Susan B. Anthony Part 15

[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[165] _Ibid._

[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862.

[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.

[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245.

[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.

[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.

[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967.

[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105.

[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244.

[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.

[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865.

[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251.

[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97.

[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260.

[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323.

[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its citizens on account of color, all that cla.s.s shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."

[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112; Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.

[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B.

Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted for woman suffrage.

[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came out against it.

[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_ (Salem, Ma.s.s., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H.

Dall of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported woman suffrage at this time.

TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS

Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to the Fourteenth Amendment in a pet.i.tion from the American Equal Rights a.s.sociation, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction.

She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185]

This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's const.i.tutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for writing woman suffrage into the new const.i.tution. First she sought an interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for s.p.a.ce in the _Tribune_ to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the const.i.tution. This is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186]

Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage pet.i.tions in all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly respected George William Curtis, now editor of _Harper's Magazine_ and also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped mightily. New York women sent in pet.i.tions with hundreds of signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the right of suffrage.

Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the const.i.tutional convention's hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. a.s.suming women unable to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187]

Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big pet.i.tion in Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed he would do.[188]

In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers.

Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William Curtis announced with dignity and a.s.surance, "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a pet.i.tion from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Const.i.tution."[189]

Ripples of amus.e.m.e.nt ran through the audience, and reporters hastily took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women...." As a result, New York's new const.i.tution enfranchised only male citizens.[190]

Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and practically all agreed in the conclusion that _the women of our state do not choose to vote_. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the s.e.x do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has. .h.i.therto existed...."[191]

Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating him in the const.i.tutional convention or for the headlines in the evening papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's pet.i.tion. When they met again in New York a few weeks later at one of Alice Cary's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly greeting and brusquely remarked, "You two ladies are the most maneuvering politicians in the State of New York."[192]

While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for 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_ a.s.sociation 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 princ.i.p.al 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]