The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 28

He had indeed struck the key note to Miss Anthony's strongest characteristic, utter forgetfulness of self, total self-abnegation, self-sacrifice without a consciousness that it was such. Mrs. Hooker's statement that she "had come in at the death" shows the strong faith of most of these early workers that it would be only a brief time until the rights they claimed would be recognized and granted; but she herself has labored faithfully yet another thirty years without breaking down the Chinese Wall of opposition.

One object of Mrs. Hooker in calling this Hartford convention was to see if she could not bring together what were now becoming known as "the New York and Boston wings of the suffrage party," but she comments: "We have decided to give up our attempts at reconciliation; we have neither time nor strength to spare, and if we had, they would probably fail."

In December Miss Anthony went to the Dansville Sanitarium for a few days and after her return, Dr. Kate Jackson, so widely known and loved, wrote her: "Since your visit here, through which I obtained somewhat of an insight into your struggles and labors, I have been in special sympathy with you. I do admire the liberal and comprehensive spirit which you and Mrs. Stanton show in allowing both sides of a question to be fairly discussed in your paper, and in giving any woman who does good work for her race in any field the credit for it, even though she may not exactly agree with you on all points. The spirit of exclusiveness is not calculated to push any reform among the ma.s.ses....

Our house and hearts are always open to you. I want to send you something more than good wishes and so enclose a little New Year's gift to you, with my love and earnest prayers for your success."

The lovely Quaker, Sarah Pugh, wrote from Philadelphia:

Dear Susan: Not "Dear Madam," or "Respected Friend," according to our stately fashion, for my heart yearns too warmly toward thee and thy work for such formality. Would it were in my power to help thee more in thy onward way, for it must be onward even though opponents fill it with stumbling-blocks. Lucretia Mott is firm in her adherence to New York--not but that she can work, if the way offers, in all organizations which labor for the same end. My opinion of The Revolution may be expressed in what was said of another paper: "It fights no sham battles with enemies already defeated. It is true, good men and women not a few stumble at it, object to it and in some cases antagonize it, but n.o.body despises it. An affectation of contempt is not contempt."

Scores of similar letters were received from the early workers in the cause. It is unnecessary to enter further into a discussion of this division in the ranks of the advocates of woman suffrage. The conscientious historian must perform some unpleasant duties, hence it could not be pa.s.sed without notice. The ma.s.s of correspondence on this question has been carefully sifted and that which would give pain to others, even though it would magnify the subject of this work, has been rigorously excluded. Most of the writers and those whom they criticised have ended their labors and pa.s.sed from the scene of action. No good can be accomplished, either to the individuals or to the reform, by inflicting these personalities upon future generations. Among earnest, forceful, aggressive leaders of any great movement, there must arise controversies because of these strong characteristics, but the chief interest of mankind lies not in the individuals but in the results which they were able to accomplish. A comparison of the position of woman today with that which she occupied at the beginning of the agitation in her behalf, fifty years ago, offers more eloquent testimony to the efforts of those heroic pioneers than could be put into words by the most gifted pen.

[Footnote 48: It is claimed, on good authority, that Anna d.i.c.kinson was the first to suggest that such an amendment would be required, as early as 1866, in a consultation with Theodore Tilton and Frederick Dougla.s.s at the National Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, as the only sure method of protecting the freedmen. See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.

II, p. 327.]

[Footnote 49: In reference to this unwarranted attack, the noted writer, William Winter, said in the New York Tribune:

"n.o.ble, virtuous, honorable women are a country's greatest wealth, and when, from petty envy or jealousy, any one attempts with private innuendoes or public a.s.saults to blacken a fair name which has long stood before the nation representing a principle, it is an injury not only to the individual but to the moral sense of the nation, and all true people are interested in maintaining its integrity and power.

Susan B. Anthony has stood before this nation twenty years, earnestly devoted to every good work. As a teacher in the schools of New York for fifteen years, she bears from superintendents the highest testimonials to her faithfulness and ability. Her n.o.ble labors in the temperance cause are known throughout the State, and in a.s.sociation with the true men and women who fought the anti-slavery battle, she was equally faithful and earnest, finishing her work by getting up a pet.i.tion for the black man's freedom of 400,000 names--the largest ever presented in Congress. For woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt her labors have been unremitting and unwearied for the last eighteen years. She is a frank, generous, self-sacrificing woman, of a kind, tender nature, firm principle, great executive ability, and in every relation of life true as the needle to the pole. Her motto has ever been, 'Let the weal and the woe of humanity be everything to me; their praise and their blame of no effect.'"]

[Footnote 50: Maine 3, Vermont 1, New Hampshire 1, Ma.s.sachusetts 5, Rhode Island 2, Connecticut 1, New Jersey 7, Pennsylvania 3, Illinois 3, Ohio 3, Wisconsin 1, Minnesota 1, Missouri 3, Kansas 2, Nebraska 1, California 5, District of Columbia 3, Washington Territory 1-46. The remainder of the one hundred members who joined the a.s.sociation that evening resided in different parts of the State of New York.]

[Footnote 51: _President_, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. _Vice-presidents_, Elizabeth B. Phelps, N.Y.; Anna d.i.c.kinson, Penn.; Kate N. Doggett, Ill.; Madame Anneke, Wis.; Lucy Elmes, Conn.; Mattie Griffith Brown, Ma.s.s.; Mrs. Nicholas Smith, Kan.; Lucy A. Snow, Maine; Elizabeth B.

Schenck, Cal.; Josephine S. Griffing, D.C.; Paulina Wright Davis, R.I.; Mary Foote Henderson, Phoebe W. Cousins, Mo. _Corresponding secretaries_, Laura Curtis Bullard, Ida Greeley, Adelaide Hallock.

_Recording secretaries_, Abby Burton Crosby, Sarah E. Fuller.

_Treasurer_, Elizabeth Smith Miller. _Executive committee_, Ernestine L. Rose, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Mathilda F. Wendt, Mary F. Gilbert, Susan B. Anthony. _Advisory counsel_, Matilda Joslyn Gage, N.Y.; Mrs.

Francis Minor, Mo.; Adeline Thomson, Penn,; Mrs. M.B. Longley, Ohio; Mrs. J.P. Root, Kan.; Lilie Peckham, Wis.]

CHAPTER XX.

FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY--END OF EQUAL RIGHTS SOCIETY.

1870.

Conventions and conventions for fifty years, without a break, planned and managed by one woman--was there ever a similar record? The year 1870 opened with the Second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 19. It had been advertised for two days, but the interest was so great that it was continued through the third day and evening. Mrs. Stanton was in the chair and the papers united in praising the beauty, dignity and elegant attire of the women on the platform. A long table at the Arlington Hotel was reserved for them, and Miss Anthony relates that as they were all going into the dining-room one day, Jessie Benton Fremont beckoned to her and when she went over to the table where the general and she were sitting, she said in her bright, pretty way: "Now tell me, did you hunt the country over and pick out a score of the most beautiful women you could find to melt the hearts of our congressmen?"

Letters of warm approval were read from John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor, of England; Professor Homer B. Sprague, of Cornell University; Bishop Simpson, of the Methodist church; Senator Matthew H. Carpenter, and many other distinguished persons. A number of senators and representatives addressed the meetings, as did also Hon. A.G. Riddle, of the District of Columbia, Rev. Samuel J. May, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the usual corps of well-known suffrage speakers. Jennie Collins, the Lowell factory girl, electrified the audience by discussing the great question from the standpoint of the workingwomen. All the New York dailies sent women reporters, a comparatively new feature at conventions.

A hearing was arranged before the joint committees for the District of Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the St. Louis convention a few months before, the first a.s.sertion of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Miss Anthony said:

We are here for the express purpose of urging you to present in your respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the District of Columbia Suffrage Act and thereby enfranchise the women of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman suffrage shall be made here, under the eye of Congress, as was that of negro suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been the experimental ground of each step toward freedom. The auction-block was here first banished, slavery here first abolished, the freedmen here first enfranchised; and we now ask that women here shall be first admitted to the ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all over the country as to the results of negro suffrage, and you deemed it right and safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you all remember that three days' discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's proposition to strike out the word "male." Well do I recollect with what anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and how we longed that Congress might then declare for the establishment in this District of a real republic. But conscience or courage or something was wanting, and women were bidden still to wait.

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first voted, the success of that election inspired Congress with confidence to pa.s.s the proposition for the Fifteenth Amendment, and the different States to ratify it, until it has become a fixed fact that black men all over the nation not only may vote but sit in legislative a.s.semblies and const.i.tutional conventions. We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic yet stand.

There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to make the experiment. Therefore, we most earnestly urge it, in full faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its beneficial results, they will go forward with a Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit any State from disfranchising any of its citizens on account of s.e.x.

A letter from Mrs. Fannie Howland in the Hartford Courant thus describes the hearing:

Senator Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who took their seats around a long table. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind her sat a large semicircle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces. Opposite sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.

The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history--n.o.ble, brilliant, heroic women; but _woman_ collectively, impersonally, today asks recognition in the commonwealth--not in virtue of hereditary n.o.blesse--not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the one ground of her possessing the same rights, interests and responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light, fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty and briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of everyday use, held the mind strictly to the actual facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable ill.u.s.tration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those senators and representatives who gave them audience. Mrs. Stanton was followed by Miss Anthony, morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and good nature.

The Hearth and Home, in Photographs of our Agitators, thus depicts Miss Anthony on this occasion:

She is the Bismarck; she plans the campaigns, provides the munitions of war, organizes the raw recruits, sets the squadrons in the field. Indeed, in presence of a timid lieutenant, she sometimes heads the charge; but she is most effective as the directing generalissimo. Miss Anthony is a quick, bright, nervous, alert woman of fifty or so--not at all inclined to embonpoint--sharp-eyed, even behind her spectacles. She presides over the treasury, she cuts the Gordian knots, and when the uncontrollables get by the ears at the conventions, she is the one who straightway drags them asunder and turns chaos to order again.

In every dilemma, she is unanimously summoned. As a speaker, she is angular and rigid, but trenchant, incisive, cutting through to the heart of whatever topic she touches.

Mrs. Hooker wrote: "There were congratulations without stint; but Sumner, grandest of all, approaching us said in a deep voice, really full of emotion: 'I have been in this place, ladies, for twenty years; I have followed or led in every movement toward liberty and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt; but this meeting exceeds in interest anything I ever have witnessed.'" In her weekly letter to the Independent, Mary Clemmer wrote of this convention:

I am glad to say that it was not mongrel--in part a dramatic reading, in part a concert, and in part an organ advertis.e.m.e.nt; but wholly a convention whose leaders, in dignity and intellect, were fully the peers of the men whose councils they besieged and arraigned. There was Mrs. Stanton--smiling, serene, and motherly--just the woman whose hand laid upon a young man's arm, whose voice speaking to him, could do so much to hold him back from evil. There was Susan Anthony--anxious, earnest and importunate, sarcastic, funny and unconventional as ever. Among all the company, "Susan" is the most violently and the most unjustly abused. To be sure, she can be very provocative of such speech. She sometimes has a lawless way of talking and acting, which men think wonderfully fascinating in a belle, but utterly unforgivable in a plain, middle-aged woman. Moreover, "Susan's" utter abnegation to her cause, her pa.s.sion for it, sometimes carries her on to "ways and means" not altogether tenable--in fine, she will offend your taste and mine; but this is only the outside and a very small side of Susan Anthony. A man, and more than a man--a woman who can deny herself, ignore herself, for a principle, for what she believes to be the truth, whether we believe it or not, is at least ent.i.tled to our respect.

Susan B. Anthony has a strong, earnest and loving nature; her devotion to her s.e.x is an utterly absorbing and absolute pa.s.sion.

Born and nurtured a Quaker, she transgresses no prejudice, even of education, when she stands forth everywhere and in all places the unflinching, unwearied, never-to-be-put-down champion of woman. In the better age, when the woman of the future shall be man's equal in law, in education, in labor, in labor's rewards; when time shall have softened the asperities of the present, and the crudeness of the personal shall be buried forever in the grave, Susan B. Anthony will live as one of the truest friends that woman ever had.

[Autograph: Mary Clemmer]

Sarah Pugh wrote Miss Anthony to stop over in Philadelphia and visit Mrs. Mott and herself on her way home from Washington, adding, "We are true to you." In accepting the invitation, Miss Anthony said: "I pray every day to keep broad and generous towards all who scatter and divide, and hope I may hold out to the end. The movement can not be damaged, though some particular schemes may, by any ill-judged action.

The wheels are secure on the iron rails, and no 'National' or 'American'--no New York or Boston--a.s.sumption or antagonism can block them. Individuals may jump on or off, yet the train is stopped thereby but for a moment."

A letter to her from the California a.s.sociation declares: "We will split into a thousand pieces before we will prove false to you, who have so long borne the heat and burden of the day." The heat and burden had indeed been great, and one less strong in body and less heroic in soul would have sunk under them. Although she was still weighed down by the terrible financial struggle of The Revolution, the storm of opposition which it had aroused was pa.s.sing away and the old friends and many new ones were flocking around the intrepid standard bearer, whom neither fear nor favor could induce to swerve from the straight line marked out by her own convictions and conscience. Miss Anthony would soon complete a half-century, and her friends resolved to commemorate it in a worthy manner. Handsomely engraved cards were sent out, reading:

The ladies of the Woman's Bureau invite you to a reception on Tuesday evening, February 15, 1870, to celebrate the Fiftieth Birthday of Susan B. Anthony. On this occasion her friends will be afforded an opportunity to testify their appreciation of her twenty years' service in behalf of woman. ELIZABETH B. PHELPS, ANNA B.

DARLING, CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR.

There had been hard work to persuade Miss Anthony to accept this testimonial, but she was very happy that evening when the s.p.a.cious parlors were crowded with the leading men and women of the day.

Although her opinions and methods had been many times attacked by the newspapers, they now united in cordial congratulations. The New York World, in a long account, thus described the affair:

A large number of friends and admirers of the private virtues and public services of Miss Anthony a.s.sembled at the Woman's Bureau in Twenty-third street last evening to congratulate the lady upon this auspicious anniversary, and to wish her the customary "many happy returns of the day." The parlors were dazzling with light, the atmosphere laden with perfume, the walls covered with beautiful works of art, and the sweet sounds of women's laughter and silvery voices filled the apartments. Miss Susan B. Anthony stood at the entrance of the front parlor to receive her numerous friends. She wore a dress of rich shot silk, dark red and black, cut square in front, with a stomacher of white lace and a pretty little cameo brooch. All female vanities she rigorously discarded--no hoop, train, bustle, panier, chignon, powder, paint, rouge, patches, no nonsense of any sort. From her kindly eyes and from her gentle lips, there beamed the sweetest smiles to all those loving friends who, admiring her really admirable efforts in the cause of human freedom, her undaunted heroism amid a dark and gloomy warfare, were glad to press her hand and show their appreciation of her character and achievements.

Every daily paper in the city had some pleasant comment, while scores of loving and appreciative letters were received. Accompanying these were many beautiful gifts and also checks to the amount of $1,000.[52]

[Ill.u.s.tration:

SUSAN B. ANTHONY AT THE AGE OF 50, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY SARONY.]

After the guests had a.s.sembled, Isabella Beecher Hooker announced that Anna T. Randall would read a poem written for the occasion by Phoebe Gary.[53] She was followed by Mrs. Hooker, who read some delightfully humorous verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely overwhelmed and, after stammering her thanks for the unexpected ovation of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her self-control: "If this were an a.s.sembled mob opposing the rights of women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... I ask you tonight, as your best testimony to my services, on this, the twentieth anniversary of my public work, to join me in making a demand on Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, and then to go with me before the several legislatures to secure its ratification; and when the Secretary of State proclaims that that amendment has been ratified by twenty-eight States, then Susan B.

Anthony will stop work--but not before."

When all was over, before she slept, Miss Anthony wrote this characteristically tender little note to the one who never was absent from her mind:

MY DEAR MOTHER: It really seems tonight as if I were parting with something dear--saying good-by to somebody I loved. In the last few hours I have lived over nearly all of life's struggles, and the most painful is the memory of my mother's long and weary efforts to get her six children up into womanhood and manhood. My thought centers on your struggle especially because of the proof-reading of Alice Gary's story this week. I can see the old home--the brick-makers--the dinner-pails--the sick mother--the few years of more fear than hope in the new house, and the hard years since. And yet with it all, I know there was an undercurrent of joy and love which makes the summing-up vastly in their favor. How I wish you and Mary and Hannah and Guelma could have been here--and yet it is nothing--and yet it is much.

My constantly recurring thought and prayer now are that the coming fraction of the century, whether it be small or large, may witness nothing less worthy in my life than has the half just closed--that no word or act of mine may lessen its weight in the scale of truth and right.

Then there is the bare mention of a luncheon a few days before with Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker. What a treat would have been a resume of the conversation of that gifted quintette of women!