The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 42

After an unbroken friendship of twenty-five years, Frances E. Willard, herself one of the grandest women of the century, paid this beautiful tribute in December, 1897:

Ever since I "came to myself" my love and loyalty have enveloped the name, Susan B. Anthony. I look upon her as that figure full of courage, resource and dignity which will yet be enshrined in the admiring affection of the whole republic, even as it already has been for so long in that of thoughtful women. Others have done n.o.bly and we count over their names with devout remembrance and grat.i.tude, but Susan B. Anthony by reason of her heroic self-sacrifice, her lonely life, her changeless devotion, her disregard for money and position, her concentration of purpose and universal good will, has made for herself a place on the highest pedestal in America's pantheon of women.

We do not forget "the slings and arrows" of the earlier time, now that she is justly honored in these years of greater intelligence and progress; we do not forget that high sense of personal integrity which led her to pay off the debts on The Revolution, although no legal obligation rested upon her to do so; we do not forget her testing of an unjust law in the great "case" in Rochester; we do not forget that (jointly with her great a.s.sociate, Mrs. Stanton) she prepared for us that invaluable historic record of the suffrage movement from its earliest inception; we do not forget the untiring labors which have carried her, from youth to age, into every nook and corner of the Union; and many of us are cognizant of unnumbered acts of personal kindness toward women in need who cherish her as if she were their sister or their mother.

Although the press once misrepresented her, it would hardly venture to do so now, for her standing with the public is such that not to know Miss Anthony argues one's self unknown, and to vilify her argues one's self a villain.

Blessed Sister Susan, accept the homage of one whom you have cheered and comforted, and who rejoices to believe that the loving friendship begun here shall grow and deepen in the bright light of that happier world where there is no injustice, and where we have abundant reason to believe that women will stand on a plane of perfect equality.

A number of years ago, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her own unsurpa.s.sed beauty of language, said:

I will attempt no a.n.a.lysis of one as dear to me as those of my own household. In an intimate friendship of many years, without a break or shadow; in daily consultation, sometimes for months together under the same roof, often in circ.u.mstances of great trial and perplexity, I can truly say that Susan B. Anthony is the most charitable, self-reliant, magnanimous human being that I ever knew.

As I recall the honesty and heroism of her public life; her tenderness and generous self-sacrifice to friends in private; her spontaneous good will towards her worst enemies, a new hope kindles within me for womankind--a hope that by giving some high purpose to their lives, all women may be lifted above the petty envy, jealousy, malice and discontent that now poison so many hearts which might, in healthy action, overflow with love and helpfulness to all humanity. Miss Anthony's grand life is a lesson to all unmarried women, showing that the love-element need not be wholly lost if it is not centered on husband and children. To live for a principle, for the triumph of some reform by which all mankind are to be lifted up--to be wedded to an idea--may be, after all, the holiest and happiest of marriages.

In the twilight of age, when Mrs. Stanton prepared for future generations the Reminiscences of her life and work of fourscore years, she wrote to her old friend: "The current of our lives has run in the same channel so long it can not be separated, and my book is as much your story as, I doubt not, yours is mine;" and when it was ended she placed upon it the inscription, "I dedicate this volume to Susan B.

Anthony, my steadfast friend for half a century."

Steadfast! No other word so fitly defines the keystone of the arch of n.o.ble attributes upon which this heroic life is founded--as constant to a principle as to a friendship. There is nothing of the martyr in Miss Anthony's nature and she refuses to consider herself in the light of a vicarious sacrifice. "I do not look back upon a hard life," she says; "I have been continually at work because I enjoyed being busy. Had this never-ending toil made me wretched in mind or body, I have no doubt that in some way I should have gotten out of it." "What thanks did you receive for the stand you made?" once was asked her. "I had my own thanks for retaining my self-respect," was the reply. Again one inquired, "Did you not grow discouraged in those olden times?" "Never,"

she answered; "I knew that my cause was just, and I was always in good company." Her character, instead of growing embittered by the hard experiences of early days, has been sweetened and strengthened by the high moral purpose which has dominated her life. She is a philanthropist in her love of mankind and her work for humanity, but she is governed by philosophy rather than emotion, ever examining causes and effects by the pure light of reason and logic.

Susan B. Anthony has been called the Napoleon of the woman suffrage movement and, in the planning of campaigns and the boldness and daring of carrying them forward, there may be the qualities of that famous general, but in character and principles the comparison fails utterly.

She has been termed the Gladstone among women, and in statesmanlike ability and long years of distinguished service, there may be points of resemblance, but she would repudiate the sacrifice of justice to party expediency, oftentimes charged against the noted English politician. It has been said that she has been the great Liberator of women, as Lincoln was of the negroes. There is indeed something in her countenance and manner which reminds one of Lincoln, the same unconscious dignity, the same rugged endurance, the same strong, resolute face, softened by lines of weariness and care and spiritualized by an expression of infinite patience and indescribable pathos. She has not, however, the conservatism, the forbearance, the reverence for existing laws and const.i.tutions, which made Lincoln slow to act and tolerant almost to the point of criticism.

She has been described as being to the cause of woman's emanc.i.p.ation, what Garrison was to that of the slave. She has, perhaps, more of the characteristics of Garrison than of the other three conspicuous figures of the century. His motto, "No Compromise," has been her watchword. Like Garrison, she strikes a body-blow straight from the shoulder. She recognizes no such word as expediency and accepts no halfway measures.

Theoretically a non-resistant, she fights to the last ditch and never accepts a defeat as final. She has the natural gift of selecting always the strongest word, and the power of carrying conviction to her audience. She is conventional in outward observances, but most radical in thought and speech. She detests all forms of cruelty and oppression, but it is the action, not the person, that she censures, and she is most charitable in excuses for the faults and failings of others. She bears the ills of life with cheerful fort.i.tude, and accepts the blessings with fine humility. There is no need of comparison. She has her own strong individuality, which has made its indelible impress upon history and secured for her a place among the immortals. Now, in life's evening, her world is illumined with the beauty of a sunset undimmed by clouds--and as she contemplates the infinite, she takes no heed of the gathering darkness of night, but looking into a clear sky beholds only the ineffable glory of other spheres.

FOOTNOTES:

[132] Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, the national auditors, were unable to be present.

[133] There were present also reporters from the New York Sun, New York World, Springfield Republican, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and other papers.

APPENDIX.

CHAPTER XIV--PAGE 229.

ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

_Adopted by the Women's National Loyal League, May 14, 1863._

... We ask not for ourselves or our friends redress of specific grievances or posts of honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge the loyal women of the Republic to freedom and our country. We come to strengthen you with earnest words of sympathy and encouragement. We come to thank you for your proclamation, in which the nineteenth century seems to echo back the Declaration of Seventy-six. Our fathers had a vision of the sublime idea of liberty, equality and fraternity; but they failed to climb the heights which with anointed eyes they saw. To us, their children, belongs the work to build up the living reality of what they conceived and uttered. It is not our mission to criticise the past.

Nations, like individuals, must blunder and repent. It is not wise to waste our energy in vain regret, but from each failure we should rise up with renewed conscience and courage for n.o.bler action. The follies and faults of yesterday we cast aside as the old garments we have outgrown.

Born anew to freedom, slave creeds and codes and const.i.tutions all now must pa.s.s away. "For men do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break and the wine runneth out and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles and both are preserved."

Our special thanks are due to you, that by your proclamation 2,000,000 women are freed from the foulest bondage humanity ever suffered. Slavery for man is bad enough, but the refinements of cruelty ever must fall on the mothers of the oppressed race, defrauded of all the rights of the family relation and violated in the most holy instincts of their nature.

A mother's life is bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and ambitions. But the slave-mother in her degradation rejoices not in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present and future all are wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows the wine-press she treads those tender feet must tread alone.

For, by the law of slavery, "the child follows the condition of the mother."

By your act, the family, that great conservator of national virtue and strength, has been restored to millions of humble homes around whose altars coming generations shall magnify and bless the name of Abraham Lincoln. By a mere stroke of the pen you have emanc.i.p.ated millions from a condition of wholesale concubinage. We now ask you to finish the work by declaring that nowhere under our national flag shall the motherhood of any race plead in vain for justice and protection. So long as one slave breathes in this republic, we drag the chain with him. G.o.d has so linked the race, man to man, that all must rise or fall together. Our history exemplifies this law. It was not enough that we at the North abolished slavery for ourselves, declared freedom of speech and press, built churches, colleges and free schools, studied the science of morals, government and economy, dignified labor, ama.s.sed wealth, whitened the sea with our commerce and commanded the respect and admiration of the nations of the earth--so long as the South, by the natural proclivities of slavery, was sapping the very foundations of our national life....

You are the first President ever borne on the shoulders of freedom into the position you now fill. Your predecessors owed their elevation to the slave oligarchy, and in serving slavery they did but obey their masters.

In your election, northern freemen threw off the yoke, and with you rests the responsibility that our necks never shall bow again. At no time in the annals of the nation has there been a more auspicious moment to retrieve the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to slavery. The Const.i.tution has been repudiated and the compact broken by the southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the first gun on Sumter released the North from all const.i.tutional obligations to slavery. It left the government, for the first time in our history, free to carry out the declaration of our Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact what we ever have claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

"The Union as it was"--a compromise between barbarism and civilization--can never be restored, for the opposing principles of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life, and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is death. In obedience to this law, our republic, divided and distracted by the collisions of cla.s.s and caste, is tottering to its base and can be reconstructed only on the sure foundation of impartial freedom to all. The war in which we are involved is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step in the progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time for temporizing or diplomacy. In a radical upheaving the people demand eternal principles on which to stand.

Northern power and loyalty never can be measured until the purpose of the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm ever is based on a grand idea, and unity of action demands a definite end. At this time our greatest need is not men or money, valiant generals or brilliant victories, but a _consistent policy_, based on the principle that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our declaration of rights nor under any laws, human or divine, by which free men can be made slaves; and therefore that your pledge to the slaves is irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

If it be true, as it is said, that northern women lack enthusiasm in this war, the fault rests with those who have confused and confounded its policy. The pages of history glow with instances of self-sacrifice by women in the hour of their country's danger. Fear not that the daughters of this republic will count any sacrifice too great to insure the triumph of freedom. Let the men who wield the nation's power be wise, brave and magnanimous, and its women will be prompt to meet the duties of the hour with devotion and heroism.

When Fremont on the western breeze proclaimed a day of jubilee to the bondmen within our gates, the women of the nation echoed back a loud amen. When Hunter freed a million men and gave them arms to fight our battles, justice and mercy crowned that act and tyrants stood appalled.

When Butler, in the chief city of the southern despotism, hung a traitor we felt a glow of pride; for that one act proved that we had a government and one man brave enough to administer its laws. And when Burnside would banish Vallandigham to the Dry Tortugas, let the sentence be approved and the nation will ring with plaudits. Your proclamation gives you immortality. Be just, and share your glory with men like these who wait to execute your will.

On behalf of the Women's National Loyal League,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

CHAPTER XV--PAGE 247.

RECONSTRUCTION.

_Address Delivered at Ottumwa, Kansas, July 4, 1865._

_Mr. President, and Men and Women of Kansas:_

It is a pleasure to me, beyond the reach of words, to be with you today.

I accepted the invitation of your committee that I might feast my eyes on your grand prairies, ever fringed with the darker green of their timber-skirted creeks and rivers. I came here on this 89th anniversary of our National Independence, that I might look into the honest, earnest faces of the men and the women who, ten years ago, taught the nation anew, that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to G.o.d." Through all this glorious decade of heroic struggle, my interests, my sympathies, my affections have been bound up with yours; for, during and since the cruel outrages of the summer of 1856, my two and only brothers have stood shoulder to shoulder with the freedom-loving, freedom-voting, freedom-fighting men of Kansas. And, as I have waited the telegraphic word that trembled along the western wires, telling of your successes and your defeats, it has ever been with bated breath lest those of my own home circle, too, should be numbered among the slain. Therefore, though not here in person through all these trial years, in spirit I have been with you, in your privations and hardships, in your sufferings and sacrifices to make freedom and free inst.i.tutions the sure inheritance of Kansas and the nation.

You have already listened to the grand old Declaration of the Fathers of 1776. You have heard the true words of your representative to the next Congress.[134] His manly utterances here today give you a.s.surance that he will faithfully reflect the highest and truest sentiments of his const.i.tuency. Men and women of Kansas, I congratulate you, that you have in this chosen agent a man who will speak and vote on the vital questions to come before the next Congress from the standpoint of human equality.

It is my purpose to call your attention to the recent declarations of our President to our "erring sister States" of the South. I ask you specially to note his proclamation to Mississippi. After pointing out that the Const.i.tution of the United States guarantees to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and that the late rebellion has deprived the people of Mississippi of all civil government, he continues:

Now, therefore, in obedience to the high and solemn duties imposed upon me by the Const.i.tution of the United States, and for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of said State to organize a State government, whereby justice may be established, domestic tranquillity insured, and loyal citizens protected in all their rights of life, liberty, and property, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United States, do hereby appoint William L. Sharkey Provisional Governor of the State of Mississippi, whose duty it shall be, at the earliest practicable period, to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for convening a convention, composed of delegates to be chosen by that portion of the people of said State who are loyal to the United States, and no others, for the purpose of altering or amending the const.i.tution thereof; and with authority to exercise, within the limits of said State, all the powers necessary and proper to enable such loyal people of the State of Mississippi to restore said State to its const.i.tutional relations to the Federal government, and to present such republican form of State government as will ent.i.tle the State to the guarantee of the United States therefor, and its people to protection by the United States against invasion, insurrection, and domestic violence: Provided, That in any election that may be hereafter held for choosing delegates to any State Convention as aforesaid, no person shall be qualified as an elector, or shall be eligible as a member of such convention, unless he shall have previously taken and subscribed the oath of amnesty, as set forth in the President's proclamation of May 29, A. D. 1865, _and is a voter qualified as prescribed by the Const.i.tution and laws of the State, of Mississippi, in force immediately before the ninth (9th) of January, A. D. 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of secession_; and the said convention, when convened, or the Legislature that may be thereafter a.s.sembled, will prescribe the qualifications of electors, and the eligibility of persons to hold office under the Const.i.tution and laws of the State, a power the people of the several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the government to the present time.

The President says he finds the people of Mississippi "deprived of all civil government" by the revolutionary progress of the rebellion; therefore he appoints a provisional governor, to call an election of the loyal people for delegates to a convention to alter or amend the const.i.tution that was in force prior to the rebellion. He does this "for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of said State to organize a State government whereby justice may be established, domestic tranquillity insured, and loyal citizens protected in all their rights of life, liberty and property." To this laudable end he instructs the governor, who is his military agent, to allow no man to vote or to be voted for, unless he shall have previously taken and subscribed to the oath of amnesty of May 29, 1865, _and is a voter by the old const.i.tution and laws of the slaveholding State of Mississippi_. By this ordering, the President makes it impossible for the great ma.s.s of the loyal people to have a voice in organizing the new government. He re-establishes precisely the same basis of cla.s.s representation that worked out the ruin of the old State government. Not to mention the loyal women, who make fully one-half of the loyal people, he shuts out all the loyal black men, with all the loyal poor white men, who were not allowed to vote under the old regime of slavery.

Thus, by this initiative step, the President makes it inevitable that the rebuilding of the government shall be controlled by the ex-rebels; the men who have fought desperately for four years to overthrow the federal government; the men who hate republicanism; the men who love and are determined to enjoy aristocracy. The loyal white men there, who have stood firmly and truly by the government through all the cruel persecutions of this b.l.o.o.d.y rebellion, are today a most powerless and pitiable minority; and yet the President tells this little handful that their only hope of organizing a genuine republican form of government lies in their ability to outvote the vast horde of disloyal civilians and pardoned, but not penitent, returned rebel soldiers. Such an offence against white loyalty is enough to make the very stones cry out.

But what shall we say of the other and deeper crime against the thousands of loyal black soldiers, who have fought bravely for us from the hour we permitted them to shoulder the musket; against the entire slave population, who have welcomed our Yankee soldiers, been faithful spies and guides to our armies, nursed our sick and wounded, relieved and rescued our starving prisoners, and in every conceivable way and manner given "aid and comfort" to our Union cause? I tell you, men and women of Kansas, no tongue can speak the ingrat.i.tude, the injustice, the shame and outrage of a proposition thus to leave those true and faithful freedmen to the cruel legislation of their old tyrants and oppressors, made tenfold more their enemies, because of their attachment and service to the government which they themselves have failed to destroy. Think of it, to thrust four million loyal people under the political heel of eight millions, almost to a man, disloyal!

I am sure you, who have given the best blood of Kansas to put down the slaveholders' rebellion against the rightful rule of the majority, will never by your silence give seeming consent to a reorganization of those rebel States on any basis save that of the ballot to all loyal citizens, black and white. You will never consent that loyal Union soldiers and friends, for no crime but the color of their skin, shall be made subjects, if not slaves, to disloyal rebel soldiers and enemies, with no virtue but that of belonging to the "governing race," as the President's North Carolina appointee calls the white faces. No, no, you will make these grand old prairies ring with your thunder-toned protests until they shall be felt and feared in the legislative halls at Washington.