She returned home, and on March 4 cast her ballot at the city election without any protest. Only two other ladies could be induced to vote, Mrs. Mary Pulver and Mrs. Mary S. Hebard. All of the others who had voted in the fall were thoroughly frightened, and their husbands and other male relatives were even more panic-stricken.

In the midst of her own perplexities Miss Anthony did not forget to issue the call[69] for the May Anniversary in New York, where she made an address, detailing the incidents of her arrest and defending her rights as a citizen. All the speeches and letters of the convention were deeply sympathetic, and among the resolutions bearing on this question was one stating that since the underlying principle of our government is equality of political rights, therefore "the trial of Susan B. Anthony, though ostensibly involving only the political status of woman, in reality questions the right of every man to share in the government; that it is not Susan B. Anthony or the women of the republic who alone are on trial today, but it is the government of the United States, and that as the decision is rendered for or against the political rights of citizenship, so will the men of America find themselves free or enslaved."

A reception was given by Dr. Clemence Lozier, founder of the Woman's Homeopathic College of New York, who was always Miss Anthony's faithful and devoted friend, never shaken in her trust by any storm that raged. During the darkest days of her paper, The Revolution, when the generosity of all others had been exhausted, Dr. Lozier gave her $50 every Saturday for many weeks and helped her by so much to bear the weight of the financial burden. For more than a quarter of a century her hospitable doors were always ajar for her, and it was to be expected that, at this crucial moment, she would again express her loyalty.

Miss Anthony's trial was set for the term of court beginning May 13, and she decided to make a canvass of Monroe county, not to argue her own case but in order that the people might be educated upon the constitutional points involved. Commencing March 11, she spoke in twenty-nine of the post-office districts. Being informed that District-Attorney Crowley threatened to move her trial into another county because she would prejudice the jury, she notified him she would see that that county also was thoroughly canvassed, and asked him if she were prejudicing a jury by reading and explaining the Constitution of the United States.

The speech delivered by Miss Anthony during these weeks was a masterpiece of clear, strong, logical argument in defense of woman's right to the ballot which never has been equalled.[70] Her audiences were large and attentive and public sentiment was thoroughly aroused. One of the papers gives this description: "Miss Anthony was fashionably dressed in black silk with demi-train, basque with flowing sleeves, heavily trimmed in black lace; ruffled white lace undersleeves and a broad, graceful lace collar; with a gold neck chain and pendant. Her abundant hair was brushed back and bound in a knot after the fashion of our grandmothers."

When the time for trial came, true to his promise, District-Attorney Crowley obtained an order removing the cause to the U.S. Circuit Court which was held at Canandaigua. This left just twenty-two days and, calling to her aid Matilda Joslyn Gage, Miss Anthony spoke in twenty-one places on the question, "Is it a crime for a United States citizen to vote?" and Mrs. Gage in sixteen on "The United States on trial, not Susan B. Anthony." Their last meeting was held in Canandaigua the evening before the trial, and resolutions against this injustice toward woman were heartily endorsed by the audience. The Rochester Union and Advertiser condemned her in unmeasured terms, having editorials similar to this:

SUSAN B. ANTHONY AS A CORRUPTIONIST.—We give in another column today, from a legal friend, a communication which shows very clearly that Miss Anthony is engaged in a work that will be likely to bring her to grief. It is nothing more nor less than an attempt to corrupt the source of that justice under law which flows from trial by jury. Miss Anthony's case has passed from its gayest to its gravest character. United States courts are not stages for the enactment of comedy or farce, and the promptness and decision of their judges in sentencing to prison culprits convicted before them show that they are no respecters of persons.

Many influential newspapers, however, spoke in the highest terms of her courage and ability and the justice of her cause.[71]

The trial[72] opened the afternoon of June 17, at the lovely village of Canandaigua, Associate-Justice Ward Hunt on the bench, U.S. District-Attorney Richard Crowley prosecuting, Hon. Henry R. Selden and John Van Voorhis, Esq., defending. Miss Anthony, most of the ladies who had voted with her, and also Mrs. Gage, were seated within the bar. On the right sat the jury. The courtroom was crowded, many prominent men being present, among them ex-President Fillmore. Judge Hall, of Buffalo, was an interested spectator and Miss Anthony's counsel endeavored to have him try the case with Judge Hunt in order that, if necessary, it might go to the Supreme Court, which was not possible with only one judge, but he refused.



It was conceded that Miss Anthony was a woman and that she voted on November 5, 1872. Judge Selden, for the second time in all his practice, offered himself as a witness, and testified that he advised her to vote, believing that the laws and Constitution of the United States gave her full authority. He then proposed to call Miss Anthony to testify as to the intention or belief under which she voted, but the Court held she was not competent as a witness in her own behalf. After making this decision, the Court then admitted all the testimony, as reported, which she gave on the preliminary examination before the commissioner, in spite of her counsel's protest against accepting the version which that officer took of her evidence. The prosecution simply alleged the fact of her having voted. Mr. Selden then addressed the judge and jury in a masterly argument of over three hours' duration, beginning:

The defendant is indicted under the 19th Section of the Act of Congress of May 31, 1870 (16th St. at L., 144), for "voting without having a lawful right to vote." The words of the statute, so far as they are material in this case, are as follows:

"If at any election for representative or delegate in the Congress of the United States, any person shall knowingly ... vote without having a lawful right to vote ... every such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime ... and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $500, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or by both, in the discretion of the Court, and shall pay the costs of prosecution."

The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman. If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. The crime therefore consists not in the act done but in the simple fact that the person doing it was a woman and not a man. I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex....

Women have the same interest that men have in the establishment and maintenance of good government; they are to the same extent as men bound to obey the laws; they suffer to the same extent by bad laws, and profit to the same extent by good laws; and upon principles of equal justice, as it would seem, should be allowed, equally with men, to express their preference in the choice of law-makers and rulers. But however that may be, no greater absurdity, to use no harsher term, could be presented, than that of rewarding men and punishing women for the same act, without giving to women any voice in the question which should he rewarded and which punished.

I am aware, however, that we are here to be governed by the Constitution and laws as they are, and that if the defendant has been guilty of violating the law, she must submit to the penalty, however unjust or absurd the law may be. But courts are not required to so interpret laws or constitutions as to produce either absurdity or injustice, so long as they are open to a more reasonable interpretation. This must be my excuse for what I design to say in regard to the propriety of female suffrage, because with that propriety established there is very little difficulty in finding sufficient warrant in the Constitution for its exercise. This case, in its legal aspects, presents three questions which I propose to discuss.

1. Was the defendant legally entitled to vote at the election in question?

2. If she was not entitled to vote but believed that she was, and voted in good faith in that belief, did such voting constitute a crime under the statute before referred to?

3. Did the defendant vote in good faith in that belief?

He argued the case from a legal, constitutional and moral standpoint and concluded:

One other matter will close what I have to say. Miss Anthony believed, and was advised, that she had a right to vote. She may also have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the question as to her right could not be brought before the courts for trial without her voting or offering to vote, and if either was criminal, the one was as much so as the other. Therefore she stands now arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only step by which it was possible to bring the great constitutional question as to her right before the tribunals of the country for adjudication. If for thus acting, in the most perfect good faith, with motives as pure and impulses as noble as any which can find place in your honor's breast in the administration of justice, she is by the laws of her country to be condemned as a criminal, she must abide the consequences. Her condemnation, however, under such circumstances, would only add another most weighty reason to those which I have already advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for their protection.

The district-attorney followed with a two hours' speech. Then Judge Hunt, without leaving the bench, delivered a written opinion[73] to the effect that the Fourteenth Amendment, under which Miss Anthony claimed the authority to vote, "was a protection, not to all our rights, but to our rights as citizens of the United States only; that is, the rights existing or belonging to that condition or capacity." At its conclusion he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.

Miss Anthony's counsel insisted that the Court had no power to make such a direction in a criminal case and demanded that the jury be permitted to bring in its own verdict. The judge made no reply except to order the clerk to take the verdict. Mr. Selden demanded that the jury be polled. Judge Hunt refused, and at once discharged the jury without allowing them any consultation or asking if they agreed upon a verdict. Not one of them had spoken a word. After being discharged, the jurymen talked freely and several declared they should have brought in a verdict of "not guilty."

The next day Judge Selden argued the motion for a new trial on seven exceptions, but this was denied by Judge Hunt. The following scene then took place in the courtroom:

Judge Hunt.—(Ordering the defendant to stand up). Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss Anthony.—Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government.

Judge Hunt.—The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of argument which the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

Miss Anthony.—May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property and—

Judge Hunt.—The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss Anthony.—But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that, since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury—

Judge Hunt.—The prisoner must sit down—the Court can not allow it.

Miss Anthony.—Of all my prosecutors, from the corner grocery politician who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner, district-attorney, district-judge, your honor on the bench—not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Under such circumstances a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain than have I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar—hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of the superior class.

Judge Hunt.—The Court must insist—the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

Miss Anthony.—Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women; and hence your honor's ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of the "citizen's right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But yesterday, the same man-made forms of law declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive tracking his way to Canada; and every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women take it to get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.

Judge Hunt.—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word.

Miss Anthony.—When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis—which should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice—failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers—I ask not leniency at your hands but rather the full rigor of the law.

Judge Hunt—The Court must insist—[Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony rose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution. Miss Anthony.—May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000, incurred by publishing my paper—The Revolution—the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while denying them the right of representation in the government; and I will work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

Judge Hunt.—Madam, the Court will not order you to stand committed until the fine is paid.

Thus ended the great trial, "The United States of America vs. Susan B. Anthony." From this date the question of woman suffrage was lifted from one of grievances into one of Constitutional Law.

This was Judge Hunt's first criminal case after his elevation to the Supreme Bench of the United States. He was appointed at the solicitation of his intimate friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, and had an interview with him immediately preceding this trial. Mr. Conkling was an avowed enemy of woman suffrage. Miss Anthony always has believed that he inspired the course of Judge Hunt and that his decision was written before the trial, a belief shared by most of those associated in the case.

Miss Anthony says in her journal: "The greatest judicial outrage history ever recorded! No law, logic or demand of justice could change Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her: "I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon after the trial:

The decisions of Judge Hunt in the Anthony case have been widely criticised, and it seems to us not without reason. Even among those who accept the conclusion that women have not a legal right to vote and who do not hesitate to express the opinion that Miss Anthony deserved a greater punishment than she received, we find many seriously questioning the propriety of a proceeding whereby the proper functions of the jury are dispensed with, and the Court arrogates to itself the right to determine as to the guilt or innocence of the accused party. If this may be done in one instance, why may it not in all? And if our courts may thus arbitrarily direct what verdicts shall be rendered, what becomes of the right to trial "by an impartial jury," which the Constitution guarantees to all persons alike, whether male or female? These are questions of grave importance, to which the American people now have their attention forcibly directed through the extraordinary action of a judge of the Supreme Court. It is for them to say whether the right of trial by jury shall exist only in form, or be perpetuated according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

The New York Sun scored the judge as follows:

Judge Hunt allowed the jury to be impanelled and sworn, and to hear the evidence; but when the case had reached the point of the rendering of the verdict, he directed a verdict of guilty. He thus denied a trial by jury to an accused party in his court; and either through malice, which we do not believe, or through ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the Constitution of the United States. It is hardly worth while to argue that the right of trial by jury includes the right to a verdict by the jury, and to a free and impartial verdict, not one ordered, compelled and forced from them by an adverse and predetermined court. The language of the Constitution of the United States is that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury." Do the words an "impartial jury" mean a jury directed and controlled by the court, and who might just as well, for all practical purposes, be twelve wooden automatons, moved by a string pulled by the hand of the judge?

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle commented:

In the action of Judge Hunt there was a grand, over-reaching assumption of authority, unsupported by any point in the case itself, but adopted as an established legal principle. If there is such a principle, Judge Hunt did his duty beyond question, and he is scarcely lower than the angels so far as personal power goes. The New York Sun assumes that there is no such principle; that if there were, "Judge Hunt might on his own ipsedixit, and without the intervention of a jury, fine, imprison or hang any man, woman or child in the United States." And the Sun proceeds to say that Judge Hunt "must be impeached and removed. Such punishment for the commission of a crime like his against civil liberty is a necessity. The American people will not tolerate a judge like this on the bench of their highest court. To do it would be to submit their necks to as detestable a tyranny as ever existed on the face. of the earth. They will not sit quietly by to see their liberties, red and radiant with the blood of a million of their sons, silently melted away in the judicial crucible of a stolid and tyrannical judge of their Federal Court." This is forcible, certainly; but it ought to be speedily decided, at least, whether there is such a legal principle as we have mentioned.

The Utica Observer gave this opinion:

We have sought the advice of the best legal and judicial minds in our State in regard to the ruling of Justice Ward Hunt in the case of Susan B. Anthony. While the written opinion of the judge is very generally commended, his action in ordering a verdict of guilty to be entered, without giving the jury an opportunity of saying whether it was their verdict or not, is almost universally condemned. Such a case never before occurred in the history of our courts, and the hope is very general that it never will again. Between the indictment and the judgment stands the jury, and there is no way known to the law by which the jury's power in criminal cases can be abrogated. The judge may charge the jury that the defense is invalid; that it is their clear duty to find the prisoner guilty. But beyond this he can not properly go. He has no right to order the clerk to enter a verdict which is not the verdict of the jury. In doing this thing Justice Hunt outraged the rights of Susan B. Anthony. It would probably puzzle him to tell why he submitted the case of the inspectors to the jury after taking the case of Miss Anthony out of their hands. It would also puzzle his newspaper champions.

The Legal News, of Chicago, edited by Myra Bradwell, made this pertinent comment: "Judge Ward Hunt, of the Federal Bench, violated the Constitution of the United States more in convicting Miss Anthony of illegal voting, than she did in voting; for he had sworn to support it, and she had not."

The Albany Law Journal, however, after indulging in a few vulgar platitudes on the fact of Miss Anthony's having admitted that she was a woman, declared that Judge Hunt transcended his rights but that "if Miss Anthony does not like our laws she'd better emigrate!" This legal authority failed to advise where she could emigrate to find laws which were equally just to men and to women. It might also have answered the question, "Should a woman be compelled to leave the land of her nativity because of the injustice of its laws?"

Miss Anthony's trial closed on Wednesday and she remained in Canandaigua to attend that of the three inspectors, which followed at once. She was called as a witness and inquired of Judge Hunt: "I should like to know if the testimony of a person convicted of a crime can be taken?" "They call you as a witness, madam," was his brusque reply. Later, thinking to trap her, he asked, "You presented yourself as a female, claiming that you had a right to vote?" Quick as a flash came her answer: "I presented myself not as a female, sir, but as a citizen of the United States. I was called to the ballot-box by the Fourteenth Amendment, not as a female but as a citizen."

The inspectors were defended by Mr. Van Voorhis but, after the testimony was introduced, the judge refused to allow him to address the jury. He practically directed them to bring in a verdict of guilty, saying, "You can decide it here or go out." The jury returned a verdict of guilty. The motion for a new trial was denied. One of the inspectors (Hall) had been tried and convicted without being brought into court. They were fined $25 each and the costs of the prosecution but, although neither was paid, they were not imprisoned at that time.

When asked for his opinion on the case, after a lapse of twenty-four years, Mr. Van Voorhis gave the following:

There never before was a trial in the country of one-half the importance of this of Miss Anthony's. That of Andrew Johnson had no issue which could compare in value with the one here at stake. If Miss Anthony had won her case on the merits, it would have revolutionized the suffrage of the country and enfranchised every woman in the United States. There was a pre-arranged determination to convict her. A jury trial was dangerous, and so the Constitution was openly and deliberately violated.

The Constitution makes the jury, in a criminal case, the judges of the law and of the facts. No matter how clear or how strong the case may appear to the judge, it must be submitted to the jury. That is the mandate of the Constitution. As no one can be convicted of crime except upon trial by jury, it follows that the jury are entitled to pass upon the law as well as the facts. The judge can advise the jury on questions of law. He can legally do no more. If he control the jury and direct a verdict of guilty, he himself is guilty of a crime for which impeachment is the remedy.

The jury in Miss Anthony's case was composed of excellent men. None better could have been drawn anywhere. Justice Hunt knew that. He had the jury impanelled only as a matter of form. He said so in the inspectors' case. He came to Canandaigua to hold the Circuit Court, for the purpose of convicting Miss Anthony. He had unquestionably prepared his opinion beforehand. The job had to be done, so he took the bull by the horns and directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty. In the case of the inspectors he refused to defendants' counsel the right of addressing the jury.

Judge Hunt very adroitly, in passing sentence on Miss Anthony imposing a fine of $100, refused to add, what is usual in such cases, that she be imprisoned until the fine be paid. Had he done so, Miss Anthony would have gone to prison, and then taken her case directly to the Supreme Court of the United States by writ of habeas corpus. There she would have been discharged, because trial by jury had been denied her. But as Miss Anthony was not even held in custody after judgment had been pronounced, she could not resort to habeas corpus proceedings and had no appeal.

But the outrage of ordering a verdict of guilty against the defendant was not the only outrage committed by this judge on these trials:

It was an outrage to refuse the right of a defendant to poll the jury.

It was an outrage for the judge to refuse to hold that if the defendant believed she had a right to vote, and voted in good faith in that belief, she was not guilty of the charge.

It was an outrage to hold that the jury, in considering the question whether she did or did not believe she had a right to vote, might not consider that she took the advice of Judge Selden before she voted, and acted on that advice.

It was an outrage to hold that the jury might not take into consideration, as bearing upon the same question, the fact that the inspectors and supervisor of election looked into the question, and came to the conclusion that she had the right to be registered and vote, and told her so, and so decided.

It was an outrage for the judge to hold that the jury had not the right to consider the defendant's motive, and to find her innocent if she acted without any intent to violate the law.

In the case of the inspectors, it was an outrage to refuse defendants' counsel the right to address the jury.

It was an outrage to refuse to instruct the jury that if the defendants, being administrative officers, acted without any criminal motive but in accordance with their best judgment, and in perfect good faith, they were not guilty.

Judge Selden has passed to his eternal rest and lies beneath a massive monument of granite in beautiful Mount Hope cemetery. Mr. Van Voorhis thus paid tribute to his associate in this noted case: "His argument on the constitutional points involved is one of the ablest and most complete to be found in history. As a lawyer he had no superior; he was a master in his profession. He had a most discriminating mind and a marvellous memory. He was familiar with the books, and possessed a power of statement equal to that of Daniel Webster. I predict that the verdict of history will be that Judge Selden was right and the Court wrong upon the constitutional question involved in this case."

To the heavy debts of The Revolution which, with all her efforts, Miss Anthony had been able to reduce but a fraction, were now added the costs of this suit. She did not propose to pay the fines, but she did intend to see that the inspectors were relieved of all expense in connection with the trial. Her indomitable courage did not fail her even in this emergency, and as usual she was sustained by the substantial appreciation of her friends. Letters of sympathy and financial help poured in from acquaintances and strangers in all parts of the country. Indignation meetings were held and contributions sent also by various reform clubs and societies.[74] All were swallowed up in the heavy and unavoidable expenses of the suits of herself and the inspectors. Neither of her lawyers ever presented a bill. She had 5,000 copies made of Judge Selden's argument on the habeas corpus at Albany, which she scattered broadcast. She also had printed 3,000 pamphlets, at a cost of $700, containing a full report of the trial, and sent them to all the law journals in the United States and Canada, to the newspapers, etc. The Democrat and Chronicle said of this book, "We believe it is the most important contribution yet made to the discussion of woman suffrage from a legal standpoint." None of the other cases ever were brought to trial.[75]

Miss Anthony had no fears of not being able to raise money to pay her debts if she could be free to give her time to the lecture platform, but an entire year had been occupied with her trial, and the money received during this period had been required to meet its expenses. She had a vital reason, however, for feeling that she could not leave home—the rapidly-failing health of her beloved sister Guelma, her senior by only twenty months, for more than half a century her close companion, and for the past eight years living under the same roof. Her heart had been broken by the death, a few years before, of her two beautiful children just at the dawn of manhood and womanhood, and the fatal malady consumption met with no resistance. Day by day she faded away, the physician holding out no hope from the first. Her mother, now eighty years of age, was completely crushed; the sister Mary was principal of one of the city schools and busy all day, and Miss Anthony felt it her imperative duty to remain beside the invalid, even could she have overcome her grief sufficiently to appear in public. Invitations to lecture came to her from many points but she refused them and remained by the gentle sufferer day and night.[76] At daybreak on November 9 the loved one passed away, and the tender hands of sisters and of the only daughter performed the last ministrations.[77]

With Miss Anthony the love of family was especially intense as she had formed no outside ties, and the parents, the brothers and sisters filled her world of affection. The sundering of these bonds wrenched her very heartstrings and upon every recurring anniversary the anguish broke forth afresh, scarcely assuaged by the lapse of years. A short time after this last sorrow she writes:

MY DEAR MOTHER: How continually, except the one hour when I am on the platform, is the thought of you and your loss and my own with me! How little we realize the constant presence in our minds of our loved and loving ones until they are forever gone. We would not call them back to endure again their suffering, but we can not help wishing they might have been spared to us in health and vigor. Our Guelma, does she look down upon us, does she still live, and shall we all live again and know each other, and work together and love and enjoy one another? In spite of instinct, in spite of faith, these questions will come up again and again.... She said you would soon follow her, and we know that in the nature of things it must be so. When that time comes, dear mother, may you fall asleep as sweetly and softly as did your eldest born; and as the sands of life ebb out into the great eternal, may all of us be with you to make the way easy. It does seem too cruel that every one of us must be so overwhelmingly immersed in work, but may the Good Father help us so to do that there may be no vain regrets for things done or left undone when the last hour comes.

A beautiful incident cast a flood of light through the heavy shadows of this trying year, and made November 27 in truth a day of Thanksgiving for one brave woman. At his urgent invitation, Miss Anthony had spent it in the home of her cousin, Anson Laphain, at Skaneateles. After a pleasant day, as she sat quietly and sadly by the window, watching the deepening twilight, the noble-hearted cousin took from his desk her notes for $4,000, which he had so generously loaned her during the stormy days of The Revolution, cancelled all and presented them to her. She was overwhelmed with surprise and when she attempted to express her gratitude, he stopped her with words of respect, confidence and encouragement which seemed to roll away a stone from her heart and in its place put new hope, ambition and strength.

[Footnote 68: ... Good and lawful men of the said District, then and there sworn and charged to inquire for the said United States of America, and for the body of said District, do, upon their oaths, present, that Susan B. Anthony now or late of Rochester, in the county of Monroe, with force and arms,... did knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress of the United States for the State of New York at large, and for a Representative in the Congress of the United States for said twenty-ninth Congressional District, without having a lawful right to vote in said election district (the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of the female sex), as she, the said Susan B. Anthony then and there well knew, contrary to the form of the statute of the United States of America in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the United States of America and their dignity, etc.]

[Footnote 69: The Twenty-fifth Woman Suffrage Anniversary will be held in Apollo Hall, New York, Tuesday, May 6, 1873. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who called the first woman's rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, will be present to give their reminiscences. That convention was scarcely mentioned by the local press; now, over the whole world, equality for woman is demanded. In the United States, woman suffrage is the chief political question of the hour. Great Britain is deeply agitated upon the same topic. Germany has a princess at the head of its national woman's rights organization. Portugal, Spain and Russia have been roused. In Rome an immense meeting, composed of the representatives of Italian democracy, was recently called in the Coliseum; one of its resolutions demanded a reform in the laws relating to woman and a re-establishment of her natural rights. Turkey, France, England, Switzerland, Italy, sustain papers devoted to woman's enfranchisement. A Grand International Woman's Rights Congress is to be held in Paris, in September of this year, to which the whole world is invited to send delegates, and this congress is to be under the management of the most renowned liberals of Europe. Come up, then, friends, and celebrate the silver wedding of the woman suffrage movement. Let our twenty-fifth anniversary be one of power; our reform is everywhere advancing, let us redouble our energies and our courage. SUSAN B. ANTHONY, President; MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Chairman Executive Committee.]

[Footnote 70: See Appendix for speech in full.]

[Footnote 71: See Appendix for newspaper comment.]

[Footnote 72: A full report of this trial, testimony, arguments of counsel, etc., may be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, beginning page 647.]

[Footnote 73: Can a judge with propriety prepare a written opinion before he has heard all the arguments in a case?]

[Footnote 74: The Buffalo suffrage club sent $100; the Chicago club, through Mrs. Fernando Jones, $75; the Milwaukee club, through Madame Anneke, $50; the Milwaukee "radicals," $20; the New York club, through Lillie Devereux Blake, $50; the patients at the Dansville Sanitarium, $30. Dr. Lozier sent $30; Lucretia Mott, $30; Dr. E.B. Foote, of New York, $25; Phebe Jones, of Albany, $25; Dr. Sarah Dolley, of Rochester, $20; the Hallowells, $25; the Glastonbury Smith sisters, $20; and from men and women in all parts of the country came sums from fifty cents upwards, all amounting to over $1,100. Gerrit Smith sent at first $30 to help defray the expenses of the trial, and after it was over a draft for $100, saying: "I send you herewith the money to pay your fine. If you shall still decline doing so, then use it at your own discretion to promote the cause of woman suffrage." Mrs. Lewia C. Smith raised a purse of $100 among Rochester friends and presented it as a testimonial to Judge Selden, in the name of the Women Tax-Payers' Society. Miss Anthony gave a lecture in Corinthian Hall for the benefit of the inspectors, which netted about $180.]

[Footnote 75: The first Woman's Congress, afterwards called the Association for the Advancement of Women, was organized during the autumn of this year. To the call were appended the names of most of the noted women of the day, but Miss Anthony's was conspicuously absent. Her most intimate friends being among the signers, and supposing she was to be also, made inquiry as to the reason and received this answer: 1st, Her name beginning with A would have had to head the list; 2d, Her title as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association would have had to be given; 3d, She could not be managed. Miss Anthony was so greatly amused at these reasons that she quite forgave the omission of her name.]

[Footnote 76: And yet on November 4 she stole away long enough to go to the polling-place and again offer her vote. It was refused, she found her name had been struck from the register, and thus ended that battle.]

[Footnote 77: Three of the brave Rochester women who went to the polls at the election of 1872, died within one year: Guelma Anthony McLean, Mary B.F. Curtis and Rhoda De Garmo.]



CHAPTER XXVI.

NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO JURY OR FRANCHISE.

1874.

Miss Anthony's case continued to attract widespread attention, Judge Hunt's arbitrary action finding few apologists even among opponents of woman suffrage. It was finally decided by her counsel and herself to make an appeal to Congress for the remission of the fine, which, if granted, would be in effect a declaration of the illegality of Judge Hunt's act and a precedent for the future. Judge Selden based his authority for such an appeal on a case in the United States Statutes at Large, chap. 45, p. 802, where a fine of $1,000 and costs, illegally imposed upon Matthew Lyon under the Alien and Sedition Laws, 1799, were refunded with interest to his heirs. Mr. Van Voorhis found an authority also in an act passed by the British Parliament in 1792, correcting the departure from the common law, in respect to the rights of juries, by Lord Mansfield and his associates in the cases of Woodfall and Shipley. This act was passed through the exertions of Lord Camden and Mr. Fox in order to prevent the erroneous decisions of the judges from becoming the law of England.

Both of the attorneys keenly resented the action of Judge Hunt, Mr. Selden pronouncing it "the greatest judicial outrage ever perpetrated in the United States;" and Mr. Van Voorhis asserting that "trial by jury was completely annihilated in this case, and there is no remedy except to appeal to the justice of Congress to remit the fine and declare that trial by jury does and shall exist in this country." The appeal, or petition, was prepared and Miss Anthony carried it to Washington when she went to the National Convention, January 15, 1874. It was an able document, reciting the facts in the case and the action of the judge, and concluding:

Your petitioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings, she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury and the right to have the assistance of counsel for their defense. It is a mockery to call hers a trial by jury; and, unless the assistance of counsel may be limited to the argument of legal questions, without the privilege of saying a word to the jury upon the question of the guilt or innocence in fact of a party charged, or the privilege of ascertaining from the jury whether they do or do not agree to the verdict pronounced by the Court in their name, she has been denied the assistance of counsel for her defense.

Of the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of your petitioner to vote, she makes no complaint. It was a question properly belonging to the Court to decide, was fully and fairly submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right or wrong, your petitioner is well aware she can not here complain. But in regard to her conviction of crime, which she insists, for the reasons above given, was in violation of the principles of the common law, of common morality, of the statute under which she was charged, and of the Constitution—a crime of which she was as innocent as the judge by whom she was convicted—she respectfully asks, inasmuch as the law has provided no means of reviewing the decisions of the judge, or of correcting his errors, that the fine imposed upon your petitioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust.

This was presented in the Senate by A.A. Sargent, of California, and in the House by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and was referred to the judiciary committees. In May, Lyman Tremaine, from the House Judiciary Committee, reported adversely on the petition in a lengthy document, which incorporated a letter from District-Attorney Crowley, urging the committee "not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal;" and declaring that "Miss Anthony's trial was fair and constitutional and by an impartial jury." (!) Mr. Tremaine's report said: "Congress can not be converted into a national court of review for any and all criminal convictions where it shall be alleged the judge has committed an error." Thus did he deliberately ignore the point at issue, the refusal of a trial by jury. It concluded by saying: "Since the discussion of this question has arisen in the committee, the President has pardoned Miss Anthony for the offense of which she was convicted and this seems to furnish a conclusive reason why no further action should be taken by the judiciary committee." (!) The learned gentleman probably referred to the pardon of the inspectors by the President. Miss Anthony had not asked executive clemency for herself.

Benjamin F. Butler presented an able and exhaustive minority report which closed with the following declaration: "Therefore, because the fine has been imposed by a court of the United States for an offense triable by jury, without the same being submitted to the jury, and because the court assumed to itself the right to enter a verdict without submitting the case to the jury, and in order that the judgment of the House of Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the committee, may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its determination to sustain in its integrity the common law right of trial by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the petitioner be granted."

In June George F. Edmunds made an adverse report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in this remarkable language: "That they are not satisfied that the ruling of the judge was precisely as represented in the petition, and that if it were so, the Senate could not legally take any action in the premises, and they move that the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the petition, and that the bill be postponed indefinitely."

Senator Matthew II. Carpenter presented a long and carefully prepared minority report which concluded:

Unfortunately the United States has no "well-ordered system of jurisprudence." A citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and no court can grant him relief or a new trial. If a citizen have a cause involving the title to his farm, if it exceed $2,000 in value, he may bring his cause to the Supreme Court; but if it involve his liberty or his life, he can not. While we permit this blemish to exist on our judicial system, it behooves us to watch carefully the judgments inferior courts may render; and it is doubly important that we should see to it that twelve jurors shall concur with the judge before a citizen shall be hanged, incarcerated or otherwise punished.

I concur with the majority of the committee that Congress can not grant the precise relief prayed for in the memorial; but I deem it to be the duty of Congress to declare its disapproval of the doctrine asserted and the course pursued in the trial of Miss Anthony; and all the more for the reason that no judicial court has jurisdiction to review the proceedings therein.

I need not disclaim all purpose to question the motives of the learned judge before whom this trial was conducted. The best of judges may commit the gravest of errors amid the hurry and confusion of a nisi prius term; and the wrong Miss Anthony has suffered ought to be charged to the vicious system which denies to those convicted of offenses against the laws of the United States a hearing before the court of last resort—a defect it is equally within the power and the duty of Congress speedily to remedy.

When Miss Anthony returned to Rochester in February, she found the inspectors were about to be put into jail because, acting under advice, they still refused to pay their fines. She wrote Benjamin F. Butler, who replied under date of February 22: "I would not, if I were they, pay, but allow process to be served; and I have no doubt the President will remit the fine if they are pressed too far." They were imprisoned February 26. Miss Anthony went at once to the jail and urged them not to pay the fine, for the sake of principle, promising to see that they were soon released. She waded through a heavy snow to consult her attorneys and then to the newspaper offices to talk with the editors in regard to the prisoners, reaching home at dark, and in her diary that night she writes, "I could not bear to come away and leave them one night in that dolorous place."

She went out for a few lectures in neighboring towns, and at the Dansville Sanitarium was presented by the patients with a purse of $62. Arriving in Rochester at 7 A. M., March 2, she went straight to the jail and breakfasted with the inspectors; then to see the marshal and succeeded in having them released on bail. She did not reach home till 1 p. M., and here she found this telegram from Senator Sargent: "I laid the case of the inspectors before the President today. He kindly orders their pardon. Papers are being prepared." Benjamin F. Butler also had interceded with the President and sent Miss Anthony a telegram of congratulation on the result. In a few days the inspectors were pardoned and their fines remitted by President Grant. They were in jail just one week and during that time received hundreds of calls, while each day bountiful meals were sent them by the women whose votes they had accepted. After their pardon a reception was given them at the home of Miss Anthony's sister, Mrs. Mosher, by the ladies of the Eighth ward, and in the spring they were re-elected by a handsome majority. Miss Anthony's fine stands against her to the present day.

This case was the dominating feature of the National Convention at Washington in the winter of 1874; the key-note of all the speeches and the arguments before the judiciary committees was woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. The women did not relinquish this claim until all ground for it was destroyed by a decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1875, in the case of Virginia L. Minor, of St. Louis. Francis Minor, a lawyer of that city, was the first to assert that women were enfranchised by both the letter and the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, acting under his advice, his wife attempted to register for the presidential election of 1872. Her name was refused and she brought suit against the inspector for the purpose of making a test case. After an adverse decision by the lower courts, the case was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and argued before that tribunal by Mr. Minor, at the October term, 1874. It is not too much to say that no constitutional lawyer in the country could have improved upon this argument in its array of authorities, its keen logic and its impressive plea for justice.[78]

The decision was adverse, the opinion of the court being delivered March 29, 1875, by Chief-Justice Waite, himself a strong advocate of the enfranchisement of women. The court admitted that "women are persons and citizens," but found that the "National Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United States has no voters of its own creation. The National Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the States had the power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These amendments, ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination, but did not forbid that against sex."

This is in direct contradiction to the decision of Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case: "The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms and mean the same thing; they describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty."

Although Miss Anthony and her co-workers still believed that, with a true interpretation, women were voters under these amendments, they were obliged to accept the decision of the highest court of appeal. They then returned to the work of petitioning Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex. They continued also the original plan of endeavoring to secure amendments to the constitutions of the different States abolishing the word "male" as a qualification for voting.[79] Bitterly disappointed at the decision of the Supreme Court, it was nevertheless a source of pride to the women that they had made their claim for representation in the government, carried it to the highest tribunal and gone down in honorable defeat.



Miss Anthony never hesitated to ask the most distinguished men to speak on the woman suffrage platform, and Henry Wilson writes from the chamber of the Vice-President his regrets that he can not accept her invitation. Benjamin F. Butler replies: "As a rule I have refused to take part in any convention in the District of Columbia about any matter which might come before Congress. I have gone farther out of my way in that regard in the matter of woman suffrage than in any other. Having given evidence that I am most strongly committed to the legality, propriety and justice of granting the ballot to woman, I do not see how I can add anything to it. Hoping that your cause may succeed, I have the honor to be, very truly yours."

Her cousin, Elbridge G. Lapham, M. C., of New York, says in a letter: "I am persuaded the time is fast hastening when woman will be accorded the exercise of the right your association demands. With that secured, many other advantages, now denied, will surely and speedily follow. I can see no valid objection to the right of suffrage being conferred, while there are many and very cogent reasons in favor of it. As has been said, you may go on election day to the most degraded elector you can find at the polls, who would sell his vote for a dollar or a dram, and ask him what he would take for his right to vote and you couldn't purchase it with a kingdom."

[Autograph: Elbridge G. Lapham]

She found it possible even to interview the President of the United States on this question. During a conversation with General Grant one day on Pennsylvania Avenue, she said, "Well, Mr. President, what are you going to do for woman suffrage?" In a hearty, pleasant way he answered, "I have already done more for women than any other President, I have recognized the right of 5,000 of them to be postmasters." There were always distinguished men to champion this cause, but the chief drawback was expressed in a letter from that staunch supporter, Hon. A.G. Riddle, in 1874:

There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the courts; and just as little from politicians. They never will take up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never—till the thing is done. The Republicans want no new issues or disturbing elements. The Democrats are certain that the Republicans are about to dissolve; and they want to hold on as they are. Both think this thing may, perhaps will come, but now is not the time; and with both, there never will be a "now." The trouble is that below all this lies the fact that man can govern alone and that, though woman has the right, man wants to do it; and if she wait for him to ask her, she will never vote.

There never was a cause with so much unembodied strength, and with so little working power; and the problem is how to vitalize and organize it. One of two things, I think, must occur; either man must be made to see and feel, as he never has done yet, the need of woman's help in the great field of human government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as she never has, and take her place. I still think that one of the main hindrances is with women. The fact is, that the worst bugbear is the never-seen, ever-felt law of caste which has always walled woman around, and which few have the courage to step over.

[Autograph:

Sincerely yours A.G. Riddle]

At the close of the convention Miss Anthony accepted the invitation of Mrs. Hooker, the State president, to join her in a month's tour through Connecticut. They spoke in nineteen different cities and towns, Mrs. Hooker assuming all financial responsibility and paying Miss Anthony $25 for each lecture. They had excellent audiences and were entertained in many beautiful homes. In Miss Anthony's diary, March 11, she says: "Senator Sumner died today, the noblest Roman of them all; true to the negro, but never a public word for woman. How I have pleaded with him for years, and he always admitted that his principles logically carried out gave woman an equal guarantee with man."

In the spring of 1874 the women's temperance crusade began in Rochester and, although their methods were very different from those Miss Anthony would have employed, she met with them at their request to help them organize. After this was effected they called on her for a speech and she said in brief:

I am always glad to welcome every association of women for any good purpose, because I know that they will quickly learn the impossibility of accomplishing any substantial end. Women never realize their inability to effect a reform until they attempt it, and then they find how closely interwoven with politics are all such matters, and how entirely without political power are they themselves.... Now my good women, the best thing this organization will do for you will be to show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. You never can talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which is voted into existence. You never will be able to lessen this evil until you have votes. Frederick Douglass used to tell how, when he was a Maryland slave and a good Methodist, he would go into the farthest corner of the tobacco field and pray God to bring him liberty; but God never answered his prayers until he prayed with his heels. And so, dear friends, He never will answer yours for the suppression of the liquor traffic until you are able to pray with your ballots.[80]

Miss Anthony's sentiments on this question are further expressed in a letter to her brother Daniel R., editor Leavenworth Times:

I like the Times' article on the women's whiskey war. Emerson says, "God answers only such prayers as men themselves answer." After ignorant and helpless mothers have transmitted to their children the drunkard's appetite, God can not answer their prayers to prevent them from gratifying it. But this crusade will educate the women who engage in it to use the one and only means of regulating or prohibiting the traffic in liquor—that of the ballot. As soon as they find this crusade experiment a failure, which they certainly will, because all spasmodic, sensational religious efforts are transient and fleeting, they will realize the enduring strength and usefulness of the franchise. However little that is permanent may come of this movement, it is good in itself because anything is better for women than tame submission to the evils around them; and when they find kind words, entreaties and tears avail nothing, they will surely try the virtue of stones (votes) to bring down the great demon that desolates their homes.

An entry in the journal made soon afterward says: "I dropped into the Industrial Congress today and was invited to speak. I told the men that the degraded labor of women made them quite as heavy a millstone round the necks of working-men as is the Heathen Chinese." And a few days later: "Dr. Dio Lewis called today, and I went to hear him speak this evening. Same old story—men make and break the laws, and women by love and persuasion must soften their hearts to abandon their wickedness. Never a hint that women should have anything to do with the making and enforcing of the laws. They must only coax."

The diary shows over one hundred letters written by Miss Anthony's own hand in arranging for the May Anniversary in New York, while she sat at the bedside of her mother, who was very ill. Many cordial answers were received, among them one from Josephine E. Butler, of England. Mary L. Booth thus closed her reply: "Pray believe that I always hold you in affectionate remembrance as one of the most sincere, earnest and disinterested women whom it has ever been my fortune to meet, and whom I shall always be glad to hear from or to see." Mrs. Stanton sent an extract from a letter of Martha C. Wright, saying: "Our only hope is in the gradual accession of thinking men and women, and in our indomitable Susan."

At Miss Anthony's earnest desire, Mrs. Wright was elected president of the association and this proved to be her last appearance on that platform which she had graced for many years. An interesting feature of the meeting was the presence of the veteran worker, Ernestine L. Rose, who was back from England on a visit. During this May meeting a telegram was sent over the country stating: "Miss Anthony stalked down the aisle with faded alpaca dress to the top of her boots, blue cotton umbrella and white cotton gloves, perched herself on the platform, crossed her legs, pulled out her snuff-box and passed it around. On the platform were Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Rose and other noted women, all dressed in unmentionables cut bias, and smoking penny drab cigars. Susan was quite drunk." The New York Herald, which rarely had a good word for the suffrage conventions, in a long and respectful account of this same meeting, said:

There was a perfume of Fifth Avenue about the audience. Carriages in livery rolled up to the door. The striking contrast of this audience with that of other years, in the almost perfect conformity of the manner and dress of the women to those of other women who rule in the fashionable world and are supposed to look down upon these knights-errant of the sex, was not greater than that between the treatment of Miss Anthony now and in other times. In former years they came to scoff at this wiry and resolute champion of her sex. Now every word she utters is received with almost reverent rapture. Yesterday brought together as intelligent and perhaps as refined an audience of ladies as might he gathered in the city. Miss Anthony was dressed with her usual simplicity in black silk. She read the call for the convention and made thereon one of her characteristic addresses, full of fire and prophecy.

During the summer of 1874 Miss Anthony lectured in many places in Massachusetts and New York, striving to pay the interest and reduce by a little her pressing debts, and slipping home occasionally to see her mother who was carefully tended by the devoted sister Mary. At one of these times she writes in her diary: "It is always so good to get into my own humble bed." August 22 she sent a letter of congratulation on his fiftieth birthday to her brother Daniel R. After referring to the $50 he sent to her at the close of her half century, she says:

Though I can not return my love and wishes in the same kind, they are none the less for your joy and peace in the future, neither is my rejoicing less over the success of your first half of life. From your many experiences, whether they have been such as you would have chosen or not, strength, growth, discipline have resulted, and sometimes I think all the adverse winds of life are needed to check our ever-rising vain-glory in our own power and success.... Whatever comes to those closely united by marriage or by blood, the one lesson from recent developments in Brooklyn is that none of the parties ever should take in an outside person as confidant. If the twain can not themselves restore their oneness, none other can. If parents and children, brothers and sisters, can not adjust their own differences among themselves, it is in vain they look to friends outside.

What lessons we are having that not only is honesty the best policy, but that there is nothing but most dreadful disaster in any policy which is not based on absolute honesty. The fact is, nothing is worth the getting, if that has to be done by cunning, falsehood, deception. Whether it be wealth, position, office or the society of one we love, if we have to steal it, though it may be sweet and seemingly real and lasting, the exposure of the illicit means of gaining it is sure to come, and then the thing itself turns to dross. When will the children of men learn this fact, that nothing pays but that which is obtained fairly, openly and honestly?

This year the Michigan Legislature submitted a woman suffrage amendment to the voters, and Miss Anthony decided to canvass the State. To do this would ruin her own lecture season for the autumn, and those in charge of the suffrage campaign could offer her no salary. She did not hesitate, however, but without any financial guarantee, began her work there September 24. On the eve of going she wrote to a friend: "I leave home without having had one single week of rest this summer—not this year, indeed, nor for twenty-five years." She made a forty days' canvass, taking out three days for the Illinois convention at Chicago, and during that time spoke in thirty-five different places. Everywhere she addressed immense and enthusiastic crowds. She was frequently preceded by Senator Zach. Chandler, speaking for the Republican party, and often her audiences were much larger than the senator's.[81] Toward the close of the campaign she wrote home:

If these meetings of mine were only by and in favor of an enfranchised class, they would carry almost the solid vote of every town for the measure advocated; but alas, they are for a class powerless to help or hinder any party for good or for evil. It is wonderful to see how quickly the prejudices yield to a little common sense talk. If only we had speakers and time, we could carry the vote of this State, but we have neither, and so all we can hope for is a respectable minority. I enclose $200 left above travelling expenses, hall rent, etc., from collections and the sale of my trial pamphlets. If I could have had even a twenty-five cents admission, I should have cleared over $1,000, but I could not have it said that I went to Michigan, at such a crisis, to make money for myself; it would have ruined the moral effect of my work. Now they are calling on me from Washington to stay in that city all next winter to get our measure considered by Congress, but I ought to go to work to earn money, for I need it if ever anybody did. If I have to get it, however, at the cost of losing our golden opportunity there, it will be too dear a price to pay.

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

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

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

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

The New York Sun expressed the general sentiment of the press when it said in this connection: "Miss Anthony is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by those who know anything of her character." Her home paper, the Democrat and Chronicle, paid this tribute: "Whether she will make any definite revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."

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

To Mr. Hooker, on this same subject, she wrote: "In my heart of hearts I hate the whole doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity.' I am not even a believer in second marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I consider the marriage relation." A few extracts from her diary during these days will show the trend of her thoughts:

Silence alone is all there is for me at present. I appreciate as never before the value of having lived an open life.... The parlor, the street corner, the newspapers, the very air seem full of social miasma.... Sad, sad revelations! There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which denies it.... It is almost an impossibility for a man and a woman to have a close, sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish.... The great financial rings, Christian Union, Life of Christ and Plymouth church, the three in one, most powerful trinity, seem to have subsidized the entire New York press.

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

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

The house of the Tiltons was the second home of Mr. Beecher, and scarcely a day passed that he did not visit it. He found here the brightness, congeniality, sympathy and loving trust which every human being longs for. The choicest new literature was sent hither for the delicate appreciation it was sure to receive. When he came in from his Peekskill country place with great baskets of flowers, the most beautiful always found their way to this household. Miss Anthony recalls one occasion when Mrs. Tilton, slipping her hand through her arm, drew her to the mantelpiece over which hung a lovely water color of the trailing arbutus, and said, "My pastor brought that to me this morning." At another time, when she went on Saturday evening to stay over Sunday, Mrs. Tilton said, as she dropped into a low chair: "Mr. Beecher sat here all the morning writing his sermon. He says there is no place in the world where he can get such inspiration as at Theodore's desk, while I sit beside him in this little chair darning the children's stockings."

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

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

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

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

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

One of the largest audiences ever in the opera house gathered last evening on the occasion of the lecture of Miss Susan B. Anthony.—Adrian Times and Expositor.

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXVII.

REVOLUTION DEBT PAID—WOMEN'S FOURTH OF JULY.

1875-1876.

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

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

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

In the winter of 1875, Miss Anthony prepared her speech on "Social Purity" and gave it first at the Grand Opera House, Chicago, March 14, in the Sunday afternoon Dime lecture course.[82] When she reached the opera house the crowd was so dense she could not get inside and was obliged to go through the engine room and up the back way to the stage. The gentleman who was to introduce her could not make his way through the throng and so this service was gracefully performed by "Long John" Wentworth, who was seated on the stage. At the close of the address, to her surprise, A. Bronson Alcott, Parker Pillsbury and A.J. Grover came up to congratulate her. She had not known they were in the city. Mr. Alcott said: "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter." No other speaker, man or woman, ever had handled this question with such boldness and severity and the lecture produced a great sensation. Even the radical Mrs. Stanton wrote her she would never again be asked to speak in Chicago, and Mr. Slayton said that she had ruined her future chances there; nevertheless she was invited by the same committee the following winter.

It was given at several places in Wisconsin, Illinois,[83] Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to crowded houses and the newspaper comments were varied. On the occasion of its delivery in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis, in the Star lecture course, the Democrat said: "The audience was large and composed of the most respectable and intelligent of our citizens, a majority being ladies. Miss Anthony is one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century—remarkable for the purity of her life, the earnestness with which she promulgates her peculiar views, and the indomitable courage and perseverance with which she bears defeat and misfortune. No longer in the bloom of youth—if she ever had any bloom—hard-featured, guileless, cold as an icicle, fluent and philosophical, she wields today tenfold more influence than all the beautiful and brilliant female lecturers that ever flaunted upon the platform as preachers of social impossibilities."

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

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

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

While Miss Anthony was in attendance at the May Suffrage Anniversary in New York, a telegram came announcing that her brother Daniel R., of Leavenworth, had been shot and fatally wounded. Her friends feeling that they could not go through with the meeting without her, retained the telegram until after her speech in the evening, and then she could get no train before the next day. She did not go to bed that night but, in the midst of her grief, she examined every bill for the convention and put each in an envelope with the money to pay it. In the early morning she took a local train for Albany and stopped off to bid a last farewell to her old friend, Lydia Mott, who was dying of consumption. Her sisters met her at the Rochester station with wrapper, slippers and comfortable things for the sickroom, and she learned that her brother was still alive. Telegrams came to her at intervals during the journey, and, after a most distressing delay at Kansas City, she finally reached Leavenworth at midnight, May 14, and was gladly received by her brother who had watched the clock and counted her progress every hour. The shooting had grown out of some criticisms in his paper. The ball had fractured the clavicle and severed the subclavian artery. His devoted wife and brother Merritt were in constant attendance.

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

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

On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman, characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore. When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening." The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging letter and a liberal contribution.