Not at all daunted or discouraged, Miss Anthony took her speakers

forthwith into the very heart of the enemy's country, the capital of

the State. Albany had at that time a Democratic mayor, George H.

Thacher. As soon as the papers announced the coming of the

Abolitionists, over a hundred prominent citizens addressed a petition

to the mayor to forbid their meeting for fear of the same riotous

demonstrations which had disgraced the other cities. He replied at

considerable length, saying that he had taken an oath to support the

Constitutions of the United States and the State of New York, that both

guaranteed the right of free speech to all citizens, and while he was

mayor he intended to protect them in that right.

On the day of the convention he called at the Delevan House for Miss

Anthony and Mrs. Stan ton, now reinforced by Lucretia Mott, Martha C.

Wright, Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass, and accompanied them to

Association Hall. They found it packed to the doors. The mayor went on

the platform and announced that he had placed policemen in various

parts of the hall in citizens' clothes, and that whoever made the least

disturbance would be at once arrested. Then he laid a revolver across

his knees, and there he sat during the morning, afternoon and evening

sessions. Several times the mob broke forth, and each time arrests were

promptly made. Toward the close of the evening he said to Miss Anthony:

"If you insist upon holding your meetings tomorrow, I shall still

protect you, but it will be a difficult thing to hold this rabble in

check much longer. If you will adjourn at the close of this session I

shall consider it a personal favor." Of course she willingly acceded to

his request. He accompanied the ladies to their hotel, the mob

following all the way.

This closed the series of conventions. With a Republican mayor in every

other city, there had been no attempt at official protection; and yet

it may be remembered, in extenuation, that it is always easier for the

party out of power than for the one in power to stand for principle;

the former has nothing to lose. The Republicans at this time were

panic-stricken and staggering under the weight of responsibility

suddenly laid upon them; and the Abolitionists, by their radical

demands and scathing criticism, were adding to their difficulties.

There can be no justification, however, for any official who is too

cowardly or too dishonest to fulfill the duties of his office.

Immediately upon the close of this anti-slavery meeting, the State

Woman's Rights Convention was held in Albany, February 7 and 8. Mr.

Garrison, Mrs. Rose, Lucretia Mott and many of the old brilliant galaxy

were among the speakers. They little thought that this was the last

convention they would hold for five years, that a long and terrible war

would cast its shadow over every household before they met again, that

differences would arise in their own ranks, and that never more would

they come together in the old, fraternal spirit that had bound them so

closely and given them strength to bear the innumerable hardships which

so largely had been their portion.

After the Albany meeting, Miss Anthony at once began preparations for

the National Woman's Rights Convention in New York in May. The date was

set, the Tabernacle secured and many of the speakers engaged, but in

the meantime the affairs of the nation had become more and more

complicated; the threatened secession of the Southern States had been

accomplished; the long-expected, long-dreaded crisis seemed close at

hand; the people were uncertain and bewildered in the presence of the

dreadful catastrophe. All thought, all interest, all action were

centered in the new President. The whole nation was breathlessly

awaiting the declaration of Lincoln's policy. To call any kind of

meeting which had an object other than that relating to the

preservation of the Union seemed almost a sacrilege. Letters poured in

upon Miss Anthony urging her to relinquish all idea of a convention,

but she never had learned to give up. Even after the fall of Sumter and

the President's call for troops, the letters were still insisting that

she declare the meeting postponed; but it was not until the abandonment

of the Anti-Slavery Anniversary, which always took place the same week,

and until she found there were absolutely no speakers to be had, that

she finally yielded.

About this time she takes care of a sister with a baby, and writes Mrs.

Stanton: "O this babydom, what a constant, never-ending, all-consuming

strain! We should never ask anything else of the woman who has to

endure it. I realize more and more that rearing children should be

looked upon as a profession which, like any other, must be made the

primary work of those engaged in it. It can not be properly done if

other aims and duties are pressing upon the mother." And yet so great

was her spirit of self-sacrifice that in this same letter she offers to

take entire charge of Mrs. Stanton's seven children while she makes a

three months' trip abroad. At a later date, when caring for a young

niece, she says: "The dear little Lucy engrosses most of my time and

thoughts. A child one loves is a constant benediction to the soul,

whether or not it helps to the accomplishment of great intellectual

feats."

The watchword of the Abolitionists ever had been "Peace." Under the

leadership of Garrison, their policy had been one of non-resistance.

When war actually was precipitated, when the South had fired upon the

stars and stripes and the tread of marching feet resounded through

every northern city, they were amazed and bewildered. Instinctively

they turned to their great leaders for guidance. In Music Hall, Boston,

April 21, 1861, to an audience of over 4,000, Wendell Phillips made

that masterly address, justifying "this last appeal to the God of

Battles," and declaring for War. It was one of the matchless speeches

of all history, and touched the keynote which soon swelled into a grand

refrain from ocean to ocean. But even then there were those who waited

for the declaration of Garrison, the great pioneer of Abolitionism. A

letter written by Rev. Beriah Green to Miss Anthony, May 22, expresses

the sentiment which pervaded the minds of many Abolitionists at this

period:

I looked forward to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary with the keenest

pleasure and hope. I should see luminous faces; I should bear the

voice of wisdom; I should gather strength and courage and return to

my task-garden refreshed and quickened. But when I read the

official notice in the Standard and Liberator of the grounds on

which the meeting was given up, "that nothing should be done at

this solemn crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current

of popular feeling which is now sweeping southward with the

strength and impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras," I was surprised

and puzzled. I have read Phillips' War Speech, marked the tenor and

spirit of the Liberator, seen the stars and stripes paraded in the

Standard, perused James Freeman Clarke's sermon, and I feel more

desolate and solitary than ever. Mrs. Stanton, too, is for War for

the Union, and I say to myself: "How will Susan Anthony and Parker

Pillsbury and all the other old comrades be affected by these signs

of the times?"

Miss Anthony replied in the same strain:

A feeling of sadness, almost of suffocation, has been mine ever

since the first announcement that the anti-slavery meeting was

postponed. I can not welcome the demon of expediency or consent to

be an abettor, by silence any more than by word or act, of wicked

means to accomplish an end, not even for the sake of emancipating

the slaves. I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone

remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have

insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony

but one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The

Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all

the world that they are out of time and place, hence should hold

their peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to

me seems most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of

expediency not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for

the abandonment of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed

and sad that even the little Apostolic number have yielded to the

world's motto--"the end justifies the means."

As the long, hard winter's work had left her very tired she gladly

turned to that haven of refuge, the farm-home. The father, who was

willing always to put the control of affairs into her capable hands,

took this opportunity to make a long-desired trip to Kansas, going the

first of May and returning in September. She assumed the entire

management of the farm, put in the crops, watched over, harvested and

sold them; assisted her mother with the housework and the family sewing

and, by way of variety, pieced a silk quilt and wove twenty yards of

rag carpet in the old loom. She found time, more-over, to go to the

Progressive Friends' meeting at Junius and to attend the State

Teachers' Convention at Watertown. She also managed a large

anti-slavery Fourth of July meeting at Gregory's grove, near Rochester,

securing a number of distinguished speakers. In writing her, relative

to this meeting, Frederick Douglass said: "I rejoice not in the death

of any one, yet I can not but feel that, in the death of Stephen A.

Douglas, a most dangerous person has been removed. No man of his time

has done more than he to intensify hatred of the negro and to

demoralize northern sentiment. Since Henry Clay he has been the King of

Compromise. Yours for the freedom of man and of woman always."

[Autograph: Frederick Douglass]

From her diary may be obtained an idea of the busy life which only

allowed the briefest entries, but these show her restlessness and

dissatisfaction:

Tried to interest myself in a sewing society; but little

intelligence among them.... Attended Progressive Friends' meeting;

too much namby-pamby-ism.... Went to colored church to hear

Douglass. He seems without solid basis. Speaks only popular

truths.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems to be no longer my

calling.... I stained and varnished the library bookcase today, and

superintended the plowing of the orchard.... The last load of hay

is in the barn; all in capital order. Fitted out a fugitive slave

for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman.... The teachers'

convention was small and dull. The woman's committee failed to

report. I am mortified to death for them.... Washed every window in

the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the frame. Commenced

Mrs. Browning's Portuguese Sonnets. Have just finished Casa Guidi

Windows, a grand poem and so fitting to our terrible struggle.... I

wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom to every

slave and call on every able-bodied negro to enlist in the Union

army. How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington. Good,

stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have

nothing to lose and all to gain for their party. The present

incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but

only wait. To forever blot out slavery is the only possible

compensation for this merciless war.

All through the chroniclings of the monotonous daily life is the cry:

"The all-alone feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the

feast of great presences to which I have been so long accustomed."

During these days she reads Adam Bede, and thus writes Mrs. Stanton:

I finished Adam Bede yesterday noon. I can not throw off the

palsied oppression of its finale to poor, poor Hetty--and Arthur

almost equally commands my sympathy. He no more desired to wrong

her or cause her one hour of sorrow than did Adam, but the impulse

of his nature brooked no restraint. Should public sentiment

tolerate such a consummation of love--or passion, if it were not

love? (But I believe it was, only the impassable barrier of caste

forbade its public avowal.) If such a birth could be left free from

odium and scorn, contempt and pity from the world, it would be a

thousand times more holy, more happy, than many of those in legal

marriage. It will not do for me to read romances; they are too real

to shake off. What is the irresistible power so terrifically

pictured in both Hetty and Arthur, which led them on to the very

ill they most would shun?

To crown the result I went to the colored church to hear Sallie

Holley, but she did not come. Mrs. Coleman was in the pulpit and

read a poem of Gerald Massey on Peace, spoke a few minutes and said

she saw Miss Anthony present and hoped she'd occupy the time. Then

rang round the house the appalling cry of "Miss Anthony." There was

no escape, and I staggered up and stammered out a few words and sat

down--dead, killed--thoroughly enraged that I had not spent the

forenoon in making myself ready at least to read something, instead

of poring over Adam Bede.

To this Mrs. Stanton replies: "You speak of the effect of Adam Bede on

you. It moved me deeply, and The Mill on the Floss is another agony.

Such books as these explain why the 'marriage question' is

all-absorbing. O, Susan, are you ever coming to visit me again? It

would be like a new life to spend a day with you. How I shudder when I

think of our awful experience with those mobs last winter, and yet even

now I long for action." Miss Anthony was equally restive in her own

seclusion which, although by no means an idle one, had shut her from

the great outside world that at this hour seemed to cry aloud for the

best service of every man and woman. In January, 1862, she went to Mrs.

Stanton's and together they prepared an address for the State

Anti-Slavery Convention to be held at Albany, February 7 and 8, and

here in the society of Garrison and Phillips, she received fresh

inspiration. Soon after reaching home, at Phillips' request, she

arranged a lecture for him in Rochester. After paying all expenses, she

sent him a check--there is no record of its size--but he returned a

portion, saying:

DEAR SUSAN: Thank you, but you are too generous. I can't take such

an awful big lion's share, even to satisfy your modesty. Put the

enclosed, with my thanks, into your own pocket, as a slight

compensation for all your trouble. Remember and pay my successor

not one cent more than you can afford.... I had to charter a

locomotive all to myself to get back from Oswego in time for

Rondout. Riding in the darkness with the engineer through the snow

gave me time to think of the pleasant group and supper I missed the

night before at the Hallowells. Kind regards to them. Tell Mrs.

Hallowell her lunch tasted good about midnight, as I entered

Syracuse.

Miss Anthony managed the usual series of lectures this winter. When she

sent Mr. Tilton his check he returned this rollicking answer:

DEAR S.B.A.: I received your letter and its enclosure, which latter

has already vanished like April snow, to pay the debts of the

subscriber.... Our morning ride with our good friend Frederick

gives me pleasure whenever I think of it. Those pictures of Mount

Hope and the waterfall were better than any in the Academy of

Design. As to yourself, I have had some talk with Rev. Oliver

Johnson about your "sphere," and we both agree that you are

defrauding some honest man of his just due. I recommend that you

form an acquaintance, with a view to prospective results for life,

with some well-settled, Old-School Presbyterian clergyman, and send

me some of the cake.

[Autograph: Theodore Tilton]

In 1862, as the previous year, Miss Anthony was determined to hold a

National Woman's Rights Convention in New York, but her efforts met

with no favorable response and so, for the second time, she was obliged

to give up the annual protest which seemed to her a sacred duty. She

did not then acknowledge, nor has she ever admitted, that there is any

question of more vital importance than that relating to the freedom of

woman. Defeated here she decided to start out again in the anti-slavery

lecture field, since, as she wrote her friend Lydia: "It is so easy to

feel your power for public work slipping away if you allow yourself to

remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of home. It requires

great will-force to resurrect one's soul." In her tour she visited

Adams, accompanied by her loved niece, Ann Eliza McLean, and wrote back

an amusing account of how she lectured the male relatives for requiring

their women folks to use worn-out cook-stoves, broken kitchen utensils

and all sorts of inconvenient things in the household. While there she

went with a large party of relatives over the mountains to see the

wonderful Hoosac Tunnel, now well under way. One day she spoke to an

audience on the very top of the Green mountains. On this trip, having

for a rarity a little leisure, she visited the art galleries of New

York and wrote:

My very heart of hearts has been made to rejoice in the work of two

of earth's noblest women--Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur. Twice

have I visited the Academy of Design and there have I sat in

silent, reverential awe, with eyes intent upon the marble face of

Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci. I have no power to express my

hope, my joy, my renewed faith in womanhood. In the accomplishment

of that grand work of the sculptor's chisel, making that cold

marble breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble

and elevate woman than she possibly could have done by mere words,

it matters not how Godlike; though I would not ignore true words,

for it is these which rouse to action the latent powers of the

Harriet Hosmers.... Even the rude and uncultivated seem awed into

silence when they come into the presence of that sleeping, but

speaking purity. Rosa Bonheur is the first woman who has dared

venture into the field of animal painting, and her work not only

surpasses anything ever done by a woman, but is a bold and

successful step beyond all other artists. Mark another significant

fact: The three greatest productions of art during the past three

years are by women--Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, Rosa

Bonheur's Horse Fair and Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci--and these

triumphs are in three of its most difficult and exalted

departments.

In April she took Mrs. Stanton's four boys from Seneca Falls to New

York, and cared for them while the family were removing to that city.

In May she attended the New York Anniversary and the New England

convention in Boston, and on the Fourth of July the celebration at

Framingham, and during this time gave many addresses on anti-slavery.

When in Boston she had a delightful visit with the Garrisons, and

called on Mrs. Phillips with Mrs. Garrison, one of the few persons

admitted to the invalid's seclusion.

While all the women were giving themselves, body and soul, to the great

work of the war, the New York Legislature, April 10, 1862, finding them

off guard, very quietly amended the law of 1860 and took away from

mothers the lately-acquired right to the equal guardianship of their

children. They also repealed the law which secured to the widow the

control of the property for the care of minor children. Thus at one

blow were swept away the results of nearly a decade of hard work on the

part of women, and wives and mothers were left in almost the same

position as under the old common law. Had one woman been a member of

the Legislature, such an act never would have been possible; but the

little band who for ten years had watched and toiled to protect the

interests of their sex, were in the sanitary commission, the hospitals,

at the front, on the platform in the interest of the Union, or at home

doing the work of those who had gone into the army, and this was their

reward! Miss Anthony's anger and sorrow were intense when she heard of

the repeal of the laws which she had spent seven long years to obtain,

tramping through cold and heat to roll up petitions and traversing the

whole State of New York in the dead of winter to create public

sentiment in their favor. In her anguish she wrote Lydia Mott:

Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that

abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight

hundred bills before it, and hence felt sure it would not come up

this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm.

Well, well; while the old guard sleep the "young devils" are wide

awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense

of justice;" but nothing short of this could rouse our women again

to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic.

All alike say: "Have no conventions at this crisis; wait until the

war excitement abates;" which is to say: "Ask our opponents if they

think we had better speak, or rather if they do not think we had

better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the

world against the wish and will of our best friends. What can we do

now when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship

is voted down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that--a hard

year's work--the law secured--the echoes of our words of gratitude

in the Capitol scarcely died away, and now all is lost!

This year began the acquaintance with Anna Dickinson, whose letters are

as refreshing as a breeze from the ocean:

The sunniest of sunny mornings to you, how are you today? Well and

happy, I hope. To tell the truth I want to see you very much

indeed, to hold your hand in mine, to hear your voice, in a word, I

want _you_--I can't have you? Well, I will at least put down a

little fragment of my foolish self and send it to look up at

you.... I work closely and happily at my preparations for next

winter--no, for the future--nine hours a day, generally; but I

never felt better, exercise morning and evening, and never touch

book or paper after gaslight this warm weather; so all those talks

of yours were not thrown away upon me.

What think you of the "signs of the times?" I am sad always, under

all my folly;--this cruel tide of war, sweeping off the fresh,

young, brave life to be dashed out utterly or thrown back shattered

and ruined! I know we all have been implicated in the "great

wrong," yet I think the comparatively innocent suffer today more

than the guilty. And the result--will the people save the country

they love so well, or will the rulers dig the nation's grave?

Will you not write to me, please, soon? I want to see a touch of

you very much.

[Autograph:

Very Affectionately Yours

Anna E. Dickinson]

Early in September Greeley writes her: "I still keep at work with the

President in various ways and believe you will yet hear him proclaim

universal freedom. Keep this letter and judge me by the event."

Miss Anthony thus lectures Mrs. Stanton because she has a teacher and

educates her children at home: "I am still of the opinion that whatever

the short-comings of the public schools your children would be vastly

more profited in them, side by side with the very multitude with whom

they must mingle as soon as school days are over. Any and every private

education is a blunder, it seems to me. I believe those persons

stronger and nobler who have from childhood breasted the commonalty. If

children have not the innate strength to resist evil, keeping them

apart from what they must inevitably one day meet, only increases their

incompetency."

In the summer of 1862 Miss Anthony attended her last State Teachers'

Convention, which was held in Rochester, where she began her labors in

this direction. In 1853 she had forced this body to grant her a share

in their deliberations, the first time a woman's voice had been heard.

For ten years she never had missed an annual meeting, keeping up her

membership dues and allowing no engagement to interfere. Year after

year she had followed them up, insisting that in the conventions women

teachers should hold offices, serve on committees and exercise free

speech; demanding that they should be eligible to all positions in the

schools with equal pay for equal work; and compelling a general

recognition of their rights. All these points, with the exception of

equal pay, had now been gained and there was much improvement in

salaries.

Her mission here being ended, she turned her attention to other fields;

but for the privileges which are enjoyed by the women teachers of the

present day, they are indebted first of all to Susan B. Anthony.[31]

After speaking at intervals through the summer, she started on a

regular tour early in the fall, writing Lydia Mott: "I can not feel

easy in my conscience to be dumb in an hour like this. I am speaking

now extempore and more to my satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed

at myself, but I could not do it if any of our other speakers were

listening to me. I am entirely off old anti-slavery grounds and on the

new ones thrown up by the war. What a stay, counsel and comfort you

have been to me, dear Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance

meeting in that cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me

to feel myself competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and

distrust. I never can express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you."

A letter from Abby Kelly Foster at this time said: "I am especially

gratified to know that you have entered the field in earnest as your

own speaker, which you ought to have done years ago instead of always

pushing others to the front and taking the drudgery yourself." Miss

Anthony was very successful, each day gaining more courage. Her sole

theme was "Emancipation the Duty-of the Government." A prominent

citizen of Schuyler county wrote her after she had spoken at

Mecklinburg: "There is not a man among all the political speakers who

can make that duty as plain as you have done." Her whole heart was in

the work and she was constantly inspired by the thought that the day of

deliverance for the slave was approaching.

[Illustration:

FATHER AND MOTHER OF SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

AGED 60, FROM DAGUERREOTYPES]

At the height of her enthusiasm came the heaviest blow it would have

been possible for her to receive. She had come home for a few days, and

the Sunday morning after election was sitting with her father talking

over the political situation. They had been reading the Liberator and

the Anti-Slavery Standard and were discussing the probable effect of

Lincoln's proclamation, when suddenly he was stricken with acute

neuralgia of the stomach. He had not had a day's illness in forty years

and had not the slightest premonition of this attack. He lingered in

great suffering for two weeks and died on November 25, 1862.

No words can express the terrible bereavement of his family. He had

been to them a tower of strength. From childhood his sons and daughters

had carried to him every grief and perplexity and there never had been

a matter concerning them too trivial to receive his careful attention.

In manhood and womanhood they still had turned to him above all others

for advice and comfort, even the grandchildren receiving always the

same loving care. Between husband and wife there ever had been the

deepest, truest affection. He was far ahead of his time in his

recognition of the rights of women. Years before he had written to a

brother: "Take your family into your confidence and give your wife the

purse." He was never willing to enter into any pleasure which his wife

did not share. They tell of him that once the daughters persuaded him

to remain in town on a stormy evening and go to the Hutchinson concert.

As they were driving home he said: "Never again ask me to do such a

thing; I suffered more in thinking of your mother at home alone than

any enjoyment could possibly compensate." A short time before his death

he and his wife went to Ontario Beach one afternoon and did not return

till 10 o'clock. When asked by the daughters what detained them, the

mother answered that they had a fish supper and then strolled on the

beach by moonlight; and on their laughing at her and saying she was

worse than the girls, she replied: "Your father is more of a lover

today than he was the first year of our marriage."

He was a broad, humane, great-hearted man, always mindful of the rights

of others, always standing for liberty to every human being.

Public-spirited, benevolent and genial in disposition, his loss was

widely mourned. The family's devoted friend, Rev. Samuel J. May,

conducted the funeral services, at which Frederick Douglass and several

prominent Abolitionists paid affectionate tribute, expressing "profound

reverence for Mr. Anthony's character as a man, a friend and a

citizen." Many letters of sympathy were received by Miss Anthony, but

nothing brought consolation to her heart; her best and strongest friend

was gone. Parker Pillsbury expressed her sorrow when he wrote: "You

must be stricken sore indeed in the loss of your constant helper in the

great mission to which you are devoted, your counselor, your consoler,

your all that man could be, besides the endearing relation of father.

What or who can supply the loss?"

There had not been a day in her life which had not felt his presence.

She went forth to every duty sustained by his cheery and brave

encouragement. With her father's support she could face the opposition

and calumny of the world, and when these became too great she had but

to turn again to him for the fullest sympathy and appreciation. He had

inspired all she had done and with his wise advice and financial aid

had assisted in the doing. When he passed away she felt the foundations

taken from beneath her feet. For a little while she was stunned and

helpless, and then the old strength came slowly back. The same

spiritual force that had upheld her so many years still spoke to her

soul and bade her once more take up life's duties.

[Footnote 31: A few years after the war, Miss Anthony chancing to be in

Binghamton at the time of a teachers' convention went in. Immediately

the whole body rose to give her welcome, she was escorted to the

platform and, amid great applause, invited to address them.]

CHAPTER XIV.

WOMEN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.

1863--1864.

It was with a sore and heavy heart that Miss Anthony again turned to

her public work, but she was impelled by the thought that it would have

been her father's earnest wish, and also by the feeling that work alone

could give relief to the sorrow which overwhelmed her. She was bitterly

disappointed that the "old guard" persisted in putting the question of

the rights of women in the background, thus losing the vantage points

gained by years of agitation. She alone, of all who had labored so

earnestly for this sacred cause, was not misled by the sophistry that

the work which women were doing for the Union would compel a universal

recognition of their demands when the war was ended. Subsequent events

showed the correctness of her judgment in maintaining that the close of

the war would precipitate upon the country such an avalanche of

questions for settlement that the claims of women would receive even

less consideration than heretofore had been accorded. Next to this

cause, however, that of the slaves appealed to her most strongly and

she willingly continued her labors for them, trusting that the day

might come when Garrison, Phillips, Greeley and the other great spirits

would redeem their pledges and unite their strength in securing justice

for women.

On January 11, 1863, Miss Anthony received this letter from Theodore

Tilton: "Well, what have you to say to the proclamation? Even if not

all one could wish, it is too much not to be thankful for. It makes the

remainder of slavery too valueless and precarious to be worth keeping.

The millenium is on the way. Three cheers for God!... I had the

pleasure of dining yesterday with Wendell Phillips in New York. Shall I

tell you a secret? I happened to allude to one Susan Anthony. 'Yes,'

said he, 'one of the salt of the earth.'" On the 16th came this from

Henry B. Stanton: "I date from the federal capital. Since I arrived

here I have been more gloomy than ever. The country is rapidly going to

destruction. The army is almost in a state of mutiny for want of its

pay and for lack of a leader. Nothing can carry the North through but

the Southern negroes, and nobody can marshal them into the struggle

except the Abolitionists. The country was never so badly off as at this

moment. Such men as Lovejoy, Hale and the like have pretty much given

up the struggle in despair. You have no idea how dark the cloud is

which hangs over us.... We must not lay the flattering unction to our

souls that the proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and

have a dissolution of the Union. Here then is work for you. Susan, put

on your armor and go forth!"

From many prominent men and women came the same cry, and so she did

gird on her armor and go forth. The latter part of February she took up

her abode with Mrs. Stanton in New York. Herculean efforts were being

made at this time by the Republicans, under the leadership of Charles

Sumner, to secure congressional action in regard to emancipation. A

widespread fear existed that the President's proclamation might not

prove sufficient, that some way of overriding it might be found, and

there was much anxiety to secure such an expression of public sentiment

as would justify Congress in submitting an amendment to the United

States Constitution which should forever abolish slavery. This could

best be done through petitions, and here Miss Anthony recognized her

work. An eloquent appeal was sent out, enclosing the following:

CALL FOR A MEETING OF THE LOYAL WOMEN OF THE NATION.

In this crisis it is the duty of every citizen to consider the

peculiar blessings of a republican form of government, and decide

what sacrifices of wealth and life are demanded for its defense and

preservation.... No mere party or sectional cry, no technicalities

of constitutional or military law, no methods of craft or policy,

can touch the heart of a nation in the midst of revolution. A grand

idea of freedom or justice is needful to kindle and sustain the

fires of a high enthusiasm.

At this hour the best word and work of every man and woman are

imperatively demanded. To man, by common consent, are assigned the

forum, camp and field. What is woman's legitimate work and how she

may best accomplish it is worthy our earnest counsel one with

another.... Woman is equally interested and responsible with man in

the final settlement of this problem of self-government; therefore

let none stand idle spectators now. When every hour is big with

destiny and each delay but complicates our difficulties, it is high

time for the daughters of the Revolution in solemn council to

unseal the last will and testament of the fathers, lay hold of

their birthright of freedom and keep it a sacred trust for all

coming generations.

To this end we ask the loyal women of the nation to meet in the

Church of the Puritans, New York, on Thursday, the 14th of May

next. Let the women of every State be largely represented both in

person and by letter.

On behalf of the Woman's Central Committee,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

An immense audience, mostly women, assembled in Dr. Cheever's famous

church. Miss Anthony called the convention to order and nominated Lucy

Stone for president. Stirring addresses were made by Mrs. Stanton and

the veteran anti-slavery speaker, Angelina Grimké Weld, while the

Hutchinson family with their songs added inspiration to the occasion.

Miss Anthony presented a series of patriotic resolutions with the

following spirited address:

There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this shall be made

a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war

which was begun to found an empire upon slavery, and shame on us if

we do not make it one to establish the freedom of the

negro--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and

West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.

Instead of suppressing the real cause of the war, it should have

been proclaimed not only by the people but by the President,

Congress, Cabinet and every military commander. Instead of

President Lincoln's waiting two long years before calling to the

aid of the government the millions of allies whom we have had

within the territory of rebeldom, it should have been the first

decree he sent forth. By all the laws of common sense--to say

nothing of laws military or civil--if the President, as

commander-in-chief of the army and navy, could have devised any

possible means whereby he might hope to suppress the rebellion

without the sacrifice of the life of one loyal citizen, without the

sacrifice of one dollar of the loyal North, it was clearly his duty

to have done so. Every interest of the insurgents, every dollar of

their property, every institution, every life in every rebel State

even, if necessary, should have been sacrificed, before one dollar

or one man should have been drawn from the free States. How much

more then was it the President's duty to confer freedom on the

millions of slaves, transform them into an army for the Union,

cripple the rebellion and establish justice, the only sure

foundation of peace. I therefore hail the day when the government

shall recognize that this is a war for freedom.

We talk about returning to "the Union as it was" and "the

Constitution as it is"--about "restoring our country to peace and

prosperity--to the blessed conditions which existed before the

war!" I ask you what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have

we had? Since the first slave ship sailed up the James river with

its human cargo and there, on the soil of the Old Dominion, it was

sold to the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that

pirate captain landed on the shores of Africa and there kidnapped

the first stalwart negro and fastened the first manacle, the

struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement

of the terrible war in the midst of which we are today. Between the

slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This is but

a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the old

conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union which is a

Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham. By the Constitution

as it is, the North has stood pledged to protect slavery in the

States where it existed. We have been bound, in case of

insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those struggling for

liberty but of the oppressors. It was politicians who made this

pledge at the beginning, and who have renewed it from year to year.

These same men have had control of the churches, the

Sabbath-schools and all religious institutions, and the women have

been a party in complicity with slavery. They have made the large

majority in all the churches throughout the country and have,

without protest, fellowshipped the slaveholder as a Christian;

accepted proslavery preaching from their pulpits; suffered the

words "slavery a crime" to be expurgated from all the lessons

taught their children, in defiance of the Golden Rule, "Do unto

others as you would that others should do unto you." They have

meekly accepted whatever morals and religion the selfish interest

of politics and trade dictated.

Woman must now assume her God-given responsibilities and make

herself what she is clearly designed to be, the educator of the

race. Let her no longer be the mere reflector, the echo of the

worldly pride and ambition of man. Had the women of the North

studied to know and to teach their sons the law of justice to the

black man, they would not now be called upon to offer the loved of

their households to the bloody Moloch of war. Women of the North, I

ask you to rise up with earnest, honest purpose and go forward in

the way of right, fearlessly, as independent human beings,

responsible to God alone for the discharge of every duty. Forget

conventionalisms; forget what the world will say, whether you are

in your place or out of it; think your best thoughts, speak your

best words, do your best works, looking to your own consciences for

approval.

The fourth resolution, asking equal rights for women as well as

negroes, was seriously objected to by several who insisted that they

did not want political rights. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Weld, Mrs. Rose and

Mrs. Coleman made strong speeches in its favor, and Miss Anthony said:

This resolution merely makes the assertion that in a genuine

republic, every citizen must have the right of representation. You

remember the maxim "Governments derive their just powers from the

consent of the governed." This is the fundamental principle of

democracy, and before our government can be placed on a lasting

foundation, the civil and political rights of every citizen must be

practically established. This is the meaning of the resolution. It

is a philosophical statement, made not because women suffer, not

because slaves suffer, not because of any individual rights or

wrongs--but as a simple declaration of the fundamental truth of

democracy proclaimed by our Revolutionary fathers. I hope the

discussion will no longer be continued as to the comparative rights

or wrongs of one class or another. This is the question before us:

Is it possible that peace and union shall be established in this

country, is it possible for this government to be a true democracy,

a genuine republic, while one-sixth or one-half of the people are

disfranchised?

The resolution was adopted by a large majority. A business meeting was

held in the afternoon to decide upon the practical work, and again the

room was crowded. Miss Anthony was in the chair. There were women of

all ages, classes and conditions, and the assembly was pervaded with

deep and solemn feeling. The following was unanimously adopted: "We,

loyal women of the nation, assembled in convention this 14th day of

May, 1863, hereby pledge ourselves one to another in a Loyal League, to

give support to the government in so far as it makes a war for

freedom." Mrs. Stanton was elected president and Miss Anthony secretary

of the permanent organization. A great meeting was held in Cooper

Institute in the evening. An eloquent address to President Lincoln,

read by Miss Anthony, was adopted and sent to him.[32] Powerful

speeches were made by Ernestine L. Rose and Rev. Antoinette Blackwell,

a patriotic address to the soldiers was adopted, and the convention

closed amid great enthusiasm.

At subsequent meetings it was decided to confine the work of the League

to the one object of securing signatures to petitions to the Senate and

House of Representatives, praying for an act emancipating all persons

of African descent held in involuntary servitude. They set their

standard at a million names. Their scheme received the commendation of

the entire anti-slavery press, and of prominent men and women in all

parts of the country. The first of June headquarters were opened in

Room 20, Cooper Institute, and the great work was begun. Miss Anthony

prepared and sent out thousands of petitions accompanied by this

letter:

THE WOMEN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE TO THE WOMEN OF THE REPUBLIC: We

ask you to sign and circulate this petition for the entire

abolition of slavery. Remember the President's proclamation reaches

only the slaves of rebels. The jails of loyal Kentucky are today

filled with Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama slaves, advertised to

be sold for their jail fees "according to law," precisely as before

the war! While slavery exists anywhere there can be freedom

nowhere. There must be a law abolishing slavery. We have undertaken

to canvass the nation for freedom. Women, you can not vote or fight

for your country. Your only way to be a power in the government is

through the exercise of this one, sacred, constitutional "right of

petition;" and we ask you to use it now to the utmost. Go to the

rich, the poor, the high, the low, the soldier, the civilian, the

white, the black--gather up the names of all who hate slavery, all

who love liberty, and would have it the law of the land, and lay

them at the feet of Congress, your silent but potent vote for human

freedom guarded by law....

Every day and every hour were given to the Loyal League. All through

the hot summer Miss Anthony remained at her post in Cooper Institute,

scattering her letters far and wide, pushing into the field every woman

who was willing to work, sending out lecturers to stir up the people,

directing affairs with the sagacity of an experienced general, sparing

no one who could be pressed into service, and herself least of all. On

July 15, during the New York Draft Riots, she writes home: "These are

terrible times. The Colored Orphan Asylum which was burned was but one

block from Mrs. Stanton's, and all of us left the house on Monday

night. Yesterday when I started for Cooper Institute I found the cars

and stages had been stopped by the mob and I could not get to the

office. I took the ferry and went to Flushing to stay with my cousin,

but found it in force there. We all arose and dressed in the middle of

the night, but it was finally gotten under control."

Miss Anthony had many heartaches during these trying times and longed

more and more for that strength which had been taken from her forever.

Writing to her mother of her brother Daniel R.'s election as mayor of

Leavenworth, Kan., she says: "O, how has our dear father's face flitted

before me as I have thought what his happiness would have been over

this honor. Last night when my head was on my pillow, I seemed to be in

the old carriage jogging homeward with him, while he happily recounted

D.R.'s qualifications for this high post and accepted his election as

the triumph of the opposition to rebels and slaveholders. Every day I

appreciate more fully father's desire for justice to every human being,

the lowest and blackest as well as the highest and whitest, and my

constant prayer is to be a worthy daughter."

On the anniversary of his death she writes again to her mother: "It has

seemed to me last night and today that I must fly to you and with you

sit down _in the quiet_. It is torture here with not one who knew or

cared for the loved one. It is sacrilege to speak his name or tell my

grief to those who knew him not. O, how my soul reaches out in yearning

to his dear spirit! Does he see me, will he, can he, come to me in my

calm, still moments and gently minister and lift me up into nobler

living and working?"

In a letter to her, relative to the sale of the home, the mother uses

these touching words: "If it had been my heart that had ceased to beat,

all might have gone on as before, but now all must go astray. I know I

ought to get rid of this care, and Mary and I should not try to live

here alone, but every foot of ground is sacred to me, and I love every

article bought by the dear father of my children." On this subject Miss

Anthony writes to her sister Mary:

Your letter sent a pang to my very heart's core that the dear old

home, so full of the memory of our father, must be given up. I do

wish it could be best to keep it, and yet I do not think he will be

less with us away from that loved spot, for my experience in the

past months disproves such feeling. Every place, every movement,

almost, suggests him. Last evening, I strolled west on Forty-fifth

street to the Hudson river, a mile or more. There was newly-sawed

lumber there and the smell carried me back, back to the old sawmill

and childhood's days. I looked at the beautiful river and the

schooners with their sails spread to the breeze. I felt alone, but

my mind traversed the entire round of the loved ones. I doubt if

there be any mortal who clings to loves with greater tenacity than

do I. To see mother without father in the old home, to feel the

loneliness of her spirit, and all of us bereft of the joy of

looking into the loved face, listening to the loved tones, waiting

for his sanction or rejection--O, how I could see and feel it all!

The rest of us have our work to engross us and other objects to

center our affections upon, but mother now lives in her children,

and I often feel as if we did too little to lighten her heart and

cheer her path. Never was there a mother who came nearer to knowing

nothing save her own household, her husband and children, whether

high in the world's esteem or crucified, the same still with her

through all. If we sometimes give her occasion to feel that we

prized father more than her, it was she who taught us ever to hold

him thus above all others. Our high respect and deep love for him,

our perfect trust in him, we owe to mother's precepts and vastly

more to her example. And, by and by, when we have to reckon her

among the invisible, we shall live in remembrance of her wise

counsel, tender watching, self-sacrifice and devotion not second to

that we now cherish for the memory of our father--nay, it will even

transcend that in measure, as a mother's constant and ever-present

love and care for her children are beyond those of a father.

A bit of mirth comes into the somber atmosphere with a note from

Theodore Tilton:

To SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ADJUTANT-GENERAL--Since of late you have been

bold in expressing your opinion that the draft should be

strenuously enforced and that the broken ranks of our brave armies

should be supplied with new men, it will serve to show you how

great the difference is between those who _say_ and those who _do_,

if I inform you--as in duty bound I do hereby--that I know a little

lady only half your size who doubles your zeal in all these

respects and who, without waiting for your tardy example, presented

on her own account to the government on Thursday last a new man,

weighing nine pounds, to be enrolled among the infantry of the

United States.

Miss Anthony undertook the great work of this National Loyal League

without the guarantee from any source of a single dollar. The expenses

were very heavy; office rent, clerk hire, printing bills, postage,

etc., brought them up to over $5,000, but as usual she was fertile in

resources for raising money. All who signed the petition were requested

to give a cent and in this way about $3,000 were realized. A few

contributions came in, but the demands were infinite for every dollar

which patriotic citizens could spare, and the league felt desirous of

paying its own way. To assist in this, she arranged a course of

lectures at Cooper Institute. Among those who responded to her call

were Hon. William D. Kelley, Edwin P. Whipple, Theodore D. Weld, Rev.

Stephen H. Tyng, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, George William

Curtis, Frances D. Gage and several others. Most of these donated their

services and others reduced their price. Letters of commendation were

received from editors, ministers, senators and generals. George

Thompson, the British Abolitionist and ex-member of Parliament, gave

hearty sympathy and co-operation.

[Autograph:

Respectfully

Stephen H. Tyng]

Benjamin F. Wade wrote: "You may count upon any aid which I am

competent to bestow to forward the object of your league. As a member

of Congress, you shall have my best endeavors for your success, for a

cause more honorable to human nature or one that promised more benefit

to the world, never called forth the efforts of the patriot or

philanthropist." From Major-General Rosecrans came the message: "The

cause in which you are engaged is sacred, and would ennoble mean and

sanctify common things. You have my best wishes for continued success

in your good work."

[Autograph:

My hearty sympathy

In extreme haste,

Very Sincerely

Geo Thompson]

In December, 1863, Miss Anthony went to Philadelphia to attend the

great meeting which celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the

founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and was strengthened and

encouraged by the lofty and enthusiastic addresses and the renewed

expressions of friendship and fealty to herself.

The work of securing the petitions was rapidly and energetically pushed

during the winter and spring of 1864. Miss Anthony gave all her time to

the office.[33] During the year and a half of her arduous labors, she

received from the Hovey Committee $12 a week. As she boarded with Mrs.

Stanton at a reduced price she managed to keep her expenses within this

limit. She writes home: "I go to a restaurant near by for lunch every

noon. I take always strawberries with two tea-rusks. Today I said, 'All

this lacks is a glass of milk from my mother's cellar,' and the girl

replied, 'We have very nice Westchester county milk.' So tomorrow I

shall add that to my bill of fare. My lunch costs, berries, five cents,

rusks five, and tomorrow the milk will be three." There is reason to

believe, however, that she often would have been glad to afford a

second dish of strawberries.

The Hovey Committee sent $155, Gerrit Smith $200, Schieffelin Brothers,

Druggists, $100, and Jessie Benton Fremont, $50. In her great need of

funds, Miss Anthony decided to appeal to Henry Ward Beecher and she

relates how, as she was wearily climbing Columbia Heights to his home,

she felt a hand on her shoulder and heard a hearty voice say: "Well,

old girl, what do you want now?" It was Mr. Beecher himself who, the

moment she explained her mission, said: "I'll take up a collection in

Plymouth church next Sunday." The result of this was $200. The

carefully kept books still in existence show that when the accounts of

the league were closed, there was a deficit of $4.72 to settle all

indebtedness, and this Miss Anthony paid out of her own pocket!

In January the brother Daniel R. came East for his beautiful young

bride, and the mother from her quiet farm-nook sends her petition to

New York. She can not manage the "infare" unless Susan comes home and

helps. So she drops the affairs of government long enough to skim

across the State and lend a hand in preparing for this interesting

event, and then back again to her incessant drudgery, made doubly hard

by financial anxiety.

[Autograph:

Faithfully yours,

Robert Dale Owen]

During all this work of the Loyal League, Miss Anthony found her

strongest and staunchest support in Robert Dale Owen, who was then in

New York by appointment of President Lincoln as chairman of the

Freedman's Inquiry Commission. She was also in constant communication

with Senator Charles Sumner, who was most anxious that the work should

be hastened. The blank petitions were sent in great sacks to him at

Washington, and distributed under his "frank" to all parts of the

Union. On February 9, 1864, he presented in the Senate the first

installment. The petitions from each State were tied by themselves in a

large bundle and endorsed with the number of signatures. Two

able-bodied negroes carried them into the Senate chamber, and Mr.

Sumner presented them, saying in part:

These petitions are signed by 100,000 men and women, who unite in

this unparalleled number to support their prayer. They are from all

parts of the country and from every condition of life.... They ask

nothing less than universal emancipation, and this they ask

directly at the hands of Congress. It is not for me to assign

reasons which the army of petitioners has forborne to assign; but I

may not improperly add that, naturally and obviously, they all feel

in their hearts, what reason and knowledge confirm, not only that

slavery is the guilty origin of the rebellion, but that its

influence everywhere, even outside the rebel States, has been

hostile to the Union, always impairing loyalty and sometimes openly

menacing the national government. The petitioners know well that to

save the country from peril, especially to save the national life,

there is no power in the ample arsenal of self-defense which

Congress may not grasp; for to Congress under the Constitution,

belongs the prerogative of the Roman Dictator to see that the

republic receives no detriment. Therefore to Congress these

petitioners now appeal.

After an earnest discussion by the Senate the petition was referred to

the Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, whose chairman was Thomas

D. Eliot, of Massachusetts. Immediately afterwards several thousand

more blank petitions were sent out, accompanied by a second appeal

which closed: "Shall we not all join in one loud, earnest, effectual

prayer to Congress, which will swell on its ear like the voice of many

waters, that this bloody, desolating war shall be arrested and ended by

the immediate and final removal by statute law and amended

Constitution, of that crime and curse which alone has brought it upon

us?"

[Autograph: Charles Sumner]

In answer to an invitation to be present at the first anniversary of

the Women's National Loyal League, Senator Sumner wrote:

I can not be with you for my post of duty is here. I am grateful to

your association for what you have done to arouse the country to

insist on the extinction of slavery. Now is the time to strike and

no effort should be spared. The good work must be finished, and to

my mind nothing seems to be done, while anything remains to be

done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No

effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of

_property in man_, which is the corner-stone of the rebel

pretension and the constant assumption of the partisans of slavery,

or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled out and

there will be no sympathy with the rebellion, and there will be no

such abomination as slave-hunting, which is beyond question the

most execrable feature of slavery itself.

As Miss Anthony herself had asked so many favors of Wendell Phillips,

she thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Stanton invite him to

make an address at this anniversary; but he was not in the least

deceived, as his reply shows:

DEAR MRS. STANTON: Your S.B.A. thinks she is very cunning. As if I

did not see a huge pussy under that meal! She has been so modest,

humble, ashamed, reluctant, apologetic, contrite, self-accusing

whenever the last ten years she has asked me to do anything, go

anywhere, speak on any topic! Now she makes you pull the chestnuts

out of the fire and thinks I do not see her waiting behind. Ah, the

hand is the hand of Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob, wicked,

sly, skulking, mystifying Jacob. Why don't "secretaries" write the

official letters? How much they leave the "president" to do!

Naughty idlers, those secretaries! Well, let me thank Miss

Secretary Anthony for her gentle consideration; then let me say

I'll try to speak, as you say, fifteen minutes.... Remember me

defiantly to S.B.A.

In the midst of all this correspondence came a letter from a sweetheart

of her girlhood, now a prominent officeholder in Ohio, stating that he

was a widower but would not long remain one if his old friend would

take pity upon him. It is sincerely to be hoped that the secretary of

the Loyal League found time at least to have one of her clerks answer

this epistle.

The meeting was held in the Church of the Puritans, May 12, 1864, and

soul-stirring speeches were made by Phillips, Mrs. Rose, Lucretia Mott,

George Thompson, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. The report of the

executive committee showed that a debt of $5,000, including $1,000 for

postage alone, had been paid; that 25,000 blank petitions had been sent

out; that the league now numbered 5,000 members, and that branch Loyal

Leagues had been formed in many cities. Strong resolutions were adopted

demanding not only emancipation but enfranchisement for the negroes.

The entire proceedings of the convention illustrated how thoroughly the

leading women of the country understood the political situation, how

broad and comprehensive was their grasp of public affairs, and with

what a patriotic and self-sacrificing spirit they performed their part

of the duties imposed by the great Civil War.

By August, 1864, the signatures to the petitions had reached almost

400,000. Again and again Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson had written

Miss Anthony that these petitions formed the bulwark of their demand

for congressional action to abolish slavery. Public sentiment on this

point had now become emphatic, the Senate had passed the bill for the

prohibition of slavery, and the intention of the House of

Representatives was so apparent that it did not seem necessary to

continue the petitions. The headquarters in Cooper Institute were

closed, and the magnificent work, which from this center had radiated

throughout the country, found its reward in the proposition by

Congress, on February 1, 1865, for Amendment XIII to the Federal

Constitution:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment

for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall

exist in the United States, or any place subject to their

jurisdiction.

The faithful, untiring, persistent chief of this Women's National Loyal

League was Susan B. Anthony, whose only material reminder of that great

achievement for the freedom of the slave is the arm-chair in which, for

the past thirty-five years, she has sat and conducted her vast

correspondence in the interest of liberty for the half of humanity

still in bondage; yet in the blessed thought that her efforts were an

important factor in securing freedom for millions of her

fellow-creatures, she has been rewarded a thousandfold. But what words

can express her sense of humiliation when, at the close of this long

conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully still held

her unworthy a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the

political superiors of all the noble women of the nation, the negro men

just emerged from slavery and not only totally illiterate but also

densely ignorant of every public question?

[Autograph: Elizabeth Blackwell]

There never can be an adequate portrayal of the services rendered by

the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny

that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and

self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison of values is impossible,

but women's labors supplemented those of men, and together they wrought

out the freedom of the slave and the salvation of the Union. Among the

great body of women, a few stand out in immortal light. The plan of the

vital campaign of the Tennessee, one of the great strategic movements

of history, was made by Anna Ella Carroll. The work of Dorothea Dix,

government superintendent of women nurses, with its onerous and

important duties, needs no eulogy. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, fresh from

England and an intimacy with Florence Nightingale, originated the

Sanitary Commission. No name is held in more profound reverence than

that of Clara Barton, for her matchless services upon the battlefield

among the dead and dying. To Josephine S. Griffing belongs the full

credit of founding the Freedmen's Bureau, which played so valuable a

part in the help and protection of the newly emancipated negroes. Who

of all the public speakers rendered greater aid to the Union than the

inspired Anna Dickinson? Yet not one of these ever received the

slightest official recognition from the government. In the cases of

Miss Carroll, Dr. Blackwell and Mrs. Griffing, the honors and the

profits all were absorbed by men. Neither Dorothea Dix nor Clara Barton

ever asked for a pension. All of these women at the close of the war

appealed for the right of suffrage, a voice in the affairs of

government; but such appeals were and still are treated with

contemptuous denial. The situation was thus eloquently summed up by

that woman statesman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

The lessons of the war were not lost on the women of this nation;

through varied forms of suffering and humiliation, they learned

that they had an equal interest with men in the administration of

the government, alike enjoying its blessings or enduring its

miseries. When in the enfranchisement of the black men they saw

another ignorant class of voters placed above their heads, and

beheld the danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever

involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and

demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that

woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be

expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man

had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died

for his country.

[Footnote 32: See Appendix for this address.]

[Footnote 33: She was assisted from time to time by Mrs. Stanton, Lucy

Stone, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mary F. Gilbert,

Frances V. Hallock, Mattie Griffith (Brown), Rebecca Shepard (Putnam),

and Frances M. Russell, all donating their services. The bookkeeper and

the clerks were paid small salaries from the office receipts.]

CHAPTER XV.

"MALE" IN THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

1865.

Soon after closing the league headquarters, Miss Anthony went to Auburn

to attend the wedding of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and Ellen, daughter

of her dear friend Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott, a union

of two families very acceptable to the friends of both. From this scene

of festivity she returned home to meet a fresh sorrow in the sudden

death, almost at the hour of her arrival, of Ann Eliza, daughter of her

eldest sister Guelma and Aaron McLean, the best beloved of all her

nieces. She was twenty-three years old, beautiful and talented, a good

musician and an artist of fine promise. In her Miss Anthony had

centered many hopes and ambitions, and the letters show that she was

always planning and working for her future as she would have done for

that of a cherished daughter. She was laid to rest on the silver

wedding anniversary of her parents. Miss Anthony writes: "She had

ceased to be a child and had become the fullgrown woman, my companion

and friend. I loved her merry laugh, her bright, joyous presence, and

yet my loss is so small compared to the awful void in her mother's life

that I scarcely dare mention it."

Months afterwards she wrote her sister Hannah: "Today I made a

pilgrimage to Mount Hope. The last rays of red, gold and purple fringed

the horizon and shone serenely on the mounds above our dear father and

Ann Eliza. What a contrast in my feelings; for the one a subdued sorrow

at the sudden ending of a life full-ripened, only that we would have

basked in its sunshine a little longer; for the other a keen anguish

over the untimely cutting off in the dawn of existence, with the hopes

and longings but just beginning to take form, the real purpose of life

yet dimly developed, a great nature but half revealed. The faith that

she and all our loved and gone are graduated into a higher school of

growth and progress is the only consolation for death."

At another time she wrote her brother: "This new and sorrowful reminder

of the brittleness of life's threads should soften all our expressions

to each other in our home circles and open our lips to speak only words

of tenderness and approbation. We are so wont to utter criticisms and

to keep silence about the things we approve. I wish we might be as

faithful in expressing our likes as our dislikes, and not leave our

loved ones to take it for granted that their good acts are noted and

appreciated and vastly outnumber those we criticise. The sum of home

happiness would be greatly multiplied if all families would

conscientiously follow this method."

There were urgent appeals in these days from the lately-married brother

and his wife for sister Susan to come to Kansas and, as no public work

seemed to be pressing, she started the latter part of January, 1865.

She stopped in Chicago to visit her uncle Albert Dickinson, was

detained a week by heavy storms, and reached Leavenworth the last day

of the month. Of her journey she wrote home:

I paid a dollar for a ride across the Mississippi on the ice. When

we reached Missouri all was devastation. I asked the conductor if

there were not a sleeper and he replied, "Our sleeping cars are in

the ditch." Scarcely a train had been over the road in weeks

without being thrown off the track. We were nineteen hours going

the 200 miles from Quincy to St. Joe. Twelve miles out from the

latter we had to wait for the train ahead of us to get back on the

rails. I was desperate. Any decent farmer's pigpen would be as

clean as that car. There were five or six families, each with half

a dozen children, moving to Kansas and Nebraska, who had been shut

up there for days. A hovel stood up the bank a little way and

several of the men went there and washed their faces. After

watching them enjoy this luxury for a while I finally rushed up

myself and asked the woman in charge if she would sell me a cup of

coffee. She grunted out yes, after some hesitation, and while she

was making it, I washed my face and hands. When she handed me my

drink she said, "This is no rye; it is real coffee." And so it was

and I enjoyed it, brass spoon, thick, dingy, cracked cup and all.

This was Miss Anthony's first visit to Kansas and she found much to

interest her in Leavenworth--caravans of emigrants long trains of

supplies for the army, troops from the barracks crowds of colored

refugees, the many features of frontier life so totally different from

all she had seen and known in her eastern home. The prominence of her

brother brought many distinguished visitors to his house, she enjoyed

the long carriage drives and the days were filled with pleasant duties,

so that she writes, "I am afraid I shall get into the business of being

comfortable." On her birthday, February 15, the diary shows that she

wagered a pair of gloves with the family physician that it would not

rain before morning, and on the 16th is recorded: "The bell rang early

this morning and a boy left a box containing a pair of gloves with the

compliments of the doctor." In March one entry reads: "The new

seamstress starts in pretty well but she can not sew nicely enough for

the little clothes. We shall have to make those ourselves."

This life of ease proved to be of short duration. Her brother was

renominated for mayor and plunged at once into the thick of a political

campaign, while Miss Anthony went to the office to help manage his

newspaper, limited only by his injunction "not to have it all woman's

rights and negro suffrage." The labor, however, which she most enjoyed

was among the colored refugees. Soon after the slaves were set free

they flocked to Kansas in large numbers, and what should be done with

this great body of uneducated, untrained and irresponsible people was a

perplexing question. She went into the day schools, Sunday-schools,

charitable societies and all organizations for their relief and

improvement. The journal shows that four or five days or evenings every

week were given to this work and that she formed an equal rights league

among them. A colored printer was put into the composing-room, and at

once the entire force went on strike. The diary declares "it is a

burning, blistering shame," and relates her attempts to secure other

work for him. She met at this time Hiram Revels, a colored Methodist

preacher, afterwards United States senator from Mississippi.

During these months she was in constant receipt of letters pressing her

to return to the East. Phillips said: "Come back, there is work for you

here." From Lydia Mott came the pathetic cry: "Our old fraternity is no

more; we are divided, bodily and spiritually, and I seem to grow more

isolated every day." Pillsbury wrote: "We do not know much now about

one another. We called a meeting of the Hovey Committee and only

Whipple and I were present. Why have you deserted the field of action

at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost twenty

centuries? If you watch our papers you must have observed that with you

gone, our forces are scattered until I can almost truly say with him of

old, 'I only am left.' It is not for me to decide your field of labor.

Kansas needed John Brown and may need you. It is no doubt missionary

ground and, wherever you are, I know you will not be idle; but New York

is to revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is

to make the plea for woman?" Mrs. Stanton insisted that she should not

remain buried in Kansas and concluded a long letter:

I hope in a short time to be comfortably located in a new house

where we will have a room ready for you when you come East. I long

to put my arms around you once more and hear you scold me for my

sins and short-comings. Your abuse is sweeter to me than anybody

else's praise for, in spite of your severity, your faith and

confidence shine through all. O, Susan, you are very dear to me. I

should miss you more than any other living being from this earth.

You are intertwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and

all my future plans are based on you as a coadjutor. Yes, our work

is one, we are one in aim and sympathy and we should be together.

Come home.

Miss Anthony's own heart yearned to return, but the workers were so few

in Kansas and so many in the Eastern States. that she scarcely knew

where the call of duty was strongest. At the close of the war her mind

grasped at once the full import of the momentous questions which would

demand settlement and she felt the necessity of placing herself in

touch with those who would be most powerful in moulding public

sentiment. The threatened division in the Abolitionist ranks and the

reported determination of Mr. Garrison to disband the Anti-Slavery

Society, filled her with dismay and she sent back the strongest

protests she could put into words:

How can any one hold that Congress has no right to demand negro

suffrage in the returning rebel States because it is not already

established in all the loyal ones? What would have been said of

Abolitionists ten or twenty years ago, had they preached to the

people that Congress had no right to vote against admitting a new

State with slavery, because it was not already abolished in all the

old States? It is perfectly astounding, this seeming eagerness of

so many of our old friends to cover up and apologize for the

glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the manhood of the

black race. Well, you will be in New York to witness, perhaps, the

disbanding of the Anti-Slavery Society--and I shall be away out

here, waiting anxiously to catch the first glimpse of the spirit of

the meeting. But Phillips will be glorious and genial to the end.

All through this struggle he has stood up against the tide, one of

the few to hold the nation to its vital work--its one necessity,

moral as military--absolute justice and equality for the black man.

I wish every ear in this country might listen to his word.

A letter from Mr. Phillips said: "Thank you for your kind note. I see

you understand the lay of the land and no words are necessary between

you and me. Your points we have talked over. If Garrison should resign,

we incline to Purvis for president for many, many reasons. We (Hovey

Committee) shall aid in keeping our Standard floating till the enemy

comes down." All the letters received by Miss Anthony during May and

June were filled with the story of the dissension in the Anti-Slavery

Society.

It is not a part of this work to go into the merits of that discussion.

In brief, Mr. Garrison and his followers believed that, with the

ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was forever abolished

in the United States and there was no further need of the Anti-Slavery

Society which he himself had founded. Phillips and his following held

that "no emancipation can be effectual and no freedom real, unless the

negro has the ballot and the States are prohibited from enacting laws

making any distinction among their citizens on Account of race or

color." There were minor differences of opinion respecting men and

measures, but the above are the fundamental points which led to the

first breach that had occurred for a quarter of a century in the ranks

of the great anti-slavery leaders, who had borne a persecution never

equalled in the history of our country. It resulted, at the May

Anniversary in New York, in Garrison's declining a re-election to the

presidency of the society, which he had held for thirty-two years, and

in the election of Phillips.

Those most intimately connected with Miss Anthony sustained the

position of Mr. Phillips--Mrs. Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Robert

Purvis, Charles Remond, Stephen Foster, Lucretia and Lydia Mott, Anna

Dickinson, Sarah Pugh--and she herself was his staunchest defender.

Believing as strongly as she did that the suffrage is the very

foundation of liberty, that without it there can be no real freedom for

either man or woman, she could not have done otherwise, and yet, so

great was her reverence and affection for Mr. Garrison, it was with the

keenest regret she found herself no longer able to follow him. She

writes: "I am glad I was spared from witnessing that closing scene. It

will be hard beyond expression to leave him out of our councils, but he

never will be out of our sympathies. I hope you will refrain from all

personalities. Pro-slavery signs are too apparent and too dangerous at

this hour for us to stop for personal adjustments. To go forward with

the great work pressing upon the society, without turning to the right

or the left, is the one wise course."

Parker Pillsbury was made editor of the Standard in place of Oliver

Johnson, and was assisted by George W. Smalley, who had married an

adopted daughter of Wendell Phillips. Mr. Pillsbury wrote Miss Anthony

soon after the anniversary:

We could not see how the colored race were to be risked, shut up in

the States with their old masters, whom they had helped to conquer

and out of whose defeat their freedom had come; so we voted to keep

the machinery in gear until better assurances were given of a free

future than we yet possess. We have offended some by our course. I

am sorry, but it was Mr. Garrison who taught me to be true to

myself. To my mind, suffrage for the negro is now what immediate

emancipation was thirty years ago. If we emancipate from slavery

and leave the European doctrine of serfdom extant, even in the

mildest form, then the colored race, or we, or perhaps both, have

another war in store. And so my work is not done till the last

black man can declare in the full face of the world, "I am a man

and a brother."

In June, as the expected little stranger had arrived safe, Miss Anthony

accepted an invitation to deliver the Fourth of July address at

Ottumwa, and then went through her inevitable agony whenever she had a

speech to prepare. She took the stage for Topeka, finding among her

fellow-passengers her relative, Major Scott Anthony, with Mr.

Butterfield of the Overland Dispatch, and the long, hot, dusty ride was

enlivened by an animated discussion of the political questions of the

day. During this drive over the unbroken prairies, she made the

prediction that, given a few decades of thrift, they would be dotted

with farms, orchards and villages and the State would be a paradise.

Miss Anthony was among the first of the Abolitionists to declare that

the negroes must have the suffrage, one of the most unpopular ideas

ever broached, and she writes: "As fearless, radical and independent as

my brother is, he will not allow my opinions on this subject to go into

his paper." At Topeka she spoke to a large audience in the Methodist

church on this question. In order to reach Ottumwa she had to ride 125

miles by stage in the heat of July, and her expenses were considerable.

No price had been guaranteed for her address, but she learned to her

surprise that she was expected to make it a gratuitous offering, as was

the custom on account of the poverty of the people. They came from

miles around and were enthusiastic over her speech on "President

Johnson's Mississippi Reconstruction Proclamation." The Republicans

insisted that she should put her notes in shape for publication, but

urged her to leave out the paragraph on woman suffrage.[34]

The other speakers were Sidney Clark, M.C., and a professor from

Lawrence University. They were entertained by a prominent official who

had just built a new house, the upper story of which was unfinished. It

was divided into three rooms by hanging up army blankets, and each of

the orators was assigned to one of these apartments. Miss Anthony was

so exhausted from the long stage-ride, the speaking and the heat, that

she scarcely could get ready for bed, but no sooner had she touched the

pillow than she was assailed by a species of animals noted for the

welcome they extended to travellers in the early history of Kansas. Her

dilemma was excruciating. Should she lie still and be eaten alive, or

should she get up, strike a light and probably rouse the honorable

gentlemen on the other side of the army blankets? A few minutes decided

the question; she slipped out of bed, lighted her tallow dip and

reconnoitered. Then she blew out her light, and sat by the window till

morning.

She spoke at Lawrence in the Unitarian and the Congregational churches,

and August 1, the thirty-first anniversary of England's emancipation of

the slaves in the West Indies, she addressed an immense audience in a

grove near Leavenworth. She discussed the changed condition of the

colored people and their new rights and duties, and called their

attention to the fact that not one of the prominent politicians

advertised was there; pointed out that if they possessed the ballot and

could vote these men into or out of office, all would be eager for an

opportunity to address them; and then drew a parallel between their

political condition and that of women. At this time she received a

second intimation of what was to come, when prominent Republicans

called upon her and insisted that hereafter she should not bring the

question of woman's rights into her speeches on behalf of the negro.

A few days afterwards Miss Anthony was seated in her brother's office

reading the papers when she learned to her amazement that several

resolutions had been offered in the House of Representatives

sanctioning disfranchisement on account of sex. Up to this time the

Constitution of the United States never had been desecrated by the word

"male," and she saw instantly that such action would create a more

formidable barrier than any now existing against the enfranchisement of

women. She hesitated no longer but started immediately on her homeward

journey, stopping in Atchison, where she was the guest of ex-Mayor

Crowell. Senator Pomeroy called, accompanied her to church and arranged

for her to address the colored people next day. She lectured also in

St. Joseph, Mo. At Chillicothe one of the editors sent word that if she

would not "lash" him he would print her handbills free of charge. Here

she addressed a great crowd of colored people in a tobacco factory. At

Macon City she spoke to them in an abandoned barracks, and slept in a

slab house. Her night's experience at Ottumwa was repeated here, except

that the army of invaders were fleas. The next day she was invited to

the Methodist minister's home and his church placed at her disposal,

where she addressed a large white audience. Of her speech in St. Louis

she wrote:

Sunday afternoon I spoke to the colored people in an old slave

church in which priests used to preach "Servants, obey your

masters;" and in which slaves never dared breathe aloud their

hearts' deepest prayer for freedom. The church was built by actual

slaves with money they earned working odd hours allowed them by

their masters. The greatest danger for these people now lies in

being duped by the priests and Levites who used to pass them by on

the other side but who, now that they have become popular prey,

wildly run to and fro to do them good--that is, get their money and

give themselves easy, fat posts as superintendents, missionaries,

teachers, etc. The country is full of these soul-sharks, men who

haven't had brains enough to find pulpits or places in the free

States.

As Miss Anthony took the train for Chicago, a woman-thief picked her

pocket but she caught her and, without any appeal to the police,

compelled her to deliver up the stolen goods. At Chicago she lectured

several times, visited the Freedmen's Commission, heard General Howard,

called on General Sherman, went to the board of trade, where she was

greatly shocked at the roaring of the "bulls and bears," and had

pleasant visits with relatives in the city and adjacent towns, speaking

at a number of these places. She lectured at Battle Creek and Ann

Arbor, arriving at Rochester September 23. Pausing only for a brief

visit, she went on to New York to fulfill the purpose which brought her

eastward. She stopped at Auburn to counsel with Mrs. Wright and Mrs.

Worden, but found both very dubious about reviving interest in woman's

rights at this critical moment. After a night of mapping out the

campaign with Mrs. Stanton, she started out bright and early the next

morning on that mission which she was to follow faithfully and

steadfastly, without cessation or turning aside, for the next thirty

years--to compel the Constitution of the United States to recognize the

political rights of woman! The days were spent in hunting up old

friends and supporters of the years before the war and enlisting their

sympathies in the great work now at hand; and the evenings were

occupied with Mrs. Stanton in preparing an appeal and a form of

petition praying Congress to confer the suffrage on women.[35] This was

the first demand ever made for Congressional action on this question.

The Fourteenth Amendment, as proposed, contained in Section 2, to which

the women objected, the word "male" three times, and read as follows:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States

according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of

persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the

right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for

president and vice-president of the United States, representatives

in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the

members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the _male_

inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and

citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for

participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of

representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the

number of such _male_ citizens shall bear to the whole number of

_male_ citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

If it had been adopted without this word "male," all women would have

been virtually enfranchised, as men would have let women vote rather

than have them counted out of the basis of representation. Thaddeus

Stevens made a vigorous attempt to have women included in the

provisions of this amendment.

[Autograph: Thaddeus Stevens]

A letter written by Mrs. Stanton to Martha Wright is a sample of

hundreds which were sent to friends in all parts of the country:

I enclose you the proof of the memorial which Susan and I have just

been getting up for Congress. I have been writing to Mr. Garrison

to make some mention of us, "the only disfranchised class now

remaining," in his last Liberator. It is fitting that we should be

recognized in his valedictory. We have now boosted the negro over

our own heads, and we had better begin to remember that

self-preservation is the first law of nature. Will you see if you

can get our petition in your city and county papers? Sign it

yourself and send it to your representatives in Senate and

Congress, and then try to galvanize the women of your district into

life. Some say: "Be still; wait; this is the negro's hour." We

believe this is the hour for everybody to do the best thing for

reconstruction.

Miss Anthony found the leaders among the men so absorbed with their

interest in the male negro that they had given little thought to the

suffrage as related to women; but the Hovey Committee appropriated $500

to begin the petition work. She went to Concord and held a parlor

meeting attended by Emerson, Alcott, Sanborn and other sages of that

intellectual center, stating what the women desired to accomplish.

After she finished, Emerson was appealed to for an opinion but said:

"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide

for me in practical matters." Mrs. Emerson replied without hesitation

that she fully agreed with Miss Anthony in regard to the necessity for

petitioning Congress at once to enfranchise women, either before this

great body of negroes was invested with the ballot or at the same time.

Mr. Emerson and the other gentlemen then assured her of their sympathy

and support.

[Autograph: R. Waldo Emerson]

She presented her claims at the annual anti-slavery meeting in

Westchester and at many other gatherings. She went also to Philadelphia

to visit James and Lucretia Mott and interest Mary Grew and Sarah Pugh

and all the friends in that locality; then back to New York with

tireless energy and unflagging zeal. She wrote articles for the

Anti-Slavery Standard, sent out petitions and left no stone unturned to

accomplish her purpose. The diary shows the days to have been well

filled:

Went to Tilton's office to express regrets at not being able to

attend their tin wedding. He read us his editorial on Seward and

Beecher. Splendid!... Went to hear Beecher, morning and evening.

There is no one like him.... Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and

went with her to Mrs. Bowen's.... Listened to O.B. Frothingham,

"Justice the Mother of Wisdom."... Put some new buttons on my

cloak. This is its third winter.... Excellent audience in Friends'

meeting house, at Milton-on-the-Hudson. Visited the grave of Eliza

W. Farnham.... Went over to New Jersey to confer with Lucy Stone

and Antoinette Blackwell.... Called at Dr. Cheever's, and also had

an interview with Robert Dale Owen.... Went to Worcester to see

Abby Kelly Foster and from there to Boston.... Found Dr. Harriot K.

Hunt ready for woman suffrage work. Took dinner at Garrison's. Saw

Whipple and May, then went to Wendell Phillips'.... Spent the day

with Caroline M. Severance, at West Newton. She is earnest in the

cause of women.... Returned to New York and commenced work in

earnest. Spent nearly all the Christmas holidays addressing and

sending off petitions.

Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton entered heartily into the plans

of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Mr. Tilton proposed that they should

form a National Equal Rights Association, demanding suffrage for

negroes and for women, that Mr. Phillips should be its president, the

Anti-Slavery Standard its official organ; and Mr. Beecher agreed to

lecture in behalf of this new movement. Mr. Tilton came out with a

strong editorial in the Independent, advocating suffrage for women and

paying a beautiful tribute to the efficient services in the past of

those who were now demanding recognition of their political rights:

A LAW AGAINST WOMEN.--The spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing

this creature's mossy legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington

are seeking to fix these upon the Federal Constitution, to make

that instrument walk backward in like style. For instance, the

Constitution has never laid any legal disabilities upon woman.

Whatever denials of rights it formerly made to our slaves, it

denied nothing to our wives and daughters. The legal rights of an

American woman--for instance, her right to her own property, as

against a squandering husband; or her right to her own children as

against a malicious father--have grown, year by year, into a more

generous and just statement in American laws. This beautiful result

is owing in great measure to the persistent efforts of many noble

women who, for years past, both publicly and privately, by pen and

speech, have appealed to legislative committees and to the whole

community for an enlargement of the legal and civil status of their

fellow-countrywomen. Signal, honorable and beneficent have been the

works and words of Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, Paulina Wright

Davis, Abby Kelly Foster, Frances D. Gage, Lucy Stone, Caroline H.

Ball, Antoinette Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and many others. Not in all the land lives a poor woman or

a widow who does not owe some portion of her present safety under

the law to the brave exertions of these faithful laborers.

All forward-looking minds know that, sooner or later, the chief

public question in this country will be woman's claim to the

ballot. The Federal Constitution, as it now stands, leaves this

question an open one for the several States to settle as they

choose. Two bills, however, now lie before Congress proposing to

array the fundamental law of the land against the multitude of

American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a

whole sex. To this injustice we object totally! Such an amendment

is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future

progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted on the most tender

and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics.

If the present Congress is not called to legislate _for_ the rights

of women, let it not legislate _against_ them. Americans now live

who shall not go down into the grave till they have left behind

them a republican government; and no republic is republican that

denies to half its citizens those rights which the Declaration of

Independence and a true Christian democracy make equal to all.

Meanwhile, let us break the legs of the spider-crab.

[Footnote 34: See Appendix for full speech.]

[Footnote 35: As the question of suffrage is now agitating the public

mind, it is the hour for woman to make her demand. Propositions already

have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as

to exclude women from a voice in the government. As this would be to

turn the wheels of legislation backward, let the women of the nation

now unitedly protest against such a desecration of the Constitution,

and petition for that right which is at the foundation of all

government, the right of representation. Send your petition when signed

to your representative in Congress, at your earliest convenience.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, LUCY STONE.]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEGRO'S HOUR.

1866.

The reconstruction period of our government was no less trying a time

than the four years of warfare which preceded it. The Union had been

preserved but the disorganization of the Southern States was complete.

Lincoln, whose cool judgment, restraining wisdom and remarkable genius

for understanding and persuading men never had been more needed, was

dead by the hand of an assassin. In his place was a man, rash,

headlong, aggressive, stubborn, distrusted by the party which had

placed him in power. This chief executive had to deal not only with the

great, perplexing questions which always follow upon the close of a

war, but with these rendered still more difficult by the great mass of

bewildered and helpless negroes, ignorant of how to care for

themselves, with no further claims upon their former owners, and yet

destined to live among them. The immense Republican majority in

Congress found itself opposed by a President, southern in birth and

sympathy and an uncompromising believer in State Rights.

The southern legislatures, while accepting the Thirteenth Amendment,

which prohibited slavery, passed various laws whose effect could not be

other than to keep the negro in a condition of "involuntary servitude."

To the South these measures seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence

to retain at least temporary control of a race unfitted for a wise use

of liberty; to the North they appeared a determination to evade the

provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and Congress decided upon more

radical measures. One wing of the old Abolitionists, under the

leadership of Phillips, had steadfastly insisted that there could be no

real freedom without the ballot. Several attempts had been made to

secure congressional action for the enfranchisement of the negro, which

the majority of Republicans had now come to see was essential for his

protection, and these resulted finally in the submission of the

Fourteenth Amendment. Charles Sumner stated that he covered nineteen

pages of foolscap in his effort so to formulate it as to omit the word

"male" and, at the same time, secure the ballot for the negro.

When Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton sounded the alarm, the old leaders

in the movement for woman's rights came at once to their aid, but they

were soon to meet with an unexpected and serious disappointment. In

January Miss Anthony went to the anti-slavery meeting at Boston, full

of the new idea of consolidating the old Anti-Slavery and the Woman's

Rights Societies under one name, that of the Equal Rights Association.

She was warmly supported by Tilton, Lucy Stone, Powell and others, but

to their amazement they found Mr. Phillips very cool and discouraging.

He said this could be done only by amending the constitution of the

Anti-Slavery Society, which required three months' notice. Still they

did not dream of his opposing the proposition and so deputized Mr.

Powell to give the formal notice, in order that it might be acted upon

at the coming May Anniversary. On the way back the New York delegation

discussed this new plan enthusiastically, and Miss Anthony wrote home

that there was a strong wish in the society to widen its object so as

to include universal suffrage, believing this to be the case. The

necessary steps at once were taken for calling a national woman's

rights meeting to convene in New York the same week as the Anti-Slavery

Anniversary, and the following call was issued setting forth its

principal objects:

Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the

deep gulf between our broad theory and our partial legislation; do

not see that our government for the last century has been but a

repetition of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence the

failure is not in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our

part to apply it. The question now is, have we the wisdom and

conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system to

reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis which never yet

has been tried--Equal Rights to All?

From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we

have not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for,

while our representatives at Washington are discussing the right of

suffrage for the black man as the only protection to life, liberty

and happiness, they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman,

by proposing to introduce the word "male" into the Federal

Constitution. In securing suffrage but to another shade of manhood,

while disfranchising 15,000,000 women, we come not one line nearer

the republican idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman and dignity

on her brow, more unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an

American Congress pay less honor to the daughter of a President

than a British Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our

petitions command as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as

a speech of Victoria in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that

here all men and women are nobles--all heirs apparent to the

throne? The fact that this backward legislation has roused so

little thought or protest from the women of the country but proves

what some of our ablest thinkers already have declared, that the

greatest barrier to a government of equality is the aristocracy of

its women; for while woman holds an ideal position above man and

the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry and

distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation

never can realize the divine idea of equality.

To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the

same upheavings we now see in the state; for while our egotism,

selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose

life was a sacrifice, while at the family altar we are taught to

worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is

vain to talk of a republican government. The fair fruits of

liberty, equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud till

cherished in the heart of woman. At this hour the nation needs the

highest thought and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into

every vein and artery of its life; and woman needs a broader,

deeper education such as a pure religion and lofty patriotism alone

can give. From the baptism of this second Revolution should she not

rise up with new strength and dignity, clothed in all those

"rights, privileges and immunities" which shall best enable her to

fulfill her highest duties to humanity, her country, her family and

herself?

On behalf of the National Woman's Rights Central Committee,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_; SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

Letters both encouraging and discouraging were received. Robert Purvis,

one of the most elegant and scholarly colored men our country has

known, whose father was a Scotchman and mother a West Indian with no

slave blood, sent this noble response: "....I can not agree that this

or any hour is 'especially the negro's.' I am an anti-slavery man

because I hate tyranny and in my nature revolt against oppression,

whatever its form or character. As an Abolitionist, therefore, I am for

the equal rights movement, and as one of the confessedly oppressed

race, how could I be otherwise? With what grace could I ask the women

of this country to labor for my enfranchisement, and at the same time

be unwilling to put forth a hand to remove the tyranny, in some

respects greater, to which they are subjected? Again wishing you a

successful meeting, I am very gratefully yours."

[Autograph: Robert Purvis]

Anna Dickinson, who had come upon the scene of action since the last

woman's rights convention five years before, wrote Miss Anthony that

she should be present but was not sure that she was yet ready to speak:

"I'm a great deal of a Quaker--I don't like to take up any work till I

feel called to it. My personal interest is perhaps stronger in that of

which thee writes me than in any other, but my hands are so full just

now. I see what I shall do in the future, and I hope the near future.

Wait for me a little--forbear, and I honestly believe I'll do thee some

good and faithful service; I don't mean wait for me, but be patient

with me. I write this out of my large love for and confidence in thee.

I will talk to thee more of it by end of the month when I see thee in

Boston and put my mite in thy hands; till then believe me, dear friend,

affectionately and truly thine."

At the business meeting of the anti-slavery convention the proposition

was made by the National Woman's Rights Committee that, as all there

was left for the society to do was to secure suffrage for the negro,

and as the woman's society also was working for universal suffrage,

they should merge the two into one, and in that way the same

conventions, appeals, petitions, etc., would answer for both. To this

Mr. Phillips vigorously objected because the necessary three months'

notice had not been given! As Mr. Powell had been delegated the

previous January to give this, there could be no other conclusion than

that he had refrained from doing so. There was considerable discussion

on the question but, as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr.

Phillips' influence was supreme and the coalition was declined.

The Woman's Rights Convention met in Dr. Cheever's church, May 10,

1866, with a large audience present. It was their first meeting since

before the war, and while it had many elements of gladness, yet it was

not unmixed with sorrow. Mr. Garrison was absent, the first rift had

been made in the love and gratitude in which for many years Mr.

Phillips had been held, and a vague feeling of distrust and alarm was

beginning to creep over the women, lest, after all these years of

patient work, they were again to be sacrificed.

Miss Anthony presented a ringing set of resolutions, and splendid

addresses were given by Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward

Beecher. Mr. Phillips then made a long and eloquent speech which was

rapturously received by the audience, but which filled the leaders with

sadness, because of the skillful evasion of the disputed question which

they never had expected from this staunch friend. Miss Anthony read an

address to Congress[36] which was adopted with unanimous approval. At

the close of the convention a business session was held, at which she

offered a resolution declaring that, since by the act of emancipation

and the Civil Rights Bill, the negro and woman now had the same civil

and political status, alike needing only the ballot, therefore the time

had come for an organization which should demand universal suffrage;

and that hereafter their society should be known as the American Equal

Rights Association. She supported this by an able speech in which she

said:

For twenty years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right

of representation in the government. Each successive year after

1848, conventions were held in different States, until the

beginning of the war. Up to this hour we have looked only to State

action for the recognition of our rights; but now, by the results

of the war, the whole question of suffrage reverts back to the

United States Constitution. The duty of Congress at this moment is

to declare what shall be the basis of representation in a

republican form of government. There is, there can be, but one true

basis, viz.: that taxation and representation must be inseparable;

hence our demand must now go beyond woman--it must extend to the

farthest limit of the principle of the "consent of the governed,"

as the only authorized or just government. We therefore wish to

broaden our woman's rights platform and make it in name what it

ever has been in spirit, a human rights platform. As women we can

no longer claim for ourselves what we do not for others, nor can we

work in two separate movements to get the ballot for the two

disfranchised classes, negroes and women, since to do so must be at

double cost of time, energy and money.... Therefore, that we may

henceforth concentrate all our forces for the practical application

of our one grand, distinctive, national idea--universal suffrage--I

hope we will unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus

resolving ourselves into the American Equal Eights Association.

Notwithstanding the rebuff they had received from the Anti-Slavery

Society, this resolution was unanimously adopted and the Woman's Rights

Society which had existed practically for sixteen years was merged into

the American Equal Rights Association to work for universal suffrage. A

constitution was adopted and officers chosen.[37] Mrs. Stanton thus

describes the last moments of the convention: "As Lucretia Mott uttered

her few parting words of benediction, the fading sunlight through the

stained windows falling upon her pure face, a celestial glory seemed

about her, a sweet and peaceful influence pervaded every heart, and all

responded to Theodore Tilton when he said this closing meeting was one

of the most beautiful, delightful and memorable which any of its

participants ever enjoyed."

A short time thereafter Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Phillips and

Mr. Tilton were in the Standard office discussing the work. Mr.

Phillips argued that the time was ripe for striking the word "white"

out of the New York constitution, at its coming convention, but not for

striking out "male." Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction

to all he had so warmly advocated only a few weeks before, and said

what the women should do was to canvass the State with speeches and

petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the

women to come afterward, presumably twenty years later, when there

would be another revision of the constitution. Mrs. Stanton, entirely

overcome by the eloquence of these two gifted men, acquiesced in all

they said; but Miss Anthony, who never could be swerved from her

standard by any sophistry or blandishments, was highly indignant and

declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the

ballot for the black man and not for woman. After Phillips had left,

she overheard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, "What does ail Susan? She

acts like one possessed." Mrs. Stanton replied, "I can not imagine; I

never before saw her so unreasonable and absolutely rude."

She was obliged to leave immediately to keep an engagement, but as soon

as she was at liberty went straight to Mrs. Stanton's home, and found

her walking up and down the long parlors, wringing her hands. She threw

her arms around Miss Anthony, exclaiming: "I never was so glad to see

you. Do tell me what is the matter with me? I feel as if I had been

scourged from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet!" They sat

down together and went over the whole conversation, and she then saw

and felt most keenly the insult and degradation concealed in the

proposition of the two men, and agreed with Miss Anthony that she would

sacrifice her life before she would accept it.

This incident illustrates one marked difference in these two women,

each so strong in her own characteristics. Mrs. Stanton in the presence

of brilliant intellect and elegant culture at times would seem to be

entirely psychologized, even though the arguments used were in direct

conflict with her own instincts and judgment. On the contrary, no

eloquence, no persuasiveness of manner, no magnetic power could induce

Miss Anthony for one moment to abandon her convictions of truth and

justice. Mrs. Stanton's disposition was one of extreme suavity which

loved to please, while Miss Anthony's nature was rugged, unflinching

and stern in upholding the right without regard to expediency.

On May 31 both the Anti-Slavery Society and the Equal Rights

Association held large meetings in Boston. The latter, in conformity

with its new name, announced that "any member of the audience, man or

woman, was entitled to speak on the topics under debate and would be

made welcome." This had been the rule always in the old woman's rights

conventions, but it was reaffirmed now in order to show the broad and

catholic spirit of the new organization. At this Boston meeting Anna

Dickinson made her first speech for the rights of woman. It was one of

those bursts of inspiration which no pen can reproduce, and was

received by the audience with cheer upon cheer. She gave $100 to the

cause, assuring them of her services henceforth, and Miss Anthony wrote

of her, "She is sound to the heart's core."

The great work of rolling up petitions, not only to Congress but to the

New York Constitutional Convention, was then commenced. The executive

board of the Standard offered to lease to the Equal Rights Association

office-room and a certain amount of space in the paper. These, however,

were put at such a price and placed under such restrictions as it was

thought unwise to accept. All the matter submitted would be subject to

"editorial revision," even though the association paid for the space,

and as Mr. Pillsbury had resigned the editorship and Mr. Powell had

taken it, they decided they could not trust the "editorial revision."

The women had done so vast an amount of gratuitous work for the

Standard in past years, that they felt themselves entitled to more

liberal treatment. The editor had written, only a short time before, of

the excellent service Miss Anthony had rendered in straightening out

the accounts. She also had secured numerous subscribers, sending in as

many as thirty at a time from some of her meetings.

For the purpose of arousing public interest in the approaching New York

Constitutional Convention, an equal rights meeting was held at Albany,

in Tweddle Hall, November 21. To make this a success Miss Anthony spent

many weeks of hard work. The diary notes that, among other things, she

directed and sent out 1200 complimentary tickets.[38] At this Albany

convention political differences began to appear. Mrs. Stanton

complimented the Democrats for the assistance they had rendered;

Frederick Douglass objected to their receiving any credit, branding

their advocacy as a trick of the enemy, and there were frequent sharp

encounters. Miss Anthony made an extended speech, of which there is but

this newspaper report:

She referred to the assertion of Horace Greeley, that while women

had the abstract right to suffrage the great majority of them did

not wish it. So they told us when we said the negro ought to be

free; he did not wish it; he was contented and happy. As we replied

relative to the negro, so do we regarding women. If they do not

desire the right to vote, it is an evidence of the depth to which

they have been degraded by its deprivation. A woman clerk, in the

New York Mercantile Library, told her that during the war the

salaries of the male clerks all had been raised, but not those of

the women, and a man's, who held an inferior position, had been

increased to $300 more than her own. The clerk said that if she had

been a voter she did not believe such injustice would have been

perpetrated. In Rochester the salaries of the male teachers in the

public schools were raised $100 per annum while the small salaries

of the women were still further reduced. In Auburn $200 additional

compensation was voted to the male teachers and $25 to the women,

who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution

thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then

required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult,

and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The

speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician

dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held

the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can

protect herself.

A form of petition was approved asking that women might be members of

the coming Constitutional Convention and vote on the new constitution.

Respectful reports were made by the New York papers with the exception

of the World, which said in a long and abusive article:

Altogether the ablest, most dignified and best-balanced man in the

body is Frederick Douglass, and there is a deep feeling for him for

United States senator in spite of the drift of the convention,

which is evidently in favor of Susan B. Anthony; notwithstanding

which Elizabeth Cady Stanton is likewise a candidate with

considerable strength, favoring as she does the Copperheads, the

Democratic party and other dead and buried remains of alleged

disloyalty. Susan is lean, cadaverous and intellectual, with the

proportions of a file and the voice of a hurdy-gurdy. She is the

favorite of the convention. Mrs. Stanton is of intellectual stock,

impressive in manner and disposed to henpeck the convention which

of course calls out resistance and much cackling.... Susan has a

controlling advantage over her in the fact that she is unencumbered

with a husband. As male members of Congress rarely have wives in

Washington, so female members will be expected to be without

husbands at the capital....

Parker Pillsbury, one of the notabilities of the body, is a

good-looking white man naturally, but has a cowed and sneakish

expression stealing over him, as though he regretted he had not

been born a nigger or one of these females.... Lucy Stone, the

president of the convention, is what the law terms a "spinster."

She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is

wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or

command.... Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic

duties, habits and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic,

dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of

opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated,

oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore Tilton, make

up the less than a hundred members of this caravan, called, by

themselves, the American Equal Rights Association.

On December 6 and 7 a mass meeting was held in Cooper Institute, Miss

Anthony presiding. There were the usual effective speeches and large

and appreciative audiences present at every session. From New York the

speakers went at once to Rochester and held a two days' convention

there. The forces then divided and, under the management of Miss

Anthony, held meetings in a large number of the towns of western and

central New York, to arouse public sentiment in favor of giving women a

representation at the Constitutional Convention.

Meanwhile the petitions asking Congress to include women in the

proposed Fourteenth Amendment were rapidly pushed, and as soon as ten

or twelve thousand names were secured they were sent at once to

Washington, as the resolution was then under discussion. And here came

the revelation which had been for some time foreshadowed--the

Republicans refused to champion this cause! From the founding of the

Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, women had been always its most loyal

supporters, bearing their share of the odium and persecution of early

days. When the Republican party was formed, the leading women of the

country had allied themselves with it and given faithful service during

the long, dark years which followed. All the Abolitionists and

prominent Republicans had upheld the principle of equal rights to all,

and now, when the test came, they refused to recognize the claims of

woman! Some of the senators and representatives declined to present the

petitions sent from their own districts; others offered them merely as

petitions for "universal suffrage," carefully omitting the word "woman"

and trusting that it would be inferred they meant suffrage for the

negro men.

Even Charles Sumner, who so many times had acknowledged his

indebtedness to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and the other women who were

now asking for their rights, presented a petition from Massachusetts,

headed by Lydia Maria Child, with the declaration that he did it under

protest and that it was "most inopportune." Mrs. Child was the first

and one of the ablest editors of the Anti-Slavery Standard, and had

battled long and earnestly for the freedom of the slave at the cost of

her literary popularity; but now when she asked that she might receive

the rights of citizenship at least at the same time they were conferred

upon the freedman, her plea was declared "most inopportune."