never before the value of having lived an open life.... The parlor,
the street corner, the newspapers, the very air seem full of social
miasma.... Sad, sad revelations! There is nothing more demoralizing
than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which
denies it.... It is almost an impossibility for a man and a woman
to have a close, sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one
soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of
infinite pain and anguish.... The great financial rings, Christian
Union, Life of Christ and Plymouth church, the three in one, most
powerful trinity, seem to have subsidized the entire New York
press.
In her positive refusal to speak the word which would criminate a
woman, Miss Anthony was actuated by the highest sense of honor. She
loved Mr. and Mrs. Tilton as her own family. She had enjoyed the
hospitality of their beautiful home and seen their children grow up
from babyhood. Mrs. Tilton was one of the loveliest characters she ever
had known, an exquisite housekeeper, an ideal mother; a woman of wide
reading and fine literary taste, of sunny temperament and affectionate
disposition. To violate the confidence of such a woman, given in an
hour of supreme anguish, would have been treachery unparalleled. In
answer to the charge that Mrs. Tilton was a very weak or a very wicked
woman, Miss Anthony always maintained that none ever was called upon to
suffer such temptation. On the one hand was her husband, one of the
most brilliant writers and speakers of the day, a man of marvellously
attractive powers in the home as well as in the outside world. At his
table often sat Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Wilson and many other
prominent men, who all alike admired and loved him.
On the other hand was her pastor, the most powerful and magnetic
preacher and orator not only in Brooklyn but in the nation. When he
spoke on Sunday to his congregation of 3,000 people, there was not a
man present but felt that he could get strength by touching even the
hem of his garment. If his power were such over men, by the law of
nature it must have been infinitely greater over women. Since it was
thus irresistible in public, how transcendent must it have been in the
close and intimate companionship of private life!
The house of the Tiltons was the second home of Mr. Beecher, and
scarcely a day passed that he did not visit it. He found here the
brightness, congeniality, sympathy and loving trust which every human
being longs for. The choicest new literature was sent hither for the
delicate appreciation it was sure to receive. When he came in from his
Peekskill country place with great baskets of flowers, the most
beautiful always found their way to this household. Miss Anthony
recalls one occasion when Mrs. Tilton, slipping her hand through her
arm, drew her to the mantelpiece over which hung a lovely water color
of the trailing arbutus, and said, "My pastor brought that to me this
morning." At another time, when she went on Saturday evening to stay
over Sunday, Mrs. Tilton said, as she dropped into a low chair: "Mr.
Beecher sat here all the morning writing his sermon. He says there is
no place in the world where he can get such inspiration as at
Theodore's desk, while I sit beside him in this little chair darning
the children's stockings."
In all of these and many similar occurrences Miss Anthony saw nothing
but a warm and sincere friendship. To Mr. Tilton Mr. Beecher was as a
father or an elder brother. He had placed the ambitious and talented
youth where he could achieve both fame and fortune, had introduced him
into the highest social circles and shown to the world that he regarded
him as his dearest confidential friend, and for years the two men had
enjoyed the closest and strongest intimacy. Mrs. Tilton had been born
into Plymouth church, baptized by Mr. Beecher, had taught in his Sunday
school, visited at his home. He loved her as his own, and she adored
him as a very Christ. To these two great intellectual and spiritual
magnets, first to one, then to the other, she was irresistibly and
uncontrollably drawn. When troubles arose and the two became bitterly
hostile, her situation was most pitiable. After matters had culminated
and the battle was on, Beecher still spoke of her as "the beloved
Christian woman," and Tilton, as "the whitest-souled woman who ever
lived." Weak she may have been through her emotions, never wilfully
wicked, and far less sinning than sinned against. She was wholly
dominated by two powerful influences. Between the upper and the nether
millstone her life was crushed.
[Footnote 78: For full report see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II,
p. 715.]
[Footnote 79: This has been accomplished (1897) in four States,
Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.]
[Footnote 80: The W.C.T.U. did not recognize this fact at the time of
their organization but in 1881 they established a franchise department
and many of them now advocate suffrage.]
[Footnote 81: Not far from three times as many were at Miss Anthony's
lecture as gathered to hear Senator Chandler.--Jackson Patriot.
One of the largest audiences ever in the opera house gathered last
evening on the occasion of the lecture of Miss Susan B.
Anthony.--Adrian Times and Expositor.
Probably the largest audience ever assembled in Clinton Hall convened
to hear-Miss Susan B. Anthony, the celebrated expounder of the rights
of women.--Pontiac Gazette.
Since the great Children's Jubilee there has not been so large an
audience in the Academy of Music as that assembled to hear Miss
Anthony's lecture.--East Saginaw Daily Republican.
Miss Anthony spoke at Hillsdale to a densely crowded opera house, while
full 1,000 people were unable to gain admission.--Grand Rapids Post.
Miss Susan B. Anthony spoke last evening to the largest audience that
ever greeted a lecturer in Marshall, and we have had Mrs. Stanton,
Theodore Tilton, Mark Twain and Olive Logan. She had at least 1,200
hearers.--Telegram to Detroit Evening News.
Last evening the aisles were double-seated, and the anterooms,
staircases and vestibules densely packed with standing hearers. No such
house ever was had at this place. She spoke with wonderful power. At
Pigeon, between trains, she spoke to a great throng who would not
consider her strength and take "no" for an answer.--Three Rivers
Reporter.
A woman with whose public sayings and doings we have been familiar
since the fall of 1867, and for whom our respect and admiration has
never wavered during that period, spoke to the largest indoor audience
ever assembled in this village. The courthouse was literally packed,
and the speaker had to stand on a table in front of the judge's
desk.--Cassopolis National Democrat.]
CHAPTER XXVII.
REVOLUTION DEBT PAID--WOMEN'S FOURTH OF JULY.
1875-1876.
At the close of 1874, December 28, the cause of woman suffrage lost a
strong supporter by the death of Gerrit Smith. Miss Anthony felt the
loss deeply, as he had been her warm personal friend for twenty-five
years and always ready with financial aid for her projects; but she
suffered a keener shock one week later when the news came of the sudden
death of Martha C. Wright, January 4, 1875. She says in her diary: "It
struck me dumb, I could not believe it; clear-sighted, true and
steadfast almost beyond all other women! Her home was my home, always
so restful and refreshing, her friendship never failed; the darker the
hour, the brighter were her words of encouragement, the stronger and
closer her support. I can not be reconciled."
But for this earnest advocate there could be no cessation of work and
the 14th of January found her again in Washington at the National
Convention. These annual meetings, with their advertising, hall rent,
expenses of speakers, etc., were costly affairs. Before every one Miss
Anthony always received scores of letters from the other workers
begging that it might be given up for that year, insisting that for
various reasons it would be a failure, and declaring that they could
not and would not attend. Mrs. Stanton usually headed the list of the
objectors, for she hated everything connected with a convention. On the
back of one of these vehement protests, carefully filed away, is
written in Miss Anthony's penmanship, "Mrs. Stanton's chronic letter
before each annual meeting." She never paid the slightest heed to any
of these appeals, but went straight ahead, wheeled all of them into
line, engaged the speakers, raised the money and carried the convention
to a finish. When the funds were lacking she advanced them from her
own, usually ending one or two hundred dollars out of pocket. Then she
went about among the friends and secured enough to replace the loan or,
failing in this, worked so much the harder to make it up out of her
earnings.
On her way home from Washington, Miss Anthony stopped for a visit with
her loved cousin Anson Lapham and on leaving he handed her a check for
$1,000, saying, "Susan, this is not for suffrage but for thee
personally." Nevertheless she at once applied it on the debt still
hanging over her from The Revolution. Francis & Loutrel, of New York,
who had furnished her with paper, letter-heads, etc., also presented
her at this time with their receipted bill for $200.
In the winter of 1875, Miss Anthony prepared her speech on "Social
Purity" and gave it first at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, March 14,
in the Sunday afternoon Dime lecture course.[82] When she reached the
opera house the crowd was so dense she could not get inside and was
obliged to go through the engine room and up the back way to the stage.
The gentleman who was to introduce her could not make his way through
the throng and so this service was gracefully performed by "Long John"
Wentworth, who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to
her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came
up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr.
Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless
manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."
No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with
such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation.
Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked
to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her
future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same
committee the following winter.
It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,[83] Iowa, Kansas
and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied.
On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis,
in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large
and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a
majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women
of the nineteenth century--remarkable for the purity of her life, the
earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the
indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and
misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth--if she ever had any
bloom--hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and
philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the
beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the
platform as preachers of social impossibilities."
The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a
lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but
the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will
show:
There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is
following in the wake of Anna Dickinson, in publicly lecturing upon
subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her sex, to
acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon
the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social
Purity"--topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to
discuss. It would be suggestively coarse for a married woman to
deliberately select such questionable themes for a public
discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters
are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary
information--are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to
contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say analyze
it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous
details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for
the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in
attempting it; but if so, how much more do they degrade their sex
when they go out of the way to ask us to believe that they are
intimate with a corruption infinitely more debasing and more
destructive? The best lecture a woman can give the community on
"moral purity" is the eloquent one of a spotless life. The best
discourse she can furnish us on the sad "evil" alluded to is the
sincerity of her profound ignorance of the subject.
A woman suffrage bill was under consideration by the legislature of
Iowa and Miss Anthony felt that missionary work ought to be done in
that State, so she wrote to the friends in one hundred different towns,
offering to speak for $25 or one-half the gross receipts. Sixty of them
accepted and during the spring and autumn of 1875 she filled these
engagements, the sixty lectures averaging $30 apiece. In order to reach
the different places she had to take trains at all hours of the night,
occasionally to ride in a freight car, sometimes to drive twenty-five
or thirty miles across country in mud and snow and prairie winds, and
frequently to go on the platform without having eaten a mouthful or
changed her dress. Even these ills were not so hard to bear as the
cold, dirty rooms, hard beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in
small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as
not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the
bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is
uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides.
While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in
New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of
Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling
that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained
the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could
get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but,
in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention
and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early
morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last
farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption.
Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and
comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother
was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey,
and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached
Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother
who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The
shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had
fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted
wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.
Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat
by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the
gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month the
physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the
wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had
formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by
pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns
day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital
spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical
fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer
doubtful. The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss
Anthony's devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose
whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a
degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained
nurse.[84]
Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and
namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how
closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia
Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all
the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to
stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of
August 20 says: "There passed out of my life today the one who, next to
my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty
years."
On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first
time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman,
characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a
guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore.
When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the
platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy
enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave
her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry
R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening."
The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in
Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many
engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not
to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable
hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging
letter and a liberal contribution.
Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement
winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to
crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was
religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago
to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her
diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and
happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this
occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."[85] She returned at once to Iowa,
Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of
Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution
debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up
her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness,
and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from
her shoulders and she was free. Even the newspapers offered
congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.[86] In a long notice,
the Chicago Daily News said:
Her paper lived a few years and then went down. In the heart of the
woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so
much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in
other women's hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby's
face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death. But
The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars.
Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and assumed,
individually, the entire indebtedness. By working six years and
devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn she has paid
the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper
and others who really know her, whatever they may think of her
political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel
inclined to raise their hats in reverence.
The Rochester Post-Express thus voiced the opinion of her own
townspeople:
The thousands of friends of the plucky and noble woman of whom we
speak will rejoice with her over this success. There are a good
many men who have hidden behind their wives' petticoats for a much
smaller sum than $10,000. It should be remembered, furthermore,
that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman
suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a
contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United
States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months
over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin's
bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and
has always, everywhere, been the soul of helpfulness and
benevolence. Here is an example, in a woman, who our laws say is
not fit to exercise the active and defensive privilege of
citizenship, that puts to shame the lives of ninety-nine in every
hundred men.
It is not surprising that the letters of her friends during these past
months should speak of "the pale, sad face, so worn by lines of care
and toil," but now all was over and she returned home. To rest? Far
from it. The third day found her en route for New York to attend the
Suffrage Anniversary, May 10 and 11.
The thinking women of the country were justly indignant, in this great
centennial year of the Republic, at the high-handed manner in which
they had been ignored in the vast preparations for its celebration, in
spite of their protests and in face of the fact that women had
purchased $100,000 of the centennial stock issued to pay expenses. It
had been decided at the Washington convention that the National
Association should open headquarters in Philadelphia, and at this May
meeting Miss Anthony was made chairman of the 1876 campaign committee.
The resolutions adopted show the spirit of the convention:
WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual
before governments are founded, constitutions framed or courts
created; and _whereas_, Governments exist to protect the people in
the enjoyment of their natural rights, and when one becomes
destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist
and abolish it; and _whereas_, The women of the United States for
one hundred years have been denied the exercise of their natural
right of self-government; therefore
_Resolved_, That it is their natural right and most sacred duty to
rebel against the injustice, usurpation and tyranny of our present
government.
WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did
not claim to be of the people, but on the contrary upheld the
"divine right of kings;" and _whereas_, The women of this nation
today, under a government which claims to be based upon individual
rights, in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the
wrongs which led to the war of the Revolution; and _whereas_, the
oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters, instead
of dwelling in a foreign land, are our husbands, fathers, brothers
and sons; therefore
_Resolved_, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater
cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than had the men of
1776.
_Resolved_, That with Abigail Adams we believe "the passion for
liberty can not be strong in the breasts of those who are
accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty;" that, as
she predicted in 1776, "we are determined to foment a rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice
or representation."
WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and that
a true republic is the best form of government in the world; and
_whereas_, This government is false to its underlying principles in
denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot; and
one-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century of boasted
liberty, are still political slaves; therefore
_Resolved_, That we protest against calling the present centennial
a celebration of the independence of the _people_ of the United
States.
_Resolved_, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on
the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound to
obey laws in whose making we have had no voice and, in presence of
the assembled nations of the world gathered on this soil to
celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the women of
this land.
Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage had long had in view the
preparation of a history of the woman's rights movement, which they
expected to be a pamphlet of several hundred pages, and they offered
this as a premium to every one who should send $5 toward the
contemplated headquarters.[87] Fifty-two women responded at once, and
with this $260 they ventured to rent fine, large parlors in a desirable
part of Philadelphia and fit them up in an attractive manner. By the
laws of Pennsylvania a married woman could not make a contract and Miss
Anthony, being the only femme sole, was obliged to assume the financial
responsibility. She and Mrs. Gage took charge of the headquarters May
25, and issued the following announcement:
The National Woman Suffrage Association has established its
Centennial headquarters in Philadelphia at No. 1431 Chestnut
street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the association,
are devoted to the special work of the year, pertaining to the
centennial celebration and the political party conventions; also to
calls, receptions, etc. On the table a Centennial autograph book
receives the names of visitors....
On July 4th, while the men of this nation and the world are
rejoicing that "all men are free and equal" in the United States, a
declaration of rights for women will be issued from these
headquarters, and a protest against calling this Centennial a
celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are
still political slaves. Let the women of the whole land, on that
day, in meetings, in parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be,
unite with us in this declaration and protest; and immediately
thereafter send full reports for record in our centennial book,
that the world may see that the women of 1876 know and feel their
political degradation no less than did the men of 1776.
In commemoration of the twenty-eighth anniversary of the first
woman's rights convention, the National Suffrage Association will
hold in Philadelphia, July 19 and 20, of the present year, a grand
mass convention, in which eminent reformers from the new and the
old world will take part.
From these headquarters eloquent letters were written to the national
political conventions and sent by delegations of prominent women,
asking for a woman suffrage plank. The Democrats ignored the question
in their platform; the Republicans adopted the following: "The
Republican party recognizes with approval the substantial advance
recently made toward the establishment of equal rights for women by the
many important amendments effected by the Republican legislatures, in
the laws which concern the personal and property relations of wives,
mothers and widows, and by the election and appointment of women to the
superintendence of education, charities and other public trusts. The
honest demands of this class of citizens for additional rights,
privileges and immunities should be treated with respectful
consideration." In a letter from Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, she says,
"Well, the Republicans have thickened the old sop and re-served it."
The women were determined to obtain a recognition at the centennial
celebration to be held July 4, in Independence Square. "It is the hour,
the golden hour, for woman to speak her word which shall roll down our
second century as has man's Fourth of July manifesto through the last
one hundred years," wrote Miss Anthony. Then she and Mrs. Stanton and
Mrs. Gage put their heads together and framed a document which had all
the holy fire of the immortal Declaration of Independence, and this
they proposed to have made a part of the-great day's proceedings.[88]
Their efforts to this end, their repulse and their subsequent action
are so delightfully described in the History of Woman Suffrage that it
would be presumptuous to attempt to improve upon it. Their utmost
efforts could obtain but four seats on the platform. Miss Anthony had a
ticket as reporter for her brother's paper. The earnest request of Mrs.
Stanton, president of the National Suffrage Association, to General
Joseph R. Hawley, president of the Centennial Commission, not that the
women might read but simply might present their declaration, was
refused on the ground that the program could not be changed. The report
thus continues:
As President Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting
Vice-President, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was
to officiate in his place and he, too, was addressed by note, and
courteously requested to make time for the reception of this
declaration. As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the
demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he
would render his aid. Yet he was forgetful that in his position
that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of
a hundred years, and he too refused; thus the simple request of
woman for a half moment's recognition on the nation's centennial
birthday was denied by all in authority.
While the women of the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the
right of public protest, lavish preparations were made for the
reception and entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons
of monarchial institutions. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a
representative of that form of government against which the United
States is a perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with
fulsome adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of
the day; Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose
shoulders rests the promise of a future kingship, was seated near.
Count Rochambeau of France, the Japanese commissioners, high
officials from Russia and Prussia, from Austria, Spain, England,
Turkey, representing the barbarism and semi-civilization of the
day, found no difficulty in securing recognition and places of
honor upon that platform, where representative womanhood was
denied.
Though refused by their own countrymen a place and part in the
centennial celebration, the women who had taken this presentation
in hand were not to be conquered. They had respectfully asked for
recognition; now that it had been denied, they determined to seize
upon the moment when the reading of the Declaration of Independence
closed, to proclaim to the world the tyranny and injustice of the
nation toward one-half its people. Five officers of the National
Suffrage Association, with that heroic spirit which has ever
animated lovers of liberty in resistance to tyranny, determined,
whatever the result, to present the Woman's Declaration of Rights
at the chosen hour. They would not, they dared not sacrifice the
golden opportunity to which they had so long looked forward; their
work was not for themselves alone, nor for the present generation,
but for all women of all time. The hopes of posterity were in their
hands and they determined to place on record for the daughters of
1976 the fact that their mothers of 1876 had asserted their
equality of rights, and impeached the government of that day for
its injustice toward woman. Thus, in taking a grander step toward
freedom than ever before, they would leave one bright remembrance
for the women of the next Centennial.
That historic Fourth of July dawned at last, one of the most
oppressive days of that terribly heated season. Susan B. Anthony,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake
and Phoebe Couzins made their way through the crowds under the
broiling sun to Independence Square, carrying the Woman's
Declaration of Rights. This declaration had been handsomely
engrossed by Mrs. Spencer and signed by the oldest and most
prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of
admission proved an open sesame through the military and all other
barriers, and a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies,
these women found themselves within the precincts from which most
of their sex were excluded.
The declaration of 1776 was read by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
about whose family clusters so much of historic fame. The close of
his reading was deemed the appropriate moment for the presentation
of the Woman's Declaration. Not quite sure how their approach might
be met--not quite certain if at this final moment they would be
permitted to reach the presiding officer--these ladies arose from
their seats at the back of the stage and walked down the aisle. The
bustle of preparation for the Brazilian hymn covered their advance.
The foreign guests, the military and civil officers who filled the
space directly around the speaker's stand, courteously made way,
while Miss Anthony in fitting words presented the Declaration. Mr.
Ferry's face paled, as bowing low, with no word, he received it,
and it thus became a part of the day's proceedings; the ladies
turned, scattering printed copies as they deliberately passed up
the aisle and off the platform. On every side eager hands were
stretched; men stood on seats and asked for them, while General
Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his audacious denial to women of
the right to present their Declaration, shouted, "Order, order!"
Going out through the crowd, they made their way to a platform
erected for the musicians in front of Independence Hall. Here on
this historic ground, under the shadow of of Washington's statue,
back of them the old bell which proclaimed "liberty to all the land
and all the inhabitants thereof," they took their places, and to a
listening, applauding crowd, Miss Anthony read a copy of the
Declaration just presented to Mr. Ferry. It was warmly applauded at
many points, and after again scattering a number of printed copies,
the delegation descended from the platform and hastened to the
convention of the National Association. A meeting had been
appointed at 12 o'clock, in the First Unitarian church, where Rev.
William H. Furness preached for fifty years, but whose pulpit was
then filled by Joseph May, a son of Rev. Samuel J. May. They found
the church crowded with an expectant audience, which greeted them
with thanks for what they had just done; the first act of this
memorable day taking place on the old centennial platform in
Independence Square, the last in a church so long devoted to
equality and justice.
The venerable Lucretia Mott, then in her eighty-fourth year,
presided. Belva A. Lockwood took up the judiciary, showing the way
that body lends itself to party politics. Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke
upon the writ of habeas corpus, pointing out what a mockery to
married women was that constitutional guarantee. Lucretia Mott
reviewed the progress of the reform from the first convention. Sara
Andrews Spencer illustrated the evils arising from two codes of
morality. Lillie Devereux Blake spoke upon trial by jury; Susan B.
Anthony upon taxation without representation, illustrating her
remarks by incidents of unjust taxation of women during the present
year. Elizabeth Cady Stanton pictured the aristocracy of sex and
the evils arising from manhood suffrage. Judge Esther Morris, of
Wyoming, said a few words in regard to suffrage in that territory.
Phoebe Couzins, with great pathos, told of woman's work in the war.
Margaret Parker, president of the women's suffrage club of Dundee,
Scotland, and of the newly formed International W.C.T.U., declared
this was worth the journey across the Atlantic. Mr. J.H. Raper, of
Manchester, England, characterized it as the grandest meeting of
the day, and said the patriot of a hundred years hence would seek
for every incident connected with it, and the next Centennial would
be adorned by the portraits of the women who sat upon that
platform.
The Hutchinsons were present and in their best vein interspersed
the speeches with appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott
did not confine herself to a single speech but, in Quaker style,
whenever the spirit moved made many happy points. As her sweet and
placid countenance appeared above the pulpit, the Hutchinsons burst
into, "Nearer, My God, to Thee." The effect was marvellous; the
audience at once arose, and spontaneously joined in the hymn. For
five long hours of that hot midsummer day, that crowded audience
listened earnestly to woman's demand for equality of rights before
the law. When the meeting at last adjourned, the Hutchinsons
singing, "A Hundred Years Hence," it was slowly and reluctantly
that the great audience left the house.
The headquarters were kept open for two months, the weekly receptions
were largely attended and the rooms each day crowded with visitors. The
immense autograph book was signed by hundreds, most of whom also
affixed their names to the Woman's Declaration of Rights. Lucretia Mott
always came in after attending the mid-week meeting of the Friends, and
the ladies had a pot of tea ready for her coming.[89] When she left she
never failed to hand them $5 "to pay for the trouble she had made," her
contributions in this way amounting to $50. George W. Childs gave $100,
Dr. Clemence Lozier, $100, Ellen C. Sargent, $50, Elizabeth B. Phelps,
$50, Miss Anthony herself contributed $175, and altogether about two
hundred people donated nearly $1,700, all of which was expended in
keeping up the headquarters and printing and circulating thousands of
documents. When the accounts were audited they showed a balance of just
$4.64.
At this time Mrs. Mott sent Miss Anthony this little note, accompanied
by a large package of fine tea: "I forgot to take the tea I promised
thee, so please accept it now. Thank thee for so oft remembering me
with the delicious drinks of it. After leaving thee so hurriedly
yesterday, I feared that thou wast still short of an even balance, and
now enclose another $10 for thy own personal use. It is too hard for
our widely extended national society to suffer thee to labor so
unceasingly without a consideration." But Miss Anthony did not work for
personal reward and said in a letter to her old friend Clarina Howard
Nichols: "The Kansas women say, 'All we have of freedom we owe to Mrs.
Nichols and yet we never have given her a testimonial.' Well, you and I
and all who labor to make the conditions of the world better for coming
generations, must find our testimonials in the good accomplished
through our work."
As soon as the Centennial headquarters were closed Miss Anthony
proceeded to carry out her cherished plan of writing the history of the
woman's rights movement. She had sent the most peremptory orders to
Mrs. Stanton not to make a lecture engagement before December 1, so
that in August, September, October and November they might prepare this
history. She then shipped to Mrs. Stanton's home several large trunks
and boxes full of letters, reports and various documents which she had
carefully preserved during the past quarter of a century, and the first
day of August they set to work. The entries in the diary for the next
two months give some idea of her state of mind: "I am immersed to my
ears and feel almost discouraged.... The work before me is simply
appalling.... The prospect of ever getting out a satisfactory history
grows less each day.... Would that the good spirits in my own brain
would come to the rescue!... O, these old letters! It makes me sad and
tired to read them over, to see the terrible strain I was under every
minute then, have been ever since, am now and shall be, I think, the
rest of my life."[90]
On August 24 occurred the death of Paulina Wright Davis and, at the
husband's request, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the funeral.
The former felt that again she had lost a friend who never could be
replaced. Mrs. Davis was a woman of beauty, culture, wealth and social
position and a life-long advocate of woman suffrage. In October the
dear cousin Anson Lapham passed away, and in the diary that night was
written: "No man except my father ever gave me such love and
confidence, and his acts were equal to his faith."
[Autograph:
With truest and tenderest friendship for my co-workers, I am as ever,
Pauline Wright Davis.]
Work was pressing upon her from every side. In the spring of this year
she had been engaged by the editors of Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia
to write the chapter on suffrage and prepare the biographies of a
number of eminent women. Amidst all the other cares of the summer and
fall, she had been endeavoring to collect the materials for these
sketches, having the usual experience. Some failed to answer; others
wrote asking a score of questions; many sent four times as many words
as were requested, with the statement that not one single line could be
cut out; while a number forwarded a mass of unintelligible matter and
requested her to make a good sketch out of it. The history also was
occupying her waking and sleeping thoughts, and the depleted condition
of her pocket-book foreshadowed the necessity of another lecture tour.
Meanwhile, the mother at home was growing very feeble, and on
Thanksgiving Day Miss Anthony wrote to her: "I feel as if I were
robbing myself of the last moments which I may ever have to be with
you, but I can not see the way clear to stay at home this coming
winter. It is ever thus with me, so hard to know which is the strongest
duty, the one that ought to be done first, and so I grope on in the
dark. That I am always away from home may look to the world as if I
care less for it than other people, whereas my longing for it almost
makes me weak; but you, dear mother, understand my love."
[Footnote 82: See Appendix for full speech.]
[Footnote 83: At Carbondale she addressed the students of the Normal
School, the day after her lecture, emphasizing the necessity of woman's
being able to care for herself, urging them to marry only for love and
not for support, and to look upon marriage as a luxury and not a
necessity. She was a little doubtful as to the effect of this talk upon
both faculty and students, but one of the professors called to tell her
how fitting was every word and how he had longed to have just those
things said. The girl students sent her a handsome bouquet as she was
taking her train.]
[Footnote 84: President M.B. Anderson, of Rochester University, wrote a
friend in this connection: "I always remember Miss Anthony as an angel
of mercy in the house of a sister who was crushed by the loss of a
son."]
[Footnote 85: See Appendix for full speech.]
[Footnote 86: From a large number of clippings, the following are
selected as specimens:
Miss Anthony has now earned the money and discharged the last
obligation of her paper. This is the work of a brave and good woman....
She is a woman who pays her debts and sets a watch upon her
lips.--Cincinnati Enquirer.
It is the fashion among fools of both sexes to sneer at Susan B.
Anthony and use her name to point witless jokes. But it seems to
us--and we differ from her most emphatically on the question of woman
suffrage--that her brave, unselfish life reflects a credit on womanhood
which the follies of a thousand others can not remove.--Utica Observer.
"She has paid her debts like a man," says an exchange. Like a man? Not
so. Not one man in a thousand but would have "squealed," "laid down"
and settled at ten or twenty cents on the dollar. As people go in this
wicked world, it is no more than fair to say in good faith that Miss
Anthony is a very admirable person. She is in business, as in other
matters, one of the few--the select few--who steer by their own compass
and not by the shifting winds.--Buffalo Express.
Miss Susan B. Anthony has done a noble thing, which deserves to be
widely known. She has lectured 120 times during this season and has
paid off the last debt of The Revolution. That she has felt obliged to
work thus for years when thousands of men avail themselves of the
privileges of the bankrupt act, is a phenomenal exhibition of personal
honor. A woman is thoroughly qualified to plead for the claims of her
own sex when she respects the rights of human nature so keenly.--New
York Graphic.
We are thankful to see the recognition accorded to the worth of our
townswoman. She has been often misjudged and sometimes abused; but
unfalteringly and unselfishly she has devoted herself to her life-work,
and despite cavilling and sneers, has deeply impressed her thought upon
the age in which she has been placed. Her executive talent has
unceasingly declared itself and her character has been without
reproach. She is today a power in the land, respected even by those who
oppose her. She may not witness the full triumph of her cause; but her
fame as a brave, truthful and consistent advocate of a conquering cause
is secure. Even in her lifetime she is receiving something of the
reward to which her fidelity to principle entities her.--Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle.]
[Footnote 87: When this work finally was issued at $15 per set, every
one of these pledges was carefully fulfilled, necessarily at a great
pecuniary loss.]
[Footnote 88: For full text of this magnificent document see History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 31.]
[Footnote 89: The little teapot and the cup and saucer which she used
now stand upon Miss Anthony's sideboard.]
[Footnote 90: To this work, which these women expected to accomplish in
four months, they gave every day that could be spared from other duties
for the next ten years!]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
COLORADO CAMPAIGN--POLITICAL ATTITUDE.
1877-1878.
The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of
Virginia L. Minor rendered useless any further efforts to obtain
suffrage under the National Constitution until it should be amended for
this special purpose. The agitation of the last eight years, however,
had not been without its value. The student of history will observe
that the ablest constitutional arguments ever made in favor of the
practical application of the great underlying principles of our
government, were those of Benjamin F. Butler, A.G. Riddle, Henry R.
Selden, William Loughridge, Francis Minor, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage on the right of women to vote
under the Fourteenth Amendment. These were reviewed by the newspapers
and law journals and widely discussed by the people, while the
congressional debates, published in the Record, became a part of
history.
Although from the standpoint of justice these arguments were
unanswerable, they did not succeed in establishing the political rights
of women, and the advocates therefore were compelled to return to their
former policy of demanding a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
which should protect them as the Fifteenth protected the negroes. To
this end, in November, 1876, an earnest appeal was sent out by Mrs.
Stanton, president; Miss Anthony, secretary; and Mrs. Gage, chairman of
the executive committee of the National Association, asking the women
to secure petitions for the amendment and send them to the annual
meeting. Two letters received by Miss Anthony in January, 1877,
illustrate the wide difference of opinion which prevailed. Wm. Lloyd
Garrison wrote:
You desire me to send you a letter, to be read at the Washington
convention, in favor of a petition to Congress, asking that body to
submit to the several States a Sixteenth Amendment securing
suffrage for all, irrespective of sex. On fully considering the
subject, I must decline doing so, because such a petition I deem to
be quite premature. If its request were complied with by the
present Congress--a supposition simply preposterous--the proposed
amendment would be rejected by every State in the Union, and in
nearly every instance by such an overwhelming majority as to bring
the movement into needless contempt. Even as a matter of
"agitation," I do not think it would pay. Look over the whole
country and see in the present state of public sentiment on the
question of woman suffrage what a mighty primary work remains to be
done in enlightening the masses, who know nothing and care nothing
about it and, consequently, are not at all prepared to cast their
vote for any such thing. I think it is a mistake to look for a
favorable consideration of the question on the part of legislators
under such circumstances. More light is needed for the popular
mind.
In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation, Mr. Garrison never
waited for the popular mind to become prepared but, by the ploughshare
of bold, aggressive action, he turned up the soil and made it ready for
the seed. When "more light" was needed, by vigorous effort he stirred
up a blaze which illuminated the world.
From Wendell Phillips came the old-time clarion note: "I think you are
on the right track--the best method to agitate the question--and I am
with you, though, between you and me, I still think the individual
States must lead off and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State
by State. But I mean always to help everywhere and every one."
The convention met in Lincoln Hall, January 16 and 17. Although there
had been but a few weeks for the work, petitions asking a Sixteenth
Amendment were received from twenty-six different States, aggregating
over 10,000 names. The History says: "To Sara Andrews Spencer we are
indebted for the great labor of receiving, assorting, counting,
rolling-up and planning the presentation of the petitions. It was by a
well-considered coup d'état that, with her brave coadjutors, she
appeared on the floor of the House and gave each member a petition from
his own State. Even Miss Anthony, always calm in the hour of danger, on
finding herself suddenly whisked into those sacred enclosures, amid a
crowd of stalwart men, spittoons and scrap-baskets, when brought
vis-a-vis with our champion, Mr. Hoar, hastily apologized for the
intrusion, to which the honorable gentleman promptly replied, 'I hope,
madam, yet to see you on this floor in your own right and in business
hours too.'"
The spectacle is variously described.[91] The trustworthy correspondent
of the Independent, Mary Clemmer, looked at the proceedings with a
woman's eyes and, in her weekly letter, thus vented her indignation:
A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity and
without comment; but the majority seemed intensely conscious of
holding something unutterably funny in their hands. They appeared
to consider it a huge joke. The entire Senate presented the
appearance of a laughing-school practising side-splitting and
ear-extended grins. Mr. Wadleigh leaned back in his chair and shook
with laughter, after portraying to his next neighbor, Pinkney
Whyte, of Maryland, the apparition of Pinkney's landlady descending
upon the polls like a wolf on the fold, to annihilate his election.
Oglesby, erst warrior of Illinois, spake with such endearing
gallantry of his "dear constituents," whom he did all his wit could
do to make ridiculous, that the Senate laughed, and even Roscoe
Conkling, who never condescends to sneer at a woman in public,
turned and listened and smiled his most sardonic smile. Then
Thurman blew his loudest regulation blast--sure portent of
approaching battle--and rose and moved that the petition be
referred to the committee on public lands, of which Oglesby is
chairman. At this proposition--intended to be equally humorous and
contemptuous--the whole Senate laughed aloud.
There was one senator man enough and gentleman enough to lift the
petition from this insulting proposition. It was Senator Sargent,
of California, the husband of the woman who, though a senator's
wife, is brave enough to be the treasurer of the National Suffrage
Association. He turned to Mr. Thurman and demanded for the petition
of more than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be
given to any other.... Then the craven Senate declared Thurman's
motion, which was only an insult, carried. Let it be recorded of
the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress that the one petition which
it received as a preposterous joke and treated with utter contempt
and outrage was that of tens of thousands of the mothers, wives and
daughters of the land.
The Capital of Sunday was perfectly correct when it said: "The
ladies managed the business badly. If they had employed the female
lobby, the venerable Solons would have softened and thrown open
their doors as readily as their hearts." It seems an ungracious
thing to say; but it is the truth. The woman who wins her way with
the majority of these men is the siren of the gallery and the
anteroom, who sends in her card and her invitation to the senator
at his desk. She never talks of "rights." She cares for no "cause"
but her own cause of ease and pelf. She shakes her tresses,
"banged" and usually blonde; she lifts her alluring eyes, and nine
times out of ten makes him do as she listeth. No wonder when the
earnest appeal of honest women reaches his hands, he has neither
response, honor nor justice to give it.
Miss Anthony had been speaking in all parts of the country for a
quarter of a century and generally had been her own manager. The
preceding year she had given the Slayton Lyceum Bureau a partial trial
and at the beginning of 1877 made a contract with it, commencing the
last of January. The entire first page of the circular for the season
was devoted to this new engagement and began:
The manager takes pride in announcing the name of Susan B. Anthony,
the most earnest, fearless advocate of the ballot for woman. She
has hitherto confined herself entirely to this one question, which
to her is most sacred and righteous, but this season we are to have
something different, as will be seen from the titles of her new
lectures. Her great speeches, "Woman and the Sixteenth Amendment,"
and "Woman wants Bread, not the Ballot," will still be called for,
and committees will have their choice in all cases.... A certain
gentleman frequently wrote us last year to avoid "all night rides"
after his lectures; Miss Anthony never makes such a request. She
can lecture every night in the season.... When a list of fifty or
one hundred engagements has been mapped out and fixed, nothing but
an act of God will prevent her filling them.... Of nearly fifty
consecutive lectures, delivered by Miss Anthony last spring in the
State of Illinois alone, only two failed to realize a profit....
She is always making converts among the men as well as the women.
Among the notices quoted is one from Col. John W. Forney, of the
Philadelphia Press, saying: "I must accept woman suffrage as I did
negro emancipation; as a necessity made urgent and imperative by the
times in which we live. Put me down then, if you please, as being an
ardent woman's rights man, fighting under the banner of Susan B.
Anthony, and proud of following such a leader."
[Autograph:
Very truly yours.
J W Forney]
Miss Anthony found both advantages and disadvantages in this new
arrangement; for while it relieved her of much responsibility, it took
away the control of her own time and movements, a situation which she
soon found very trying. She lectured through February and March, but by
this time her sister, Mrs. Hannah Mosher, whose failing health had sent
her to Kansas in the hope of benefit, was declared by the physicians
beyond recovery. Miss Anthony's first impulse was to hasten to her
side, but she was confronted with her lecture engagements and told that
it would be impossible to release her until May. She was almost
desperate to be with the loved one and at last could bear it no longer,
so telegraphing Mr. Slayton to cancel everything after April 5,
regardless of consequences, she took the train at Chicago and reached
Leavenworth on the 7th. She found her sister rapidly declining with the
same inexorable disease which had claimed another four years before,
and at once installed herself beside the invalid, who was rejoiced
indeed to have her companionship and ministrations. All that loving
hands could do she had had from husband, children and brothers, but she
had longed for the presence of her sister and it filled her with joy
and peace.
In just a week, though her heart was breaking, Miss Anthony was obliged
to return to Illinois to fill four or five engagements in places which
threatened claims for damages if this were not done. She hastened back
to Leavenworth, reaching the bedside of her sister at midnight, April
20, and scarcely leaving it a moment until the end came, May 12.
Between herself and this sister, just nineteen months younger,
beautiful in character and strong in affection, there ever had existed
the closest sympathy. For the last decade they had been separated only
by a dooryard, they had shared each other's every joy and sorrow, and
the severing of these ties of over a half-century seemed more than she
could endure.
She remained at Leavenworth,[92] trying to renew her strength and
courage, until the last of June, when she returned to Rochester, taking
with her the orphaned daughter Louise. Many comforting letters and
tokens of affection came to her during these months, among them a gift
of $100 from Helen Potter, the famous impersonator. Her imitations of
Gough, Ristori, Charlotte Cushman, Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Stanton and
even Miss Anthony herself were most remarkable. During the Centennial
they had become warm personal friends, and in giving the money she
said: "Now, this is not for any society or committee or cause, but for
your very self."
Mrs. Stanton wrote her: "Do be careful, dear Susan, you can not stand
what you once did. I should feel desolate indeed with you gone." When
the lecturing had commenced she again wrote: "As I go dragging around
in these despicable hotels, I think of you and often wish we had at
least the little comfort of enduring it together. When is your agony
over?" Referring to a young woman speaker who was being spoiled by
flattery, she said: "We should be thankful, Susan, for the ridicule and
abuse on which we have fed." To one who tried to make trouble between
Miss Anthony and herself she sent this reply: "Our friendship is of too
long standing and has too deep roots to be easily shattered. I think we
have said worse things to each other, face to face, than we have ever
said about each other. Nothing that Susan could say or do could break
my friendship with her; and I know nothing could uproot her affection
for me." And to Miss Anthony she wrote: "I send you letters from _our_
children. As the environments of the mother influence the child in
prenatal life, and you were with me so much, there is no doubt you have
had a part in making them what they are. There are a depth and
earnestness in these younger ones and a love for you that delight my
heart." Such letters as these are scattered thickly through the
correspondence of nearly fifty years, and while Miss Anthony seldom put
her own feelings into words, her absolute loyalty and devotion to Mrs.
Stanton during all the half-century bear their own testimony.
The talented contributor to the Philadelphia Sunday Republic, Annie
McDowell, paid a beautiful tribute to Miss Anthony at this time,
illustrating how much she was loved by women:
"Some one wishes to know which of the advocates of woman's rights
we think the ablest. Why, Susan B., of course. Without her, the
organization would have been utterly broken to pieces and
scattered. She is the guiding spirit, the executive power that
leads the forlorn hope and brings order out of chaos. Others seek
to promote their own interests, but Susan, earnest, honest,
self-sacrificing, much-enduring, thinks only of the work she has in
hand, and speculates solely on the chances of living long enough to
accomplish it. She has given up home, friends, her profession of
teacher and the modest competence acquired by her labor; has been
caricatured, ridiculed, maligned and persecuted, but has never
turned aside or faltered in the work to which she has given her
life. Whatever may be the opinion of the conservative or fogy world
with regard to Susan B. Anthony, those who know her well and have
watched her career most attentively, know her to be rich in all the
best and most tender of womanly virtues, and possessed of as brave
and noble a spirit and as great integrity of character as ever fell
to the lot of mortal woman."
The legislature of Colorado had submitted the question of woman
suffrage to be voted on October 2, 1877, and notwithstanding the
lucrative business under the lyceum bureau, Miss Anthony could not
resist offering her services to the women of Colorado with their little
money and few speakers. From Dr. Alida C. Avery, president of the State
Suffrage Association, came the quick response: "Your generous proposal
was duly received, and laid before the executive committee, who
resolved that the thanks of the association be tendered you for your
friendly offer, which we gratefully accept."
Although inured to hardship, Miss Anthony found this Colorado campaign
the most trying she ever had experienced, not excepting that of Kansas
ten years before. The country was new, many of the towns were off the
railroad among the mountains and in most of them woman suffrage never
had been heard of; there was no one to advertise the meetings, nobody
to meet her when she reached her destination, hotels were of the most
primitive nature and there were few public halls. There were, of
course, some oases in this desert, and occasionally she found a good
hotel or was hospitably entertained in a comfortable home. At one place
she spoke in the railroad station to about twenty-five men who could
not understand what it was she wanted them to do, though all were
voters. Sometimes a landlord would clear out the hotel dining-room and
she would gather her audience there, but they would have to stand and
soon would grow tired. The mining towns were filled with a densely
ignorant class of foreigners, and some of the southern counties were
almost wholly populated by Mexicans. It was to these men that an
American woman, her grandfather a soldier of the Revolution, appealed
for the right of women to representation in this government.
To reach Del Norte Miss Anthony rode sixty-five miles by stage over a
vast, arid tract evidently once the bed of an inland sea, but the
terrible discomforts of the journey were almost overlooked in the
enjoyment of the magnificent scenery. She travelled all the next night;
at Wagon Wheel Gap the stage stopped for a while and, taking a cup, she
went alone down to the river, drank of its icy waters and stood a long
time absorbed in the glory of the moonlight on the mountain peaks. In
all this weary journey of two days, she was the only woman in a stage
filled with men. When she reached Lake City she was delightfully
entertained, finding her hostess to be a college graduate, and spoke in
the evening from a dry-goods box on the courthouse steps to an
enthusiastic audience of a thousand persons. Ouray was the next place
marked on the route sent her, but to reach it would require a ride of
fifty miles over a dangerous mountain trail or a three days' journey of
150 miles around, for which she must hire a private conveyance, so she
gave it up.
She rested one whole day and night and started at 6 A.M. on a buckboard
for the next place, wound around the mountainsides by the picturesque
Gunnison river, and reached her destination at 5 o'clock. She found a
disbeliever of equal rights in her landlady, whom she describes as "a
weak, silly woman and a wretched cook and housekeeper." To be an
opponent of suffrage and a poor housekeeper Miss Anthony always
regarded as two unpardonable sins. The husband, however, intended to
vote for it. At the next stopping-place her hostess was a cultured
woman, her house neatly kept and meals well-cooked, and she wanted to
vote. The husband in this case was violently opposed and expected to
cast his ballot against the amendment. Thus it is that wives are
"represented by their husbands."
On she went, over mountain and through canyon, across the "great
divide," sometimes having large audiences, more often only a handful,
and enduring every possible hardship in the way of travel, sleep and
food. At Oro City she lectured in a saloon, as she had done at a number
of places, and Governor Routt, happening to be in town, stood by her
and spoke also in favor of woman suffrage. At many places she slept on
a straw-filled tick laid on planks, with sometimes a "corded" bed for a
luxury. A door with a lock scarcely ever was found. Once she had a room
with a board partition which extended only half-way up, separating it
from one adjoining where half a dozen men slept. It is hardly necessary
to say that this was a wakeful night and the dawn was hailed with
rejoicing. At Leadville the gold fever was at its height and she spoke
in a big saloon to the roughest crowd she had encountered. They were
good-natured, however, and when they saw she was coughing from the
tobacco smoke, put out their pipes and made up for the sacrifice by
more frequent drinks. At Fair Play she found the Democratic editor had
placarded the town with bills announcing in big letters: "A New
Version! Suffrage! Free Love in the Ascendency. Anthony! On the Gale
Tonight." The citizens were indignant, there was a large and respectful
audience, Miss Anthony was introduced by Judge Henry and resolutions
were unanimously passed denouncing the posters.
On election day, her work finished, she started on a stage ride of
eighty-five miles to Denver. The collections at her twenty-four
meetings amounted to $165. Her fare to Colorado and return, exclusive
of some passes furnished by her brother and including sleeper and
meals, was $100, and her expenses during the tour more than used up the
other $65, so it hardly could be called a good financial speculation.
Soon afterwards she received from Mr. and Mrs. Israel Hall, of Ann
Arbor, Mich., a deed for 320 acres of well-timbered land in St. Francis
county, Ark., "as a tribute to her life-work for woman suffrage and
especially her hard campaign in Colorado." There came also a letter
from the ever-generous and faithful Mrs. Knox Goodrich, of San Jose,
Cal., with a draft for $50 "to be used for your campaign expenses;" and
in her diary Miss Anthony writes: "It is a great comfort, after all
these years of financially unrequited work, to receive such marks of
appreciation."
At Denver she met Margaret Campbell, of Iowa, and Matilda Hindman, of
Pennsylvania, who also had been campaigning in Colorado. They had an
amusing time comparing notes, but as Mrs. Campbell had travelled in her
own carriage with her husband, and Miss Hindman had spoken mostly in
towns along the railroad, their experiences had been less picturesque
and less harrowing. She also met here Abby Sage Richardson, who was
giving a course of readings in Denver. It was in this locality that her
sister Hannah had spent many weary weeks the year before, seeking for
health, and Miss Anthony hunted up every person who had known her,
hoping each would recall some incident of her stay; visited every spot
her sister had loved, and felt the whole place haunted with her
hallowed memory.
Dr. Alida C. Avery was going East for some time, but was to leave two
young women medical students in her house and she invited Miss Anthony
to stay there while she remained in Denver. She was soon installed in
the large, airy front chamber of this lovely home, looking down on a
grassy and well-irrigated lawn and outward towards the rugged and
massive Rocky mountains. It was an inspiring spot and, as she had
promised a new lecture for the Slayton Bureau, she decided to remain
and write it here. Her surroundings recalled the many charming homes
made and maintained by unmarried women whom she had visited, and so in
the three weeks that she enjoyed Dr. Avery's hospitality, she wrote her
lecture, "Homes of Single Women." During this time she spoke at
Boulder; and also in the opera house at Denver under the auspices of a
committee, receiving $100.
She started, October 23, on a long lecture tour arranged for her
through Nebraska,[93] Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, which
lasted the remainder of the year. She almost perished with cold and
fatigue before it was finished but found some compensation in the $30 a
night which the lectures yielded. At this time she received an urgent
request from a San Francisco lecture committee to come to that State,
but was unable to accept. "If I only could have sister Mary with me
over Sunday in these dull and lonely little towns, I could stand it the
rest of the week," she wrote; and to a friend who sent her an account
of a visit to her mother: "I am very glad you do go occasionally to see
dear mother, sitting there in her rocking-chair by the window as life
ebbs out and out. O, how I fear the final ebb will come when I am away,
but still I hope and trust it may not, and work and work on."
As Miss Anthony was still under contract with the lecture bureau, she
was once more compelled to forego the satisfaction of attending the
annual convention in Washington, January 8 and 9, 1878, but as in 1876
she sent $100 of the money she had worked so hard to earn. "It is not
quite just to myself to do it," she wrote a friend, "but if the women
of wealth and leisure will not help us, we must give both the labor and
the money." While this convention was a success as to numbers and
enthusiasm, several things occurred which the ladies thought might have
been avoided if Miss Anthony had been in command with her cool head and
firm hand. Especially was this true in regard to a prayer meeting which
some of the religious zealots, in spite of the most urgent appeals from
the other members, persisted in holding in the reception room of the
Capitol directly after a morning session of the convention. The affair
itself was most inopportune but, to make it still worse, the cranks and
bores who always are watching for an opportunity, gained control and
turned it into a farce.
In her disgust and wrath Mrs. Stanton wrote Miss Anthony: "Mrs. Sargent
and I did not attend the prayer meeting. As God has never taken a very
active part in the suffrage movement, I thought I would stay at home
and get ready to implore the committee, having more faith in their
power to render us the desired aid." Mrs. Sargent, with her usual calm
and beautiful philosophy, wrote: "Do not let yourself be troubled. We
can not take down and rebuild without a great deal of dirt and rubbish,
and we must endure it all for the sake of the grand edifice that is to
appear in due time. Work and let work, each in her own way. We can not
all work alike any more than we can look alike. We must not require
impossibilities. All action helps us, it shows life; inaction, we know,
means death. I hope you can be with us next convention. The women of
this country and of the world owe you a debt they never can repay. I
know, however, that you will get your reward."
Virginia L. Minor sent this earnest plea: "Can not you and Mrs.
Stanton, before another convention, manage in some way to civilize our
platform and keep off that element which is doing us so much harm? I
think the ship never floated that had so many barnacles attached as has
ours.... I have a compliment for you, my dear. Wendell Phillips has
just told a reporter of the St. Louis Post that, 'of all the advocates
of the woman's movement, Miss Anthony stands at the head.'"
In her usual racy style Phoebe Couzins concluded her description by
saying: "It seems very strange that when you are not about, things
generally break loose and no woman can be found who unites the
moderation, brains and common sense necessary to carry matters to a
respectable conclusion. That meeting was like those they used to have
in the District of Columbia. Not until the National Association, in the
persons of Mrs. Stanton and yourself, came to the rescue and raised
them to a dignified standard did they attain any degree of hearing from
the thoughtful people of the capital." And so Miss Anthony determined
that no lecture bureau should keep her away from another National
convention.
The entire year of 1878, with the exception of the three summer months,
was spent in the lecture field. On July 19 Miss Anthony and other
workers arranged a celebration at Rochester of the thirtieth
anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. This was held in
place of the usual May Anniversary in New York and was attended by a
distinguished body of women. The Unitarian church, in spite of the
intense heat, was filled with a representative audience. The noble
Quaker, Amy Post, now seventy-seven years old, who had been the leading
spirit in the convention of thirty years before, assisted in the
arrangements. The usual brilliant and logical speeches were made by
Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs, Gage, Dr. Lozier, Mrs.
Spencer, Mrs. Sargent, Frederick Douglass, Miss Couzins and others.
This was the first appearance on the National platform of Mrs. May
Wright Sewall, of Indianapolis, from that time one of the leaders of
the movement. Almost one hundred interesting and encouraging letters
were received from Phillips, Garrison, Senator Sargent, Frances E.
Willard, Clara Barton and many others in this country and in England.
This was the last convention Lucretia Mott ever attended, and she had
made the journey hither under protest from her family, for she was
nearly eighty-six years old, but her devoted friend Sarah Pugh
accompanied her. She spoke several times in her old, gentle,
half-humorous but convincing manner and was heard with rapt attention.
As she walked down the aisle to leave the church, the whole audience
arose and Frederick Douglass called out with emotion, "Good-by,
Lucretia." The convention received a telegram of congratulation from
the International Congress at Paris, presided over by Victor Hugo. Mrs.
Stanton was re-elected president and Miss Anthony chairman of the
executive committee. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle said:
The assemblage was composed of as fine a body of American women as
ever met in convention or anywhere else. Among them were many noted
for their culture and refinement, and for their attainments in the
departments of literature, medicine, divinity and law. As Douglass
said, to which the president bowed her acquiescence, any cause
which could stand the test of thirty years' agitation, was bound to
succeed. The foremost ladies engaged in the movement today are
those who initiated it in this country and have bravely and grandly
upheld their cause from that day to this. Among them we must first
speak of Susan B. Anthony, one of the most sensible and worthy
citizens of this republic, a lady of warm and tender heart but
indomitable purpose and energy, and a resident of whom Rochester
may well be proud.
Miss Anthony was very tired after the labors of this convention and was
glad to remain with the invalid mother while sister Mary went to the
White mountains for rest and change. She received an invitation from
the board of directors to address the Kansas State Fair in September,
and also one from Col. John P. St. John, Republican candidate for
governor, to speak at a Grand National Temperance Camp Meeting near
Lawrence, but was obliged to decline both.
During the summer of 1878 reports were so constantly circulated
declaring woman suffrage a failure in Wyoming that Miss Anthony wrote
to J.H. Hayford, postmaster and editor of the Sentinel at Laramie City,
in regard to one of these in the New York World, which paper declared
it would vouch for the integrity of the writer. She received the
following answer:
The enclosed slander upon Wyoming women I had seen before, but did
not deem it worthy reply. Some of my Cheyenne friends took pains to
ascertain the writer and they assure me (and the Cheyenne papers
have published the fact) that he is a worthless, drunken dead-beat,
who worked out a ten days' sentence on the streets of that city
with a ball and chain to his leg.
I have not time to go into a detailed history of the practical
working of woman suffrage in Wyoming, but I can add my testimony to
the fact that its effect has been most salutary and beneficial. Not
one of the imaginary evils which its opponents predicted has ever
been realized here. On this frontier, where the roughest element is
supposed to exist, and where women are so largely in the
minority--even here, under these adverse circumstances, _woman's
influence has redeemed our politics_. Our elections are conducted
as quietly and civilly as any other public gatherings. Republicans
are not always elected, the most desirable men are not always
elected, perhaps; but the influence of our women is almost
universally given for the best men and the best laws, and we would
as soon be without woman's assistance in the government of the
family as in that of the Territory.
After having tried the experiment for nine years, it is safe to say
there is not one citizen of the Territory--man or woman--who
desires good order, good laws and good government, who would be
willing to see it abolished. Woman's influence in the government of
our Territory is a terror only to evil-doers, and they, and they
only, are the ones who desire its repeal. Such base slanders as the
specimen you sent me excite in the minds of Wyoming citizens only
feelings of disgust and contempt for the author, and wonder at the
ignorance of any one who is gullible enough to believe them.
In August she received a letter from Lucy Stone, asking if she had been
correctly reported by the papers as saying that "the suffragists would
advocate any party which would declare for woman suffrage," to which
she replied:
I answer "yes," save that I used the pronoun "I" instead of the
word "suffragists." I spoke for myself alone, because I know many
of our women are so much more intensely Republican or Democratic,
Hard-Money or Green-back, Prohibition or License, than they are
"Equal Rights for All," that now, as in the past, they will hold
the question of woman's enfranchisement in abeyance, while they
give their money and their energies to secure the success of one or
another of the contending parties, even though it wholly ignore
their just claim to a voice in the government. It is not that I
have no opinions or preferences on the many grave questions which
distract and divide the parties; but it is that, in my judgment,
the right of self-government for one-half the people is of far more
vital consequence to the nation than any or all other questions.
This has been my position ever since the abolition of slavery, by
which the black race were raised from chattels to citizens, and
invested also with civil rights equally with the cultured,
tax-paying, white women of the country. Have you forgotten the cry
"This is the negro's hour," which came back to us in 1866, when we
urged the Abolitionists to make common cause with us and demand
suffrage _as a right_ for all United States citizens, instead of
asking it simply as an _expediency_ for only another class of men?
Do you not remember, too how the taunt "false to the negro" was
flung into the face of every one of us who insisted that it was
"humanity's hour," and that to talk of "freedom without the ballot"
was no less "mockery" to woman than to the negro?
If, in those most trying reconstruction years, I could not
subordinate the fundamental principle of "Equal Rights for All" to
Republican party necessity for negro suffrage--if, in that fearful
national emergency, I would not sacrifice the greater to the
less--I surely can not and will not today hold any of the far less
important party questions paramount to that most sacred principle
of our republic. So long as you and I and all women are political
slaves, it ill becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions
of our sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with
self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon
the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as
their political equals, duly register our names and respectfully
count our opinions at the ballot-box, as a constitutional
right--not as a high crime, punishable with "$500 fine or six
months' imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court."
If all the "suffragists" of all the States could see eye to eye on
this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and
politician not fully and unequivocally committed to "Equal Rights
for Women," we should become at once a moral balance of power which
could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to
proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform. "In union
alone there is strength." Until that good day comes, I shall
continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling to
get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our
enslaved half of the people; and in turn, I shall promise to do all
a "subject" can do, for the success of the party which thus
declares its purpose "to undo the heavy burdens and let the
oppressed go free."
[Footnote 91: That women will, by voting, lose nothing of man's
courteous, chivalric attention and respect is admirably proven by the
manner in which Congress, in the midst of the most anxious and
perplexing presidential conflict in our history, received their appeals
for a Sixteenth Amendment protecting the rights of women. In both
Houses, by unanimous consent, the petitions were presented and read in
open session, and the most prominent senators impressed upon the Senate
the importance of the question.... The ladies naturally feel greatly
encouraged by the evident interest of both parties in the proposed
amendment.--Washington Star.
The time has evidently arrived when demands for a recognition of the
personal, civil and political rights of one-half--unquestionably the
better half--of the people can not be laughed down or sneered down, and
recent indications are that they can not much longer be voted down. The
speaker of the House set a commendable example by proposing that the
petitions be delivered in open session, to which there was no
objection. The early advocates of equal rights for women--Hoar, Kelley,
Banks, Kasson, Lawrence and Lapham--were, if possible, surpassed in
courtesy by those who are not committed, but are beginning to see that
a finer element, in the body politic would clear the vision, purify the
atmosphere and help to settle many vexed questions on the basis of
exact and equal justice. In the Senate the unprecedented courtesy was
extended to women of half an hour's time on the floor and while this
kind of business has usually been transacted with an attendance of from
seven to ten senators, it was observed that only two out of the
twenty-six who had Sixteenth Amendment petitions to present were out of
their seats.--National Republican.]
[Footnote 92: For the first time in twenty years Miss Anthony missed
the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York City.]
[Footnote 93: At Beatrice, Neb., Miss Anthony met for the first time
Mrs. Clara B. Colby, who said in a bright letter received soon
afterwards: "Everybody was delighted with your lecture, except one man
who sat there with a child on each arm, and he said you never looked at
him or gave him a bit of credit for it."]
CHAPTER XXIX.
SENATE COMMITTEE REPORT--PRESS COMMENT.
1879-1880.
At the beginning of 1879 Miss Anthony put all lecture work aside until
after the Washington convention, January 9 and 10. The thunderbolts
forged by the resolution committee were a little more fiery even than
those of former years, and the combined workmanship of the two Vulcans,
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, is quite apparent, with vivid sparks
from the chairman, Mrs. Spencer:
_Resolved_, That the Forty-fifth Congress, in ignoring the
individual petitions of more than 300 women of high social standing
and culture, asking for the removal of their political
disabilities, while promptly enacting special legislation for the
removal of those of every man who petitioned, illustrates the
indifference of Congress to the rights of a sex deprived of
political power.
WHEREAS, Senator Blaine says it is the very essence of tyranny to
count any citizens in the basis of representation who are denied a
voice in the laws and a choice in their rulers; therefore
_Resolved_, That counting women in the basis of representation,
while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to
swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable
usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of this republic.
WHEREAS, In President Hayes' last message, he makes a truly
paternal review of the interests of this republic, both great and
small, from the army, the navy and our foreign relations, to the
ten little Indians in Hampton, Va., our timber on the western
mountains, and the switches of the Washington railroads; from the
Paris Exposition, the postal service, the abundant harvests, and
the possible bulldozing of some colored men in various southern
districts, to cruelty to live animals and the crowded condition of
the mummies, dead ducks and fishes in the Smithsonian
Institute--yet forgets to mention 20,000,000 women robbed of their
social, civil and political rights; therefore
_Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed to wait upon the
President and remind him of the existence of one-half the American
people ....
WHEREAS, All the vital principles involved in the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments have been denied in their
application to women by courts, legislatures and political parties;
therefore
_Resolved_, That it is logical that these amendments should fail to
protect even the male African for whom said courts, legislatures
and parties declare they were expressly designed and enacted.
WHEREAS, The general government has refused to exercise federal
power to protect women in their right to vote in the various States
and Territories; therefore
_Resolved_, That it should forbear to exercise federal power to
disfranchise the women of Utah, who have had a more just and
liberal spirit shown them by Mormon men than Gentile women in the
States have yet received from their rulers.
WHEREAS, The proposed legislation for Chinese women on the Pacific
slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the opinion of the
press that no respectable woman should be seen in the streets after
dark, are all based upon the presumption that woman's freedom must
be forever sacrificed to man's license; therefore
_Resolved_, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by
which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our
streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom which
belongs to her by day and by night.
An address to President Hayes, asking that in his next message he
recommend that women should be protected in their civil and political
rights, was signed by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage. Several
ladies, by appointment, had a private audience in the President's
library and a courteous and friendly hearing. The petition for a
Sixteenth Amendment was sent in printed form to every member of
Congress, presented in the Senate by Vice-President Wheeler and, at the
request of Senator Ferry, was read at length and referred to the
committee on privileges and elections. This was done by the special
desire of its chairman, Senator Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, who
stated that he wished to bring in a report in favor of the
amendment.[94]
[Autograph: O.P. Morton]
Before the committee could act upon this question Senator Morton passed
away. An adverse report was presented by his successor, Senator
Bainbridge Wadleigh, of New Hampshire, June 14, 1878. Among many severe
scorings received by this honorable gentleman, the following from Mary
Clemmer will serve as an example:
... You can not be unconscious of the fact that a new race of
women is born into the world who, while they lack no womanly
attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It
will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before
the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happen to
be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she
happen to be a woman.
On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical
strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person
the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I am a
property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do you
assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen,
while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between
me and a man? Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a
lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my
own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God. Leave to
unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the
distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator
do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an
equal chance to make the best and most of himself.
If American men could say, as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a single
obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the beginning has so
heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war, men and women
would reign together, the equal companions, friends, helpers and
lovers that nature intended they should be. But what is love,
tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice? Tyranny and
servitude, that is all, brute supremacy, spiritual slavery. By what
authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more
enlightened franchise, for political equality, if even six women
citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand
both?
All the women's papers expressed indignation, and there was general
rejoicing when, at the next election, Mr. Wadleigh was superseded by
Hon. Henry W. Blair.
The first favorable consideration this question ever received from the
Senate was the minority report of this committee, signed by Senators
George F. Hoar, John H. Mitchell and Angus Cameron, an unanswerable
argument for the enfranchisement of women.[95] It declared that "the
people of the United States are committed to the doctrine of universal
suffrage by their constitution, their history and their opinions, and
by it they must stand or fall." One week later the bill admitting women
to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate, grandly
advocated by Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar.
[Autograph: I am yrs very truly Geo F Hoar]
After the convention Miss Anthony went to Tenafly with Mrs. Stanton for
a few days, to aid in disentangling the mass of material which was
being prepared for the History; then started again into the lecture
field, commencing at Skowhegan, Me. She lectured through New Hampshire
and Vermont, taking long sleigh-rides from point to point, through wind
and sleet, but comforted by the thought that many of her audience had
done likewise to receive the gospel she preached. On her way westward
she stopped at home for one short day, the first for four months, and
then started on the old route through the States of the Middle West,
this year adding Kentucky to the list. It is not essential to a full
appreciation of her work to follow in detail these tours, which
extended through a number of years and were full of pleasant as well as
disagreeable features; nor is it possible to quote extensively the
comments of the press. Miss Anthony undoubtedly has been as widely
written up as any lecturer, and she seldom received less than a column
in each paper of every town visited. Large numbers of these notices
have been carefully preserved in those wonderful scrap-books which
cover a period of fifty years.
At first her demands seemed so radical and the idea of a woman on the
platform was so contrary to the precedent of all the ages, that the
tone of the press, almost without exception, was contemptuous or
denunciatory. As the justice of her claims began to dawn upon the minds
of enlightened people, as many other prominent women joined in
advocating the same reforms, and as these were adopted, one after
another, without serious consequences, the public mind awakened to the
remarkable change which was being wrought, and in a large measure gave
its approval. When the masses of people throughout the country came to
see and hear and know Miss Anthony, they resented the way in which she
had been misrepresented. There was in her manner and words so much of
dignity, earnestness and sincerity that "those who came to scoff
remained to pray," and this change of sentiment was nowhere so marked
as in the newspapers. Even those who differed radically from her views
paid tribute to the persistence with which she had urged them and the
sacrifices she had made for them during the past thirty years. Not only
had there been developed a recognition of her high purposes and noble
life, but also of her great intellectual ability and clear
comprehension of all the issues of the day. An extract from the Terre
Haute Express, February 12, 1879, illustrates this:
Miss Anthony's lecture was full of fine passages and strong
appeals, and replete with well-stated facts in support of her
arguments. She has wonderful command of language, and her speech at
times flows with such rapidity that no reporter could do her
justice or catch a tithe of the brilliance of her sayings.
Moreover, there are not half of our public men who are nearly so
well posted in the political affairs of our country as she, or who,
knowing them, could frame them so solidly in argument. If the women
of the nation were half so high-minded or even half so earnest,
their title to the franchise might soon be granted.[96]
Another Indiana paper thus voiced the changing sentiment: "The fact is,
that like the advance agent of any great reform--especially if a
woman--Susan B. Anthony has been so belied and maligned by the press in
years gone by that many who do not stop to think had come to believe
her a perfect ogre, a cross-grained, incongruous old maid whom nobody
could like, when the truth of the matter is, one has but to look at and
listen to her, either in public or private, to realize that she is a
pure, generous, deep-thinking, womanly woman. Simply because she has
lived her own life, spoken her own thoughts and stood upon her own
platform, the masses have condemned her; but history has already
recorded her as one of the most earnest, hard-working reformers of the
day. If the women of this country only knew how many changes and
ameliorations have been made in the laws regarding themselves through
her unselfish, persistent efforts, at her approach they would all rise
up and call her blessed." But that there still existed editors of the
old-time caliber, this extract from the Richmond, Ky., Herald, October
29, 1879, shows:
Miss Anthony is above the medium height for women, dresses plainly,
is uncomely in person, has rather coarse, rugged features and
masculine manners. Her piece, which doubtless she has been studying
for thirty or forty years, was very well delivered for a woman,
containing no original thought, but full of old hackneyed ideas,
which every female suffrage shrieker has hurled from the stump
against "ignorant men and small boys," for time out of mind all
over this country and every other country where they could command
an audience of curious people willing to throw away an hour or two
on a vain, futile and foolish harangue, proposing to transform men
into women and women into men. Such dissatisfied females should not
hurl anathemas at men, forsooth, because they happened to be born
into the world women instead of men. God alone is responsible for
the difference between the sexes, and he is able to bear it. Men
are not to blame that women are women, for there is not a man in
this whole land who wouldn't rather have a boy baby than a gal baby
any time. There never was a newly-married man when he learned that
his first born was a girl, that didn't try to tear out his hair by
the roots because it wasn't a boy.... If this tirade against men is
to be persisted in, we see no escape for man except to quit his
foolishness and have no more children, unless he can have some sort
of guarantee that they will all be boys. It will have come to a
strange pass indeed when the good women of this land, who, as
mothers, have the nurture, training and admonition of every boy
from his cradle to mature manhood, are unwilling to trust in the
hands of their own offspring the destinies of the nation.
That such an attack can not be attributed to sectional prejudice may be
proved by this extract from a column of vituperation in the Grand
Rapids, Mich., Times, during this same trip, headed "Spinster Susan's
Suffrage Show:"
A "miss" of an uncertain number of years, more or less brains, a
slimsy figure, nut-cracker face and store teeth, goes raiding about
the country attempting to teach mothers and wives their duty.... As
is the yellow-fever to the South, the grasshopper to the plains,
and diphtheria to our northern cities, so is Susan B. Anthony and
her class to all true, pure, lovely women. The sirocco of the
desert blows no hotter or more tainting breath in the face of the
traveller, than does this woman against all men who do not believe
as she does, and no pestilence makes sadder havoc among them than
would Susan B. Anthony if she had the power. The women who make
homes, who are sources of comfort to husbands, fathers, brothers,
sisters or themselves, who wish to keep sacred all that goes to
make their lives noble, refined and worth the living, will be as
diametrically opposed to the lecturer of last evening as are most
intelligent men. Susan B. Anthony may find her remedy in suffrage,
but alas! there is no remedy for us against Susan and her ilk.
Each lecture usually was followed by letters not only from friends but
from entire strangers, asking her forgiveness for having misjudged her
so many years, and closing something like this from a lady in St. Paul,
Minn.: "For the last ten years your name has been familiar to me
through the newspapers, or rather through newspaper ridicule, and has
always been associated with what was pretentious and wholly unamiable.
Your lecture tonight has been a revelation to me. I wanted to come and
touch your hand, but I felt too guilty. Henceforth I am the avowed
defender of woman suffrage. Never again shall a word of mine be heard
derogatory to the noble women who are working with heart and hand for
the best welfare of humanity."
A two-column interview in the Chicago Tribune during this tour gives
Miss Anthony's views on many public matters, concluding thus:
"If men would only think of the question without paying attention
to prejudice or precedent, simply as one of political economy, they
would soon begin to regard woman, and woman's rights, just as they
regard themselves and their own rights," said she.
"The W.C.T.U. are doing good work, are they not?"
"Yes, Miss Willard is doing noble work, but I can not coincide with
her views, and my new lecture, 'Will Home Protection Protect,' will
combat them. The officer who holds his position by the votes of men
who want free whiskey, can not prosecute the whiskey-sellers. The
district-attorney and the judge can not enforce the law when they
know that to do so will defeat them at the next election. If women
had votes the officials would no longer fear to enforce the law, as
they would know that though they lost the votes of 5,000
whiskey-sellers and drinkers, they would gain those of 20,000
women. Miss Willard has a lever, but she has no fulcrum on which to
place it."
"Where do you find the strongest antipathy to woman suffrage?"
"In the fears of various parties that it might he disastrous to
their interests. The Protestants fear it lest there should be a
majority of Catholic women to increase the power of that church;
the free-thinkers are afraid that, as the majority of
church-members are women, they would put God in the Constitution;
the free-whiskey men are opposed because they think women would
vote down their interests; the Republicans would put a suffrage
plank in their platform if they knew they could secure the majority
vote of the women, and so would the Democrats, but each party fears
the result might help the other. Thus, you see, we can not appeal
to the self-interest of anybody and this is our great source of
weakness."
It was decided to bold this year's May Anniversary in St. Louis instead
of New York, and all arrangements having been made by Virginia L. Minor
and Phoebe Couzins, the convention opened formally on the evening of
May 7, to quote the newspapers, "in the presence of a magnificent
audience which packed every part of St. George's Hall, crowding gallery
and stairs and leaving hardly standing room in the aisles." They also
paid many compliments to the intellectual character of the audience,
its evident sympathy with the cause for which the convention was
assembled, and the elegant costumes worn by the ladies both in the body
of the house and on the platform. Mrs. Minor presided and a beautiful
address of welcome was delivered by Miss Couzins. The ladies were
invited to the Merchants' Exchange by its president, and also visited
the Fair grounds by invitation of the board. Miss Couzins gave a
reception at her home, and the evening before the convention opened,
Mrs. Minor entertained the delegates informally. Of this latter
occasion the Globe-Democrat said:
Miss Susan B. Anthony, perhaps the only lady present of national
reputation, commanded attention at a glance. Her face is one which
would attract notice anywhere; full of energy, character and
intellect, the strong lines soften on a closer inspection. There is
a good deal that is "pure womanly" in the face which has been held
up to the country so often as a gaunt and hungry specter's crying
for universal war upon mankind. The spectacles sit upon a nose
strong enough to be masculine, but hide eyes which can beam with
kindliness as well as flash with wit, irony and satire. Angular she
may be--"angular as a Lebanon Shakeress" she said the New York
Herald once termed her--but if so, the irregularities of outline
were completely hidden under the folds of the modest and dignified
black silk which covered her most becomingly.
At this convention occurred that touching scene which has been so often
described, when May Wright Sewall presented Miss Anthony, to her
complete surprise, with a beautiful floral offering from the delegates.
The Globe-Democrat thus reports:
Miss Anthony, visibly affected, responded: "Mrs. President and
Friends: I am not accustomed to demonstrations of gratitude or of
praise. I don't know how to behave tonight. Had you thrown stones
at me, had you called me hard names, had you said I should not
speak, had you declared I had done women more harm than good and
deserved to be burned at the stake; had you done anything, or said
anything, against the cause which I have tried to serve for the
last thirty years, I should have known how to answer, but now I do
not. I have been as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to this
movement. I know nothing and have known nothing of oratory or
rhetoric. Whatever I have done has been done because I wanted to
see better conditions, better surroundings, better circumstances
for women. Now, friends, don't expect me to make any proper
acknowledgments for such a demonstration as has been made here
tonight. I can not; I am overwhelmed."
As the association wished to continue Mrs. Stanton at the head, they
created the office of vice-president-at-large and elected Miss Anthony
to fill it. Senator Sargent's term having expired, he returned with his
family to San Francisco, and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford was elected national
treasurer in place of Mrs. Sargent, who had served so acceptably for
six years. Her return to California was deeply regretted by Miss
Anthony. From the time of their first acquaintance, on that long
snow-bound journey in 1871, they had been devoted friends, and on all
her annual trips to Washington she was a guest at the spacious and
comfortable home of the Sargents. The senator always was a true and
consistent friend of suffrage, and frequently said to Miss Anthony:
"Tell my wife what you want done and, if she indorses it, I will try to
bring it about." Mrs. Sargent was of a serene, philosophical nature,
with an unwavering faith in the evolution of humanity into a broader
and better life. She was thoroughly without personal ends to serve,
ready to receive new ideas and those who brought them, weigh them
carefully in her well-balanced mind and pronounce the judgment which
was usually correct. The closing of their Washington house was a severe
loss to the many who had enjoyed their free and gracious hospitality.
On May 24, 1879, Miss Anthony received notice of the death of her old
and revered fellow-laborer, Wm. Lloyd Garrison. She could not attend
the funeral but wrote at once, saying in part:
The telegrams of the last few days had prepared us for this
morning's tidings that your dear father and humanity's devoted
friend had passed on to the beyond, where so many of his brave
co-workers had gone before; and where his devoted life-companion,
your precious mother, awaited his coming.... It is impossible for
me to express my feelings of love and respect, of honor and
gratitude, for the life, the words, the works, of your father; but
you all know, I trust, that few mortals had greater veneration for
him than I. His approbation was my delight; his disapproval, my
regret.... That each and all of you may strive to be to the
injustice of your day and generation what he was to that of his, is
the best wish--the best aspiration--I can offer. Blessed are you
indeed, that you mourn so true, so noble, so grand a man as your
loved and loving father.
In her diary that night she wrote: "I sent a letter, but how paltry it
seemed compared to what was in my heart. Why can I not put my thought
into words?"
The last of May she went home, having lectured and worked every day
since the previous October. She records with much delight that she has
now snugly tucked away in bank $4,500, the result of her last two
lecture seasons. During the one just closed she spoke 140 nights,
besides attending various conventions. This bank account did not
represent all she had earned, for she always gave with a lavish hand.
How much she has given never can be known, but in the year 1879, for
instance, one friend acknowledges the receipt of $50 to enable her to
buy a dress and other articles so that she can attend the Washington
convention. Another writes: "I have just learned that the $25 you
handed me to pay my way home from the meeting had been given you to pay
your own." To an old and faithful fellow-worker, now in California, she
sends by express a warm flannel wrapper. There is scarcely a month
which does not record some gift varying from $100 in value down to a
trinket for remembrance. Each year she contributed $100 to the suffrage
work, besides many smaller sums at intervals, and the account-books
show that her benefactions were many. She never spared money if an end
were to be accomplished, and never failed to keep an engagement, no
matter at what risk or expense. On several occasions she chartered an
engine, even though the cost was more than she would receive for the
lecture. As she was now approaching her sixtieth birthday, relatives
and friends were most anxious that she should lay aside part of her
earnings for a time when even her indomitable spirit might have to
succumb to physical weakness, but she herself never seemed to feel any
anxiety as to the future.
Notwithstanding her own disastrous experiment, Miss Anthony never
ceased to desire a woman's paper, one which not only should present the
questions relating directly to women but should be edited and
controlled entirely by women, and discuss all the issues of the day.
Scattered through the correspondence of years are letters on this
subject, either wanting to resurrect The Revolution or to start a new
paper. At intervals some wealthy woman would seem half-inclined to
advance money for the purpose and then hope would be revived, only to
be again destroyed. During the summer of 1872 a clever journalist, Mrs.
Helen Barnard, had edited a paper called the Woman's Campaign,
supported by Republican funds. Miss Anthony had hoped to convert this
into her ideal paper after the election, and spent considerable time in
trying to form a stock company. A large amount was subscribed but not
enough, and all was returned by Mrs. Sargent, then national treasurer.
Sarah L. Williams, editor of the woman's department of the Toledo
Blade, started a bright suffrage paper called the Ballot-Box and edited
it for several years. Miss Anthony assisted her in every possible way,
and spoiled the effect of many a fine speech by asking at its close for
subscribers to this paper. In 1878, '79 and '80 she secured 2,500
names. In 1878 Mrs. Williams turned her paper over to Matilda Joslyn
Gage, who added National Citizen to the title. Miss Anthony's and Mrs.
Stanton's names were placed at the head as corresponding editors, and
the paper was ably conducted by Mrs. Gage, but it had not the financial
backing necessary to success; when Miss Anthony ceased lecturing, new
subscribers no longer came and, after much tribulation, it finally
suspended in 1881.
While Miss Anthony continued for many years to cherish this idea of a
distinctively woman's paper, the daily press grew more and more
liberal, devoting larger space to the interests of women every year,
and she became of the opinion that possibly the most effective work
might be accomplished through this medium. She held, however, that
there should be one woman upon each paper whose special business it
should be to look after this department, and who should be permitted to
discuss not only the "woman question" but all others from a woman's
standpoint. As newspapers are now managed, the readers have only man's
views of all the vital issues attracting public attention. Woman
occupies a subordinate position and must write on all subjects in a
spirit which will be acceptable to the masculine head of the paper; so
the public gets in reality his thought and not hers. She had come to
see, also, that the newspaper work should be a leading and distinctive
feature of the National Association to a far greater extent than
hitherto had been attempted, and which, until of late years, had not
been possible. No man or woman ever had a higher opinion of the
influence of the press, which she considered the most powerful agency
in the world for good or for evil.
In the summer of 1879, Miss Anthony received from her friend, A.
Bronson Alcott, a complimentary ticket for three seasons of lectures at
the Concord School of Philosophy; but the living questions of the day
were too pressing for her to withdraw to this classic and sequestered
retreat, outside the busy and practical world.
[Autograph: A. Bronson Alcott]
During the decade from 1870 to 1880, there was a large accession of
valuable workers to the cause of woman suffrage and many new friends
came into Miss Anthony's life. Among these were May Wright Sewall; the
sisters, Julia and Rachel Foster; Clara B. Colby; Zerelda G. Wallace;
Frances E. Willard; J. Ellen Foster; the wife and three talented
daughters of Cassius M. Clay, Mary B., Laura and Sallie Clay Bennett;
M. Louise Thomas; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and others, who became her
devoted adherents and fellow-workers, and whose homes and hospitality
she enjoyed during all the years which followed.
At the close of her lecture season in 1879 she was able to spend
Christmas and New Year's at her own home for the first time in many
years; but she left on January 2 to fill engagements, reaching
Washington on the eve of the National Convention, which assembled at
Lincoln Hall, January 21, 1880. As Mrs. Stanton was absent, Miss
Anthony presided over the sessions. During this meeting, 250 new
petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, signed by over 12,000 women, were
sent to Congress, besides over 300 petitions from individual women
praying for a removal of their political disabilities. These were
presented by sixty-five different representatives. Hon. T.W. Ferry, of
Michigan, in the Senate, and Hon. George B. Loring, of Massachusetts,
in the House, introduced a resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment. This
with all the petitions was referred to the judiciary committees, each
of which granted a hearing of two hours to the ladies. Among the
delegates who addressed them was Julia Smith Parker, of Glastonbury,
Conn., at that time over eighty years old, who with her sister Abby
annually resisted the payment of taxes because they were denied
representation, and whose property was in consequence annually seized
and sold. Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the mother so beautifully pictured
in Ben Hur, addressed a congressional committee for the first time, and
among the other speakers were Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Blake, Miss Couzins, Mrs.
Emma Mont McRae, of Indiana, and Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, of
Louisiana. It was at this hearing that Senator Edmunds complimented
Miss Anthony by saying, "Most speeches on this question are platform
oratory; yours is argument." Through the influence of Hon. E.G. Lapham,
all these addresses were printed in pamphlet form.
During this convention Miss Anthony was the guest of Mrs. Spofford,
whose husband was proprietor of the Riggs House. The place of hostess,
which had been so beautifully filled by Mrs. Sargent, was assumed at
once by Mrs. Spofford, a lady of culture and position. For twelve years
a suite of rooms was set apart for Miss Anthony in this commodious
hotel whenever she was at the capital, whether for days or for months,
and she received every possible courtesy and attention, without price.
Miss Anthony wrote her many times: "You can not begin to know what a
blessing your home is to me, or how grateful I am to you for its
comfort and luxury. You are indeed Mrs. Sargent's successor in love and
hospitality, and my hope is always to deserve them."
After a brilliant reception at the Riggs House to the delegates, Miss
Anthony left for Philadelphia, in company with the venerable Julia
Smith Parker, and went to Roadside, the suburban home of Lucretia Mott,
"where," she writes, "it was a wonderful sight to see the two
octogenarians talking together, so bright and wide awake to the
questions of the present." She never again saw Lucretia Mott or heard
her sweet voice.
[Illustration HW: Jane H. Spofford]
The health of Miss Anthony's mother was now so precarious that she did
not dare go far from home and a course of lectures was arranged for her
through Pennsylvania by Rachel Foster, a young girl of wealth and
distinction, who was growing much interested in the cause of woman and
very devoted to Miss Anthony personally. Frequent trips were made to
the home in Rochester through the inclement weather, and toward the
last of March she saw that the end was near and did not go away. The
beloved mother fell asleep on the morning of April 3, 1880, the two
remaining daughters by her side. She was in her eighty-seventh year,
her long life had been passed entirely within the immediate circle of
home, but her interest in outside matters was strong. The husband and
children, in whatever work they were engaged, felt always the
encouragement of her sanction and sympathy. Her ambition was centered
in them, their happiness and success were her own; she was content to
be the home-keeper, to have the house swept and garnished and the
bountiful table ready for their return, finding a rich reward in their
unceasing love and appreciation. She was extremely fond of reading, had
read the Bible from cover to cover many times, and could give the exact
location and wording of many texts of Scripture. She enjoyed history,
was familiar with the works of Dickens and Scott and knew by heart The
Lady of the Lake. In old age, when memory failed, she lived among
historical personages and characters in books and would speak of them
as persons she had known in her youth. As the four children gathered
about the still form and looked lovingly upon the placid face, they
could not remember that she ever had spoken an unkind word. And so,
with tenderness and affection, they laid her to rest by the side of the
husband whose memory she had so faithfully cherished for eighteen
years.
A month later Miss Anthony again set forth on the weary round, leaving
her sister Mary in the lonely house with two young nieces, Lucy and
Louise, whose education she was superintending. Just before going she
wrote to Rachel Foster: "Yes, the past three weeks are all a
dream--such constant watching and care and anxiety for so many years
all taken away from us! But my mother, like my father, if she could
speak would bid us 'go forward' to greater and better work. She never
asked me to stop at home when she was living, not even after she became
feeble, but always said, 'Go and do all the good you can;' and I know
my highest regard for her and for my father and sisters gone before
will be shown by my best and noblest doing."
[Footnote 94: In 1874, when a bill was pending to establish the
Territory of Pembina, Senator Sargent wished to so amend it as to
incorporate woman suffrage. After he had finished a matchless argument,
in which he was supported by Senators Stewart, of Nevada, and
Carpenter, of Wisconsin, Senator Morton made one of those grand
speeches for which he was famous. He based his demands for woman
suffrage on the Declaration of Independence, whose principles, he
declared, did not apply to man alone but to the human family; and he
demonstrated that no man or woman could "consent" to a government
except through a vote.
For Sargent's and Morton's speeches see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.
II, pp. 546 and 549.]
[Footnote 95: For full text see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p.
138.]
[Footnote 96: Miss Anthony lectured in Terre Haute under the auspices
of the young men's Occidental Literary Club, Eugene V. Debs, president
and one of its founders.]