The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 41

Miss Anthony was correct in her forecast, the suffrage amendment was defeated in Michigan by more than three to one, but there is no doubt her able canva.s.s contributed largely to secure "a respectable minority."

In the summer of 1874 the so-called Beecher-Tilton scandal, which had been smouldering a long time, burst into full blaze. Miss Anthony had been for many years on intimate terms with all the parties in this unfortunate affair, and there was a persistent rumor that she had at one time received a confession from Mrs. Tilton which, if given by her to the public, would settle the vexed question beyond a doubt. It is scarcely possible to describe the pressure brought to bear to force her to disclose what she knew. During her lecture tours of that summer and fall, while the trial was in progress before the church committee, she never entered a railroad car, an omnibus or a hotel but there was somebody ready to question her. In every town and city she was called upon for an interview before she had time to brush off the dust of travel. One of the New York papers detailed a reporter to follow her from point to point, catch every word she uttered, ferret out all she said to her friends and in some way extort what was wanted. She often remarked that "in this case men proved themselves the champion gossips of the world."

Papers which had befriended her and her cause reminded her of this fact and urged her to return the favor by telling them what she knew.

Telegrams and letters poured in upon her from strangers and friends, some commending and begging her to continue silent; others censuring and urging her to tell the whole story. Lawyers connected with the case wrote her the shrewdest of pleas, telling her how the other side were trying to defame her character and urging her to speak in self-defense; but it is a significant fact that she received no official summons either during the church committee investigation or the trial in court.

The Chicago Tribune, having failed to secure an interview, said: "Miss Anthony keeps her own counsel in this matter with a resolution which would do credit to General Grant." Several papers manufactured interviews with her out of whole cloth. Everybody else, man or woman, who had the slightest knowledge of the affair, rushed into print, but under all the pressure she remained as immovable and silent as the granite mountains amid which she was born. The universal desire to have her speak was because of the value placed upon her integrity and veracity. John Hooker, the eminent lawyer of Hartford, Conn., brother-in-law of Mr. Beecher, voiced the opinion of her friends when he wrote under date of November 9, 1874: "A more truthful person does not live. The whole world could not get her to go into a conspiracy against one whom she believed to be innocent. I have perfect confidence in her truthfulness and always stoutly a.s.sert it."

The New York Sun expressed the general sentiment of the press when it said in this connection: "Miss Anthony is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by those who know anything of her character."

Her home paper, the Democrat and Chronicle, paid this tribute: "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."

Most of the charges made against her during this ordeal were so manifestly absurd they did not need refuting, but the oft-repeated a.s.sertions that she believed in what was popularly termed "free love"

were a source of great annoyance. In a letter written at this time to Elizabeth Smith Miller she thus definitely expressed herself: "I have always believed the 'variety' system vile, and still do so believe. I am convinced that no one has yet wrought out the true social system. I am sure no theory can be correct which a mother is not willing for her daughter to practice. Decent women should not live with licentious husbands in the relation of wife. As society is now, good, pure women, by so living, cover up and palliate immorality and help to violate the law of monogamy. Women must take the social helm into their own hands and not permit the men of their own circle, any more than the women, to be transgressors."

To Mr. Hooker, on this same subject, she wrote: "In my heart of hearts I hate the whole doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity.' 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." A few extracts from her diary during these days will show the trend of her thoughts:

Silence alone is all there is for me at present. I appreciate as never before the value of having lived an open life.... The parlor, the street corner, the newspapers, the very air seem full of social miasma.... Sad, sad revelations! There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which denies it.... It is almost an impossibility 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.... The great financial rings, Christian Union, Life of Christ and Plymouth church, the three in one, most powerful trinity, seem to have subsidized the entire New York press.

In her positive refusal to speak the word which would criminate a woman, Miss Anthony was actuated by the highest sense of honor. She loved Mr. and Mrs. Tilton as her own family. She had enjoyed the hospitality of their beautiful home and seen their children grow up from babyhood. Mrs. Tilton was one of the loveliest characters she ever had known, an exquisite housekeeper, an ideal mother; a woman of wide reading and fine literary taste, of sunny temperament and affectionate disposition. To violate the confidence of such a woman, given in an hour of supreme anguish, would have been treachery unparalleled. In answer to the charge that Mrs. Tilton was a very weak or a very wicked woman, Miss Anthony always maintained that none ever was called upon to suffer such temptation. On the one hand was her husband, one of the most brilliant writers and speakers of the day, a man of marvellously attractive powers in the home as well as in the outside world. At his table often sat Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Wilson and many other prominent men, who all alike admired and loved him.

On the other hand was her pastor, the most powerful and magnetic preacher and orator not only in Brooklyn but in the nation. When he spoke on Sunday to his congregation of 3,000 people, there was not a man present but felt that he could get strength by touching even the hem of his garment. If his power were such over men, by the law of nature it must have been infinitely greater over women. Since it was thus irresistible in public, how transcendent must it have been in the close and intimate companionship of private life!

The house of the Tiltons was the second home of Mr. Beecher, and scarcely a day pa.s.sed that he did not visit it. He found here the brightness, congeniality, sympathy and loving trust which every human being longs for. The choicest new literature was sent hither for the delicate appreciation it was sure to receive. When he came in from his Peekskill country place with great baskets of flowers, the most beautiful always found their way to this household. Miss Anthony recalls one occasion when Mrs. Tilton, slipping her hand through her arm, drew her to the mantelpiece over which hung a lovely water color of the trailing arbutus, and said, "My pastor brought that to me this morning." At another time, when she went on Sat.u.r.day evening to stay over Sunday, Mrs. Tilton said, as she dropped into a low chair: "Mr.

Beecher sat here all the morning writing his sermon. He says there is no place in the world where he can get such inspiration as at Theodore's desk, while I sit beside him in this little chair darning the children's stockings."

In all of these and many similar occurrences Miss Anthony saw nothing but a warm and sincere friendship. To Mr. Tilton Mr. Beecher was as a father or an elder brother. He had placed the ambitious and talented youth where he could achieve both fame and fortune, had introduced him into the highest social circles and shown to the world that he regarded him as his dearest confidential friend, and for years the two men had enjoyed the closest and strongest intimacy. Mrs. Tilton had been born into Plymouth church, baptized by Mr. Beecher, had taught in his Sunday school, visited at his home. He loved her as his own, and she adored him as a very Christ. To these two great intellectual and spiritual magnets, first to one, then to the other, she was irresistibly and uncontrollably drawn. When troubles arose and the two became bitterly hostile, her situation was most pitiable. After matters had culminated and the battle was on, Beecher still spoke of her as "the beloved Christian woman," and Tilton, as "the whitest-souled woman who ever lived." Weak she may have been through her emotions, never wilfully wicked, and far less sinning than sinned against. She was wholly dominated by two powerful influences. Between the upper and the nether millstone her life was crushed.

[Footnote 78: For full report see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715.]

[Footnote 79: This has been accomplished (1897) in four States, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.]

[Footnote 80: The W.C.T.U. did not recognize this fact at the time of their organization but in 1881 they established a franchise department and many of them now advocate suffrage.]

[Footnote 81: Not far from three times as many were at Miss Anthony's lecture as gathered to hear Senator Chandler.--Jackson Patriot.

One of the largest audiences ever in the opera house gathered last evening on the occasion of the lecture of Miss Susan B.

Anthony.--Adrian Times and Expositor.

Probably the largest audience ever a.s.sembled in Clinton Hall convened to hear-Miss Susan B. Anthony, the celebrated expounder of the rights of women.--Pontiac Gazette.

Since the great Children's Jubilee there has not been so large an audience in the Academy of Music as that a.s.sembled to hear Miss Anthony's lecture.--East Saginaw Daily Republican.

Miss Anthony spoke at Hillsdale to a densely crowded opera house, while full 1,000 people were unable to gain admission.--Grand Rapids Post.

Miss Susan B. Anthony spoke last evening to the largest audience that ever greeted a lecturer in Marshall, and we have had Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton, Mark Twain and Olive Logan. She had at least 1,200 hearers.--Telegram to Detroit Evening News.

Last evening the aisles were double-seated, and the anterooms, staircases and vestibules densely packed with standing hearers. No such house ever was had at this place. She spoke with wonderful power. At Pigeon, between trains, she spoke to a great throng who would not consider her strength and take "no" for an answer.--Three Rivers Reporter.

A woman with whose public sayings and doings we have been familiar since the fall of 1867, and for whom our respect and admiration has never wavered during that period, spoke to the largest indoor audience ever a.s.sembled in this village. The courthouse was literally packed, and the speaker had to stand on a table in front of the judge's desk.--Ca.s.sopolis National Democrat.]

CHAPTER XXVII.

REVOLUTION DEBT PAID--WOMEN'S FOURTH OF JULY.

1875-1876.

At the close of 1874, December 28, the cause of woman suffrage lost a strong supporter by the death of Gerrit Smith. Miss Anthony felt the loss deeply, as he had been her warm personal friend for twenty-five years and always ready with financial aid for her projects; but she suffered a keener shock one week later when the news came of the sudden death of Martha C. Wright, January 4, 1875. She says in her diary: "It struck me dumb, I could not believe it; clear-sighted, true and steadfast almost beyond all other women! Her home was my home, always so restful and refreshing, her friendship never failed; the darker the hour, the brighter were her words of encouragement, the stronger and closer her support. I can not be reconciled."

But for this earnest advocate there could be no cessation of work and the 14th of January found her again in Washington at the National Convention. These annual meetings, with their advertising, hall rent, expenses of speakers, etc., were costly affairs. Before every one Miss Anthony always received scores of letters from the other workers begging that it might be given up for that year, insisting that for various reasons it would be a failure, and declaring that they could not and would not attend. Mrs. Stanton usually headed the list of the objectors, for she hated everything connected with a convention. On the back of one of these vehement protests, carefully filed away, is written in Miss Anthony's penmanship, "Mrs. Stanton's chronic letter before each annual meeting." She never paid the slightest heed to any of these appeals, but went straight ahead, wheeled all of them into line, engaged the speakers, raised the money and carried the convention to a finish. When the funds were lacking she advanced them from her own, usually ending one or two hundred dollars out of pocket. Then she went about among the friends and secured enough to replace the loan or, failing in this, worked so much the harder to make it up out of her earnings.

On her way home from Washington, Miss Anthony stopped for a visit with her loved cousin Anson Lapham and on leaving he handed her a check for $1,000, saying, "Susan, this is not for suffrage but for thee personally." Nevertheless she at once applied it on the debt still hanging over her from The Revolution. Francis & Loutrel, of New York, who had furnished her with paper, letter-heads, etc., also presented her at this time with their receipted bill for $200.

In the winter of 1875, Miss Anthony prepared her speech on "Social Purity" and gave it first at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, March 14, in the Sunday afternoon Dime lecture course.[82] When she reached the opera house the crowd was so dense she could not get inside and was obliged to go through the engine room and up the back way to the stage.

The gentleman who was to introduce her could not make his way through the throng and so this service was gracefully performed by "Long John"

Wentworth, who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr.

Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."

No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation.

Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same committee the following winter.

It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,[83] Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied.

On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis, in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century--remarkable for the purity of her life, the earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth--if she ever had any bloom--hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the platform as preachers of social impossibilities."

The metropolitan press generally acknowledged the necessity for such a lecture and complimented Miss Anthony's courage in undertaking it, but the country papers were greatly distressed, as a specimen extract will show:

There is very little satisfaction in observing that Miss Anthony is following in the wake of Anna d.i.c.kinson, in publicly lecturing upon subjects that no modest woman ought, in respect for her s.e.x, to acknowledge that she is so familiar with. Miss D. expatiates upon the "Social Evil," and Miss A. enlarges upon "Social Purity"--topics that maidenly delicacy, we repeat, should refuse to discuss. It would be suggestively coa.r.s.e for a married woman to deliberately select such questionable themes for a public discourse; but these two ladies are spinsters yet, and spinsters are presumed to be wholly innocent of the necessary information--are supposed, in truth, to be too pure-minded to contemplate vice in its most repulsive shape, not to say a.n.a.lyze it, and dwell oratorically before the world upon its nauseous details. The women's crusade against liquor effected nothing, for the simple reason that women were out of their proper sphere in attempting it; but if so, how much more do they degrade their s.e.x when they go out of the way to ask us to believe that they are intimate with a corruption infinitely more debasing and more destructive? The best lecture a woman can give the community on "moral purity" is the eloquent one of a spotless life. The best discourse she can furnish us on the sad "evil" alluded to is the sincerity of her profound ignorance of the subject.

A woman suffrage bill was under consideration by the legislature of Iowa and Miss Anthony felt that missionary work ought to be done in that State, so she wrote to the friends in one hundred different towns, offering to speak for $25 or one-half the gross receipts. Sixty of them accepted and during the spring and autumn of 1875 she filled these engagements, the sixty lectures averaging $30 apiece. In order to reach the different places she had to take trains at all hours of the night, occasionally to ride in a freight car, sometimes to drive twenty-five or thirty miles across country in mud and snow and prairie winds, and frequently to go on the platform without having eaten a mouthful or changed her dress. Even these ills were not so hard to bear as the cold, dirty rooms, hard beds, and poorly cooked food sometimes found in small hotels. Frequently she had to sit by the kitchen stove all day as not a bedroom would have a fire and the only sitting-room contained the bar and was black with tobacco smoke. The path of the lecturer is uphill, over stony roads, with briar hedges on both sides.

While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but, in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption.

Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey, and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.

Then began the long struggle for life. For nine weeks Miss Anthony sat by his bedside giving the service of a born nurse, added to the gentleness of a loving sister. At the end of the first month the physicians decided on a continued pressure upon the artery above the wound to prevent the constant rush of blood into the aneurism which had formed. Owing to its peculiar position this could be done only by pressing the finger upon it, and so the family and friends took turns day and night, sitting by the patient and pressing upon this vital spot. After five weeks, to the surprise of the whole medical fraternity, the experiment proved a success and recovery was no longer doubtful. The papers were filled with glowing accounts of Miss Anthony's devotion, seeming to think it wonderful that a woman whose whole life had been spent in public work should possess in so large a degree not only sisterly affection but the accomplishments of a trained nurse.[84]

Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of August 20 says: "There pa.s.sed out of my life today the one who, next to my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty years."

On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman, characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore.

When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening."

The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging letter and a liberal contribution.

Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."[85] She returned at once to Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness, and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from her shoulders and she was free. Even the newspapers offered congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.[86] In a long notice, the Chicago Daily News said:

Her paper lived a few years and then went down. In the heart of the woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in other women's hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby's face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death. But The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars.

Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and a.s.sumed, individually, the entire indebtedness. By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, whatever they may think of her political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence.