seemed unwise. She told them frankly how she felt and left it at that,
but most of them had to learn by experience. When Belva Lockwood, one
of her most able colleagues in Washington, accepted the nomination for
President of the United States, offered her by the women of California
in 1884 and by the women of Iowa in 1888 through their Equal Rights
party, she did not lend her support or that of the National
Association, but followed her consistent policy of no alignment with a
minority party. Nevertheless, she heartily believed in women's right
and ability to hold the highest office in the land.
* * * * *
Ever since her trip to Europe in 1883, Susan had been planning for an
international gathering of women. Interest in this project was kept
alive among European women by Mrs. Stanton during her frequent visits
with her daughter Harriot in England and her son Theodore in France.
It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the
National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an
international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate
the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten
thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all
parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as
well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and
an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference
and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of
Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the
enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide
contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many
and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy
development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her _Woman's
Tribune_ in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's _Tribune_,
established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had since then met in a
measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she
welcomed its transfer to Washington.[362]
Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House
in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which
opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted
entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the
pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national
organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England,
France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada.
Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record
attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and
Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in
Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening
thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel
not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and
demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training
in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal
suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their
responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education
and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were
listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White
House by President and Mrs. Cleveland.
Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress
with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine
of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore _Sun_, "daily
grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good
works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of
press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of
doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the
parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without
murmur or dissent."[363]
A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five
years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as
president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed
as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as
vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral
reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as
Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international
movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn
by experience.
Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women,
two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and
overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American
Woman Suffrage Associations.
Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary
Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she assumed, was a narrow Methodist
minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman
in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience
spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm
personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a
matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan
and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled
as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met.
Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her
indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the
hardships and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary
Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her
way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School,
from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two
Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist
Episcopal church because of her sex. Eventually she was ordained by
the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied
medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker
was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups.
Through the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she met an
inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances
Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave
the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage
movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the
Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was placed at the head
of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she
met Susan B. Anthony.
[Illustration: Anna Howard Shaw]
The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the
feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant
vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her,
seemed particularly well fitted to assist Susan in the arduous
campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure
take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western
tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's
promise that she would lecture for the National Association.
One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after
meeting her at the International Council. A warm friendship quickly
developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years
they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and
planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester
through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home
and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and
devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker
nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her
tasks, though less spectacular, were important and freed both Susan
and Anna from many details.
Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard
Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman
Suffrage Association, just so it clarified the opinions of other young
women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of
both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups
should not work together in one large strong organization, and this
seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other
countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the
personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had
caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the
difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they
press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt
themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked
forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together,
but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had
made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by
surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American Association proposed
that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union.
* * * * *
The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous
partisans, and in the _Woman's Journal_, the _Woman's Tribune_, and
elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the
twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the
tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the
past aroused little interest.
The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most
difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton,
nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed
for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for
Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger
members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were
chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's
favor. Her popularity in the National Association was tremendous.
Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and
admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she
now spent so much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many
who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go
to Susan, who was always on the job.
[Illustration: Harriot Stanton Blatch]
Most of the American Association regarded Susan as safer and less
radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path
of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election.
Susan did not want the presidency. She wanted it for Mrs. Stanton, who
had headed the National Association so ably for so many years. She
pleaded earnestly with the delegates of the National Association: "I
will say to every woman who is a National and who has any love for the
old Association, or for Susan B. Anthony, that I hope you will not
vote for her for president.... Don't you vote for any human being but
Mrs. Stanton.... When the division was made 22 years ago it was
because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too
radical.... And now ... if Mrs. Stanton shall be deposed ... you
virtually degrade her.... I want our platform to be kept broad enough
for the infidel, the atheist, the Mohammedan, or the Christian....
These are the broad principles I want you to stand upon."[364]
When the two organizations met in February 1890 to effect formal union
as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton was elected president by a majority of 41 votes, while Susan
was the almost unanimous choice for vice-president at large. With Lucy
Stone chosen chairman of the executive committee, Jane Spofford
treasurer, and Rachel Foster and Alice Stone Blackwell
secretaries,[365] the new organization was well equipped with able
leaders for the work ahead. It was dedicated to work for both state
and federal woman suffrage amendments and its official organ would be
the _Woman's Journal_.
Susan now faced the future with gratitude that a strong unified
organization could be handed down to the younger women who would
gradually take over the work she had started, and her confidence in
these young women grew day by day. Working closely with Rachel Foster
and May Wright Sewall, she knew their caliber. Anna Howard Shaw and
Alice Stone Blackwell showed great promise, and Harriot Stanton Blatch
was living up to her expectations. In England where Harriot had made
her home since her marriage in 1882, she was active in the cause, and
on her visits to her mother in New York, she kept in touch with the
suffrage movement in the United States. She took part in the union
meeting, and in her diary, Susan recorded these words of commendation,
"Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy of her mother
and her mother's lifelong friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment
for me."[366]
To such she could entrust her beloved cause.
FOOTNOTES:
[356] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 592.
[357] _Ibid._, p. 658.
[358] Miss Anthony first met Frances Willard in 1875 when she lectured
in Rochester. Invited to sit on the platform, by her side, she
thoughtfully refused, adding "You have a heavy enough load to carry
without me." Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 472. When Frances Willard took
her stand for woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876, Miss Anthony
wrote her, "Now you are to go forward. I wish I could see you and make
you feel my gladness." Mary Earhart, _Frances Willard_ (Chicago,
1944), p. 153.
[359] During the debate, Frances Willard rendered valuable aid with a
petition for woman suffrage, signed by 200,000 women. This
counteracted in a measure the protests against woman suffrage by
President Eliot of Harvard and 200 New England clergymen.
[360] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 622-623.
[361] _Ibid._, p. 612.
[362] So successful was Mrs. Colby's Washington venture that she
continued to publish her _Woman's Tribune_ there for the next 16 years
[363] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 637.
[364] _Woman's Tribune_, Feb. 22, 1890.
[365] The credit for achieving union after two years of patient
negotiation goes to Rachel Foster Avery, secretary of the National
Association, and to Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell,
secretary of the American Association.
[366] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 675.
VICTORIES IN THE WEST
New western states were coming into the Union, North and South Dakota,
Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, and in Susan's opinion it was
highly important that they be admitted as woman suffrage states, for
she had not forgotten that disturbing line of the Supreme Court
decision in the Virginia Minor case which read, "No new State has ever
been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage
on women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her
admission."[367] Susan wanted to start a new trend.
Opposition to Wyoming's woman suffrage provision was strong in
Congress in spite of the fact that it had the unanimous approval of
Wyoming's constitutional convention. To Susan in the gallery of the
House of Representatives, listening anxiously to the debate on the
admission of Wyoming, defeat was unthinkable after women had voted in
the Territory of Wyoming for twenty years; but Democrats, wishing to
block the admission of a preponderantly Republican state, used woman
suffrage as an excuse. With a sinking heart, she heard an amendment
offered, limiting suffrage in Wyoming to males. At the crucial moment,
however, the tide was turned by a telegram from the Wyoming
legislature, the words of which rejoiced Susan, "We will remain out of
the Union a hundred years rather than come in without woman
suffrage."[368] After this, the House voted to admit Wyoming, 139 to
127, but the Senate delayed, renewing the attack on the woman suffrage
provision. Not until July 1890, while she was speaking to a large
audience in the opera house at Madison, South Dakota, did the good
news of the admission of Wyoming reach her. Jubilant as she commented
on this great victory, she spoke as one inspired, for she saw this as
the turning point in her forty long years of uphill work.
Neither North Dakota nor South Dakota had wanted to risk their
chances of statehood by incorporating woman suffrage in their
constitutions.[369] Yet public opinion in both states was friendly,
South Dakota directing its first legislature to submit the question to
the voters. It was this that brought Susan to South Dakota in 1890.
Sentiment for woman suffrage in South Dakota had previously been
created almost entirely by the W.C.T.U., and this had linked woman
suffrage and prohibition together. Now, the liquor interests made
prohibition an issue in this woman suffrage campaign, as they rallied
their forces for the repeal of prohibition which had been adopted when
South Dakota was admitted to statehood. Through the propaganda of the
liquor interests the 30,000 foreign-born voters became formidable
opponents, and newly naturalized Russians, Scandinavians, and Poles,
given the vote before American women, wore badges carrying the slogan,
"Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B. Anthony."[370] Both Republicans
and Democrats cultivated these foreign-born voters, turning a cold
shoulder to the woman suffrage amendment and refusing to endorse it in
their state conventions. Even the Farmers' Alliance and the Knights of
Labor, previously friendly to woman suffrage, now joined with the
Prohibitionists to form a third political party which also failed to
endorse the woman suffrage amendment. On top of all this,
anti-suffragists from Massachusetts, calling themselves Remonstrants,
flooded South Dakota with their leaflets.
It now seemed to Susan as if every clever politician had lined up
against women. During these trying days, Anna Howard Shaw joined her,
and together they covered the state, hoping by the truth and sincerity
of their statements to quash the propaganda against woman suffrage.
Often they traveled in freight cars, as transportation was limited, or
drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat
was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything
they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately
poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress
could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these
honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an investigating
commission.[371]
Occasionally Susan and Anna spent the night in isolated sod houses
where ingenious pioneer women cooked their scant meals over burning
chips of buffalo bones gathered on the prairie. Glorying in the
valiant spirit of these women, who in loneliness and hardship played
an important but unheralded role in the conquest of this new country,
Susan was generous with her praise. To them her words of commendation
were like a benediction, and few of them ever forgot a visit from
Susan B. Anthony.
By this time life on the frontier was an old story to her, for she had
campaigned under similar conditions in Kansas and in the far West.
Nonetheless, the hardships were trying. Yet this plucky woman of
seventy wrote friends in the East, "Tell everybody that I am perfectly
well in body and in mind, never better, and never doing more work....
O, the lack of modern comforts and conveniences! But I can put up with
it better than any of the young folks.... I shall push ahead and do my
level best to carry this State, come weal or woe to me personally....
I never felt so buoyed up with the love and sympathy and confidence of
the good people everywhere...."[372]
Young vigorous Anna Howard Shaw proved to be a campaigner after
Susan's own heart, tireless, uncomplaining, and good-tempered, an
exceptional speaker, witty and quick to say the right word at the
right time. It was a joy to find in Anna the same devotion to the
cause that she herself felt, the same crusading fervor and
reliability. During the long drives over the prairie, she talked to
Anna of the work that must be done, of what it would mean to the women
of the future, and she fired Anna's soul "with the flame that burned
in her own."[373]
Another young western woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, also attracted
Susan's attention at this time. She had volunteered for the South
Dakota campaign, after attending her first national woman suffrage
convention; and Susan, meeting her in Huron, South Dakota, to map out
a speaking tour for her, found a tall handsome confident young woman
ready to attack the work and see it through, in spite of the hardships
which confronted her.
Carrie Lane, a graduate of Iowa State College, had briefly studied law
and taught school before her marriage to Lee Chapman. Now, four years
after his death, she had married George W. Catt of Seattle, a
promising young engineer and a former fellow-student at Iowa State
College. What particularly impressed Susan was that Carrie, in spite
of her marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota.
She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every
difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and
planned for the future. In Carrie's report of her work there was a
ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's
approval. Here was a young woman to watch and to keep in the work.
[Illustration: The Anthony home, Rochester, New York]
The visible result of six months of campaigning was defeat, with the
vote 22,972 for woman suffrage and 45,632 opposed, and as Susan
remembered the maneuvers of the politicians, the trading of votes for
the location of the state capital, and the scheming of the liquor
interests, she felt she was championing a lonely cause.
* * * * *
From now on Susan hoped to turn over to the younger women much of the
lecturing and organizing in the West, and she needed an anchorage, a
home of her own from which she could direct the work. Her mother had
willed 17 Madison Street to Mary, who had rented the first floor and
was living on the second where there was a room for Susan. Now that
Susan planned to spend more time at home and Mary had retired from
teaching, they decided to take over the whole house, modernize and
redecorate it, and enjoy it the rest of their lives. Mary as usual
took charge, but Susan had definite ideas about what should be done.
Mary, who had learned to be cautious and frugal, was more willing
than Susan to make old furnishings do, but their friends came to the
rescue, showering them with gifts.
Freshly painted and papered, with new rugs on the floor, lace curtains
at the windows, easy chairs and new furniture here and there, the
house was all Susan had wished for, and everywhere were familiar
touches, such as her mother's spinning wheel by the fireplace in the
back parlor.
She spent most of her time in her study on the second floor. Here she
hung her pictures of the reformers she admired and loved; and right
over her desk, looking down at her, was the comforting picture of her
dearest friend, Mrs. Stanton. Hour after hour, she sat at this desk,
writing letters, hurriedly dashing off one after another, writing just
as the thoughts came, as if she were talking, bothering little with
punctuation, using dashes instead, and vigorously underlining words
and phrases for emphasis. Instructions to workers in all parts of the
country, letters of friendship and sympathy, answers to the many
questions which came in every mail, these were signed and sealed one
after another, and slipped into the mail box when she took a brisk
walk before going to bed.
She started each day with the morning newspaper, stepping out on the
front veranda to pick it up, taking a deep breath of fresh air, and
enjoying the green grass and the tall graceful chestnut trees in front
of the house. Then sitting down in the back parlor beside the big
table covered with magazines and mail, she carefully read her paper
before beginning the work at her desk, for she must keep up-to-date on
the news.