Not only was she holding antislavery meetings, making speeches, and
distributing leaflets whenever and wherever possible, but she was also
lobbying in Albany for a personal liberty bill to protect the slaves
who were escaping from the South. "Treason in the Capitol," the
Democratic press labeled efforts for a personal liberty bill, and as
Susan reported to William Lloyd Garrison,[83] even Republicans shied
away from it, many of them regarding Seward's "irrepressible conflict"
speech a sorry mistake. Such timidity and shilly-shallying were
repugnant to her. She could better understand the fervor of John Brown
although he fought with bullets.
Yet John Brown's fervor soon ended in tragedy, sowing seeds of fear,
distrust, and bitter partisanship in all parts of the country. When,
in October 1859, the startling news reached Susan of the raid on
Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown, she sadly tried to piece
together the story of his failure. She admired and respected John
Brown, believing he had saved Kansas for freedom. That he had further
ambitious plans was common knowledge among antislavery workers, for he
had talked them over with Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and the
three young militants, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frank Sanborn, and
Samuel Gridley Howe. Somehow these plans had failed, but she was sure
that his motives were good. He was imprisoned, accused of treason and
murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said,
implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing
the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so
completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end,
befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he had rescued
fugitive slaves.
Scanning the _Liberator_ for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it
colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to
all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild,
apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by
insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added,
"Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the
right of the slaves to imitate the example of our fathers."[84]
Behind closed doors and in public meetings, abolitionists pledged
their allegiance to John Brown's noble purpose. He had wanted no
bloodshed, they said, had no thought of stirring up slaves to brutal
revenge. The raid was to be merely a signal for slaves to arise, to
cast off slavery forever, to follow him to a mountain refuge, which
other slave insurrections would reinforce until all slaves were free.
To him the plan seemed logical and he was convinced it was
God-inspired. To some of his friends it seemed possible--just a step
beyond the Underground Railroad and hiding fugitive slaves. To Susan
he was a hero and a martyr.
Southerners, increasingly fearful of slave insurrections, called John
Brown a cold-blooded murderer and accused Republicans--"black
Republicans," they classed them--of taking orders from abolitionists
and planning evil against them. To law-abiding northerners, John Brown
was a menace, stirring up lawlessness. Seward and Lincoln, speaking
for the Republicans, declared that violence, bloodshed, and treason
could not be excused even if slavery was wrong and Brown thought he
was right. All saw before them the horrible threat of civil war.
During John Brown's trial, his friends did their utmost to save him.
The noble old giant with flowing white beard, who had always been more
or less of a legend, now to them assumed heroic proportions. His
calmness, his steadfastness in what he believed to be right captured
the imagination.
The jury declared him guilty--guilty of treason, of conspiring with
slaves to rebel, guilty of murder in the first degree. The papers
carried the story, and it spread by word of mouth--the story of those
last tense moments in the courtroom when John Brown declared, "It is
unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interferred ... in
behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called
great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... it would have been all
right.... I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any
respecter of persons. I believe that to have interferred as I have
done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong but right. Now if
it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust
enactments, I say, let it be done...."[85]
He was sentenced to die.
Susan, sick at heart, talked all this over with her abolitionist
friends and began planning a meeting of protest and mourning in
Rochester if John Brown were hanged. She engaged the city's most
popular hall for this meeting, never thinking of the animosity she
might arouse, and as she went from door to door selling tickets, she
asked for contributions for John Brown's destitute family. She tried
to get speakers from among respected Republicans to widen the popular
appeal of the meeting, but her diary records, "Not one man of
prominence in religion or politics will identify himself with the John
Brown meeting."[86] Only a Free Church minister, the Rev. Abram Pryn,
and the ever-faithful Parker Pillsbury were willing to speak.
There was still hope that John Brown might be saved and excitement ran
high. Some like Higginson, unwilling to let him die, wanted to rescue
him, but Brown forbade it. Others wanted to kidnap Governor Wise of
Virginia and hold him on the high seas, a hostage for John Brown.
Wendell Phillips was one of these. Parker Pillsbury, sending Susan the
latest news from "the seat of war" and signing his letter, "Faithfully
and fervently yours," wrote, "My voice is against any attempt at
rescue. It would inevitably, I fear, lead to bloodshed which could not
compensate nor be compensated. If the people dare murder their victim,
as they are determined to do, and in the name of the law ... the moral
effect of the execution will be without a parallel since the scenes on
Calvary eighteen hundred years ago, and the halter that day sanctified
shall be the cord to draw millions to salvation."[87]
On Friday, December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. Through the North,
church bells tolled and prayers were said for him. Everywhere people
gathered together to mourn and honor or to condemn. In New York City,
at a big meeting which overflowed to the streets, it was resolved
"that we regard the recent outrage at Harper's Ferry as a crime, not
only against the State of Virginia, but against the Union itself...."
In Boston, however, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to a tremendous audience
of "the new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by
love of man into conflict and death ... who will make the gallows
glorious," and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recorded in his diary, "This
will be a great day in our history; the date of a new revolution." Far
away in France, Victor Hugo declared, "The eyes of Europe are fixed on
America. The hanging of John Brown will open a latent fissure that
will finally split the union asunder.... You preserve your shame, but
you kill your glory."[88]
In Rochester, three hundred people assembled. All were friends of the
cause and there was no unfriendly disturbance to mar the proceedings.
Susan presided and Parker Pillsbury, in her opinion, made "the
grandest speech of his life," for it was the only occasion he ever
found fully wicked enough to warrant "his terrific invective."[89]
Thus these two militant abolitionists, Susan B. Anthony and Parker
Pillsbury, joined hundreds of others throughout the nation in honoring
John Brown, sensing the portent of his martyrdom and prophesying that
his soul would go marching on.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 144-145. As John Brown visited
Frederick Douglass in Rochester, it is possible that Susan B. Anthony
had met him.
[70] Oct. 19, 1856, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.
[71] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 148.
[72] _Ibid._, p. 151; also quotation following.
[73] Alice Stone Blackwell, _Lucy Stone_ (Boston, 1930), pp. 197-198.
[74] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[75] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 152.
[76] April 20, 1857, Abby Kelley Foster Papers, American Antiquarian
Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
[77] Parker Pillsbury, _The Acts of the Antislavery Apostles_
(Concord, N.H., 1883).
[78] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 160.
[79] March 22, 1858, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.
[80] N.d., Alma Lutz Collection.
[81] Charles A. and Mary B. Beard, _The Rise of American Civilization_
(New York, 1930), II, p. 9.
[82] A. M. Schlesinger and H. C. Hockett, _Land of the Free_ (New
York, 1944), p. 297.
[83] March 19, 1859, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library.
[84] Francis Jackson, William Lloyd II, and Wendell Phillips Garrison,
_William Lloyd Garrison_, 1805-1879 (New York, 1889), III, p. 486.
[85] _Ibid._, p. 490.
[86] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 181.
[87] _Ibid._, p. 180.
[88] Henrietta Buckmaster, _Let My People Go_ (New York, 1941), p.
269; Ehrlich, _God's Angry Man_, pp. 344-345, 350.
[89] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress. In 1890, after
visiting the John Brown Memorial at North Elbe, New York, Susan B.
Anthony wrote: "John Brown was crucified for doing what he believed
God commanded him to do, 'to break the yoke and let the oppressed go
free,' precisely as were the saints of old for following what they
believed to be God's commands. The barbarism of our government was by
so much the greater as our light and knowledge are greater than those
of two thousand years ago." Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 708.
THE TRUE WOMAN
Susan's preoccupation with antislavery work did not lessen her
interest in women's advancement. Her own expanding courage and ability
showed her the possibilities for all women in widened horizons and
activities. These possibilities were the chief topic of conversation
when she and Elizabeth Stanton were together. With Mrs. Stanton's
young daughters, Margaret and Harriot, in mind, they were continually
planning ways and means of developing the new woman, or the "true
woman" as they liked to call her; and one of these ways was physical
exercise in the fresh air, which was almost unheard of for women
except on the frontier.
Taking off her hoops and working in the garden in the freedom of her
long calico dress, Susan was refreshed and exhilarated. "Uncovered the
strawberry and raspberry beds ..." her diary records. "Worked with
Simon building frames for the grapevines in the peach orchards.... Set
out 18 English black currants, 22 English gooseberries and Muscatine
grape vines.... Finished setting out the apple trees & 600 blackberry
bushes...."[90]
She knew how little this strengthening work and healing influence
touched the lives of most women. Hemmed in by the walls of their
homes, weighed down by bulky confining clothing, fed on the tradition
of weakness, women could never gain the breadth of view, courage, and
stamina needed to demand and appreciate emancipation. She thought a
great deal about this and how it could be remedied, and wrote her
friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson "The salvation of the race depends,
in a great measure, upon rescuing women from their hot-house
existence. Whether in kitchen, nursery or parlor, all alike are shut
away from God's sunshine. Why did not your Caroline Plummer of Salem,
why do not all of our wealthy women leave money for industrial and
agricultural schools for girls, instead of ever and always providing
for boys alone?"[91]
An exceptional opportunity was now offered Susan--to speak on the
controversial subject of coeducation before the State Teachers'
Association, which only a few years before had been shocked by the
sound of a woman's voice. Deeply concerned over her ability to write
the speech, she at once appealed to Elizabeth Stanton, "Do you please
mark out a plan and give me as soon as you can...."[92]
[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony, 1856]
Busy with preparations for woman's rights meetings in popular New York
summer resorts, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Clifton Springs, and
Avon, she grew panicky at the prospect of her impending speech and
dashed off another urgent letter to Mrs. Stanton, underlining it
vigorously for emphasis: "Not a _word written_ ... and mercy only
knows when I can get a moment, and what is _worse_, as the _Lord knows
full well_, is, that if _I get all the time the world has--I can't get
up a decent document_.... It is of but small moment who writes the
Address, but of _vast moment_ that it be _well done_.... No woman but
you can write from _my standpoint_ for all would base their strongest
_argument_ on the _un_likeness of the _sexes_....
"Those of you who have the _talent_ to do honor to poor, oh how poor
womanhood have all given yourselves over to _baby_-making and left
poor brainless _me_ to battle alone. It is a shame. Such a lady as _I
might_ be _spared_ to _rock cradles_, but it is a crime for _you_ and
_Lucy_ and _Nette_."[93]
On a separate page she outlined for Mrs. Stanton the points she wanted
to make. Her title was affirmative, "Why the Sexes Should be Educated
Together." "Because," she reasoned, "by such education they get true
ideas of each other.... Because the endowment of both public and
private funds is ever for those of the male sex, while all the
Seminaries and Boarding Schools for Females are left to
maintain themselves as best they may by means of their tuition
fees--consequently cannot afford a faculty of first-class
professors.... Not a school in the country gives to the girl equal
privileges with the boy.... No school _requires_ and but very few
allow the _girls_ to declaim and discuss side by side with the boys.
Thus they are robbed of half of education. The grand thing that is
needed is to give the sexes _like motives_ for acquirement. Very
rarely a person studies closely, without hope of making that knowledge
useful, as a means of support...."[94]
Mrs. Stanton wrote her at once, "Come here and I will do what I can to
help you with your address, if you will hold the baby and make the
puddings."[95] Gratefully Susan hurried to Seneca Falls and together
they "loaded her gun," not only for the teachers' convention but for
all the summer meetings.
Addressing the large teachers' meeting in Troy, Susan declared that
mental sex-differences did not exist. She called attention to the
ever-increasing variety of occupations which women were carrying on
with efficiency. There were women typesetters, editors, publishers,
authors, clerks, engravers, watchmakers, bookkeepers, sculptors,
painters, farmers, and machinists. Two hundred and fifty women were
serving as postmasters. Girls, she insisted, must be educated to earn
a living and more vocations must be opened to them as an incentive to
study. "A woman," she added, "needs no particular kind of education to
be a wife and mother anymore than a man does to be a husband and
father. A man cannot make a living out of these relations. He must
fill them with something more and so must women."[96]
Her advanced ideas did not cause as much consternation as she had
expected and she was asked to repeat her speech at the Massachusetts
teachers' convention; but the thoughts of many in that audience were
echoed by the president when he said to her after the meeting, "Madam,
that was a splendid production and well delivered. I could not have
asked for a single thing different either in matter or manner; but I
would rather have followed my wife or daughter to Greenwood cemetery
than to have had her stand here before this promiscuous audience and
deliver that address."[97]
It was one thing to talk about coeducation but quite another to offer
a resolution putting the New York State Teachers' Association on
record as asking all schools, colleges, and universities to open their
doors to women. This Susan did at their next convention, and while
there were enough women present to carry the resolution, most of them
voted against it, listening instead to the emotional arguments of a
group of conservative men who prophesied that coeducation would
coarsen women and undermine marriage. Nor did she forget the Negro at
these conventions, but brought much criticism upon herself by offering
resolutions protesting the exclusion of Negroes from public schools,
academies, colleges, and universities.
Such controversial activities were of course eagerly reported in the
press, and Henry Stanton, reading his newspaper, pointed them out to
his wife, remarking drily, "Well, my dear, another notice of Susan.
You stir up Susan and she stirs up the world."[98]
* * * * *
The best method of arousing women and spreading new ideas, Susan
decided, was holding woman's rights conventions, for the discussions
at these conventions covered a wide field and were not limited merely
to women's legal disabilities. The feminists of that day extolled
freedom of speech, and their platform, like that of antislavery
conventions, was open to anyone who wished to express an opinion.
Always the limited educational opportunities offered to women were
pointed out, and Oberlin College and Antioch, both coeducational, were
held up as patterns for the future. Resolutions were passed, demanding
that Harvard and Yale admit women. Women's low wages and the very few
occupations open to them were considered, and whether it was fitting
for women to be doctors and ministers. At one convention Lucy Stone
made the suggestion that a prize be offered for a novel on women,
like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, to arouse the whole nation to the unjust
situation of women whose slavery, she felt, was comparable to that of
the Negro. At another, William Lloyd Garrison maintained that women
had the right to sit in the Congress and in state legislatures and
that there should be an equal number of men and women in all national
councils. Inevitably Scriptural edicts regarding woman's sphere were
thrashed out with Antoinette Brown, in her clerical capacity, setting
at rest the minds of questioning women and quashing the protests of
clergymen who thought they were speaking for God. Usually Ernestine
Rose was on hand, ready to speak when needed, injecting into the
discussions her liberal clear-cut feminist views. Nor was the
international aspect of the woman's rights movement forgotten. The
interest in Great Britain in the franchise for women of such men as
Lord Brougham and John Stuart Mill was reported as were the efforts
there among women to gain admission to the medical profession.
Distributed widely as a tract was the "admirable" article in the
_Westminster Review_, "The Enfranchisement of Women," by Harriet
Taylor, now Mrs. John Stuart Mill.
In New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, where
state conventions were held annually, women carried back to their
homes and their friends new and stimulating ideas. National
conventions, which actually represented merely the northeastern states
and Ohio and occasionally attracted men and women from Indiana,
Missouri, and Kansas, were scheduled by Susan to meet every year in
New York, simultaneously with antislavery conventions. Thus she was
assured of a brilliant array of speakers, for the Garrisonian
abolitionists were sincere advocates of woman's rights.
Both Elizabeth Stanton and Lucy Stone were a great help to Susan in
preparing for these national gatherings for which she raised the
money. Elizabeth wrote the calls and resolutions, while Lucy could not
only be counted upon for an eloquent speech, but through her wide
contacts brought new speakers and new converts to the meetings.
However, national woman's rights conventions would probably have
lapsed completely during the troubled years prior to the Civil War,
had it not been for Susan's persistence. She was obliged to omit the
1857 convention because all of her best speakers were either having
babies or were kept at home by family duties. Lucy's baby, Alice Stone
Blackwell, was born in September 1857, then Antoinette Brown's first
child, and Mrs. Stanton's seventh.
[Illustration: Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell]
Impatient to get on with the work, Susan chafed at the delay and when
Lucy wrote her, "I shall not assume the responsibility for another
convention until I have had my ten daughters,"[99] Susan was beside
herself with apprehension. When Lucy told her that it was harder to
take care of a baby day and night than to campaign for woman's rights,
she felt that Lucy regarded as unimportant her "common work" of hiring
halls, engaging speakers, and raising money. This rankled, for
although Susan realized it was work without glory, she did expect Lucy
to understand its significance.
Mrs. Stanton sensed the makings of a rift between Susan and these
young mothers, Lucy and Antoinette, and knowing from her own
experience how torn a woman could be between rearing a family and work
for the cause, she pleaded with Susan to be patient with them. "Let
them rest a while in peace and quietness, and think great thoughts for
the future," she wrote Susan. "It is not well to be in the excitement
of public life all the time. Do not keep stirring them up or mourning
over their repose. You need rest too. Let the world alone a while. We
cannot bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year."[100]
But Susan could not let the world alone. There was too much to be
done. In addition to her woman's rights and antislavery work, she gave
a helping hand to any good cause in Rochester, such as a protest
meeting against capital punishment, a series of Sunday evening
lectures, or establishing a Free Church like that headed by Theodore
Parker in Boston where no one doctrine would be preached and all would
be welcome. There were days when weariness and discouragement hung
heavily upon her. Then impatient that she alone seemed to be carrying
the burden of the whole woman's rights movement, she complained to
Lydia Mott, "There is not one woman left who may be relied on. All
have first to please their husbands after which there is little time
or energy left to spend in any other direction.... How soon the last
standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia) will lay down the
individual 'shovel and de hoe' and with proper zeal and spirit grasp
those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I
declare to you that I distrust the powers of any woman, even of myself
to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!"[101]
To Elizabeth Stanton she confessed, "I have very weak moments and long
to lay my weary head somewhere and nestle my full soul to that of
another in full sympathy. I sometimes fear that _I too_ shall faint by
the wayside and drop out of the ranks of the faithful few."[102]
* * * * *
Susan thought a great deal about marriage at this time, about how it
interfered with the development of women's talents and their careers,
how it usually dwarfed their individuality. Nor were these thoughts
wholly impersonal, for she had attentive suitors during these years.
Her diary mentions moonlight rides and adds, "Mr.--walked home with
me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should
lack the moral spine."[103] Her standards of matrimony were high, and
she carefully recorded in her diary Lucretia Mott's wise words, "In
the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife
is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations
reciprocal."[104]
Marriage and the differences of the sexes were often discussed at the
many meetings she attended, and when remarks were made which to her
seemed to limit in any way the free and full development of woman, she
always registered her protest. She had no patience with any
unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory
that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities
reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke
frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with
sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called
"coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs.
Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or
gross. If it is a fact, there it is."[105]