The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 31

Parker Pillsbury wrote her after he returned home: "No one could do better than you have done. If any complain, ask them what they did to help you carry the paper. I am glad you are relieved of a load too heavy for you to bear. Worry yourself no more. Work of course you will, but let there be no further anxiety and nervousness. Suffrage is growing with the oaks. The whirling spheres will usher in the day of its triumph at just the right time, but your full meed of praise will have to be sung over your grave."

The motto of The Revolution, "The True Republic--Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less," was succeeded by "What G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder." It was transformed into a literary and society journal, established in elegant headquarters at Brooklyn, inaugurated with a fashionable reception, and conducted by Mrs. Bullard for eighteen months, when she tired of it, or her father tired of advancing money, and it pa.s.sed into other hands.

When Miss Anthony had her accounts audited by an expert, he stated that The Revolution was in a better financial condition than was the New York Independent at the end of its first five years. She had just begun to realize her power as a lyceum lecturer and was in constant demand at large prices. The last two months before giving up the paper, she sent in from her lectures, above all her expenses, $1,300. She always felt that, with this source of revenue, she could have sustained and in time put it on a paying basis, as her subscription list was rapidly increasing, she had learned the newspaper business, and The Revolution was gaining the confidence of the public. But the experience came too late and she was driven to the wall--not a single friend would longer give her money, a.s.sistance or encouragement to continue the paper. To this day, she will take up the bound volumes with caressing fingers, touch them with pathetic tenderness, and pore over their pages with loving reverence, as one reads old letters when the hands which penned them are still forever.

Miss Anthony did not waste a single day in mourning over her great disappointment. In fact, between May 18, when she agreed to give up The Revolution, and May 22, when the transfer actually was made, she went to Hornellsville and lectured, receiving $150 for that one evening.

There are not many instances on record where a woman starts out alone to earn the money with which to pay a debt of $10,000. Very few of the advocates of woman suffrage contributed a dollar toward the payment of this debt, which had nothing in it of a personal nature but had been made entirely in the effort to advance the cause. Miss Anthony worked unceasingly through winter's cold and summer's heat, lecturing sometimes under private auspices, sometimes under those of a bureau, and herself arranging for unengaged nights. As she had all her expenses to pay and continued to contribute from her own pocket whenever funds were needed for suffrage work, it was six years before "she could look the whole world in the face for she owed not any man."

She started at once on a western tour, lecturing through Ohio, Kansas and Illinois, speaking in the Methodist church at Evanston, June 3, 1870. Dr. E.O. Haven, president of the university, (afterwards Bishop) in presenting her endorsed woman suffrage. At Bloomington she held a debate with a young professor from the State Normal School. The manager asked if she would take $100 instead of half the receipts, as agreed on. She replied that if the prospects were so good as to warrant him in making this offer, she was just Yankee enough to take her chances. This was a shrewd decision, as her half amounted to $250. The professor opposed the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women because they could not fight. As is the case invariably with men who make this objection, he was a very diminutive specimen, and Miss Anthony could not resist observing as she commenced her speech: "The professor talks about the physical disabilities of women; why, I could take him in my arms and lift him on and off this platform as easily as a mother would her baby!" Of course this put the audience in a fine humor.

In every place she was entertained by representative people and received many social courtesies. She returned to Rochester July 27, spent just twelve hours at home, then hastened eastward, travelling by night in order to reach the Saratoga convention on the 28th. This was held under the auspices of the New York State a.s.sociation, and managed by the secretary, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Miss Anthony was paid $100, for the first time in the history of conventions. Mrs. Gage wrote: "She is heavily burdened with debt, no one has made so great sacrifices all these years, and she deserves the money." During the summer she sent to a friend in England this summing up of the condition of the suffrage movement in the United States:

The secret of the present inaction is that all our best suffrage men are in the Republican party and must keep in line with its interests, make no demands beyond its possibilities, its safety, its sure success. Hence, just now, while that party is trembling lest it should fall into the minority, and thus give place to the Democracy in 1872, it dares not espouse woman suffrage. So our friends quietly drop our demand on Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment, since to press that body to a vote would compel the Republican members to show their hands; and if those who have in private spoken for woman suffrage should not make a false public record, the number in favor would commit the majority of their party to our question; and by so doing give its opponents fresh opportunity to appeal to the ignorant ma.s.ses, which must inevitably throw it out of power. The extension of the ballot to woman is a question of intelligence and culture, and is sure to have enrolled against it every narrow, prejudiced, small-brained man in all cla.s.ses. This being the state of things, our movement is at a dead-lock. Practical action, political action, therefore, is almost hopeless until after the presidential election of 1872; and after that for still another four years, unless the Republican party should be defeated and the Democracy come into power.

Just as soon as the Republicans are out of power, they will betake themselves to the study of principles and begin to preach and promise. Hence I devoutly pray without ceasing for the overthrow of that purse-proud, corrupt, cowardly party; not that I expect from the Democracy anything better than their antecedents promise, but that I know such chastis.e.m.e.nt, such retirement, is the only means by which conscience and courage can be injected into the heads and hearts of the Republicans, the only way to make them see the political necessity of enfranchising the women of the country, and thereby securing their grat.i.tude and through it their vote to place and hold that party in power.

Then as to our woman suffrage organizations: There are first, the Cleveland movement with all the strategy and maneuvering of its semi-Republican managers, a.s.sented to and accepted by the women in their train; then the Fifth Avenue Union Committee affair, which seems not less likely to be under Republican man-power. With Mrs.

Stanton's utter refusal to stand at the helm of the National, and our merging it into the Union Society, and with my transferring The Revolution to the new company--we, E.C.S. and S.B.A., have let slip from our hands all control of organizations and newspapers; thus leaving them, I fear, to drift together into the management of mere politicians. All are lulled into the strictest propriety of expression, according to the gospel of St. Republican. And unless that saint shall enact some new and more blasphemous law against woman, which shall wake our confiding sisterhood into a sense of their befoolment, you will neither see nor hear a word from suffrage society or paper which will be in the slightest out of line with the plan and policy of the dominant party. Nothing less atrocious to woman than was the Fugitive Slave Law to the negro, can possibly sting the women of this country into a knowledge of their real subserviency, and out of their sickening sycophancy to the Republican politicians a.s.sociated with them.

So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will enable them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for woman than could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!

Not another woman possessed this strong grasp of the whole situation, this deep comprehension of the abject condition of women, the more hopeless because of their own failure to feel or resent it.

During the summer Miss Anthony attended the National Labor Congress in Philadelphia. A great strike of bookbinders had been in progress in New York and she had advised the women to take the vacant places. They were denied admission to all labor unions and their only chance of securing work was when the men and their employers disagreed. This gave a pretext for those who were opposed to a representation of women in labor conventions, and a bitter fight was made upon accepting her as a delegate. Charges of every description were preferred against her which she refuted in a spirited manner, but her credentials were finally rejected. The newspapers took up the fight on both sides, the opposition to Miss Anthony being led by the New York Star, always abusive where the question of woman's rights was concerned. During this controversy the Utica Herald contained a disgraceful editorial, saying:

Who does not feel sympathy for Susan Anthony? She has striven long and earnestly to become a man. She has met with some rebuffs, but has never succ.u.mbed. She has never done any good in the world, but then she doesn't think so. She is sweet in the eyes of her own mirror, but her advanced age and maiden name deny that she has been so in the eyes of others. Boldly she marched, and well, into the presence of 200 horrid male delegates of the Labor Congress, and took somebody's seat.... Susan felt very much like a grizzly bear unable to get at its tormentor. She had gone to the length of her chain and couldn't get her claws into any one's hair. She could only sit and glare.

At length Susan's case came up for consideration, and the congress committed the crowning act of rashness and, without a thought of the consequences, made an everlasting enemy of Susan Anthony by ruling her out of the convention as a delegate. This was the unkindest cut of all. "A lone, lorn old critter," with whom everything "goes contrairie," was denied the solace of being counted the one-two-hundreth part of a man by a labor convention!

We may well believe that Susan wept with sorrow at the blindness of man, and our sympathy if not our tears is freely offered. But so goes the world. This is not the first time that "man's inhumanity to woman" has made Miss Anthony mourn and, as it is not her first rebuff, we counsel her to seek admission again to the ranks of her s.e.x, and cease to cast reproach upon it by struggling to be a man.

When some of the women remonstrated, the editor replied that he had not supposed there was one woman in Utica who believed in equal rights.

Paulina Wright Davis had been actively arranging for a great convention in New York to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention in Ma.s.sachusetts, which was held at Worcester, in October, 1850. That one had been managed almost wholly by Mrs. Davis and she had presided over its deliberations, therefore it seemed proper for her to be the central figure in celebrating its second decade. The New England suffrage people declined to take part in this meeting and, for some reason, Mr. Tilton's Union Society was decidedly averse to it.

Mrs. Davis finally became ill from anxiety and overwork and joined her entreaties to Mrs. Stanton's that Miss Anthony should drop her lectures and come to New York; so she started for that city September 30, determined that Mrs. Davis' scheme should not be a failure. The entries in her journal give some idea of her energetic and unwearied action:

As soon as I reached New York I went to Dr. Lozier's for lunch, then to see Mrs. Phelps. All in despair about the decade meeting.

Went at once to consult Alice and Phoebe Cary; from them to Mrs.

Winchester, found her just home from Europe; then to Julia Brown Bemis, and thence to Murray street to see Mr. Studwell; then to Tenafly on the evening train.... Back to New York the next morning, to Tilton's, to Curtis', to Mrs. Wilbour's, and then to Providence to see Mrs. Davis. Beached there late at night, woke her up and we talked till morning. She was terribly distressed at the thought of giving up the decade and in the morning I telegraphed to New York that it _must_ go on.... Went there by first train, had all the newspaper notices of its abandonment countermanded and new ones put in, and an item sent out by a.s.sociated Press. Too late for last train to Tenafly and had to hire a carriage to take me there.

Her time was then divided between working on speeches with Mrs. Stanton and rushing over to New York to prepare for this meeting. On October 19 she writes: "Ground out the resolutions, and took the afternoon train for the city. Met Martha Wright and Mrs. Davis at the St. James Hotel."

There was a great reception the next afternoon in the hotel parlors, and the convention met at Apollo Hall, October 21, the whole of the arrangements having been made in three weeks. Mrs. Davis presided, everybody had been brought into line and it was a notable gathering.

Cordial and approving letters to Mrs. Davis were read from Jacob Bright, Canon Kingsley, Frances Power Cobbe, Emily Faithfull, Mary Somerville, Emelie J. Meriman (afterwards the wife of Pere Hyacinthe), and other distinguished foreigners. Miss Anthony spoke strongly against their identifying themselves with either of the parties until it had declared for woman suffrage, urging them to accept every possible help from both but to form no alliance, as had been proposed. The feature of the occasion was "The History of the Woman's Rights Movement for Twenty Years," carefully prepared by Mrs. Davis.[56] In addition to this valuable work, she contributed $300 to the expenses of the meeting. It was an unqualified success and her letters were full of warmest grat.i.tude to Miss Anthony.

In November the latter resumed her lecturing tour which was arranged by Elizabeth Brown, who had been her head clerk in The Revolution office.

The first of December she attended the Northwestern Woman Suffrage Convention at Detroit. Here she received a telegram to hasten home and arrived just in time to stand by the death-bed of a dear nephew, Thomas King McLean, twenty-one years old, brother of the beloved Ann Eliza who had died a few years before, and only son of her sister Guelma. He was a senior of brilliant promise in Rochester University. His death was a heavy blow to all the family and one from which his mother never recovered.

With her debts pressing upon her and an array of lecture engagements ahead, Miss Anthony could neither pause to indulge her own grief nor to console and sympathize with the loved ones. The very night of the funeral she again set forth. By the New Year she had lessened her debt $1,600. This trip extended through New York and Pennsylvania, to Washington and into Virginia. Of the last she writes: "A great work to be done here but the lectures can not possibly be made to pay expenses." In Philadelphia she spoke in the Star course, was the guest of Anna d.i.c.kinson and was introduced to her audience by Lucretia Mott, then seventy-seven years old. The diary relates that Mrs. Mott came next morning before 8 o'clock to give her $20, saying it was very little but would show her confidence and affection. The lecture given on this tour was ent.i.tled "The False Theory" and was highly commended by the press. It never was written and probably never twice delivered in the same words, Miss Anthony always depending largely upon the inspiration of the occasion.

The middle of December she slipped back to Rochester to see her bereaved sister, and speaks of their receiving a letter of sympathy from Rev. J.K. McLean, which, she says, "is the first philosophical word that has been spoken." While at home she was invited to the Hallowells' to see Wendell Phillips, their first meeting since their sad difference of opinion concerning the Fourteenth Amendment. They had a cordial interview and she went with him to his lecture in the evening. The entry in the journal that night closes with the underscored sentence, "Phillips is matchless."

[Footnote 54: On the platform or in the audience were to be seen the beloved Quaker, Mrs. John J. Merrit, of Brooklyn, Margaret E.

Winchester, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Edwin A. Studwell, Catharine Beecher--her plain face illuminated with the fire of indignation--Jenny June Croly, writing rapidly for the New York World, Cora Tappan, Hannah Tracy Cutler, president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Benjamin F. Butler, Mrs. James Parton, better known as f.a.n.n.y Fern, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Elizabeth B. Phelps, two nieces of Mrs. U. S. Grant, Laura Curtis Bullard. Frances Dietz Hallock, Ella Dietz Clymer, Anne Lynch Botta, Mary F. Gilbert, Mrs. Moses Beach, Julia Ward Howe, and many other well-known women.]

[Footnote 55: The demands for woman everywhere today are for a wider range of employment, higher wages, thorough mental and physical education, and an equal right before the law in all those relations which grow out of the marriage state. While we yield to none in the earnestness of our advocacy of these claims, we make a broader demand for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman, as the only way in which all her just rights can be permanently secured. By discussing, as we shall incidentally, leading questions of political and social importance, we hope to educate women for an intelligent judgment upon public affairs, and for a faithful expression of that judgment at the polls.

As masculine ideas have ruled the race for six thousand years, we especially desire that The Revolution shall be the mouth piece of women, to give the world the feminine thought in politics, religion and social life; so that ultimately in the union of both we may find the truth in all things. On the idea taught by the creeds, codes and customs of the world, that woman was made for man, we declare war to the death, and proclaim the higher truth that, like man, she was created by G.o.d for individual moral responsibility and progress here and forever.

Our princ.i.p.al contributors this year are: Anna d.i.c.kinson, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Olive Logan, Mary Clemmer, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Phoebe Couzins, Elizabeth Boynton and others; and foreign, Rebecca Moore, Lydia E. Becker and Madame Marie Goeg.

The Revolution is an independent journal, bound to no party or sect, and those who write for our columns are responsible only for what appears under their own names. Hence, if old Abolitionists and Slaveholders, Republicans and Democrats, Presbyterians and Universalists, Catholics and Protestants find themselves side by side in writing on the question, of woman suffrage, they must pardon each other's differences on all other points, trusting that by giving their own views strongly and grandly, they will overshadow the errors by their side.]

[Footnote 56: Frances Wright, from Scotland, in 1828 was the first woman to speak on a public platform in this country. Ernestine L. Rose, from Poland, gave political lectures in 1836; Mary S. Gove, of New York, lectured oil woman's rights in 1837; Sarah and Angelina Grimke, from South Carolina, commenced their anti-slavery speeches in 1837, and Abby Kelly, of Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1839; Eliza W. Farnham, of New York, lectured in 1843; between 1840 and 1845 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright (afterwards Davis) and Ernestine L. Rose circulated pet.i.tions for a bill to secure property rights for married women, and several times addressed committees of the New York Legislature; Margaret Fuller gave lectures in Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1845; Lucy Stone spoke for the rights of women in 1847. The first woman's rights convention was called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848; Susan B. Anthony made her first speech on temperance in 1849. From 1850 the number of women speakers rapidly increased.]

CHAPTER XXII.

MRS. HOOKER'S CONVENTION--THE LECTURE FIELD.

1871.

A large correspondence was conducted in regard to the Third National Convention, which was to be held in Washington in January, 1871.

Isabella Beecher Hooker, who had all the zeal of a new convert, created some amus.e.m.e.nt among the old workers by offering to relieve them of the entire management of the convention, intimating that she would avoid the mistakes they had made and put the suffrage work on a more aristocratic basis. To Mrs. Stanton she wrote:

I have proposed taking the Washington convention into my own hands, expenses and all; arranging program, and presiding or securing help in that direction, if I should need it. I shall hope to get Robert Collyer, and a good many who might not care to speak for "the Union" but would speak for me. I should want from you a pure suffrage argument, much like that you made before the committee at Washington last winter. I know you are tired of this branch, but you are fitted to do a great work still in that direction.... Won't you promise to come to my convention, without charge save travelling expenses, provided I have one? I am waiting to hear from Susan, Mrs. Pomeroy and you, and then shall get Tilton's approval and the withdrawal of the society from the work, if they have undertaken it, and go ahead.

Mrs. Stanton consented gladly and wrote the other friends to do likewise, saying: "I should like to have Susan for president, as she has worked and toiled as no other woman has, but if we think best not to blow her horn, then let us exalt Mrs. Hooker, who thinks she could manage the cause more discreetly, more genteelly than we do. I am ready to rest and see the salvation of the Lord." On their rounds the letters came to Martha Wright, the gentle Quaker, who commented with the fine irony of which she was master: "It strikes me favorably. It would be a fine thing for Mrs. Hooker to preside over the Washington convention, while her sister, Catharine Beecher, was inveighing against suffrage, for the benefit of Mrs. Dahlgren and others. Perhaps she is right in thinking that Robert Collyer and a good many others who would not care to speak for 'the Union,' would speak for her--I for one would be glad to have her try it! If 'Captain Susan' would consent to be placed at the head of the a.s.sociation, there could not be a more suitable and just appointment."

Mrs. Stanton wrote that her lecture engagements would not permit her to go to Washington and she would send $100 instead. Mrs. Hooker replied:

Your offer just suits me, and of myself I should accept $100 with thankfulness, and excuse you, as you desire, but Susan looked disgusted and said, "She must appear before the Congressional committees, at any rate." I had not thought of that, but of course, if you were in Washington, it would be absurd not to be on our platform; and so I don't know what to say. You will talk more forcibly than any one else, and in committee you are invaluable.

Still, I want your money, and I could do without you on the platform.... I fully expect, to accomplish far more by a convention devoted to the purely political aspect of the woman question, than by a woman's rights convention, however well-managed; and this, because the time has come for this practical work--discussion has prepared the way, now we must have the thing, the vote itself. It just occurs to me that you might write an argument for the committee, which I would read, but of course your presence is most desirable, and I incline to have you on hand for this last, great effort; for it does seem to me that _we need not have another convention_ in Washington, but only a select committee to work privately every winter, and send for speakers, etc., when the committees are ready to grant hearings.

It is the part of wisdom to suppress Mrs. Stanton's reply to this, but she sent it to Martha Wright, who answered her:

You can imagine what success Mrs. Hooker will have with those wily politicians. She thinks they will come serenely from their seats to the lobby, when she tries "all the means known to an honest woman."

I fear the means known to _the other sort_ would meet a readier response. I forget which of the senators it was, last winter, who said rudely to Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Griffing, "You just call us out because you like to."... Mrs. Hooker will find it no easy matter to hook them on to _her_ platform, but she will be wiser after trying.

She is mistaken in considering the cause so nearly won, but it would be as impossible for her to realize the situation as it was for Rev. Thomas Beecher to be convinced that Mr. Smith saw more clearly than he. "Do you mean," said this potentate, "to bring down the whole Beecher family on your head?" "No," was the reply, "do you mean to bring the whole Smith family on to yours?"

The following circular letter was sent to Curtis, Phillips and other prominent men:

A convention has been announced at Washington, for January 11 and 12, to push the Sixteenth Amendment. The management is solely in my hands, and I alone a.s.sume the financial responsibility. I go to Washington January 1 to spend some days enlisting members of Congress in this purely political question, and securing short speeches from them on our platform. I have neither State nor national society behind me, but am attempting to carry on a convention with this single aim--to awaken Congress and, through it, the country, to the fact that a Sixteenth Amendment is needed, in order to carry out the principles of the Declaration of Independence; and that we women are tired of pet.i.tioning, and would fain begin to vote without delay. Will you speak for _me_ in the day or the evening, and much oblige your sincere friend, ISABELLA B. HOOKER.

Evidently they would not speak, even "for me," and Mrs. Hooker sends around this note of explanation to the "old guard:" "I know of no gentlemen outside of members of Congress, that can help us at all, who can come. Beecher, Collyer, Curtis and Phillips are all unable. If you think of any one else it would be worth while to invite, please write me at once. I have such a strong determination that members shall understand how much we are in earnest at this time, and how we won't wait any longer, that it does seem to me they will take up a burden of speech themselves, and work also. Mr. Sewall, of Boston, writes me that he will urge Mr. Sumner, as I requested, and other members, but thinks they can not need it."