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."