
as bound with them." No Phariseeism, no shudders of Puritanic
horror, no standing afar off; but a simple, loving, fraternal clasp
of hands with these struggling women, and an earnest work with
them--not to ameliorate but to abolish the whole system of woman's
subjection to man in both polygamy and monogamy.
In a letter home she says:
Our afternoon meeting of women alone was a sad spectacle. There was
scarcely a sunny, joyous countenance in the whole 300, but a vast
number of deep-lined, careworn, long-suffering faces--more so,
even, than those of our own pioneer farmers' and settlers' wives,
as I have many times looked into them. Their life of dependence on
men is even more dreadful than that of monogamy, for here it is
two, six, a dozen women and their great broods of children each and
all dependent on the one man. Think of fifteen, twenty, thirty
pairs of shoes at one strike, or as many hats and dresses!...
But when I look back into the States, what sorrow, what broken
hearts are there because of husbands taking to themselves new
friendships, just as really wives as are these, and the legal wife
feeling even more wronged and neglected. I have not the least doubt
but the suffering there equals that here--the difference is that
here it is a religious duty for the man to commit the crime against
the first wife, and for her to accept the new-comer into the family
with a cheerful face; while there the wrong is done against law and
public sentiment. But even the most devoted Mormon women say it
takes a great deal of grace to accept the other wives, and be just
as happy when the husband devotes himself to any of them as to
herself, yet the faithful Saint attains to such angelic heights and
finds her glory and the Lord's in so doing. The system of the
subjection of woman here finds its limit, and she touches the
lowest depths of her degradation.
The empire totters and Brigham feels the ground sliding from under
his feet. These men will be very likely to try the "variety" plan
of Stephen Pearl Andrews, but the women will hate that even worse
than polygamy. One man came to me relating a new vision, direct
from Christ himself, to that effect, and I said: "Away with your
man-visions! Women propose to reject them all, and begin to dream
dreams for themselves."
While at Salt Lake they received complimentary passes to California and
throughout that State, from Governor Leland Stanford, always a helpful
friend to woman suffrage. They reached San Francisco July 9, and took
rooms at the Grand Hotel, at that time the best in the city. Their
coming had been heralded by the press and they experienced the royal
California welcome, receiving flowers, fruit, calls and invitations in
abundance. Mrs. Stanton made her first speech in Platt's Hall to an
audience of 1,200; all seemed delighted and the papers were very
complimentary. At that time the whole coast was much excited over the
murder of A.P. Crittenden by Laura D. Fair, and the entire weight of
opinion was against her. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, always ready to
defend their sex, determined to hear the story from her own lips,
hoping for the sake of womanhood to learn some mitigating
circumstances. The afternoon papers came out with an attack upon them
for making this visit to the jail, and in the evening at Miss Anthony's
first lecture there was an immense audience, including many friends of
Crittenden, determined that there should be no justification of the
woman who killed him.
Miss Anthony made a strong speech on "The Power of the Ballot," which
was well received until she came to the peroration. Her purpose had
been to prove false the theory that all women are supported and
protected by men. She had demonstrated clearly the fact that in the
life of nearly every woman there came a time when she must rely on
herself alone. She asserted that while she might grant, for the sake of
the argument, that every man protected his own wife and daughter, his
own mother and sister, the columns of the daily papers gave ample
evidence that man did not protect woman as woman. She gave sundry facts
to illustrate this point, among them the experience of Sister Irene,
who had established a foundling hospital in New York two years before,
and at the close of the first year reported 1,300 little waifs laid in
the basket at the door. These figures, she said, proved that there were
at least 1,300 women in that city who had not been protected by men.
She continued impressively: "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."
Then burst forth a tremendous hissing, seemingly from every part of the
house! She had heard that sound in the old anti-slavery days and
quietly stood until there came a lull, when she repeated the sentence.
Again came a storm of hisses, but this time they were mingled with
cheers. Again she waited for a pause, and then made the same assertion
for the third time. Her courage challenged the admiration of the
audience, which broke out into a roar of applause, and she closed by
saying: "I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the
protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I
take my stand."
The next morning, however, she was denounced by the city papers as
having vindicated the murder and justified the life which Mrs. Fair had
led! Those who had not heard the lecture believed these reports, and
other papers in the State took up the cry. Even the press of New York
and other eastern cities joined in the chorus, but the latter was much
more severe on Mrs. Stanton, who in newspaper interviews did not
hesitate to declare her sympathy for Mrs. Fair; and yet for some
reason, perhaps because Miss Anthony had dared refer boldly to crime in
high places in San Francisco, the batteries there were turned wholly
upon her. In her diary she says: "Never in all my hard experience have
I been under such fire." So terrific was the onslaught that no one
could come to her rescue with a public explanation or defense. Miss
Anthony had cut San Francisco in a sore spot and it did not propose to
give her another chance to use the scalpel. She attempted to speak in
adjacent towns but her journal says: "The shadow of the newspapers hung
over me." At length she resolved to cancel all her lecture engagements
and wait quietly until the storm passed over and the public mind grew
calm. She writes in her diary, a week later: "Some friends called but
the clouds over me are so heavy I could not greet them as I would have
liked. I never before was so cut down." She tells the story to her
sister Mary, who replies:
I am so sorry for you. It will spoil your pleasure, and then I
think of that load of debt which you hoped to lighten, yet I should
have felt ashamed of you if you had failed to say a word in behalf
of that wretched woman. I am sick of one-sided justice; for the
same crime, men glorified and women gibbeted. If your words for
Mrs. Fair have made your trip a failure, so let it be--it is no
disgrace to you. It is scandalous the way the papers talk of you,
but stick to what you feel to be right and let the world wag.
On July 22, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton started for the Yosemite
Valley, a harder trip in those days even than now. It is best described
in her own words:
Mrs. Stanton, writing to The Revolution, and S.B.A., scribbling
home, are thirty miles out of the wonderful valley of the
Yosemite.... We shall have compassed the Calaveras Big Trees and
the Yosemite Valley in twelve days out from Stockton, where we
expect to arrive August 2. Mrs. Stanton is to speak there Thursday
night and I at San Jose, where I shall learn whether the press has
forgiven me. We both lecture the rest of the week, and Sunday get
into San Francisco, speak at different points the 7th and 8th, and
on the 9th go to the Geysers and stay two nights; then out again
and on with meetings almost every night till the end of the month.
We shall visit lakes Donner and Tahoe and some other points of
interest as they come in our reach. Mr. Hutchings would not take a
penny for our three days' sojourn in the valley, horses and all, so
our trip is much less expensive than we had anticipated.
With our private carriage we drove three miles nearer the top of
the mountain than the stage passengers go. Mrs. Stanton and I each
had a pair of linen bloomers which we donned last Thursday morning
at Crane's Flats, and we arrived at the brow of the mountain at 9
o'clock. Our horses were fitted out with men's saddles, and Mrs.
Stanton, perfectly confident that she would have no trouble, while
I was all doubts as to my success, insisted that I should put my
foot over the saddle first, which I did by a terrible effort. Then
came her turn, but she was so fat and her pony so broad that her
leg wouldn't go over into the stirrup nor around the horn of a
sidesaddle, so after trying several different saddles she commenced
the walk down hill with her guide leading her horse, and commanded
me to ride on with the other. By this time the sun was pouring down
and my horse was slowly fastening one foot after another in the
rocks and earth and thus carefully easing me down the steeps, while
my guide baited me on by saying, "You are doing nicely, that is the
worst place on the trail," when the fact was it hardly began to
match what was coming.
At half-past two we reached Hutchings', and a more used-up mortal
than I could not well exist, save poor Mrs. Stanton, four hours
behind in the broiling sun, fairly sliding down the mountain. I had
Mr. Hutchings fit out my guide with lunch and tea, and send him
right back to her. About six she arrived, pretty nearly jelly. We
both had a hot bath and she went supperless to bed, but I took my
rations. Presently John K. McLean and party, of Oakland, came in.
They had scaled Glacier Point that day and were about as tired and
fagged as we. The next day Mrs. Stanton kept her bed till nearly
noon; but I was up and on my horse at eight and off with the McLean
party for the Nevada and Vernal Falls....
Saturday morning, with Stephen M. Cunningham for my guide, I went
up the Mariposa trail seven miles to Artist's Point, and there
under a big pine tree, on a rock jutting out over the valley, sat
and gazed at the wondrous walls with their peaks and spires and
domes. I could take in not only the whole circuit of the mountain
tops but the valley enshrined below, with the beautiful Merced
river meandering over its pebbly bed among the grass and shrubs and
towering pines. We reached the hotel at 7 P.M.--tired--tired. Not a
muscle, not one inch of flesh from my heels to my hands that was
not sore and lame, but I took a good rub-off with the powerful
camphor from the bottle mother so carefully filled for me, and went
to bed with orders for my horse at 6 A.M.
Sunday morning's devotion for Minister McLean and the Rochester
strong-minded was to ride two and a half miles to Mirror lake, and
there wait and watch the coming of the sun over the rocky spires,
reflected in the placid water. Such a glory mortal never beheld
elsewhere. The lake was smooth as finest glass; the lofty granite
peaks with their trees and shrubs were reflected more perfectly
than costliest mirror ever sent back the face of most beautiful
woman, and as the sun slowly emerged from behind a point of rock,
the thinnest, flakiest white clouds approached or hung round it,
and the reflection shaded them with the most delicate, yet most
perfect and richest hues of the rainbow. And while we watched and
worshipped we trembled lest some rude fish or bubble should break
our mirror and forever shatter the picture seemingly wrought for
our special eyes that Sunday morning. Then and there, in that holy
hour, I thought of you, dear mother, in the body, and of dear
father in the beyond, with eyes unsealed, and of Ann Eliza and
Thomas King. I talked to John of them and wondered if they too sat
not with us in that holy of holies not made with hands. O, how
nothing seemed man-made temples, creeds and codes!
At San Jose Miss Anthony was the guest of Rev. and Mrs. Charles G.
Ames. Her audience was small but appreciative, and the Mercury, edited
by J.J. Owen, said: "After all the mean notices by certain of the daily
papers in San Francisco, her hearers were astonished at the masterly
character of her address. She held her audience delighted for an hour
and forty minutes." From here she went to the Geysers, riding on the
front seat with driver Foss, and she says in her diary: "On the way out
he explained to me the philosophy of fast driving down the steep
mountain sides; and on the way back he unfolded to me the sad story of
his life."
Miss Anthony spoke at a number of small towns but it did not seem
advisable for her to try again in San Francisco, so she devoted herself
to contributing in every possible way to the success of Mrs. Stanton's
lectures. On August 22 the latter completed her tour and left for the
East, but Miss Anthony decided to accept the numerous calls to go up
into Oregon and Washington Territory. She went to Oakland for a brief
visit with Mrs. Randall, the Mary Perkins who used to teach in her
childhood's home more than thirty years before, and her diary says:
"They are glad to see me and we have enjoyed talking over old times.
They are wholly oblivious to our reform agitation and I am glad to get
out of it for a while." But a few days later she called on the Curtis
family, who were interested in reforms, and wrote: "I got back into my
own world again and the springs of thought and conversation were
quickly loosened. It is marvelous how far apart the two worlds are."
She started on the ship Idaho for Portland, August 25. The sea was very
rough, they were seven days making the trip and, judging from the
almost illegible entries in the diary, it was not a pleasant one:
1st day.--I feel forlorn enough thus left alone on the ocean but I
am in for it and bound to go through.... Before 6 o'clock my time
came and old ocean received my first contribution.
2d day.--Strong gale and rough sea. Tried to dress--no use--back to
my berth and there I lay all day. Everybody groaning, babies
crying, mothers scolding, the men making quite as much fuss as the
women.
3d day.--Tried to get up but in vain. In the afternoon staggered up
on deck--men stretched out on all sides looking as wretched as I
felt--glad to get back to bed. Captain sent some frizzled ham and
hard tack, with his compliments. Sea growing heavier all the time.
4th day.--Terribly rough all night. Could not sleep for the thought
that every swell might end the ship's struggles. Felt much nearer
to the dear ones who have crossed the great river than to those on
this side. Out of sight of land all day and ship making only two
and a half miles an hour.
5th day.--The same pitching down into the ocean's depths, the same
unbounded waste of surging waters, but a slight lessening of the
sea-sickness.
6th day.--Quite steady this morning. Went on deck and met several
pleasant people. Took my spirit-lamp and treated the captain's
table to some delicious tea.
7th day.--First word this morning, "bar in sight." The shores look
beautiful. All faces are bright and cheery and many appear not seen
before. I felt well enough to discuss the woman question with
several of the passengers. Arrived at Portland at 10 P.M., glad
indeed to touch foot on land again.
In the first letter home she says:
Abigail Scott Duniway, editor of the New Northwest, was my first
caller this morning. I like her appearance and she will be business
manager of my lectures. The second caller was Mr. Murphy, city
editor of the Herald, and the third Rev. T.L. Eliot, of the
Unitarian church, son of Rev. William Eliot, of St. Louis. I am to
take tea at his house next Monday. I am not to speak until
Wednesday, and thus give myself time to get my head straightened
and, I hope, my line of argument. Mrs. Duniway thinks I will find
two months of profitable work in Oregon and Washington Territory,
but I hardly believe it possible. If meetings pay so as to give me
hope of adding to my $350 in the San Francisco Bank (my share of
the profits on Mrs. Stanton's and my lectures, which we divided
evenly), making it reach $2,000 or even $1,000 by December first, I
shall plod away.
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 the
cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the
last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt that our cause
was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was
making the way clear for her.
Miss Anthony could not entirely recover from the disappointment of her
reception in San Francisco, but a letter written to Mrs. Stanton, just
before her first lecture in Oregon, shows no regrets but a wish that
she had put the case even more strongly:
I am awaiting my Wednesday night execution with fear and trembling
such as I never before dreamed of, but to the rack I must go,
though another San Francisco torture be in store for me.... The
real fact is we ought to be ashamed of ourselves that we failed to
say the whole truth and illustrate it too by the one terrible
example in their jail. That would have caused not me alone but both
of us to be hissed out of the hall and hooted out of that Godless
city--Godless in its treading of womanhood under its heel. I assure
you, 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 that failure to speak the word at San Francisco over 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. To my mind the
failure to put our heads together and work up that lecture grows
every day a greater blunder, if nothing more. It was like going
down into South Carolina and failing to illustrate human oppression
by negro slavery. I hope you are not haunted with it as I am. God
helping me, I will yet ease my spirit of the load.
After this lecture she wrote again:
The first fire is passed. I send you the Bulletin and Oregonian
notices. I have not seen the Democratic paper--the Herald--but am
told it says Miss Anthony failed to interest her audience. Not a
person stirred save when I made them laugh. But tomorrow night's
audience will tell the people's estimate. My speech then will be on
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Last night I made the San
Francisco speech, but was not nearly so free and easy in the
brain-working; still I got my points clearly stated. The wet
blanket is now somewhat off. I hope to present the fact of our
right to vote under these amendments with a great deal more
freedom. If I am able to do so, I shall talk to women alone
Saturday afternoon on the social evil; then, if interest warrants,
answer objections Monday evening, and close here. I have contracted
for one-half the gross receipts of evening and the entire receipts
of afternoon lectures.
I want to tell you that with my gray silk I wore a pink bow at my
throat and a narrow pink ribbon in my hair! Mrs. Duniway is
delighted, so you see my tide is turning a little from that
terrible, killing experience. _You_ never received such wholesale
praise--_I_ never such wholesale censure. But enough; it is a
comfort to get a little outside assurance again.
Miss Anthony met with a friendly reception from the press of Oregon.
She was extensively interviewed by the leading papers and reported in a
complimentary manner. The Oregonian thus closed a column account: "The
audience, which listened attentively and with evident deep interest to
this address, was large and chiefly composed of the intelligent portion
of our citizens. Miss Anthony talked clearly, more concisely than the
average speaker, kept the thread of her logic well in hand and, it must
be confessed, made a strong argument, though we can hardly admit that
it was conclusive. She is a fluent speaker and well sustains the cause
she advocates." The Herald said in a lengthy interview: "Her
conversation is fluent and concise, each word expressing its full
complement of meaning. Her system of argument is logical and, in
contradistinction to the sex in general, she does not depend on mere
assertions but gives proofs to carry conviction."[59]
The Bulletin thus began a fine report: "As a speaker she has the happy
faculty of presenting her subject in a clear and convincing manner. Her
style is forcible and argumentative. She contents herself with
facts--presenting them in plain language, resting her case upon these,
unaided by sophistry and the blinding influence of oratory." This
paper, however, was very severe upon her doctrines, declaring
editorially that they were "mischievous, revolutionary and
impracticable, and would result in anarchy in homes and chaos in
society." Mrs. Duniway's paper, the New Northwest, said: "Miss Anthony
is a stirring and vigorous worker, a profound and logical speaker, has
a truly wonderful influence over her audiences and produces conviction
wherever she goes.... She has a peculiarly happy manner of using the
right word in the right place, never hesitates in her language, and is
evidently as brimful of argument at the close of her lectures as at
their beginning. She has awakened the dormant feelings of duty and true
womanhood in many a woman's heart in Portland, and scores of ladies in
our community who never before gave the question a moment's
consideration are now eager for the ballot."
From Portland Miss Anthony wrote to The Revolution:
There is something lovely in this Oregon climate beyond any I have
yet known on either side the Rocky mountains. It is neither too hot
nor too cold, but a delightful medium which I enjoy as I sit this
second September Sunday in my room at the St. Charles Hotel, with
its windows opening upon the broad and beautiful Willamette. I am
surprised at the size of this city, and the evidences of business
and solid wealth all about....
John Chinaman too is here, cooking, washing and ironing, quiet and
meek-looking as in San Francisco. The Republicans of this coast,
like the Democrats, talk and resolve against him for political
effect, merely to cater to the ignorant voters of their party. They
say he can not be naturalized on account of some stipulation in the
old treaty with China, when they know or ought to know that the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have as effectually blotted the
word "white" out of all United States treaties and naturalization
laws, as out of all the State and Territorial constitutions and
statutes. Their pretence that the Chinaman may not become a citizen
of the United States, precisely the same as an African, German or
Irishman, is matched only by their denial of citizenship to the
women of the entire nation. Under the old regime it was the negro
with whom we had to make common cause in our demand for the
practical recognition of our right to representation. In snatching
the black man from our side, the Republicans, out of pure sympathy
doubtless, lest we should be without any "male" compeer in our
degradation, leave the innocent Chinaman to comfort and console us.
Are we not most unreasonable in our dissatisfaction with the
company our fathers and brothers constitutionally rank with
us--idiots, lunatics, convicts, Chinamen?
While sailing up the Columbia, Mrs. Duniway wrote Mrs. Stan ton: "Miss
Anthony has been holding large meetings in Portland, Salem and Oregon
City, and has conquered the press and brought the whole fraternity to
terms. She has also succeeded in holding important and successful
meetings at The Dalles, and is now returning with me from a series of
lectures in Walla Walla. We find the people everywhere enthusiastic and
delighted. Her fund of logic, fact and fun seems inexhaustible. She
speaks three and four consecutive evenings in one place, and each time
increases the interest. We are all justly proud of her."
At Walla Walla the church doors were closed to her but she spoke in the
schoolhouse. At Salem all the judges of the supreme court were in her
audience and afterward called on her. She had good houses everywhere
but money was hard to get, and she speaks in her letters of being
almost frantic lest she may not be able to meet her notes on January
first, "the one cherished dream of this year's work."
In a letter from Olympia describing the journey she said: "Here I am,
October 22, at the head of Puget Sound. This was my route--Portland,
down the Willamette river twelve miles to the Columbia; then down that
river one hundred miles to the mouth of the Cowlitz, Monticello; then
ninety miles stage-ride, full sixty of it over the roughest kind of
corduroy. Twenty-five miles to Pumphrey's Hotel, arriving at 6 p.m.;
supper and bed; called up at 2 o'clock, and off again at
2:30--perfectly dark--lantern on each side of coach--fourteen miles to
breakfast at 7, horses walked every step of the way; eighteen more,
walk and corduroy, to dinner; then thirty miles of splendid road, and
arrival here at 5:30 p.m." At Seattle, November 4, she wrote home:
For the first time I have seen the glory of the sunrise upon the
entire Coast Range. The whole western horizon was one fiery glow on
mountain tops, all cragged and jagged from two miles in height down
to the line of perpetual snow. It has been very tantalizing to be
on this wonderful Puget Sound these ten days, and never see the
clouds and fogs lift themselves long enough to give a vision of the
majestic mountains on either side. My one hope now is that they may
rise on both sides at the same time; but the rainy season has
fairly set in. It has rained part of every twenty-four hours since
we reached Olympia ten days ago. The grass and shrubbery are as
green and delightful as with us in June, and roses and other
flowers are blooming all fragrant and fresh. The forests are
evergreen--mainly firs and cedars--and on the streets here are
maple and other deciduous trees. The feeling of the air is like
that during the September equinoctial storm. The sound, from twenty
to forty miles wide, with inlets and harbors extending full two or
three miles into the land, is the most beautiful sheet of water I
ever have seen.
I go to Port Madison this afternoon, and on Monday to Port Gamble;
back to Olympia for the Territorial Convention Wednesday; then down
to Portland and thence southward. I have traveled 1,800 miles in
fifty-six days, spoken forty-two nights and many days, and I am
tired, tired. Lots of good missionary work, but not a great deal of
money.
The last letter from Portland, November 16, said:
The mortal agony of speaking again in Portland is over, but the
hurt of it stings yet. I never was dragged before an audience so
utterly without thought or word as last night and, had there been
any way of escape, would have taken wings or, what I felt more
like, have sunk through the floor. It was the strangest and most
unaccountable condition, but nothing save bare, bald points stared
me in the face. Must stop; here is card of Herald reporter.
Before the reporter left, some ladies called, among them Mrs.
Harriet W. Williams, at whose house we all used to stop in Buffalo,
in the olden days of temperance work. She is like a mother to me.
Mrs. Eliot, wife of the Unitarian minister, also came. They formed
a suffrage society here Tuesday with some of the best women as
officers. What is more and most of all I received a letter from a
gentleman, enclosing testimonials from half a dozen of the
prominent men of the city, asking an interview looking to marriage!
I also received a serenade from a millionaire at Olympia. If any of
the girls want a rich widower or an equally rich bachelor, here is
decidedly the place to get an offer of one. But tell brother Aaron
I expect to survive them all and reach home before the New Year, as
single-handed and penniless as usual.[60]
Miss Anthony was invited to address the legislature while at Olympia.
Notwithstanding her extreme need of money she donated the proceeds of
one lecture to the sufferers by the Chicago fire. Usually she had good
audiences but occasionally would fall into the hands of persons
obnoxious to the community and the meeting would be a failure. She
writes in her diary, "It seems impossible to escape being sacrificed by
somebody." The press of Washington was for the most part very
favorable. The Olympia Standard said: "We had formed a high opinion of
the ability of the lady and her remarkable talent as a public speaker,
and our expectations have been more than realized. She presents her
arguments in graceful and elegant language, her illustrations are ample
and well chosen, and the hearer is irresistibly drawn to her
conclusions.... There is no gainsaying the sound logic of her
arguments. They appeal to a sense of right and justice which ought not
longer be denied." There was sometimes, however, a discordant note, as
may be shown by the following from the Territorial Despatch, of
Seattle, edited by Beriah Brown:
It is a mistake to call Miss Anthony a reformer, or the movement in
which she is engaged a reform; she is a revolutionist, aiming at
nothing less than the breaking up of the very foundations of
society, and the overthrow of every social institution organized
for the protection of the sanctity of the altar, the family circle
and the legitimacy of our offspring, recognizing no religion but
self-worship, no God but human reason, no motive to human action
but lust. Many, undoubtedly, will object that we state the case too
strongly; but if they will dispassionately examine the facts and
compare them with the character of the leaders and the inevitable
tendency of their teachings, they must be convinced that the
apparently innocent measure of woman suffrage as a remedy for
woman's wrongs in over-crowded populations, is but a pretext or
entering wedge by which to open Pandora's box and let loose upon
society a pestilential brood to destroy all that is pure and
beautiful in human nature, and all that has been achieved by
organized associations in religion, morality and refinement; that
the whole plan is coarse, sensual and agrarian, the worst phase of
French infidelity and communism....
She did not directly and positively broach the licentious social
theories which she is known to entertain, because she well knew
that they would shock the sensibilities of her audience, but
confined her discourse to the one subject of woman suffrage as a
means to attain equality of competitive labor. This portion of her
lecture we have not time to discuss. Our sole purpose now is to
enter our protest against the inculcation of doctrines which we
believe are calculated to degrade and debauch society by
demolishing the dividing lines between virtue and vice. It is true
that Miss Anthony did not openly advocate "free love" and a
disregard of the sanctity of the marriage relation, but she did
worse--under the guise of defending women against manifest wrongs,
she attempts to instil into their minds an utter disregard for all
that is right and conservative in the present order of society.
Apparently Mr. Brown did not approve of woman suffrage. According to
his own statement Miss Anthony confined her entire discourse to the one
point of competitive labor. The editorial was founded wholly upon his
own depraved imagination.
Miss Anthony went into British Columbia and spoke several times at
Victoria. The doctrine of equal rights was entirely new in that city
and on the first evening there was not a woman in the hall. At no
succeeding lecture were twenty women present, although there were fair
audiences of men. The press was respectful in its treatment of speaker
and speeches, but some of the "cards" which were sent to the papers
were amusing, to say the least.[61]
The journal depicts the hardships of a new country, the poor hotels,
the long stage-rides, the inconvenient hours, etc. At one place, where
there was an appalling prospect of spending Sunday in the wretched
excuse for a hotel, a lady came and took her to a fine, new home and
Miss Anthony was delighted; but when the husband appeared he announced
that he "did not keep a tavern," and so, after her evening lecture, she
returned to her former quarters, the wife not daring to remonstrate.
After meeting one woman who had had six husbands, and at least a dozen
whose husbands had deserted them and married other women without the
formality of a divorce, she writes in her journal, "Marriage seems to
be anything but an indissoluble contract out here on the coast."
Meanwhile she had received urgent invitations from California once more
to try her fortune in that State. After lecturing to crowded houses at
Oregon City, Eugene and other points, she continued southward, her
rough experience on shipboard deciding her to go by stage. From
Roseburg she wrote her mother, November 24:
I am now over one hundred miles on my stage-route south, and
horrible indeed are the roads--miles and miles of corduroy and then
twenty miles of "Joe Lane black mud," as they call it, because old
Joseph Lane settled right here in the midst of it. It is heavy clay
without a particle of loam and rolls up on the wheels until rim,
spokes and hub are one solid circle. The wheels cease to turn and
actually slide over the ground, and then driver and men passengers
jump out and with chisels and shingles cut the clay off the wheels.
* * * * *
How my thought does turn homeward, mother. I wanted always to be at
home every recurring birthday of yours so long as you remained this
side with us. I can not this year, but in spirit I shall be with
you all that day, as I am so very, very often on every other day.
The courtesy of a seat outside with the driver was usually extended to
her and she picked up much information in regard to the people and
customs, some of it perhaps not wholly reliable. On this journey she
encountered a drenching rain and heavy snow, and finally was driven
inside. When they stopped for the night she had a little, cold bedroom,
sometimes next to the bar-room, where the carousing kept her awake all
night. She wrote home from Yreka, November 28:
Last evening I lectured in the courthouse to a splendid audience,
and speak again this afternoon at 2 o'clock to answer objections.
Several lawyers threaten to be on hand and force me to the wall on
legal points, but we shall see. Then at four I am to drive with
Mrs. Jerome Churchill, and at seven board the stage again for Red
Bluff, 125 miles, riding steadily all tonight and the next day and
night. It is snowing here and southward, which delays us more and
more every day.
I rode three miles yesterday for a full view of Mount Shasta, but
the summit was hidden by a dense fog, and I saw only one of its
side-points called the crater; so all hope of seeing this lofty
snow-peak is over, unless it should clear off and I see it by
moonlight as I go out tonight. This long stage route is a new and
interesting experience to me, and I am so glad I returned this way.
The first day, in spite of the corduroy ruckabuck jouncing, I felt
a sort of halo of joy hovering around me. It was indescribable; it
was like a benediction of "well done, decided right."
From the diary:
Snow storm today but a fine moonlight view of Mount Shasta at
night. Rode all night in the stage, splendid sunrise view of Castle
Rock. Today through Sacramento canyon, fine day and grand scenery.
Supped at 9 P.M. and then nine of us were packed into a short wagon
and did not arrive at Red Bluff till 3 A.M.... No arrangements had
been made for my lecture. Sheriff refused to let me have the
courthouse. Secured the schoolhouse, but no fire and small audience
after all my hard trip to get here. Called at 2:30 A.M. to take the
stage again.... Reached Chico at last. Mr. Allen, agent of General
Bidwell, met me, and such a good cup of coffee and cosy,
comfortable time as his wife Emma gave me! Good audience, although
heavy storm.... At Marysville spoke in the theater to a small but
select audience. Expenses $20 over receipts. The fates are opposed
to my financial success, and the interest is piling up on my
debts.... Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon and a dozen other ladies met
me at Sacramento, and she and I went on to San Francisco where I
found thirty letters awaiting me at the Grand Hotel.
The flurry of prejudice against Miss Anthony had died out and she
accepted an invitation for a public address signed by a number of
influential citizens. She spoke several times to good audiences and was
fairly treated by the press, but she was too frank and outspoken to be
very popular, especially at that time. The people were greatly stirred
up over what was known as the Holland Social Evil Bill, which was under
consideration by the board of supervisors and had roused public opinion
to white heat, both in favor and in opposition. Miss Anthony naturally
made a fight against it, calling a meeting of women only and explaining
to them, point by point, its vicious propositions. This provoked both
favorable and adverse criticism by the press. At Mayfield she was a
guest at the handsome home of Judge and Mrs. Sarah Wallis. Mrs. Knox,
Mrs. Watson, Mrs. McKee and a big omnibus load drove up from San Jose,
seventeen miles. She spoke at a number of neighboring towns and the
sympathizers with the cause she represented were delighted with her
masterly efforts, but she felt everywhere the need of a good manager to
make her lectures a financial success. On December 15 her friends in
San Francisco tendered her a reception and banquet at the Grand Hotel.
All the newspapers in the city gave complimentary accounts, of which
the following from the Chronicle will serve as a specimen:
The friends of Miss Susan B. Anthony, to the number of about fifty,
comprising the more prominent leaders of the suffrage movement,
assembled in the parlors of the Grand Hotel last evening. After an
hour spent in social conversation and the interchange of
congratulations upon the bright prospects of the cause they
represent, the guests were ushered into the spacious dining-hall,
where a bountiful collation had been spread....
Miss Anthony said: "....I go from you freighted with a burden of
love and gratitude, and no greetings have been more precious than
those of working men and women. Tonight when the woman who earns
her livelihood by selling flowers through the hotel came to the
door of the parlor and, presenting me with the beautiful bouquet
which I hold in my hand, asked, 'Will you accept this because you
have spoken so nobly for us poor workingwomen?' it brought tears to
my eyes, unused to weeping. I felt a thrill of gratitude that I had
been permitted to prosecute this work. We who are seated around
this board may have all the rights we need; we are not working for
ourselves, but for those now suffering around us. For them, our
sisters, and for future generations must we labor...."
She took her seat amid warm applause. A number of brief, pithy
speeches were made and all dispersed with a hearty Godspeed to the
talented lady in whose behalf they had assembled.
Laura de Force Gordon had arranged a number of lectures for Miss
Anthony on the route eastward. At Nevada City she was the guest of A.
A. Sargent, the newly elected United States senator, and his wife, both
earnest friends of woman suffrage.[62] The rainy season had set in and
the diary says: "These storms which bring new life and hope to farmers
and miners, mean empty benches for me." The mud, snow and wind in
Nevada were terrible. At Virginia City, where she lectured, she was
snowed in for several days and finally left in a six-horse sleigh, in
the midst of a blinding storm, on Christmas Day.
[Autograph:
I wish you a successful
meeting, and encouraging
progress for your cause.
Resp'y
A. A. Sargent.]
She arrived at Reno to find that the Sargents, whom she expected to
join on their way to Washington, had passed through a day or two before
but, as they were delayed by snowdrifts, she overtook them at Ogden,
and enjoyed the privileges of their luxurious staterooms until they
reached Chicago. It happened most fortunately that the Sargents were
supplied with inexhaustible hampers of provisions, for the trip from
Ogden to Chicago occupied twelve days. Senator Mitchell and family, of
Oregon, and several other friends were on the train, but with all the
pleasant companionship and all the entertainment which could be
devised, the journey was long and tedious. The ever-faithful diary
contains a brief record of each day:
December 28.--The western-bound train arrived at noon, eight days
from Omaha, a happy set of people to be so far along on their
journey. We left Ogden at 3 p. M., three packed sleeping-cars. All
went smoothly to Bitter Creek, then we waited three or four hours
for an extra engine to take us up the grade.
December 29.--Starting and backing, then starting and backing
again. Prospect very discouraging. Mr. Sargent makes the tea,
unpacks the hampers and serves as general steward, but draws the
line at washing the dishes. We women-folks take that as our part.
Delayed all night at Percy. Here overtook the passenger train which
left Ogden last Monday.
December 30.--Detained all day and all night at Medicine Bow. Four
passenger trains packed into two, and long freight trains passed us
in the night.
December 31.--Left Medicine Bow at noon, went through deep snow
cuts ten miles in length. One heavy passenger and two long freight
trains in front of us. Reached Laramie at 10 P.M. Thus closes 1871,
a year full of hard work, six months east, six months west of the
Rocky mountains; 171 lectures, 13,000 miles of travel; gross
receipts $4,318, paid on debts, $2,271. Nothing ahead but to plod
on.
A few blank pages in an old account-book tell the rest of the story:
January 1, 1872.--Laramie City. On Pullman car "America," Union
Pacific R.R. Lay here all night and breakfasted at railway hotel.
J.H. Hayford, editor Laramie Sentinel, told us of the bill to
repeal the woman suffrage law in Wyoming. The law had been passed
by a Democratic legislature as a jest, but five Democrats voted for
repeal and four Republicans against it, in one house, and in the
other, three Republicans voted against and every Democrat for the
repeal. Governor Campbell, a Republican, vetoed this repeal bill
and woman suffrage still stands, as a Territorial legislature can
not pass a bill over the governor's veto.... Here we are at noon,
stuck in a snowdrift five miles west of Sherman, on a steep grade,
with one hundred men shovelling in front of us. Dined, Mr. Sargent
officiating, on roast turkey, jelly, bread and butter, spice cake
and excellent tea. At dark, wind and snow blowing terrifically, but
a bright sky.
January 2.--Still stationary. The railroad company has supplied the
passengers with dried fish and crackers. Mrs. Sargent and I have
made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing
mothers. It is the best we can do. Five days out from Ogden! This
is indeed a fearful ordeal, fastened here in a snowbank, midway of
the continent at the top of the Rocky mountains. They are melting
snow for the boilers and for drinking water. A train loaded with
coal is behind us, so there is no danger of our suffering from
cold. Mr. Sargent, Mr. Mitchell and Major Elliott walked to Sherman
and an old man drove them back at dusk with two ponies. The train
had moved up to Dale creek bridge and drawn into a long snow-shed.
Here, we remained all night and, with the rarified air and the
smoke from the engine, were almost suffocated, while the wind blew
so furiously we could not venture to open the doors.
January 3.--Bright sunshine and perfectly calm. Ernest and Norman
Melliss, sons of David M. Melliss, of New York City, came into our
car from the other train, which is twelve days from Ogden. How they
do revive The Revolution experiences, Train and the Wall street
gossip! Stood still in the snow-shed till noon and reached Sherman
about 6 P.M. Mr. Sargent had brought some potatoes which we roasted
on top of the stove and they proved a delicious addition to our
meal. In the car "Sacramento" we had a mock trial, Judge Mitchell
presiding and the jury composed of women. He wrote out a verdict,
which the women insisted on bringing in, not because they agreed
with it but because they wanted to please him and the other men,
but I rebelled and hung the jury!
January 4.--Morning found us still at Sherman and we did not move
till 1 P.M. There is another train ahead of us, and here we are,
four passenger trains pushing on for Cheyenne. The people from the
different ones visit among each other. Half-way to Granite Canyon
the snowplow got off the track and one wheel broke, so a dead
standstill for hours. Reached Granite Canyon at dark, a whole day
getting there from Sherman, and remained over night.
January 5.--Bright and beautiful. Reached Cheyenne at 11:30 A.M.
Little George Sargent coaxed his papa to let him walk over the
bridge to the town and fell through and broke his arm. Mrs.
Sargent, after holding him till the bone was set, fainted.
Afterwards I called on Mrs. Amalia Post. It was at her house the
Cheyenne women met and went in a body to Governor Campbell's
residence in 1869, and announced their intention of staying till he
signed the woman suffrage bill, which he did without further delay.
Met the governor and several other notables. At 1:30 P.M. our train
was off at first-class speed, and oh, what joy in every face!
January 6.--Arrived at Omaha at 3 P.M. Found letter from brother
D.R., enclosing pass to Leavenworth and saying he had passes for me
from there to Chicago and eastward. If I go to L. I shall miss the
Washington convention, where I am so badly needed. If it had not
been for this vexatious delay I could have had a day or two there
and several more at Rochester. Now I must push straight on. It is
my hard fate always to sacrifice affection and pleasure to duty and
work.
January 7.--All the baggage had to be rechecked at Omaha and when I
insisted upon attending to my own, because I had found that the
only safe way, Mr. Sargent looked so offended that I at once handed
over my checks.
January 8.--Arrived at Chicago at 3 A.M. Went at once to my aunt
Ann Eliza Dickinson's and visited with her till 7 o'clock, had
breakfast and went to Fort Wayne depot where, as I feared, I found
one of my checks called for the wrong piece of baggage; so I took
one trunk, left the baggage-master to hunt up the other, and
started straight for Washington on a train without a sleeper.
January 9.--Passed Pittsburg at 2 A.M. Breakfasted at Altoona on
top of the Alleghanies; scenery most beautiful, but not on so grand
a scale as among the Rockies.
This is the last entry. It is hardly necessary to add that Miss Anthony
reached Washington in time for the opening of the convention on the
morning of January 10. To the question whether she were not very tired,
she replied: "Why, what would make me tired? I haven't been doing
anything, for two weeks!"
[Footnote 58: Miss Anthony's lecture was a decided success, judged
either by the number and intelligence of those present or the able
manner in which she discussed the salient points pertaining to woman
suffrage. She displayed an ability, conciseness and force that must
have carried conviction to every impartial listener.... Her visit here
has done more to advance the cause of woman suffrage than can now be
fully appreciated. She has sown the germ of a movement which can not
fail to inoculate our people with a belief in the justice of her cause
and the injustice of longer depriving the more intelligent, purer and
consequently better portion of our inhabitants of that greatest of
boons, the ballot.--Sioux City Daily Times.
Miss Anthony's lecture was full of good, sound common sense, and an
opponent of woman suffrage said it was the best speech he ever heard on
the subject. Wyoming was highly complimented as being the first
Territory to recognize the equality of woman, and pronounced as much
ahead of her eastern sisters in civilization as she is higher in
altitude. The lecture abounded with gems of wit, humor and pathos, and
the audience would willingly have listened another hour.--Cheyenne
Tribune.
The press sneers at Miss Anthony, men tell her she is out of her proper
sphere, people call her a scold, good women call her masculine, a
monstrosity in petticoats; but if one-half of her sex possessed
one-half of her acquirements, her intellectual culture, her
self-reliance and independence of character, the world would be the
better for it.--Denver News.
A large and attentive audience filled the Denver theater last night to
hear Miss Susan B. Anthony, champion of the "new departure in
politics," called the woman suffrage movement. The fact that there was
not sitting room for all who came is evidence of deep interest in the
subject, or great curiosity to hear the lady speak.... It is impossible
to give an outline of her speech. It was a string of strong arguments
put in a straightforward, clear and vigorous way, eliciting favor and
inviting the attention of the audience throughout. The lecture was
suggestive, and of the kind that sets people to thinking.--Denver
Tribune.]
[Footnote 59: Notwithstanding this tribute, the Herald printed a long
string of verses with this introduction: "We trust our readers will not
miss the perusal of this piece of rhythmical irony. It is certainly one
of the happiest hits we have seen for many a day. No one can mistake
the allusion to the 'Old Gal.' who has been so recently among us
'tooting her horn.'"
"Along the city's thoroughfare,
A grim Old Gal with manly air
Strode amidst the noisy crowd,
Tooting her horn both shrill and loud;
Till e'en above the city's roar,
Above its din and discord, o'er
All, was heard, 'Ye tyrants, fear!
The dawn of freedom's drawing near--
Woman's Rights and Suffrage.'
"A meek old man, in accents wild,
Cried,'Sal! turn back and nurse our child!'
She bent on him a withering look,
Her bony fist at him she shook.
And screeched, 'Ye brute! ye think I'm flat
To mend your clo'es and nurse your brat?
Nurse it yourself; I'll change the plan,
When I am made a congressman--
Woman's Rights and Suffrage,'" etc.
*/]
[Footnote 60: Coming from The Dalles, the boat tied up for the night at
Umatilla Landing. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Duniway walking on shore saw a
man sitting in front of a little corner grocery and stopped to ask some
questions. They found that when a boy he had run away from home in Miss
Anthony's own neighborhood, had never written back and his family had
long believed him dead. After some conversation he consented that she
might write to his mother and then in his softened mood insisted that
they should have a glass of wine. Miss Anthony was a total abstainer
but not wishing to offend him, took one sip from a glass of Angelica
and then the ladies hurried back to the boat. Some one who had seen the
occurrence spread the story and the result was an Associated Press item
sent broadcast, stating that, since coming to the coast, Miss Anthony
was visiting saloons and associating with low characters.]
[Footnote 61: Two examples will suffice:
"EDITOR COLONIST: I have read with a feeling of thankfulness the letter
of 'A Male Biped,' in this day's Colonist. The writer deserves the
thanks of every good woman in the land for the bold and able manner in
which he has administered a shaking to a shrewish old mischief-maker
who, having failed to secure a husband herself, is tramping the
continent to make her more fortunate sisters miserable by creating
dissensions in their households. O, why do not some of our divines or
lawyers upset this woman's sophistries, and convince even her that
woman's true sphere is in 'submitting herself to her husband,' and
religiously fulfilling the marriage vows the wise organizers of society
have prescribed?
A WIFE AND A MOTHER."
"MR. EDITOR: America, the home of many humbugs, which produced Brigham
Young, Barnum, Home, the medium, and many others, has, it appears,
another human curiosity in Miss Anthony. This specimen from over the
way comes amongst us, and because our ladies fail to recognize or
encourage her in her vagaries, she gets very rabid and snarls and snaps
at the 'women of Victoria who had so sunk their womanhood that they
were happy even in their degradation.' The degradation referred to is
that of whipping, which this female firebrand appears to believe is the
rule hers. Surely the complete immunity from castigation of such a
noxious creature as Miss Anthony is sufficient answer to this libel.
Men in British Columbia no more countenance bad husbands than do the
women a quack apostle in petticoats. They look upon such persons as
sexual mistakes, like the two-headed lady or the four-legged baby, and
as safe guides on social questions as George Francis Train is in
politics.
AN INSULTED HUSBAND."
And yet during the few days she was in Victoria no leas than half a
dozen women came to her to protest against the law which allowed the
husband to whip his wife.]
[Footnote 62: During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate, a
California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman suffrage,
and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge. He took no
notice of it until a week or two later, when a suffrage convention met
in San Francisco; he then went before that body and delivered a radical
speech in favor of woman's rights, taking the most advanced grounds.
When he was through he remarked to a friend, "They have my views now,
and can make the most of them. I would not conceal them to be
senator."--History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 483.]
CHAPTER XXIV.
REPUBLICAN SPLINTER----MISS ANTHONY VOTES.
1872.
The leading women in the movement for suffrage, supported by some of
the ablest constitutional lawyers in the country, continued to claim
the right to vote under the following:
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, JULY 28, 1868.
SECTION 1. 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.
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, MARCH 30, 1870.
SECTION 1. 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.
Many of the Republican leaders admitted that these amendments might be
construed to include women, but were silenced by the cry of "party
expediency." The fear of defeating the attempt to enfranchise the
colored male citizen made them refuse to add the word "sex" to the
Fifteenth Amendment, which would have placed this question beyond
debate and put an end to the agitation that has continued for thirty
years. The women insisted that the exigency which compelled the
ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment by the various State
legislatures was strong enough to carry it, even with the word "sex"
included. Having failed to gain this point, the National Association
determined to maintain the position that women were already
enfranchised, and embodied it in the call for the Washington convention
of 1872: "All those interested in woman's enfranchisement are invited
to consider the 'new departure'--women already citizens, and their
rights as such secured by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of
the Federal Constitution."
The same position was re-asserted in the resolutions adopted at that
meeting, which declared that "while the Constitution of the United
States leaves the qualifications of electors to the various States, it
nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective
franchise which is possessed by any other citizen; the right to
regulate not including the right to prohibit the franchise;" that
"those provisions of the several State constitutions which exclude
women from the franchise on account of sex, are violative alike of the
letter and spirit of the Federal Constitution;" and that "as the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution have
established the right of women to the elective franchise, we demand of
the present Congress a declaratory act which shall secure us at once in
the exercise of this right."
Miss Anthony and other leaders officially asked the privilege of
addressing the Senate and House upon this momentous question. This was
refused, as contrary to precedent, but a hearing was granted before the
Senate Judiciary Committee,[63] Friday morning, January 12. Not only
the committee room but the corridors were crowded. Mrs. Stanton and
Mrs. Hooker spoke grandly,[64] and as usual Miss Anthony was chosen to
clinch the argument, which she did as follows:
You already have had logic and Constitution; I shall refer,
therefore, to existing facts. Prior to the war the plan of
extending suffrage was by State action, and it was our boast that
the National Constitution did not contain a word which could be
construed into a barrier against woman's right to vote. But at the
close of the war 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 in Congress, we rushed to you with
petitions praying you not to insert the word "male" in the second
clause. Our best friends on the floor of Congress said to us: "The
insertion of that word puts up no new barrier against woman;
therefore do not embarrass us but wait until we get the negro
question settled." So the Fourteenth Amendment with the word "male"
was adopted.
Then, when the Fifteenth was presented without the word "sex," we
again petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared that
the absence of that word was no hindrance to us, and again begged
us to wait until they had finished the work of the war. "After we
have enfranchised the negro we will take up your case." Have they
done as they promised? When we come asking protection under the new
guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us that our
only plan is 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. It is only the close relations
existing between the sexes which have prevented any such result
from this injustice to women.
Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but realize
the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights now more
than twenty years, feel precisely as you would under such
circumstances. One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator
Sumner) said to me two winters ago, after our hearing before the
committee of the District: "I never realized before that you or any
woman could feel the disgrace, the degradation of disfranchisement
precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had conspired to
deprive me of my right to vote." Although I am a Quaker and take no
oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I will never
again beg my rights, but will come to Congress each year and demand
the recognition of them under the guarantees of the National
Constitution.
What we ask of the Republican party is simply to take down its own
bars. The facts in Wyoming show how it is that a Republican party
can exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a
Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the
first election sent one Republican to Congress and seven to the
Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of a Republican party
there was formed through the enfranchisement of women. The
Democrats, seeing this, are now determined to disfranchise them.
Can you Republicans so utterly stultify yourselves, can you so
entirely work against yourselves, as to refuse us a declaratory
law? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs. Hooker has said,
"favorably, if you can; adversely, if you must." We can wait no
longer.
The committee reported adversely on the question of woman's right to
vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
At the close of the convention, Miss Anthony hastened to her home in
Rochester, which she had not seen since her departure to California
eight months before. Soon after her arrival she was invited to meet a
number of her acquaintances at the home of her dear friend, Amy Post,
and give them an account of her experiences on the Pacific slope. At
its conclusion she was surprised by the presentation of a purse
containing $50, with a touching address by Mrs. Post asking her to
accept it as a testimonial of the appreciation in which her friends and
neighbors held her work for woman and humanity. At the same time she
received a gift of money from Sarah Pugh, in an envelope marked, "For
thine own dear self." In her acknowledgment she says:
The tears started when I read your sweet letter. Were it not for
the loving sympathy and confidence of the little handful of
ever-faithful such as you, my spirit, I fear, would have fainted
long ago. There are yourself, dear Lucretia and her equally dear
sister, Martha, who never fail to know just the moment when my
purse is drained to the bottom and to drop the needed dollar into
it. It is really wonderful how I have been carried through all
these years financially. I often feel that Elijah's being fed by
the ravens was no more miraculous than my being furnished with the
means to do the great work which has been for the past twenty years
continuously presenting itself--yes, presenting itself, for it has
always come to me. My thought has been to escape the hardships but
they come ever and always, and so I try to accept the situation and
work my way through as best I can.
[Autograph:
My love and good wishes are
always flowing toward thyself and
dear Mrs Stanton--
Thine truly
Amy Post]
She was soon off again, lecturing in various cities and towns, going as
far west as Nebraska. Early in April, while waiting at a little
railroad station in Illinois, a gentleman came in and handed her a copy
of Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly containing this double-leaded
announcement:
The undersigned citizens of the United States, responding to the
invitation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, propose to
hold a convention at Steinway Hall, in the city of New York, the
9th and 10th of May. We believe the time has come for the formation
of a new political party whose principles shall meet the issues of
the hour and represent equal rights for all. As women of the
country are to take part for the first time in political action, we
propose that the initiative steps in the convention shall be taken
by them.... This convention will declare the platform of the
People's party, and consider the nomination of candidates for
President and Vice-President of the United States, who shall be the
best possible exponents of political and industrial reform....
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN E. ANTHONY,
ISABELLA B. HOOKER, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.
It was followed by the call of Mrs. Woodhull and others for a delegate
convention to form a new party. Miss Anthony was thunderstruck. Not
only had she no knowledge of this action, but she was thoroughly
opposed both to the forming of a new party and to the National
Association's having any share in such a proceeding. She immediately
telegraphed an order to have her name removed from the call, and wrote
back indignant letters of protest against involving the association in
such an affair. A month prior to this, on March 13, she had written
Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker from Leavenworth:
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. I will do all I can to support either of the leading
parties which may adopt a woman suffrage plank or nominee; but no
one of them wants to do anything for us, while each would like to
use us....
I tell you I feel utterly disheartened--not that our cause is going
to die or be defeated, but as to my place and work. 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, either in the body or
out of it, in the direction she steers, 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 control of the whole lot
of them, just precisely the same when reflected through her woman's
tongue and pen as if they spoke directly for themselves.
After sending this letter she had supposed the question settled until
she saw this notice, hence her anger and dismay can be imagined.
The regular anniversary meeting of the National Association was to
begin in New York on May 9, and on the 6th Miss Anthony reached the
city to prevent, if possible, the threatened coalition with the
proposed new party. She engaged the parlors of the Westmoreland Hotel
for headquarters and then hastened over to Tenafly to get Mrs. Stanton.
As soon as the suffrage committee opened its business session, Mrs.
Woodhull and her friends appeared by previous arrangement made during
Miss Anthony's absence in the West, and announced that they would hold
joint sessions with the suffrage convention the next two days at
Steinway Hall. It was only by Miss Anthony's firm stand and indomitable
will that this was averted, and that the set of resolutions which they
brought, cut and dried, was defeated in the committee. She positively
refused to allow them the use of Steinway Hall, which had been rented
in her name, and at length they were compelled to give up the game and
engage Apollo Hall for their "new party" convention. Mrs. Stanton and
Mrs. Hooker called her narrow, bigoted and headstrong, but the
proceedings of the "people's convention" next day, which nominated Mrs.
Woodhull for President, showed how suicidal it would have been to have
had it under the auspices of the National Suffrage Association.
The forces of the latter, however, were greatly demoralized, the
attendance at the convention was small, and Mrs. Stanton refused to
serve longer as president. Miss Anthony was elected in her stead and,
just as she was about to adjourn the first evening session, to her
amazement Mrs. Woodhull came gliding in from the side of the platform
and moved that "this convention adjourn to meet tomorrow morning at
Apollo Hall!" An ally in the audience seconded the motion, Miss Anthony
refused to put it, an appeal was made from the decision of the chair,
Mrs. Woodhull herself put the motion and it was carried overwhelmingly.
Miss Anthony declared the whole proceeding out of order, as the one
making the motion, the second, and the vast majority of those voting
were not members of the association. She adjourned the convention to
meet in the same place the next morning and, as Mrs. Woodhull persisted
in talking, ordered the janitor to turn off the gas.
The next day, almost without assistance and deserted by those who
should have stood by her, she went through with the remaining three
sessions and brought the convention to a close. In her diary that
evening is written: "A sad day for me; all came near being lost. Our
ship was so nearly stranded by leaving the helm to others, that we
rescued it only by a hair's breadth." She stopped at Lydia Mott's and
then at Martha Wright's for comfort and sympathy, finding them in
abundant measure, and reached home strengthened and refreshed, ready
again to take up the work.
At the request of many suffrage advocates, Miss Anthony and Laura De
Force Gordon went to the National Liberal Convention, at Cincinnati,
May 2, 1872, with a resolution asking that as liberal Republicans they
should hold fast to the principles of the Declaration of Independence
and recognize the right of women to the franchise. The ladies were
politely treated and invited to seats on the platform, but were not
allowed to appear before the committee and no attention was paid to
their resolution. They expected no favors from the presiding officer,
Carl Schurz, the foreign born, always a bitter opponent of woman
suffrage, but they had hoped for assistance from B. Gratz Brown, George
W. Julian, Theodore Tilton and other leading spirits of the meeting,
who had been open and avowed friends; but it was the old, old
story--political exigency required that women must be sacrificed, and
this so-called Liberal convention was no more liberal on this subject
than all which had preceded it. Miss Anthony is quoted in an interview
as saying:
You see our cause is just where the anti-slavery cause was for a
long time. It had plenty of friends and supporters three years out
of four, but every fourth year, when a President was to be elected,
it was lost sight of; then the nation was to be saved and the slave
must be sacrificed. So it is with us women. Politicians are willing
to use us at their gatherings to fill empty seats, to wave our
handkerchiefs and clap our hands when they say smart things; but
when we ask to be allowed to help them in any substantial way, by
assisting them to choose the best men for our law-makers and
rulers, they push us aside and tell us not to bother them.
On June 7 Miss Anthony and other prominent suffrage leaders attended
the National Republican Convention, at Philadelphia, which adopted the
following compromise:
The Republican party 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.
At the close of this meeting, the faithful Sarah Pugh slipped $20 into
Miss Anthony's hand, telling her to go and confer with Mrs. Stanton.
She did so and they prepared a strong letter for the New York World,
calling upon the Democrats at Baltimore to adopt a woman suffrage plank
if they did not wish to compel the women of the country to work for the
success of the Republican ticket. Immediately after the Philadelphia
convention, Henry B. Blackwell, editor of the Woman's Journal, wrote
Miss Anthony:
I have given my views to Mrs. Stanton as to the wisdom of
concentrating the woman suffragists in support of the Republican
candidates and platform. I think if this is done earnestly,
heartily and unselfishly, upon the ground of anti-slavery principle
and of progressive tendencies, a strong and general reaction will
set in and that, instead of "recognition," as in 1872, we shall
have endorsement and victory in 1876.... I believe you love the
cause better than yourself. I hope that you will see the wisdom of
accepting the resolution in the friendly, generous spirit of the
convention and, by accepting it, making it mean what we desire it
should, which we can do if we will.
To this she replied on June 14:
Your note is here. My view of our true position is to hold
ourselves as a balance of power, "to give aid and comfort," as the
Springfield Republican says, to the party which shall inscribe on
its banners "Freedom to Woman." If I am a Republican or Liberal or
Democrat per se and work for the party right or wrong, then I make
of myself and my co-workers no added power for or against the one
which adopts or rejects our claim for recognition.
I do not expect any _man_ to see and act with me here, but I do not
understand how any _woman_ can do otherwise than refuse to accept
any party which ignores her sex. I will not work with a party today
on the war issues or because it was true to them in the olden time;
but I will work with the one which accepts the living, vital issue
of today--freedom to woman--and I scarcely have a hope that
Baltimore will step ahead of Philadelphia in her platform. Grant's
recognition of citizens' rights evidently _means_ to include women,
and Wilson's letter openly and boldly declares the new mission of
Republicanism. I, therefore, now expect to take the field--the
stump, if you please to call it so--for the Republican party, but
not because of any of its nineteen planks save the fourteenth,
which makes mention of woman, although faintly. It is "the promise
of things not seen," hence I shall clutch it as the drowning man
the floating straw, and cling to it until something stronger and
surer shall present itself. It is a great step to get this first
recognition; it carries the discussion of our question legitimately
into every school district and every ward meeting of the
presidential canvass. It is what my soul has waited for these seven
years. From this we shall go rapidly onward.
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Hooker attended the National Democratic
Convention at Baltimore, July 9. The latter some time before had
repudiated her life-long allegiance to the Republican party, because of
its treatment of woman's claims, and had declared her belief that their
only chance was with the Democrats. The Baltimore Sun thus describes an
interview in the corridor between the Hon. James R. Doolittle,
president of the convention, and Miss Anthony and Mrs. Hooker: "Mr.
Doolittle's erect and commanding figure was set off to great advantage
by his elegantly-fitting dress-coat; Mrs. Hooker, tall and erect as the
lord of creation she was bearding, with her abundant tresses of
beautiful gray and her intellectual, sparkling eyes; Miss Anthony, the
peer of both in height, with her gold spectacles set forward on a nose
which would have delighted Napoleon; the two ladies attired in rich
black silk--the attention of the few who lingered was at once attracted
to the picture." But Mr. Doolittle justified his name, as far as
extending any assistance was concerned, and the ladies had not even
seats on the platform.
As an example of the way in which the politicians tried not to do it
and yet seem to sufficiently to secure such small influence as the
women might possess, may be quoted a letter from Hon. John Cochran, of
New York City, to Mrs. Stanton, his cousin: "I think Baltimore should
speak on the subject. I am sorry Cincinnati did not. Any baby could say
that fourteenth formula in the Philadelphia platform; but I would say
something more if I said anything at all. Come, see if you can rig up
this shaky plank and give something not quite suffrage, but so like it
that all the female Sampsons will vote that it is good." The Baltimore
convention, however, could not be induced to adopt even a rickety plank
which might fool the women. Miss Anthony writes in her diary: "The
Democrats have swallowed Cincinnati, hoofs, horns and all. No hope for
women here."
While the Republican plank was unsatisfactory, it was the first time
Woman ever had been mentioned in a national platform and so many
glittering hopes were held out by the Republican leaders that the
officers of the National Association felt justified in giving their
influence to this party. They were the more willing to do this as
General Grant, the nominee, had been the first President to appoint
women postmasters and was known to be friendly to their claim for equal
opportunities, and as Henry Wilson, candidate for Vice-President, was
an avowed advocate of woman suffrage. Therefore, Miss Anthony,
president, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, chairman of the executive
committee, on July 19 sent out a ringing address which began:
Women of the United States, the hour for political action has come.
For the first time in the history of our country, woman has been
recognized in the platform of a large and dominant party.
Philadelphia has spoken and woman is no longer ignored. She is now
officially recognized as a part of the body politic.... We are told
that the plank does not say much, that in fact it is only a
"splinter;" and our Liberal friends warn us not to rely upon it as
a promise of the ballot to women. What it is, we know even better
than others. We recognize its meagerness; we see in it the timidity
of politicians; but beyond and through all, we see a promise of the
future. It is the thin side of the entering wedge which shall break
woman's slavery in pieces and make us at last a nation truly
free--a nation in which the caste of sex shall fall down by the
caste of color, and humanity alone be the criterion of all human
rights. The Republican has been the party of ideas; of progress.
Under its leadership, the nation came safely through the fiery
ordeal of the rebellion; under it slavery was destroyed; under it
manhood suffrage was established. The women of the country have
long looked to it in hope, and not in vain; for today we are
launched by it into the political arena, and the Republican party
must hereafter fight our battles for us. This great, this
progressive party, having taken the initiative step, will never go
back on its record.
In July Miss Anthony, continuing the correspondence with Mr. Blackwell,
wrote:
Letters are pouring in upon me because of my announcement that I
shall work for the Republican party, second only in numbers and
regret to those of 1868--because of my accepting Train's words,
works and cash, given me to push on the cause of woman suffrage as
best I knew. It is marvelous that the friends can not see what a
gain it is to have the question of woman's claims introduced into
politics. It is the hour I have longed and worked for with might
and main because I have seen that so soon as we could get this, the
editors and orators of both parties must of necessity discuss the
subject pro and con, and of course the party which introduced it
favorably into politics, must be the one to give the reasons for so
doing.
As I endured the growling when I was charged with giving too much
"aid and comfort" to the Democracy, because I thanked them for what
they did to agitate our demand in Congress and out, I think I shall
be equal to the fire now for affiliating with the Republicans. You
did me the grossest injustice in the Woman's Journal, when you
called me a "woman suffrage Democrat," just as gross as the
Liberals will be likely to do, when they shall call me a "woman
suffrage Republican." I belong to neither party, and approve of one
or the other only as it shall speak and work for the
enfranchisement of woman. Had Cincinnati declared for woman, and
Philadelphia not, I should have worked with might and main for the
Liberals. All I know or care of parties now and until women are
free, is "woman and her disfranchised--crucified!"
It is most touching to observe Miss Anthony's joy over this
quasi-recognition on the part of Republicans, the more especially at
the beginning of the campaign. In her journal of July 26 she says: "It
is so strange that all can not see the immense gain to us to have the
party in power commit itself to a respectful treatment of our claims.
Already the tone of the entire Republican press is elevated. It is
wonderful to see the change. None but the Liberals deride us now, and
Theodore Tilton stands at their head in light and scurrilous
treatment." To her old friend Mrs. Bloomer, she sent this rallying cry:
"Ho for the battle now! The lines are clearly drawn.... Slight as is
the Republicans' mention of our claim in their plank, it surely is
vastly more and better than the disrespect of no mention at all by the
Democrats, coupled with the fact that their nominee, Mr. Greeley, is an
out-and-out opponent of our movement, and does not now refrain from
saying to earnest suffrage women that he 'neither desires our help nor
believes we are capable of giving any.'"
To Mrs. Stanton she wrote: "The Democrats have now abandoned their old
dogmas and accepted those of the Republicans, while the latter have
stepped up higher to labor reform and woman suffrage. Forney's
editorial in the Philadelphia Press of July 11 states positively that
the woman suffrage cause is espoused by the Republican party. I tell
you the Fort Sumter gun of our war is fired, and we will go on to
victory almost without a repulse from this date." But Mrs. Stanton
could not share in her optimism, and replied: "I do not feel jubilant
over the situation; in fact I never was so blue in my life. You and Mr.
Blackwell write most enthusiastically, and I try to feel so and to see
that the 'Philadelphia splinter' is something. Between nothing and
that, there is no choice, and we must accept it. With my natural pride
of character, it makes me feel intensely bitter to have my rights
discussed by popinjay priests and politicians, to have woman's work in
church and State decided by striplings of twenty-one, and the press of
the country in a broad grin because, forsooth, some American matrons
choose to attend a political convention. Now do I know how Robert
Purvis feels when these 'white mules' turn round their long left ears
at him. But let the Democrats and Liberals do what they may, the cat
will mew, the dog will have his day. Dear friend, you ask me what I
see. I am under a cloud and see nothing."
Under date of August 19, Henry Wilson wrote Miss Anthony: "Your
cheerful and cheering note came to me in Indiana. In great haste I can
only say that I like its spirit, believe in its doctrines, and will
call the attention of the Republican committees, both national and New
York, to your suggestions, and trust and believe that much good may
result from carrying into effect its suggestions."
On July 16 Miss Anthony had received a telegram from Washington to come
at once for a conference with the Republican committee. Her sister and
mother were very ill and she would not leave them, even for such a
summons. On the 24th another telegram came, but it was not until the
29th that she felt safe in leaving the invalids. When she reached
Washington, the chairman of the committee said: "At the time we sent
our first telegram we were panic-stricken and had you come then, you
might have had what you pleased to carry out your plan of work among
the women; but now the crisis has passed and we feel confident of
success; nevertheless, we will be glad of your co-operation." He gave
her a check of $500, to which the New York committee added $500 more,
to hold meetings in that State.
[Autograph: Henry Wilson]
The same change of feeling was noticeable in the press. Immediately
after the Baltimore convention, when it looked as if Greeley might be
elected, the Republican newspapers were filled with appeals to the
women, and the plank was magnified to suit any interpretation they
might choose, but as the campaign progressed and the danger passed, it
was almost wholly ignored by both press and platform. The Republicans
did, however, employ a number of women speakers during the campaign,
but Miss Anthony received no money except this $1,000, all of which she
expended in public meetings. The first was at Rochester, September 20,
and, the daily papers said, "far surpassed any rally held during the
season." Mayor Carter Wilder presided, and the speakers were Mrs.
Stanton, Mrs. Gage and Rev. Olympia Brown. The series closed with a
tremendous meeting at Cooper Institute, Hon. Luther R. Marsh presiding,
and Peter Cooper, Edmund Yates and a number of other prominent men on
the stage. Henry Ward Beecher had agreed to preside and to speak at
this meeting, but at the last moment was called away.
Miss Anthony was considerably at variance with some of the Republican
politicians, however, because she and her associates, through all the
campaign, persisted in speaking on the woman's plank in the platform
and advocating equal suffrage, instead of ignoring these points, as the
men speakers did, and making the fight on the other issues of the
party. Her position is best stated in one of her own letters to Mrs.
Stanton early in the autumn:
If you are ready to go forth into this canvass saying that you
endorse the party on any other point or for any other cause than
that of its recognition of woman's claim to vote, _I_ am not and I
shall not thus go. To the contrary, I shall work for the Republican
party and call on all women to join me, precisely as we thanked the
Democrats of Wyoming and Kansas, and Hon. James Brooks and Senator
Cowan, viz: for what that party has done and promises to do for
woman, nothing more, nothing less.
Then again, I shall not join with the Republicans in hounding
Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the
Democracy. Greeley and all the Liberals are just as good and true
Republicans as ever; and the fact that old pro-slavery men propose
to vote for him no more makes him pro-slavery than the drunkards'
or rum-sellers' vote for him makes him a friend and advocate of the
liquor traffic. My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the
Harpers' 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.
I shall try to be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but
more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the
slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent
and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle
or of our philosophy of reform to aid mere Republican partisanship.
Miss Anthony never has abandoned this position and the leading
advocates of woman suffrage stand with her squarely upon the ground
that no party, whatever its principles, shall have their sanction and
advocacy until it shall make an unequivocal declaration in favor of the
enfranchisement of women and support this by means of the party press
and platform.
There was a desire on the part of many women to test the right to vote
which they claimed was conferred on them by the Fourteenth Amendment,
and in 1872 a number in different places attempted to cast their
ballots at the November election. A few were accepted by the
inspectors, but most of them were refused. On Friday morning, November
1, Miss Anthony read, at the head of the editorial columns of the
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the following strong plea:
Now register! Today and tomorrow are the only remaining
opportunities. If you were not permitted to vote, you would fight
for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it.
You have it now at the cost of five minutes' time to be spent in
seeking your place of registration and having your name entered.
And yet, on election day, less than a week hence, hundreds of you
are likely to lose your votes because you have not thought it worth
while to give the five minutes. Today and tomorrow are your only
opportunities. Register now!
There was nothing to indicate that this appeal was made to men only, it
said plainly that suffrage was a right for which one would fight and
face death, and that it could be had at the cost of five minutes' time.
She was a loyal American citizen, had just conducted a political
campaign, was thoroughly conversant with the issues and vitally
interested in the results of the election, and certainly competent to
vote. She summoned her three faithful sisters and going to the registry
office of the Eighth ward (in a barber's shop) they asked to be
registered. There was some hesitation, but Miss Anthony read the
Fourteenth Amendment and the article in the State constitution in
regard to taking the oath, which made no sex-qualification, and at
length their names were duly entered by the inspectors, Beverly W.
Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, Republicans; William B. Hall, Democrat,
objecting. Miss Anthony then called upon several other women in her
ward, urging them to follow her example, and in all fifteen registered.
The evening papers noted this fact and the next day enough women in
other wards followed their example to bring the number up to fifty.
The Rochester Express and the Democrat and Chronicle (Republican) noted
the circumstance, expressing no opinion, but the Union and Advertiser
(Democratic) denounced the proceeding and declared that "if the votes
of these women were received the inspectors should be prosecuted to the
full extent of the law." This attack was kept up till the day of
election, November 5, with the result of so terrorizing the inspectors
that all refused to accept the votes of the women who had registered
except those in the Eighth ward where the ballots of the fifteen[65]
were received.
In a letter to Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony says: "Well, I have been and
gone and done it, positively voted this morning at 7 o'clock, and swore
my vote in at that. Not a jeer, not a rude word, not a disrespectful
look has met one woman. Now if all our suffrage women would work to
this end of enforcing the constitutional supremacy of National over
State law, what strides we might make from now on; but oh, I'm so
tired! I've been on the go constantly for five days, but to good
purpose, so all right. I hope you too voted."
The news of the acceptance of these votes was sent by the Associated
Press to all parts of the country and created great interest and
excitement. There was scarcely a newspaper in the United States which
did not contain from one to a dozen editorial comments. Some of these
were flippant or abusive, most of them non-committal but respectful,
and many earnest, dignified and commendatory;[66] a few, notably the
New York Graphic, contained outrageous cartoons.
Immediately after registering Miss Anthony had gone to a number of the
leading lawyers in Rochester for advice as to her right to vote on the
following Tuesday, but none of them would consider her case. Finally
she entered the office of Henry R. Selden, a leading member of the bar
and formerly judge of the court of appeals. He listened to her
attentively, took the mass of documents which she had brought with
her--Benjamin F. Butler's minority report, Francis Minor's resolutions,
Judge Riddle's speech made in Washington in a similar case the year
previous, various Supreme Court decisions, an incontrovertible array of
argument--and told her he would give her an answer on Monday. She
called then and he said: "My brother Samuel and I have spent an entire
day in examining these papers and we believe that your claim to a right
to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment is valid. I will protect you in
that right to the best of my ability."
Armed with this authority she cast her vote the next day, and advised
the other women to do the same. As the inspectors hesitated to receive
the votes, Miss Anthony assured them that should they be prosecuted she
herself would bear all the expenses of the suit. They had been advised
not to register the women by Silas J. Wagner, Republican supervisor.
All three of the inspectors and also a bystander declared under oath
that Daniel J. Warner, the Democratic supervisor, had advised them to
register the names of the women; but on election day this same man
attempted to challenge their votes. This, however, already had been
done by one Sylvester Lewis, who testified later that he acted for the
Democratic central committee. The general belief that these ladies
voted the Republican ticket may have influenced this action.
About two weeks after election, Monday, November 18, Miss Anthony
received a call from Deputy United States Marshal E.J. Keeney who, amid
many blushes and much hesitation and stammering, announced that it was
his unpleasant duty to arrest her. "Is this your usual method of
serving a warrant?" she calmly inquired. The marshal, thus encouraged,
produced the necessary legal document.[67] As she wished to make some
change in her dress, he told her she could come down alone to the
commissioner's office, but she refused to take herself to court, so he
waited until she was ready and then declined her suggestion that he put
handcuffs on her. She had intended to have suit brought against those
inspectors who refused to register the women, but it never had occurred
to her that those who voted would themselves be arrested.
Under date of November 27, Judge Selden wrote her: "I suppose the
commissioner will, as a matter of course, hold you for trial at the
circuit court, _whatever your rights may be in the matter._ In my
opinion, the idea that you can be charged with a _crime_ on account of
voting, or offering to vote, when you honestly believed yourself
entitled to vote, is simply preposterous, whether your belief _were
right or wrong_. However, the learned gentlemen engaged in this
movement seem to suppose they can make a crime out of your honest
deposit of your ballot, and _perhaps_ they can find a respectable court
or jury that will be of their opinion. If they do so I shall be greatly
disappointed."
Miss Anthony and the fourteen other ladies who voted, went before U. S.
Commissioner Storrs, U. S. District-Attorney Crowley and Assistant U.
S. District-Attorney Pond, and were ordered to appear for examination
Friday, November 29. Following is a portion of the examination of Miss
Anthony by the commissioner:
Previous to voting at the 1st district poll in the Eighth ward, did
you take the advice of counsel upon your voting?--Yes, sir.--Who
was it you talked with?--Judge Henry E. Selden.--What did he advise
you in reference to your legal right to vote?--He said it was the
only way to find out what the law was upon the subject--to bring it
to a test case.--Did he advise you to offer your vote?--Yes,
sir.--State whether or not, prior to such advice, you had retained
Mr. Selden. No, sir.--Have you anything further to say upon Judge
Selden's advice?--I think it was sound.--Did he give you an opinion
upon the subject?--He was like the rest of you lawyers--he had not
studied the question.--What did he advise you?--He left me with
this opinion: That he was a conscientious man; that he would
thoroughly study the subject of woman's right to vote and decide
according to the law.--Did you have any doubt yourself of your
right to vote?--Not a particle.
Cross-examination--Would you not have made the same efforts to vote
that you did, if you had not consulted with Judge Selden?--Yes,
sir.--Were you influenced in the matter by his advice at all?--No,
sir.--You went into this matter for the purpose of testing the
question?--Yes, sir; I had been resolved for three years to vote at
the first election when I had been at home for thirty days before.
It is an incident worthy of note that this examination took place and
the commissioner's decision was rendered in the same dingy little room
where, in the olden days, fugitive slaves were examined and returned to
their masters. While the attorneys were endeavoring to agree upon a
date for the hearing of arguments, Miss Anthony remarked that she
should be engaged lecturing in central Ohio until December 10. "But you
are supposed to be in custody all this time," said the
district-attorney. "Oh, is that so? I had forgotten all about that,"
she replied. That night she wrote in her diary: "A hard day and a sad
anniversary! Ten years ago our dear father was laid to rest. This
evening at 7 o'clock my old friend Horace Greeley died. A giant
intellect suddenly gone out!"
The second hearing took place December 23 in the common council
chamber, in the presence of a large audience which included many
ladies, the newspapers stating that it had rather the appearance of a
social gathering than an arraignment of criminals. Of those on trial
one paper said: "The majority of these law-breakers 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."
At Judge Selden's request, Hon. John Van Voorhis, one of the ablest
lawyers in Rochester, had been associated with himself for the defense.
Both made strong, logical arguments, and Miss Anthony herself spoke
most earnestly in behalf of the three inspectors, who also had been
arrested. The commissioner held all of them guilty, fixed their bail at
$500 each, and gave them until the following Monday to furnish it. All
did so except Miss Anthony, who refused to give bail and applied for a
writ of habeas corpus from U. S. District-Judge N. K. Hall. The
Rochester Express, which stood nobly by her through this ordeal, said
editorially:
Miss Anthony had a loftier end in view than the making of a
sensation when she registered her name and cast her vote. The act
was in harmony with a life steadily consecrated to a high purpose
from which she has never wavered, though she has met a storm of
invective, personal taunt and false accusation, more than enough to
justify any person less courageous than she in giving up a warfare
securing her only ingratitude and abuse. But Miss Anthony has no
morbid sentiment in her nature. There is at least one woman in the
land--and we believe there are a good many more--who does not whine
others into helping her over a hard spot, or even plead for help,
but bravely helps herself and puts her hand to the plough without
turning back. Those who are now regarding her as practically
condemned to State prison or the payment of a fine of $500, need
not waste their sympathy, for she would suffer either penalty with
heroic cheerfulness if thereby she might help bring about the day
when the principle "no taxation without representation" meant
something more than it does. In writing lately to a friend, she
thus expressed herself:
"Yes, I hope you will be present at the examination, to witness the
grave spectacle of fifteen native born citizens, of sound mind and
not convicted of any crime, arraigned in the United States criminal
courts to answer for the offense of illegal voting, when the United
States Constitution, the supreme law of this land, says, 'All
persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens;
no State shall deny or abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens;' and 'The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied.'
The one question to be settled is, are personal freedom and
personal representation inherent rights and privileges under
democratic-republican institutions, or are they things of
legislation, precisely as under old monarchical governments, to be
given and taken at the option of a ruling class or of a majority
vote? If the former, then is our country free indeed; if the
latter, then is our country a despotism, and we women its victims!"
Under date of December 12, Benjamin F. Butler, then a member of
Congress, wrote Miss Anthony regarding her case:
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 practical force
to them there must be legislation. As, for example, in trial by
jury, a man can invoke the Constitution to prevent his being tried,
in a proper case, by any other tribunal than a jury; but if there
is no legislation, congressional or other, to give him a trial by
jury, I think, under the decisions, it would be very difficult to
see how it might be done. Therefore, the point is for the friends
of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation.
[Autograph: Benjamin F. Butler]
The results of the trial showed that General Butler was right in
thinking that further legislation would be required to enable women to
vote under the Constitution of the United States. It proved also that a
judge could set aside the right of a citizen to a trial by jury,
supposed to be guaranteed by every safeguard which could be thrown
around it by this same Constitution.
[Footnote 63: Present, Lyman Trumbull, Illinois, chairman; Roscoe
Conkling, New York; F.F. Frelinghuysen, New Jersey; Matthew H.
Carpenter, Wisconsin.]
[Footnote 64: See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, pp. 499 and 506.]
[Footnote 65: Susan B. Anthony, Mary S. Anthony, Guelma Anthony McLean,
Hannah Anthony Mosher, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah Truesdale, Mary Pulver,
Lottie B. Anthony, Nancy M. Chapman, Susan M. Hough, Hannah Chatfield,
Margaret Leyden, Mary Culver, Ellen S. Baker, Mary L. Hebard (wife of
the editor of the Express).]
[Footnote 66: When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden
testifies that he told Miss Anthony before election that she had a
right to vote, and this after a careful examination of the question,
the whole subject assumes new importance.... How grateful to Judge
Selden must all the suffragists be! He has struck the strongest and
most promising blow in their behalf that has yet been given. Dred Scott
was the pivot on which the Constitution turned before the war. Miss
Anthony seems likely to occupy a similar position now.--New York
Commercial Advertiser.
The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of
the renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November
election, afford a curious illustration of the extent to which the
United States government is stretching its hand in these matters. If
these women violated any law at all by voting, it was clearly a statute
of the State of New York, and that State might safely be left to
vindicate the majesty of its own laws. It is only by an over-strained
stretch of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that the national
government can force its long finger into the Rochester case at
all.--New York Sun.
Whatever may be said of Susan B. Anthony, there is no doubt but she has
kept the public mind of the country agitated upon the woman's rights
question as few others, male or female, could have done. She has
displayed very superior judgment and has seldom been led into acts of
even seeming impropriety. She has won the respect of all classes by her
ability, her consistency and her spotless character, and she today
stands far in advance of all her co-workers in the estimation of the
people. The fact that she voted at Rochester at the presidential
election has created no little commotion on the part of the press, but
if women are to become voters, who but the one who has taken the lead
in the advocacy of that right should be among the first to cast the
vote?--Toledo Blade.
We pause in the midst of our pressing duties to admire the zeal and
courage which find in the course of these ladies a challenge to battle,
while evils a thousandfold worse, such as bribery, etc., are permitted
to pass unnoticed.... The ladies who voted in this city on the 5th of
this month did so from the conviction that they had a constitutional
right to the ballot. In that they may or may not have been mistaken,
but they certainly can not be justly classed with the ordinary illegal
voter and repeater. The latter always vote for a pecuniary
consideration, knowingly and intentionally violating our laws to get
gain. The former voted for a principle and to assert what, they esteem
a right. The attempt by insinuation to class them among the ordinary
illegal voters will react upon its movers.--Rochester Evening Express.]
[Footnote 67: Complaint has this day been made by ---- on oath before
me, William C. Storrs, commissioner, charging that Susan B. Anthony, on
or about the fifth day of November, 1872, at the city of Rochester, N.
Y., at an election held in the Eighth ward of the city of Rochester
aforesaid, for a representative in the Congress of the United States,
did then and there vote for a representative in the Congress of the
United States, without having a lawful right to vote and in violation
of Section 19 of an act of Congress approved May 31, 1870, entitled "An
act, to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in
the several States of this Union and for other purposes."]
CHAPTER XXV.
TRIAL FOR VOTING UNDER FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.
1873.
In the midst of these harassing circumstances Miss Anthony made the
usual preparations for holding the annual woman suffrage convention in
Washington, January 16 and 17, 1873, and presided over its
deliberations. In her opening speech she said:
There are three methods of extending suffrage to new classes. The
first is for the legislatures of the several States to submit the
question to those already voters. Before the war this was the only
way thought of, and during all those years we petitioned the
legislatures to submit an amendment striking the word "male" from
the suffrage clause of the State constitutions. The second method
is for Congress to submit to the several legislatures a proposition
for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit the States from
depriving women citizens of their right to vote. The third plan is
for women to take their right under the Fourteenth Amendment of the
National Constitution, which declares that all persons are
citizens, and no State shall deny or abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens.
Again, there are two ways of securing the right of suffrage under
the Constitution as it is, one by a declaratory act of Congress
instructing the officers of election to receive the votes of women;
the other by bringing suits before the courts, as women already
have done, in order to secure a judicial decision on the broad
interpretation of the Constitution that all persons are citizens,
and all citizens voters. The vaults in yonder Capitol hold the
petitions of 100,000 women for a declaratory act, and the calendars
of our courts show that many are already testing their right to
vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. I stand here under indictment
for having exercised my right as a citizen to vote at the last
election; and by a fiction of the law, I am now in custody and not
a free person on this platform.
Among the forcible resolutions adopted were one asserting "that States
may regulate all local questions of property, taxation, etc., but the
inalienable personal rights of citizenship must be declared by the
Constitution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by Congress,
and enforced by the arm of the Executive;" and another declaring "that
the criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony by the United States, for
the alleged crime of exercising the citizen's right of suffrage, is an
act of arbitrary and unconstitutional authority and a blow at the
liberties of every citizen of this nation." Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton,
Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Rev. Olympia Brown and others made
ringing speeches on the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth
Amendment, defended the course of Miss Anthony and denounced her
arrest. This was the tenor of all the addresses. She was unanimously
elected president for the ensuing year, notwithstanding prison walls
loomed up before her; and then she hastened back to prepare for her
legal battle.
Miss Anthony met her counsel at Albany, and on January 21 Judge Selden
made a masterly argument before U.S. District-Judge N.K. Hall, in
support of her demand for a writ of habeas corpus, and asked the
discharge of the prisoner on the grounds: 1st, That in the act
complained of she discharged a duty or, at all events, exercised a
right, instead of committing a crime; that she had a constitutional and
lawful right to offer her ballot and to have it received and counted;
that she, as well as her brothers, was entitled to express her choice
as to the persons who should make, and those who should execute the
laws, inasmuch as she, as well as they, would be bound to observe them.
2d, That, if she had not that right, she in good faith believed that
she had it and, therefore, her act lacked the indispensable ingredient
of all crime, a corrupt intention.
The judge denied the writ and increased her bail to $1,000. From the
first Miss Anthony had been determined not to recognize the right of
the courts to interfere with her exercise of the franchise, and again
she refused to give bail, insisting that rather than do this she
preferred to go to jail. Judge Selden, however, in kindness of heart,
said there were times when a client must be guided by advice of her
counsel, and himself went on her bond. As she came out of the courtroom
she met her other lawyer, Mr. Van Voorhis, and told him what had been
done. He exclaimed, "You have lost your chance to get your case before
the Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus!" In her ignorance of legal
forms she had not understood this, and at once she rushed back and
tried to have the bond cancelled, but, to her bitter disappointment,
this was impossible. When she demanded of Judge Selden, "Did you not
know that you had estopped me from carrying my case to the Supreme
Court?" he replied with his old-time courtesy, "Yes, but I could not
see a lady I respected put in jail."
The following day, January 22, the commission then in session at Albany
for the purpose of revising the State Constitution was addressed by
Miss Anthony on woman's right to vote under the Constitution of the
United States. Her attorneys, Selden and Van Voorhis, were present and,
when she finished, the former said to her, "If I had heard this address
first I could have made a far better argument before Judge Hall."
Immediately following the judge's decision, Miss Anthony was indicted
by the grand jury.[68]
During this winter she attended the Ohio and Illinois Suffrage
conventions, and in a number of cities in these States and in Indiana
made her great constitutional argument on the right of women to vote
under the Fourteenth Amendment. Every newspaper in the country took up
the points involved and the interest and agitation were wide-spread.
She spoke at Ft. Wayne on February 25, an intensely cold night. Above
her was an open scuttle, from which a stream of air poured down upon
her head, and when half through her lecture she suddenly became
unconscious. She was the guest of Mrs. Mary Hamilton Williams, and was
taken at once to her home where she received every possible kindness
and attention. As soon as she recovered consciousness she begged that
steps be taken immediately to keep the occurrence from the Associated
Press, as she feared that, on account of her mother's extremely
delicate health, the shock and anxiety would prove fatal. Three nights
later, although not wholly recovered, she spoke to a large audience at
Marion, Ind.; the diary says, "going on the platform with fear and
trembling."
She returned home, and on March 4 cast her ballot at the city election
without any protest. Only two other ladies could be induced to vote,
Mrs. Mary Pulver and Mrs. Mary S. Hebard. All of the others who had
voted in the fall were thoroughly frightened, and their husbands and
other male relatives were even more panic-stricken.
In the midst of her own perplexities Miss Anthony did not forget to
issue the call[69] for the May Anniversary in New York, where she made
an address, detailing the incidents of her arrest and defending her
rights as a citizen. All the speeches and letters of the convention
were deeply sympathetic, and among the resolutions bearing on this
question was one stating that since the underlying principle of our
government is equality of political rights, therefore "the trial of
Susan B. Anthony, though ostensibly involving only the political status
of woman, in reality questions the right of every man to share in the
government; that it is not Susan B. Anthony or the women of the
republic who alone are on trial today, but it is the government of the
United States, and that as the decision is rendered for or against the
political rights of citizenship, so will the men of America find
themselves free or enslaved."
A reception was given by Dr. Clemence Lozier, founder of the Woman's
Homeopathic College of New York, who was always Miss Anthony's faithful
and devoted friend, never shaken in her trust by any storm that raged.
During the darkest days of her paper, The Revolution, when the
generosity of all others had been exhausted, Dr. Lozier gave her $50
every Saturday for many weeks and helped her by so much to bear the
weight of the financial burden. For more than a quarter of a century
her hospitable doors were always ajar for her, and it was to be
expected that, at this crucial moment, she would again express her
loyalty.
Miss Anthony's trial was set for the term of court beginning May 13,
and she decided to make a canvass of Monroe county, not to argue her
own case but in order that the people might be educated upon the
constitutional points involved. Commencing March 11, she spoke in
twenty-nine of the post-office districts. Being informed that
District-Attorney Crowley threatened to move her trial into another
county because she would prejudice the jury, she notified him she would
see that that county also was thoroughly canvassed, and asked him if
she were prejudicing a jury by reading and explaining the Constitution
of the United States.
The speech delivered by Miss Anthony during these weeks was a
masterpiece of clear, strong, logical argument in defense of woman's
right to the ballot which never has been equalled.[70] Her audiences
were large and attentive and public sentiment was thoroughly aroused.
One of the papers gives this description: "Miss Anthony was fashionably
dressed in black silk with demi-train, basque with flowing sleeves,
heavily trimmed in black lace; ruffled white lace undersleeves and a
broad, graceful lace collar; with a gold neck chain and pendant. Her
abundant hair was brushed back and bound in a knot after the fashion of
our grandmothers."
When the time for trial came, true to his promise, District-Attorney
Crowley obtained an order removing the cause to the U.S. Circuit Court
which was held at Canandaigua. This left just twenty-two days and,
calling to her aid Matilda Joslyn Gage, Miss Anthony spoke in
twenty-one places on the question, "Is it a crime for a United States
citizen to vote?" and Mrs. Gage in sixteen on "The United States on
trial, not Susan B. Anthony." Their last meeting was held in
Canandaigua the evening before the trial, and resolutions against this
injustice toward woman were heartily endorsed by the audience. The
Rochester Union and Advertiser condemned her in unmeasured terms,
having editorials similar to this:
SUSAN B. ANTHONY AS A CORRUPTIONIST.--We give in another column
today, from a legal friend, a communication which shows very
clearly that Miss Anthony is engaged in a work that will be likely
to bring her to grief. It is nothing more nor less than an attempt
to corrupt the source of that justice under law which flows from
trial by jury. Miss Anthony's case has passed from its gayest to
its gravest character. United States courts are not stages for the
enactment of comedy or farce, and the promptness and decision of
their judges in sentencing to prison culprits convicted before them
show that they are no respecters of persons.
Many influential newspapers, however, spoke in the highest terms of her
courage and ability and the justice of her cause.[71]
The trial[72] opened the afternoon of June 17, at the lovely village of
Canandaigua, Associate-Justice Ward Hunt on the bench, U.S.
District-Attorney Richard Crowley prosecuting, Hon. Henry R. Selden and
John Van Voorhis, Esq., defending. Miss Anthony, most of the ladies who
had voted with her, and also Mrs. Gage, were seated within the bar. On
the right sat the jury. The courtroom was crowded, many prominent men
being present, among them ex-President Fillmore. Judge Hall, of
Buffalo, was an interested spectator and Miss Anthony's counsel
endeavored to have him try the case with Judge Hunt in order that, if
necessary, it might go to the Supreme Court, which was not possible
with only one judge, but he refused.
[Illustration HW:
No one loves you and thanks
God more sincerely for your great
work for women than I do--
Lovingly Yours
C S Lozier]
It was conceded that Miss Anthony was a woman and that she voted on
November 5, 1872. Judge Selden, for the second time in all his
practice, offered himself as a witness, and testified that he advised
her to vote, believing that the laws and Constitution of the United
States gave her full authority. He then proposed to call Miss Anthony
to testify as to the intention or belief under which she voted, but the
Court held she was not competent as a witness in her own behalf. After
making this decision, the Court then admitted all the testimony, as
reported, which she gave on the preliminary examination before the
commissioner, in spite of her counsel's protest against accepting the
version which that officer took of her evidence. The prosecution simply
alleged the fact of her having voted. Mr. Selden then addressed the
judge and jury in a masterly argument of over three hours' duration,
beginning:
The defendant is indicted under the 19th Section of the Act of
Congress of May 31, 1870 (16th St. at L., 144), for "voting without
having a lawful right to vote." The words of the statute, so far as
they are material in this case, are as follows:
"If at any election for representative or delegate in the Congress
of the United States, any person shall knowingly ... vote without
having a lawful right to vote ... every such person shall be deemed
guilty of a crime ... and on conviction thereof shall be punished
by a fine not exceeding $500, or by imprisonment for a term not
exceeding three years, or by both, in the discretion of the Court,
and shall pay the costs of prosecution."
The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is
that she is a woman. If the same act had been done by her brother
under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only
innocent but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a
woman it is said to be a crime. The crime therefore consists not in
the act done but in the simple fact that the person doing it was a
woman and not a man. I believe this is the first instance in which
a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of
her sex....
Women have the same interest that men have in the establishment and
maintenance of good government; they are to the same extent as men
bound to obey the laws; they suffer to the same extent by bad laws,
and profit to the same extent by good laws; and upon principles of
equal justice, as it would seem, should be allowed, equally with
men, to express their preference in the choice of law-makers and
rulers. But however that may be, no greater absurdity, to use no
harsher term, could be presented, than that of rewarding men and
punishing women for the same act, _without giving to women any
voice in the question which should he rewarded and which punished_.
I am aware, however, that we are here to be governed by the
Constitution and laws as they are, and that if the defendant has
been guilty of violating the law, she must submit to the penalty,
however unjust or absurd the law may be. But courts are not
required to so interpret laws or constitutions as to produce either
absurdity or injustice, so long as they are open to a more
reasonable interpretation. This must be my excuse for what I design
to say in regard to the propriety of female suffrage, because with
that propriety established there is very little difficulty in
finding sufficient warrant in the Constitution for its exercise.
This case, in its legal aspects, presents three questions which I
propose to discuss.
1. Was the defendant legally entitled to vote at the election in
question?
2. If she was not entitled to vote but believed that she was, and
voted in good faith in that belief, did such voting constitute a
crime under the statute before referred to?
3. Did the defendant vote in good faith in that belief?
He argued the case from a legal, constitutional and moral standpoint
and concluded:
One other matter will close what I have to say. Miss Anthony
believed, and was advised, that she had a right to vote. She may
also have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the question
as to her right could not be brought before the courts for trial
without her voting or offering to vote, and if either was criminal,
the one was as much so as the other. Therefore she stands now
arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only step by which it was
possible to bring the great constitutional question as to her right
before the tribunals of the country for adjudication. If for thus
acting, in the most perfect good faith, with motives as pure and
impulses as noble as any which can find place in your honor's
breast in the administration of justice, she is by the laws of her
country to be condemned as a criminal, she must abide the
consequences. Her condemnation, however, under such circumstances,
would only add another most weighty reason to those which I have
already advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for
their protection.
The district-attorney followed with a two hours' speech. Then Judge
Hunt, without leaving the bench, delivered a written opinion[73] to the
effect that the Fourteenth Amendment, under which Miss Anthony claimed
the authority to vote, "was a protection, not to all our rights, but to
our rights as citizens of the United States only; that is, the rights
existing or belonging to that condition or capacity." At its conclusion
_he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty_.
Miss Anthony's counsel insisted that the Court had no power to make
such a direction in a criminal case and demanded that the jury be
permitted to bring in its own verdict. The judge made no reply except
to order the clerk to take the verdict. Mr. Selden demanded that the
jury be polled. Judge Hunt refused, and at once discharged the jury
without allowing them any consultation or asking if they agreed upon a
verdict. Not one of them had spoken a word. After being discharged, the
jurymen talked freely and several declared they should have brought in
a verdict of "not guilty."
The next day Judge Selden argued the motion for a new trial on seven
exceptions, but this was denied by Judge Hunt. The following scene then
took place in the courtroom:
Judge Hunt.--(Ordering the defendant to stand up). Has the prisoner
anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
Miss Anthony.--Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in
your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every
vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil
rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike
ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am
degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not
only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's
verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called
republican form of government.
Judge Hunt.--The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of argument
which the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in
presenting.
Miss Anthony.--May it please your honor, I am not arguing the
question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, 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 as
an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right
to life, liberty, property and--
Judge Hunt.--The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss Anthony.--But your honor will not deny me this one and only
poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my
citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that, since
the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that
either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been
allowed a word of defense before judge or jury--
Judge Hunt.--The prisoner must sit down--the Court can not allow
it.
Miss Anthony.--Of all my prosecutors, from the corner grocery
politician who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal,
commissioner, district-attorney, district-judge, your honor on the
bench--not one is my peer, but each and all are my political
sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as
was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of
protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or
foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant,
sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political
superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Under such circumstances a
commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far
less cause to complain than have I, a woman, tried before a jury of
men. Even my counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause
so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my
political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is
entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the
franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to
practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the
bar--hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of the superior
class.
Judge Hunt.--The Court must insist--the prisoner has been tried
according to the established forms of law.
Miss Anthony.--Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by
men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and
against women; and hence your honor's ordered verdict of guilty,
against a United States citizen for the exercise of the "citizen's
right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a
man. But yesterday, the same man-made forms of law declared it a
crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment to
give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread or a night's shelter to
a panting fugitive tracking his way to Canada; and every man or
woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that
wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so
doing. As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over
or under or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must
women take it to get their right to a voice in this government; and
I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
Judge Hunt.--The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not
allow another word.
Miss Anthony.--When I was brought before your honor for trial, I
hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution
and its recent amendments, which should declare all United States
citizens under its protecting aegis--which 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 rigor of the law.
Judge Hunt--The Court must insist--[Here the prisoner sat down.]
The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony rose again.] The
sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs
of the prosecution. Miss Anthony.--May it please your honor, I will
never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I
possess is a debt of $10,000, 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, which tax, fine, imprison and hang
women, while denying them the right of representation in the
government; and I will work on with might and main to pay every
dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust
claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all
women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim,
"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
Judge Hunt.--Madam, the Court will not order you to stand committed
until the fine is paid.
Thus ended the great trial, "The United States of America _vs._ Susan
B. Anthony." From this date the question of woman suffrage was lifted
from one of grievances into one of Constitutional Law.
This was Judge Hunt's first criminal case after his elevation to the
Supreme Bench of the United States. He was appointed at the
solicitation of his intimate friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, and
had an interview with him immediately preceding this trial. Mr.
Conkling was an avowed enemy of woman suffrage. Miss Anthony always has
believed that he inspired the course of Judge Hunt and that his
decision was written before the trial, a belief shared by most of those
associated in the case.
Miss Anthony says in her journal: "The greatest judicial outrage
history ever recorded! No law, logic or demand of justice could change
Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the
trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her:
"I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the
case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the
country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus
expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon after the trial:
The decisions of Judge Hunt in the Anthony case have been widely
criticised, and it seems to us not without reason. Even among those
who accept the conclusion that women have not a legal right to vote
and who do not hesitate to express the opinion that Miss Anthony
deserved a greater punishment than she received, we find many
seriously questioning the propriety of a proceeding whereby the
proper functions of the jury are dispensed with, and the Court
arrogates to itself the right to determine as to the guilt or
innocence of the accused party. If this may be done in one
instance, why may it not in all? And if our courts may thus
arbitrarily direct what verdicts shall be rendered, what becomes of
the right to trial "by an impartial jury," which the Constitution
guarantees to all persons alike, whether male or female? These are
questions of grave importance, to which the American people now
have their attention forcibly directed through the extraordinary
action of a judge of the Supreme Court. It is for them to say
whether the right of trial by jury shall exist only in form, or be
perpetuated according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
The New York Sun scored the judge as follows:
Judge Hunt allowed the jury to be impanelled and sworn, and to hear
the evidence; but when the case had reached the point of the
rendering of 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. It is hardly worth while to argue that the
right of trial by jury includes the right to a verdict by the jury,
and to a free and impartial verdict, not one ordered, compelled and
forced from them by an adverse and predetermined court. The
language of the Constitution of the United States is that "in all
criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
and public trial by an impartial jury." Do the words an "impartial
jury" mean a jury directed and controlled by the court, and who
might just as well, for all practical purposes, be twelve wooden
automatons, moved by a string pulled by the hand of the judge?
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle commented:
In the action of Judge Hunt there was a grand, over-reaching
assumption of authority, unsupported by any point in the case
itself, but adopted as an established legal principle. If there is
such a principle, Judge Hunt did his duty beyond question, and he
is scarcely lower than the angels so far as personal power goes.
The New York Sun assumes that there is no such principle; that if
there were, "Judge Hunt might on his own _ipsedixit_, and without
the intervention of a jury, fine, imprison or hang any man, woman
or child in the United States." And the Sun proceeds to say that
Judge Hunt "must be impeached and removed. Such punishment for the
commission of a crime like his against civil liberty is a
necessity. The American people will not tolerate a judge like this
on the bench of their highest court. To do it would be to submit
their necks to as detestable a tyranny as ever existed on the face.
of the earth. They will not sit quietly by to see their liberties,
red and radiant with the blood of a million of their sons, silently
melted away in the judicial crucible of a stolid and tyrannical
judge of their Federal Court." This is forcible, certainly; but it
ought to be speedily decided, at least, whether there is such a
legal principle as we have mentioned.
The Utica Observer gave this opinion:
We have sought the advice of the best legal and judicial minds in
our State in regard to the ruling of Justice Ward Hunt in the case
of Susan B. Anthony. While the written opinion of the judge is very
generally commended, his action in ordering a verdict of guilty to
be entered, without giving the jury an opportunity of saying
whether it was their verdict or not, is almost universally
condemned. Such a case never before occurred in the history of our
courts, and the hope is very general that it never will again.
Between the indictment and the judgment stands the jury, and there
is no way known to the law by which the jury's power in criminal
cases can be abrogated. The judge may charge the jury that the
defense is invalid; that it is their clear duty to find the
prisoner guilty. But beyond this he can not properly go. He has no
right to order the clerk to enter a verdict which is not the
verdict of the jury. In doing this thing Justice Hunt outraged the
rights of Susan B. Anthony. It would probably puzzle him to tell
why he submitted the case of the inspectors to the jury after
taking the case of Miss Anthony out of their hands. It would also
puzzle his newspaper champions.
The Legal News, of Chicago, edited by Myra Bradwell, made this
pertinent comment: "Judge Ward Hunt, of the Federal Bench, violated the
Constitution of the United States more in convicting Miss Anthony of
illegal voting, than she did in voting; for he had sworn to support it,
and she had not."
The Albany Law Journal, however, after indulging in a few vulgar
platitudes on the fact of Miss Anthony's having admitted that she was a
woman, declared that Judge Hunt transcended his rights but that "if
Miss Anthony does not like our laws she'd better emigrate!" This legal
authority failed to advise where she could emigrate to find laws which
were equally just to men and to women. It might also have answered the
question, "Should a woman be compelled to leave the land of her
nativity because of the injustice of its laws?"
Miss Anthony's trial closed on Wednesday and she remained in
Canandaigua to attend that of the three inspectors, which followed at
once. She was called as a witness and inquired of Judge Hunt: "I should
like to know if the testimony of a person convicted of a crime can be
taken?" "They call you as a witness, madam," was his brusque reply.
Later, thinking to trap her, he asked, "You presented yourself as a
female, claiming that you had a right to vote?" Quick as a flash came
her answer: "I presented myself not as a female, sir, but as a citizen
of the United States. I was called to the ballot-box by the Fourteenth
Amendment, not as a female but as a citizen."
The inspectors were defended by Mr. Van Voorhis but, after the
testimony was introduced, the judge refused to allow him to address the
jury. He practically directed them to bring in a verdict of guilty,
saying, "You can decide it here or go out." The jury returned a verdict
of guilty. The motion for a new trial was denied. One of the inspectors
(Hall) had been tried and convicted without being brought into court.
They were fined $25 each and the costs of the prosecution but, although
neither was paid, they were not imprisoned at that time.
When asked for his opinion on the case, after a lapse of twenty-four
years, Mr. Van Voorhis gave the following:
There never before was a trial in the country of one-half the
importance of this of Miss Anthony's. That of Andrew Johnson had no
issue which could compare in value with the one here at stake. If
Miss Anthony had won her case on the merits, it would have
revolutionized the suffrage of the country and enfranchised every
woman in the United States. There was a pre-arranged determination
to convict her. A jury trial was dangerous, and so the Constitution
was openly and deliberately violated.
The Constitution makes the jury, in a criminal case, the judges of
the law and of the facts. No matter how clear or how strong the
case may appear to the judge, it must be submitted to the jury.
That is the mandate of the Constitution. As no one can be convicted
of crime except upon trial by jury, it follows that the jury are
entitled to pass upon the law as well as the facts. The judge can
advise the jury on questions of law. He can legally do no more. If
he control the jury and direct a verdict of guilty, he himself is
guilty of a crime for which impeachment is the remedy.
The jury in Miss Anthony's case was composed of excellent men. None
better could have been drawn anywhere. Justice Hunt knew that. He
had the jury impanelled only as a matter of form. He said so in the
inspectors' case. He came to Canandaigua to hold the Circuit Court,
for the purpose of convicting Miss Anthony. He had unquestionably
prepared his opinion beforehand. The job had to be done, so he took
the bull by the horns and directed the jury to find a verdict of
guilty. In the case of the inspectors he refused to defendants'
counsel the right of addressing the jury.
Judge Hunt very adroitly, in passing sentence on Miss Anthony
imposing a fine of $100, refused to add, what is usual in such
cases, that she be imprisoned until the fine be paid. Had he done
so, Miss Anthony would have gone to prison, and then taken her case
directly to the Supreme Court of the United States by writ of
habeas corpus. There she would have been discharged, because trial
by jury had been denied her. But as Miss Anthony was not even held
in custody after judgment had been pronounced, she could not resort
to habeas corpus proceedings and had no appeal.
But the outrage of ordering a verdict of guilty against the
defendant was not the only outrage committed by this judge on these
trials:
It was an outrage to refuse the right of a defendant to poll the
jury.
It was an outrage for the judge to refuse to hold that if the
defendant believed she had a right to vote, and voted in good faith
in that belief, she was not guilty of the charge.
It was an outrage to hold that the jury, in considering the
question whether she did or did not believe she had a right to
vote, might not consider that she took the advice of Judge Selden
before she voted, and acted on that advice.
It was an outrage to hold that the jury might not take into
consideration, as bearing upon the same question, the fact that the
inspectors and supervisor of election looked into the question, and
came to the conclusion that she had the right to be registered and
vote, and told her so, and so decided.
It was an outrage for the judge to hold that the jury had not the
right to consider the defendant's motive, and to find her innocent
if she acted without any intent to violate the law.
In the case of the inspectors, it was an outrage to refuse
defendants' counsel the right to address the jury.
It was an outrage to refuse to instruct the jury that if the
defendants, being administrative officers, acted without any
criminal motive but in accordance with their best judgment, and in
perfect good faith, they were not guilty.
Judge Selden has passed to his eternal rest and lies beneath a massive
monument of granite in beautiful Mount Hope cemetery. Mr. Van Voorhis
thus paid tribute to his associate in this noted case: "His argument on
the constitutional points involved is one of the ablest and most
complete to be found in history. As a lawyer he had no superior; he was
a master in his profession. He had a most discriminating mind and a
marvellous memory. He was familiar with the books, and possessed a
power of statement equal to that of Daniel Webster. I predict that the
verdict of history will be that Judge Selden was right and the Court
wrong upon the constitutional question involved in this case."
To the heavy debts of The Revolution which, with all her efforts, Miss
Anthony had been able to reduce but a fraction, were now added the
costs of this suit. She did not propose to pay the fines, but she did
intend to see that the inspectors were relieved of all expense in
connection with the trial. Her indomitable courage did not fail her
even in this emergency, and as usual she was sustained by the
substantial appreciation of her friends. Letters of sympathy and
financial help poured in from acquaintances and strangers in all parts
of the country. Indignation meetings were held and contributions sent
also by various reform clubs and societies.[74] All were swallowed up
in the heavy and unavoidable expenses of the suits of herself and the
inspectors. Neither of her lawyers ever presented a bill. She had 5,000
copies made of Judge Selden's argument on the habeas corpus at Albany,
which she scattered broadcast. She also had printed 3,000 pamphlets, at
a cost of $700, containing a full report of the trial, and sent them to
all the law journals in the United States and Canada, to the
newspapers, etc. The Democrat and Chronicle said of this book, "We
believe it is the most important contribution yet made to the
discussion of woman suffrage from a legal standpoint." None of the
other cases ever were brought to trial.[75]
Miss Anthony had no fears of not being able to raise money to pay her
debts if she could be free to give her time to the lecture platform,
but an entire year had been occupied with her trial, and the money
received during this period had been required to meet its expenses. She
had a vital reason, however, for feeling that she could not leave
home--the rapidly-failing health of her beloved sister Guelma, her
senior by only twenty months, for more than half a century her close
companion, and for the past eight years living under the same roof. Her
heart had been broken by the death, a few years before, of her two
beautiful children just at the dawn of manhood and womanhood, and the
fatal malady consumption met with no resistance. Day by day she faded
away, the physician holding out no hope from the first. Her mother, now
eighty years of age, was completely crushed; the sister Mary was
principal of one of the city schools and busy all day, and Miss Anthony
felt it her imperative duty to remain beside the invalid, even could
she have overcome her grief sufficiently to appear in public.
Invitations to lecture came to her from many points but she refused
them and remained by the gentle sufferer day and night.[76] At daybreak
on November 9 the loved one passed away, and the tender hands of
sisters and of the only daughter performed the last ministrations.[77]
With Miss Anthony the love of family was especially intense as she had
formed no outside ties, and the parents, the brothers and sisters
filled her world of affection. The sundering of these bonds wrenched
her very heartstrings and upon every recurring anniversary the anguish
broke forth afresh, scarcely assuaged by the lapse of years. A short
time after this last sorrow she writes:
MY DEAR MOTHER: How continually, except the one hour when I am on
the platform, is the thought of you and your loss and my own with
me! How little we realize the constant presence in our minds of our
loved and loving ones until they are forever gone. We would not
call them back to endure again their suffering, but we can not help
wishing they might have been spared to us in health and vigor. Our
Guelma, does she look down upon us, does she still live, and shall
we all live again and know each other, and work together and love
and enjoy one another? In spite of instinct, in spite of faith,
these questions will come up again and again.... She said you would
soon follow her, and we know that in the nature of things it must
be so. When that time comes, dear mother, may you fall asleep as
sweetly and softly as did your eldest born; and as the sands of
life ebb out into the great eternal, may all of us be with you to
make the way easy. It does seem too cruel that every one of us must
be so overwhelmingly immersed in work, but may the Good Father help
us so to do that there may be no vain regrets for things done or
left undone when the last hour comes.
A beautiful incident cast a flood of light through the heavy shadows of
this trying year, and made November 27 in truth a day of Thanksgiving
for one brave woman. At his urgent invitation, Miss Anthony had spent
it in the home of her cousin, Anson Laphain, at Skaneateles. After a
pleasant day, as she sat quietly and sadly by the window, watching the
deepening twilight, the noble-hearted cousin took from his desk her
notes for $4,000, which he had so generously loaned her during the
stormy days of The Revolution, cancelled all and presented them to her.
She was overwhelmed with surprise and when she attempted to express her
gratitude, he stopped her with words of respect, confidence and
encouragement which seemed to roll away a stone from her heart and in
its place put new hope, ambition and strength.
[Footnote 68: ... Good and lawful men of the said District, then and
there sworn and charged to inquire for the said United States of
America, and for the body of said District, do, upon their oaths,
present, that Susan B. Anthony now or late of Rochester, in the county
of Monroe, with force and arms,... did knowingly, wrongfully and
unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress of the United
States for the State of New York at large, and for a Representative in
the Congress of the United States for said twenty-ninth Congressional
District, without having a lawful right to vote in said election
district (the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of
the female sex), as she, the said Susan B. Anthony then and there well
knew, contrary to the form of the statute of the United States of
America in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the
United States of America and their dignity, etc.]
[Footnote 69: The Twenty-fifth Woman Suffrage Anniversary will be held
in Apollo Hall, New York, Tuesday, May 6, 1873. Lucretia Mott and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who called the first woman's rights convention
at Seneca Falls in 1848, will be present to give their reminiscences.
That convention was scarcely mentioned by the local press; now, over
the whole world, equality for woman is demanded. In the United States,
woman suffrage is the chief political question of the hour. Great
Britain is deeply agitated upon the same topic. Germany has a princess
at the head of its national woman's rights organization. Portugal,
Spain and Russia have been roused. In Rome an immense meeting, composed
of the representatives of Italian democracy, was recently called in the
Coliseum; one of its resolutions demanded a reform in the laws relating
to woman and a re-establishment of her natural rights. Turkey, France,
England, Switzerland, Italy, sustain papers devoted to woman's
enfranchisement. A Grand International Woman's Rights Congress is to be
held in Paris, in September of this year, to which the whole world is
invited to send delegates, and this congress is to be under the
management of the most renowned liberals of Europe. Come up, then,
friends, and celebrate the silver wedding of the woman suffrage
movement. Let our twenty-fifth anniversary be one of power; our reform
is everywhere advancing, let us redouble our energies and our courage.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _President_; MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive
Committee_.]
[Footnote 70: See Appendix for speech in full.]
[Footnote 71: See Appendix for newspaper comment.]
[Footnote 72: A full report of this trial, testimony, arguments of
counsel, etc., may be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II,
beginning page 647.]
[Footnote 73: Can a judge with propriety prepare a _written_ opinion
before he has heard all the arguments in a case?]
[Footnote 74: The Buffalo suffrage club sent $100; the Chicago club,
through Mrs. Fernando Jones, $75; the Milwaukee club, through Madame
Anneke, $50; the Milwaukee "radicals," $20; the New York club, through
Lillie Devereux Blake, $50; the patients at the Dansville Sanitarium,
$30. Dr. Lozier sent $30; Lucretia Mott, $30; Dr. E.B. Foote, of New
York, $25; Phebe Jones, of Albany, $25; Dr. Sarah Dolley, of Rochester,
$20; the Hallowells, $25; the Glastonbury Smith sisters, $20; and from
men and women in all parts of the country came sums from fifty cents
upwards, all amounting to over $1,100. Gerrit Smith sent at first $30
to help defray the expenses of the trial, and after it was over a draft
for $100, saying: "I send you herewith the money to pay your fine. If
you shall still decline doing so, then use it at your own discretion to
promote the cause of woman suffrage." Mrs. Lewia C. Smith raised a
purse of $100 among Rochester friends and presented it as a testimonial
to Judge Selden, in the name of the Women Tax-Payers' Society. Miss
Anthony gave a lecture in Corinthian Hall for the benefit of the
inspectors, which netted about $180.]
[Footnote 75: The first Woman's Congress, afterwards called the
Association for the Advancement of Women, was organized during the
autumn of this year. To the call were appended the names of most of the
noted women of the day, but Miss Anthony's was conspicuously absent.
Her most intimate friends being among the signers, and supposing she
was to be also, made inquiry as to the reason and received this answer:
1st, Her name beginning with A would have had to head the list; 2d, Her
title as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association would
have had to be given; 3d, She could not be managed. Miss Anthony was so
greatly amused at these reasons that she quite forgave the omission of
her name.]
[Footnote 76: And yet on November 4 she stole away long enough to go to
the polling-place and again offer her vote. It was refused, she found
her name had been struck from the register, and thus ended that
battle.]
[Footnote 77: Three of the brave Rochester women who went to the polls
at the election of 1872, died within one year: Guelma Anthony McLean,
Mary B.F. Curtis and Rhoda De Garmo.]
CHAPTER XXVI.
NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO JURY OR FRANCHISE.
1874.
Miss Anthony's case continued to attract widespread attention, Judge
Hunt's arbitrary action finding few apologists even among opponents of
woman suffrage. It was finally decided by her counsel and herself to
make an appeal to Congress for the remission of the fine, which, if
granted, would be in effect a declaration of the illegality of Judge
Hunt's act and a precedent for the future. Judge Selden based his
authority for such an appeal on a case in the United States Statutes at
Large, chap. 45, p. 802, where a fine of $1,000 and costs, illegally
imposed upon Matthew Lyon under the Alien and Sedition Laws, 1799, were
refunded with interest to his heirs. Mr. Van Voorhis found an authority
also in an act passed by the British Parliament in 1792, correcting the
departure from the common law, in respect to the rights of juries, by
Lord Mansfield and his associates in the cases of Woodfall and Shipley.
This act was passed through the exertions of Lord Camden and Mr. Fox in
order to prevent the erroneous decisions of the judges from becoming
the law of England.
Both of the attorneys keenly resented the action of Judge Hunt, Mr.
Selden pronouncing it "the greatest judicial outrage ever perpetrated
in the United States;" and Mr. Van Voorhis asserting that "trial by
jury was completely annihilated in this case, and there is no remedy
except to appeal to the justice of Congress to remit the fine and
declare that trial by jury does and shall exist in this country." The
appeal, or petition, was prepared and Miss Anthony carried it to
Washington when she went to the National Convention, January 15, 1874.
It was an able document, reciting the facts in the case and the action
of the judge, and concluding:
Your petitioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings,
she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to
all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury and the
right to have the assistance of counsel for their defense. It is a
mockery to call hers a trial by jury; and, unless the assistance of
counsel may be limited to the argument of legal questions, without
the privilege of saying a word to the jury upon the question of the
guilt or innocence in fact of a party charged, or the privilege of
ascertaining from the jury whether they do or do not agree to the
verdict pronounced by the Court in their name, she has been denied
the assistance of counsel for her defense.
Of the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of your
petitioner to vote, she makes no complaint. It was a question
properly belonging to the Court to decide, was fully and fairly
submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right or
wrong, your petitioner is well aware she can not here complain. But
in regard to her conviction of crime, which she insists, for the
reasons above given, was in violation of the principles of the
common law, of common morality, of the statute under which she was
charged, and of the Constitution--a crime of which she was as
innocent as the judge by whom she was convicted--she respectfully
asks, inasmuch as the law has provided no means of reviewing the
decisions of the judge, or of correcting his errors, that the fine
imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the
sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust.
This was presented in the Senate by A.A. Sargent, of California, and in
the House by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and was referred to the
judiciary committees. In May, Lyman Tremaine, from the House Judiciary
Committee, reported adversely on the petition in a lengthy document,
which incorporated a letter from District-Attorney Crowley, urging the
committee "not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal;" and
declaring that "Miss Anthony's trial was fair and constitutional and by
an impartial jury." (!) Mr. Tremaine's report said: "Congress can not
be converted into a national court of review for any and all criminal
convictions where it shall be alleged the judge has committed an
error." Thus did he deliberately ignore the point at issue, the refusal
of a trial by jury. It concluded by saying: "Since the discussion of
this question has arisen in the committee, the President has pardoned
Miss Anthony for the offense of which she was convicted and this seems
to furnish a conclusive reason why no further action should be taken by
the judiciary committee." (!) The learned gentleman probably referred
to the pardon of the inspectors by the President. Miss Anthony had not
asked executive clemency for herself.
Benjamin F. Butler presented an able and exhaustive minority report
which closed with the following declaration: "Therefore, because the
fine has been imposed by a court of the United States for an offense
triable by jury, without the same being submitted to the jury, and
because the court assumed to itself the right to enter a verdict
without submitting the case to the jury, and in order that the judgment
of the House of Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the
committee, may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its
determination to sustain in its integrity the common law right of trial
by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioner be
granted."
In June George F. Edmunds made an adverse report from the Senate
Judiciary Committee in this remarkable language: "That they are not
satisfied that the ruling of the judge was precisely as represented in
the petition, and that if it were so, the Senate could not legally take
any action in the premises, and they move that the committee be
discharged from the further consideration of the petition, and that the
bill be postponed indefinitely."
Senator Matthew II. Carpenter presented a long and carefully prepared
minority report which concluded:
Unfortunately the United States has no "well-ordered system of
jurisprudence." A citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death
by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and no court
can grant him relief or a new trial. If a citizen have a cause
involving the title to his farm, if it exceed $2,000 in value, he
may bring his cause to the Supreme Court; but if it involve his
liberty or his life, he can not. While we permit this blemish to
exist on our judicial system, it behooves us to watch carefully the
judgments inferior courts may render; and it is doubly important
that we should see to it that twelve jurors shall concur with the
judge before a citizen shall be hanged, incarcerated or otherwise
punished.
I concur with the majority of the committee that Congress can not
grant the precise relief prayed for in the memorial; but I deem it
to be the duty of Congress to declare its disapproval of the
doctrine asserted and the course pursued in the trial of Miss
Anthony; and all the more for the reason that no judicial court has
jurisdiction to review the proceedings therein.
I need not disclaim all purpose to question the motives of the
learned judge before whom this trial was conducted. The best of
judges may commit the gravest of errors amid the hurry and
confusion of a nisi prius term; and the wrong Miss Anthony has
suffered ought to be charged to the vicious system which denies to
those convicted of offenses against the laws of the United States a
hearing before the court of last resort--a defect it is equally
within the power and the duty of Congress speedily to remedy.
When Miss Anthony returned to Rochester in February, she found the
inspectors were about to be put into jail because, acting under advice,
they still refused to pay their fines. She wrote Benjamin F. Butler,
who replied under date of February 22: "I would not, if I were they,
pay, but allow process to be served; and I have no doubt the President
will remit the fine if they are pressed too far." They were imprisoned
February 26. Miss Anthony went at once to the jail and urged them not
to pay the fine, for the sake of principle, promising to see that they
were soon released. She waded through a heavy snow to consult her
attorneys and then to the newspaper offices to talk with the editors in
regard to the prisoners, reaching home at dark, and in her diary that
night she writes, "I could not bear to come away and leave them one
night in that dolorous place."
She went out for a few lectures in neighboring towns, and at the
Dansville Sanitarium was presented by the patients with a purse of $62.
Arriving in Rochester at 7 A. M., March 2, she went straight to the
jail and breakfasted with the inspectors; then to see the marshal and
succeeded in having them released on bail. She did not reach home till
1 p. M., and here she found this telegram from Senator Sargent: "I laid
the case of the inspectors before the President today. He kindly orders
their pardon. Papers are being prepared." Benjamin F. Butler also had
interceded with the President and sent Miss Anthony a telegram of
congratulation on the result. In a few days the inspectors were
pardoned and their fines remitted by President Grant. They were in jail
just one week and during that time received hundreds of calls, while
each day bountiful meals were sent them by the women whose votes they
had accepted. After their pardon a reception was given them at the home
of Miss Anthony's sister, Mrs. Mosher, by the ladies of the Eighth
ward, and in the spring they were re-elected by a handsome majority.
Miss Anthony's fine stands against her to the present day.
This case was the dominating feature of the National Convention at
Washington in the winter of 1874; the key-note of all the speeches and
the arguments before the judiciary committees was woman's right to vote
under the Fourteenth Amendment. The women did not relinquish this claim
until all ground for it was destroyed by a decision of the United
States Supreme Court in 1875, in the case of Virginia L. Minor, of St.
Louis. Francis Minor, a lawyer of that city, was the first to assert
that women were enfranchised by both the letter and the spirit of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and, acting under his advice, his wife attempted
to register for the presidential election of 1872. Her name was refused
and she brought suit against the inspector for the purpose of making a
test case. After an adverse decision by the lower courts, the case was
carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and argued before
that tribunal by Mr. Minor, at the October term, 1874. It is not too
much to say that no constitutional lawyer in the country could have
improved upon this argument in its array of authorities, its keen logic
and its impressive plea for justice.[78]
The decision was adverse, the opinion of the court being delivered
March 29, 1875, by Chief-Justice Waite, himself a strong advocate of
the enfranchisement of women. The court admitted that "women are
persons and citizens," but found that the "National Constitution does
not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United States
has no voters of its own creation. The National Constitution does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be
regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the
privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an
additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the States had the
power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These amendments,
ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination, but did not
forbid that against sex."
This is in direct contradiction to the decision of Chief-Justice Taney
in the Dred Scott case: "The words 'people of the United States' and
'citizens' are synonymous terms and mean the same thing; they describe
the _political body who, according to our republican institutions, form
the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through
their representatives_. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign
people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent
member of this sovereignty."
Although Miss Anthony and her co-workers still believed that, with a
true interpretation, women were voters under these amendments, they
were obliged to accept the decision of the highest court of appeal.
They then returned to the work of petitioning Congress for a Sixteenth
Amendment to the National Constitution which should prohibit
disfranchisement on account of sex. They continued also the original
plan of endeavoring to secure amendments to the constitutions of the
different States abolishing the word "male" as a qualification for
voting.[79] Bitterly disappointed at the decision of the Supreme Court,
it was nevertheless a source of pride to the women that they had made
their claim for representation in the government, carried it to the
highest tribunal and gone down in honorable defeat.
[Illustration HW: Yours truly Virginia L. Minor]
Miss Anthony never hesitated to ask the most distinguished men to speak
on the woman suffrage platform, and Henry Wilson writes from the
chamber of the Vice-President his regrets that he can not accept her
invitation. Benjamin F. Butler replies: "As a rule I have refused to
take part in any convention in the District of Columbia about any
matter which might come before Congress. I have gone farther out of my
way in that regard in the matter of woman suffrage than in any other.
Having given evidence that I am most strongly committed to the
legality, propriety and justice of granting the ballot to woman, I do
not see how I can add anything to it. Hoping that your cause may
succeed, I have the honor to be, very truly yours."
Her cousin, Elbridge G. Lapham, M. C., of New York, says in a letter:
"I am persuaded the time is fast hastening when woman will be accorded
the exercise of the right your association demands. With that secured,
many other advantages, now denied, will surely and speedily follow. I
can see no valid objection to the right of suffrage being conferred,
while there are many and very cogent reasons in favor of it. As has
been said, you may go on election day to the most degraded elector you
can find at the polls, who would sell his vote for a dollar or a dram,
and ask him what he would take for his _right to vote_ and you couldn't
purchase it with a kingdom."
[Autograph: Elbridge G. Lapham]
She found it possible even to interview the President of the United
States on this question. During a conversation with General Grant one
day on Pennsylvania Avenue, she said, "Well, Mr. President, what are
you going to do for woman suffrage?" In a hearty, pleasant way he
answered, "I have already done more for women than any other President,
I have recognized the right of 5,000 of them to be postmasters." There
were always distinguished men to champion this cause, but the chief
drawback was expressed in a letter from that staunch supporter, Hon.
A.G. Riddle, in 1874:
There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the courts; and just
as little from politicians. They never will take up this cause,
never! Individuals will, parties never--till the thing is done. The
Republicans want no new issues or disturbing elements. The
Democrats are certain that the Republicans are about to dissolve;
and they want to hold on as they are. Both think this thing may,
perhaps will come, but now is not the time; and with both, there
never will be a "now." The trouble is that below all this lies the
fact 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.
There never was a cause with so much unembodied strength, and with
so little working power; and the problem is how to vitalize and
organize it. One of two things, I think, must occur; either man
must be made to see and feel, as he never has done yet, 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. I still think that one of the main hindrances is with
women. The fact is, that the worst bugbear is the never-seen,
ever-felt law of caste which has always walled woman around, and
which few have the courage to step over.
[Autograph:
Sincerely yours
A.G. Riddle]
At the close of the convention Miss Anthony accepted the invitation
of Mrs. Hooker, the State president, to join her in a month's tour
through Connecticut. They spoke in nineteen different cities and
towns, Mrs. Hooker assuming all financial responsibility and paying
Miss Anthony $25 for each lecture. They had excellent audiences and
were entertained in many beautiful homes. In Miss Anthony's diary,
March 11, she says: "Senator Sumner died today, the noblest Roman
of them all; true to the negro, but never a public word for woman.
How I have pleaded with him for years, and he always admitted that
his principles logically carried out gave woman an equal guarantee
with man."
In the spring of 1874 the women's temperance crusade began in
Rochester and, although their methods were very different from
those Miss Anthony would have employed, she met with them at their
request to help them organize. After this was effected they called
on her for a speech and she said in brief:
I am always glad to welcome every association of women for any good
purpose, because I know that they will quickly learn the
impossibility of accomplishing any substantial end. Women never
realize their inability to effect a reform until they attempt it,
and then they find how closely interwoven with politics are all
such matters, and how entirely without political power are they
themselves.... Now my good women, 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 never can talk down or sing
down or pray down an institution which is voted into existence. You
never will be able to lessen this evil until you have votes.
Frederick Douglass used to tell how, when he was a Maryland slave
and a good Methodist, he would go into the farthest corner of the
tobacco field and pray God to bring him liberty; but God never
answered his prayers until he prayed with his heels. And so, dear
friends, He never will answer yours for the suppression of the
liquor traffic until you are able to pray with your ballots.[80]
Miss Anthony's sentiments on this question are further expressed in a
letter to her brother Daniel R., editor Leavenworth Times:
I like the Times' article on the women's whiskey war. Emerson says,
"God answers only such prayers as men themselves answer." After
ignorant and helpless mothers have transmitted to their children
the drunkard's appetite, God can not answer their prayers to
prevent them from gratifying it. But this crusade will educate the
women who engage in it to use the one and only means of regulating
or prohibiting the traffic in liquor--that of the ballot. As soon
as they find this crusade experiment a failure, which they
certainly will, because all spasmodic, sensational religious
efforts are transient and fleeting, they will realize the enduring
strength and usefulness of the franchise. However little that is
permanent may come of this movement, it is good in itself because
anything is better for women than tame submission to the evils
around them; and when they find kind words, entreaties and tears
avail nothing, they will surely try the virtue of stones (votes) to
bring down the great demon that desolates their homes.
An entry in the journal made soon afterward says: "I dropped into the
Industrial Congress today and was invited to speak. I told the men that
the degraded labor of women made them quite as heavy a millstone round
the necks of working-men as is the Heathen Chinese." And a few days
later: "Dr. Dio Lewis called today, and I went to hear him speak this
evening. Same old story--men make and break the laws, and women by love
and persuasion must soften their hearts to abandon their wickedness.
Never a hint that women should have anything to do with the making and
enforcing of the laws. They must only coax."
The diary shows over one hundred letters written by Miss Anthony's own
hand in arranging for the May Anniversary in New York, while she sat at
the bedside of her mother, who was very ill. Many cordial answers were
received, among them one from Josephine E. Butler, of England. Mary L.
Booth thus closed her reply: "Pray believe that I always hold you in
affectionate remembrance as one of the most sincere, earnest and
disinterested women whom it has ever been my fortune to meet, and whom
I shall always be glad to hear from or to see." Mrs. Stanton sent an
extract from a letter of Martha C. Wright, saying: "Our only hope is in
the gradual accession of thinking men and women, and in our indomitable
Susan."
At Miss Anthony's earnest desire, Mrs. Wright was elected president of
the association and this proved to be her last appearance on that
platform which she had graced for many years. An interesting feature of
the meeting was the presence of the veteran worker, Ernestine L. Rose,
who was back from England on a visit. During this May meeting a
telegram was sent over the country stating: "Miss Anthony stalked down
the aisle with faded alpaca dress to the top of her boots, blue cotton
umbrella and white cotton gloves, perched herself on the platform,
crossed her legs, pulled out her snuff-box and passed it around. On the
platform were Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Rose and other
noted women, all dressed in unmentionables cut bias, and smoking penny
drab cigars. Susan was quite drunk." The New York Herald, which rarely
had a good word for the suffrage conventions, in a long and respectful
account of this same meeting, said:
There was a perfume of Fifth Avenue about the audience. Carriages
in livery rolled up to the door. The striking contrast of this
audience with that of other years, in the almost perfect conformity
of the manner and dress of the women to those of other women who
rule in the fashionable world and are supposed to look down upon
these knights-errant of the sex, was not greater than that between
the treatment of Miss Anthony now and in other times. In former
years they came to scoff at this wiry and resolute champion of her
sex. Now every word she utters is received with almost reverent
rapture. Yesterday brought together as intelligent and perhaps as
refined an audience of ladies as might he gathered in the city.
Miss Anthony was dressed with her usual simplicity in black silk.
She read the call for the convention and made thereon one of her
characteristic addresses, full of fire and prophecy.
During the summer of 1874 Miss Anthony lectured in many places in
Massachusetts and New York, striving to pay the interest and reduce by
a little her pressing debts, and slipping home occasionally to see her
mother who was carefully tended by the devoted sister Mary. At one of
these times she writes in her diary: "It is always so good to get into
my own humble bed." August 22 she sent a letter of congratulation on
his fiftieth birthday to her brother Daniel R. After referring to the
$50 he sent to her at the close of her half century, she says:
Though I can not return my love and wishes in the same kind, they
are none the less for your joy and peace in the future, neither is
my rejoicing less over the success of your first half of life. From
your many experiences, whether they have been such as you would
have chosen or not, strength, growth, discipline have resulted, and
sometimes I think all the adverse winds of life are needed to check
our ever-rising vain-glory in our own power and success....
Whatever comes to those closely united by marriage or by blood, the
one lesson from recent developments in Brooklyn is that none of the
parties ever should take in an outside person as confidant. If the
twain can not themselves restore their oneness, none other can. If
parents and children, brothers and sisters, can not adjust their
own differences among themselves, it is in vain they look to
friends outside.
What lessons we are having that not only is honesty the best
policy, but that there is nothing but most dreadful disaster in any
policy which is not based on absolute honesty. The fact is, nothing
is worth the getting, if that has to be done by cunning, falsehood,
deception. Whether it be wealth, position, office or the society of
one we love, if we have to steal it, though it may be sweet and
seemingly real and lasting, the exposure of the illicit means of
gaining it is sure to come, and then the thing itself turns to
dross. When will the children of men learn this fact, that nothing
pays but that which is obtained fairly, openly and honestly?
This year the Michigan Legislature submitted a woman suffrage amendment
to the voters, and Miss Anthony decided to canvass the State. To do
this would ruin her own lecture season for the autumn, and those in
charge of the suffrage campaign could offer her no salary. She did not
hesitate, however, but without any financial guarantee, began her work
there September 24. On the eve of going she wrote to a friend: "I leave
home without having had one single week of rest this summer--not this
year, indeed, nor for twenty-five years." She made a forty days'
canvass, taking out three days for the Illinois convention at Chicago,
and during that time spoke in thirty-five different places. Everywhere
she addressed immense and enthusiastic crowds. She was frequently
preceded by Senator Zach. Chandler, speaking for the Republican party,
and often her audiences were much larger than the senator's.[81] Toward
the close of the campaign she wrote home:
If these meetings of mine were only by and in favor of an
enfranchised class, they would carry almost the solid vote of every
town for the measure advocated; but alas, they are for a class
powerless to help or hinder any party for good or for evil. It is
wonderful to see how quickly the prejudices yield to a little
common sense talk. If only we had speakers and time, we could carry
the vote of this State, but we have neither, and so all we can hope
for is a respectable minority. I enclose $200 left above travelling
expenses, hall rent, etc., from collections and the sale of my
trial pamphlets. If I could have had even a twenty-five cents
admission, I should have cleared over $1,000, but I could not have
it said that I went to Michigan, at such a crisis, to make money
for myself; it would have ruined the moral effect of my work. Now
they are calling on me from Washington to stay in that city all
next winter to get our measure considered by Congress, but I ought
to go to work to earn money, for I need it if ever anybody did. If
I have to get it, however, at the cost of losing our golden
opportunity there, it will be too dear a price to pay.
Miss Anthony was correct in her forecast, the suffrage amendment was
defeated in Michigan by more than three to one, but there is no doubt
her able canvass contributed largely to secure "a respectable
minority."
In the summer of 1874 the so-called Beecher-Tilton scandal, which had
been smouldering a long time, burst into full blaze. Miss Anthony had
been for many years on intimate terms with all the parties in this
unfortunate affair, and there was a persistent rumor that she had at
one time received a confession from Mrs. Tilton which, if given by her
to the public, would settle the vexed question beyond a doubt. It is
scarcely possible to describe the pressure brought to bear to force her
to disclose what she knew. During her lecture tours of that summer and
fall, while the trial was in progress before the church committee, she
never entered a railroad car, an omnibus or a hotel but there was
somebody ready to question her. In every town and city she was called
upon for an interview before she had time to brush off the dust of
travel. One of the New York papers detailed a reporter to follow her
from point to point, catch every word she uttered, ferret out all she
said to her friends and in some way extort what was wanted. She often
remarked that "in this case men proved themselves the champion gossips
of the world."
Papers which had befriended her and her cause reminded her of this fact
and urged her to return the favor by telling them what she knew.
Telegrams and letters poured in upon her from strangers and friends,
some commending and begging her to continue silent; others censuring
and urging her to tell the whole story. Lawyers connected with the case
wrote her the shrewdest of pleas, telling her how the other side were
trying to defame her character and urging her to speak in self-defense;
but it is a significant fact that she received no official summons
either during the church committee investigation or the trial in court.
The Chicago Tribune, having failed to secure an interview, said: "Miss
Anthony keeps her own counsel in this matter with a resolution which
would do credit to General Grant." Several papers manufactured
interviews with her out of whole cloth. Everybody else, man or woman,
who had the slightest knowledge of the affair, rushed into print, but
under all the pressure she remained as immovable and silent as the
granite mountains amid which she was born. The universal desire to have
her speak was because of the value placed upon her integrity and
veracity. John Hooker, the eminent lawyer of Hartford, Conn.,
brother-in-law of Mr. Beecher, voiced the opinion of her friends when
he wrote under date of November 9, 1874: "A more truthful person does
not live. The whole world could not get her to go into a conspiracy
against one whom she believed to be innocent. I have perfect confidence
in her truthfulness and always stoutly assert it."
The New York Sun expressed the general sentiment of the press when it
said in this connection: "Miss Anthony is a lady whose word will
everywhere be believed by those who know anything of her character."
Her home paper, the Democrat and Chronicle, paid this tribute: "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."
Most of the charges made against her during this ordeal were so
manifestly absurd they did not need refuting, but the oft-repeated
assertions that she believed in what was popularly termed "free love"
were a source of great annoyance. In a letter written at this time to
Elizabeth Smith Miller she thus definitely expressed herself: "I have
always believed the 'variety' system vile, and still do so believe. I
am convinced that no one has yet wrought out the true social system. I
am sure no theory can be correct which a mother is not willing for her
daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious
husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women,
by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the
law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands
and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than the women, to
be transgressors."
To Mr. Hooker, on this same subject, she wrote: "In my heart of hearts
I hate the whole doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity.' I am not even
a believer in second marriages after one of the parties is dead, so
sacred and binding do I consider the marriage relation." A few extracts
from her diary during these days will show the trend of her thoughts:
Silence alone is all there is for me at present. I appreciate as
never before the value of having lived an open life.... The parlor,
the street corner, the newspapers, the very air seem full of social
miasma.... Sad, sad revelations! There is nothing more demoralizing
than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which
denies it.... It is almost an impossibility 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.... The great financial rings, Christian
Union, Life of Christ and Plymouth church, the three in one, most
powerful trinity, seem to have subsidized the entire New York
press.
In her positive refusal to speak the word which would criminate a
woman, Miss Anthony was actuated by the highest sense of honor. She
loved Mr. and Mrs. Tilton as her own family. She had enjoyed the
hospitality of their beautiful home and seen their children grow up
from babyhood. Mrs. Tilton was one of the loveliest characters she ever
had known, an exquisite housekeeper, an ideal mother; a woman of wide
reading and fine literary taste, of sunny temperament and affectionate
disposition. To violate the confidence of such a woman, given in an
hour of supreme anguish, would have been treachery unparalleled. In
answer to the charge that Mrs. Tilton was a very weak or a very wicked
woman, Miss Anthony always maintained that none ever was called upon to
suffer such temptation. On the one hand was her husband, one of the
most brilliant writers and speakers of the day, a man of marvellously
attractive powers in the home as well as in the outside world. At his
table often sat Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Wilson and many other
prominent men, who all alike admired and loved him.
On the other hand was her pastor, the most powerful and magnetic
preacher and orator not only in Brooklyn but in the nation. When he
spoke on Sunday to his congregation of 3,000 people, there was not a
man present but felt that he could get strength by touching even the
hem of his garment. If his power were such over men, by the law of
nature it must have been infinitely greater over women. Since it was
thus irresistible in public, how transcendent must it have been in the
close and intimate companionship of private life!
The house of the Tiltons was the second home of Mr. Beecher, and
scarcely a day passed that he did not visit it. He found here the
brightness, congeniality, sympathy and loving trust which every human
being longs for. The choicest new literature was sent hither for the
delicate appreciation it was sure to receive. When he came in from his
Peekskill country place with great baskets of flowers, the most
beautiful always found their way to this household. Miss Anthony
recalls one occasion when Mrs. Tilton, slipping her hand through her
arm, drew her to the mantelpiece over which hung a lovely water color
of the trailing arbutus, and said, "My pastor brought that to me this
morning." At another time, when she went on Saturday evening to stay
over Sunday, Mrs. Tilton said, as she dropped into a low chair: "Mr.
Beecher sat here all the morning writing his sermon. He says there is
no place in the world where he can get such inspiration as at
Theodore's desk, while I sit beside him in this little chair darning
the children's stockings."
In all of these and many similar occurrences Miss Anthony saw nothing
but a warm and sincere friendship. To Mr. Tilton Mr. Beecher was as a
father or an elder brother. He had placed the ambitious and talented
youth where he could achieve both fame and fortune, had introduced him
into the highest social circles and shown to the world that he regarded
him as his dearest confidential friend, and for years the two men had
enjoyed the closest and strongest intimacy. Mrs. Tilton had been born
into Plymouth church, baptized by Mr. Beecher, had taught in his Sunday
school, visited at his home. He loved her as his own, and she adored
him as a very Christ. To these two great intellectual and spiritual
magnets, first to one, then to the other, she was irresistibly and
uncontrollably drawn. When troubles arose and the two became bitterly
hostile, her situation was most pitiable. After matters had culminated
and the battle was on, Beecher still spoke of her as "the beloved
Christian woman," and Tilton, as "the whitest-souled woman who ever
lived." Weak she may have been through her emotions, never wilfully
wicked, and far less sinning than sinned against. She was wholly
dominated by two powerful influences. Between the upper and the nether
millstone her life was crushed.
[Footnote 78: For full report see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II,
p. 715.]
[Footnote 79: This has been accomplished (1897) in four States,
Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.]
[Footnote 80: The W.C.T.U. did not recognize this fact at the time of
their organization but in 1881 they established a franchise department
and many of them now advocate suffrage.]
[Footnote 81: Not far from three times as many were at Miss Anthony's
lecture as gathered to hear Senator Chandler.--Jackson Patriot.
One of the largest audiences ever in the opera house gathered last
evening on the occasion of the lecture of Miss Susan B.
Anthony.--Adrian Times and Expositor.
Probably the largest audience ever assembled in Clinton Hall convened
to hear-Miss Susan B. Anthony, the celebrated expounder of the rights
of women.--Pontiac Gazette.
Since the great Children's Jubilee there has not been so large an
audience in the Academy of Music as that assembled to hear Miss
Anthony's lecture.--East Saginaw Daily Republican.
Miss Anthony spoke at Hillsdale to a densely crowded opera house, while
full 1,000 people were unable to gain admission.--Grand Rapids Post.
Miss Susan B. Anthony spoke last evening to the largest audience that
ever greeted a lecturer in Marshall, and we have had Mrs. Stanton,
Theodore Tilton, Mark Twain and Olive Logan. She had at least 1,200
hearers.--Telegram to Detroit Evening News.
Last evening the aisles were double-seated, and the anterooms,
staircases and vestibules densely packed with standing hearers. No such
house ever was had at this place. She spoke with wonderful power. At
Pigeon, between trains, she spoke to a great throng who would not
consider her strength and take "no" for an answer.--Three Rivers
Reporter.
A woman with whose public sayings and doings we have been familiar
since the fall of 1867, and for whom our respect and admiration has
never wavered during that period, spoke to the largest indoor audience
ever assembled in this village. The courthouse was literally packed,
and the speaker had to stand on a table in front of the judge's
desk.--Cassopolis National Democrat.]
CHAPTER XXVII.
REVOLUTION DEBT PAID--WOMEN'S FOURTH OF JULY.
1875-1876.
At the close of 1874, December 28, the cause of woman suffrage lost a
strong supporter by the death of Gerrit Smith. Miss Anthony felt the
loss deeply, as he had been her warm personal friend for twenty-five
years and always ready with financial aid for her projects; but she
suffered a keener shock one week later when the news came of the sudden
death of Martha C. Wright, January 4, 1875. She says in her diary: "It
struck me dumb, I could not believe it; clear-sighted, true and
steadfast almost beyond all other women! Her home was my home, always
so restful and refreshing, her friendship never failed; the darker the
hour, the brighter were her words of encouragement, the stronger and
closer her support. I can not be reconciled."
But for this earnest advocate there could be no cessation of work and
the 14th of January found her again in Washington at the National
Convention. These annual meetings, with their advertising, hall rent,
expenses of speakers, etc., were costly affairs. Before every one Miss
Anthony always received scores of letters from the other workers
begging that it might be given up for that year, insisting that for
various reasons it would be a failure, and declaring that they could
not and would not attend. Mrs. Stanton usually headed the list of the
objectors, for she hated everything connected with a convention. On the
back of one of these vehement protests, carefully filed away, is
written in Miss Anthony's penmanship, "Mrs. Stanton's chronic letter
before each annual meeting." She never paid the slightest heed to any
of these appeals, but went straight ahead, wheeled all of them into
line, engaged the speakers, raised the money and carried the convention
to a finish. When the funds were lacking she advanced them from her
own, usually ending one or two hundred dollars out of pocket. Then she
went about among the friends and secured enough to replace the loan or,
failing in this, worked so much the harder to make it up out of her
earnings.
On her way home from Washington, Miss Anthony stopped for a visit with
her loved cousin Anson Lapham and on leaving he handed her a check for
$1,000, saying, "Susan, this is not for suffrage but for thee
personally." Nevertheless she at once applied it on the debt still
hanging over her from The Revolution. Francis & Loutrel, of New York,
who had furnished her with paper, letter-heads, etc., also presented
her at this time with their receipted bill for $200.
In the winter of 1875, Miss Anthony prepared her speech on "Social
Purity" and gave it first at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, March 14,
in the Sunday afternoon Dime lecture course.[82] When she reached the
opera house the crowd was so dense she could not get inside and was
obliged to go through the engine room and up the back way to the stage.
The gentleman who was to introduce her could not make his way through
the throng and so this service was gracefully performed by "Long John"
Wentworth, who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to
her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came
up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr.
Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless
manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."
No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with
such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation.
Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked
to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her
future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same
committee the following winter.
It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,[83] Iowa, Kansas
and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied.
On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis,
in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large
and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a
majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women
of the nineteenth century--remarkable for the purity of her life, the
earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the
indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and
misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth--if she ever had any
bloom--hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and
philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the
beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the
platform as preachers of social impossibilities."
The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a
lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but
the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will
show:
There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is
following in the wake of Anna Dickinson, in publicly lecturing upon
subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her sex, to
acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon
the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social
Purity"--topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to
discuss. It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to
deliberately select such questionable themes for a public
discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters
are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary
information--are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to
contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze
it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous
details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for
the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in
attempting it; but if so, how much more do they degrade their sex
when they go out of the way to ask us to believe that they are
intimate with a corruption infinitely more debasing and more
destructive? The best lecture a woman can give the community on
"moral purity" is the eloquent one of a spotless life. The best
discourse she can furnish us on the sad "evil" alluded to is the
sincerity of her profound ignorance of the subject.
A woman suffrage bill was under consideration by the legislature of
Iowa and Miss Anthony felt that missionary work ought to be done in
that State, so she wrote to the friends in one hundred different towns,
offering to speak for $25 or one-half the gross receipts. Sixty of them
accepted and during the spring and autumn of 1875 she filled these
engagements, the sixty lectures averaging $30 apiece. In order to reach
the different places she had to take trains at all hours of the night,
occasionally to ride in a freight car, sometimes to drive twenty-five
or thirty miles across country in mud and snow and prairie winds, and
frequently to go on the platform without having eaten a mouthful or
changed her dress. Even these ills were not so hard to bear as the
cold, dirty rooms, hard beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in
small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as
not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the
bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is
uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides.
While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in
New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of
Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling
that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained
the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could
get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but,
in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention
and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early
morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last
farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption.
Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and
comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother
was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey,
and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached
Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother
who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The
shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had
fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted
wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.
Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat
by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the
gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month the
physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the
wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had
formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by
pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns
day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital
spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical
fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer
doubtful. The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss
Anthony's devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose
whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a
degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained
nurse.[84]
Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and
namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how
closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia
Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all
the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to
stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of
August 20 says: "There passed out of my life today the one who, next to
my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty
years."
On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first
time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman,
characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a
guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore.
When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the
platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy
enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave
her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry
R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening."
The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in
Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many
engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not
to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable
hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging
letter and a liberal contribution.
Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement
winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to
crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was
religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago
to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her
diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and
happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this
occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."[85] She returned at once to Iowa,
Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of
Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution
debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up
her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness,
and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from
her shoulders and she was free. Even the newspapers offered
congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.[86] In a long notice,
the Chicago Daily News said:
Her paper lived a few years and then went down. In the heart of the
woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so
much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in
other women's hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby's
face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death. But
The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars.
Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and assumed,
individually, the entire indebtedness. 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, whatever they may think of her
political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel
inclined to raise their hats in reverence.
The Rochester Post-Express thus voiced the opinion of her own
townspeople:
The thousands of friends of the plucky and noble woman of whom we
speak will rejoice with her over this success. There are a good
many men who have hidden behind their wives' petticoats for a much
smaller sum than $10,000. It should be remembered, furthermore,
that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman
suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a
contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United
States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months
over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin's
bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and
has always, everywhere, been the soul of helpfulness and
benevolence. Here is an example, in a woman, who our laws say is
not fit to exercise the active and defensive privilege of
citizenship, that puts to shame the lives of ninety-nine in every
hundred men.
It is not surprising that the letters of her friends during these past
months should speak of "the pale, sad face, so worn by lines of care
and toil," but now all was over and she returned home. To rest? Far
from it. The third day found her en route for New York to attend the
Suffrage Anniversary, May 10 and 11.
The thinking women of the country were justly indignant, in this great
centennial year of the Republic, at the high-handed manner in which
they had been ignored in the vast preparations for its celebration, in
spite of their protests and in face of the fact that women had
purchased $100,000 of the centennial stock issued to pay expenses. It
had been decided at the Washington convention that the National
Association should open headquarters in Philadelphia, and at this May
meeting Miss Anthony was made chairman of the 1876 campaign committee.
The resolutions adopted show the spirit of the convention:
WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual
before governments are founded, constitutions framed or courts
created; and _whereas_, Governments exist to protect the people in
the enjoyment of their natural rights, and when one becomes
destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist
and abolish it; and _whereas_, The women of the United States for
one hundred years have been denied the exercise of their natural
right of self-government; therefore
_Resolved_, That it is their natural right and most sacred duty to
rebel against the injustice, usurpation and tyranny of our present
government.
WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did
not claim to be of the people, but on the contrary upheld the
"divine right of kings;" and _whereas_, The women of this nation
today, under a government which claims to be based upon individual
rights, in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the
wrongs which led to the war of the Revolution; and _whereas_, the
oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters, instead
of dwelling in a foreign land, are our husbands, fathers, brothers
and sons; therefore
_Resolved_, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater
cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than had the men of
1776.
_Resolved_, That with Abigail Adams we believe "the passion for
liberty can not be strong in the breasts of those who are
accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty;" that, as
she predicted in 1776, "we are determined to foment a rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice
or representation."
WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and that
a true republic is the best form of government in the world; and
_whereas_, This government is false to its underlying principles in
denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot; and
one-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century of boasted
liberty, are still political slaves; therefore
_Resolved_, That we protest against calling the present centennial
a celebration of the independence of the _people_ of the United
States.
_Resolved_, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on
the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound to
obey laws in whose making we have had no voice and, in presence of
the assembled nations of the world gathered on this soil to
celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the women of
this land.
Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage had long had in view the
preparation of a history of the woman's rights movement, which they
expected to be a pamphlet of several hundred pages, and they offered
this as a premium to every one who should send $5 toward the
contemplated headquarters.[87] Fifty-two women responded at once, and
with this $260 they ventured to rent fine, large parlors in a desirable
part of Philadelphia and fit them up in an attractive manner. By the
laws of Pennsylvania a married woman could not make a contract and Miss
Anthony, being the only femme sole, was obliged to assume the financial
responsibility. She and Mrs. Gage took charge of the headquarters May
25, and issued the following announcement:
The National Woman Suffrage Association has established its
Centennial headquarters in Philadelphia at No. 1431 Chestnut
street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the association,
are devoted to the special work of the year, pertaining to the
centennial celebration and the political party conventions; also to
calls, receptions, etc. On the table a Centennial autograph book
receives the names of visitors....
On July 4th, while the men of this nation and the world are
rejoicing that "all men are free and equal" in the United States, a
declaration of rights for women will be issued from these
headquarters, and a protest against calling this Centennial a
celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are
still political slaves. Let the women of the whole land, on that
day, in meetings, in parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be,
unite with us in this declaration and protest; and immediately
thereafter send full reports for record in our centennial book,
that the world may see that the women of 1876 know and feel their
political degradation no less than did the men of 1776.
In commemoration of the twenty-eighth anniversary of the first
woman's rights convention, the National Suffrage Association will
hold in Philadelphia, July 19 and 20, of the present year, a grand
mass convention, in which eminent reformers from the new and the
old world will take part.
From these headquarters eloquent letters were written to the national
political conventions and sent by delegations of prominent women,
asking for a woman suffrage plank. The Democrats ignored the question
in their platform; the Republicans adopted the following: "The
Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial advance
recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the
many important amendments effected by the Republican legislatures, in
the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives,
mothers and widows, and by the election and appointment of women to the
superintendence of education, charities and other public trusts. The
honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights,
privileges and immunities should be treated with respectful
consideration." In a letter from Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, she says,
"Well, the Republicans have thickened the old sop and re-served it."
The women were determined to obtain a recognition at the centennial
celebration to be held July 4, in Independence Square. "It is the hour,
the golden hour, for woman to speak her word which shall roll down our
second century as has man's Fourth of July manifesto through the last
one hundred years," wrote Miss Anthony. Then she and Mrs. Stanton and
Mrs. Gage put their heads together and framed a document which had all
the holy fire of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and this
they proposed to have made a part of the-great day's proceedings.[88]
Their efforts to this end, their repulse and their subsequent action
are so delightfully described in the History of Woman Suffrage that it
would be presumptuous to attempt to improve upon it. Their utmost
efforts could obtain but four seats on the platform. Miss Anthony had a
ticket as reporter for her brother's paper. The earnest request of Mrs.
Stanton, president of the National Suffrage Association, to General
Joseph R. Hawley, president of the Centennial Commission, not that the
women might read but simply might present their declaration, was
refused on the ground that the program could not be changed. The report
thus continues:
As President Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting
Vice-President, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was
to officiate in his place and he, too, was addressed by note, and
courteously requested to make time for the reception of this
declaration. As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the
demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he
would render his aid. Yet he was forgetful that in his position
that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of
a hundred years, and he too refused; thus the simple request of
woman for a half moment's recognition on the nation's centennial
birthday was denied by all in authority.
While the women of the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the
right of public protest, lavish preparations were made for the
reception and entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons
of monarchial institutions. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a
representative of that form of government against which the United
States is a perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with
fulsome adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of
the day; Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose
shoulders rests the promise of a future kingship, was seated near.
Count Rochambeau of France, the Japanese commissioners, high
officials from Russia and Prussia, from Austria, Spain, England,
Turkey, representing the barbarism and semi-civilization of the
day, found no difficulty in securing recognition and places of
honor upon that platform, where representative womanhood was
denied.
Though refused by their own countrymen a place and part in the
centennial celebration, the women who had taken this presentation
in hand were not to be conquered. They had respectfully asked for
recognition; now that it had been denied, they determined to seize
upon the moment when the reading of the Declaration of Independence
closed, to proclaim to the world the tyranny and injustice of the
nation toward one-half its people. Five officers of the National
Suffrage Association, with that heroic spirit which has ever
animated lovers of liberty in resistance to tyranny, determined,
whatever the result, to present the Woman's Declaration of Rights
at the chosen hour. They would not, they dared not sacrifice the
golden opportunity to which they had so long looked forward; their
work was not for themselves alone, nor for the present generation,
but for all women of all time. The hopes of posterity were in their
hands and they determined to place on record for the daughters of
1976 the fact that their mothers of 1876 had asserted their
equality of rights, and impeached the government of that day for
its injustice toward woman. Thus, in taking a grander step toward
freedom than ever before, they would leave one bright remembrance
for the women of the next Centennial.
That historic Fourth of July dawned at last, one of the most
oppressive days of that terribly heated season. Susan B. Anthony,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake
and Phoebe Couzins made their way through the crowds under the
broiling sun to Independence Square, carrying the Woman's
Declaration of Rights. This declaration had been handsomely
engrossed by Mrs. Spencer and signed by the oldest and most
prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of
admission proved an open sesame through the military and all other
barriers, and a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies,
these women found themselves within the precincts from which most
of their sex were excluded.
The declaration of 1776 was read by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
about whose family clusters so much of historic fame. The close of
his reading was deemed the appropriate moment for the presentation
of the Woman's Declaration. Not quite sure how their approach might
be met--not quite certain if at this final moment they would be
permitted to reach the presiding officer--these ladies arose from
their seats at the back of the stage and walked down the aisle. The
bustle of preparation for the Brazilian hymn covered their advance.
The foreign guests, the military and civil officers who filled the
space directly around the speaker's stand, courteously made way,
while Miss Anthony in fitting words presented the Declaration. Mr.
Ferry's face paled, as bowing low, with no word, he received it,
and it thus became a part of the day's proceedings; the ladies
turned, scattering printed copies as they deliberately passed up
the aisle and off the platform. On every side eager hands were
stretched; men stood on seats and asked for them, while General
Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his audacious denial to women of
the right to present their Declaration, shouted, "Order, order!"
Going out through the crowd, they made their way to a platform
erected for the musicians in front of Independence Hall. Here on
this historic ground, under the shadow of of Washington's statue,
back of them the old bell which proclaimed "liberty to all the land
and all the inhabitants thereof," they took their places, and to a
listening, applauding crowd, Miss Anthony read a copy of the
Declaration just presented to Mr. Ferry. It was warmly applauded at
many points, and after again scattering a number of printed copies,
the delegation descended from the platform and hastened to the
convention of the National Association. A meeting had been
appointed at 12 o'clock, in the First Unitarian church, where Rev.
William H. Furness preached for fifty years, but whose pulpit was
then filled by Joseph May, a son of Rev. Samuel J. May. They found
the church crowded with an expectant audience, which greeted them
with thanks for what they had just done; the first act of this
memorable day taking place on the old centennial platform in
Independence Square, the last in a church so long devoted to
equality and justice.
The venerable Lucretia Mott, then in her eighty-fourth year,
presided. Belva A. Lockwood took up the judiciary, showing the way
that body lends itself to party politics. Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke
upon the writ of habeas corpus, pointing out what a mockery to
married women was that constitutional guarantee. Lucretia Mott
reviewed the progress of the reform from the first convention. Sara
Andrews Spencer illustrated the evils arising from two codes of
morality. Lillie Devereux Blake spoke upon trial by jury; Susan B.
Anthony upon taxation without representation, illustrating her
remarks by incidents of unjust taxation of women during the present
year. Elizabeth Cady Stanton pictured the aristocracy of sex and
the evils arising from manhood suffrage. Judge Esther Morris, of
Wyoming, said a few words in regard to suffrage in that territory.
Phoebe Couzins, with great pathos, told of woman's work in the war.
Margaret Parker, president of the women's suffrage club of Dundee,
Scotland, and of the newly formed International W.C.T.U., declared
this was worth the journey across the Atlantic. Mr. J.H. Raper, of
Manchester, England, characterized it as the grandest meeting of
the day, and said the patriot of a hundred years hence would seek
for every incident connected with it, and the next Centennial would
be adorned by the portraits of the women who sat upon that
platform.
The Hutchinsons were present and in their best vein interspersed
the speeches with appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott
did not confine herself to a single speech but, in Quaker style,
whenever the spirit moved made many happy points. As her sweet and
placid countenance appeared above the pulpit, the Hutchinsons burst
into, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The effect was marvellous; the
audience at once arose, and spontaneously joined in the hymn. For
five long hours of that hot midsummer day, that crowded audience
listened earnestly to woman's demand for equality of rights before
the law. When the meeting at last adjourned, the Hutchinsons
singing, "A Hundred Years Hence," it was slowly and reluctantly
that the great audience left the house.
The headquarters were kept open for two months, the weekly receptions
were largely attended and the rooms each day crowded with visitors. The
immense autograph book was signed by hundreds, most of whom also
affixed their names to the Woman's Declaration of Rights. Lucretia Mott
always came in after attending the mid-week meeting of the Friends, and
the ladies had a pot of tea ready for her coming.[89] When she left she
never failed to hand them $5 "to pay for the trouble she had made," her
contributions in this way amounting to $50. George W. Childs gave $100,
Dr. Clemence Lozier, $100, Ellen C. Sargent, $50, Elizabeth B. Phelps,
$50, Miss Anthony herself contributed $175, and altogether about two
hundred people donated nearly $1,700, all of which was expended in
keeping up the headquarters and printing and circulating thousands of
documents. When the accounts were audited they showed a balance of just
$4.64.
At this time Mrs. Mott sent Miss Anthony this little note, accompanied
by a large package of fine tea: "I forgot to take the tea I promised
thee, so please accept it now. Thank thee for so oft remembering me
with the delicious drinks of it. After leaving thee so hurriedly
yesterday, I feared that thou wast still short of an even balance, and
now enclose another $10 for thy own personal use. It is too hard for
our widely extended national society to suffer thee to labor so
unceasingly without a consideration." But Miss Anthony did not work for
personal reward and said in a letter to her old friend Clarina Howard
Nichols: "The Kansas women say, 'All we have of freedom we owe to Mrs.
Nichols and yet we never have given her a testimonial.' Well, you and I
and all who labor to make the conditions of the world better for coming
generations, must find our testimonials in the good accomplished
through our work."
As soon as the Centennial headquarters were closed Miss Anthony
proceeded to carry out her cherished plan of writing the history of the
woman's rights movement. She had sent the most peremptory orders to
Mrs. Stanton not to make a lecture engagement before December 1, so
that in August, September, October and November they might prepare this
history. She then shipped to Mrs. Stanton's home several large trunks
and boxes full of letters, reports and various documents which she had
carefully preserved during the past quarter of a century, and the first
day of August they set to work. The entries in the diary for the next
two months give some idea of her state of mind: "I am immersed to my
ears and feel almost discouraged.... The work before me is simply
appalling.... The prospect of ever getting out a satisfactory history
grows less each day.... Would that the good spirits in my own brain
would come to the rescue!... O, these old letters! It makes me sad and
tired to read them over, to see the terrible strain I was under every
minute then, have been ever since, am now and shall be, I think, the
rest of my life."[90]
On August 24 occurred the death of Paulina Wright Davis and, at the
husband's request, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the funeral.
The former felt that again she had lost a friend who never could be
replaced. Mrs. Davis was a woman of beauty, culture, wealth and social
position and a life-long advocate of woman suffrage. In October the
dear cousin Anson Lapham passed away, and in the diary that night was
written: "No man except my father ever gave me such love and
confidence, and his acts were equal to his faith."
[Autograph:
With truest and tenderest friendship for my co-workers, I am as ever,
Pauline Wright Davis.]
Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year
she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia
to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a
number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and
fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these
sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others
wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words
as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be
cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and
requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was
occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition
of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour.
Meanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on
Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were
robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with
you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming
winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest
duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the
dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I
care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost
makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."
[Footnote 82: See Appendix for full speech.]
[Footnote 83: At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal
School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's
being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and
not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a
necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon
both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her
how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those
things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was
taking her train.]
[Footnote 84: President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a
friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel
of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a
son."]
[Footnote 85: See Appendix for full speech.]
[Footnote 86: From a large number of clippings, the following are
selected as specimens:
Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last
obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman....
She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her
lips.--Cincinnati Enquirer.
It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B.
Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to
us--and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman
suffrage--that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood
which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.--Utica Observer.
"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not
so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down"
and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this
wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss
Anthony is a very admirable person. She is in business, as in other
matters, one of the few--the select few--who steer by their own compass
and not by the shifting winds.--Buffalo Express.
Miss Susan B. Anthony has done a noble thing, which deserves to be
widely known. She has lectured 120 times during this season and has
paid off the last debt of The Revolution. That she has felt obliged to
work thus for years when thousands of men avail themselves of the
privileges of the bankrupt act, is a phenomenal exhibition of personal
honor. A woman is thoroughly qualified to plead for the claims of her
own sex when she respects the rights of human nature so keenly.--New
York Graphic.
We are thankful to see the recognition accorded to the worth of our
townswoman. She has been often misjudged and sometimes abused; but
unfalteringly and unselfishly she has devoted herself to her life-work,
and despite cavilling and sneers, has deeply impressed her thought upon
the age in which she has been placed. Her executive talent has
unceasingly declared itself and her character has been without
reproach. She is today a power in the land, respected even by those who
oppose her. She may not witness the full triumph of her cause; but her
fame as a brave, truthful and consistent advocate of a conquering cause
is secure. Even in her lifetime she is receiving something of the
reward to which her fidelity to principle entities her.--Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle.]
[Footnote 87: When this work finally was issued at $15 per set, every
one of these pledges was carefully fulfilled, necessarily at a great
pecuniary loss.]
[Footnote 88: For full text of this magnificent document see History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 31.]
[Footnote 89: The little teapot and the cup and saucer which she used
now stand upon Miss Anthony's sideboard.]
[Footnote 90: To this work, which these women expected to accomplish in
four months, they gave every day that could be spared from other duties
for the next ten years!]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
COLORADO CAMPAIGN--POLITICAL ATTITUDE.
1877-1878.
The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of
Virginia L. Minor rendered useless any further efforts to obtain
suffrage under the National Constitution until it should be amended for
this special purpose. The agitation of the last eight years, however,
had not been without its value. The student of history will observe
that the ablest constitutional arguments ever made in favor of the
practical application of the great underlying principles of our
government, were those of Benjamin F. Butler, A.G. Riddle, Henry R.
Selden, William Loughridge, Francis Minor, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage on the right of women to vote
under the Fourteenth Amendment. These were reviewed by the newspapers
and law journals and widely discussed by the people, while the
congressional debates, published in the Record, became a part of
history.
Although from the standpoint of justice these arguments were
unanswerable, they did not succeed in establishing the political rights
of women, and the advocates therefore were compelled to return to their
former policy of demanding a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
which should protect them as the Fifteenth protected the negroes. To
this end, in November, 1876, an earnest appeal was sent out by Mrs.
Stanton, president; Miss Anthony, secretary; and Mrs. Gage, chairman of
the executive committee of the National Association, asking the women
to secure petitions for the amendment and send them to the annual
meeting. Two letters received by Miss Anthony in January, 1877,
illustrate the wide difference of opinion which prevailed. Wm. Lloyd
Garrison wrote:
You desire me to send you a letter, to be read at the Washington
convention, in favor of a petition to Congress, asking that body to
submit to the several States a Sixteenth Amendment securing
suffrage for all, irrespective of sex. On fully considering the
subject, I must decline doing so, because such a petition I deem to
be quite premature. If its request were complied with by the
present Congress--a supposition simply preposterous--the proposed
amendment would be rejected by every State in the Union, and in
nearly every instance by such an overwhelming majority as to bring
the movement into needless contempt. Even as a matter of
"agitation," I do not think it would pay. Look over the whole
country and see in the present state of public sentiment on the
question of woman suffrage what a mighty primary work remains to be
done in enlightening the masses, who know nothing and care nothing
about it and, consequently, are not at all prepared to cast their
vote for any such thing. I think it is a mistake to look for a
favorable consideration of the question on the part of legislators
under such circumstances. More light is needed for the popular
mind.
In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Garrison never
waited for the popular mind to become prepared but, by the ploughshare
of bold, aggressive action, he turned up the soil and made it ready for
the seed. When "more light" was needed, by vigorous effort he stirred
up a blaze which illuminated the world.
From Wendell Phillips came the old-time clarion note: "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 every one."
The convention met in Lincoln Hall, January 16 and 17. Although there
had been but a few weeks for the work, petitions asking a Sixteenth
Amendment were received from twenty-six different States, aggregating
over 10,000 names. The History says: "To Sara Andrews Spencer we are
indebted for the great labor of receiving, assorting, counting,
rolling-up and planning the presentation of the petitions. It was by a
well-considered coup d'état that, with her brave coadjutors, she
appeared on the floor of the House and gave each member a petition from
his own State. Even Miss Anthony, always calm in the hour of danger, on
finding herself suddenly whisked into those sacred enclosures, amid a
crowd of stalwart men, spittoons and scrap-baskets, when brought
vis-a-vis with our champion, Mr. Hoar, hastily apologized for the
intrusion, to which the honorable gentleman promptly replied, 'I hope,
madam, yet to see you on this floor in your own right and in business
hours too.'"
The spectacle is variously described.[91] The trustworthy correspondent
of the Independent, Mary Clemmer, looked at the proceedings with a
woman's eyes and, in her weekly letter, thus vented her indignation:
A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity and
without comment; but the majority seemed intensely conscious of
holding something unutterably funny in their hands. They appeared
to consider it a huge joke. The entire Senate presented the
appearance of a laughing-school practising side-splitting and
ear-extended grins. Mr. Wadleigh leaned back in his chair and shook
with laughter, after portraying to his next neighbor, Pinkney
Whyte, of Maryland, the apparition of Pinkney's landlady descending
upon the polls like a wolf on the fold, to annihilate his election.
Oglesby, erst warrior of Illinois, spake with such endearing
gallantry of his "dear constituents," whom he did all his wit could
do to make ridiculous, that the Senate laughed, and even Roscoe
Conkling, who never condescends to sneer at a woman in public,
turned and listened and smiled his most sardonic smile. Then
Thurman blew his loudest regulation blast--sure portent of
approaching battle--and rose and moved that the petition be
referred to the committee on public lands, of which Oglesby is
chairman. At this proposition--intended to be equally humorous and
contemptuous--the whole Senate laughed aloud.
There was one senator man enough and gentleman enough to lift the
petition from this insulting proposition. It was Senator Sargent,
of California, the husband of the woman who, though a senator's
wife, is brave enough to be the treasurer of the National Suffrage
Association. He turned to Mr. Thurman and demanded for the petition
of more than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be
given to any other.... Then the craven Senate declared Thurman's
motion, which was only an insult, carried. Let it be recorded of
the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress that the one petition which
it received as a preposterous joke and treated with utter contempt
and outrage was that of tens of thousands of the mothers, wives and
daughters of the land.
The Capital of Sunday was perfectly correct when it said: "The
ladies managed the business badly. If they had employed the female
lobby, the venerable Solons would have softened and thrown open
their doors as readily as their hearts." It seems an ungracious
thing to say; but it is the truth. The woman who wins her way with
the majority of these men is the siren of the gallery and the
anteroom, who sends in her card and her invitation to the senator
at his desk. She never talks of "rights." She cares for no "cause"
but her own cause of ease and pelf. She shakes her tresses,
"banged" and usually blonde; she lifts her alluring eyes, and nine
times out of ten makes him do as she listeth. No wonder when the
earnest appeal of honest women reaches his hands, he has neither
response, honor nor justice to give it.
Miss Anthony had been speaking in all parts of the country for a
quarter of a century and generally had been her own manager. The
preceding year she had given the Slayton Lyceum Bureau a partial trial
and at the beginning of 1877 made a contract with it, commencing the
last of January. The entire first page of the circular for the season
was devoted to this new engagement and began:
The manager takes pride in announcing the name of Susan B. Anthony,
the most earnest, fearless advocate of the ballot for woman. She
has hitherto confined herself entirely to this one question, which
to her is most sacred and righteous, but this season we are to have
something different, as will be seen from the titles of her new
lectures. Her great speeches, "Woman and the Sixteenth Amendment,"
and "Woman wants Bread, not the Ballot," will still be called for,
and committees will have their choice in all cases.... A certain
gentleman frequently wrote us last year to avoid "all night rides"
after his lectures; Miss Anthony never makes such a request. She
can lecture every night in the season.... When a list of fifty or
one hundred engagements has been mapped out and fixed, nothing but
an act of God will prevent her filling them.... Of nearly fifty
consecutive lectures, delivered by Miss Anthony last spring in the
State of Illinois alone, only two failed to realize a profit....
She is always making converts among the men as well as the women.
Among the notices quoted is one from Col. John W. Forney, of the
Philadelphia Press, saying: "I must accept woman suffrage as I did
negro emancipation; as a necessity made urgent and imperative by the
times in which we live. Put me down then, if you please, as being an
ardent woman's rights man, fighting under the banner of Susan B.
Anthony, and proud of following such a leader."
[Autograph:
Very truly yours.
J W Forney]
Miss Anthony found both advantages and disadvantages in this new
arrangement; for while it relieved her of much responsibility, it took
away the control of her own time and movements, a situation which she
soon found very trying. She lectured through February and March, but by
this time her sister, Mrs. Hannah Mosher, whose failing health had sent
her to Kansas in the hope of benefit, was declared by the physicians
beyond recovery. Miss Anthony's first impulse was to hasten to her
side, but she was confronted with her lecture engagements and told that
it would be impossible to release her until May. She was almost
desperate to be with the loved one and at last could bear it no longer,
so telegraphing Mr. Slayton to cancel everything after April 5,
regardless of consequences, she took the train at Chicago and reached
Leavenworth on the 7th. She found her sister rapidly declining with the
same inexorable disease which had claimed another four years before,
and at once installed herself beside the invalid, who was rejoiced
indeed to have her companionship and ministrations. All that loving
hands could do she had had from husband, children and brothers, but she
had longed for the presence of her sister and it filled her with joy
and peace.
In just a week, though her heart was breaking, Miss Anthony was obliged
to return to Illinois to fill four or five engagements in places which
threatened claims for damages if this were not done. She hastened back
to Leavenworth, reaching the bedside of her sister at midnight, April
20, and scarcely leaving it a moment until the end came, May 12.
Between herself and this sister, just nineteen months younger,
beautiful in character and strong in affection, there ever had existed
the closest sympathy. For the last decade they had been separated only
by a dooryard, they had shared each other's every joy and sorrow, and
the severing of these ties of over a half-century seemed more than she
could endure.
She remained at Leavenworth,[92] trying to renew her strength and
courage, until the last of June, when she returned to Rochester, taking
with her the orphaned daughter Louise. Many comforting letters and
tokens of affection came to her during these months, among them a gift
of $100 from Helen Potter, the famous impersonator. Her imitations of
Gough, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Stanton and
even Miss Anthony herself were most remarkable. During the Centennial
they had become warm personal friends, and in giving the money she
said: "Now, this is not for any society or committee or cause, but for
your very self."
Mrs. Stanton wrote her: "Do be careful, dear Susan, you can not stand
what you once did. I should feel desolate indeed with you gone." When
the lecturing had commenced she again wrote: "As I go dragging around
in these despicable hotels, I think of you and often wish we had at
least the little comfort of enduring it together. When is your agony
over?" Referring to a young woman speaker who was being spoiled by
flattery, she said: "We should be thankful, Susan, for the ridicule and
abuse on which we have fed." To one who tried to make trouble between
Miss Anthony and herself she sent this reply: "Our friendship is of too
long standing and has too deep roots to be easily shattered. I think we
have said worse things to each other, face to face, than we have ever
said about each other. Nothing that Susan could say or do could break
my friendship with her; and I know nothing could uproot her affection
for me." And to Miss Anthony she wrote: "I send you letters from _our_
children. As the environments of the mother influence the child in
prenatal life, and you were with me so much, there is no doubt you have
had a part in making them what they are. There are a depth and
earnestness in these younger ones and a love for you that delight my
heart." Such letters as these are scattered thickly through the
correspondence of nearly fifty years, and while Miss Anthony seldom put
her own feelings into words, her absolute loyalty and devotion to Mrs.
Stanton during all the half-century bear their own testimony.
The talented contributor to the Philadelphia Sunday Republic, Annie
McDowell, paid a beautiful tribute to Miss Anthony at this time,
illustrating how much she was loved by women:
"Some one wishes to know which of the advocates of woman's rights
we think the ablest. Why, Susan B., of course. Without her, the
organization would have been utterly broken to pieces and
scattered. She is the guiding spirit, the executive power that
leads the forlorn hope and brings order out of chaos. Others seek
to promote their own interests, but Susan, earnest, honest,
self-sacrificing, much-enduring, thinks only of the work she has in
hand, and speculates solely on the chances of living long enough to
accomplish it. She has given up home, friends, her profession of
teacher and the modest competence acquired by her labor; has been
caricatured, ridiculed, maligned and persecuted, but has never
turned aside or faltered in the work to which she has given her
life. Whatever may be the opinion of the conservative or fogy world
with regard to Susan B. Anthony, those who know her well and have
watched her career most attentively, know her to be rich in all the
best and most tender of womanly virtues, and possessed of as brave
and noble a spirit and as great integrity of character as ever fell
to the lot of mortal woman."
The legislature of Colorado had submitted the question of woman
suffrage to be voted on October 2, 1877, and notwithstanding the
lucrative business under the lyceum bureau, Miss Anthony could not
resist offering her services to the women of Colorado with their little
money and few speakers. From Dr. Alida C. Avery, president of the State
Suffrage Association, came the quick response: "Your generous proposal
was duly received, and laid before the executive committee, who
resolved that the thanks of the association be tendered you for your
friendly offer, which we gratefully accept."
Although inured to hardship, Miss Anthony found this Colorado campaign
the most trying she ever had experienced, not excepting that of Kansas
ten years before. The country was new, many of the towns were off the
railroad among the mountains and in most of them woman suffrage never
had been heard of; there was no one to advertise the meetings, nobody
to meet her when she reached her destination, hotels were of the most
primitive nature and there were few public halls. There were, of
course, some oases in this desert, and occasionally she found a good
hotel or was hospitably entertained in a comfortable home. At one place
she spoke in the railroad station to about twenty-five men who could
not understand what it was she wanted them to do, though all were
voters. Sometimes a landlord would clear out the hotel dining-room and
she would gather her audience there, but they would have to stand and
soon would grow tired. The mining towns were filled with a densely
ignorant class of foreigners, and some of the southern counties were
almost wholly populated by Mexicans. It was to these men that an
American woman, her grandfather a soldier of the Revolution, appealed
for the right of women to representation in this government.
To reach Del Norte Miss Anthony rode sixty-five miles by stage over a
vast, arid tract evidently once the bed of an inland sea, but the
terrible discomforts of the journey were almost overlooked in the
enjoyment of the magnificent scenery. She travelled all the next night;
at Wagon Wheel Gap the stage stopped for a while and, taking a cup, she
went alone down to the river, drank of its icy waters and stood a long
time absorbed in the glory of the moonlight on the mountain peaks. In
all this weary journey of two days, she was the only woman in a stage
filled with men. When she reached Lake City she was delightfully
entertained, finding her hostess to be a college graduate, and spoke in
the evening from a dry-goods box on the courthouse steps to an
enthusiastic audience of a thousand persons. Ouray was the next place
marked on the route sent her, but to reach it would require a ride of
fifty miles over a dangerous mountain trail or a three days' journey of
150 miles around, for which she must hire a private conveyance, so she
gave it up.
She rested one whole day and night and started at 6 A.M. on a buckboard
for the next place, wound around the mountainsides by the picturesque
Gunnison river, and reached her destination at 5 o'clock. She found a
disbeliever of equal rights in her landlady, whom she describes as "a
weak, silly woman and a wretched cook and housekeeper." To be an
opponent of suffrage and a poor housekeeper Miss Anthony always
regarded as two unpardonable sins. The husband, however, intended to
vote for it. At the next stopping-place her hostess was a cultured
woman, her house neatly kept and meals well-cooked, and she wanted to
vote. The husband in this case was violently opposed and expected to
cast his ballot against the amendment. Thus it is that wives are
"represented by their husbands."
On she went, over mountain and through canyon, across the "great
divide," sometimes having large audiences, more often only a handful,
and enduring every possible hardship in the way of travel, sleep and
food. At Oro City she lectured in a saloon, as she had done at a number
of places, and Governor Routt, happening to be in town, stood by her
and spoke also in favor of woman suffrage. At many places she slept on
a straw-filled tick laid on planks, with sometimes a "corded" bed for a
luxury. A door with a lock scarcely ever was found. Once she had a room
with a board partition which extended only half-way up, separating it
from one adjoining where half a dozen men slept. It is hardly necessary
to say that this was a wakeful night and the dawn was hailed with
rejoicing. At Leadville the gold fever was at its height and she spoke
in a big saloon to the roughest crowd she had encountered. They were
good-natured, however, and when they saw she was coughing from the
tobacco smoke, put out their pipes and made up for the sacrifice by
more frequent drinks. At Fair Play she found the Democratic editor had
placarded the town with bills announcing in big letters: "A New
Version! Suffrage! Free Love in the Ascendency. Anthony! On the Gale
Tonight." The citizens were indignant, there was a large and respectful
audience, Miss Anthony was introduced by Judge Henry and resolutions
were unanimously passed denouncing the posters.
On election day, her work finished, she started on a stage ride of
eighty-five miles to Denver. The collections at her twenty-four
meetings amounted to $165. Her fare to Colorado and return, exclusive
of some passes furnished by her brother and including sleeper and
meals, was $100, and her expenses during the tour more than used up the
other $65, so it hardly could be called a good financial speculation.
Soon afterwards she received from Mr. and Mrs. Israel Hall, of Ann
Arbor, Mich., a deed for 320 acres of well-timbered land in St. Francis
county, Ark., "as a tribute to her life-work for woman suffrage and
especially her hard campaign in Colorado." There came also a letter
from the ever-generous and faithful Mrs. Knox Goodrich, of San Jose,
Cal., with a draft for $50 "to be used for your campaign expenses;" and
in her diary Miss Anthony writes: "It is a great comfort, after all
these years of financially unrequited work, to receive such marks of
appreciation."
At Denver she met Margaret Campbell, of Iowa, and Matilda Hindman, of
Pennsylvania, who also had been campaigning in Colorado. They had an
amusing time comparing notes, but as Mrs. Campbell had travelled in her
own carriage with her husband, and Miss Hindman had spoken mostly in
towns along the railroad, their experiences had been less picturesque
and less harrowing. She also met here Abby Sage Richardson, who was
giving a course of readings in Denver. It was in this locality that her
sister Hannah had spent many weary weeks the year before, seeking for
health, and Miss Anthony hunted up every person who had known her,
hoping each would recall some incident of her stay; visited every spot
her sister had loved, and felt the whole place haunted with her
hallowed memory.
Dr. Alida C. Avery was going East for some time, but was to leave two
young women medical students in her house and she invited Miss Anthony
to stay there while she remained in Denver. She was soon installed in
the large, airy front chamber of this lovely home, looking down on a
grassy and well-irrigated lawn and outward towards the rugged and
massive Rocky mountains. It was an inspiring spot and, as she had
promised a new lecture for the Slayton Bureau, she decided to remain
and write it here. Her surroundings recalled the many charming homes
made and maintained by unmarried women whom she had visited, and so in
the three weeks that she enjoyed Dr. Avery's hospitality, she wrote her
lecture, "Homes of Single Women." During this time she spoke at
Boulder; and also in the opera house at Denver under the auspices of a
committee, receiving $100.
She started, October 23, on a long lecture tour arranged for her
through Nebraska,[93] Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, which
lasted the remainder of the year. She almost perished with cold and
fatigue before it was finished but found some compensation in the $30 a
night which the lectures yielded. At this time she received an urgent
request from a San Francisco lecture committee to come to that State,
but was unable to accept. "If I only could have sister Mary with me
over Sunday in these dull and lonely little towns, I could stand it the
rest of the week," she wrote; and to a friend who sent her an account
of a visit to her mother: "I am very glad you do go occasionally to see
dear mother, sitting there in her rocking-chair by the window as life
ebbs out and out. O, how I fear the final ebb will come when I am away,
but still I hope and trust it may not, and work and work on."
As Miss Anthony was still under contract with the lecture bureau, she
was once more compelled to forego the satisfaction of attending the
annual convention in Washington, January 8 and 9, 1878, but as in 1876
she sent $100 of the money she had worked so hard to earn. "It is not
quite just to myself to do it," she wrote a friend, "but if the women
of wealth and leisure will not help us, we must give both the labor and
the money." While this convention was a success as to numbers and
enthusiasm, several things occurred which the ladies thought might have
been avoided if Miss Anthony had been in command with her cool head and
firm hand. Especially was this true in regard to a prayer meeting which
some of the religious zealots, in spite of the most urgent appeals from
the other members, persisted in holding in the reception room of the
Capitol directly after a morning session of the convention. The affair
itself was most inopportune but, to make it still worse, the cranks and
bores who always are watching for an opportunity, gained control and
turned it into a farce.
In her disgust and wrath Mrs. Stanton wrote Miss Anthony: "Mrs. Sargent
and I did not attend the prayer meeting. As God has never taken a very
active part in the suffrage movement, I thought I would stay at home
and get ready to implore the committee, having more faith in their
power to render us the desired aid." Mrs. Sargent, with her usual calm
and beautiful philosophy, wrote: "Do not let yourself be troubled. We
can not take down and rebuild without a great deal of dirt and rubbish,
and we must endure it all for the sake of the grand edifice that is to
appear in due time. Work and let work, each in her own way. We can not
all work alike any more than we can look alike. We must not require
impossibilities. All action helps us, it shows life; inaction, we know,
means death. I hope you can be with us next convention. The women of
this country and of the world owe you a debt they never can repay. I
know, however, that you will get your reward."
Virginia L. Minor sent this earnest plea: "Can not you and Mrs.
Stanton, before another convention, manage in some way to civilize our
platform and keep off that element which is doing us so much harm? I
think the ship never floated that had so many barnacles attached as has
ours.... I have a compliment for you, my dear. Wendell Phillips has
just told a reporter of the St. Louis Post that, 'of all the advocates
of the woman's movement, Miss Anthony stands at the head.'"
In her usual racy style Phoebe Couzins concluded her description by
saying: "It seems very strange that when you are not about, things
generally break loose and no woman can be found who unites the
moderation, brains and common sense necessary to carry matters to a
respectable conclusion. That meeting was like those they used to have
in the District of Columbia. Not until the National Association, in the
persons of Mrs. Stanton and yourself, came to the rescue and raised
them to a dignified standard did they attain any degree of hearing from
the thoughtful people of the capital." And so Miss Anthony determined
that no lecture bureau should keep her away from another National
convention.
The entire year of 1878, with the exception of the three summer months,
was spent in the lecture field. On July 19 Miss Anthony and other
workers arranged a celebration at Rochester of the thirtieth
anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. This was held in
place of the usual May Anniversary in New York and was attended by a
distinguished body of women. The Unitarian church, in spite of the
intense heat, was filled with a representative audience. The noble
Quaker, Amy Post, now seventy-seven years old, who had been the leading
spirit in the convention of thirty years before, assisted in the
arrangements. The usual brilliant and logical speeches were made by
Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs, Gage, Dr. Lozier, Mrs.
Spencer, Mrs. Sargent, Frederick Douglass, Miss Couzins and others.
This was the first appearance on the National platform of Mrs. May
Wright Sewall, of Indianapolis, from that time one of the leaders of
the movement. Almost one hundred interesting and encouraging letters
were received from Phillips, Garrison, Senator Sargent, Frances E.
Willard, Clara Barton and many others in this country and in England.
This was the last convention Lucretia Mott ever attended, and she had
made the journey hither under protest from her family, for she was
nearly eighty-six years old, but her devoted friend Sarah Pugh
accompanied her. She spoke several times in her old, gentle,
half-humorous but convincing manner and was heard with rapt attention.
As she walked down the aisle to leave the church, the whole audience
arose and Frederick Douglass called out with emotion, "Good-by,
Lucretia." The convention received a telegram of congratulation from
the International Congress at Paris, presided over by Victor Hugo. Mrs.
Stanton was re-elected president and Miss Anthony chairman of the
executive committee. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle said:
The assemblage was composed of as fine a body of American women as
ever met in convention or anywhere else. Among them were many noted
for their culture and refinement, and for their attainments in the
departments of literature, medicine, divinity and law. As Douglass
said, to which the president bowed her acquiescence, any cause
which could stand the test of thirty years' agitation, was bound to
succeed. The foremost ladies engaged in the movement today are
those who initiated it in this country and have bravely and grandly
upheld their cause from that day to this. Among them we must first
speak of Susan B. Anthony, one of the most sensible and worthy
citizens of this republic, a lady of warm and tender heart but
indomitable purpose and energy, and a resident of whom Rochester
may well be proud.
Miss Anthony was very tired after the labors of this convention and was
glad to remain with the invalid mother while sister Mary went to the
White mountains for rest and change. She received an invitation from
the board of directors to address the Kansas State Fair in September,
and also one from Col. John P. St. John, Republican candidate for
governor, to speak at a Grand National Temperance Camp Meeting near
Lawrence, but was obliged to decline both.
During the summer of 1878 reports were so constantly circulated
declaring woman suffrage a failure in Wyoming that Miss Anthony wrote
to J.H. Hayford, postmaster and editor of the Sentinel at Laramie City,
in regard to one of these in the New York World, which paper declared
it would vouch for the integrity of the writer. She received the
following answer:
The enclosed slander upon Wyoming women I had seen before, but did
not deem it worthy reply. Some of my Cheyenne friends took pains to
ascertain the writer and they assure me (and the Cheyenne papers
have published the fact) that he is a worthless, drunken dead-beat,
who worked out a ten days' sentence on the streets of that city
with a ball and chain to his leg.
I have not time to go into a detailed history of the practical
working of woman suffrage in Wyoming, but I can add my testimony to
the fact that its effect has been most salutary and beneficial. Not
one of the imaginary evils which its opponents predicted has ever
been realized here. On this frontier, where the roughest element is
supposed to exist, and where women are so largely in the
minority--even here, under these adverse circumstances, _woman's
influence has redeemed our politics_. Our elections are conducted
as quietly and civilly as any other public gatherings. Republicans
are not always elected, the most desirable men are not always
elected, perhaps; but the influence of our women is almost
universally given for the best men and the best laws, and we would
as soon be without woman's assistance in the government of the
family as in that of the Territory.
After having tried the experiment for nine years, it is safe to say
there is not one citizen of the Territory--man or woman--who
desires good order, good laws and good government, who would be
willing to see it abolished. Woman's influence in the government of
our Territory is a terror only to evil-doers, and they, and they
only, are the ones who desire its repeal. Such base slanders as the
specimen you sent me excite in the minds of Wyoming citizens only
feelings of disgust and contempt for the author, and wonder at the
ignorance of any one who is gullible enough to believe them.
In August she received a letter from Lucy Stone, asking if she had been
correctly reported by the papers as saying that "the suffragists would
advocate any party which would declare for woman suffrage," to which
she replied:
I answer "yes," save that I used the pronoun "I" instead of the
word "suffragists." I spoke for myself alone, because I know many
of our women are so much more intensely Republican or Democratic,
Hard-Money or Green-back, Prohibition or License, than they are
"Equal Rights for All," that now, as in the past, they will hold
the question of woman's enfranchisement in abeyance, while they
give their money and their energies to secure the success of one or
another of the contending parties, even though it wholly ignore
their just claim to a voice in the government. It is not that I
have no opinions or preferences on the many grave questions which
distract and divide the parties; but it is that, in my judgment,
the right of self-government for one-half the people is of far more
vital consequence to the nation than any or all other questions.
This has been my position ever since the abolition of slavery, by
which the black race were raised from chattels to citizens, and
invested also with civil rights equally with the cultured,
tax-paying, white women of the country. Have you forgotten the cry
"This is the negro's hour," which came back to us in 1866, when we
urged the Abolitionists to make common cause with us and demand
suffrage _as a right_ for all United States citizens, instead of
asking it simply as an _expediency_ for only another class of men?
Do you not remember, too how the taunt "false to the negro" was
flung into the face of every one of us who insisted that it was
"humanity's hour," and that to talk of "freedom without the ballot"
was no less "mockery" to woman than to the negro?
If, in those most trying reconstruction years, I could not
subordinate the fundamental principle of "Equal Rights for All" to
Republican party necessity for negro suffrage--if, in that fearful
national emergency, I would not sacrifice the greater to the
less--I surely can not and will not today hold any of the far less
important party questions paramount to that most sacred principle
of our republic. So long as you and I and all women are political
slaves, it ill becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions
of our sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with
self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon
the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as
their political equals, duly register our names and respectfully
count our opinions at the ballot-box, as a constitutional
right--not as a high crime, punishable with "$500 fine or six
months' imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court."
If all the "suffragists" of all the States could see eye to eye on
this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and
politician not fully and unequivocally committed to "Equal Rights
for Women," we should become at once a moral balance of power which
could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to
proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform. "In union
alone there is strength." Until that good day comes, I shall
continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling to
get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our
enslaved half of the people; and in turn, I shall promise to do all
a "subject" can do, for the success of the party which thus
declares its purpose "to undo the heavy burdens and let the
oppressed go free."
[Footnote 91: That women will, by voting, lose nothing of man's
courteous, chivalric attention and respect is admirably proven by the
manner in which Congress, in the midst of the most anxious and
perplexing presidential conflict in our history, received their appeals
for a Sixteenth Amendment protecting the rights of women. In both
Houses, by unanimous consent, the petitions were presented and read in
open session, and the most prominent senators impressed upon the Senate
the importance of the question.... The ladies naturally feel greatly
encouraged by the evident interest of both parties in the proposed
amendment.--Washington Star.
The time has evidently arrived when demands for a recognition of the
personal, civil and political rights of one-half--unquestionably the
better half--of the people can not be laughed down or sneered down, and
recent indications are that they can not much longer be voted down. The
speaker of the House set a commendable example by proposing that the
petitions be delivered in open session, to which there was no
objection. The early advocates of equal rights for women--Hoar, Kelley,
Banks, Kasson, Lawrence and Lapham--were, if possible, surpassed in
courtesy by those who are not committed, but are beginning to see that
a finer element, in the body politic would clear the vision, purify the
atmosphere and help to settle many vexed questions on the basis of
exact and equal justice. In the Senate the unprecedented courtesy was
extended to women of half an hour's time on the floor and while this
kind of business has usually been transacted with an attendance of from
seven to ten senators, it was observed that only two out of the
twenty-six who had Sixteenth Amendment petitions to present were out of
their seats.--National Republican.]
[Footnote 92: For the first time in twenty years Miss Anthony missed
the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York City.]
[Footnote 93: At Beatrice, Neb., Miss Anthony met for the first time
Mrs. Clara B. Colby, who said in a bright letter received soon
afterwards: "Everybody was delighted with your lecture, except one man
who sat there with a child on each arm, and he said you never looked at
him or gave him a bit of credit for it."]
CHAPTER XXIX.
SENATE COMMITTEE REPORT--PRESS COMMENT.
1879-1880.
At the beginning of 1879 Miss Anthony put all lecture work aside until
after the Washington convention, January 9 and 10. The thunderbolts
forged by the resolution committee were a little more fiery even than
those of former years, and the combined workmanship of the two Vulcans,
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, is quite apparent, with vivid sparks
from the chairman, Mrs. Spencer:
_Resolved_, That the Forty-fifth Congress, in ignoring the
individual petitions of more than 300 women of high social standing
and culture, asking for the removal of their political
disabilities, while promptly enacting special legislation for the
removal of those of every man who petitioned, illustrates the
indifference of Congress to the rights of a sex deprived of
political power.
WHEREAS, Senator Blaine says it is the very essence of tyranny to
count any citizens in the basis of representation who are denied a
voice in the laws and a choice in their rulers; therefore
_Resolved_, That counting women in the basis of representation,
while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to
swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable
usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of this republic.
WHEREAS, In President Hayes' last message, he makes a truly
paternal review of the interests of this republic, both great and
small, from the army, the navy and our foreign relations, to the
ten little Indians in Hampton, Va., our timber on the western
mountains, and the switches of the Washington railroads; from the
Paris Exposition, the postal service, the abundant harvests, and
the possible bulldozing of some colored men in various southern
districts, to cruelty to live animals and the crowded condition of
the mummies, dead ducks and fishes in the Smithsonian
Institute--yet forgets to mention 20,000,000 women robbed of their
social, civil and political rights; therefore
_Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed to wait upon the
President and remind him of the existence of one-half the American
people ....
WHEREAS, All the vital principles involved in the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have been denied in their
application to women by courts, legislatures and political parties;
therefore
_Resolved_, That it is logical that these amendments should fail to
protect even the male African for whom said courts, legislatures
and parties declare they were expressly designed and enacted.
WHEREAS, The general government has refused to exercise federal
power to protect women in their right to vote in the various States
and Territories; therefore
_Resolved_, That it should forbear to exercise federal power to
disfranchise the women of Utah, who have had a more just and
liberal spirit shown them by Mormon men than Gentile women in the
States have yet received from their rulers.
WHEREAS, The proposed legislation for Chinese women on the Pacific
slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the opinion of the
press that no respectable woman should be seen in the streets after
dark, are all based upon the presumption that woman's freedom must
be forever sacrificed to man's license; therefore
_Resolved_, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by
which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our
streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom which
belongs to her by day and by night.
An address to President Hayes, asking that in his next message he
recommend that women should be protected in their civil and political
rights, was signed by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage. Several
ladies, by appointment, had a private audience in the President's
library and a courteous and friendly hearing. The petition for a
Sixteenth Amendment was sent in printed form to every member of
Congress, presented in the Senate by Vice-President Wheeler and, at the
request of Senator Ferry, was read at length and referred to the
committee on privileges and elections. This was done by the special
desire of its chairman, Senator Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, who
stated that he wished to bring in a report in favor of the
amendment.[94]
[Autograph: O.P. Morton]
Before the committee could act upon this question Senator Morton passed
away. An adverse report was presented by his successor, Senator
Bainbridge Wadleigh, of New Hampshire, June 14, 1878. Among many severe
scorings received by this honorable gentleman, the following from Mary
Clemmer will serve as an example:
... You can not be unconscious of the fact that a new race of
women is born into the world who, while they lack no womanly
attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It
will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before
the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happen to
be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she
happen to be a woman.
On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical
strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person
the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I am a
property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do you
assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen,
while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between
me and a man? Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a
lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my
own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God. Leave to
unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the
distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator
do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an
equal chance to make the best and most of himself.
If American men could say, as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a single
obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the beginning has so
heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war, men and women
would reign together, the equal companions, friends, helpers and
lovers that nature intended they should be. But what is love,
tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice? Tyranny and
servitude, that is all, brute supremacy, spiritual slavery. By what
authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more
enlightened franchise, for political equality, if even six women
citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand
both?
All the women's papers expressed indignation, and there was general
rejoicing when, at the next election, Mr. Wadleigh was superseded by
Hon. Henry W. Blair.
The first favorable consideration this question ever received from the
Senate was the minority report of this committee, signed by Senators
George F. Hoar, John H. Mitchell and Angus Cameron, an unanswerable
argument for the enfranchisement of women.[95] It declared that "the
people of the United States are committed to the doctrine of universal
suffrage by their constitution, their history and their opinions, and
by it they must stand or fall." One week later the bill admitting women
to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate, grandly
advocated by Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar.
[Autograph: I am yrs very truly Geo F Hoar]
After the convention Miss Anthony went to Tenafly with Mrs. Stanton for
a few days, to aid in disentangling the mass of material which was
being prepared for the History; then started again into the lecture
field, commencing at Skowhegan, Me. She lectured through New Hampshire
and Vermont, taking long sleigh-rides from point to point, through wind
and sleet, but comforted by the thought that many of her audience had
done likewise to receive the gospel she preached. On her way westward
she stopped at home for one short day, the first for four months, and
then started on the old route through the States of the Middle West,
this year adding Kentucky to the list. It is not essential to a full
appreciation of her work to follow in detail these tours, which
extended through a number of years and were full of pleasant as well as
disagreeable features; nor is it possible to quote extensively the
comments of the press. Miss Anthony undoubtedly has been as widely
written up as any lecturer, and she seldom received less than a column
in each paper of every town visited. Large numbers of these notices
have been carefully preserved in those wonderful scrap-books which
cover a period of fifty years.
At first her demands seemed so radical and the idea of a woman on the
platform was so contrary to the precedent of all the ages, that the
tone of the press, almost without exception, was contemptuous or
denunciatory. As the justice of her claims began to dawn upon the minds
of enlightened people, as many other prominent women joined in
advocating the same reforms, and as these were adopted, one after
another, without serious consequences, the public mind awakened to the
remarkable change which was being wrought, and in a large measure gave
its approval. When the masses of people throughout the country came to
see and hear and know Miss Anthony, they resented the way in which she
had been misrepresented. There was in her manner and words so much of
dignity, earnestness and sincerity that "those who came to scoff
remained to pray," and this change of sentiment was nowhere so marked
as in the newspapers. Even those who differed radically from her views
paid tribute to the persistence with which she had urged them and the
sacrifices she had made for them during the past thirty years. Not only
had there been developed a recognition of her high purposes and noble
life, but also of her great intellectual ability and clear
comprehension of all the issues of the day. An extract from the Terre
Haute Express, February 12, 1879, illustrates this:
Miss Anthony's lecture was full of fine passages and strong
appeals, and replete with well-stated facts in support of her
arguments. She has wonderful command of language, and her speech at
times flows with such rapidity that no reporter could do her
justice or catch a tithe of the brilliance of her sayings.
Moreover, there are not half of our public men who are nearly so
well posted in the political affairs of our country as she, or who,
knowing them, could frame them so solidly in argument. If the women
of the nation were half so high-minded or even half so earnest,
their title to the franchise might soon be granted.[96]
Another Indiana paper thus voiced the changing sentiment: "The fact is,
that like the advance agent of any great reform--especially if a
woman--Susan B. Anthony has been so belied and maligned by the press in
years gone by that many who do not stop to think had come to believe
her a perfect ogre, a cross-grained, incongruous old maid whom nobody
could like, when the truth of the matter is, one has but to look at and
listen to her, either in public or private, to realize that she is a
pure, generous, deep-thinking, womanly woman. Simply because she has
lived her own life, spoken her own thoughts and stood upon her own
platform, the masses have condemned her; but history has already
recorded her as one of the most earnest, hard-working reformers of the
day. If the women of this country only knew how many changes and
ameliorations have been made in the laws regarding themselves through
her unselfish, persistent efforts, at her approach they would all rise
up and call her blessed." But that there still existed editors of the
old-time caliber, this extract from the Richmond, Ky., Herald, October
29, 1879, shows:
Miss Anthony is above the medium height for women, dresses plainly,
is uncomely in person, has rather coarse, rugged features and
masculine manners. Her piece, which doubtless she has been studying
for thirty or forty years, was very well delivered for a woman,
containing no original thought, but full of old hackneyed ideas,
which every female suffrage shrieker has hurled from the stump
against "ignorant men and small boys," for time out of mind all
over this country and every other country where they could command
an audience of curious people willing to throw away an hour or two
on a vain, futile and foolish harangue, proposing to transform men
into women and women into men. Such dissatisfied females should not
hurl anathemas at men, forsooth, because they happened to be born
into the world women instead of men. God alone is responsible for
the difference between the sexes, and he is able to bear it. Men
are not to blame that women are women, for there is not a man in
this whole land who wouldn't rather have a boy baby than a gal baby
any time. There never was a newly-married man when he learned that
his first born was a girl, that didn't try to tear out his hair by
the roots because it wasn't a boy.... If this tirade against men is
to be persisted in, we see no escape for man except to quit his
foolishness and have no more children, unless he can have some sort
of guarantee that they will all be boys. It will have come to a
strange pass indeed when the good women of this land, who, as
mothers, have the nurture, training and admonition of every boy
from his cradle to mature manhood, are unwilling to trust in the
hands of their own offspring the destinies of the nation.
That such an attack can not be attributed to sectional prejudice may be
proved by this extract from a column of vituperation in the Grand
Rapids, Mich., Times, during this same trip, headed "Spinster Susan's
Suffrage Show:"
A "miss" of an uncertain number of years, more or less brains, a
slimsy figure, nut-cracker face and store teeth, goes raiding about
the country attempting to teach mothers and wives their duty.... As
is the yellow-fever to the South, the grasshopper to the plains,
and diphtheria to our northern cities, so is Susan B. Anthony and
her class to all true, pure, lovely women. The sirocco of the
desert blows no hotter or more tainting breath in the face of the
traveller, than does this woman against all men who do not believe
as she does, and no pestilence makes sadder havoc among them than
would Susan B. Anthony if she had the power. The women who make
homes, who are sources of comfort to husbands, fathers, brothers,
sisters or themselves, who wish to keep sacred all that goes to
make their lives noble, refined and worth the living, will be as
diametrically opposed to the lecturer of last evening as are most
intelligent men. Susan B. Anthony may find her remedy in suffrage,
but alas! there is no remedy for us against Susan and her ilk.
Each lecture usually was followed by letters not only from friends but
from entire strangers, asking her forgiveness for having misjudged her
so many years, and closing something like this from a lady in St. Paul,
Minn.: "For the last ten years your name has been familiar to me
through the newspapers, or rather through newspaper ridicule, and has
always been associated with what was pretentious and wholly unamiable.
Your lecture tonight has been a revelation to me. I wanted to come and
touch your hand, but I felt too guilty. Henceforth I am the avowed
defender of woman suffrage. Never again shall a word of mine be heard
derogatory to the noble women who are working with heart and hand for
the best welfare of humanity."
A two-column interview in the Chicago Tribune during this tour gives
Miss Anthony's views on many public matters, concluding thus:
"If men would only think of the question without paying attention
to prejudice or precedent, simply as one of political economy, they
would soon begin to regard woman, and woman's rights, just as they
regard themselves and their own rights," said she.
"The W.C.T.U. are doing good work, are they not?"
"Yes, Miss Willard is doing noble work, but I can not coincide with
her views, and my new lecture, 'Will Home Protection Protect,' will
combat them. The officer who holds his position by the votes of men
who want free whiskey, can not prosecute the whiskey-sellers. The
district-attorney and the judge can not enforce the law when they
know that to do so will defeat them at the next election. If women
had votes the officials would no longer fear to enforce the law, as
they would know that though they lost the votes of 5,000
whiskey-sellers and drinkers, they would gain those of 20,000
women. Miss Willard has a lever, but she has no fulcrum on which to
place it."
"Where do you find the strongest antipathy to woman suffrage?"
"In the fears of various parties that it might he disastrous to
their interests. The Protestants fear it lest there should be a
majority of Catholic women to increase the power of that church;
the free-thinkers are afraid that, as the majority of
church-members are women, they would put God in the Constitution;
the free-whiskey men are opposed because they think women would
vote down their interests; the Republicans would put a suffrage
plank in their platform if they knew they could secure the majority
vote of the women, and so would the Democrats, but each party fears
the result might help the other. Thus, you see, we can not appeal
to the self-interest of anybody and this is our great source of
weakness."
It was decided to bold this year's May Anniversary in St. Louis instead
of New York, and all arrangements having been made by Virginia L. Minor
and Phoebe Couzins, the convention opened formally on the evening of
May 7, to quote the newspapers, "in the presence of a magnificent
audience which packed every part of St. George's Hall, crowding gallery
and stairs and leaving hardly standing room in the aisles." They also
paid many compliments to the intellectual character of the audience,
its evident sympathy with the cause for which the convention was
assembled, and the elegant costumes worn by the ladies both in the body
of the house and on the platform. Mrs. Minor presided and a beautiful
address of welcome was delivered by Miss Couzins. The ladies were
invited to the Merchants' Exchange by its president, and also visited
the Fair grounds by invitation of the board. Miss Couzins gave a
reception at her home, and the evening before the convention opened,
Mrs. Minor entertained the delegates informally. Of this latter
occasion the Globe-Democrat said:
Miss Susan B. Anthony, perhaps the only lady present of national
reputation, commanded attention at a glance. Her face is one which
would attract notice anywhere; full of energy, character and
intellect, the strong lines soften on a closer inspection. There is
a good deal that is "pure womanly" in the face which has been held
up to the country so often as a gaunt and hungry specter's crying
for universal war upon mankind. The spectacles sit upon a nose
strong enough to be masculine, but hide eyes which can beam with
kindliness as well as flash with wit, irony and satire. Angular she
may be--"angular as a Lebanon Shakeress" she said the New York
Herald once termed her--but if so, the irregularities of outline
were completely hidden under the folds of the modest and dignified
black silk which covered her most becomingly.
At this convention occurred that touching scene which has been so often
described, when May Wright Sewall presented Miss Anthony, to her
complete surprise, with a beautiful floral offering from the delegates.
The Globe-Democrat thus reports:
Miss Anthony, visibly affected, responded: "Mrs. President and
Friends: I am not accustomed to demonstrations of gratitude or of
praise. I don't know how to behave tonight. Had you thrown stones
at me, had you called me hard names, had you said I should not
speak, had you declared I had done women more harm than good and
deserved to be burned at the stake; had you done anything, or said
anything, against the cause which I have tried to serve for the
last thirty years, I should have known how to answer, but now I do
not. I have been as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to this
movement. I know nothing and have known nothing of oratory or
rhetoric. Whatever I have done has been done because I wanted to
see better conditions, better surroundings, better circumstances
for women. Now, friends, don't expect me to make any proper
acknowledgments for such a demonstration as has been made here
tonight. I can not; I am overwhelmed."
As the association wished to continue Mrs. Stanton at the head, they
created the office of vice-president-at-large and elected Miss Anthony
to fill it. Senator Sargent's term having expired, he returned with his
family to San Francisco, and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford was elected national
treasurer in place of Mrs. Sargent, who had served so acceptably for
six years. Her return to California was deeply regretted by Miss
Anthony. From the time of their first acquaintance, on that long
snow-bound journey in 1871, they had been devoted friends, and on all
her annual trips to Washington she was a guest at the spacious and
comfortable home of the Sargents. The senator always was a true and
consistent friend of suffrage, and frequently said to Miss Anthony:
"Tell my wife what you want done and, if she indorses it, I will try to
bring it about." Mrs. Sargent was of a serene, philosophical nature,
with an unwavering faith in the evolution of humanity into a broader
and better life. She was thoroughly without personal ends to serve,
ready to receive new ideas and those who brought them, weigh them
carefully in her well-balanced mind and pronounce the judgment which
was usually correct. The closing of their Washington house was a severe
loss to the many who had enjoyed their free and gracious hospitality.
On May 24, 1879, Miss Anthony received notice of the death of her old
and revered fellow-laborer, Wm. Lloyd Garrison. She could not attend
the funeral but wrote at once, saying in part:
The telegrams of the last few days had prepared us for this
morning's tidings that your dear father and humanity's devoted
friend had passed on to the beyond, where so many of his brave
co-workers had gone before; and where his devoted life-companion,
your precious mother, awaited his coming.... It is impossible for
me to express my feelings of love and respect, of honor and
gratitude, for the life, the words, the works, of your father; but
you all know, I trust, that few mortals had greater veneration for
him than I. His approbation was my delight; his disapproval, my
regret.... That each and all of you may strive to be to the
injustice of your day and generation what he was to that of his, is
the best wish--the best aspiration--I can offer. Blessed are you
indeed, that you mourn so true, so noble, so grand a man as your
loved and loving father.
In her diary that night she wrote: "I sent a letter, but how paltry it
seemed compared to what was in my heart. Why can I not put my thought
into words?"
The last of May she went home, having lectured and worked every day
since the previous October. She records with much delight that she has
now snugly tucked away in bank $4,500, the result of her last two
lecture seasons. During the one just closed she spoke 140 nights,
besides attending various conventions. This bank account did not
represent all she had earned, for she always gave with a lavish hand.
How much she has given never can be known, but in the year 1879, for
instance, one friend acknowledges the receipt of $50 to enable her to
buy a dress and other articles so that she can attend the Washington
convention. Another writes: "I have just learned that the $25 you
handed me to pay my way home from the meeting had been given you to pay
your own." To an old and faithful fellow-worker, now in California, she
sends by express a warm flannel wrapper. There is scarcely a month
which does not record some gift varying from $100 in value down to a
trinket for remembrance. Each year she contributed $100 to the suffrage
work, besides many smaller sums at intervals, and the account-books
show that her benefactions were many. She never spared money if an end
were to be accomplished, and never failed to keep an engagement, no
matter at what risk or expense. On several occasions she chartered an
engine, even though the cost was more than she would receive for the
lecture. As she was now approaching her sixtieth birthday, relatives
and friends were most anxious that she should lay aside part of her
earnings for a time when even her indomitable spirit might have to
succumb to physical weakness, but she herself never seemed to feel any
anxiety as to the future.
Notwithstanding her own disastrous experiment, Miss Anthony never
ceased to desire a woman's paper, one which not only should present the
questions relating directly to women but should be edited and
controlled entirely by women, and discuss all the issues of the day.
Scattered through the correspondence of years are letters on this
subject, either wanting to resurrect The Revolution or to start a new
paper. At intervals some wealthy woman would seem half-inclined to
advance money for the purpose and then hope would be revived, only to
be again destroyed. During the summer of 1872 a clever journalist, Mrs.
Helen Barnard, had edited a paper called the Woman's Campaign,
supported by Republican funds. Miss Anthony had hoped to convert this
into her ideal paper after the election, and spent considerable time in
trying to form a stock company. A large amount was subscribed but not
enough, and all was returned by Mrs. Sargent, then national treasurer.
Sarah L. Williams, editor of the woman's department of the Toledo
Blade, started a bright suffrage paper called the Ballot-Box and edited
it for several years. Miss Anthony assisted her in every possible way,
and spoiled the effect of many a fine speech by asking at its close for
subscribers to this paper. In 1878, '79 and '80 she secured 2,500
names. In 1878 Mrs. Williams turned her paper over to Matilda Joslyn
Gage, who added National Citizen to the title. Miss Anthony's and Mrs.
Stanton's names were placed at the head as corresponding editors, and
the paper was ably conducted by Mrs. Gage, but it had not the financial
backing necessary to success; when Miss Anthony ceased lecturing, new
subscribers no longer came and, after much tribulation, it finally
suspended in 1881.
While Miss Anthony continued for many years to cherish this idea of a
distinctively woman's paper, the daily press grew more and more
liberal, devoting larger space to the interests of women every year,
and she became of the opinion that possibly the most effective work
might be accomplished through this medium. She held, however, that
there should be one woman upon each paper whose special business it
should be to look after this department, and who should be permitted to
discuss not only the "woman question" but all others from a woman's
standpoint. As newspapers are now managed, the readers have only man's
views of all the vital issues attracting public attention. Woman
occupies a subordinate position and must write on all subjects in a
spirit which will be acceptable to the masculine head of the paper; so
the public gets in reality his thought and not hers. She had come to
see, also, that the newspaper work should be a leading and distinctive
feature of the National Association to a far greater extent than
hitherto had been attempted, and which, until of late years, had not
been possible. No man or woman ever had a higher opinion of the
influence of the press, which she considered the most powerful agency
in the world for good or for evil.
In the summer of 1879, Miss Anthony received from her friend, A.
Bronson Alcott, a complimentary ticket for three seasons of lectures at
the Concord School of Philosophy; but the living questions of the day
were too pressing for her to withdraw to this classic and sequestered
retreat, outside the busy and practical world.
[Autograph: A. Bronson Alcott]
During the decade from 1870 to 1880, there was a large accession of
valuable workers to the cause of woman suffrage and many new friends
came into Miss Anthony's life. Among these were May Wright Sewall; the
sisters, Julia and Rachel Foster; Clara B. Colby; Zerelda G. Wallace;
Frances E. Willard; J. Ellen Foster; the wife and three talented
daughters of Cassius M. Clay, Mary B., Laura and Sallie Clay Bennett;
M. Louise Thomas; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and others, who became her
devoted adherents and fellow-workers, and whose homes and hospitality
she enjoyed during all the years which followed.
At the close of her lecture season in 1879 she was able to spend
Christmas and New Year's at her own home for the first time in many
years; but she left on January 2 to fill engagements, reaching
Washington on the eve of the National Convention, which assembled at
Lincoln Hall, January 21, 1880. As Mrs. Stanton was absent, Miss
Anthony presided over the sessions. During this meeting, 250 new
petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, signed by over 12,000 women, were
sent to Congress, besides over 300 petitions from individual women
praying for a removal of their political disabilities. These were
presented by sixty-five different representatives. Hon. T.W. Ferry, of
Michigan, in the Senate, and Hon. George B. Loring, of Massachusetts,
in the House, introduced a resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment. This
with all the petitions was referred to the judiciary committees, each
of which granted a hearing of two hours to the ladies. Among the
delegates who addressed them was Julia Smith Parker, of Glastonbury,
Conn., at that time over eighty years old, who with her sister Abby
annually resisted the payment of taxes because they were denied
representation, and whose property was in consequence annually seized
and sold. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the mother so beautifully pictured
in Ben Hur, addressed a congressional committee for the first time, and
among the other speakers were Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Blake, Miss Couzins, Mrs.
Emma Mont McRae, of Indiana, and Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, of
Louisiana. It was at this hearing that Senator Edmunds complimented
Miss Anthony by saying, "Most speeches on this question are platform
oratory; yours is argument." Through the influence of Hon. E.G. Lapham,
all these addresses were printed in pamphlet form.
During this convention Miss Anthony was the guest of Mrs. Spofford,
whose husband was proprietor of the Riggs House. The place of hostess,
which had been so beautifully filled by Mrs. Sargent, was assumed at
once by Mrs. Spofford, a lady of culture and position. For twelve years
a suite of rooms was set apart for Miss Anthony in this commodious
hotel whenever she was at the capital, whether for days or for months,
and she received every possible courtesy and attention, without price.
Miss Anthony wrote her many times: "You can not begin to know what a
blessing your home is to me, or how grateful I am to you for its
comfort and luxury. You are indeed Mrs. Sargent's successor in love and
hospitality, and my hope is always to deserve them."
After a brilliant reception at the Riggs House to the delegates, Miss
Anthony left for Philadelphia, in company with the venerable Julia
Smith Parker, and went to Roadside, the suburban home of Lucretia Mott,
"where," she writes, "it was a wonderful sight to see the two
octogenarians talking together, so bright and wide awake to the
questions of the present." She never again saw Lucretia Mott or heard
her sweet voice.
[Illustration HW: Jane H. Spofford]
The health of Miss Anthony's mother was now so precarious that she did
not dare go far from home and a course of lectures was arranged for her
through Pennsylvania by Rachel Foster, a young girl of wealth and
distinction, who was growing much interested in the cause of woman and
very devoted to Miss Anthony personally. Frequent trips were made to
the home in Rochester through the inclement weather, and toward the
last of March she saw that the end was near and did not go away. The
beloved mother fell asleep on the morning of April 3, 1880, the two
remaining daughters by her side. She was in her eighty-seventh year,
her long life had been passed entirely within the immediate circle of
home, but her interest in outside matters was strong. The husband and
children, in whatever work they were engaged, felt always the
encouragement of her sanction and sympathy. Her ambition was centered
in them, their happiness and success were her own; she was content to
be the home-keeper, to have the house swept and garnished and the
bountiful table ready for their return, finding a rich reward in their
unceasing love and appreciation. She was extremely fond of reading, had
read the Bible from cover to cover many times, and could give the exact
location and wording of many texts of Scripture. She enjoyed history,
was familiar with the works of Dickens and Scott and knew by heart The
Lady of the Lake. In old age, when memory failed, she lived among
historical personages and characters in books and would speak of them
as persons she had known in her youth. As the four children gathered
about the still form and looked lovingly upon the placid face, they
could not remember that she ever had spoken an unkind word. And so,
with tenderness and affection, they laid her to rest by the side of the
husband whose memory she had so faithfully cherished for eighteen
years.
A month later Miss Anthony again set forth on the weary round, leaving
her sister Mary in the lonely house with two young nieces, Lucy and
Louise, whose education she was superintending. Just before going she
wrote to Rachel Foster: "Yes, the past three weeks are all a
dream--such constant watching and care and anxiety for so many years
all taken away from us! But my mother, like my father, if she could
speak would bid us 'go forward' to greater and better work. She never
asked me to stop at home when she was living, not even after she became
feeble, but always said, 'Go and do all the good you can;' and I know
my highest regard for her and for my father and sisters gone before
will be shown by my best and noblest doing."
[Footnote 94: In 1874, when a bill was pending to establish the
Territory of Pembina, Senator Sargent wished to so amend it as to
incorporate woman suffrage. After he had finished a matchless argument,
in which he was supported by Senators Stewart, of Nevada, and
Carpenter, of Wisconsin, Senator Morton made one of those grand
speeches for which he was famous. He based his demands for woman
suffrage on the Declaration of Independence, whose principles, he
declared, did not apply to man alone but to the human family; and he
demonstrated that no man or woman could "consent" to a government
except through a vote.
For Sargent's and Morton's speeches see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.
II, pp. 546 and 549.]
[Footnote 95: For full text see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p.
138.]
[Footnote 96: Miss Anthony lectured in Terre Haute under the auspices
of the young men's Occidental Literary Club, Eugene V. Debs, president
and one of its founders.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony
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