protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men
say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in
the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void
the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word
'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon
yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the
end a bloody revolution...."
Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for
women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse
report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent
supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the
House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and
Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the
right to vote and hold office in the territories.
* * * * *
Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for
woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in
Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of
the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she
realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run
do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality
who gave only part of herself to the task.
When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly
that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new
political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We
have no element out of which to make a political party, because there
is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he
endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance
party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown
away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."[281]
Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has
the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her
port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I
might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is
wholly owned and dominated by _men_ spirits and I spurn the whole lot
of them...."
A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of _Woodhull &
Claflin's Weekly_, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call
to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage
Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her
name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not
to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's
presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new
political party while she was publishing _The Revolution_, she was
practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria
Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure.
Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker
still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to
date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of
Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The
Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had
again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an
increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail
suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard,
Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to
free the National Association of her influence.
When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into
the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association
in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a
joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they
would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a
woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her
flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she
called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of
the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope
with Victoria, should this again become necessary.
Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance
near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention
adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with the people's
convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan
refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited
audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on
the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and
it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the
suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor
many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan
in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the
same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands
until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the
audience dispersed in the darkness.
With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage
Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at
Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was
nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal
Rights party.
Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan
breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her
diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle--all come of Mrs. S.
[Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's
Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with
the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by
letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull--though we rescued it--it was
as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no
condemnation of her actions in _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ but only
the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's
great work.[282]
The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria
Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into
line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under
Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood,
campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria
Woodhull.
* * * * *
While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the
sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of
financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication
of her _Weekly_, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and
Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the
liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George
W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored
woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a
persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better.
Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated
Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this
coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go
the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a
plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which
Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important,
powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform.
"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its
obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to
the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is
received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of
citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful
consideration."[283]
Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her
Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready
to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown
around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the
two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and
work together for "the living, vital issue of today--freedom to
women."
She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward
to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school
district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were
generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New
York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers
she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it
plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in
Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a
torrent of false accusations.[284] Only Mary Livermore of the American
Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with
Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did
not lack for effective orators.
In an _Appeal to the Women of America_, financed by the Republicans
and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and
the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most
bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has
heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women,
while the whole power of the _Tribune_ had been used to crush our
great reform...."[285]
Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time
friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and
defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not
join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding
Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the
Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the
Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the
Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that
everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a
Democrat or an apostate."[286]
Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as
they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse
further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her
speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the
Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs.
Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse
the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of
woman's claim to vote, _I_ am not...."[287]
FOOTNOTES:
[262] A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of Senator
Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage.
[263] _The Revolution_, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159.
[264] Clipping from _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Susan B. Anthony
Scrapbook, Library of Congress.
[265] Emanie, Sachs, _The Terrible Siren_ (New York, 1928), p. 87.
After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage meeting in
Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, 1871, "I
wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet modest and
dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely inspired for her
work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much impressed with her work
and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection,
Smith College.
[266] May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington
Library.
[267] _The Golden Age_, Dec., 1871.
[268] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 388.
[269] _Ibid._, pp. 389-390.
[270] _Ibid._, pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had been the
mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was acquitted of
his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to her pistol
shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia Cooley
Altrocchi, _The Spectacular San Franciscans_ (New York, 1949).
[271] Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871.
[272] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396.
[273] _Ibid._
[274] Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871.
[275] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 403.
[276] Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871.
[277] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396.
[278] Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872.
[279] _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Jan. 23, 1873.
[280] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 410-411.
[281] _Ibid._, p. 413.
[282] Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872.
[283] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 416-417.
[284] Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the _Woman's
Journal_, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the movement to
which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their lot with the
Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would have been
better for all concerned...."
[285] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 519. The Republicans
financed a paper, _Woman's Campaign_, edited by Helen Barnard, which
published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for a time hoped to
convert into a woman suffrage paper.
[286] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 422.
[287] _Ibid._
TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign
of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the
Union.
Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the
possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great
interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had
attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were
still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for
representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in
Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the
case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that
"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This
legal contest had been fully reported in _The Revolution_, and
disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to
establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising
among women.
There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she
hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She
had exulted in _The Revolution_ in 1868 over the attempt of women to
vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of
women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French
had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla
Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming
this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871,
Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V.
White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California,
and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to
vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah
Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to
the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their
ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election
Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of
the United States.[289] Another test case based on the Fourteenth
Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell,
one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the
Illinois bar because she was a woman.
With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women,
lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the
legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even
the press was friendly.
Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the
thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she
glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these
challenging words, "Now Register!... If you were not permitted to vote
you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face
death for it...."[290]
This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right.
She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she
intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly
to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering.
Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered.
The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that
this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she
claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but
under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines.
Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she
persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both
Republicans, finally consented to register the four women.
This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing
to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by
the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined
the ranks of the militants.
On election day, November 5, 1872, Susan gleefully wrote Elizabeth
Stanton, "Well, I have gone and done it!!--positively voted the
Republican ticket--Strait--this A.M. at 7 o'clock--& swore my vote in
at that.... All my three sisters voted--Rhoda deGarmo too--Amy Post
was rejected & she will immediately bring action against the
registrars.... Not a jeer not a word--not a look--disrespectful has
met a single woman.... I hope the mornings telegrams will tell of many
women all over the country trying to vote.... I hope you voted
too."[291]
* * * * *
Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which
Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in
Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie
Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had
courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth
Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm
about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan.
However, the fact that Susan B. Anthony had voted won immediate
response from the press in all parts of the country. Newspapers in
general were friendly, the New York _Times_ boldly declaring, "The act
of Susan B. Anthony should have a place in history," and the Chicago
_Tribune_ venturing to suggest that she ought to hold public office.
The cartoonists, however, reveling in a new and tempting subject,
caricatured her unmercifully, the New York Graphic setting the tone.
Some Democratic papers condemned her, following the line of the
Rochester _Union and Advertiser_ which flaunted the headline, "Female
Lawlessness," and declared that Miss Anthony's lawlessness had proved
women unfit for the ballot.
Before she voted, Susan had taken the precaution of consulting Judge
Henry R. Selden, a former judge of the Court of Appeals. After
listening with interest to her story and examining the arguments of
Benjamin Butler, Francis Minor, and Albert G. Riddle in support of the
claim that women had a right to vote under the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments, he was convinced that women had a good case and
consented to advise her and defend her if necessary. Judge Selden, now
retired from the bench because of ill health, was practicing law in
Rochester where he was highly respected. A Republican, he had served
as lieutenant governor, member of the Assembly, and state senator.
Susan had known him as one of the city's active abolitionists, a
friend of Frederick Douglass who had warned him to flee the country
after the raid on Harper's Ferry and the capture of John Brown. Such
a man she felt she could trust.
All was quiet for about two weeks after the election and it looked as
if the episode might be forgotten in the jubilation over Grant's
election. Then, on November 18, the United States deputy marshal rang
the doorbell at 7 Madison Street and asked for Miss Susan B. Anthony.
When she greeted him, he announced with embarrassment that he had come
to arrest her.
"Is this your usual manner of serving a warrant?" she asked in
surprise.[292]
He then handed her papers, charging that she had voted in violation of
Section 19 of an Act of Congress, which stipulated that anyone voting
knowingly without having the lawful right to vote was guilty of a
crime, and on conviction would be punished by a fine not exceeding
$500, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years.
This was a serious development. It had never occurred to Susan that
this law, passed in 1870 to halt the voting of southern rebels, could
actually be applicable to her. In fact, she had expected to bring suit
against election inspectors for refusing to accept the ballots of
women. Now charged with crime and arrested, she suddenly began to
sense the import of what was happening to her.
When the marshal suggested that she report alone to the United States
Commissioner, she emphatically refused to go of her own free will and
they left the house together, she extending her wrists for the
handcuffs and he ignoring her gesture. As they got on the streetcar
and the conductor asked for her fare, she further embarrassed the
marshal by loudly announcing, "I'm traveling at the expense of the
government. This gentleman is escorting me to jail. Ask him for my
fare." When they arrived at the commissioner's office, he was not
there, but a hearing was set for November 29.
On that day, in the office where a few years before fugitive slaves
had been returned to their masters, Susan was questioned and
cross-examined, and she felt akin to those slaves. Proudly she
admitted that she had voted, that she had conferred with Judge Selden,
that with or without his advice she would have attempted to vote to
test women's right to the franchise.[293]
"Did you have any doubt yourself of your right to vote?" asked the
commissioner.
"Not a particle," she replied.
On December 23, 1872, in Rochester's common council chamber, before a
large curious audience, Susan, the other women voters, and the
election inspectors were arraigned. People expecting to see bold
notoriety-seeking women were surprised by their seriousness and
dignity. "The majority of these law-breakers," reported the press,
"were elderly, matronly-looking women with thoughtful faces, just the
sort one would like to see in charge of one's sick-room, considerate,
patient, kindly."[294]
The United States Commissioner fixed their bail at $500 each. All
furnished bail but Susan, who through her counsel, Henry R. Selden,
applied for a writ of habeas corpus, demanding immediate release and
challenging the lawfulness of her arrest. When a writ of habeas corpus
was denied and her bail increased to $1,000 by United States District
Judge Nathan K. Hall, sitting in Albany, Susan was more than ever
determined to resist the interference of the courts in her
constitutional right as a citizen to vote. She refused to give bail,
emphatically stating that she preferred prison.
Seeing no heroism but only disgrace in a jail term for his client and
unwilling to let her bring this ignominy upon herself. Henry Selden
chivalrously assured her that this was a time when she must be guided
by her lawyer's advice, and he paid her bail. Ignorant of the
technicalities of the law, she did not realize the far-reaching
implications of this well-intentioned act until they left the
courtroom and in the hallway met tall vigorous John Van Voorhis of
Rochester who was working on the case with Judge Selden. With the
impatience of a younger man, eager to fight to the finish, he
exclaimed, "You have lost your chance to get your case before the
Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus!"[295]