The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 5

In June she attends her first circus, "Sands, Lent & Co., Proprietors."

About this time she writes of being invited to a military ball and says: "My fancy for attending dances is fully satiated. I certainly shall not attend another unless I can have a total abstinence man to accompany me, and not one whose highest delight is to make a fool of himself." She says in this letter: "The town election has just been held and the good people elected a distiller for supervisor and a rumseller for justice of the peace."

In 1848 she shows the first signs of growing tired of teaching and wonders if she is to follow it for a lifetime. She says: "I don't know whether I am weary of well-doing, but oh, if I could only unstring my bow for a few short months, I think I could take up my work with renewed vigor." She is very homesick, after the two years' absence, and so makes a visit to Rochester in August. For this she gets "a drab silk bonnet shirred inside with pink, and her blue lawn and her brown silk made over, half low-necked." She has "a beautiful green delaine and a black braise [barege] which are very becoming." She wants a fancy hat, a $15 pin and $30 mantilla, every one of which she resolves to deny herself, but afterwards writes: "There is not a mantilla in town like mine."

In March, 1849, her beloved cousin Margaret, with whom she has been living for the past two years, gives birth to a child and she remains with her through the ordeal. In a letter to her mother immediately afterwards, she expresses the opinion that there are some drawbacks to marriage which make a woman quite content to remain single. She quotes a little bit of domestic life: "Joseph had a headache the other day and Margaret remarked that she had had one for weeks. 'Oh,' said the husband, 'mine is the real headache, genuine pain, yours is a sort of natural consequence.'" For seven weeks she is at Margaret's bedside every moment when out of school, and also superintends the house and looks after the children. There are a nurse and a girl in the kitchen, but the invalid will eat no food which Cousin Susan does not prepare; there is no touch so light and gentle as hers; her very presence gives rest and strength. At the end of this time Margaret dies, leaving four little children. Susan's grief is as intense as if she had lost a sister, and she decides to remain no longer in Canajoharie. She writes: "I seem to shrink from my daily tasks; energy and stimulus are wanting; I have no courage. A great weariness has come over me." In all the letters of the past ten years there has not been one note of discontent or discouragement, but now she is growing tired of the treadmill. At this time the California fever was at its height, hundreds of young men were starting westward, and she writes: "Oh, if I were but a man so that I could go!"

Soon after coming to Canajoharie Miss Anthony joined the society of the Daughters of Temperance and was made secretary. Her heart and soul were enlisted in this cause. She realized the immense task to be accomplished, and, even then, saw dimly the power that women might wield if they were properly organized and given full authority and sanction to work. As yet no women had spoken in public on this question, and they had just begun to organize societies among themselves, called Daughters' Unions, which were a sort of annex to the men's organizations, but they were strongly opposed by most women as being unladylike and entirely out of woman's sphere.

On March 1, 1849, the Daughters of Temperance gave a supper, to which were invited the people of the village, and the address of the evening was made by Miss Anthony. She thus describes the occasion in a letter:

I was escorted into the hall by the Committee where were a.s.sembled about 200 people. The room was beautifully festooned with cedar and red flannel. On the south side was printed in large capitals of evergreen the name of "Susan B. Anthony!" I hardly knew how to conduct myself amidst so much kindly regard. They had an elegant supper. On the top of one pyramid loaf cake was a beautiful bouquet, which was handed to the gentleman who escorted me (Charlie Webster) and by him presented to me.

The paper is interesting as the first platform utterance of a woman destined to become one of the noted speakers of the century. While it gives no especial promise of the oratorical ability which later developed, it ill.u.s.trates the courage of the woman who dared read an address in public, when to do so provoked the severest criticism. The following extracts are taken verbatim from the original MS.:

Welcome, Gentlemen and Ladies, to this, our Hall of Temperance. We feel that the cause we have espoused is a common cause, in which you, with us, are deeply interested. We would that some means were devised, by which our Brothers and Sons shall no longer be allured from the _right_ by the corrupting influence of the fashionable sippings of wine and brandy, those sure destroyers of Mental and Moral Worth, and by which our Sisters and Daughters shall no longer be exposed to the vile arts of the gentlemanly-appearing, gallant, but really half-inebriated seducer. Our motive is to ask of you counsel in the formation, and co-operation in the carrying-out of plans which may produce a radical change in our Moral Atmosphere....

But to the question, what good our Union has done? Though our Order has been strongly opposed by ladies professing a desire to see the Moral condition of our race elevated, and though we still behold some of our thoughtless female friends whirling in the giddy dance, with intoxicated partners at their side and, more than this, see them accompany their reeling companions to some secluded nook and there quaff with them from that Virtue-destroying cup, yet may we not hope that an influence, though now unseen, unfelt, has gone forth, which shall tell upon the future, which shall convince us that our weekly resort to these meetings has not been in vain, and which shall cause the friends of humanity to admire and respect--nay, venerate--this now-despised little band of Daughters of Temperance?...

We count it no waste of time to go forth through our streets, thus proclaiming our desire for the advancement of our great cause. You, with us, no doubt, feel that Intemperance is the blighting mildew of all our social connections; you would be most happy to speed on the time when no Wife shall watch with trembling heart and tearful eye the slow, but sure descent of her idolized Companion down to the loathsome haunts of drunkenness; you would hasten the day when no Mother shall have to mourn over a darling son as she sees him launch his bark on the circling waves of the mighty whirlpool.

How is this great change to be wrought, who are to urge on this vast work of reform? Shall it not be women, who are most aggrieved by the foul destroyer's inroads? Most certainly. Then arises the question, how are we to accomplish the end desired? I answer, not by confining our influence to our own home circle, not by centering all our benevolent feelings upon our own kindred, not by caring naught for the culture of any minds, save those of our own darlings. No, no; the gratification of the _selfish_ impulses _alone_, can never produce a desirable change in the Moral aspect of Society....

It is generally conceded that it is our s.e.x that fashions the Social and Moral State of Society. We do not presume that females possess unbounded power in abolishing the evil customs of the day; but we do believe that were they en ma.s.se to discountenance the use of wine and brandy as beverages at both their public and private parties, not one of the opposite s.e.x, who has any claim to the t.i.tle of gentleman, would so insult them as to come into their presence after having quaffed of that foul destroyer of all true delicacy and refinement.

I am not aware that we have any inebriate females among us, but have we not those, who are fallen from _Virtue_, and who claim our efforts for their reform, equally with the inebriate? And while we feel it our duty to extend the hand of sympathy and love to those who are wanderers from the path of Temperance, should we not also be zealous in reclaiming those poor, deluded ones, who have been robbed of their most precious Gem, Virtue, and whom we blush to think belong to our s.e.x?

Now, Ladies, all we would do is to do all in our power, both individually and collectively, to harmonize and happify our Social system. We ask of you candidly and seriously to investigate the Matter, and decide for yourselves whether the object of our Union be not on the side of right, and if it be, then one and all, for the sake of erring humanity, come forward and _speed_ on the right.

If you come to the conclusion that the end we wish to attain is right, but are not satisfied with the plan adopted, then I ask of you to devise means by which this great good may be more speedily accomplished, and you shall find us ready with both heart and hand to co-operate with you. In my humble opinion, all that is needed to produce a complete Temperance and Social reform in this age of Moral Suasion, is for our s.e.x to cast their United influences into the balance.

Ladies! there is no Neutral position for us to a.s.sume. If we sustain not this n.o.ble enterprise, both by precept and example, then is our influence on the side of Intemperance. If we say we love the Cause, and then sit down at our ease, surely does our action speak the lie. And now permit me once more to beg of you to lend your aid to this great Cause, the Cause of G.o.d and all Mankind.

The next day on the streets, so the letters say, everybody was exclaiming, "Miss Anthony is the smartest woman who ever has been in Canajoharie." Soon afterwards the school closed and, after spending the summer visiting eastern relatives and friends, Miss Anthony returned to Rochester in the autumn of 1849. The thing she remembers most vividly is how she reveled in fruit. All the young orchards her father had planted were now bearing, including a thousand peach trees, and for the first time in her life she had all the peaches she wanted, and "lived on them for a month."

The years of 1850 and 1851 Daniel Anthony conducted his insurance business in Syracuse and Susan remained at home, taking entire charge of the farm, superintending the planting of the crops, the harvesting and the selling. She also did most of the housework, as her mother was in delicate health, her sister was teaching school and both brothers were away. In the winter of 1852, she went into a school in Rochester as supply for three months. She found, however, that her taste for teaching was entirely gone, her work was without inspiration, her interest and sympathy had become enlisted in other things. She longed to take an active part in the two great reforms of temperance and anti-slavery, which now were absorbing public attention; she could not endure the narrow and confining life of the school-room, and so, in the spring, she abandoned teaching forever, after an experience of fifteen years.

[Footnote 9: Nearly fifty years afterwards, when Mr. Hagar was at the head of the Girls' High School, in Salem, Ma.s.s., Miss Anthony visited him and was most cordially invited to address his pupils "on any subject she pleased, even woman suffrage."]

[Footnote 10: The play for this occasion was written by James Arkell, father of W.J. Arkell, proprietor of the Judge. He was a pupil in the boys' department of the old academy.]

CHAPTER V.

ENTRANCE INTO PUBLIC LIFE.

1850--1852.

Ill the conditions were such as to make it most natural for Miss Anthony, when she reached the age of maturity, to adopt a public career and go actively into reform work, and especially to enter upon that contest to secure equal rights for those of her own s.e.x, which she was to wage unceasingly for half a century. Her father's mother and sister were "high seat" Quakers, the latter a famous preacher. Her mother's cousin, Betsey Dunnell White, of Stafford's Hill, was noted as the only woman in that locality who could "talk politics," and the men used to come from far and near to get her opinion on the political situation.

She was brought up in a society which recognizes the equality of the s.e.xes and encourages women in public speaking. In her own home the father believed in giving sons and daughters the same advantages, and in preparing the latter as well as the former for self-support. The daughters were taught business principles, and invested with responsibility at an early age. Two of them married, and the third was of a quiet and retiring disposition; but in Susan he saw ability of a high order and that same courage, persistence and aggressiveness which entered into his own character, enabling him to make his way in the business world and rally from his losses and defeats. He encouraged her desire to go into the reforms which were demanding attention, gave her financial backing when necessary, moral support upon all occasions, and was ever her most interested friend and faithful ally. She received also the sympathy and a.s.sistance of her mother, who, no matter how heavy the domestic burdens, or how precarious her own health, was never willing that she should take any time from her public work to give to the duties of home, although she frequently insisted upon doing so.

During Miss Anthony's stay at Canajoharie she went often to Albany and there made the intimate acquaintance of Abigail Mott and her sister Lydia, whose names are now a blessed memory with the leaders of the abolition movement that still remain. Their modest home was a rallying center for the reformers of the day, and here Miss Anthony met many of the noted men and women with whom she was to become so closely a.s.sociated in the future. She reached home in 1849 to find a hot-bed of discussion and fermentation. The first rift had been made in the old common law, which for centuries had held women in its iron grasp, by the pa.s.sage, in April, 1848, of the Property Bill allowing a married woman to hold real estate in her own name in New York. Previous to this time all the property which a woman owned at marriage and all she might receive by gift or inheritance pa.s.sed into the possession of the husband; the rents and profits belonged to him, and he could sell it during his lifetime or dispose of it by will at his death except her life interest in one-third of the real estate. The more thoughtful among women were beginning to ask why other unjust laws should not also be repealed, and the whole question of the rights of woman was thus opened.

In 1848, Spiritualism may be said to have had its birth, and the remarkable manifestations of the Fox sisters brought numbers of people to Rochester, where they had-removed as soon as they began to be widely known. This form of religious belief soon acquired a large following, causing much controversy and great excitement.

The Society of Friends had divided on the slavery issue and Miss Anthony found her family attending the Unitarian church, which soon afterwards called William Henry Channing to its pulpit. Both he and Samuel J. May, the father of Unitarianism in Syracuse, became her steadfast friends and never-failing support in all the great work which was developed in later years.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

AUNT HANNAH, THE QUAKER PREACHER.

FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE.]

In July, 1848, the first Woman's Rights Convention had been held in Seneca Falls and adjourned to meet in Rochester August 2. Miss Anthony's father, mother and sister Mary had attended and signed the declaration demanding equal rights for women, and she found them enthusiastic upon this subject and also over Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott and other prominent women who had taken part. Her cousin, Sarah Anthony Burtis, had acted as secretary of the convention.

In 1849 Mrs. Mott published her admirable Discourse on Woman in answer to a lyceum lecture by Richard H. Dana ridiculing the idea of civil and political rights for women. In 1847 Frederick Dougla.s.s had brought his family to Rochester and established his paper, the North Star. As soon as Miss Anthony reached home she was taken by her father to call on Dougla.s.s, and this was the beginning of another friendship which was to last a lifetime.

The year 1849 saw the whole country in a state of great unrest and excitement. Eighty thousand men had gone to California in search of gold. Telegraphs and railroads were being rapidly constructed, thus bringing widely separated localities into close communication. The unsettled condition of Europe and the famine in Ireland had turned toward America that tremendous tide of immigration which this year had risen to 300,000. The admission of Texas into the Union had precipitated the full force of the slavery question. Old parties were disintegrating and sectional lines becoming closely drawn. New territories were knocking at the door of the Union and the whole nation was in a ferment as to whether they should be slave or free. Threats of secession were heard in both the North and the South. A spirit of compromise finally prevailed and deferred the crisis for a decade, but the agitation and unrest continued to increase. The Abolitionists were still a handful of radicals, repudiated alike by the Free Soil Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. Slavery, as an inst.i.tution, had not yet become a political issue, but only its extension into the territories.

Such, in brief, was the situation at the beginning of 1850. It was a period of grave apprehension on the part of older men and women, of intense aggressiveness with the younger, who were eager for action. It is not surprising then that an educated, self-reliant, public-spirited woman who had just reached thirty should chafe against the narrow limits of a school-room and rebel at giving her time and strength to the teaching of children, when all her mind and heart were drawn toward the great issues then filling the press and the platform and even finding their way into the pulpit. Miss Anthony's whole soul soon became absorbed in the thought, "What service can I render humanity; what can I do to help right the wrongs of society?" At this time the one and only field of public work into which women had dared venture, except in a few isolated cases, was that of temperance. Miss Anthony had brought her credentials from the Daughters' Union at Canajoharie and presented them at once to the society in Rochester; they were gladly accepted and she soon became a leader. In these days John B.

Gough was delivering his magnificent lectures throughout the country, and Philip S. White, of South Carolina, was winning fame as a temperance orator.

The year 1850 was for her one of transition. A new world opened out before her. The Anthony homestead was a favorite meeting place for liberal-spirited men and women. On Sunday especially, when the father could be at home, the house was filled and fifteen or twenty people used to gather around the hospitable board. Susan always superintended these Sunday dinners, and was divided between her anxiety to sustain her reputation as a superior cook and her desire not to lose a word of the conversation in the parlor. Garrison, Pillsbury, Phillips, Channing and other great reformers visited at this home, and many a Sunday the big wagon would be sent to the city for Frederick Dougla.s.s and his family to come out and spend the day. Here were gathered many times the Posts, Hallowells, DeGarmos, Willises, Burtises, Kedzies, Fishes, Curtises, Stebbins, Asa Anthonys, all Quakers who had left the society on account of their anti-slavery principles and were leaders in the abolition and woman's rights movements. Every one of these Sunday meetings was equal to a convention. The leading events of the day were discussed in no uncertain tones. All were Garrisonians and believed in "immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation." In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Law was pa.s.sed and all the resources of the federal government were employed for its enforcement. Its provisions exasperated the Abolitionists to the highest degree. The house of Isaac and Amy Post was the rendezvous for runaway slaves, and each of these families that gathered on Sunday at the Anthony farm could have told where might be found at least one station on the "underground railroad."

Miss Anthony read with deep interest the reports of the woman's rights convention held at Worcester, Ma.s.s., October, 1850, which were published in the New York Tribune.[11] She sympathized fully with the demand for equal rights for women, but was not yet quite convinced that these included the suffrage. This, no doubt, was largely because Quaker men did not vote, thinking it wrong to support a government which believed in war. Even so progressive and public-spirited a man as Daniel Anthony, much as he was interested in all national affairs, never voted until 1860, when he became convinced it was only by force of arms that the question of slavery could be settled.

In 1851, the License Law having been arbitrarily repealed a few years before, there was practically no regulation of the liquor business, nor was there any such public sentiment against intemperance as exists at the present day. Drunkenness was not looked upon as an especial disgrace and there had been little agitation of the question. The wife of a drunkard was completely at his mercy. He had the entire custody of the children, full control of anything she might earn, and the law did not recognize drunkenness as a cause for divorce. Although woman was the greatest sufferer, she had not yet learned that she had even the poor right of protest. Oppressed by the weight of the injustice and tyranny of ages, she knew nothing except to suffer in silence; and so degraded was she by generations of slavish submission, that she possessed not even the moral courage to stand by those of her own s.e.x who dared rebel and demand a new dispensation.

The old Washingtonian Society of the first half of the nineteenth century, composed entirely of men, because reformed drunkards only could belong to it, was succeeded by the Sons of Temperance, and these had permitted the organization of subordinate lodges called Daughters of Temperance, which, as subsequent events will show, were ent.i.tled to no official recognition. It was in one of these, the only organized bodies of women known at this time,[12] that Miss Anthony first displayed that executive ability which was destined to make her famous.

During 1851 she was very active in temperance work and organized a number of societies in surrounding towns. She inst.i.tuted in Rochester a series of suppers and festivals to raise the funds which she at once saw were necessary before any efficient work could be done. An old invitation to one of these, dated February 21, 1851, and signed by Susan B. Anthony, chairman, reads: "The entertainment is intended to be of such a character as will meet the approbation of the wise and good; Supper, Songs, Toasts, Sentiments and short speeches will be the order of-the evening; $1 will admit a gentleman and a lady" A newpaper account says:

The five long tables were loaded with a rich variety of provisions, tastefully decorated and arranged. Mayor Samuel Richardson presided at the supper table. After the repast was over, Miss Susan B.

Anthony, Directress of the Festival and President of the a.s.sociation, introduced these highly creditable sentiments, which were greatly applauded by the a.s.semblage:

"The Women of Rochester--Powerful to fashion the customs of society, may they not fail to exercise that power for the speedy and total banishment of all that intoxicates from our domestic and social circles, and thus speed on the day when no young man, be he ever so _genteelly_ dressed or of ever so _n.o.ble_, origin, who pollutes his lips with the touch of the drunkard's cup, shall presume to seek the favor of any of our precious daughters.

"Our Cause--May each succeeding day add to its glory and every hour give fresh impetus to its progress...."

Many other toasts were proposed which s.p.a.ce forbids quoting, but the following by one of the gentlemen deserves a place:

The Daughters--Our characters they elevate, Our manners they refine; Without them we'd degenerate To the level of the swine.

It is curious how willing men have been, through all the centuries, to admit that only the influence of women saves them from being brutes and how anxious to confine that influence to the narrowest possible limits.

[Autograph:

Very truly and affectionately Abby K. Foster]