In their protest against this discrimination and their insistence that

the word "sex" should be included in the Fifteenth Amendment, Miss

Anthony and Mrs. Stanton stood practically alone. Most of the other

women allowed themselves to be persuaded by the politicians that it was

their duty to step aside and wait till the negro was invested with this

highest attribute of citizenship.

In the first issue of The Revolution for 1869 appeared this letter from

George Francis Train, who had just been released from the Dublin jail

and had returned to America:

....I knew the load I had to carry in the woman question, but you

did not know the load you had to carry in Train. When the poor

man's horse fell and broke his leg, the crowd sympathized. "How

much you pity?" asked the Frenchman; "I pity man $20." I saw that

the theoretical breeching had broken in Kansas, and with voice,

with pen, with time and, what none of your old friends did, with

purse, I threw myself into the battle.

With your remarkable industry and extraordinary executive ability

you have astonished all by your success. You remember I begged you

never to stop to defend me but to push on to victory. Now both

parties are neck and neck to see who shall lead the army of

in-coming negro voters. Woman already begins to creep. Soon she

will walk and legislate. No sneers, no low jokes, no obscene

remarks are now bandied about. The iceberg of prejudice is moving

down the Gulf Stream of a wider liberty and will melt away with the

bigotry of ages. The ball is rolling down the hill. You no longer

need my services. The Revolution is a power. Would it not be more

so without Train? Had you not better omit my name in 1869? Would it

not bring you more subscribers, and better assist the noble cause

of reform? Although the Garrisonians have so ungenerously attacked

me, perhaps they will do as much for you as I have. If so, tell

them, confidentially, the thousands I have devoted to the cause,

and guarantee the haters of Train that his name shall not appear in

The Revolution after January 1. I can not better show my

unselfishness than by asking you to forget my honest exertions for

equal rights and equal pay for women, and to shut me out of The

Revolution in future, in order to bring in again "the apostates."

Although Mr. Train continued to supply funds and to send an occasional

letter for a few months longer, his active connection with the paper

ceased after its first year. In the issue of May 1 it contained the

following editorial comment:

Our readers will find Mr. Train's valedictory in another column.

Feeling that he has been a source of grief to our numerous friends

and, through their constant complaints, an annoyance to us, he

magnanimously retires. He has always said that as soon as we were

safely launched on the tempestuous sea of journalism, he should

leave us "to row our own boat." Our partnership dissolves today.

Now we shall look for a harvest of new subscribers, as many have

written and said to us again and again, if you will only drop

Train, we will send you patrons by the hundred. We hope the fact

that Train has dropped _us_ will not vitiate these promises. Our

generous friend starts for California on May 7, in the first train

over the Pacific road. He takes with him the sincere thanks of

those who know what he has done in the cause of woman, and of those

who appreciate what a power The Revolution has already been in

rousing public thought to the importance of her speedy

enfranchisement.

The heading of the financial department and the column of Wall street

gossip, which had given so much offense, were removed, and the paper

became purely an advocate of the rights of humanity in general and

women in particular. Up to this time the editorial rooms had been in

the fourth story of the New York World building, and the paper was

printed on the fifth floor of another several blocks away, with no

elevator in either. Miss Anthony made the trip from one to the other

and climbed the seven flights of stairs half a dozen times a day for

sixteen months. In 1869, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Phelps, a wealthy and

practical philanthropist of New York City, purchased a large and

elegant house on East Twenty-third street, near the Academy of Design,

which she dedicated as the "Woman's Bureau." She proposed to rent the

rooms wholly for women's clubs and societies and for enterprises

conducted by women. The first floor was taken by The Revolution. The

handsome and spacious parlors above were to be used for receptions,

readings, concerts, etc., and it was Mrs. Phelps' intention to make the

Bureau a center, not only for the women of New York, but for all those

who might visit the city.

Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony did not abate her

labors for the Equal Rights Association and she worked unceasingly for

the success of the approaching May Anniversary in New York, securing,

among other advantages, half fare on all the railroads for delegates.

Hundreds of letters were sent out from The Revolution office to

distinguished people in all parts of the country and cordial answers

were received, showing that the hostility against the paper and its

editors was principally confined to a very small area. A private letter

from Mrs. Stanton says: "We have written every one of the old friends,

ignoring the past and urging them to come. We do so much desire to sink

all petty considerations in the one united effort to secure woman

suffrage. Though many unkind acts and words have been administered to

us, which we have returned with sarcasm and ridicule, there are really

only kind feelings in our souls for all the noble men and women who

have fought for freedom during the last thirty years."

Under date of April 4, Mary A. Livermore wrote Miss Anthony, asking if

she could secure a pass for her over the Erie road, and saying: "I have

written to the New England friends to let bygones be bygones and come

to the May meeting. It seems to me personal feelings should be laid

aside and women should all pull together." After telling of the

excellent prospects of her own suffrage paper, the Agitator, just

started in Chicago, she continues: "It seems as if everybody who does

not like The Revolution is bound to take the Agitator, which is very

well, since they are detachments of the same corps. We must keep up a

good understanding and work together. If you want to let people know

there is no rivalry between us, you can announce that I am to send your

paper fortnightly letters from the West detailing the progress of

affairs here."

A cheery letter from Anna Dickinson says: "Work has run in easy grooves

this winter--not that the travel has not often been exhausting and the

roads wearisome; but that every one in this western world is ablaze

with the grand question. Thank God, and hurrah! I feel in both moods. I

hope you and that adorable cherub, E.C.S., are well, and that

everything is flourishing as it should flourish with two such saints.

As for me, the finger of care touches lightly; furthermore I am in a

doubly delectable condition by reason of having my face set towards

home, and beyond home is a vista of my Susan's countenance. Please, my

dear, can't you meet this sinner at Cortlandt street, and then the

sinner and the saint will have all the afternoon together somewhere,

and that seems almost too good to be true?"

This was the beginning of a correspondence with Gail Hamilton, who

wrote: "I regret to say that I can neither honor nor shame your

anniversary with my presence. I have been out on a sixteen-months'

cruise, fighting single handed for equal rights, and am now hauled up

in dock for repairs. But you, I am sure, will be glad to know that,

though much battered and tempest-tossed, I came into port with all sail

set and every rag of bunting waving victory. This is a private note to

you, and as you are but a landsman yourself, you will never know if my

ropes are not knotted sailor-fashion."

[Autograph:

Very respectfully

Gail Hamilton]

The third aniversary of the Equal Rights Association opened at Steinway

Hall, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Stanton presiding, and proved to be the most

stormy and unsatisfactory meeting ever held. The usual brilliant galaxy

of speakers was present, besides a number of prominent men and women

who were just beginning to be heard on the woman suffrage platform.

Among these were Olive Logan, Phoebe Couzins, Madam D'Hericourt, a

French physician and writer, Rev. Phoebe A. Hanaford, Rev. O.B.

Frothingham, Hon. Henry Wilson, Rev. Gilbert Haven and others. There

were also more delegates from the West, headed by Mrs. Livermore, than

had been present at any previous meeting. The usual number of fine

addresses were made and all promised fair, but Stephen S. Foster soon

disturbed the harmony by suggesting that it was time for Miss Anthony

and Mrs. Stanton to withdraw from the association, as they had

repudiated its principles and the Massachusetts society could no longer

co-operate with them. This called forth indignant speeches from all

parts of the house, and he was soon silenced.[49]

[Autograph:

Yours very truly

O.B. Frothingham]

Frederick Douglass and several other men attempted to force the

adoption of a resolution that "we gratefully welcome' the pending

Fifteenth Amendment prohibiting disfranchisement on account of race and

earnestly solicit the State legislatures to pass it without delay."

Miss Anthony declared indignantly that she protested against this

amendment because it did not mean equal rights; it put 2,000,000

colored men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 colored women,

who until now had been at least the equals of the men at their side.

She continued:

The question of precedence has no place on an equal rights

platform. The only reason it ever forced itself here was because

certain persons insisted that woman must stand back and wait until

another class should be enfranchised. In answer we say: "If you

will not give the whole loaf of justice to the entire people, if

you are determined to extend the suffrage piece by piece, then give

it first to women, to the most intelligent and capable of them at

least. I remember a long discussion with Tilton and Phillips on

this very question, when we were about to carry our petitions to

the New York Constitutional Convention. Mr. Tilton said that we

should urge the amendment to strike out the word 'white,'" and

added: "The question of striking out the word 'male' we, as an

equal rights association, shall of course present as an

intellectual theory, but not as a practical thing to be

accomplished at this convention." Mr. Phillips also emphasized this

point; but I repudiated this downright insolence, when for fifteen

years I had canvassed the entire State, county by county, with

petition in hand asking for woman suffrage! To think that those two

men, among the most progressive of the nation, should dare look me

in the face and speak of this great principle for which I had

toiled, as a mere intellectual theory!

If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said "black men

first and white women afterwards," he would have seen that it was

only the men. When he tells us that the case of black men is so

perilous, I tell him that even outraged as they are by the hateful

prejudice against color, he himself would not today exchange his

sex and color with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Mr. Douglass--"Will you allow me a question?"

Miss Anthony--"Yes, anything for a fight today."

Mr. Douglass--"I want to inquire whether granting to woman the right of

suffrage will change anything in respect to the nature of our sexes."

Miss Anthony--"It will change the nature of one thing very much, and

that is the dependent condition of woman. It will place her where she

can earn her own bread, so that she may go out into the world an equal

competitor in the struggle for life; so that she shall not be compelled

to take such positions as men choose to accord and then accept such pay

as men please to give.... It is not a question of precedence between

women and black men; the business of this association is to demand for

every man, black or white, and every woman, black or white, that they

shall be enfranchised and admitted into the body politic with equal

rights and privileges."

As everybody in the hall was allowed to vote there was no difficulty in

securing the desired endorsement of an amendment to enfranchise negro

men and make them the political superiors of all women. There never had

been a convention so dominated by men. Although the audience refused to

listen to most of them and drowned their voices by expressions of

disapproval and calls for the women speakers, they practically wrested

the control of the meeting from the hands of the women and managed it

to suit themselves.

This was Mrs. Livermore's first appearance at one of these

anniversaries and she created a commotion by introducing this

resolution: "While we recognize the disabilities which legal marriage

imposes upon woman as wife and mother, and while we pledge ourselves to

seek their removal by putting her on equal terms with man, we

abhorrently repudiate 'free loveism' as horrible and mischievous to

society, and disown any sympathy with it." It was the first time the

subject had been brought before a woman's rights convention and its

introduction was indignantly resented by the "old guard." Lucy Stone

exclaimed: "I feel it is a mortal shame to give any foundation for the

implication that we favor 'free loveism.' I am ashamed that the

question should be raised here. There should be nothing at all said

about it. Do not let us, for the sake of our own self-respect, allow it

to be hinted that we helped to forge a shadow of a chain which comes in

the name of 'free love.' I am unwilling that it should be suggested

that this great, sacred cause of ours means anything but what we have

said it does. If any one says to us, 'Oh, I know what you mean, you

mean free love by this agitation,' let the lie stick in his throat."

Mrs. Rose followed with a strong protest, saying: "I think it strange

that the question of 'free love' should have been brought upon this

platform. I object to Mrs. Livermore's resolution, not on account of

its principles, but on account of its pleading guilty. When a man tries

to convince me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers.

If we pass this resolution that we are not 'free lovers,' people will

say, 'It is true that you are, for you try to hide it.' Lucretia Mott's

name has been mentioned as a friend of 'free love,' but I hurl back the

lie into the faces of those who uttered it. We have been thirty years

in this city before the public, and it is an insult to all the women

who have labored in this cause; it is an insult to the thousands and

tens of thousands of men and women who have listened to us in our

conventions, to say at this late hour, 'We are not free lovers.'"

The charge of "free love" was vigorously repudiated by Miss Anthony

also, who closed the discussion by asserting: "This howl comes from the

men who know that when women get their rights they will be able to live

honestly and not be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in

or out of marriage. There are very few women in the world who would

enter into this relationship with drunkards and libertines provided

they could get their subsistence in any other way. We can not be

frightened from our purpose, the public mind can not long be prejudiced

by this 'free love' cry of our enemies." Olive Logan poured oil upon

the troubled waters in a graceful speech, and the subject was dropped.

At each recurring anniversary the conviction had been growing that the

term "equal rights" was too comprehensive, permitting entirely too much

latitude as to speakers and subjects. Ever themselves having been

repressed and silenced, when at last women made a platform on which

they had a right to stand, they declared first of all for "free

speech." They would not refuse to any human being what so long had been

denied to them and, as a result, fanatics, visionaries and advocates of

all reforms flocked to this platform, delighted to find such audiences.

According to the tenets of the association, all speakers must have

equal rights on their platform and there was no escape. Sometimes it

was nothing more harmful than a man with a map to explain how the

national debt could be paid without money, or a woman with a system of

celestial kites by which she proposed to communicate with the other

world. Occasionally the advocates of various political theories would

secure possession, consuming the time and diverting attention from the

main issue. At the convention just closed, the hobby-riders were

present in greater force than ever before and it seemed imperative that

some means should be adopted to shut them out thereafter. It was

proposed to change the name to Woman Suffrage Association, which would

bar all discussion of a miscellaneous character. There was a strong

objection to this, however, because such action required three months'

notice.

At the close of the convention a reception was held at the Woman's

Bureau, Saturday evening, May 15, 1869, and attended by women from

nineteen States who had come as representatives to the Equal Rights

Association.[50] At their earnest request, it was decided to form a new

organization to be called the National Woman Suffrage Association,

whose especial object should be a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal

Constitution, securing the ballot to the women of the nation on equal

terms with men. A convention of officially appointed delegates was at

that time impracticable, as there were but few local suffrage societies

and still fewer State organizations. It was thought that although it

might not be formed by delegates elected for this specific object, it

would be sufficient for working purposes until the next spring when,

the required three months' notice having been given, a permanent

organization might be effected. Accordingly, a constitution was adopted

and officers elected.[51] The following week at Cooper Institute Anna

Dickinson made her great speech for the rights of women, entitled

"Nothing Unreasonable," to inaugurate the new National Woman Suffrage

Association, and before an immense audience she pleaded for woman with

the same beauty and eloquence as in days past she had pictured the

wrongs of the slave and urged his emancipation.

The association was organized May 15, and on the 17th Mrs. Livermore

wrote Miss Anthony from Boston: "I hope you are rested somewhat. I am

very sorry for you, that you are carrying such heavy burdens. If you

and I lived in the same city, I would relieve you of some of them, for

I believe we might work together, with perhaps an occasional collision.

Now I want you to answer these two questions: 1st.--Did you do anything

in the way of organizing at the Saturday evening reunion, and if so,

what? That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug. I would not

have come on to the anniversary, nor would any of us, if we had known

what it was. We supposed we were coming to a woman suffrage convention.

2d.--If Mrs. Stanton will not go West to a series of meetings this fall

and winter, would you dare undertake it with me alone? We must have

strong people of established reputations. 'Only the Stanton, the

Anthony, and the Livermore,' that is what the Chicago Tribune says...."

Later, while still in Boston, she wrote again:

You are mistaken in thinking I exhorted the formation of a national

suffrage association the Saturday night after the New York

convention; I only advised talking it up. All agreed that it ought

to be formed but that a preliminary call should be issued first. I

am for a national organization with Mrs. Stanton, president, and

with you as one of the executive committee, but I want it arrived

at compatibly with parliamentary rules.... And now having asserted

myself, let me say that I sympathize more with your energy and

earnestness which lead you to override forms and rules than I do

with the awfully proper and correct spirit that waits till

everybody consents before it does anything. I have no doubt but we

all shall join the National Association, each State by its elected

members, when we hold our great Western Woman Suffrage Convention

in Chicago next fall. Mrs. Stanton and you must both be present; we

probably shall all vote together then to go into the National

Association. Remember you are to make that series of conventions

with me. I am depending on you.

The next November, in answer to a circular signed by Lucy Stone, Julia

Ward Howe, Caroline M. Severance, T.W. Higginson and George H. Vibbert,

a call was issued resulting in a convention at Cleveland, O., to form

another national suffrage association on the following basis of

representation: "The delegates appointed by existing State

organizations shall be admitted, provided their number does not exceed,

in each case, that of the congressional delegation of the State. Should

it fall short of that number, additional delegates may be admitted from

local organizations, or _from no organization whatever_, provided the

applicants be actual residents of the State they claim to represent."

The American Suffrage Association was thus formed, with twenty-one

States represented; Henry Ward Beecher, president; Henry B. Blackwell,

Amanda Way, recording secretaries; Lucy Stone, chairman executive

committee.

In the midst of her exacting duties and many annoyances, Miss Anthony

found time to write numerous letters and obtain a testimonial for

Ernestine L. Rose, who was about to return with her husband to England,

after having given many years of valuable service to the women of

America. She secured a handsome sum of money and a number of presents

for her, and Mrs. Rose went on board ship laden with flowers and very

happy and grateful. Miss Anthony wrote to Lucretia Mott: "Was it not a

little funny that this unsentimental personage should have suggested

the thing and stirred so many to do the sentimental, and yet could not

even take the time to go to the wharf and say good-by? I spent Sunday

evening with her and it is a great comfort to me that I helped others

contribute to her pleasure." On the back of this letter, which was sent

to her sister, Martha Wright, Mrs. Mott penned: "Think of the

complaints made of Susan when she does so much and puts others up to

doing, and always keeps herself in the background."

In the summer of 1869, under the auspices of the National Association,

large and successful conventions were held at Saratoga and Newport in

the height of the season. Of the former The Revolution said: "That a

woman suffrage convention should have been allowed to organize in the

parlors of Congress Hall, that those parlors should have been filled to

their utmost capacity by the habitual guests of the place, that such

men as ex-President Fillmore, Thurlow Weed, George Opdyke and any

number of clergymen from different parts of the country, should have

been interested lookers-on, are significant facts which may well carry

dismay to the enemies of the cause. That the whole convention was

conducted by women in a dignified, orderly and business-like manner, is

a strong intimation that in spite of all which has been said to the

contrary, women are capable of learning how to manage public affairs."

The following comment was made by Mrs. Stanton on the Newport

convention: "So, obeying orders, we sailed across the Sound one bright

moonlight night with a gay party of the 'disfranchised,' and found

ourselves quartered on the enemy the next morning as the sun rose in

all its resplendent glory. Although trunk after trunk--not of

gossamers, laces and flowers, but of suffrage ammunition, speeches,

petitions, resolutions, tracts, and folios of The Revolution--had been

slowly carried up the winding stairs of the Atlantic, the brave men and

fair women, who had tripped the light fantastic toe until the midnight

hour, slept heedlessly on, wholly unaware that twelve apartments were

already filled with the strong-minded invaders.... The audience

throughout the convention was large, fashionable and as enthusiastic as

the state of the weather would permit."

The Fourth of July was celebrated by the association in a beautiful

grove in Westchester county, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Judge E.D.

Culver and others making addresses. Weekly meetings of as many of its

members as were in New York were held at the Woman's Bureau, a large

number of practical questions relating to women were brought forward,

and there was constant agitation and discussion. A note from the tax

collector called forth this indignant answer from Miss Anthony:

I have your polite note informing me that as publisher of The

Revolution, I am indebted to the United States in the sum of $14.10

for the tax on monthly sales of that journal. Enclosed you will

find the amount, but you will please understand that I pay it under

protest. The Revolution, you are aware, is a journal the main

object of which is to apply to these degenerate times the great

principle for which our ancestors fought, that taxation and

representation should go together. I am not represented in the

United States government, and yet it taxes me; and it taxes me,

too, for publishing a paper the chief purpose of which is to rebuke

the glaring inconsistency between its professions and its

practices. Under the circumstances, the federal government ought to

be ashamed to exact this tax of me....

On September 10 Miss Anthony attended the Great Western Woman Suffrage

Convention at Chicago, where she spoke several times and was cordially

received. She was the guest of Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, founder of the

Fortnightly Club. From here she went to the St. Louis convention,

October 6 and 7, which was especially distinguished because of the

resolutions presented by Francis Minor, a prominent lawyer of that

city, with an argument to prove that, under the Fourteenth Amendment,

women already had a legal right to vote. These were supported by his

wife, Virginia L. Minor, in a strong speech. They were the first thus

to interpret this amendment. Ten thousand extra copies of The

Revolution containing the resolutions and this speech were published,

laid on the desk of every member of Congress, sent to the leading

newspapers and circulated throughout the country. For a number of years

the National Suffrage Association held to this construction of the

amendment, until it was decided to the contrary by the Supreme Court of

the United States.

Conventions were held in Cincinnati and Dayton, O. At the latter Miss

Anthony gave a scathing review of the laws affecting married women, the

control which they allowed the husband over the wife, children and

property, making, however, no attack upon men but only upon laws. Each

of the other speakers, all of whom were married, in turn took up the

cudgel, and proceeded to tell how good her own husband was, and to say

that if Miss Anthony only had a good husband she never would have made

that speech, but each admitted that the men were better than the laws.

In her closing remarks Miss Anthony used their own testimony against

them and created great merriment in the audience. Whenever she

commented on existing conditions or on general principles, individual

men and women were sure to rush into the fray, making a personal

application and waxing highly indignant. The Dayton Herald said of her

evening address: "She made a clear, logical and lawyerlike argument, in

sprightly language, that women being persons are citizens, and as

citizens, voters. We think that none who examine her authorities and

line of discussion can avoid her conclusions, and we are certain that

many of the ablest jurists of the land have the honor (logically and

legally) to coincide in her argument."

In 1869 Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker came actively into the suffrage

work and proved a valuable ally. She had been much prejudiced against

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton by newspaper reports and by the

misrepresentations of some of her acquaintances, and in order to

overcome this feeling Paulina Wright Davis arranged that the three

should visit her for several days at her home in Providence, R.I.,

saying in her invitation: "I once had a prejudice against Susan B.

Anthony but am ashamed of it. I investigated carefully every charge

made against her, and I now know her to be honest, honorable, generous

and above all petty spites and jealousies." Mrs. Hooker was so

delightfully disappointed in the two ladies that she became at once and

forever their staunchest friend and advocate. To Caroline M. Severance

she wrote:

I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week, and I

have taken the testimony of those who have known her intimately for

twenty years, and all are united in this resume of her character:

She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile

has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she has

scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded

only by her physical power, which is something immense. Sometimes

she fails in judgment, according to the standard of others, but in

right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends. I

confess that after studying her carefully for days, and under the

shadow of ----'s letters against her, and after attending a

two-days' convention in Newport engineered by her in her own

fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation

of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston. Mrs.

Stanton, too, is a magnificent woman, and the truest, womanliest

one of us all. I have spent three days in her company, in the most

intense, heart-searching debate I ever undertook in my life. I have

handled what seemed to me to be her errors without gloves, and the

result is that I love her as well as I do Miss Anthony. I hand in

my allegiance to both as the leaders and representatives of the

great movement.

Mrs. Hooker set about arranging a mass convention at her home in

Hartford, Conn., and upon Miss Anthony's expressing some doubt as to

being present, she wrote: "Here I am at work on a convention intended

chiefly to honor Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, and behold the

Quakeress says maybe she can not come! I won't have the meeting if you

are going to flunk. It has been a real consolation to me in this

wearisome business to think you would for once be relieved from all

responsibility and come as orator and guest. Don't fail me."

The convention, which closed October 29, was a great success and a

State society was formed with a distinguished list of officers. The

Hartford Post gave considerable space to Miss Anthony's address,

saying:

Miss Anthony is a resolute, substantial woman of forty or fifty,

exhibiting no signs of age or weariness. Her hair is dark, her head

well formed, her face has an expression of masculine strength. If

she were a man you would guess that she was a schoolmaster, or a

quiet clergyman, or perhaps a business man and deacon. She pays no

special attention to feminine graces, but is not ungraceful or

unwomanly. In speaking her manner is self-possessed without ranting

or unpleasant demonstrations, her tones slightly monotonous. Long

experience has taught her a candid, kindly, sensible way of

presenting her views, which wins the good will of her hearers

whether they accept them or not. She said in part:

"How different is this from the assemblages that used to greet us

who twenty years ago commenced to agitate the enfranchisement of

woman. We begin to see the time, which we shall gladly welcome,

when we shall not be needed at the front of the battle. Of late

years, the country has been occupied in discussing the claim of man

to hold property in his fellow-man, and has decided the question in

the negative. Still another form of slavery remains to be disposed

of; the old idea yet prevails that woman is owned and possessed by

man, to be clothed and fed and cared for by his generosity. All the

wrongs, arrogances and antagonisms of modern society grow out of

this false condition of the relations between man and woman. The

present agitation rises from a demand of the soul of woman for the

right to own and possess herself. It is said that as a rule man

does sufficiently provide for woman, and that she ought to remain

content. The great facts of the world are at war with this

assumption.

"For example, I see in the New York Herald 1,200 advertisements of

people wanting work. Upon examination, 500 of them come from women

and 300 more are from boarding-house keepers; and we may therefore

say that eight of the twelve hundred advertisements are from women

compelled to rely upon their own energies to gain their food and

clothing. Every morning from 6 to 7 o'clock you may see on the

Bowery and other great north and south avenues of New York, troops

of young girls and women, with careworn or crime-stained faces,

carrying their poor lunch half-concealed beneath a scanty shawl. If

the facts were in accordance with the common theory, we should not

see these myriads of women thus thrust out to get their living.

Society must either provide great establishments maintained by

taxation to care for women, or else the doors of all trades and

callings must be thrown wide open to them.... This woman's movement

promises an entire change of the conditions of wages and support.

The status of woman can not be materially changed while the

subsistence question remains as at present."

Miss Anthony was entertained at the home of Governor Jewell, afterwards

Postmaster-General. One morning she went over to Mrs. Hooker's and

found all her guests at the breakfast table, Henry Ward Beecher, Wm.

Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Severance, Mrs. Davis and others. She received a

hearty welcome and Mrs. Hooker insisted she should sit down and have a

cup of tea or coffee. Mr. Beecher joined in the entreaty, saying: "Now,

Miss Anthony, you know you have to make a big speech today. When I want

to be very effective and make people cry, I drink a cup of tea before

speaking; when I want to be very clever and make them laugh, I drink

coffee; but when I want them to cry half the time and laugh the other

half, I take a cup of each."

In a letter to Miss Anthony after she returned home Mrs. Hooker said:

"I am astonished at the praise I receive for my part in the convention,

and humbled too, for I realize how worthy of all these pleasant and

commendatory words you and others have been all these years, and what

have you received--or rather what have you not received? Thank God,

that is all over now and you are to have blue sky and clear sailing. It

must be through suffering we enter the gates of peace." But the peace

was a long way off and the hardest struggle was yet to come! A little

later Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend:

I can't tell you how my heart swells--but there is present within

me one undercurrent of feeling that will come to the surface ever

and anon, viz., the wonderful dignity, strength and purity of the

early workers in this reform. I can't wait for history to do them

justice; I want to make history today, and so far as in me lies I

will do it. I have come in at the death and get a large share of

the glory, and lo, here are these, a great company, who have been

in the field for thirty years, and a whole generation has passed

them by unrecognized. Every one here says, "Our noble friend Susan

has carried the day right over the heads of all of us." Said one of

our editors, Charles Dudley Warner, a man of finest taste and

culture, when he had been praising the dignity and power of the

whole platform: "Susan Anthony is my favorite. She was the only

woman there who never once thought of herself. You could see in her

every motion and in her very silence that the cause was all she

cared for, self was utterly forgotten."

He had indeed struck the key note to Miss Anthony's strongest

characteristic, utter forgetfulness of self, total self-abnegation,

self-sacrifice without a consciousness that it was such. Mrs. Hooker's

statement that she "had come in at the death" shows the strong faith of

most of these early workers that it would be only a brief time until

the rights they claimed would be recognized and granted; but she

herself has labored faithfully yet another thirty years without

breaking down the Chinese Wall of opposition.

One object of Mrs. Hooker in calling this Hartford convention was to

see if she could not bring together what were now becoming known as

"the New York and Boston wings of the suffrage party," but she

comments: "We have decided to give up our attempts at reconciliation;

we have neither time nor strength to spare, and if we had, they would

probably fail."

In December Miss Anthony went to the Dansville Sanitarium for a few

days and after her return, Dr. Kate Jackson, so widely known and loved,

wrote her: "Since your visit here, through which I obtained somewhat of

an insight into your struggles and labors, I have been in special

sympathy with you. I do admire the liberal and comprehensive spirit

which you and Mrs. Stanton show in allowing both sides of a question to

be fairly discussed in your paper, and in giving any woman who does

good work for her race in any field the credit for it, even though she

may not exactly agree with you on all points. The spirit of

exclusiveness is not calculated to push any reform among the masses....

Our house and hearts are always open to you. I want to send you

something more than good wishes and so enclose a little New Year's gift

to you, with my love and earnest prayers for your success."

The lovely Quaker, Sarah Pugh, wrote from Philadelphia:

Dear Susan: Not "Dear Madam," or "Respected Friend," according to

our stately fashion, for my heart yearns too warmly toward thee and

thy work for such formality. Would it were in my power to help thee

more in thy onward way, for it must be onward even though opponents

fill it with stumbling-blocks. Lucretia Mott is firm in her

adherence to New York--not but that she can work, if the way

offers, in all organizations which labor for the same end. My

opinion of The Revolution may be expressed in what was said of

another paper: "It fights no sham battles with enemies already

defeated. It is true, good men and women not a few stumble at it,

object to it and in some cases antagonize it, but nobody despises

it. An affectation of contempt is not contempt."

Scores of similar letters were received from the early workers in the

cause. It is unnecessary to enter further into a discussion of this

division in the ranks of the advocates of woman suffrage. The

conscientious historian must perform some unpleasant duties, hence it

could not be passed without notice. The mass of correspondence on this

question has been carefully sifted and that which would give pain to

others, even though it would magnify the subject of this work, has been

rigorously excluded. Most of the writers and those whom they criticised

have ended their labors and passed from the scene of action. No good

can be accomplished, either to the individuals or to the reform, by

inflicting these personalities upon future generations. Among earnest,

forceful, aggressive leaders of any great movement, there must arise

controversies because of these strong characteristics, but the chief

interest of mankind lies not in the individuals but in the results

which they were able to accomplish. A comparison of the position of

woman today with that which she occupied at the beginning of the

agitation in her behalf, fifty years ago, offers more eloquent

testimony to the efforts of those heroic pioneers than could be put

into words by the most gifted pen.

[Footnote 48: It is claimed, on good authority, that Anna Dickinson was

the first to suggest that such an amendment would be required, as early

as 1866, in a consultation with Theodore Tilton and Frederick Douglass

at the National Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, as the only sure

method of protecting the freedmen. See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.

II, p. 327.]

[Footnote 49: In reference to this unwarranted attack, the noted

writer, William Winter, said in the New York Tribune:

"Noble, virtuous, honorable women are a country's greatest wealth, and

when, from petty envy or jealousy, any one attempts with private

innuendoes or public assaults to blacken a fair name which has long

stood before the nation representing a principle, it is an injury not

only to the individual but to the moral sense of the nation, and all

true people are interested in maintaining its integrity and power.

Susan B. Anthony has stood before this nation twenty years, earnestly

devoted to every good work. As a teacher in the schools of New York for

fifteen years, she bears from superintendents the highest testimonials

to her faithfulness and ability. Her noble labors in the temperance

cause are known throughout the State, and in association with the true

men and women who fought the anti-slavery battle, she was equally

faithful and earnest, finishing her work by getting up a petition for

the black man's freedom of 400,000 names--the largest ever presented in

Congress. For woman's enfranchisement her labors have been unremitting

and unwearied for the last eighteen years. She is a frank, generous,

self-sacrificing woman, of a kind, tender nature, firm principle, great

executive ability, and in every relation of life true as the needle to

the pole. Her motto has ever been, 'Let the weal and the woe of

humanity be everything to me; their praise and their blame of no

effect.'"]

[Footnote 50: Maine 3, Vermont 1, New Hampshire 1, Massachusetts 5,

Rhode Island 2, Connecticut 1, New Jersey 7, Pennsylvania 3, Illinois

3, Ohio 3, Wisconsin 1, Minnesota 1, Missouri 3, Kansas 2, Nebraska 1,

California 5, District of Columbia 3, Washington Territory 1-46. The

remainder of the one hundred members who joined the association that

evening resided in different parts of the State of New York.]

[Footnote 51: _President_, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. _Vice-presidents_,

Elizabeth B. Phelps, N.Y.; Anna Dickinson, Penn.; Kate N. Doggett,

Ill.; Madame Anneke, Wis.; Lucy Elmes, Conn.; Mattie Griffith Brown,

Mass.; Mrs. Nicholas Smith, Kan.; Lucy A. Snow, Maine; Elizabeth B.

Schenck, Cal.; Josephine S. Griffing, D.C.; Paulina Wright Davis, R.I.;

Mary Foote Henderson, Phoebe W. Cousins, Mo. _Corresponding

secretaries_, Laura Curtis Bullard, Ida Greeley, Adelaide Hallock.

_Recording secretaries_, Abby Burton Crosby, Sarah E. Fuller.

_Treasurer_, Elizabeth Smith Miller. _Executive committee_, Ernestine

L. Rose, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Mathilda F. Wendt, Mary F. Gilbert,

Susan B. Anthony. _Advisory counsel_, Matilda Joslyn Gage, N.Y.; Mrs.

Francis Minor, Mo.; Adeline Thomson, Penn,; Mrs. M.B. Longley, Ohio;

Mrs. J.P. Root, Kan.; Lilie Peckham, Wis.]

CHAPTER XX.

FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY--END OF EQUAL RIGHTS SOCIETY.

1870.

Conventions and conventions for fifty years, without a break, planned

and managed by one woman--was there ever a similar record? The year

1870 opened with the Second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in

Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 19. It had been advertised for

two days, but the interest was so great that it was continued through

the third day and evening. Mrs. Stanton was in the chair and the papers

united in praising the beauty, dignity and elegant attire of the women

on the platform. A long table at the Arlington Hotel was reserved for

them, and Miss Anthony relates that as they were all going into the

dining-room one day, Jessie Benton Fremont beckoned to her and when she

went over to the table where the general and she were sitting, she said

in her bright, pretty way: "Now tell me, did you hunt the country over

and pick out a score of the most beautiful women you could find to melt

the hearts of our congressmen?"

Letters of warm approval were read from John Stuart Mill and Helen

Taylor, of England; Professor Homer B. Sprague, of Cornell University;

Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist church; Senator Matthew H. Carpenter,

and many other distinguished persons. A number of senators and

representatives addressed the meetings, as did also Hon. A.G. Riddle,

of the District of Columbia, Rev. Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour,

Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the usual corps of well-known suffrage

speakers. Jennie Collins, the Lowell factory girl, electrified the

audience by discussing the great question from the standpoint of the

workingwomen. All the New York dailies sent women reporters, a

comparatively new feature at conventions.

A hearing was arranged before the joint committees for the District of

Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton

based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the

St. Louis convention a few months before, the first assertion of

woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony

said:

We are here for the express purpose of urging you to present in

your respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the

District of Columbia Suffrage Act and thereby enfranchise the women

of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman suffrage shall

be made here, under the eye of Congress, as was that of negro

suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been the experimental

ground of each step toward freedom. The auction-block was here

first banished, slavery here first abolished, the freedmen here

first enfranchised; and we now ask that women here shall be first

admitted to the ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all

over the country as to the results of negro suffrage, and you

deemed it right and safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you

all remember that three days' discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's

proposition to strike out the word "male." Well do I recollect with

what anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and

how we longed that Congress might then declare for the

establishment in this District of a real republic. But conscience

or courage or something was wanting, and women were bidden still to

wait.

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first

voted, the success of that election inspired Congress with

confidence to pass the proposition for the Fifteenth Amendment, and

the different States to ratify it, until it has become a fixed fact

that black men all over the nation not only may vote but sit in

legislative assemblies and constitutional conventions. We now ask

Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the

women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may

go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see

that it is possible for women to vote and the republic yet stand.

There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our

demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to

make the experiment. Therefore, we most earnestly urge it, in full

faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed

its beneficial results, they will go forward with a Sixteenth

Amendment which shall prohibit any State from disfranchising any of

its citizens on account of sex.

A letter from Mrs. Fannie Howland in the Hartford Courant thus

describes the hearing:

Senator Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively

the gentlemen of the committee, who took their seats around a long

table. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind

her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group

of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the

intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest

faces. Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but

listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause

of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.

The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women

have often appeared in history--noble, brilliant, heroic women; but

_woman_ collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the

commonwealth--not in virtue of hereditary noblesse--not for any

excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of

her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as

man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch

the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light,

fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which

women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty

and briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning,

the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of everyday

use, held the mind strictly to the actual facts which gave that

group of representative men and women its moral significance, its

severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for

a memorable illustration of this period, will put this new

"Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the

land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen

at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave

them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally

as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and

intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and

good nature.

The Hearth and Home, in Photographs of our Agitators, thus depicts Miss

Anthony on this occasion:

She is the Bismarck; she plans the campaigns, provides the

munitions of war, organizes the raw recruits, sets the squadrons in

the field. Indeed, in presence of a timid lieutenant, she sometimes

heads the charge; but she is most effective as the directing

generalissimo. Miss Anthony is a quick, bright, nervous, alert

woman of fifty or so--not at all inclined to

embonpoint--sharp-eyed, even behind her spectacles. She presides

over the treasury, she cuts the Gordian knots, and when the

uncontrollables get by the ears at the conventions, she is the one

who straightway drags them asunder and turns chaos to order again.

In every dilemma, she is unanimously summoned. As a speaker, she is

angular and rigid, but trenchant, incisive, cutting through to the

heart of whatever topic she touches.

Mrs. Hooker wrote: "There were congratulations without stint; but

Sumner, grandest of all, approaching us said in a deep voice, really

full of emotion: 'I have been in this place, ladies, for twenty years;

I have followed or led in every movement toward liberty and

enfranchisement; but this meeting exceeds in interest anything I ever

have witnessed.'" In her weekly letter to the Independent, Mary Clemmer

wrote of this convention:

I am glad to say that it was not mongrel--in part a dramatic

reading, in part a concert, and in part an organ advertisement; but

wholly a convention whose leaders, in dignity and intellect, were

fully the peers of the men whose councils they besieged and

arraigned. There was Mrs. Stanton--smiling, serene, and

motherly--just the woman whose hand laid upon a young man's arm,

whose voice speaking to him, could do so much to hold him back from

evil. There was Susan Anthony--anxious, earnest and importunate,

sarcastic, funny and unconventional as ever. Among all the company,

"Susan" is the most violently and the most unjustly abused. To be

sure, she can be very provocative of such speech. She sometimes has

a lawless way of talking and acting, which men think wonderfully

fascinating in a belle, but utterly unforgivable in a plain,

middle-aged woman. Moreover, "Susan's" utter abnegation to her

cause, her passion for it, sometimes carries her on to "ways and

means" not altogether tenable--in fine, she will offend your taste

and mine; but this is only the outside and a very small side of

Susan Anthony. A man, and more than a man--a woman who can deny

herself, ignore herself, for a principle, for what she believes to

be the truth, whether we believe it or not, is at least entitled to

our respect.

Susan B. Anthony has a strong, earnest and loving nature; her

devotion to her sex is an utterly absorbing and absolute passion.

Born and nurtured a Quaker, she transgresses no prejudice, even of

education, when she stands forth everywhere and in all places the

unflinching, unwearied, never-to-be-put-down champion of woman. In

the better age, when the woman of the future shall be man's equal

in law, in education, in labor, in labor's rewards; when time shall

have softened the asperities of the present, and the crudeness of

the personal shall be buried forever in the grave, Susan B. Anthony

will live as one of the truest friends that woman ever had.

[Autograph: Mary Clemmer]

Sarah Pugh wrote Miss Anthony to stop over in Philadelphia and visit

Mrs. Mott and herself on her way home from Washington, adding, "We are

true to you." In accepting the invitation, Miss Anthony said: "I pray

every day to keep broad and generous towards all who scatter and

divide, and hope I may hold out to the end. The movement can not be

damaged, though some particular schemes may, by any ill-judged action.

The wheels are secure on the iron rails, and no 'National' or

'American'--no New York or Boston--assumption or antagonism can block

them. Individuals may jump on or off, yet the train is stopped thereby

but for a moment."

A letter to her from the California association declares: "We will

split into a thousand pieces before we will prove false to you, who

have so long borne the heat and burden of the day." The heat and burden

had indeed been great, and one less strong in body and less heroic in

soul would have sunk under them. Although she was still weighed down by

the terrible financial struggle of The Revolution, the storm of

opposition which it had aroused was passing away and the old friends

and many new ones were flocking around the intrepid standard bearer,

whom neither fear nor favor could induce to swerve from the straight

line marked out by her own convictions and conscience. Miss Anthony

would soon complete a half-century, and her friends resolved to

commemorate it in a worthy manner. Handsomely engraved cards were sent

out, reading:

The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on

Tuesday evening, February 15, 1870, to celebrate the Fiftieth

Birthday of Susan B. Anthony. On this occasion her friends will be

afforded an opportunity to testify their appreciation of her twenty

years' service in behalf of woman. ELIZABETH B. PHELPS, ANNA B.

DARLING, CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR.

There had been hard work to persuade Miss Anthony to accept this

testimonial, but she was very happy that evening when the spacious

parlors were crowded with the leading men and women of the day.

Although her opinions and methods had been many times attacked by the

newspapers, they now united in cordial congratulations. The New York

World, in a long account, thus described the affair:

A large number of friends and admirers of the private virtues and

public services of Miss Anthony assembled at the Woman's Bureau in

Twenty-third street last evening to congratulate the lady upon this

auspicious anniversary, and to wish her the customary "many happy

returns of the day." The parlors were dazzling with light, the

atmosphere laden with perfume, the walls covered with beautiful

works of art, and the sweet sounds of women's laughter and silvery

voices filled the apartments. Miss Susan B. Anthony stood at the

entrance of the front parlor to receive her numerous friends. She

wore a dress of rich shot silk, dark red and black, cut square in

front, with a stomacher of white lace and a pretty little cameo

brooch. All female vanities she rigorously discarded--no hoop,

train, bustle, panier, chignon, powder, paint, rouge, patches, no

nonsense of any sort. From her kindly eyes and from her gentle

lips, there beamed the sweetest smiles to all those loving friends

who, admiring her really admirable efforts in the cause of human

freedom, her undaunted heroism amid a dark and gloomy warfare, were

glad to press her hand and show their appreciation of her character

and achievements.

Every daily paper in the city had some pleasant comment, while scores

of loving and appreciative letters were received. Accompanying these

were many beautiful gifts and also checks to the amount of $1,000.[52]

[Illustration:

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

AT THE AGE OF 50, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY SARONY.]

After the guests had assembled, Isabella Beecher Hooker announced that

Anna T. Randall would read a poem written for the occasion by Phoebe

Gary.[53] She was followed by Mrs. Hooker, who read some delightfully

humorous verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss

Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher

Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the

recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely

overwhelmed and, after stammering her thanks for the unexpected ovation

of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her

self-control: "If this were an assembled mob opposing the rights of

women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse

people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... I ask you

tonight, as your best testimony to my services, on this, the twentieth

anniversary of my public work, to join me in making a demand on

Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and

then to go with me before the several legislatures to secure its

ratification; and when the Secretary of State proclaims that that

amendment has been ratified by twenty-eight States, then Susan B.

Anthony will stop work--but not before."

When all was over, before she slept, Miss Anthony wrote this

characteristically tender little note to the one who never was absent

from her mind:

MY DEAR MOTHER: It really seems tonight as if I were parting with

something dear--saying good-by to somebody I loved. In the last few

hours I have lived over nearly all of life's struggles, and the

most painful is the memory of my mother's long and weary efforts to

get her six children up into womanhood and manhood. My thought

centers on your struggle especially because of the proof-reading of

Alice Gary's story this week. I can see the old home--the

brick-makers--the dinner-pails--the sick mother--the few years of

more fear than hope in the new house, and the hard years since. And

yet with it all, I know there was an undercurrent of joy and love

which makes the summing-up vastly in their favor. How I wish you

and Mary and Hannah and Guelma could have been here--and yet it is

nothing--and yet it is much.

My constantly recurring thought and prayer now are that the coming

fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness

nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed--that

no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of truth

and right.

Then there is the bare mention of a luncheon a few days before with

Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker. What a treat would

have been a résumé of the conversation of that gifted quintette of

women!

Mrs. Stanton was ill and could not attend the reception, which was a

great disappointment to Miss Anthony. They had shared so much trouble

that she felt most anxious they should share this one great pleasure.

In the diary at midnight is recorded: "Fiftieth birthday! One

half-century done, one score years of it hard labor for bettering

humanity--temperance--emancipation--enfranchisement--oh, such a

struggle! Terribly stormy night, but a goodly company and many, many

splendid tributes to my work. Really, if I had been dead and these the

last words, neither press nor friends could have been more generous and

appreciative."

This beautiful anniversary was a sweet oasis in the severe monotony of

a life which had been filled always with hard work, criticism and

misrepresentation, although it was only a public expression of the

numerous and strong friendships which had been many times manifested in

private. The birthday celebration served also to disprove the

oft-repeated assertion that all women conceal their age, but though

Miss Anthony made this frank avowal of her fifty years, there was

scarcely a newspaper which did not introduce its comments with the

usual silly and threadbare remarks.

After the people began to recover in a social, intellectual and

financial way from the effects of the Civil War, the lyceum bureau

became a marked feature in literary life. The principal bureaus were in

New York, Boston and Chicago. Their managers engaged the best speakers

and each season marked out a route, made the appointments, advertised

extensively and sent them throughout the country. They paid excellent

prices, assuming all responsibility, and engagements with them were

considered very desirable. Under the management of the New York bureau,

Mrs. Stanton began a tour in November, 1869. Miss Anthony at this time,

while well-known from one end of the country to the other, had not

gained a reputation as a platform orator. She thoroughly distrusted her

own power to make a sustained speech of an entire evening, and at all

conventions had placed others on the program for the principal

addresses, presided herself, if necessary, and kept everything in

motion.

By the winter of 1870, however, the bureau began to receive

applications from all parts of the United States for lectures from her,

and Mrs. Stanton being ill for a month, Miss Anthony went as her

substitute. She proved so acceptable that in February, March and April

she was engaged by the bureau for many places in Pennsylvania, Ohio,

Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, and received a considerable sum for her

services, besides securing a number of subscribers and some liberal

donations for The Revolution. In her journal she speaks of the good

audiences, the enthusiasm and the many prominent callers at most of the

places. At Mattoon she had a day and a night with Anna Dickinson and

wrote: "I found her the most weary and worn I had ever seen her, and

desperately tired of the lecture field. Her devotion to me is

marvelous. She is like my loving and loved child."

At Peoria, the editor of the Democratic paper stated that the laws of

Illinois were better for women than for men. Colonel Robert G.

Ingersoll, whom she never had seen, was in the audience, and sent a

note to the president of the meeting, asking that Miss Anthony should

not answer the editor but give him that privilege. He then took up the

laws, one after another, and, illustrating by cases in his own

practice, showed in his eloquent manner how cruelly unjust they were to

women and proved how necessary it was that women should have a voice in

making them. He also offered the following resolution, which was

unanimously adopted: "We pledge ourselves, irrespective of party, to

use all honorable means to make the women of America the equals of men

before the law."

In Detroit Rev. Justin Fulton occupied one evening in opposition to

woman suffrage, and Miss Anthony replied to him the next. An audience

of a thousand gathered in Young Men's Hall at each meeting. The Free

Press had a most scurrilous review of the debate in which it said:

The speakeress rattled on in this strain until a late hour, saying

nothing new, nothing noble, not a word that would give one maid or

mother a purer or better thought. She drew no pictures of love in

the household--she did not seem to think that man and wife could

even stay under the same roof. She was not content that any woman

should be a bashful, modest woman, but wanted them to be like her,

to think as she thought.... People went there to see Susan B.

Anthony, who has achieved an evanescent reputation by her strenuous

endeavors to defy nature. Not one woman in a hundred cares to vote,

cares aught for the ballot, would take it with the degrading

influences it would surely bring.... Old, angular, sticking to

black stockings, wearing spectacles, a voice highly suggestive of

midnight Caudleism at poor Anthony, if he ever comes around, though

he never will. If all woman's righters look like that, the theory

will lose ground like a darkey going through a cornfield in a light

night. If she had come out and plainly said, "See here, ladies, see

me, I am the result of twenty years of constant howling at man's

tyranny," there would never have been another "howl" uttered in

Detroit. Or, if she had plainly said, in so many words, "I am going

to lecture on bosh, for the sake of that almighty half-dollar per

head--take it as bosh," people would have admired her candor,

though forming the same conclusions without her assistance....

Myra Bradwell, the able editor of the Chicago Legal News, paid the

following tribute: "Miss Anthony is terribly in earnest on this

suffrage question. We fully agree with her that the great battle-ground

in the first instance should be in Congress.... She is now fifty, and

the best years of her life have been devoted solely to the cause of

woman. She has never turned aside from this object but has always been

in the field, defending her principles against all assaults with an

ability which has not only won the admiration of her friends but the

respect of her enemies."

She made many new acquaintances on this tour, and one entry in the

diary is: "Quite a novel feature this--to have people quarrel as to who

shall have the pleasure of entertaining me as their guest!" She

returned to New York on Saturday, April 30, and on Sunday the diary

says: "Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and heard Beecher preach a

splendid sermon on 'Visiting the Sins of the Parents on the Children.'"

Various friends of the woman suffrage cause had decided that something

must be done to unite the two national organizations. An editorial in

the Independent to this effect was followed by a call for a conference

to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, April 6, signed by Theodore Tilton,

Phoebe Cary, Rev. John Chadwick and a number of others. The meeting was

duly held, and the venerable Lucretia Mott, who now rarely left home,

came all the way from Philadelphia to use her influence toward a

reconciliation. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were lecturing in the

West and the former telegraphed: "The entire West demands united

national organization for the Sixteenth Amendment, this very

congressional session, and so does Susan B. Anthony." Mrs. Stanton

wrote to the conference: "I will do all I can for union. If I am a

stumbling-block I will gladly resign my office. Having fought the world

twenty years, I do not now wish to turn and fight those who have so

long stood together through evil and good report. I should be glad to

have all united, with Mr. Beecher or Lucretia Mott for our general....

I am willing to work with any and all or to get out of the way

entirely, that there may be an organization which shall be respectable

at home and abroad."

The representatives of the American Association insisted that they had

offered the olive branch at the time of their organization and it had

been refused. This olive branch had been a suggestion that the National

Association should consider itself a local society and become auxiliary

to the American. After a protracted but fruitless discussion of over

four hours, they withdrew from the room, declining to accept or to

suggest any overtures. The proposition made by the callers of the

conference was that the two associations should merge into one, with a

new constitution embodying the best features of both, and with a board

of officers elected from the two existing organizations. Even the

friendly offices of Lucretia Mott, which never before were disregarded,

failed to effect a union, and the many letters from mutual friends were

equally ineffective. In her regular letter to The Revolution Miss

Anthony said:

There is but one feeling all through this glorious West, and that

is that it is a sin to have a divided front at this auspicious

moment. Since my last I have had splendid meetings in Quincy,

Farmington, Elwood, Mendota, Peru, La-Salle, Batavia, Peoria and

Champaign in Illinois, and in Sturgis and Jonesvine, Michigan. I

can tell you with emphasis that the fields are white unto

harvest--waiting, waiting only the reapers. And it is a shame--it

is a crime--for any of the old or new public workers to halt by the

way to pluck the motes out of their neighbors' eyes. Not one of us

but has blundered; yet if only we are in earnest, each will

forgive, in the faith that the others, like herself, mean right.

How any one can stand in the way of a united national organization

at an hour like this, is wholly inexplicable.

Just before the May Anniversary Mrs. Stanton published the following

card in The Revolution: "It is a great thing for those who have been

prominent in any movement to know when their special work is done, and

when the posts they hold can be more ably filled by others. Having, in

my own judgment, reached that time, at the present anniversary of our

association I must forbid the use of my name for president or any other

official position in any organization whatsoever."

The anniversary had been advertised for Irving Hall, but when it was

found that colored people would not be admitted to that building, it

was changed to Apollo Hall, and opened May 10 with Mrs. Stanton

presiding. At the business meeting in the afternoon, with

representatives present from nineteen States, the proposition of the

conference committee was considered. According to the report in The

Revolution there was much feeling on the part of the younger women

against any organization which did not have Miss Anthony and Mrs.

Stanton at the head, but at their earnest request, made in the interest

of harmony, it was finally voted to accept the name Union Woman

Suffrage Society, and Mr. Tilton for president.

On May 14, 1870, the Saturday after the suffrage convention, a number

of the old Equal Rights Association came together at a called meeting

in New York, which is thus described in The Revolution of May 19:

One of the most interesting as well as important events of the past

week, was the transfer of the American Equal Rights Association to

the new Union Woman Suffrage Society. This was done on Saturday in

the spacious parlors of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester in Gramercy

Place, Mrs. Stanton occupying the chair in the absence of the

president, Lucretia Mott. Henry B. Blackweil presented this

resolution:

"WHEREAS, The American Equal Rights Association was organized in

1866 in order to secure equal rights to all American citizens,

especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or

sex; and, _whereas_, Political distinctions of race are now

abolished by the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Amendments; and _whereas_, Arrangements have been made by the

formation of woman suffrage associations for the advocacy of the

legal and political rights of women as a separate question; and,

_whereas_, An unnecessary multiplication of agencies for the

accomplishment of a common object should always be avoided;

therefore

"_Resolved,_ That we hereby declare the American Equal Eights

Association dissolved and adjourned sine die."

Parker Pillsbury offered the following as a substitute:

"WHEREAS, At a meeting of the executive committee held in Brooklyn,

March 3, 1870, it was voted, on motion of Oliver Johnson, that 'it

is inexpedient to hold any public anniversary of the American Equal

Rights Association, and that in our judgment it is expedient to

dissolve said body; but as we have no authority to effect such

dissolution, an informal business meeting of the association be

held in New York, during the coming anniversary week, to consider

and act upon this subject; and on motion of Lucy Stone, it was

voted that this business meeting be held on Saturday, May 14, 1870,

at 10 A.M., at the home of Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester;' therefore

"_Resolved,_ That instead of terminating our existence as an

association, we do hereby transfer it, together with all its books,

records, reports or whatsoever appertains to it, and unite it with

the Union Woman Suffrage Society, organized in New York, May 10,

1870."

A long and earnest discussion succeeded.... At last, after two

hours, the vote was reached by the previous question, with this

result:

For dissolution, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell--2. For transfer,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Susan B. Anthony,

Theodore Tilton, Paulina Wright Davis, Phoebe W. Couzins, Edwin A.

Studwell, Mrs. Studwell, Mrs. John J. Merritt, Mrs. Robert Dale

Owen, Margaret E. Winchester, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Charlotte B.

Wilbour, Eleanor Kirk, Jennie Collins, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Miss

Chichester, Mrs. S.B. Morse--18.

Thus ended the existence of the American Equal Rights Association,

formed in May, 1866, for the purpose of securing to negroes and women

the rights of citizenship. These having been obtained for the negro

men, women were left the only class denied equality, and the question

therefore became simply one of woman's rights.

At the first anniversary of the American Woman Suffrage Association,

the next November, which also was held in Cleveland, this letter was

presented:

FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS: We, the undersigned, a committee appointed

by the Union Woman Suffrage Society in New York, May, 1870, to

confer with you on the subject of merging the two organizations

into one, respectfully announce:

1st. That in our judgment no difference exists between the objects

and methods of the two societies, nor any good reason for keeping

them apart. 2d. That the society we represent has invested us with

full power to arrange with you a union of both under a single

constitution and executive. 3d. That we ask you to appoint a

committee of equal number and authority with our own, to consummate

if possible this happy result.

Yours, in the common cause of woman's enfranchisement, Isabella

Beecher Hooker, Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Josephine S.

Griffing, Laura Curtis Bullard, Gerrit Smith, Sarah Pugh, Frederick

Douglass, Mattie Griffith Brown, James W. Stillman--Theodore

Tilton, ex officio.

The acceptance of this proposition was strongly urged by Judge

Bradwell, of Chicago, and the committee on resolutions recommended "the

appointment of a committee of conference, of like number with the one

appointed by the Union Suffrage Society with a view to the union of

both organizations." After a spirited discussion, this resolution was

rejected. The National Association, having exhausted all efforts for

reconciliation and union, never thereafter made further overtures. Two

distinct organizations were maintained, and there were no more attempts

at union for twenty years.

[Footnote 52: For selections from newspapers and letters and the list

of presents see Appendix.]

[Footnote 53:

We touch our caps, and place to night

The victor's wreath upon her.

The woman who outranks us all

In courage and in honor.

While others in domestic broils

Have proved by word and carriage,

That one of the United States

Is not the state of marriage,

She, caring not for loss of men,

Nor for the world's confusion,

Hap carried on a civil war

And made a "Revolution."

True, other women have been brave,

When banded or hus-banded,

But she has bravely fought her way

Alone and single-handed.

And think of her unselfish life,

Her generous disposition,

Who never made a lasting prop

Out of a proposition.

She might have chose an honored name,

and none had scorned or hissed it;

Have written Mrs. Jones or Smith,

But, strange to say, she Missed it.

For fifty years to come may she

Grow rich and ripe and mellow,

Be quoted even above "par,"

"Or any other fellow;"

And spread the truth from pole to pole,

and keep her light a-burning

Before she cuts her stick to go

To where there's no returning.

Because her motto grand hath been

The rights of every human

And first and last, and right or wrong,

She takes the part of woman.

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,"

To aid, not to amuse one:

Take her for all in all, we ne'er

Shall see the match of Susan.

*/]

CHAPTER XXI.

END OF REVOLUTION--STATUS OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

1870.

Immediately after the Suffrage Anniversary in May, 1870, Miss Anthony

and Mrs. Stanton decided to call a mass meeting of women to discuss the

questions involved in the McFarland-Richardson trial, which had set the

country ablaze with excitement. The case in brief was that McFarland

was a drunken, improvident husband, and his wife, Abby Sage, was

compelled to be the breadwinner for the family, first as an actress and

later as a public reader. She was a woman of education, refinement and

marked ability, and enjoyed an intimate friendship with some of the

best families of New York. Boarding in the same house with her was

Albert D. Richardson, a prominent newspaper man, a stockholder in the

Tribune and a special favorite of Mr. Greeley. He befriended Mrs.

McFarland, protected her against the brutality of her husband and

learned to love her. It was understood among their mutual friends that

when she was legally free they would be married. She secured her

divorce; and a few days later McFarland walked into the Tribune office,

shot and fatally wounded Richardson. Some hours before he died, Mrs.

McFarland was married to him, Revs. Henry Ward Beecher and O.B.

Frothingham officiating, in the presence of Mr. Greeley and several

other distinguished persons. McFarland was tried, acquitted on the

ground of insanity, given the custody of their little son and allowed

to go free.

Press and pulpit were rent with discussions and, although the general

verdict was that if McFarland were insane he should be placed under

restraint and not permitted to retain the child, Mrs. Richardson was

persecuted in the most cruel and unmerciful manner. The women of New

York especially felt indignant at the result of the trial. Miss Anthony

offered to take the responsibility of a public demonstration, with Mrs.

Stanton to make the address. She sent out 3,000 handsome invitations to

the leading women of the city. Before the meeting a number of

cautionary letters were received, of which this from Miss Catharine

Beecher will serve as a sample:

I am anxious for your own sake and for the sake of "our good

cause," that you should manage wisely your very difficult task.

There is a widespread combination undermining the family state, and

we need to protect all the customs as well as the laws that tend to

sustain it. In doing this, we need to discriminate between what is

in bad taste and evil in its tendencies, and what is in direct

violation of a moral law. The custom that requires a man to wait a

year after the death of one wife before he takes another, it is

usually in bad taste and inexpedient to violate, but there are

cases in which such violation is demanded and is lawful.

But the law of marriage demanding that in _no_ case a man shall

seek another wife while his first one lives is always imperative.

Then the question of divorce arises, and here the Lord of morality

and religion, who sees the end from the beginning, has decided that

only one crime can justify it. A woman may separate from her

husband for abuse or drunkenness and not violate this law, but

neither party can marry again without practically saying, "I do not

recognize Jesus Christ as the true teacher of morals and religion."

If Mrs. McFarland were sure she could prove adultery, she was

morally free to marry again; but could she be justified on any

other ground without denying the authority of the Lord Jesus

Christ? Is not here a point where you need to be very cautious and

guarded?

I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you on Tuesday at Apollo

Hall. Very truly and affectionately your friend.

The following account is taken from The Revolution:

On May 17, long before the hour appointed, Apollo Hall was filled.

Ministers had preached and editors written their ambiguous views on

the justice of the McFarland verdict. Reporters had interviewed the

murderer and described (probably from imagination) the conduct and

statements of Mrs. Richardson. John Graham had informed a gaping

public what should be and what was the opinion of every decent

woman in New York in regard to the guilt of this heart-broken

widow, thus making it extremely difficult to feel the actual state

of the public pulse on this all-important subject. Mrs. Stanton's

lecture clearly expressed the convictions of the intelligent and

right-minded. Never before in the annals of metropolitan history

had there been such an assemblage of women, and it was an equally

noticeable fact that they were the earnest, deep-thinking women of

the times.[54]

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were greeted with the heartiest

applause, and as soon as silence was obtained, the former said it

was the first time in her life that she had addressed a public

audience composed exclusively of women, and it was natural that she

should feel somewhat embarrassed under circumstances so peculiar.

This quaint observation brought down the house. After a few more of

her downright and invigorating remarks, she introduced Mrs.

Stanton, who was robed in quiet black, with an elegant lace shawl

over her shoulders and her beautiful white hair modestly ornamented

with a ribbon. Her appearance was very motherly and winning. Great

applause followed her address, and as she took her seat Celia

Burleigh read the resolutions adopted on Monday by Sorosis, which

were heartily reaffirmed by all present. After remarks by Miss

Anthony, Jenny June Croly, Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, Eleanor Kirk and

others, a petition to Governor Hoffman, asking that McFarland be

placed in an insane asylum, was enthusiastically endorsed.

So great was the desire that a similar meeting was held in Brooklyn.

These assemblies threw the newspaper's into convulsions of horror that

modest and shrinking women should dare discuss such questions, advocate

the same moral standard for both sexes, criticise judge, jury and laws,

and demand a different kind of justice from that which men were in the

habit of dealing out. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton came in for their

usual lion's share of censure, but they had so long offered themselves

as a vicarious sacrifice that they had learned to take criticism and

abuse philosophically. For weeks afterwards, however, they received

letters from unhappy wives in all parts of the country, thanking them

for their attitude in this affair, and pouring out the story of their

own wretchedness.

Miss Anthony had little time to think about either the reproof or the

approval, for the next day after this meeting saw the beginning of one

of the most sorrowful tragedies in her life--the giving up of The

Revolution! The favorable financial auspices under which it was

launched have been described, and an imperfect idea given of the storm

of opposition it encountered because of the alliance with Mr. Train. He

put into the paper about $3,000 and severed his connection with it

after sixteen months. Mr. Melliss continued his assistance for nearly

the same length of time, contributing altogether $7,000. He was its

staunch supporter as long as his means would allow, but at length

became apprehensive that it never would reach a paying basis and, as he

was not a man of wealth, felt unable to advance more money.

From a pecuniary point of view things looked very dark for The

Revolution. Every newspaper, in its early days, swallows up money like

a bottomless well. The Revolution had started on an expensive basis;

its office rent was $1,300 per annum; it was printed on the best of

paper, which at that time was very costly; typesetting commanded the

highest prices. Partly as a matter of pride and partly for the interest

of the paper, Miss Anthony was not willing to reduce expenses. At the

end of the first year The Revolution had 2,000, and at the end of the

second year 3,000 bona fide, paying subscribers, but these could not

sustain it without plenty of advertising, and advertisers never lavish

money on a reform paper. Mr. Pillsbury's valuable services were given

at a minimum price, Mrs. Stanton received no salary and Miss Anthony

drew out only what she was compelled to use for her actual expenses.

She was exhausted in mind and body from the long and relentless

persecution of those who once had been her co-workers, but to the world

she showed still the old indomitable spirit. Her letters to friends and

relatives at this time, appealing for funds to carry on the paper, are

heart-breaking. A dearly loved Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, of

Skaneateles, loaned her at different times $4,000. To him she wrote:

My paper must not, shall not go down. I am sure you believe in me,

in my honesty of purpose, and also in the grand work which The

Revolution seeks to do, and therefore you will not allow me to ask

you in vain to come to the rescue. Yesterday's mail brought

forty-three subscribers from Illinois and twenty from California.

We only need time to win financial success. I know you will save me

from giving the world a chance to say, "There is a woman's rights

failure; even the best of women can't manage business." If I could

only die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say "amen," but to

live and fail--it would be too terrible to bear.

To Francis G. Shaw, of Staten Island, who sent $100, she wrote: "I

wonder why it is that I must forever feel compelled to take the rough

things of the world. Why can't I excuse myself from the overpowering

and disagreeable struggles? I can not tell, but after such a day as

yesterday, my heart fails me--almost. Then I remember that the promise

is to those only who hold out to the end--and nerve myself to go

forward. I am grateful nowadays for every kind word and every dollar."

On the back is inscribed: "My pride would not let me send this, and I

substituted merely a cordial note of thanks." Her letters home during

this dark period are too sacred to be given to the public. The mother

and sisters were distressed beyond expression at the merciless

criticism and censure with which she had been assailed, and begged her

to withdraw from it all to the seclusion of her own pleasant home, but

when she persisted in standing by her ship, they aided her with every

means in their power. Her sister Mary loaned her the few thousands she

had been able to save by many years' hard work in the schoolroom, and

the mother contributed from her small estate.

Her brother Daniel R., a practical newspaper man, assured her that he

was ready at any time to be one of a stock company to support the

paper, but that it was useless to sink any more money in the shape of

individual subscriptions. He urged her to cut down expenses, make it a

semi-monthly or monthly if necessary, but not to go any more deeply in

debt, saying: "I know how earnest you are, but you stand alone. Very

few think with you, and they are not willing to risk a dollar. You have

put in your all and all you can borrow, and all is swallowed up. You

are making no provision for the future, and you wrong yourself by so

doing. No one will thank you hereafter. Although you are now fifty

years old and have worked like a slave all your life, you have not a

dollar to show for it. This is not right. Do make a change." Her sister

Mary spent all her vacation in New York one hot summer looking after

the business of the paper, while Miss Anthony went out lecturing and

getting subscribers. After returning home she wrote:

You can not begin to know how you have changed, and many times

every day the tears would fill my eyes if I allowed myself a moment

to reflect upon it. I beg of you for your own sake and for ours, do

not persevere in this work unless people will aid you enough to do

credit to yourself as you always have done. Make a plain statement

to your friends, and if they will not come to your rescue, go down

as gracefully as possible and with far less indebtedness than you

will have three months from now. It is very sad for all of us to

feel that you are working so hard and being so misunderstood, and

we constantly fear that, in some of your hurried business

transactions, your enemies will delight to pick you up and make you

still more trouble.

At this time, in a letter to Martha C. Wright, Mr. Pillsbury said:

"Susan works like a whole plantation of slaves, and her example is

scourge enough to keep me tugging also." With her rare optimism, Miss

Anthony never gives up hoping, and on January 1, 1870, writes to Sarah

Pugh: "The year opens splendidly. December brought the largest number

of subscriptions of any month since we began, and yesterday the largest

of any day. So the little 'rebel Revolution' doesn't feel anything but

the happiest sort of a New Year."

A movement was begun for forming a stock company of several wealthy

women, on a basis of $50,000, to relieve Miss Anthony of all financial

responsibility, making her simply the business manager. Paulina Wright

Davis already had given $500, and January 1, 1870, her name appeared as

corresponding editor. Isabella Beecher Hooker took the liveliest

interest in the paper and was very anxious that it should be continued.

She devised various schemes for this purpose and finally decided that

her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and herself would give The

Revolution their personal influence and that of their large circle of

friends, by putting their names on the staff of editors. Early in

December, 1869, she sent the following:

We will give our names as corresponding editors for your paper for

one year and agree to furnish at least six articles apiece and also

to secure an original article from some friend every other week

during the year. We agree to do this without promised compensation,

but on the condition that you will change the name of the paper to

The True Republic, or something equally satisfactory to us; and

that you will pay us equally for this service according to your

ability, you yourself being sole judge of that.

H.B. STOWE, I.B. HOOKER.

This was written while they were in New York City, and on her way home

Mrs. Hooker wrote, while on board the train, an enthusiastic letter

regarding details of the work, ending, after she arrived: "I give you

my hand upon it. I have read the above to my two Mentors, and they

approve in the main." In a few days, she said in a long letter:

I wish Mrs. Stanton's "editorial welcome" to us might be in the

dignified style of her best essays or speeches, not in the least

gossipy or familiar, but stately and full of womanly presence. She

ought to have a copy of Mrs. Stowe's editorial the moment it is

written, for approval and suggestion. If Mr. Pillsbury would stay

for a month or two and initiate Phoebe Cary, and we all work well

as we mean to, I think she might get on.... I shall go to the

Washington convention to work, not to speak. Tilton should be

secured by all means--his wife, too. Our parlor needs her demure,

motherly, angelic sweetness, as much as our platform needs him.

These little, quiet, domestic women are trump cards, nowadays. I

wish we had a whole pack of them.... Mr. Burton will hunt up a

capital motto or heading, and he will write, I am sure. Mrs. Jewell

met me in the street and said, "Is it true that you and Mrs. Stowe

are going to help The Revolution?" I told her what we proposed and

she was much delighted.

In reply to a letter asking her opinion, Mrs. Stanton wrote: "As for

changing the name of The Revolution, I should consider it a great

mistake. We are thoroughly advertised under the present title. There is

no other like it, never was, and never will be. The establishing of

woman on her rightful throne is the greatest of revolutions. It is no

child's play. You and I know the conflict of the last twenty years; the

ridicule, persecution, denunciation, detraction, the unmixed bitterness

of our cup for the last two, when even friends have crucified us. We

have so much hope and pluck that none but the Good Father knows how we

have suffered. A journal called 'The Rose-bud' might answer for those

who come with kid gloves and perfumes to lay immortelle wreaths on the

monuments which in sweat and tears we have hewn and built; but for us,

and that great blacksmith of ours who forges such red-hot thunderbolts

for Pharisees, hypocrites and sinners, there is no name but The

Revolution."

Miss Anthony consulted many newspaper men and all advised against the

proposed change, saying that experience had shown this to be fatal to a

paper. Acting upon this advice, and also upon her own strong

convictions, she decided to retain the original title. Meanwhile,

tremendous pressure had been brought to bear upon Mrs. Hooker and Mrs.

Stowe not to identify themselves with The Revolution. After Mrs.

Stowe's salutatory had been prepared, Mrs. Hooker wrote as follows:

I think the name should not be changed. If you change it in

deference to our wishes and against good advice, it would lay an

obligation on us that we could ill endure. Already I was feeling

uneasy under the thought, and Mrs. Stowe actually said to me that

she should prefer greatly to write as contributor and would do just

as much work as if called editor. She settled down on consenting to

be corresponding editor; and Mrs. Davis and I will be assistant

editors. I will write for The Revolution and work for it just as

hard as I can, sending out a circular through Connecticut asking

contributions to it.

Later--Since reading Mrs. Stanton on the Richardson-McFarland case,

I feel disinclined to be associated with her in editorial work. I

want to say this very gently; but I have no time for

circumlocution....

[Autograph: Alice Cary]

The promised contributions did not materialize, and The Revolution

received no aid of any description. The struggle was bravely continued

throughout the first five months of 1870. The Cary sisters were devoted

friends of Miss Anthony and deeply interested in the paper, and some of

their sweetest poems had appeared in its columns. Their beautiful home

was just three blocks below The Revolution office, and she spent many

hours with them. These frequent calls, breakfasts and luncheons were

much more delightful to her than their Sunday evening receptions,

although at those were gathered the writers, artists, musicians,

reformers and politicians of New York, besides eminent persons who

happened to be in the city. It was a literary center which never has

been equalled since those lovely and cultured sisters passed away. In

her lecture on "Homes of Single Women," Miss Anthony thus describes one

of her visits:

[Autograph: Phoebe Cary]

I shall never forget the December Sunday morning when a note came

from Phoebe asking, "Will you come round and sit with Alice while I

go to church?" Of course I was only too glad to go; and it was

there in the cheery sick-room, as I sat on a cushion at the feet of

this lovely, large-souled, clear-brained woman, that she told me

how ever and anon in the years gone by, as she was writing her

stories for bread and shelter, her pen would run off into facts and

philosophies of woman's servitude that she knew would ruin her book

with the publishers, but which, for her own satisfaction, she had

carefully treasured, chapter by chapter, as her heart had thus

overflowed. "I am now," she said, "financially free, where I could

write my deepest and best thought for woman, and now I must die. O,

how much of my life I have been compelled to write what men would

buy, not what my heart most longed to say, and what a clog to my

spirit it has been."

As she sat there, reading from those chapters, her sweet face, her

lustrous eyes, her musical voice all aglow as with a live coal from

off the altar, I said: "Alice, I must have that story for The

Revolution!" "But I may never be able to finish it," she objected.

"We'll trust to Providence for that," I replied; and the last five

months of The Revolution carried The Born Thrall to thousands of

responsive hearts. But, alas, nature gave way and she was never

well enough to put the finishing touches to those terribly

true-to-life pictures of the pioneer wife and mother.

The poetry for The Revolution was selected by Mrs. Tilton, who had rare

literary taste and discrimination. The exquisite child articles,

entitled "Dot and I" and signed Faith Rochester, were written by

Francis E. Russell. It had a corps of foreign correspondents, among

them the English philanthropist, Rebecca Moore. The distinguished list

of contributors and the broad scope of The Revolution may be judged

from its prospectus for 1870.[55] The chances of its paying expenses,

however, did not increase, and the hoped-for stock company never was

formed. Mr. Pillsbury had been most anxious for the past year to be

released from his editorial duties, and had remained only because he

could not bear to desert the paper in its distress. Mrs. Stanton,

engaged in the lecture field, had sent only an occasional article, and

now declined to continue her services longer without a salary. One

person who stood by Miss Anthony unflinchingly through all this trying

period was the publisher, R.J. Johnston, who never once failed in

prompt and efficient service, and gave the most conscientious care to

the make-up of the paper. Although her indebtedness to him finally

reached the thousands, he remained faithful up to the printing of the

very last number, and his was the first debt she paid out of the

proceeds of her lyceum lectures.

When Mrs. Phelps had opened the Woman's Bureau and invited The

Revolution to take an office therein, Miss Anthony had warned her that

it might keep other organizations of women away; but she was willing to

take the risk. It resulted as prophesied. Not even the strong-minded

Sorosis would have its clubrooms there, nor would any other society of

women, and after a year's experiment, she gave up her project, rented

the building to a private family and The Revolution moved to No. 27

Chatham street. The generous Anna Dickinson, because of her friendship

for Miss Anthony, presented Mrs. Phelps with $1,000, as a recompense

for any loss she might have sustained through The Revolution. Mrs.

Phelps being very ill that winter, added a codicil to her will giving

Miss Anthony $1,000 to show that she had only the kindest feelings for

her.

At the beginning of 1870, a stock company was formed and the Woman's

Journal established in Boston. Mrs. Livermore merged her Chicago paper,

the Agitator, into this new enterprise (as she had proposed to do into

The Revolution the year previous) removed to Boston and became

editor-in-chief; Lucy Stone was made assistant editor and H.B.

Blackwell business manager. This paper secured the patronage of all

those believers in the rights of women who were not willing to accept

the bold, fearless and radical utterances of The Revolution. The latter

had exhausted the finances of its friends and had no further resources.

The strain upon Miss Anthony, who alone was carrying the whole burden,

was terrible beyond description. Never was there a longer, harder, more

persistent struggle against the malice of enemies, the urgent advice of

friends, against all hope, than was made by this heroic woman. As the

inevitable end approached she wrote of it to Mrs. Stanton, who

answered: "Make any arrangement you can to roll that awful load off

your shoulders. If Anna Dickinson will be sole editor, I say, glory to

God! Leave me to my individual work, the quiet of my home for the

summer and the lyceum for the winter.... Tell our glorious little Anna

if she only will nail her colors to that mast and make the dear old

proprietor free once more, I will sing her praises to the end of time."

Anna Dickinson very wisely concluded that she was not suited for an

editor. Laura Curtis Bullard was much interested in reform work,

possessed of literary ability and very desirous of securing The

Revolution. Theodore Tilton, who was editing the New York Independent

and the Brooklyn Daily Union, promised to assist her in managing the

paper. Miss Anthony at last agreed to let her have it, and on May 22,

1870, the formal transfer was made. She received the nominal sum of one

dollar, and assumed personally the entire indebtedness. She had this

dollar alone to show for two and a half years of as hard work as ever

was performed by mortal, besides all the money she had earned and

begged which had gone directly into the paper. During that time $25,000

had been expended, and the present indebtedness amounted to $10,000

more.

Miss Anthony could not view this giving up of The Revolution so

philosophically as did Mrs. Stanton; she was of very different

temperament. Into this paper she had put her ambition, her hope, her

reputation. The stronger the opposition, the firmer was her

determination not to yield, nor was it a relief to be rid of it. She

would have counted no cost too great, no work too hard, no sacrifice

too heavy, could she but have continued the publication. Not only was

it a terrible blow to her pride, but it wrung her heart. She could bear

the triumph of her enemies far better than she could the giving up of

the means by which she had expected to accomplish a great and permanent

good for women and for all humanity. On the evening of the day when the

paper passed out of her hands forever, she wrote in her diary, "It was

like signing my own death-warrant;" and in a letter to a friend she

said, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a

dear child that she could not support." To the public she kept the same

brave, unruffled exterior, but in a private letter, written a short

time afterwards, is told in a few sentences a story which makes the

heart ache:

My financial recklessness has been much talked of. Let me tell you

in what this recklessness consists: When there was need of greater

outlay, I never thought of curtailing the amount of work to lessen

the amount of cash demanded, but always doubled and quadrupled the

efforts to raise the necessary sum; rushing for contributions to

every one who had professed love or interest for the cause. If it

were 20,000 tracts for Kansas, the thought never entered my head to

stint the number--only to tramp up and down Broadway for

advertisements to pay for them. If to meet expenses of The

Revolution, it was not to pinch clerks or printers, but to make a

foray upon some money-king. None but the Good Father can ever begin

to know the terrible struggle of those years. I am not complaining,

for mine is but the fate of almost every originator or pioneer who

ever has opened up a way. I have the joy of knowing that I showed

it to be possible to publish an out-and-out woman's paper, and

taught other, women to enter in and reap where I had sown.

Heavy debts are still due, every dollar of which I intend to pay,

and I am tugging away, lecturing amid these burning suns, for no

other reason than to keep pulling down, hundred by hundred, that

tremendous pile. I sanguinely hope to cancel this debt in two years

of hard work, and cheerfully look forward to the turning of every

possible dollar into that channel. If you today should ask me to

choose between the possession of $25,000 and the immense work

accomplished by my Revolution during the time in which I sank that

amount, I should choose the work done--not the cash in hand. So,

you see, I don't groan or murmur--not a bit of it; but for the good

name of humanity, I would have liked to see the moneyed men and

women rally around the seed-sowers.

Parker Pillsbury wrote her after he returned home: "No one could do

better than you have done. If any complain, ask them what they did to

help you carry the paper. I am glad you are relieved of a load too

heavy for you to bear. Worry yourself no more. Work of course you will,

but let there be no further anxiety and nervousness. Suffrage is

growing with the oaks. The whirling spheres will usher in the day of

its triumph at just the right time, but your full meed of praise will

have to be sung over your grave."

The motto of The Revolution, "The True Republic--Men, their rights and

nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," was succeeded by

"What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." It was

transformed into a literary and society journal, established in elegant

headquarters at Brooklyn, inaugurated with a fashionable reception, and

conducted by Mrs. Bullard for eighteen months, when she tired of it, or

her father tired of advancing money, and it passed into other hands.

When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that

The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New

York Independent at the end of its first five years. She had just begun

to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at

large prices. The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent

in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300. She always felt

that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time

put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly

increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution

was gaining the confidence of the public. But the experience came too

late and she was driven to the wall--not a single friend would longer

give her money, assistance or encouragement to continue the paper. To

this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers,

touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with

loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned

them are still forever.

Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great

disappointment. In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The

Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went

to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening.

There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone

to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000. Very few of the

advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of

this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been

made entirely in the effort to advance the cause. Miss Anthony worked

unceasingly through winter's cold and summer's heat, lecturing

sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau,

and herself arranging for unengaged nights. As she had all her expenses

to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds

were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before "she could look

the whole world in the face for she owed not any man."

She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas

and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3,

1870. Dr. E.O. Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop)

in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage. At Bloomington she held a

debate with a young professor from the State Normal School. The manager

asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed

on. She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in

making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances. This

was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250. The professor

opposed the enfranchisement of women because they could not fight. As

is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very

diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she

commenced her speech: "The professor talks about the physical

disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on

and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!" Of course

this put the audience in a fine humor.

In every place she was entertained by representative people and

received many social courtesies. She returned to Rochester July 27,

spent just twelve hours at home, then hastened eastward, travelling by

night in order to reach the Saratoga convention on the 28th. This was

held under the auspices of the New York State Association, and managed

by the secretary, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony was paid $100, for

the first time in the history of conventions. Mrs. Gage wrote: "She is

heavily burdened with debt, no one has made so great sacrifices all

these years, and she deserves the money." During the summer she sent to

a friend in England this summing up of the condition of the suffrage

movement in the United States:

The secret of the present inaction is that all our best suffrage

men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its

interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety,

its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling

lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give place to the

Democracy in 1872, it dares not espouse woman suffrage. So our

friends quietly drop our demand on Congress for a Sixteenth

Amendment, since to press that body to a vote would compel the

Republican members to show their hands; and if those who have in

private spoken for woman suffrage should not make a false public

record, the number in favor would commit the majority of their

party to our question; and by so doing give its opponents fresh

opportunity to appeal to the ignorant masses, which must inevitably

throw it out of power. The extension of the ballot to woman is a

question of intelligence and culture, and is sure to have enrolled

against it every narrow, prejudiced, small-brained man in all

classes. This being the state of things, our movement is at a

dead-lock. Practical action, political action, therefore, is almost

hopeless until after the presidential election of 1872; and after

that for still another four years, unless the Republican party

should be defeated and the Democracy come into power.

Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake

themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and

promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of

that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from

the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but

that I know such chastisement, such retirement, is the only means

by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and

hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the

political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and

thereby securing their gratitude and through it their vote to place

and hold that party in power.

Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the

Cleveland movement with all the strategy and maneuvering of its

semi-Republican managers, assented to and accepted by the women in

their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which

seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power. With Mrs.

Stanton's utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and

our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The

Revolution to the new company--we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip

from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus

leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere

politicians. All are lulled into the strictest propriety of

expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican. And unless

that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against

woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of

their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from

suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of

line with the plan and policy of the dominant party. Nothing less

atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro,

can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of

their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to

the Republican politicians associated with them.

So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages,

still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some

terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a

self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation

of their present position; which will force them to break their

yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make

them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable

them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for woman than

could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women are in

chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they

do not realize it. O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give

them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own

freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world

for doing it!

Not another woman possessed this strong grasp of the whole situation,

this deep comprehension of the abject condition of women, the more

hopeless because of their own failure to feel or resent it.

During the summer Miss Anthony attended the National Labor Congress in

Philadelphia. A great strike of bookbinders had been in progress in New

York and she had advised the women to take the vacant places. They were

denied admission to all labor unions and their only chance of securing

work was when the men and their employers disagreed. This gave a

pretext for those who were opposed to a representation of women in

labor conventions, and a bitter fight was made upon accepting her as a

delegate. Charges of every description were preferred against her which

she refuted in a spirited manner, but her credentials were finally

rejected. The newspapers took up the fight on both sides, the

opposition to Miss Anthony being led by the New York Star, always

abusive where the question of woman's rights was concerned. During this

controversy the Utica Herald contained a disgraceful editorial, saying:

Who does not feel sympathy for Susan Anthony? She has striven long

and earnestly to become a man. She has met with some rebuffs, but

has never succumbed. She has never done any good in the world, but

then she doesn't think so. She is sweet in the eyes of her own

mirror, but her advanced age and maiden name deny that she has been

so in the eyes of others. Boldly she marched, and well, into the

presence of 200 horrid male delegates of the Labor Congress, and

took somebody's seat.... Susan felt very much like a grizzly bear

unable to get at its tormentor. She had gone to the length of her

chain and couldn't get her claws into any one's hair. She could

only sit and glare.

At length Susan's case came up for consideration, and the congress

committed the crowning act of rashness and, without a thought of

the consequences, made an everlasting enemy of Susan Anthony by

ruling her out of the convention as a delegate. This was the

unkindest cut of all. "A lone, lorn old critter," with whom

everything "goes contrairie," was denied the solace of being

counted the one-two-hundreth part of a man by a labor convention!

We may well believe that Susan wept with sorrow at the blindness of

man, and our sympathy if not our tears is freely offered. But so

goes the world. This is not the first time that "man's inhumanity

to woman" has made Miss Anthony mourn and, as it is not her first

rebuff, we counsel her to seek admission again to the ranks of her

sex, and cease to cast reproach upon it by struggling to be a man.

When some of the women remonstrated, the editor replied that he had not

supposed there was one woman in Utica who believed in equal rights.

Paulina Wright Davis had been actively arranging for a great convention

in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first woman's

rights convention in Massachusetts, which was held at Worcester, in

October, 1850. That one had been managed almost wholly by Mrs. Davis

and she had presided over its deliberations, therefore it seemed proper

for her to be the central figure in celebrating its second decade. The

New England suffrage people declined to take part in this meeting and,

for some reason, Mr. Tilton's Union Society was decidedly averse to it.

Mrs. Davis finally became ill from anxiety and overwork and joined her

entreaties to Mrs. Stanton's that Miss Anthony should drop her lectures

and come to New York; so she started for that city September 30,

determined that Mrs. Davis' scheme should not be a failure. The entries

in her journal give some idea of her energetic and unwearied action:

As soon as I reached New York I went to Dr. Lozier's for lunch,

then to see Mrs. Phelps. All in despair about the decade meeting.

Went at once to consult Alice and Phoebe Cary; from them to Mrs.

Winchester, found her just home from Europe; then to Julia Brown

Bemis, and thence to Murray street to see Mr. Studwell; then to

Tenafly on the evening train.... Back to New York the next morning,

to Tilton's, to Curtis', to Mrs. Wilbour's, and then to Providence

to see Mrs. Davis. Beached there late at night, woke her up and we

talked till morning. She was terribly distressed at the thought of

giving up the decade and in the morning I telegraphed to New York

that it _must_ go on.... Went there by first train, had all the

newspaper notices of its abandonment countermanded and new ones put

in, and an item sent out by Associated Press. Too late for last

train to Tenafly and had to hire a carriage to take me there.

Her time was then divided between working on speeches with Mrs. Stanton

and rushing over to New York to prepare for this meeting. On October 19

she writes: "Ground out the resolutions, and took the afternoon train

for the city. Met Martha Wright and Mrs. Davis at the St. James Hotel."