suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the
petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a
verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to
face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she
was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton
went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage
would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures.
However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in
January 1866--the very first demand ever made for Congressional action
on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up
400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under
protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child,
who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and
Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever
zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[177]
By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful
Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically
friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves
wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's
influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her
only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional
recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way,
not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found
James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to
present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was
regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now
advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she
herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate
as well as in the House--a few because they saw justice in the demands
of the women, others because they believed white women should have
political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw
in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the
Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000
signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans.
In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and
Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had
found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young
editor of the _Independent_. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and
the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his
flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had
winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had
proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights
group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would
fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell
Phillips he suggested for president, and the _Antislavery Standard_
as the paper of the new organization.
This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to
Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult
Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips,
however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of
amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before
any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually
oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but
when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May
1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society,
she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union
had been given to the members of the antislavery group and therefore
there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal
Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the woman's
rights convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the
Negro. To her this seemed a natural development as she had always
thought of woman's rights as part of the larger struggle for human
rights.
"For twenty years," she declared, "we have pressed the claims of women
to the right of representation in the government.... Up to this hour
we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights;
but now by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage
reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress
at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation
in a republican form of government.
"There is, there can be, but one true basis," she continued. "Taxation
and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go
beyond woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights
platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human
rights platform."[178]
The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their
own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical
experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton with all their hearts
wanted this experiment to succeed, and yet as they resolved their
woman's rights organization into the American Equal Rights
Association, they were apprehensive.
They did not have to wait long for disillusionment. Meeting Wendell
Phillips and Theodore Tilton in the office of the _Antislavery
Standard_ to plan a campaign for the Equal Rights Association, they
discussed with them what should be done in New York, preparatory to
the revision of the state constitution. Emphatically Wendell Phillips
declared that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of
the constitution, but not the word "male." That could come, he added,
when the constitution was next revised, some twenty or thirty years
later. To their astonishment, Theodore Tilton heartily agreed. Then he
added, "The question of striking out the word 'male,' we as an equal
rights association shall of course present as an intellectual theory,
but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention."
Completely unprepared for such an attitude on Tilton's part, Susan
retorted with indignation, "I would sooner cut off my right hand than
ask for the ballot for the black man and not for woman." Then telling
the two men just what she thought of them for their betrayal of women,
she swept out of the office to keep another appointment.[179]
Equally exasperated with these men, Mrs. Stanton stayed on, hoping to
heal the breach, but when Susan returned to the Stanton home that
evening, she found her highly indignant, declaring she was through
boosting the Negro over her own head. Then and there they vowed that
they would devote themselves with all their might and main to woman
suffrage and to that alone.
* * * * *
By this time, Congress had passed a civil rights bill over President
Johnson's veto, conferring the rights of citizenship upon freedmen,
and a Fourteenth Amendment to make these rights permanent was now
before Congress. The latest developments regarding the various drafts
of the Fourteenth Amendment were passed along to Susan and Mrs.
Stanton by Robert Dale Owen. Senator Sumner, he reported, had yielded
to party pressure and now supported the Fourteenth Amendment, although
in the past he had always maintained such an amendment wholly
unnecessary since there was already enough justice, liberty, and
equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen. Senator
Sumner opposed and defeated a clause in the amendment referring to
"race" and "color," words which had never previously been mentioned
in the Constitution, but he raised no serious objection to the
introduction of the word "male" as a qualification for suffrage, which
was also unprecedented. That he tried time and time again to avoid the
word "male" when he was redrafting the amendment or that Thaddeus
Stevens tried to substitute "legal voters" for "male citizens" was no
comfort to Susan and Mrs. Stanton, as they saw the Fourteenth
Amendment writing discrimination against women into the federal
Constitution for the first time.[180]
As they carefully read over the first section of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which conferred citizenship on every person born or
naturalized in the United States, women's rights seemed assured:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Then in the controversial second section which provided the penalty of
reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes
of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by
the words, "male inhabitants" and "male citizens," used to define
legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single
word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise
arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere
abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to
women, there was no doubt.
With determination, Susan and Mrs. Stanton fought this injustice. Were
they not "persons born ... in the United States," they asked. Were
they forever to be regarded as children or as lower than persons,
along with criminals, idiots, and the insane? Were women not counted
in the basis of representation and should they not have a voice in the
election of those representatives whose office their numbers helped to
establish?
As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of
suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there
were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the
right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the
Fourteenth Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and
limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional, she
reasoned, when the first lines of the Constitution read, "We, the
people of the United States, in order to ... establish justice ... and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America." Of course "the people" must include women, if the English
language meant what it said.
The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by
Congress and referred to the states for ratification in June 1866. As
never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the
unimportance of women. Once more politicians and reformers had ignored
women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's
intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman
of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the
Fourteenth Amendment's broad term of "persons." Yet according to
statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling,
both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the
possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property
of individuals from the interference of state and municipal
legislation, through the federal control extended by this amendment.
At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have
received abundant protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, along
with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.[181]
Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage
could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it
were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was
all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but
neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They
knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South
the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and
could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured
of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be
considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would
vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted.
Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican
party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican,
Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the
watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each
and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any
distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate
floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking
out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He
stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and
although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud
the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the
three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts
declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two
issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a
separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas
objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it
with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his
approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's
amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine
votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182]
Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had
for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had
treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing
definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York
_Tribune_. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry
from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the
ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the
glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against
woman suffrage and the _Antislavery Standard_ avoiding the subject as
if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached
the public.[183]
It was hard for Susan to forgive the _Antislavery Standard_ for what
she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed
allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest
Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading
men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and
Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing
to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage
at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the
Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of
political parties.
Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the
antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one
temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was
the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own
claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights.
Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha
C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John
Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the
ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not
criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure
am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the
country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to
use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has
taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the
charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he
speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect
and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove
expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point
again."[184]
FOOTNOTES:
[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's
Vineyard, in 1864.
[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs.
Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester.
Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street
in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable
insurance business.
[161] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 241.
[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.
[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862.
[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.
[165] _Ibid._
[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862.
[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.
[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245.
[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.
[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.
[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967.
[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105.
[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244.
[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.
[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865.
[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251.
[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97.
[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260.
[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323.
[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus
Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its
citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of
the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not
disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was
a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."
[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112;
Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana,
Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.
[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B.
Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted
for woman suffrage.
[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to
woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came
out against it.
[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_
(Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H.
Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported
woman suffrage at this time.
TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS
Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She
carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to
the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights
Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment,
many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she
hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction.
She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the
amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185]
This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's
constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for
writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an
interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was
more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this
convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the
_Tribune_ to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he
emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that
measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This
is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186]
Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his
opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in
all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly
respected George William Curtis, now editor of _Harper's Magazine_ and
also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and
Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped
mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of
signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip,
and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the
right of suffrage.
Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's
hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness
answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading
consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually
serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable
to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot
and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two
women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan
replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the
point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she
reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought
in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and
paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187]
Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his
oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to
vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in
Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had
complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play,
should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed
he would do.[188]
In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over
their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many
reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers.
Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William
Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in
my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women,
citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from
the Constitution."[189]
Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily
took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet,
looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky
voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your
committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to
women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only
male citizens.[190]
Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter
to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom
that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and
practically all agreed in the conclusion that _the women of our state
do not choose to vote_. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the
sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in
favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The
few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the
situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to
me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto
existed...."[191]
Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating
him in the constitutional convention or for the headlines in the
evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's
petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of
Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly
greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most
maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."[192]
* * * * *