trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in
addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."[25] She had
dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple,
white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a
gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her
smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new
prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so
pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some
young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy
of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon
saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for
the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room
of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced.
In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but because of
the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two
years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only
a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah
Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott.
In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents,
"Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of
building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My
room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not
pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at
least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school
of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty
compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is
wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest
and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage to
persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my
fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That
is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches,
cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in
bloom and all about the farming business."[26]
* * * * *
During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active
abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this
time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform
movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the
country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help,
but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting
that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off
when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance
societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters
of Temperance.
Canajoharie had its Daughters of Temperance, and Susan, long an
advocate of temperance, gladly joined the crusade, and made her first
speech when the Daughters of Temperance held a supper meeting to
interest the people of the village. Few women at this time could have
been persuaded to address an audience of both men and women, believing
this to be bold, unladylike, and contrary to the will of God; but the
young Quaker, whose grandmother and aunts had always spoken in
Meeting when the spirit moved them, was ready to say her word for
temperance, taking it for granted that it was not only woman's right
but her responsibility to speak and work for social reform.
About two hundred people assembled for the supper, and entering the
hall, Susan found it festooned with cedar and red flannel and to her
amazement saw letters in evergreen on one of the walls, spelling out
Susan B. Anthony.
"I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly
regard,"[27] she confided to her family.
She had carefully written out her speech and had sewn the pages
together in a blue cover. Now in a clear serious voice, she read its
formal flowery sentences telling of the weekly meetings of "this now
despised little band" which had awakened women to the great need of
reform.
"It is generally conceded," she declared, "that our sex fashions the
social and moral state of society. We do not assume that females
possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but
we do believe that were they en masse to discontinue the use of wine
and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not
one of the opposite sex, who has any claim to the title of gentleman,
would so insult them as to come into their presence after having
quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement....
Ladies! There is no neutral position for us to assume...."[28]
The next day the village buzzed with talk of the meeting; only a few
criticized Susan for speaking in public, and almost all agreed that
she was the smartest woman in Canajoharie.
While she was busy with her temperance work, there were stirrings
among women in other parts of New York State in the spring and early
summer of 1848. Through the efforts of a few women who circulated
petitions and the influence of wealthy men who saw irresponsible
sons-in-law taking over the property they wanted their daughters to
own, a Married Women's Property Law passed the legislature; this made
it possible for a married woman to hold real estate in her own name.
Heretofore all property owned by a woman at marriage and all received
by gift or inheritance had at once become her husband's and he had had
the right to sell it or will it away without her consent and to
collect the rents or the income. The new law was welcomed in the
Anthony household, for now Lucy Anthony's inheritance, which had
bought the Rochester farm, could at last be put in her own name and
need no longer be held for her by her brother.
In the newspapers in July, Susan read scornful, humorous, and
indignant reports of a woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New
York, at which women had issued a Declaration of Sentiments,
announcing themselves men's equals. They had protested against legal,
economic, social, and educational discriminations and asked for the
franchise. A woman's rights convention in the 1840s was a startling
event. Women, if they were "ladies" did not attend public gatherings
where politics or social reforms were discussed, because such subjects
were regarded as definitely out of their sphere. Much less did they
venture to call meetings of their own and issue bold resolutions.
Susan was not shocked by this break with tradition, but she did not
instinctively come to the defense of these rebellious women, nor
champion their cause. She was amused rather than impressed. Yet
Lucretia Mott's presence at the convention aroused her curiosity.
Among her father's Quaker friends in Rochester, she had heard only
praise of Mrs. Mott, and she herself, when a pupil at Deborah
Moulson's seminary, had been inspired by Mrs. Mott's remarks at
Friends' Meeting in Philadelphia.
So far Susan had encountered few barriers because she was a woman. She
had had little personal contact with the hardships other women
suffered because of their inferior legal status. To be sure, it had
been puzzling to her as child that Sally Hyatt, the most skillful
weaver in her father's mill, had never been made overseer, but the
fact that her mother had not the legal right to hold property in her
own name did not at the time make an impression upon her. Brought up
as a Quaker, she had no obstacles put in the way of her education. She
had an exceptional father who was proud of his daughters' intelligence
and ability and respected their opinions and decisions. Her only real
complaint was the low salary she had been obliged to accept as a
teacher because she was a woman. She sensed a feeling of male
superiority, which she resented, in her brother-in-law, Aaron McLean,
who did not approve of women preachers and who thought it more
important for a woman to bake biscuits than to study algebra. She met
the same arrogance of sex in her Cousin Margaret's husband, but she
had not analyzed the cause, or seen the need of concerted action by
women.
Returning home for her vacation in August, she found to her surprise
that a second woman's rights convention had been held in Rochester in
the Unitarian church, that her mother, her father, and her sister
Mary, and many of their Quaker friends had not only attended, but had
signed the Declaration of Sentiments and the resolutions, and that her
cousin, Sarah Burtis Anthony, had acted as secretary. Her father
showed so much interest, as he told her about the meetings, that she
laughingly remarked, "I think you are getting a good deal ahead of the
times."[29] She countered Mary's ardent defense of the convention with
good-natured ridicule. The whole family, however, continued to be so
enthusiastic over the meetings and this new movement for woman's
rights, they talked so much about Elizabeth Cady Stanton "with her
black curls and ruddy cheeks"[30] and about Lucretia Mott "with her
Quaker cap and her crossed handkerchief of the finest muslin," both
"speaking so grandly and looking magnificent," that Susan's interest
was finally aroused and she decided she would like to meet these women
and talk with them. There was no opportunity for this, however, before
she returned to Canajoharie for another year of teaching.
It proved to be a year of great sadness because of the illness of her
cousin Margaret whom she loved dearly. In addition to her teaching,
she nursed Margaret and looked after the house and children. She saw
much to discredit the belief that men were the stronger and women the
weaker sex, and impatient with Margaret's husband, she wrote her
mother that there were some drawbacks to marriage that made a woman
quite content to remain single. In explanation she added, "Joseph had
a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one
for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine
pain, yours is sort of a natural consequence.'"[31]
Within a few weeks Margaret died. This was heart-breaking for Susan,
and without her cousin, Canajoharie offered little attraction.
Teaching had become irksome. The new principal was uncongenial, a
severe young man from the South whose father was a slaveholder. Susan
longed for a change, and as she read of the young men leaving for the
West, lured by gold in California, she envied them their adventure and
their opportunity to explore and conquer a whole new world.
[Illustration: Frederick Douglass]
* * * * *
The peaches were ripe when Susan returned to the farm. The orchard
which her father had planted, now bore abundantly. Restless and eager
for hard physical work, she discarded the stylish hoops which impeded
action, put on an old calico dress, and spent days in the warm
September sunshine picking peaches. Then while she preserved, canned,
and pickled them, there was little time to long for pioneering in the
West.
She enjoyed the active life on the farm for she was essentially a
doer, most happy when her hands and her mind were busy. As she helped
with the housework, wove rag carpet, or made shirts by hand for her
father and brothers, she dreamed of the future, of the work she might
do to make her life count for something. Teaching, she decided, was
definitely behind her. She would not allow her sister Mary's interest
in that career to persuade her otherwise, even if teaching were the
only promising and well-thought-of occupation for women. Reading the
poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she was deeply stirred and looked
forward romantically to some great and useful life work.
The _Liberator_, with its fearless denunciation of Negro slavery, now
came regularly to the Anthony home, and as she pored over its pages,
its message fired her soul. Eagerly she called with her father at the
home of Frederick Douglass, who had recently settled in Rochester and
was publishing his paper, the _North Star_. Not only did she want to
show friendliness to this free Negro of whose intelligence and
eloquence she had heard so much, but she wanted to hear first-hand
from him and his wife of the needs of his people.
Almost every Sunday the antislavery Quakers met at the Anthony farm.
The Posts, the Hallowells, the De Garmos, and the Willises were sure
to be there. Sometimes they sent a wagon into the city for Frederick
Douglass and his family. Now and then famous abolitionists joined the
circle when their work brought them to western New York--William Lloyd
Garrison, looking with fatherly kindness at his friends through his
small steel-rimmed spectacles; Wendell Phillips, handsome, learned,
and impressive; black-bearded, fiery Parker Pillsbury; and the
friendly Unitarian pastor from Syracuse, the Reverend Samuel J. May.
Susan, helping her mother with dinner for fifteen or twenty, was torn
between establishing her reputation as a good cook and listening to
the interesting conversation. She heard them discuss woman's rights,
which had divided the antislavery ranks. They talked of their
antislavery campaigns and the infamous compromises made by Congress to
pacify the powerful slaveholding interests. Like William Lloyd
Garrison, all of them refused to vote, not wishing to take any part in
a government which countenanced slavery. They called the Constitution
a proslavery document, advocated "No Union with Slaveholders," and
demanded immediate and unconditional emancipation. All about them and
with their help the Underground Railroad was operating, circumventing
the Fugitive Slave Law and guiding Negro refugees to Canada and
freedom. Amy and Isaac Post's barn, Susan knew, was a station on the
Underground, and the De Garmos and Frederick Douglass almost always
had a Negro hidden away. She heard of riots and mobs in Boston and
Ohio; but in Rochester not a fugitive was retaken and there were no
street battles, although the New York _Herald_ advised the city to
throw its "nigger printing press"[32] into Lake Ontario and banish
Douglass to Canada.
As the Society of Friends in Rochester was unfriendly to the
antislavery movement, Susan with her father and other liberal Hicksite
Quakers left it for the Unitarian church. Here for the first time they
listened to "hireling ministry" and to a formal church service with
music. This was a complete break with what they had always known as
worship, but the friendly Christian spirit expressed by both minister
and congregation made them soon feel at home. This new religious
fellowship put Susan in touch with the most advanced thought of the
day, broke down some of the rigid precepts drilled into her at Deborah
Moulson's seminary, and encouraged liberalism and tolerance. Although
there had been austerity in the outward forms of her Quaker training,
it had developed in her a very personal religion, a strong sense of
duty, and a high standard of ethics, which always remained with her.
It had fostered a love of mankind that reached out spontaneously to
help the needy, the unfortunate, and the oppressed, and this now
became the driving force of her life. It led her naturally to seek
ways and means to free the Negro from slavery and to turn to the
temperance movement to wipe out the evil of drunkenness.
These were the days when the reformed drunkard, John B. Gough, was
lecturing throughout the country with the zeal of an evangelist,
getting thousands to sign the total-abstinence pledge. Inspired by his
example, the Daughters of Temperance were active in Rochester. They
elected Susan their president, and not only did she plan suppers and
festivals to raise money for their work but she organized new
societies in neighboring towns. Her more ambitious plans for them were
somewhat delayed by home responsibilities which developed when her
father became an agent of the New York Life Insurance Company. This
took him away from home a great deal, and as both her brothers were
busy with work of their own and Mary was teaching, it fell to Susan to
take charge of the farm. She superintended the planting, the
harvesting, and the marketing, and enjoyed it, but she did not let it
crowd out her interest in the causes which now seemed so vital.
Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_ came regularly to the farm, for
the Anthonys, like many others throughout the country, had come to
depend upon it for what they felt was a truthful report of the news.
In this day of few magazines, it met a real need, and Susan, poring
over its pages, not only kept in touch with current events, but found
inspiration in its earnest editorials which so often upheld the ideals
which she felt were important. She found thought-provoking news in the
full and favorable report of the national woman's rights convention
held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in October 1850. Better informed now
through her antislavery friends about this new movement for woman's
rights, she was ready to consider it seriously and she read all the
stirring speeches, noting the caliber of the men and women taking
part. Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, and Lucretia Mott were there, as
well as Lucy Stone, that appealing young woman of whose eloquence on
the antislavery platform Susan had heard so much, and Abby Kelley
Foster, whose appointment to office in the American Antislavery
Society had precipitated a split in the ranks on the "woman question."
* * * * *
A year later, when Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen spoke at
antislavery meetings in Rochester, Susan had her first opportunity to
meet this fearless woman. Listening to Abby's speeches and watching
the play of emotion on her eager Irish face under the Quaker bonnet,
Susan wondered if she would ever have the courage to follow her
example. Like herself, Abby had started as a schoolteacher, but after
hearing Theodore Weld speak, had devoted herself to the antislavery
cause, traveling alone through the country to say her word against
slavery and facing not only the antagonism which abolition always
provoked, but the unreasoning prejudice against public speaking by
women, which was fanned into flame by the clergy. For listening to
Abby Kelley, men and women had been excommunicated. Mobs had jeered at
her and often pelted her with rotten eggs. She had married a
fellow-abolitionist, Stephen Foster, even more unrelenting than she.
Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make
an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them
on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's ability to hold
the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and
wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence.
Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her
apprenticeship by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and
traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out
of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear
William Lloyd Garrison and the English abolitionist, George Thompson,
and was the guest of a temperance colleague, Amelia Bloomer, an
enterprising young woman who was editing a temperance paper for women,
_The Lily_.
To her surprise Susan found Amelia in the bloomer costume about which
she had read in _The Lily_. Introduced in Seneca Falls by Elizabeth
Smith Miller, the costume, because of its comfort, had so intrigued
Amelia that she had advocated it in her paper and it had been dubbed
with her name. Looking at Amelia's long full trousers, showing beneath
her short skirt but modestly covering every inch of her leg, Susan was
a bit startled. Yet she could understand the usefulness of the costume
even if she had no desire to wear it herself. In fact she was more
than ever pleased with her new gray delaine dress with its long full
skirt.
Seneca Falls, however, had an attraction for Susan far greater than
either William Lloyd Garrison or Amelia Bloomer, for it was the home
of Elizabeth Cady Stanton whom she had longed to meet ever since 1848
when her parents had reported so enthusiastically about her and the
Rochester woman's rights convention. Walking home from the antislavery
meeting with Mrs. Bloomer, Susan met Mrs. Stanton. She liked her at
once and later called at her home. They discussed abolition,
temperance, and woman's rights, and with every word Susan's interest
grew. Mrs. Stanton's interest in woman's rights and her forthright,
clear thinking made an instant appeal. Never before had Susan had such
a satisfactory conversation with another woman, and she thought her
beautiful. Mrs. Stanton's deep blue eyes with their mischievous
twinkle, her rosy cheeks and short dark hair gave her a very youthful
appearance, and it was hard for Susan to realize she was the mother of
three lively boys.
Susan listened enthralled while Mrs. Stanton told how deeply she had
been moved as a child by the pitiful stories of the women who came to
her father's law office, begging for relief from the unjust property
laws which turned over their inheritance and their earnings to their
husbands. For the first time, Susan heard the story of the exclusion
of women delegates from the World's antislavery convention in London,
in 1840, which Mrs. Stanton had attended with her husband and where
she became the devoted friend of Lucretia Mott. She now better
understood why these two women had called the first woman's rights
convention in 1848 at which Mrs. Stanton had made the first public
demand for woman suffrage.
[Illustration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"]
They talked about the bloomer costume which Mrs. Stanton now wore and
about dress reform which at the moment seemed to Mrs. Stanton an
important phase of the woman's rights movement, and she pointed out to
Susan the advantages of the bloomer in the life of a busy housekeeper
who ran up and down stairs carrying babies, lamps, and buckets of
water. She praised the freedom it gave from uncomfortable stays and
tight lacing, confident it would be a big factor in improving the
health of women.
Thoroughly interested, Susan left Seneca Falls with much to think
about, but not yet converted to the bloomer costume, or even to woman
suffrage. Of one thing, however, she was certain. She wanted this
woman of vision and courage for her friend.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Anthony Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New
York.
[22] Hannah Anthony married Eugene Mosher, a merchant of Easton, New
York, on September 4, 1845.
[23] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, New York.
[24] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 48.
[25] _Ibid._, p. 50.
[26] May 28, 1848, Lucy E. Anthony Collection.
[27] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 53.
[28] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[29] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888, p. 327.
[30] To Nora Blatch, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar
College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York.
[31] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 52.
[32] Amy H. Croughton, _Antislavery Days in Rochester_ (Rochester,
N.Y., 1936). Anyone implicated in the escape of a slave was liable to
$1000 fine, to the payment of $1000 to the owner of the fugitive, and
to a possible jail sentence of six months.
FREEDOM TO SPEAK
Susan was soon rejoicing at the prospect of meeting Lucy Stone and
Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_. Mrs. Stanton had
invited her to Seneca Falls to discuss with them and other influential
men and women the founding of a people's college. Unhesitatingly she
joined forces with Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone to insist that the
people's college be opened to women on the same terms as men. Lucy had
proved the practicability of this as a student at Oberlin, the first
college to admit women, and was one of the first women to receive a
college degree. However, to suggest coeducation in those days was
enough to jeopardize the founding of a college, and Horace Greeley
stood out against them, his babylike face, fringed with throat
whiskers, getting redder by the moment as he begged them not to
agitate the question.