help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas, where in November
1867 two amendments would be voted upon, enfranchising women and
Negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare
Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak
throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy, as trustees of the Jackson
Fund, outvoting Wendell Phillips, were able to appropriate $1,500 for
this campaign.
Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas, where
she and her husband, Henry Blackwell, were winning many friends for
the cause. "I fully expect we shall carry the State," Lucy confidently
wrote Susan. "The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past
all expression if they don't get the right to vote.... But the Negroes
are all against us.... These men _ought not to be allowed to vote
before we do_, because they will be just so much dead weight to
lift."[193]
One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to
withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had
sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York _Tribune_ and
the _Independent_, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word
favorable to woman suffrage, for these two papers with their influence
and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women
not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the
Republican press changed from indifference to outright animosity,
striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them "free lovers,"
because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as
Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful, believing the
Democrats were ready to take them up, but she reminded Susan, "It will
be necessary to have a good force here in the fall, and you will have
to come."
Never for a moment did the importance of this election in Kansas
escape Susan, and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart
Mill, who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas woman
suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November
give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, history will
remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been
the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over
the earth and to be looked back to ... as one of the most fertile in
beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human
affairs."[194]
Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman suffrage just as it
had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held
back. Her first problem, however, was to raise the money to get
herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson Fund
had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan, who
most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they
returned to the East. Olympia Brown, recently graduated from Antioch
College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist church, was a
new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable, she reached every
part of Kansas during the summer, driving over the prairies with the
Singing Hutchinsons.[195]
Olympia Brown's valiant help made waiting in New York easier for Susan
as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the
Jackson Fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision; and the
trustees of the Hovey Fund, established to further the rights of both
Negroes and women, refused to finance a woman suffrage campaign in
Kansas.
"We are left without a dollar," she wrote State Senator Samuel N.
Wood. "Every speaker who goes to Kansas must _now pay her own_
expenses out of her own private purse, unless money should come from
some unexpected source. I shall run the risk--as I told you--and draw
upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not
contract _debts_ under the impression that _our_ Association can pay
for them--_for it cannot_."[196]
She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently
needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and
down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough
to pay the printer for 60,000 tracts, with the result that along with
the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore
Parker, George William Curtis, and John Stuart Mill went
advertisements of Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and
patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to
attract the people of Kansas.
* * * * *
With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had had little time
to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to
Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for
several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to
Kansas.
On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a
congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton, she enjoyed every new
experience, particularly the new Palace cars advertised as the finest,
most luxurious in the world, costing $40,000 each. The comfortable
daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by
solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two
good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for
many a day.
As soon as they reached Kansas, they set out immediately on a two-week
speaking tour of the principal towns, and as usual Susan starred Mrs.
Stanton while she herself acted as general manager, advertising the
meetings, finding a suitable hall, sweeping it out if necessary,
distributing and selling tracts, and perhaps making a short speech
herself. The meetings were highly successful, but traveling by stage
and wagon was rugged; most of the food served them was green with soda
or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bedbugs. Susan
wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors"
out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197]
Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when
they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by
Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman,
had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a
rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly.
Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough
cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and
a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows....
Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very
scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that
great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings,
and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our
railroad fare--eight cents per mile--and hotel bills. Our collections
thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully
disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas
meetings."[198]
The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win
her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years
which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old
maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke
down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender
energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin
to that of the frontiersman.
Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm.
The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a
brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a
queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully
curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor
built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager
to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her.
This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She
sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small
towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular
and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State
Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In
the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the
campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine,
against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas
Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican,
the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up
as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and
woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought
women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the
liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against
votes for women.
* * * * *
While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the
Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage
Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in
Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he
telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own
expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy,
eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad,
Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she
herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the
women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory,
speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences.
A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily
dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers,
patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth
driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment
they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of
his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none
of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous
sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the
day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences
held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When
he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were
building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman
suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when
he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who
throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother,
his daughter, his sister, and his wife."[200]
[Illustration: George Francis Train]
At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling
Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and
eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in
Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make
last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support
both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a
_Tribune_ editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that
the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard
it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas.
She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women
have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really
desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them
the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would
conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole,
rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of
their husbands and fathers...."[201]
These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in
Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning her back on such
fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously.
When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train
on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred
at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it
alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued
with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber
wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest
settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity,
traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not
at all, unconventional though it was.
She took charge of the meetings, opening them herself with a short
sincere plea for both the woman and Negro suffrage amendments, and
then she introduced George Francis Train, who, no matter how late they
arrived or how tiring the day, had changed his wrinkled gray traveling
suit for his resplendent platform costume. The expectant crowd never
failed to respond with a gasp of surprise, and immediately the fun
began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them, calling
for their support of woman suffrage and advocating as well some of his
own pet ideas, such as freeing Ireland from British oppression, paying
our national debt in greenbacks, establishing an eight-hour day in
industry, and even nominating himself for President.
Amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit, Susan found
neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by
opponents of woman suffrage. As the days went by with their continued
hardships and increasing fatigue, she marveled at his unfailing
courteousness, his pluck, and good cheer, while he in turn admired her
courage, her endurance, and her zeal for her cause, and between them a
bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed
by the pressures of later years.
During the long hours on the road, he entertained her with the story
of his life and his travels, an adventure story of a poor boy who had
made good. Building clipper ships, introducing American goods in
Australia, traveling in India, China, and Russia, promoting street
railways in England, and now building the Union Pacific, he had a
wealth of information to impart.
Their views on the Negro differed sharply. Rating the whole race as
inferior and incapable of improvement, he naturally opposed
enfranchising Negroes before women. She, on the other hand, had always
regarded Negroes as her equals, and in campaigning with Train, she had
to make her choice between Negroes and women. She chose women, just as
her abolitionist friends in the East had chosen the Negro; and their
indifference and opposition to woman suffrage at this crucial time was
as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them. They
called him a Copperhead, remembering his southern wife and his hatred
of abolitionists, his vocal resistance to the draft, and his demands
for immediate unconditional peace. They ignored entirely his defense
of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated
with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy. They abused him in
their newspapers and he, not to be outdone, ridiculed them in his
speeches, shouting, "Where is Wendell Phillips, today? Lost caste
everywhere. Inconsistent in all things, cowardly in this. Where is
Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty? Pitching the woman
suffrage idea out of the Convention and bailing out Jeff Davis. Where
is William Lloyd Garrison? Being patted on the shoulders by his
employers, our enemies abroad, for his faithful work in trying to
destroy our nation. Where is Henry Ward Beecher? Writing a story for
Bonner's Ledger...."[202]
They never forgave him this estimate of them, nor did they forgive
Susan for associating herself with him.
On one of the last days of the Kansas campaign, while she was driving
over the prairie with him, he suddenly asked her why the woman
suffrage people did not have a paper of their own. "Not lack of
brains, but lack of money," she tersely replied.[203]
They talked for a while about the good such a paper would do, about
the people who should edit and write for it, what name it should have.
Then he said simply, "I will give you the money."
Because a woman suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so
many years, she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant
gesture soon to be forgotten; but to her amazement that very evening
she heard Train announce to his audience, "When Miss Anthony gets back
to New York, she is going to start a woman suffrage paper. Its name is
to be _The Revolution_: its motto, 'Men their rights, and nothing
more; women, their rights and nothing less.' This paper is to be a
weekly, price $2. per year; its editors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
Parker Pillsbury; its proprietor, Susan B. Anthony. Let everybody
subscribe for it!"
* * * * *
Election day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth,
to Daniel's home, to learn the verdict of the people of Kansas. As the
returns came in, their hope of seeing Kansas become the first woman
suffrage state quickly faded. Neither their amendment nor the Negroes'
polled enough votes for adoption. Their woman suffrage amendment,
however, received only 1,773 votes less than the Republican-sponsored
Negro amendment, and to have accomplished this in a hard-fought bitter
campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves
and in their judgment of men and events. No longer need they depend
upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance. From
now on they would chart their own course. This led, they believed, to
Washington, where they must gain support among members of Congress for
a federal woman suffrage amendment. Few, if any, Republicans would
help them, but already one Democrat had come forward. George Francis
Train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a
lecture tour on their way East. To Susan, who had to raise every penny
spent in her work, this seemed like an answer to prayer, as did his
proposal to finance a woman suffrage paper for them.
By this time their abolitionist friends in the East were writing them
indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on George
Francis Train and warning them not to link woman suffrage with an
unbalanced charlatan. Even their devoted friends in Kansas, including
Governor Robinson, advised them against further association with
Train.
They did not make their decision lightly, nor was it easy to go
against the judgment of respected friends, but of this they were
confident--that with or without Train, they would estrange most of
their old friends if they campaigned for woman suffrage now. Without
him, their work, limited by lack of funds, would be ineffectual. With
his financial backing, they not only had the opportunity of spreading
their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New
York, but had the promise of a paper, now so desperately needed when
other news channels were closed to them. That Train was eccentric they
agreed, and they also admitted that possibly some of his financial
theories were unsound. They believed he was ahead of his time when he
advocated the eight-hour day and the abolition of standing armies; but
at least he looked forward, not backward. Susan had found him to be a
man of high principles. She had heard him "make speeches on woman's
suffrage that could be equalled only by John B. Gough,"[204] the
well-known temperance crusader. Train's radical ideas did not disturb
her. Her association with antislavery extremists prior to the Civil
War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of
conservatives. She was aware that on this proposed lecture tour Train
probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs.
Stanton's popularity as a speaker; but on the other hand, his
generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced.
For Susan there was only one choice--to work for woman suffrage with
the financial backing of Train. Mrs. Stanton agreed, and as she
expressed it, "I have always found that when we see eye to eye, we are
sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong.... I take
my beloved Susan's judgment against the world."[205]
* * * * *
Traveling homeward with George Francis Train, Susan and Mrs. Stanton
spoke in Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland,
Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Hartford, and other important cities where
they drew large crowds, which had never before listened to a
discussion of woman suffrage. Most of their old friends among the
suffragists and abolitionists shunned them, for they had been warned
against this folly by their colleagues in the East. The lively
meetings rated plenty of publicity, complimentary in the Democratic
papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press. Usually
"Woman Suffrage" got the headlines, but sometimes it was "Woman
Suffrage and Greenbacks" or "Train for President." Handbills, the
printing of which Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and
epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all
meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also
arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, _The
Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, with this jingle, so
uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, on its cover:
The Garrisons, Phillipses, Greeleys, and Beechers,
False prophets, false guides, false teachers and preachers,
Left Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Brown, and Stone,
To fight the Kansas battle alone;
While your Rosses, Pomeroys, and your Clarkes
Stood on the fence, or basely fled,
While woman was saved by a Copperhead.
Even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists were
the back-page advertisements of a new woman-suffrage paper, _The
Revolution_, and of woman's rights tracts which could be purchased
from Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the American Equal Rights
Association. That Susan would presume to line up this organization in
any way with George Francis Train aroused the indignation of Lucy
Stone, who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust. While Susan
and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward, enjoying the comfort of the best
hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences, a coalition against
them was being formed in the East.
"All the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong,"
Susan wrote in her diary, January 1, 1868. "Only time can tell, but I
believe we are right and hence bound to succeed."[206]
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Ms., Petition, Jan. 9, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection
[186] Ms., note, 1893, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.
[187] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 278; _History of Woman Suffrage_, II,
p. 284.
[188] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 279.
[189] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287. Petitions with 20,000
signatures were presented.
[190] _Ibid._, p. 285.
[191] Aug. 25, 1867, Alma Lutz Collection.
[192] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 287.
[193] _Ibid._, pp. 234-235, 239.
[194] _Ibid._, p. 252.
[195] A famous family of singers who enlivened woman's rights,
antislavery, and temperance meetings with their songs.
[196] July 9, 1867, Anthony Papers, Kansas State Historical Society,
Topeka, Kansas.
[197] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 284.
[198] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 242.
[199] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 287. George Francis Train on his own
initiative spoke for woman suffrage before the New York Constitutional
Convention.
[200] George Francis Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_
(Leavenworth, Kansas, 1867), p. 68.
[201] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 248-249.
[202] Train, _The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, p. 40.
[203] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 290.
[204] Inscription by Susan B. Anthony on copy of Train's _The Great
Epigram Campaign of Kansas_, Library of Congress.
[205] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 293.
[206] _Ibid._, p. 295.
THE ONE WORD OF THE HOUR