hope. She had brought suit against an election inspector for his
refusal to register her as a voter in the presidential election of
1872, and the case of Minor vs. Happersett reached the United States
Supreme Court in 1874. An adverse decision, on March 29, 1875,
delivered by Chief Justice Waite, a friend of woman suffrage, was a
bitter blow to Susan and to all those who had pinned their faith on a
more liberal interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments.
Carefully studying the decision, Susan tried to fathom its reasoning,
so foreign to her own ideas of justice. "Sex," she read, "has never
been made of one of the elements of citizenship in the United
States.... The XIV Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women
any more than it did of men.... The direct question is, therefore,
presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters."[312]
She read on: "The Constitution does not define the privileges and
immunities of citizens.... In this case we need not determine what
they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It
certainly is nowhere made so in express terms....
"When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the
several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had Constitutions
of their own.... We find in no State were all citizens permitted to
vote.... Women were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by
the express provision of their constitutions and laws ... No new State
has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of
suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered valid
objection to her admission. On the contrary ... the right of suffrage
was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey,
without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to
prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have
been reorganized under a requirement that, before their
Representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress, they must have
adopted new Constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these
Constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States
have all been restored to their original position as States in the
Union ... Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled,
this is one....
"Our province," concluded Chief Justice Waite, "is to decide what the
law is, not to declare what it should be.... Being unanimously of the
opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the
right of suffrage upon any one, and that the Constitutions and laws of
the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are
not necessarily void, we affirm the judgment of the Court below."
"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored
it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration
which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal
control over the rights and privileges of citizens. If the
Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage, she asked herself,
why does it define the qualifications of those voting for members of
the House of Representatives? How about the enfranchisement of Negroes
by federal amendment or the enfranchisement of foreigners? Why did
the federal government interfere in her case, instead of leaving it in
the hands of the state of New York?
Like most abolitionists, Susan had always regarded the principles of
the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as
the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation
of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of
harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also
contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, Sir Edward
Coke, who said, "Whenever the question of liberty runs doubtful, the
decision must be given in favor of liberty."[313]
In the face of such a ruling by the highest court in the land, she was
helpless. Women were shut out of the Constitution and denied its
protection. From here on there was only one course to follow, to press
again for a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women.
FOOTNOTES:
[304] Ms., Diary, April 26, 1873.
[305] _Trial_, p. 17.
[306] _Ibid._, pp. 62-68.
[307] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1873.
[308] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1873, Library of Congress.
[309] _Trial_, pp. 81-85.
[310] This booklet also included the speeches of Susan B. Anthony and
Matilda Joslyn Gage, delivered prior to the trial, and a short
appraisal of the trial, _Judge Hunt and the Right of Trial by Jury_,
by John Hooker, the husband of Isabella Beecher Hooker. The Rochester
_Democrat and Chronicle_ called the booklet "the most important
contribution yet made to the discussion of woman suffrage from a legal
standpoint." The _Woman's Suffrage Journal_, IV, Aug. 1, 1873, p. 121,
published in England by Lydia Becker, said: "The American law which
makes it a criminal offense for a person to vote who is not legally
qualified appears harsh to our ideas."
[311] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 455-456.
[312] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 737-739, 741-742.
[313] _Trial_, p. 191.
SOCIAL PURITY
Militancy among the suffragists continued to flare up here and there
in resistance to taxation without representation. Abby Kelley Foster's
home in Worcester was sold for taxes for a mere fraction of its worth,
while in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Abby and Julia Smith's cows and
personal property were seized for taxes. Both Dr. Harriot K. Hunt in
Boston and Mary Anthony in Rochester continued their tax protests.
Much as Susan admired this spirited rebellion, she recognized that
these militant gestures were but flames in the wind unless they had
behind them a well-organized, sustained campaign for a Sixteenth
Amendment, and this she could not undertake until _The Revolution_
debt was paid. Nor was there anyone to pinch-hit for her since
Ernestine Rose had returned to England and Mrs. Stanton gave all her
time to Lyceum lectures.
At the moment the prospect looked bleak for woman suffrage. In
Congress, there was not the slightest hope of the introduction of or
action on a Sixteenth Amendment. In the states, interest was kept
alive by woman suffrage bills before the legislatures, and year by
year, with more people recognizing the inherent justice of the demand,
the margin of defeat grew smaller. Whenever these state contests were
critical, Susan managed to be on hand, giving up profitable lecture
engagements to speak without fees; in Michigan in 1874 and in Iowa in
1875, she made new friends for the cause but was unable to stem the
tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in
Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor,
drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then
the other extreme, every narrow, selfish religious bigot."[314]
A new militant movement swept the country in 1874, starting in small
Ohio towns among women who were so aroused over the evil influence of
liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in
front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to
reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising,
the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next
few years was organized into a powerful reform movement by a young
schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard.
A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the
conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly
temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women.
Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who
organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she
felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to
show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic.
You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which
is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil
until you have votes."[315]
As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what
she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment,
speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the
Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a
week, which she applied to the _Revolution_ debt.
Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their
popularity,--particularly in the West, where in the little towns
scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters,
and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met
the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and
children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons
to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card,
for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost
everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise,
discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe.
She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her
dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but
frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to
them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple
conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious
oratory of other lecturers.
Continuous travel in all kinds of weather was difficult. Branch lines
were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by
blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel
by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits in dingy
dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy,
reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on
any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister
Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood
public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel
rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only
occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of
coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her
unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too
generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their
services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and
arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could
be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.[317]
Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and
Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously
she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in
despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she
reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy
a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done
until the _Revolution_ debt was paid, for some of her creditors were
becoming impatient.
* * * * *
As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her
family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her
illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to
take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for
her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that
Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas.
These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a
great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George
Eliot's _Middlemarch_ and Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_ of particular
interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions
which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case,
now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest
developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends.
She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in
whose home she had so often visited and toward whom she felt a warm
motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose
help and loyalty during the difficult days of _The Revolution_ she
never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose
quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he
had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same
was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to
say a good word for woman's rights.
Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before,
Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and
Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs.
Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in
1872 had revived her _Weekly_ for a crusade on what she called "the
social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton
Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined
by merciless publicity.
The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable
people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward
Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young
parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by
Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials
continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The
whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward
Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him.
Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote
Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike
anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"[318]
When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a
suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the
alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news
throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published
anything and everything even remotely connected with the case.
Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the
West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding
them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force
her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry
Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she steadfastly
refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who
astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her
in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice
quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton,
who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the
New York _Graphic_ without Susan's consent published her letter to
Mrs. Hooker.
The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher,
whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher,
whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word
carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could
not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a
sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that
the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his
side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes
influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church
real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, _Christian Union_,
and from his book the _Life of Christ_, now in preparation and for
which he had already been paid $20,000.
Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular
side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own
defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her
to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew
far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or
Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press
campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman
Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their
previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as
were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in _The
Revolution_ six years before.
Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole
doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the
husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second
marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I
consider the marriage relation."[319]
Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or
innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to
her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding
the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an
impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have
a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul
becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain
and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more
demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie
which denies it."[320]
Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she
could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her
reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the
New York _Sun_, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by
those who know anything of her character." The Rochester _Democrat and
Chronicle_ had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite
revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be
received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence
of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the
country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."[321]
She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of
trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a
verdict.
* * * * *
Realizing that many taboos were being broken down by the lurid
nation-wide publicity on the Beecher-Tilton case and that as a result
people were more willing to consider subjects which hitherto had not
been discussed in polite society, Susan began to plan a lecture on
"Social Purity."
She was familiar with the public protest Englishwomen under the
leadership of Josephine Butler were making against the state
regulation of vice. Following with interest and admiration their
courageous fight for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which
placed women suspected of prostitution under police power, Susan found
encouragement in the support these reformers had received from such
men as John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright. Such legislation, she
resolved, must not gain a foothold in her country, because it not only
disregarded women's right to personal liberty but showed a dangerous
callousness toward men's share of responsibility for prostitution.
She was awake to the problems prostitution presented in cities like
New York and Washington, its prevalence, the police protection it
received, the political corruption it fostered and the reluctance of
the public to face the situation, the majority of men regarding it as
a necessity, and most women closing their eyes to its existence.
During the winter of 1875, while the Beecher-Tilton case was being
tried in Brooklyn, she delivered her speech on "Social Purity" at the
Chicago Grand Opera House, in the Sunday dime-lecture course, facing
with trepidation the immense crowd which gathered to hear her. Even
the daring Mrs. Stanton had warned her that she would never be asked
to speak in Chicago again, and with this the manager of the Slayton
Lecture Bureau agreed. But they were wrong. The people were hungry for
the truth and for a constructive policy. In the past they had heard
the "social evil" described and denounced in vivid thunderous words by
eloquent men and by the dramatic Anna E. Dickinson. Now an earnest
woman with graying hair, one of their own kind, talked to them without
mincing matters, calmly and logically, and offered them a remedy.
Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and
breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of
abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these
evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them
successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics,
revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a
foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence
rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously
mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against
England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for
New York and Washington and which she described as licensed
prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social
corruption.
Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as
the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more
statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work
formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually
taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a
living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were
supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet
their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and
comfortable shelter into an immoral life.
Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who
now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell
themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she
told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of
financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence.
Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women
like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322]
"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals.
Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees,
legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there
must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers,
doctors--that wherever women go to seek counsel--spiritual, legal,
physical--there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest
of their own sex to minister to them."
Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a
necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will
cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the
equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions."
She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make
the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise,
rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them,
have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges,
jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our
courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married
woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence.
Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity
presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause
was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott,
fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling
approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott
declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner,
truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323]
She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas,
and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the
issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed
by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper
observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the
sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the
subject."[324]
* * * * *