To focus attention on woman suffrage at this crucial time, Susan, in January 1869, called together the first woman suffrage convention ever held in Washington. No only did it attract women from as far west as Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, but Senator Pomeroy lent it importance by his opening speech, and through the detailed and respectful reporting of the New York World and of Grace Greenwood of the Philadelphia Press it received nationwide notice.

Congress, however, gave little heed to women's demands. "The experiment" of woman suffrage in the District of Columbia was not tried and nothing came of the resolutions for universal suffrage introduced by Pomeroy, Julian, and Wilson. In spite of all Susan's efforts to have the word "sex" added to the Fifteenth Amendment, she soon faced the bitter disappointment of seeing a version ignoring women submitted to the states for ratification: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The blatant omission of the word "sex" forced Susan and Mrs. Stanton to initiate an amendment of their own, a Sixteenth Amendment, and again Congressman Julian came to their aid, although he too regarded Negro suffrage as more "immediately important and absorbing"[233] than suffrage for women. On March 15, 1869, at one of the first sessions of the newly elected Congress, he introduced an amendment to the Constitution, providing that the right of suffrage be based on citizenship without any distinction or discrimination because of sex. This was the first federal woman suffrage amendment ever proposed in Congress.

Opportunity to campaign for this amendment was now offered Susan and Elizabeth Stanton as they addressed a series of conventions in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Press notices were good, a Milwaukee paper describing Susan as "an earnest enthusiastic, fiery woman—ready, apt, witty and what a politician would call sharp ... radical in the strongest sense," making "radical everything she touches."[234] She found woman suffrage sentiment growing by leaps and bounds in the West and western men ready to support a federal woman suffrage amendment.

* * * * *

With a lighter heart than she had had in many a day and with new subscriptions to The Revolution, Susan returned to New York. She moved the Revolution office to the first floor of the Women's Bureau, a large four-story brownstone house at 49 East Twenty-third Street, near Fifth Avenue, which had been purchased by a wealthy New Yorker, Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps, who looked forward to establishing a center where women's organizations could meet and where any woman interested in the advancement of her sex would find encouragement and inspiration. Susan's hopes were high for the Women's Bureau, and in this most respectable, fashionable, and even elegant setting, she expected her Revolution, in spite of its inflammable name, to live down its turbulent past and win new friends and subscribers.[235]

She made one last effort to resuscitate the American Equal Rights Association, writing personal letters to old friends, urging that past differences be forgotten and that all rededicate themselves to establishing universal suffrage by means of the Sixteenth Amendment. She was optimistic as she prepared for a convention in New York, particularly as one obstacle to unity had been removed. George Francis Train had voluntarily severed all connections with The Revolution to devote himself to freeing Ireland. She soon found, however, that the misunderstandings between her and her old antislavery friends were far deeper than George Francis Train, although he would for a long time be blamed for them. The Fifteenth Amendment was still a bone of contention and The Revolution's continued editorials against it widened the breach.

The fireworks were set off in the convention of the American Equal Rights Association by Stephen S. Foster, who objected to the nomination of Susan and Mrs. Stanton as officers of the Association because they had in his opinion repudiated its principles. When asked to explain further, he replied that not only had they published a paper advocating educated suffrage while the Association stood for universal suffrage but they had shown themselves unfit by collaboration with George Francis Train who ridiculed Negroes and opposed their enfranchisement.

Trying to pour oil on the troubled waters, Mary Livermore, the popular new delegate from Chicago, asked whether it was quite fair to bring up George Francis Train when he had retired from The Revolution.

To this Stephen Foster sternly replied, "If The Revolution which has so often endorsed George Francis Train will repudiate him because of his course in respect to the Negro's rights, I have nothing further to say. But they do not repudiate him. He goes out; but they do not cast him out."[236]

"Of course we do not," Susan instantly protested.

Mr. Foster then objected to the way Susan had spent the funds of the Association, accusing her of failing to keep adequate accounts.

This she emphatically denied, explaining that she had presented a full accounting to the trust fund committee, that it had been audited, and she had been voted $1,000 to repay her for the amount she had personally advanced for the work.

Unwilling to accept her explanation and calling it unreliable, he continued his complaints until interrupted by Henry Blackwell who corroborated Susan's statement, adding that she had refused the $1,000 due her because of the dissatisfaction expressed over her management. Declaring himself completely satisfied with the settlement and confident of the purity of Susan's motives even if some of her expenditures were unwise, Henry Blackwell continued, "I will agree that many unwise things have been written in The Revolution by a gentleman who furnished part of the means by which the paper has been carried on. But that gentleman has withdrawn, and you, who know the real opinions of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of Negro suffrage, do not believe that they mean to create antagonism between the Negro and woman question...."

To Susan's great relief Henry Blackwell's explanation satisfied the delegates, who gave her and Mrs. Stanton a vote of confidence. Not so easily healed, however, were the wounds left by the accusations of mismanagement and dishonesty.

The atmosphere was still tense, for differences of opinion on policy remained. Most of the old reliable workers stood unequivocally for the Fifteenth Amendment, which they regarded as the crowning achievement of the antislavery movement, and they heartily disapproved of forcing the issue of woman suffrage on Congress and the people at this time. Although they had been deeply moved by the suffering of Negro women under slavery and had used this as a telling argument for emancipation, they now gave no thought to Negro women, who, even more than Negro men, needed the vote to safeguard their rights. Believing with the Republicans that one reform at a time was all they could expect, they did not want to hear one word about woman suffrage or a Sixteenth Amendment until male Negroes were safely enfranchised by the Fifteenth Amendment.

Offering a resolution endorsing the Fifteenth Amendment, Frederick Douglass quoted Julia Ward Howe as saying, "I am willing that the Negro shall get the ballot before me," and he added, "I cannot see how anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the Negro."

Quick as a flash, Susan was on her feet, challenging his statements, and as the dauntless champion of women debated the question with the dark-skinned fiery Negro, the friendship and warm affection built up between them over the years occasionally shone through the sharp words they spoke to each other.

"The old antislavery school says that women must stand back," declared Susan, "that they must wait until male Negroes are voters. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of justice to an entire people, give it to the most intelligent first."

Here she was greeted with applause and continued, "If intelligence, justice, and morality are to be placed in the government, then let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last.... Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro, how he is hunted down ..., but with all the wrongs and outrages that he today suffers, he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton."

"I want to know," shouted Frederick Douglass, "if granting you the right of suffrage will change the nature of our sexes?"

"It will change the pecuniary position of woman," Susan retorted before the shouts of laughter had died down. "She will not be compelled to take hold of only such employments as man chooses for her."

Lucy Stone, who so often in her youth had pleaded with Susan and Frederick Douglass for both the Negro and women, now entered the argument. She had matured, but her voice had lost none of its conviction or its power to sway an audience. Disagreeing with Douglass's assertion that Negro suffrage was more urgent than woman suffrage, she pointed out that white women of the North were robbed of their children by the law just as Negro women had been by slavery.

This was balm to Susan's soul, but with Lucy's next words she lost all hope that her old friend would cast her lot wholeheartedly with women at this time. "Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet," Lucy continued, "and the Negro too has an ocean of wrongs that cannot be fathomed. But I thank God for the Fifteenth Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every state. I will be thankful in my soul if anybody can get out of the terrible pit....

"I believe," she admitted, "that the national safety of the government would be more promoted by the admission of women as an element of restoration and harmony than the other. I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other influence. I see the signs of the times pointing to this consummation. I believe that in some parts of the country women will vote for the President of these United States in 1872."

Susan grew impatient as Lucy shifted from one side to the other, straddling the issue. Her own clear-cut approach, earning for her the reputation of always hitting the nail on the head, made Lucy's seem like temporizing.

The men now took control, criticizing the amount of time given to the discussion of woman's rights, and voted endorsement of the Fifteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, a small group of determined women continued their fight, Susan declaring with spirit that she protested against the Fifteenth Amendment because it was not Equal Rights and would put 2,000,000 more men in the position of tyrants over 2,000,000 women who until now had been the equals of the Negro men at their side.[237]

* * * * *

It was now clear to Susan and to the few women who worked closely with her that they needed a strong organization of their own and that it was folly to waste more time on the Equal Rights Association. Western delegates, disappointed in the convention's lack of interest in woman suffrage, expressed themselves freely. They had been sorely tried by the many speeches on extraneous subjects which cluttered the meetings, the heritage of a free-speech policy handed down by antislavery societies.

"That Equal Rights Association is an awful humbug," exploded Mary Livermore to Susan. "I would not have come on to the anniversary, nor would any of us, if we had known what it was. We supposed we were coming to a woman suffrage convention."[238]

At a reception for all the delegates held at the Women's Bureau at the close of the convention, this dissatisfaction culminated in a spontaneous demand for a new organization which would concentrate on woman suffrage and the Sixteenth Amendment. Alert to the possibilities, Susan directed this demand into concrete action by turning the reception temporarily into a business meeting. The result was the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association by women from nineteen states, with Mrs. Stanton as president and Susan as a member of the executive committee. The younger women of the West, trusting the judgment of Susan and Mrs. Stanton, looked to them for leadership, as did a few of the old workers in the East—Ernestine Rose, always in the vanguard, Paulina Wright Davis, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Lucretia Mott, who although holding no office in the new organization gave it her support, Martha C. Wright, and Matilda Joslyn Gage who never wavered in her allegiance. Lucy Stone, who would have found it hard even to step into the Revolution office, did not attend the reception at the Women's Bureau or take part in the formation of the new woman suffrage organization.



Aided and abetted by her new National Woman Suffrage Association, Susan continued her opposition in The Revolution to the Fifteenth Amendment until it was ratified in 1870.

So incensed was the Boston group by The Revolution's opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, so displeased was Lucy Stone by the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association without consultation with her, one of the oldest workers in the field, that they began to talk of forming a national woman suffrage organization of their own. They charged Susan with lust for power and autocratic control. Mrs. Stanton they found equally objectionable because of her radical views on sex, marriage, and divorce, expressed in The Revolution in connection with the Hester Vaughn case. They sincerely felt that the course of woman suffrage would run more smoothly, arouse less antagonism, and make more progress without these two militants who were forever stirring things up and introducing extraneous subjects.

* * * * *

During these trying days of accusations, animosity, and rival factions, Mrs. Stanton's unwavering support was a great comfort to Susan as was the joy of having a paper to carry her message.

In addition to all the responsibilities connected with publishing her weekly paper, advertising, subscriptions, editorial policy, and raising the money to pay the bills, Susan was also holding successful conventions in Saratoga and Newport where men and women of wealth and influence gathered for the summer; she was traveling out to St. Louis, Chicago, and other western cities to speak on woman suffrage, making trips to Washington to confer with Congressmen, getting petitions for the Sixteenth Amendment circulated, and through all this, building up the National Woman Suffrage Association.

The Revolution office became the rallying point for a forward-looking group of women, many of whom contributed to the hard-hitting liberal sheet. Elizabeth Tilton, the lovely dark-haired young wife of the popular lecturer and editor of the Independent, selected the poetry. Alice and Phoebe Cary gladly offered poems and a novel; and when Susan was away, Phoebe Cary often helped Mrs. Stanton get out the paper. Elizabeth Smith Miller gave money, encouragement, and invaluable aid with her translations of interesting letters which The Revolution received from France and Germany. Laura Curtis Bullard, the heir to the Dr. Winslow-Soothing-Syrup fortune, who traveled widely in Europe, sent letters from abroad and took a lively interest in the paper. Another new recruit was Lillie Devereux Blake, who was gaining a reputation as a writer and who soon proved to be a brilliant orator and an invaluable worker in the New York City suffrage group. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, unfailingly gave her support, and her calm assurance strengthened Susan. The wealthy Paulina Wright Davis of Providence, Rhode Island, who followed Parker Pillsbury as editor, when he felt obliged to resign for financial reasons, gave the paper generous financial backing.



It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great movement."[239]

From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national woman suffrage organization.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] The Revolution, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385.

[233] George W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1840-1872 (Chicago, 1884), pp. 324-325.

[234] The Revolution, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148.

[235] The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's Bureau while it housed the radical Revolution, and as women showed so little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a year's trial.

[236] The Revolution, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307.

[237] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 392.

[238] Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 327-328.

[239] Ibid., p. 332.



A HOUSE DIVIDED

"I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of The Revolution may yet have an organization with which they can work in harmony."[240] So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands.

"The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally belong to it—and there will be harmonious work."

When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."[241]

Those feeling as she did eagerly signed the call, while others who knew little about the controversy in the East added their names because they were glad to take part in a convention sponsored by such prominent men and women as Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and William Lloyd Garrison. Still others who did not understand the insurmountable differences in temperament and policy between the two groups hoped that a new truly national organization would unite the two factions. Even Mary Livermore, who had been active in the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was by this time responding to overtures from the Boston group, writing William Lloyd Garrison, "I have been repelled by some of the idiosyncrasies of our New York friends, as have others. Their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, the buffoonery of George F. Train, the loose utterances of the Revolution on the marriage and dress questions—and what is equally potent hindrance to the cause, the fearful squandering of money at the New York headquarters—all this has tended to keep me on my own feet, apart from those to whom I was at first attracted.... I am glad at the prospect of an association that will be truly national and which promises so much of success and character."[242]

Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton received a notice of the Cleveland convention, but Susan, scanning a copy of the call sent her by a solicitous friend, was deeply disturbed when she saw the signatures of Lydia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Myra Bradwell, Gerrit Smith, and other good friends.

The New York World, at once suspecting a feud, asked, "Where are those well-known American names, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It is clear that there is a division in the ranks of the strong-minded and that an effort is being made to ostracize The Revolution which has so long upheld the cause of Suffrage, through evil report and good...."[243]

The Rochester Democrat, loyal to Susan, put this question, "Can it be possible that a National Woman's Suffrage Convention is called without Susan's knowledge or consent?... A National Woman's Suffrage Association without speeches from Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton will be a new order of things. The idea seems absurd."[244]

To Susan it also seemed both absurd and unrealistic, for she remembered how almost single-handed she had held together and built up the woman suffrage movement during the years when her colleagues had been busy with family duties. She was appalled at the prospect of a division in the ranks at this time when she believed victory possible through the action of a strong united front.

Confident that many who signed the call were ignorant of or blind to the animus behind it, she did her best to bring the facts before them. She put the blame for the rift entirely upon Lucy Stone, believing that without Lucy's continual stirring up, past differences in policy would soon have been forgotten. The antagonism between the two burned fiercely at this time. Susan was determined to fight to the last ditch for control of the movement, convinced that her policies and Mrs. Stanton's were forward-looking, unafraid, and always put women first.

Susan now also had to face the humiliating possibility that she might be forced to give up The Revolution. Not only was the operating deficit piling up alarmingly, but there were persistent rumors of a competitor, another woman suffrage paper to be edited by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.

Susan had assumed full financial responsibility for The Revolution because Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, both with families to consider, felt unable to share this burden. Mrs. Stanton had always contributed her services and Parker Pillsbury had been sadly underpaid, while Susan had drawn out for her salary only the most meager sums for bare living expenses.

With a maximum of 3,000 subscribers, the paper could not hope to pay its way even though she had secured a remarkably loyal group of advertisers.[245] Reluctantly she raised the subscription price from $2 to $3 a year. Her friends and family were generous with gifts and loans, but these only met the pressing needs of the moment and in no way solved the overall financial problem of the paper.

Appealing once again to her wealthy and generous Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, she wrote him in desperation, "My paper must not, shall not go down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also in the grand work which The Revolution seeks to do, and therefore you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. Yesterday's mail brought 43 subscribers from Illinois and 20 from California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you will save me from giving the world a chance to say, 'There is a woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business!' If only I could die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say, 'Amen,' but to live and fail—it would be too terrible to bear."[246] He came to her aid as he always had in the past.

Susan's sister Mary not only lent her all her savings, but spent her summer vacation in New York in 1869, working in The Revolution office while Susan, busy with woman suffrage conventions in Newport, Saratoga, Chicago, and Ohio, was building up good will and subscriptions for her paper. Concerned for her welfare, Mary repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged her to give up. Daniel added his entreaties to Mary's, begging Susan not to go further into debt, but to form a stock company if she were determined to continue her paper. She considered his advice very seriously for he was a practical businessman and yet appreciated what she was trying to do. For a time the formation of a stock company seemed possible, for the project appealed to three women of means, Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Laura Curtis Bullard, but it never materialized.

* * * * *

With the financial problem of The Revolution still unsolved, Susan decided to make her appearance at Lucy Stone's convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on November 24, 1869. Not only did she want to see with her own eyes and hear with her own ears all that went on, but she was determined to walk the second mile with Lucy and her supporters, or even to turn the other cheek, if need be, for the sake of her beloved cause.

Seeing her in the audience, Judge Bradwell of Chicago moved that she be invited to sit on the platform, but Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who was presiding, replied that he thought this unnecessary as a special invitation had already been extended to all desiring to identify themselves with the movement. Judge Bradwell would not be put off, his motion was carried, and as Susan walked up to the platform to join the other notables, she was greeted with hearty applause. Sitting there among her critics, she wondered what she could possibly say to persuade them to forget their differences for the sake of the cause. After listening to Lucy Stone plead for renewed work for woman suffrage and for petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, she spontaneously rose to her feet and asked permission to speak. "I hope," she began, "that the work of this association, if it be organized, will be to go in strong array up to the Capitol at Washington to demand a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The question of the admission of women to the ballot would not then be left to the mass of voters in every State, but would be submitted by Congress to the several legislatures of the States for ratification, and ... be decided by the most intelligent portion of the people. If the question is left to the vote of the rank and file, it will be put off for years.[247]

"So help me, Heaven!" she continued with emotion. "I care not what may come out of this Convention, so that this great cause shall go forward to its consummation! And though this Convention by its action shall nullify the National Association of which I am a member, and though it shall tread its heel upon The Revolution, to carry on which I have struggled as never mortal woman or mortal man struggled for any cause ... still, if you will do the work in Washington so that this Amendment will be proposed, and will go with me to the several Legislatures and compel them to adopt it, I will thank God for this Convention as long as I have the breath of life."

Loud and continuous applause greeted these earnest words. However, instead of pledging themselves to work for a Sixteenth Amendment, the newly formed American Woman Suffrage Association, blind to the exceptional opportunity at this time for Congressional action on woman suffrage, decided to concentrate on work in the states where suffrage bills were pending. Instead of electing an outstanding woman as president, they chose Henry Ward Beecher, boasting that this was proof of their genuine belief in equal rights. Lucy Stone headed the executive committee.

Divisions soon began developing among the suffragists in the field. Many whose one thought previously had been the cause now spent time weighing the differences between the two organizations and between personalities, and antagonisms increased.

Hardest of all for Susan to bear was the definite announcement of a rival paper, the Woman's Journal, to be issued in Boston in January 1870 under the editorship of Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe, with Henry Blackwell as business manager. Mary Livermore, who previously had planned to merge her paper, the Agitator, with The Revolution now merged it with the Woman's Journal. Financed by wealthy stockholders, all influential Republicans, the Journal, Susan knew, would be spared the financial struggles of The Revolution, but would be obliged to conform to Republican policy in its support of woman's rights. Had not the Woman's Journal been such an obvious affront to the heroic efforts of The Revolution and a threat to its very existence, she could have rejoiced with Lucy over one more paper carrying the message of woman suffrage.

More determined than ever to continue The Revolution, Susan redoubled her efforts, announcing an imposing list of contributors for 1870, including the British feminist, Lydia Becker, and as a special attraction, a serial by Alice Cary. Through the efforts of Mrs. Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe was persuaded to consider serving as contributing editor provided the paper's name was changed to The True Republic or to some other name satisfactory to her.[248]

Having struggled against the odds for so long, Susan had no intention of being stifled now by Mrs. Stowe's more conservative views, nor would she give her crusading sheet an innocuous name. However, the decision was taken out of her hands by The Revolution's coverage of the sensational McFarland-Richardson murder case, which so shocked both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe that they gave up all thought of being associated in a publishing venture with Susan or Mrs. Stanton.

The whole country was stirred in December 1869 by the fatal shooting in the Tribune office of the well-known journalist, Albert D. Richardson, by Daniel McFarland, to whose divorced wife Richardson had been attentive. When just before his death, Richardson was married to the divorced Mrs. McFarland by Henry Ward Beecher with Horace Greeley as a witness, the press was agog. So strong was the feeling against a divorced woman that Henry Ward Beecher was severely condemned for officiating at the marriage, and Mrs. Richardson was played up in the press and in court as the villain, although her divorce had been granted because of the brutality and instability of McFarland.

Indignant at the sophistry of the press and the general acceptance of a double standard of morals, The Revolution not only spoke out fearlessly in defense of Mrs. Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs. Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and despise each other...."[249] When the court acquitted McFarland, giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old son, Susan called a protest meeting which attracted an audience of two thousand.

Such words and such activities disturbed many who sympathized with Mrs. Richardson but saw no reason for flaunting exultant approval of divorce in a woman suffrage paper, and they turned to the Woman's Journal as more to their taste.

Susan, however, reading the first number of the Woman's Journal, found its editorials lacking fire. She rebelled at Julia Ward Howe's counsel, "to lay down all partisan warfare and organize a peaceful Grand Army of the Republic of Women ... not ... as against men, but as against all that is pernicious to men and women."[250] Susan's fight had never been against men but against man-made laws that held women in bondage. There had always been men willing to help her. Experience had taught her that the struggle for woman's rights was no peaceful academic debate, but real warfare which demanded political strategy, self-sacrifice, and unremitting labor. She was prouder than ever of her Revolution and its liberal hard-hitting policy.

* * * * *

Convinced that the National Woman Suffrage Association must publicize its existence and its value, Susan began the year 1870 with a convention in Washington which even Senator Sumner praised as exceeding in interest anything he had ever witnessed there. Its striking demonstration of the vitality and intelligence of the National Association was the best answer she could possibly have given to the accusations and criticism aimed at her and her organization.

Jessie Benton Fremont, watching the delegates enter the dining room of the Arlington Hotel, called Susan over to her table and said with a twinkle in her eyes, "Now, tell me, Miss Anthony, have you hunted the country over and picked out and brought to Washington a score of the most beautiful women you could find?"[251]

They were a fine-looking and intelligent lot—Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Josephine Griffin of the Freedman's Bureau, Charlotte Wilbour, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Martha C. Wright, and Olympia Brown; Phoebe Couzins and Virginia Minor from Missouri, Madam Anneke from Wisconsin, and best of all to Susan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their presence, their friendship and allegiance were a source of great pride and joy. Elizabeth Stanton had come from St. Louis, interrupting her successful lecture tour, when she much preferred to stay away from all conventions. She had written Susan, "Of course, I stand by you to the end. I would not see you crushed by rivals even if to prevent it required my being cut into inch bits.... No power in heaven, hell or earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded together."[252]

Also at this convention to show his support of Susan and her program, was her faithful friend of many years, the Rev. Samuel J. May of Syracuse. Clara Barton, ill and unable to attend, sent a letter to be read, an appeal to her soldier friends for woman suffrage.

Not only did the large and enthusiastic audiences show a growing interest in votes for women, but two great victories for women in 1869, one in Great Britain and the other in the United States, brought to the convention a feeling of confidence. Women taxpayers had been granted the right to vote in municipal elections in England, Scotland, and Wales, through the efforts of Jacob Bright. In the Territory of Wyoming, during the first session of its legislature, women had been granted the right to vote, to hold office, and serve on juries, and married women had been given the right to their separate property and their earnings. This progressive action by men of the West turned Susan's thoughts hopefully to the western territories, and early in 1870 when the Territory of Utah enfranchised its women, she had further cause for rejoicing.

To celebrate these victories for which her twenty years' work for women had blazed the trail, some of her friends held a reception for her in New York at the Women's Bureau on her fiftieth birthday. She was amazed at the friendly attention her birthday received in the press. "Susan's Half Century," read a headline in the Herald. The World called her the Moses of her sex. "A Brave Old Maid," commented the Sun. But it was to the Tribune that she turned with special interest, always hoping for a word of approval from Horace Greeley and finding at last this faint ray of praise: "Careful readers of the Tribune have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said that her methods were as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years of disputation and struggling. Miss Anthony has thoroughly impressed friends and enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her purpose...."[253]

To Anna E. Dickinson, far away lecturing, Susan confided, "Oh, Anna, I am so glad of it all because it will teach the young girls that to be true to principle—to live an idea, though an unpopular one—that to live single—without any man's name—may be honorable."[254]

A few of Susan's younger colleagues still insisted that a merger of the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations might be possible. Again Theodore Tilton undertook the task of mediation and Lucretia Mott, who had retired from active participation in the woman's rights movement, tried to help work out a reconciliation. Susan was skeptical but gave them her blessing. Representatives of the American Association, however, again made it plain that they were unwilling to work with Susan and Mrs. Stanton.[255]

By this time The Revolution had become an overwhelming financial burden. For some months Mrs. Stanton had been urging Susan to give it up and turn to the lecture field, as she had done, to spread the message of woman's rights. Susan hesitated, unwilling to give up The Revolution and not yet confident that she could hold the attention of an audience for a whole evening. However, she found herself a great success when pushed into several Lyceum lecture engagements in Pennsylvania by Mrs. Stanton's sudden illness. "Miss Anthony evidently lectures not for the purpose of receiving applause," commented the Pittsburgh Commercial, "but for the purpose of making people understand and be convinced. She takes her place on the stage in a plain and unassuming manner and speaks extemporaneously and fluently, too, reminding one of an old campaign speaker, who is accustomed to talk simply for the purpose of converting his audience to his political theories. She used plain English and plenty of it.... She clearly evinced a quality that many politicians lack—sincerity."[256]

For each of these lectures on "Work, Wages, and the Ballot," she received a fee of $75 and was able as well to get new subscribers for The Revolution. She now saw the possibilities for herself and the cause in a Lyceum tour, and when the Lyceum Bureau, pleased with her reception in Pennsylvania wanted to book her for lectures in the West, she accepted, calling Parker Pillsbury back to The Revolution to take charge. All through Illinois she drew large audiences and her fees increased to $95, $125, and $150. In two months she was able to pay $1,300 of The Revolution's debt.

When she returned to New York, she realized that she could not continue to carry The Revolution alone, in spite of increased subscriptions. Its $10,000 debt weighed heavily upon her. Parker Pillsbury's help could only be temporary; Mrs. Stanton's strenuous lecture tour left her little time to give to the paper; and Susan's own friends and family were unable to finance it further.

Fortunately the idea of editing a paper appealed strongly to the wealthy Laura Curtis Bullard, who had the promise of editorial help from Theodore Tilton. Susan now turned the paper over to them completely, receiving nothing in return but shares of stock, while she assumed the entire indebtedness.

Giving up the control of her beloved paper was one of the most humiliating experiences and one of the deepest sorrows she ever faced. The Revolution had become to her the symbol of her crusade for women. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, she confided to her diary on the date of the transfer, "It was like signing my own death warrant," and to a friend she wrote, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support."[257]

She made a valiant announcement of the transfer in The Revolution of May 26, 1870, expressing her delight that the paper had at last found financial backing and a new, enthusiastic editor. "In view of the active demand for conventions, lectures, and discussions on Woman Suffrage," she added, "I have concluded that so far as my own personal efforts are concerned, I can be more useful on the platform than in a newspaper. So, on the 1st of June next, I shall cease to be the sole proprietor of The Revolution, and shall be free to attend public meetings where ever so plain and matter of fact an old worker as I am can secure a hearing."[258]

Financial backing, however, did not put The Revolution on its feet, although its forthright editorials and articles were replaced by spicy and brilliant observations on pleasant topics which offended no one. Before the year was up, Mrs. Bullard was making overtures to Susan to take the paper back. Susan wanted desperately "to keep the Old Ship Revolution's colors flying"[259] and to bring back Mrs. Stanton's stinging editorials. She also feared that Mrs. Bullard on Theodore Tilton's advice might turn the paper over to the Boston group to be consolidated with the Woman's Journal. As no funds were available, she had to turn her back on her beloved paper and hope for the best. "I suppose there is a wise Providence in my being stripped of power to go forward," she wrote at this time. "At any rate, I mean to try and make good come out of it."[260]

For one more year, The Revolution struggled on under the editorship of Mrs. Bullard and Theodore Tilton and then was taken over by the Christian Enquirer. The $10,000 debt, incurred under Susan's management, she regarded as her responsibility, although her brother Daniel and many of her friends urged bankruptcy proceedings. "My pride for women, to say nothing of my conscience," she insisted, "says no."[261]

FOOTNOTES:

[240] Lucy Stone to Frank Sanborn, Aug. 18, 1869, Alma Lutz Collection.

[241] Lucy Stone to Esther Pugh, Aug. 30, 1869, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

[242] Mary Livermore to W. L. Garrison, Oct. 4, 1869, Boston Public Library. Wendell Phillips did not sign the call or attend the convention for "reasons that are good to him," wrote Lucy Stone to Garrison, Sept. 27, 1869, Boston Public Library.

[243] The Revolution, IV, Oct. 21, 1869, p. 265.

[244] Ibid., p. 266.

[245] The Empire Sewing Machine Co., Benedict's Watches, Madame Demorest's dress patterns, Sapolio, insurance companies, savings banks, the Union Pacific, offering first mortgage bonds.

[246] Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 354-355. In 1873, Anson Lapham cancelled notes, amounting to $4000, and praised Susan for her continued courageous work for women.

[247] The Revolution, IV, Dec. 2, 1869, p. 343.

[248] Harriet Beecher Stowe to Susan B. Anthony, Dec., 1869, Alma Lutz Collection.

[249] The Revolution, IV, Dec. 23, 1869, p. 385.

[250] Woman's Journal, Jan. 8, 1870.

[251] Ms., Diary, Jan. 18, 1870.

[252] Stanton and Blatch, Stanton, II, pp. 124-125.

[253] The Revolution, V, Feb. 24, 1870, pp. 117-118. Susan attributed the Tribune editorial to Whitelaw Reid. Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.

[254] Feb. 21, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. Anna E. Dickinson sent Miss Anthony generous checks to help finance The Revolution. Although she lectured at Cooper Union for the National Woman Suffrage Association shortly after it was organized, she never became a member of the organization or attended its conventions. This was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony.

[255] Finally, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton against their best judgment were persuaded by younger members of the National Woman Suffrage Association to drop the name National and replace it with Union and then to try to negotiate further with the American Association. Theodore Tilton was elected president of the Union Woman Suffrage Society. This proved to be an organization in name only, and in a short time these same younger members clamored for the return to office of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and reestablished the National Woman Suffrage Association.

[256] The Revolution, V, March 10, 1870, p. 153. Mrs. Stanton's Lyceum lectures were undertaken to finance the education of her 7 children.

[257] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 362.

[258] The Revolution, V, May 26, 1870, p. 328.

[259] Sept. 19, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[260] To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[261] To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. Anthony Collection



A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay off The Revolution's debt, she was pondering a new approach to the enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor.

Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis Minor's arguments in The Revolution and also his suggestion that some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional committee in 1870.

With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however, she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled before the House judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened.



Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer, Albert G. Riddle,[262] to represent the 30,000 women who had petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage. This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement. Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the District of Columbia.

Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however, she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press had been full of amused comments regarding the lady bankers, and Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview in The Revolution, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin & Co., Bankers and Brokers.[263]

About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established their own paper, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, an "Organ of Social Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance, advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement, spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States.

Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. They invited Victoria and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, to their convention, and asked her to repeat her speech for them.

At this convention Susan, encouraged by the favorable reception among politicians of the Woodhull Memorial, mapped out a new and militant campaign, based on her growing conviction that under the Fourteenth Amendment women's rights as citizens were guaranteed. She urged women to claim their rights as citizens and persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, to register and prepare to vote at the next election, and to bring suit in the courts if they were refused.

* * * * *

So enthusiastic had been the reception of this new approach to woman suffrage, so favorable had been the news from those close to leading Republicans, that Susan was unprepared for the adverse report of the judiciary committee on the Woodhull Memorial. She now studied the favorable minority report issued by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts and William Loughridge of Iowa. Their arguments seemed to her unanswerable; and hurriedly and impulsively in the midst of her western lecture tour, she dashed off a few lines to Victoria Woodhull, to whom she willingly gave credit for bringing out this report. "Glorious old Ben!" she wrote. "He surely is going to pronounce the word that will settle the woman question, just as he did the word 'contraband' that so summarily settled the Negro question.... Everybody here chimes in with the new conclusion that we are already free."[264]

Far from New York where Victoria's activities were being aired by the press, Susan thought of her at this time only in connection with the Memorial and its impact on the judiciary committee. To be sure, she heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to discount attacks on the reputations of progressive women. In fact, Victoria Woodhull provided Susan and her associates with a spectacular opportunity to prove the sincerity of their contention that there should not be a double standard of morals—one for men and another for women.

Returning to New York in May 1871, to a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Susan found that Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Stanton, and Mrs. Davis had invited Victoria Woodhull to address that convention and to sit on the platform between Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton.

Through them and others more critical, Susan was brought up to date on the sensational story of Victoria Woodhull, who had been drawing record crowds to her lectures and whose unconventional life continuously provided reporters with interesting copy. Victoria's home at 15 East Thirty-eighth Street, resplendent and ornate with gilded furniture and bric-a-brac, housed not only her husband, Colonel Blood, and herself but her divorced husband and their children as well, and also all of her quarrelsome relatives. Here many radicals, social reformers, and spiritualists gathered, among them Stephen Pearl Andrews, who soon made use of Victoria and her Weekly to publicize his dream of a new world order, the Pantarchy, as he called it. Victoria, herself, was an ardent spiritualist, controlled by Demosthenes of the spirit world to whom she believed she owed her most brilliant utterances and by whom she was guided to announce herself as a presidential candidate in 1872. Needless to say, with such a background, Victoria Woodhull became a very controversial figure among the suffragists.

In New York only a few days, it was hard for Susan to separate fact from fiction, truth from rumor and animosity. Even Demosthenes did not seem too ridiculous to her, for many of her most respected friends were spiritualists. Nor did Victoria's presidential aspirations trouble her greatly. Presidential candidates had been nothing to brag of, and willingly would she support the right woman for President. If Victoria lived up to the high standard of the Woodhull Memorial, then even she might be that woman. After all, it was an era of radical theories and Utopian dreams, of extravagances of every sort. Almost anything could happen.

Whatever doubts the suffragists may have had when they saw Victoria Woodhull on the platform at the New York meeting of the National Association, she swept them all along with her when, as one inspired, she made her "Great Secession" speech. "If the very next Congress refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," she declared, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government.... We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the South. We are plotting revolution; we will overthrow this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead...."[265]

Susan, who felt deeply her right to full citizenship, who herself had talked revolution, and who had so often listened to the extravagant antislavery declarations of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Parker Pillsbury, was not offended by these statements. She was, however, troubled by the attitude of the press, particularly of the Tribune which labeled this gathering the "Woodhull Convention" and accused the suffragists of adopting Mrs. Woodhull's free-love theories.

Having experienced so recently the animosity stirred up by her alliance with George Francis Train, Susan resolved to be cautious regarding Victoria Woodhull and was beginning to wonder if Victoria was not using the suffragists to further her own ambitions. Yet many trusted friends, who had talked with Mrs. Woodhull far more than she had the opportunity to do, were convinced that she was a genius and a prophet who had risen above the sordid environment of her youth to do a great work for women and who had the courage to handle subjects which others feared to touch.

Free love, for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did she actually advocate promiscuity?

With these questions puzzling her, she left for Rochester and the West. Almost immediately the papers were full of Victoria Woodhull and her family quarrels which brought her into court. This was a disillusioning experience for the National Woman Suffrage Association which had so recently featured Victoria Woodhull as a speaker, and Susan began seriously to question the wisdom of further association with this strange controversial character. Nevertheless, Victoria still had her ardent defenders among the suffragists, particularly Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. Even the thoughtful judicious Martha C. Wright wrote Mrs. Hooker at this time, "It is not always 'the wise and prudent' to whom the truth is revealed; tho' far be it from me to imply aught derogatory to Mrs. Woodhull. No one can be with her, see her gentle and modest bearing and her spiritual face, without feeling sure that she is a true woman, whatever unhappy surroundings may have compromised her. I have never met a stranger toward whom I felt more tenderly drawn, in sympathy and love."[266]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke her mind in Theodore Tilton's new paper, The Golden Age: "Victoria C. Woodhull stands before us today a grand, brave woman, radical alike in political, religious and social principles. Her face and form indicate the complete triumph in her nature of the spiritual over the sensuous. The processes of her education are little to us; the grand result everything."[267]

Victoria was in dire need of defenders, for the press was venomous, goading her on to revenge. Susan, now traveling westward, lecturing in one state after another, thinking of ways to interest the people in woman suffrage, was too busy and too far away to follow Victoria Woodhull's court battles.

* * * * *

Mrs. Stanton met Susan in Chicago late in May 1871, to join her on a lecture tour of the far West. Together they headed for Wyoming and Utah, eager to set foot in the states which had been the first to extend suffrage to women. The long leisurely days on the train gave these two old friends, Susan now fifty-one and Mrs. Stanton, fifty-six, ample time to talk and philosophize, to appraise their past efforts for women, and plan their speeches for the days ahead. While their main theme would always be votes for women, they decided that from now on they must also arouse women to rebel against their legal bondage under the "man marriage," as they called it, and to face frankly the facts about sex, prostitution, and the double standard of morals. In Utah, in the midst of polygamy fostered by the Mormon Church, they would encounter still another sex problem.

After an enthusiastic welcome in Denver, they moved on to Laramie, Wyoming, where one hundred women greeted them as the train pulled in. From this first woman suffrage state, Susan exultingly wrote, "We have been moving over the soil, that is really the land of the free and the home of the brave.... Women here can say, 'What a magnificent country is ours, where every class and caste, color and sex, may find freedom....'"[268]

They reached Salt Lake City just after the Godbe secession by which a group of liberal Mormons abandoned polygamy. As guests of the Godbes for a week, they had every opportunity to become acquainted with the Mormons, to observe women under polygamy, and to speak in long all-day sessions to women alone.

Susan tried to show her audiences in Utah that her point of attack under both monogamy and polygamy was the subjection of women, and that to remedy this the self-support of women was essential. In Utah she found little opportunity for women to earn a living for themselves and their children, as there was no manufacturing and there were no free schools in need of teachers. "Women here, as everywhere," she declared, "must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal."[269]



Some of Susan's' critics at home felt she was again besmirching the suffrage cause by setting foot in polygamous Utah, but this was of no moment to her, for she saw the crying need of the right kind of missionary work among Mormon women, "no Phariseeism, no shudders of Puritanic horror, ... but a simple, loving fraternal clasp of hands with these struggling women" to encourage them and point the way.

Hearing that Susan and Mrs. Stanton were in the West en route to California, Leland Stanford, Governor of California and president of the recently completed Central Pacific Railway, sent them passes for their journey. They reached San Francisco with high hopes that they could win the support of western men for their demand for woman suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Their welcome was warm and the press friendly. An audience of over 1,200 listened with real interest to Mrs. Stanton. Then the two crusaders made a misstep. Eager to learn the woman's side of the case in the recent widely publicized murder of the wealthy attorney, Alexander P. Crittenden, by Laura Fair, they visited Laura Fair in prison. Immediately the newspapers reported this move in a most critical vein, with the result that an uneasy audience crowded into the hall where Susan was to speak on "The Power of the Ballot." As she proceeded to prove that women needed the ballot to protect themselves and their work and could not count on the support and protection of men, she cited case after case of men's betrayal of women. Then bringing home her point, she declared with vigor, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in your jail tonight."[270]

Boos and hisses from every part of the hall greeted this statement; but Susan, trained on the antislavery platform to hold her ground whatever the tumult, waited patiently until this protest subsided, standing before the defiant audience, poised and unafraid. Then, in a clear steady voice, she repeated her challenging words. This time, above the hisses, she heard a few cheers, and for the third time she repeated, "If all men had protected all women as they would have their own wives and daughters protected, you would have no Laura Fair in your jail tonight."

Now the audience, admiring her courage, roared its applause. "I declare to you," she concluded, "that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and here I take my stand."

Reading the newspapers the next morning, she found herself accused not only of defending Laura Fair, but of condoning the murder of Crittenden. This story was republished throughout the state and eagerly picked up by New York newspapers.

As it was now impossible for her or for Mrs. Stanton to draw a friendly audience anywhere in California, they took refuge in the Yosemite Valley for the next few weeks. Susan was inconsolable. These slanders on top of the loss of The Revolution and the split in the suffrage ranks seemed more than she could bear. "Never in all my hard experience have I been under such fire," she confided to her diary. "The clouds are so heavy over me.... I never before was so cut down."[271]

Not until she had spent several days riding horseback in the Yosemite Valley on "men's saddles" in "linen bloomers," over long perilous exhausting trails, did the clouds begin to lift. Gradually the beauty and grandeur of the mountains and the giant redwoods brought her peace and refreshment, putting to flight "all the old six-days story and the 6,000 jeers."

Bearing the brunt of the censure in California, Susan expected Mrs. Stanton to come to her defense in letters to the newspapers. When she did not do so, Susan was deeply hurt, for in the past she had so many times smoothed the way for her friend. Even now, on their return to San Francisco, where she herself did not yet dare lecture, she did her best to build up audiences for Mrs. Stanton and to get correct transcripts of her lectures to the papers. Disillusioned and heartsick, she was for the first time sadly disappointed in her dearest friend.

Moving on to Oregon to lecture at the request of the pioneer suffragist, Abigail Scott Duniway, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, who had left for the East, "As I rolled on the ocean last week feeling that the very next strain might swamp the ship, and thinking over all my sins of omission and commission, there was nothing undone which haunted me like the failure to speak the word at San Francisco again and more fully. I would rather today have the satisfaction of having said the true and needful thing on Laura Fair and the social evil, with the hisses and hoots of San Francisco and the entire nation around me, than all that you or I could possibly experience from their united eulogies with that one word unsaid."[272]

* * * * *

So far Susan's western trip had netted her only $350. This was disappointing in so far as she had counted upon it to reduce substantially her Revolution debt. She now hoped to build her earnings up to $1,000 in Oregon and Washington. Everywhere in these two states people took her to their hearts and the press with a few exceptions was complimentary. The beauty of the rugged mountainous country compensated her somewhat for the long tiring stage rides over rough roads and for the cold uncomfortable lonely nights in poor hotels. Only occasionally did she enjoy the luxury of a good cup of coffee or a clean bed in a warm friendly home.

At first in Oregon she was apprehensive about facing an audience because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in store for me."[273] She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to be self-supporting, and clearly and logically she marshaled her facts and her arguments. Occasionally she obliged with a temperance speech, or gathered women together to talk to them about the social evil, relieved when they responded to this delicate subject with earnestness and gratitude. Practice soon made her an easy, extemporaneous speaker. Yet she was only now and then satisfied with her efforts, recording in her diary, "Was happy in a real Patrick Henry speech."[274]

The proceeds from her lectures were disappointing, as money was scarce in the West that winter, and she had just decided to return to the East to spend Christmas with her mother and sisters when she was urged to accept lecture engagements in California. Putting her own personal longings behind her, she took the stage to California, sitting outside with the driver so that she could better enjoy the scenery and learn more about the people who had settled this new lonely overpowering country. "Horrible indeed are the roads," she wrote her mother, "miles and miles of corduroy and then twenty miles ... of black mud.... How my thought does turn homeward, mother."[275]

This time she was warmly received in San Francisco. The prejudice, so vocal six months before, had disappeared. "Made my Fourteenth Amendment argument splendidly," she wrote in her diary. "All delighted with it and me—and it is such a comfort to have the friends feel that I help the good work on."[276]

She was gaining confidence in herself and wrote her family, "I miss Mrs. Stanton. Still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people call on me, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted magazine. There is no alternative—whoever goes into a parlor or before an audience with that woman does it at a cost of a fearful overshadowing, a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully, because I felt our cause was most profited by her being seen and heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."[277]

Starting homeward through Wyoming and Nevada where she also had lecture engagements, she wrote in her diary on January 1, 1872, "6 months of constant travel, full 8000 miles, 108 lectures. The year's work full 13,000 miles travel—170 meetings." On the train she met the new California Senator, Aaron A. Sargent, his wife Ellen, and their children. A warm friendship developed on this long journey during which the train was stalled in deep snow drifts. "This is indeed a fearful ordeal, fastened here ... midway of the continent at the top of the Rocky mountains," she recorded. "The railroad has supplied the passengers with soda crackers and dried fish.... Mrs. Sargent and I have made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing mothers."[278] The Sargents had brought their own food for the journey and shared it with Susan. This and the good conversation lightened the ordeal for her, especially as both Senator and Mrs. Sargent believed heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage.

This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country.

* * * * *

Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism and dissension.

Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention: "I have been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?' Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."[279]

"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs. Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they make themselves."

Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

This time it was Susan, not Victoria, who was granted a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee. "At the close of the war," Susan reminded the Senators, "Congress lifted the question of suffrage for men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed ... we rushed to you with petitions praying you not to insert the word 'male' in the second clause. Our best friends ... said to us: 'The insertion of that word puts no new barrier against women; therefore do not embarrass us but wait until we get the Negro question settled.' So the Fourteenth Amendment with the word 'male' was adopted.[280]

"When the Fifteenth was presented without the word 'sex,'" she continued, "we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared that the absence of the word was no hindrance to us, and again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war, saying, 'After we have enfranchised the Negro, we will take up your case.'

"Have they done as they promised?" she asked. "When we come asking protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word 'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the end a bloody revolution...."

Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the right to vote and hold office in the territories.

* * * * *

Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality who gave only part of herself to the task.

When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We have no element out of which to make a political party, because there is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."[281]

Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is wholly owned and dominated by men spirits and I spurn the whole lot of them...."

A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new political party while she was publishing The Revolution, she was practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure.

Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard, Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to free the National Association of her influence.

When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope with Victoria, should this again become necessary.

Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with the people's convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the audience dispersed in the darkness.

With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal Rights party.

Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle—all come of Mrs. S. [Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull—though we rescued it—it was as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no condemnation of her actions in Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly but only the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's great work.[282]

The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood, campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria Woodhull.

* * * * *

While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication of her Weekly, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better. Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important, powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform.

"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful consideration."[283]

Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and work together for "the living, vital issue of today—freedom to women."

She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a torrent of false accusations.[284] Only Mary Livermore of the American Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did not lack for effective orators.

In an Appeal to the Women of America, financed by the Republicans and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women, while the whole power of the Tribune had been used to crush our great reform...."[285]

Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a Democrat or an apostate."[286]

Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs. Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of woman's claim to vote, I am not...."[287]

FOOTNOTES:

[262] A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of Senator Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage.

[263] The Revolution, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159.

[264] Clipping from Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.

[265] Emanie, Sachs, The Terrible Siren (New York, 1928), p. 87. After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage meeting in Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, 1871, "I wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet modest and dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely inspired for her work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much impressed with her work and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

[266] May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.

[267] The Golden Age, Dec., 1871.

[268] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 388.

[269] Ibid., pp. 389-390.

[270] Ibid., pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had been the mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was acquitted of his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to her pistol shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia Cooley Altrocchi, The Spectacular San Franciscans (New York, 1949).

[271] Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871.

[272] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 396.

[273] Ibid.

[274] Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871.

[275] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 403.

[276] Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871.

[277] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 396.

[278] Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872.

[279] Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, Jan. 23, 1873.

[280] Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 410-411.

[281] Ibid., p. 413.

[282] Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872.

[283] Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 416-417.

[284] Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the Woman's Journal, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the movement to which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their lot with the Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would have been better for all concerned...."

[285] History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 519. The Republicans financed a paper, Woman's Campaign, edited by Helen Barnard, which published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for a time hoped to convert into a woman suffrage paper.

[286] Harper, Anthony, I, p. 422.

[287] Ibid.



TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the Union.

Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that "every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This legal contest had been fully reported in The Revolution, and disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising among women.