political abolition, because in spite of the fact that slavery had for
years been one of the most pressing issues before the American people,
no great political party had yet endorsed abolition, nor had a single
prominent practical statesman[121] advocated immediate unconditional
emancipation. As the Liberty party experiment had proved, an
abolitionist running for office on an antislavery platform was doomed
to defeat. Therefore the gesture made in this critical campaign by a
small group of abolitionists in nominating Gerrit Smith for president
appeared utterly futile to Susan. Abolitionists, she believed,
followed the only course consistent with their principles when they
eschewed politics, abstained from voting, and devoted their energies
with the fervor of evangelists to a militant educational campaign.
So, whenever she could, she continued to hold antislavery meetings.
"Crowded house at Port Byron," her diary records. "I tried to say a
few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is
a terrible martyrdom for me to speak."[122] Yet so great was the need
to enlighten people on the evils of slavery that she endured this
martyrdom, stepping into the breach when no other speaker was
available. Taking as her subject, "What Is American Slavery?" she
declared, "It is the legalized, systematic robbery of the bodies and
souls of nearly four millions of men, women, and children. It is the
legalized traffic in God's image."[123]
She asked for personal liberty laws to protect the human rights of
fugitive slaves, adding that the Dred Scott decision had been possible
only because it reflected the spirit and purpose of the American
people in the North as well as the South. She heaped blame on the
North for restricting the Negro's educational and economic
opportunities, for barring him from libraries, lectures, and theaters,
and from hotels and seats on trains and buses.
"Let the North," she urged, "prove to the South by her acts that she
fully recognizes the humanity of the black man, that she respects his
rights in all her educational, industrial, social, and political
associations...."
This was asking far more than the North was ready to give, but to
Susan it was justice which she must demand. No wonder free Negroes in
the North honored and loved her and expressed their gratitude whenever
they could. "A fine-looking colored man on the train presented me with
a bouquet," she wrote in her diary. "Can't tell whether he knew me or
only felt my sympathy."[124]
* * * * *
The threats of secession from the southern states, which followed
Lincoln's election, brought little anxiety to Susan or her
fellow-abolitionists, for they had long preached, "No Union with
Slaveholders," believing that dissolution of the Union would prevent
further expansion of slavery in the new western territories, and not
only lessen the damaging influence of slavery on northern
institutions, but relieve the North of complicity in maintaining
slavery. Garrison in his _Liberator_ had already asked, "Will the
South be so obliging as to secede from the Union?" When, in December
1860, South Carolina seceded, Horace Greeley, who only a few months
before had called the disunion abolitionists "a little coterie of
common scolds," now wrote in the _Tribune_, "If the cotton states
shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we
insist in letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a
revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless."[125]
[Illustration: William Lloyd Garrison]
What abolitionists feared far more than secession was that to save the
Union some compromise would be made which would fasten slavery on the
nation. Susan agreed with Garrison when he declared in the
_Liberator_, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last
'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell'
broken--at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all
the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."[126]
Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and
confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil
war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them
Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the
Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line,
protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the
domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for
escaped slaves, and forbid Congress to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland.
Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing
noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such
an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous
declarations against compromise.
While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of
President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan
heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May,
Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she
wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to
go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its
suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that
she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ...
no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band
of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."[127]
Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her
antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but
unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and
stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no
effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and
the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her
ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the
milling crowd.
In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and
boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs
broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never before
shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with
Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she
opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting
and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the
speakers home through the jeering crowds.
All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more
meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right
of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne
pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In
Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee
of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"[128] and
rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until
the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its
tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling
drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on
the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her
companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in
the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of
Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the
square.
Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany
where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick
Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher,
was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming
opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists,
safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his
knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered
through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the
day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and
begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the
meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little
group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob
trailing behind them.
Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of
mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so
bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans
had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or
interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the
attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they
were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address
prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or
indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states
where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have
no inclination to do so."[130] To her the future looked dark when
statesmen would save the Union at such a price.
"No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as
well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with
Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others.
They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the
hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had
started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with
Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to
them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly
respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three
children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was
unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had
insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an
insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to
communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent
Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus,
took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children
to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced
the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law
which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and
their children.
Well aware of how often her friends of the Underground Railroad had
defied the Fugitive Slave Law and hidden and transported fugitive
slaves, Susan decided she would do the same for this cultured
intelligent woman, a slave to her husband under the law. Without a
thought of the consequences, she took the train on Christmas Day for
New York with Mrs. Phelps and her thirteen-year-old daughter, both in
disguise, hoping that in the crowded city they could hide from Dr.
Phelps and the law. Arriving late at night, they walked through the
snow and slush to a hotel, only to be refused a room because they were
not accompanied by a gentleman. They tried another hotel, with the
same result, and then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a
divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused
them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway
wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a
Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but
Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as much to the clerk,
adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this
office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she
retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to
the station."[131] Finally he relented and gave them a room without
heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her
friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and
finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the
Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive
wife into her home.
Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and
threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers,
because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child.
Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding
place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through
western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all.
When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging
her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any
"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard
for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and
dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest
assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had
I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I
should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any
movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle
my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment
of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the
slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."[132]
When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing
his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan,
"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the
entire guardianship and control of the children?"
"Yes, I know it," she answered. "Does not the law of the United States
give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break
it every time you help a slave to Canada? Well, the law which gives
the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and
I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before you would deliver
a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child
to its father."
Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could
not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap
his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a
divorce through the help of her friends.
The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of
Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to
recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also
essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but
when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision
was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's
divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing
laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they
sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it,
Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to
sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or
was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like
themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have
yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."[133]
FOOTNOTES:
[109] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I. p. 689. Henry Ward Beecher's
speech, _The Public Function of Women_, delivered at Cooper Union,
Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract.
[110] April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.
[111] June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.
[112] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 717.
[113] _Ibid._, p. 725.
[114] _Ibid._, p. 732.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 735.
[116] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 196.
[117] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, _Eighty Years and More_ (New York,
1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in the
midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the convention
will sustain you."
[118] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 195.
[119] _Ibid._, p. 197.
[120] Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College
Library.
[121] Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to speak for
emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican Convention.
[122] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.
[123] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[124] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.
[125] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 504; Beards, _The Rise of
American Civilization_, II, p. 63.
[126] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 508.
[127] Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library.
[128] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 210.
[129] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress.
[130] Carl Sandburg, _Abraham Lincoln, The War Years_ (New York,
1939), I, p. 125.
[131] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a more
permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet.
[132] _Ibid._, pp. 203-204.
[133] _Ibid._, p. 198.
A WAR FOR FREEDOM
Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded
early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This
breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the
minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union.
Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must
go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention
in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help
her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter
and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists
called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize
that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour.
Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the
solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of
abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was
not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for
guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an
audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a
nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the
government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the
North"[134] a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions
and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand
by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize
Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but
to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those
abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until
it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the
front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union
with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all
violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion,
and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I
am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135]
She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these
men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few,
among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of
them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone
remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have
insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but
one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The
Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all
the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their
peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems
most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency,
not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment
of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even
the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the
end justifies the means.'"[136]
Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge,
traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas,
with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and
his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a
release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work.
"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary.
"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order....
Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the
frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my
calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of
Harriet Tubman."[137]
Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times
seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas
with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone
feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great
presences to which I have been so long accustomed."
The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's _Tribune_ and
the Rochester _Democrat_. The news was discouraging--the tragedy of
Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union
armies. General Frémont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only
to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border
states.
"How not to do it seems the whole study of Washington," she wrote in
her diary. "I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom
to every slave and call on every able-bodied Negro to enlist in the
Union Army.... To forever blot out slavery is the only possible
compensation for this merciless war."[138]
To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and
events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
_Casa Guidi Windows_, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to
our terrible struggle," then to her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, and
George Eliot's popular _Adam Bede_, recently published. More serious
reading also absorbed her, for she wanted to keep abreast of the most
advanced thought of the day. "Am reading Buckle's _History of
Civilization_ and Darwin's _Descent of Man_," she wrote in her diary.
"Have finished _Origin of the Species_. Pillsbury has just given me
Emerson's poems."[139]
Eager to thrash out all her new ideas with Elizabeth Stanton, she went
to Seneca Falls for a few days of good talk, hoping to get Mrs.
Stanton's help in organizing a woman's rights convention in 1862; but
not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this
time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the
war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship.
Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best
women were so willing to be swept aside by the onrush of events.
Although opposed to war, Susan was far from advocating peace at any
price, and was greatly concerned over the confusion in Washington
which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton
received from her husband, now Washington correspondent for the New
York _Tribune_. Both she and Mrs. Stanton chafed at inaction. They had
loyalty, intelligence, an understanding of national affairs, and
executive ability to offer their country, but such qualities were not
sought after among women.
* * * * *
In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a
new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting
the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of
discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young
eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.[140] Susan listened with pride and joy
while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the
issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth,
her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's
motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became
devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous
correspondence.
Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence
in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she
herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she
studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet
Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble
breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and
elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of
Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal
painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by
a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other
artists."[141]