The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 10

It takes all too many of us women from our homes and from the works of charity and education in our respective localities, even to come to Washington, session after session, until Congress shall have submitted the proposition, and then to go from legislature to legislature, urging its adoption. But when you insist that we shall beg at the feet of each individual voter of every one of the States, native and foreign, black and white, learned and ignorant, you doom us to incalculable hardships and sacrifices, and to most exasperating insults and humiliations. I pray you to save us from the fate of waiting and working for our freedom until we shall have educated the ignorant ma.s.ses of men to consent to give their wives and sisters equality of rights with themselves. You surely will not compel us to await the enlightenment of all the freedmen of this nation and the newly-made voters from the monarchial governments of the old world!

Liberty for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by all men, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden rule. Therefore we ask that the question of equality of rights to women shall be decided by the picked men of the nation in Congress, and the picked men of the several States in their respective legislatures.

The Senate committee again submitted a majority report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women, signed by T. W. Palmer, Blair, Lapham and Anthony. The minority report, by Joseph E. Brown, c.o.c.krell and Fair, began: "The undersigned believe that the Creator intended that the sphere of the males and females of our race should be different,"

etc.

The House Judiciary Committee gave a majority report in the negative.[21] The minority report in favor was signed by Thomas B. Reed, Maine; Ezra B. Taylor, Ohio; Thomas M. Browne, Indiana; Moses A. McCoid, Iowa. It is one of the keenest, clearest expositions of the absurdity of the objections against woman suffrage that ever has been made, and ends with this trenchant paragraph:

It is sometimes a.s.serted that women now have a great influence in politics through their husbands and brothers. That is undoubtedly true. But this is just the kind of influence which is not wholesome for the community, for it is influence unaccompanied by responsibility. People are always ready to recommend to others what they would not do themselves. If it be true that women can not be prevented from exercising political influence, is not that only another reason why they should be steadied in their political action by that proper sense of responsibility which comes from acting themselves? We conclude then, that every reason which in this country bestows the ballot upon man is equally applicable to the proposition to bestow the ballot upon woman, and in our judgment there is no foundation for the fear that woman will thereby become unfitted for all the duties she has. .h.i.therto performed.

Miss Anthony mailed 500 packages of copies of this report to different points for distribution. Upon the urgent invitation of the suffrage a.s.sociation of Connecticut she went there for a few days to a.s.sist at their State convention, but in a letter to Mrs. Spofford she said: "I shall return tomorrow night, if possible. I keep thinking of those men at the Capitol not doing what I want them to." She afterwards wrote to May Wright Sewall:

My plan is to get away from here the minute I can do so without letting our work suffer in Congress. A week ago the House Judiciary Committee voted down a motion to print our "hearing" speeches.

Yesterday I went up and called out a Democrat who I knew had voted "no," and hence could move to reconsider, and he promised to go back and thus move, and did so, and Mr. Browne, of Indiana, asked leave of the House to print them. I wish you would write to Mr.

Browne that he is splendid and our main help now in the committee.

c.o.c.krell has been trying to prevent printing the Senate "hearing,"

but Blair, Lapham, Palmer and Anthony are bound it shall be printed. Still, all would fall flat and dead if some one were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "Yours &c, Thomas M. Browne"]

Miss Anthony remained in Washington till April 14, managing her forces like an experienced general until the last gun had been fired. When she returned home ready to begin work on the History, she found to her amazement that the officer who had been charged with preparing the report of the Sixteenth National Suffrage Convention, a woman of great literary ability, had given it up in despair, declaring that it would be utterly impossible to make anything creditable out of such a ma.s.s of unsatisfactory material, most of which would have to be entirely re-written. Miss Anthony did not stop to sit down and weep, but wrote her at once to send to Rochester every doc.u.ment she had in her possession. Then, taking all of them to Mrs. Stanton, who had gone to her old paternal home at Johnstown, they arranged, edited, re-wrote and put into shape the conglomerate of letters, speeches, etc., and in less than two weeks prepared and sent to the printer the most complete report ever made of a National convention.[22]

The middle of May, after two years' interruption, Miss Anthony and Mrs.

Stanton set themselves diligently to finish the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, all the boxes and trunks of material having been shipped from Tenafly. Although submerged in the avalanche of old doc.u.ments, Miss Anthony's mind was full of current events. She writes in her journal June 2: "I wait with bated breath the news from Oregon, where today the men are voting on the question of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. My heart almost stands stills. I hope against hope, but still I hope." When the news of the defeat comes, she says: "Dear Mrs.

Duniway, with all that debt left on her shoulders, which she a.s.sumed to carry on the campaign! I felt so agonized for her that on the very day of election I rushed to the bank and sent her $100. We must not leave her to carry it alone, after all her brave work. I have written a dozen letters to friends asking them to give her a.s.sistance. I feel like a lion champing the bars of his cage, shut up here digging and delving among the records of the past when I long to be out doing the work of the present." In a letter received from Senator Palmer at this time he says:

I fully sympathize with your regret and chagrin over the reverse in Oregon but hardly with your conclusion, viz., that "the women should stop asking legislatures to submit this question to the electors, to have it killed by the majority, made up of ignorance and whiskey, native and foreign, and all go to Congress for success," etc. It seems to me that nothing is to be lost and much to be gained by local discussions and temporary defeats. You know in 1850 Webster, in his unfortunate Revere House speech, stigmatized the anti-slavery movement as "a rub-a-dub agitation,"

and Wendell Phillips closed his masterly philippic thereon with what was accepted as a motto: Agitate! Agitate!! Agitate!!! Another decade of that rub-a-dub agitation sufficed to divide the continent in a political earthquake and from out the chasm the negro emerged to citizenship. It may still require years to educate a majority of our women to demand the franchise and a majority of our men or their representatives in Congress and the legislatures, to proclaim it, but that the way leads through constant agitation I make no doubt. The still pool casts nothing to sh.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "With high personal esteem I have the honor to be, Very truly yours, T W Palmer"]

She watches events across the water and writes on July 7: "Well, the House of Lords is today discussing whether 2,000,000 farm laborers shall have the ballot placed in their hands, while the half-million, more or less, women who employ them are left without it. What an outrage that Mr. Gladstone refused to allow Mr. Woodall's amendment to his bill to be at least voted upon! He applied the party whip and made voting for the woman suffrage amendment disloyalty to the government, and over one hundred Liberals, who had previously declared themselves in favor of women's sharing in this new extension of the franchise, voted against allowing them to do so. I do not believe a more humiliating abnegation of principle at the behest of a party leader ever was witnessed in our Congress."

The national political conventions in the summer of 1884 received the usual appeal to recognize the claims of women. The Republican, Democratic, Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties equivocated, although the last two nominated Benjamin F. Butler, an avowed advocate of woman suffrage; the Prohibition convention relegated the question to the States[23]. The American party put in a plank and nominated S. C.

Pomeroy, a champion of woman suffrage, but it had too small a following to offer any hope of success. Blaine was not a friend, Logan was an earnest one; Cleveland was not acceptable to many women, Hendricks had never shown himself favorable. In the midst of such a conglomeration the wise thing for all women would have been to remain non-partisan and take no share in the campaign. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, however, watching events from their secluded nook, issued a manifesto urging women to stand by the Republican party. They were led to take this action by the tendency of large numbers to rush to the support of the Prohibitionists, because of their suffrage plank; and they believed that if women were determined to work for some political party, the Republican at that time held out most hope. This aroused the antagonism of the Prohibitionists and Democrats, both men and women, and afforded the strongest possible object lesson to Miss Anthony of the wisdom of henceforth adhering to her policy of non-partisanship until one of the _dominant_ parties should declare unmistakably for woman suffrage and advocate it by means of press and platform.

In August occurred the death of Sarah Pugh, the gentle Quaker and staunch Abolitionist, her old and faithful friend. It was followed by that of Frances D. Gage a few months later; and in December pa.s.sed away the true and helpful ally, William Henry Channing. Each left a void in her heart, and yet the memory of these great souls impelled to renewed effort. There was no cessation of the work on the History, which was slowly evolved through the heat of summer and the beautiful days of early autumn, but by the end of October the funds were exhausted, the money left by Mrs. Eddy was still in litigation, and Miss Anthony again went on the lecture platform, speaking almost every night through November and December.

She did not fail, however, to look carefully after the interests of the Seventeenth National Convention which met as usual in Washington, January 20, 1885. A letter from Clarina Howard Nichols was sent to be read at this meeting, but the hand which penned it was stilled in death before it was received. Of all the pioneer workers with whom Miss Anthony had been a.s.sociated in the early days so full of scorn, ridicule and abuse, Mrs. Nichols was among the nearest and dearest, a forceful speaker and writer, a tender, loving woman. It was in this convention that the resolution denouncing dogmas and creeds was introduced by Mrs.

Stanton, and caused much commotion and heated argument. Miss Anthony opposed it, saying:

I object to the words "derived from Judaism." It does not matter where the dogma came from. I was on the old Garrison platform, and found long ago that the settling of any question of human rights by people's interpretation of the Bible is utterly impossible. I hope we shall not go back to that war. We all know what we want, and that is the recognition of woman's perfect equality. We all admit that such recognition never has been granted in the centuries of the past; but for us to begin a discussion here as to who established this injustice would be anything but profitable. Let those who wish go back into their history, but I beg it shall not be done on our platform.[24]

The public, which always longed for a sensation at these suffrage conventions and was disappointed if it did not come, seized upon this resolution, and press and pulpit made it a text. The following Sunday W.

W. Patton, D. D., president of Howard University, preached in the Congregational church of Washington a sermon ent.i.tled, "Woman and Skepticism." He took the ground that as soon as women depart from their natural sphere they become skeptical if not immoral. He gave as examples Hypatia, Madame Roland, Harriet Martineau, Frances Power Cobbe and George Eliot! Then turning his attention to America he said that "the recent convention of woman suffragists gave evidence of atheism and immorality," and that "Victoria Woodhull was the representative of the movement in this country"[25]. And this when Mrs. Woodhull had not been on the suffrage platform for thirteen years! Miss Anthony and Mrs.

Stanton occupied front seats and at the close of the sermon went forward, shook hands with the preacher and Miss Anthony remarked earnestly: "Doctor, your mother, if you have one, should lay you across her knee and give you a good spanking for that sermon." "O, no," said Mrs. Stanton quickly, "allow me to congratulate you. I have been trying for years to make women understand that the worst enemy they have is in the pulpit, and you have ill.u.s.trated the truth of it." Then, while the great divine was trying to recover his breath, they walked out of the church. The nine days' commotion which this produced can be imagined better than described. After some reflection Miss Anthony regretted that she should have been provoked into her remark, but Mrs. Stanton wrote: "Don't worry a moment. The more I think about it, the better I like it, because it was the most contemptuous thing which could have been said.

Like that shot at Lexington, it will go round the world."

On February 6, Thomas W. Palmer called up in the Senate the resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment and supported it by that masterly speech which ever since has been one of the strongest suffrage campaign doc.u.ments.

At the request of Miss Anthony thousands of copies were sent out under his frank. She went from Washington to Boston to attend a meeting of the National branch of the Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sociation, and soon afterwards, on March 2, started for the New Orleans Exposition. She was warmly welcomed by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, wife of Judge E. T. Merrick, at whose lovely home she was entertained during part of her stay. It was her first visit to the Crescent City and she was soon deluged with invitations to speak and received many charming tokens of the justly-famed southern hospitality.

She spoke before the Woman's Club in the hall of the Continental Guards, with May Wright Sewall, representative from Indiana; gave seven addresses, in as many days, before schools and colleges and, by invitation of the Press a.s.sociation, spoke in Agricultural Hall at the exposition and visited the headquarters of the different papers. The next day, by request of Commissioner Truman, she gave an address and held a reception at the New York headquarters. Her last appearance was at Tulane Hall under the auspices of the teachers of the city schools.

She was everywhere beautifully received, although her doctrines were new and unpopular, and at the close of each meeting her audience crowded about her with words of appreciation and cordiality. Miss Anthony here met for the first time "Catherine Cole," of the editorial staff, and Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, owner and manager of the Picayune. The latter presented her with an Indian basket filled to overflowing with orange blossoms, and this tribute was paid in her paper:

THE APOSTLE OF WOMAN'S RIGHTS.--Miss Susan B. Anthony has made a most favorable impression upon the New Orleans public, and has by her gentleness and courtesy won many friends for herself and her cause. She came here a total stranger, and recognized the fact that there were many who did not approve of her or her doctrines. She has been sincere, truly polite and simply womanly in all her dealings with the southern people, and by these very qualities has commanded the respectful esteem of all. Miss Anthony has not striven to make herself "solid" with the people who give the best dinners.... The workingwoman, the unfashionable woman, have been made as heartily welcome as the leader of society; and for their appreciation they have been repaid by the friendship and esteem of one of the grandest old maids that ever lived.

The Times-Democrat and Daily States also gave full and favorable reports of her visit and lectures. The two weeks allowed for this holiday sped quickly away and Miss Anthony left for the North on March 20, laden with luncheon, flowers and many tokens of affection from the women of New Orleans. At Marshall, Tex., she dined with President and Mrs. Culver, of Bishops' University, and reached St. Louis Sunday evening, where she was the guest of her nephew, Arthur A. Mosher, and his wife. The next four or five weeks were spent in the lecture field at hard work, under the management of the Slayton Bureau. In answer to her letter of regret at not meeting Mrs. J. Ellen Foster at an Iowa convention, as she had requested, Mrs. Foster wrote: "I was sorry enough not to see you but I gave the people your message in the evening. Dear soul, how long you have stood for the truth delivered unto you! G.o.d bless your words and works. I do not see creeds and dogmas just as you see them, I do not believe in all that you do, but I believe in you!"

The last of April came the long-expected summons to Boston to receive the legacy of Mrs. Eddy, the courts having sustained the will. While eastward bound, crossing the State of Illinois, newspapers were brought on the train announcing the death of Grant, and she writes: "The weather is lovely and springlike today, but how still and solemn it seems out here on these broad prairies with that great general gone forever!" The case had been in litigation three years, Benjamin F. Butler appearing for Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone. His fees were very reasonable but several thousand dollars were swallowed up in the suit. The legacy, in first-cla.s.s securities, stocks, bonds, etc., was paid April 27, each receiving $24,125.[26] Miss Anthony gives an amusing account, in one of her letters, of the awful nightmare she had on board the sleeper going home, when she dreamed that a woman was at the head of her berth stifling her while a man knelt in front, his hand cautiously creeping toward the inside pocket where she had sewed the money and bonds. She awoke with a scream and did not go to sleep again.

If this bequest had been left to Miss Anthony for her own personal use, she could not have felt one-half the joy she now experienced in having the means to carry on the work which always had been so seriously impeded for lack of funds. Of course its receipt was heralded far and wide by the papers, and appeals began to pour in from all sides, nor were they always appeals, but often demands. Scores of women considered themselves ent.i.tled to a share because the money had been left to further the cause of woman. One wanted it to help lift a mortgage on her home, others to educate their children, to pay a debt, to reward them for the valuable services they had given to woman suffrage, to start a paper, to carry one already started, and so on without end. The men also were willing to relieve her of a portion. "I am terribly oppressed by it all," Miss Anthony writes, "and nothing would make me happier than to respond to every one, but my money would melt away in a month." It was ludicrous and yet pitiful to see certain persons who had repudiated her in days gone by because she was too radical and too aggressive, discovering all at once how much they always had valued her and how anxious they had been for a long time to renew the old friendship--the common story, ancient as the world.

The one thing she was determined to do first of all was to complete the History of Woman Suffrage, upon which she and Mrs. Stanton had spent all the days that could be spared for nearly ten years. The work had been delayed by the many other demands upon their time, by their trips abroad, but more than all else by lack of money. The authors were to pay for composition, stereotyping, the making of the plates for the engravings and the printing of the same; Fowler & Wells for the paper, press-work, binding and advertising. Miss Anthony and her co-workers were to receive only 12-1/2 per cent. commission on the sales. It readily may be seen that she did not go into this as a money-making scheme. Her only thought, her only desire, was to collect the facts in connection with the movement to secure the rights of women, before they should be scattered and lost, and to preserve and put them into shape for reference.

In preparing the first two volumes she had used every dollar she had been able to earn and all she could obtain from generous friends, and there were still large unpaid bills. Now, with plenty of money at her command, she bought out the rights of Fowler & Wells, and engaged Charles Mann, of Rochester, to print the third volume. Mrs. Stanton had returned to Tenafly, and there Miss Anthony again sent all the trunks and boxes of precious doc.u.ments. She completed her lecture engagements and the first of June, 1885, found the two women once more hard at work.

"I really think of you with pity these hot midsummer days," wrote Mrs.

Sewall to Mrs. Stanton, "under the lash of blessed Susan's relentless energy; but the reflection that she applies it with the most vigor to her own back enables one to regard that instrument, after all, with more admiration than terror." It was indeed true that Mrs. Stanton's luxury and ease-loving nature required much urging,[27] and while Miss Anthony took upon herself all the drudgery possible and all the financial anxiety and burden, she was compelled to keep Mrs. Stanton keyed up to do a great portion of the literary work. "It is the one drawback at every turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called "literary work." Practice undoubtedly would have enabled her to overcome this, but she felt always that her chief strength lay in executive ability.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MISS ANTHONY AND MRS. STANTON.

WRITING THE HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.]

Early in June Miss Anthony slipped away from the work long enough to go to the Progressive Friends' meeting at Kennett Square, Penn., where she was the guest of Deborah Pennock and met, for the first time, Sarah J.

Eddy. In her diary she says: "Last evening as I sat on the sofa Miss Eddy put her arms around me and said, 'I am so glad I love you; I should have felt very sorry if I had not.' And so should I, for the sake of her dear mother and grandfather, who had so much confidence in me." The two went on to New York together and then over to Mrs. Stanton's for a little visit, and the friendship formed at that time has been maintained ever since. Later when Miss Eddy was going to Rochester to a convention, Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Hallowell: "I am sure you would be glad to entertain her; she is a sweet, lovely little woman; thoroughly sympathizing with everything and everybody that suffers injustice. I am very sorry that sister Mary and I must be away and can not have the dear girl with us."

Miss Anthony experienced a great disadvantage in being so far away from her publisher, the more especially as she had to send a chapter at a time, read proofs of each as soon as it was set up, send back corrected proof, get the revises, etc., and she soon found it necessary to spend about half her time in Rochester. The women who were preparing the chapters for their respective States delayed the work, neglecting to send them when promised; many occupied twice as much s.p.a.ce as had been a.s.signed them and were highly indignant when Mrs. Stanton used the blue pencil unsparingly on their productions. They vented their feelings on Miss Anthony, knowing that nothing they could say would ruffle Mrs.

Stanton's equipoise, and she writes in her diary: "To decide between the two has almost torn me in twain. People who can write are so tenacious, each thinking her own style better than any other, while poor I don't know which is the best."

Every few weeks she was obliged to rush over to Fayetteville to confer with Mrs. Gage, who was industriously preparing her part of the work.

Urgent appeals came from women in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Indiana that they could not possibly make a success of their State conventions unless she came to their a.s.sistance, but she steeled her heart against them and stuck closely to her task. From the lecture bureau came a list of ten engagements at $50 a night, but she refused them. Some of the expressions in her letters of those busy days show the state of her mind better than could volumes of description:

All the work of today put aside to grope into the old past. I feel like rushing to you this very minute, but here Mrs. Stanton and I are, scratching, scratching every hour, not each other's eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little....

This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write--I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history but hate to write it.

On November 12 Mrs. Stanton's seventieth birthday was celebrated by a large reception held in the parlors of Dr. Lozier in New York, where Mrs. Stanton read a charming paper on "The Pleasures of Old Age." Her daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, sent the following bright and breezy message:

... How I wish I could give my congratulations in the flesh!

Distance is the foe of love. Kiss dear Susan and let her kiss you for me. On November 12 I shall think of you both, for you two are not easily separated in my mind, and there will be a tenderness in my thoughts and a thankfulness that you both have lived. In your worries over the History, remember that at least one woman appreciates the fact that her life has been made easier because of your combined public work. You ought to be overflowing with grat.i.tude for each other's existence, for neither without the other would have achieved the work you have accomplished. Every day of your lives let your hearts praise the good fortune that brought you together. Friendship is the grandest relation in the world, and I feel infinitely blessed in having two such women as friends. You and dear Susan are not yet to be sainted; you have no end of work in you still, and must labor on for many a long year, and gain many a triumphant victory. I throw up my cap and cry hurrah for you two grand old warriors! The curl is from Nora's little head. She shall be taught to reverence her Queen Mother and Maid of Honor Susan.

Now farewell, dear ladies; I am wishing you on birthdays and every day a long and happy life.

The next morning came the cablegram announcing the sudden death in Switzerland of the mother of Julia and Rachel Foster. Miss Anthony dropped all work when the sisters arrived at New York, went with them to Philadelphia and rendered every possible consolation and a.s.sistance. But not even to go to Washington to push the work in Congress and arrange for the National Convention would she delay the task she was so anxious to finish. She wrote scores of letters, however, in regard to both, and the congressmen particularly had reason to feel that she had not forgotten their promises. Her long and persistent labors were rewarded, for the close of 1885 found the whole third volume of the History in the hands of the printers.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] An official request was sent to the heads of the departments to permit the women employes to attend one session of this convention but it was refused. A few days later permission was given them to go to Mrs.

McElroy's reception at the White House, and the male employes were given a half-holiday to attend the exercises on St. Patrick's Day.