The lessons of the war were not lost on the women of this nation; through varied forms of suffering and humiliation, they learned that they had an equal interest with men in the administration of the government, alike enjoying its blessings or enduring its miseries. When in the enfranchisement of the black men they saw another ignorant class of voters placed above their heads, and beheld the danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died for his country.

[Footnote 32: See Appendix for this address.]

[Footnote 33: She was assisted from time to time by Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mary F. Gilbert, Frances V. Hallock, Mattie Griffith (Brown), Rebecca Shepard (Putnam), and Frances M. Russell, all donating their services. The bookkeeper and the clerks were paid small salaries from the office receipts.]



CHAPTER XV.

"MALE" IN THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

1865.

Soon after closing the league headquarters, Miss Anthony went to Auburn to attend the wedding of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and Ellen, daughter of her dear friend Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott, a union of two families very acceptable to the friends of both. From this scene of festivity she returned home to meet a fresh sorrow in the sudden death, almost at the hour of her arrival, of Ann Eliza, daughter of her eldest sister Guelma and Aaron McLean, the best beloved of all her nieces. She was twenty-three years old, beautiful and talented, a good musician and an artist of fine promise. In her Miss Anthony had centered many hopes and ambitions, and the letters show that she was always planning and working for her future as she would have done for that of a cherished daughter. She was laid to rest on the silver wedding anniversary of her parents. Miss Anthony writes: "She had ceased to be a child and had become the fullgrown woman, my companion and friend. I loved her merry laugh, her bright, joyous presence, and yet my loss is so small compared to the awful void in her mother's life that I scarcely dare mention it."

Months afterwards she wrote her sister Hannah: "Today I made a pilgrimage to Mount Hope. The last rays of red, gold and purple fringed the horizon and shone serenely on the mounds above our dear father and Ann Eliza. What a contrast in my feelings; for the one a subdued sorrow at the sudden ending of a life full-ripened, only that we would have basked in its sunshine a little longer; for the other a keen anguish over the untimely cutting off in the dawn of existence, with the hopes and longings but just beginning to take form, the real purpose of life yet dimly developed, a great nature but half revealed. The faith that she and all our loved and gone are graduated into a higher school of growth and progress is the only consolation for death."

At another time she wrote her brother: "This new and sorrowful reminder of the brittleness of life's threads should soften all our expressions to each other in our home circles and open our lips to speak only words of tenderness and approbation. We are so wont to utter criticisms and to keep silence about the things we approve. I wish we might be as faithful in expressing our likes as our dislikes, and not leave our loved ones to take it for granted that their good acts are noted and appreciated and vastly outnumber those we criticise. The sum of home happiness would be greatly multiplied if all families would conscientiously follow this method."

There were urgent appeals in these days from the lately-married brother and his wife for sister Susan to come to Kansas and, as no public work seemed to be pressing, she started the latter part of January, 1865. She stopped in Chicago to visit her uncle Albert Dickinson, was detained a week by heavy storms, and reached Leavenworth the last day of the month. Of her journey she wrote home:

I paid a dollar for a ride across the Mississippi on the ice. When we reached Missouri all was devastation. I asked the conductor if there were not a sleeper and he replied, "Our sleeping cars are in the ditch." Scarcely a train had been over the road in weeks without being thrown off the track. We were nineteen hours going the 200 miles from Quincy to St. Joe. Twelve miles out from the latter we had to wait for the train ahead of us to get back on the rails. I was desperate. Any decent farmer's pigpen would be as clean as that car. There were five or six families, each with half a dozen children, moving to Kansas and Nebraska, who had been shut up there for days. A hovel stood up the bank a little way and several of the men went there and washed their faces. After watching them enjoy this luxury for a while I finally rushed up myself and asked the woman in charge if she would sell me a cup of coffee. She grunted out yes, after some hesitation, and while she was making it, I washed my face and hands. When she handed me my drink she said, "This is no rye; it is real coffee." And so it was and I enjoyed it, brass spoon, thick, dingy, cracked cup and all.

This was Miss Anthony's first visit to Kansas and she found much to interest her in Leavenworth—caravans of emigrants long trains of supplies for the army, troops from the barracks crowds of colored refugees, the many features of frontier life so totally different from all she had seen and known in her eastern home. The prominence of her brother brought many distinguished visitors to his house, she enjoyed the long carriage drives and the days were filled with pleasant duties, so that she writes, "I am afraid I shall get into the business of being comfortable." On her birthday, February 15, the diary shows that she wagered a pair of gloves with the family physician that it would not rain before morning, and on the 16th is recorded: "The bell rang early this morning and a boy left a box containing a pair of gloves with the compliments of the doctor." In March one entry reads: "The new seamstress starts in pretty well but she can not sew nicely enough for the little clothes. We shall have to make those ourselves."

This life of ease proved to be of short duration. Her brother was renominated for mayor and plunged at once into the thick of a political campaign, while Miss Anthony went to the office to help manage his newspaper, limited only by his injunction "not to have it all woman's rights and negro suffrage." The labor, however, which she most enjoyed was among the colored refugees. Soon after the slaves were set free they flocked to Kansas in large numbers, and what should be done with this great body of uneducated, untrained and irresponsible people was a perplexing question. She went into the day schools, Sunday-schools, charitable societies and all organizations for their relief and improvement. The journal shows that four or five days or evenings every week were given to this work and that she formed an equal rights league among them. A colored printer was put into the composing-room, and at once the entire force went on strike. The diary declares "it is a burning, blistering shame," and relates her attempts to secure other work for him. She met at this time Hiram Revels, a colored Methodist preacher, afterwards United States senator from Mississippi.

During these months she was in constant receipt of letters pressing her to return to the East. Phillips said: "Come back, there is work for you here." From Lydia Mott came the pathetic cry: "Our old fraternity is no more; we are divided, bodily and spiritually, and I seem to grow more isolated every day." Pillsbury wrote: "We do not know much now about one another. We called a meeting of the Hovey Committee and only Whipple and I were present. Why have you deserted the field of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost twenty centuries? If you watch our papers you must have observed that with you gone, our forces are scattered until I can almost truly say with him of old, 'I only am left.' It is not for me to decide your field of labor. Kansas needed John Brown and may need you. It is no doubt missionary ground and, wherever you are, I know you will not be idle; but New York is to revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is to make the plea for woman?" Mrs. Stanton insisted that she should not remain buried in Kansas and concluded a long letter:

I hope in a short time to be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready for you when you come East. I long to put my arms around you once more and hear you scold me for my sins and short-comings. Your abuse is sweeter to me than anybody else's praise for, in spite of your severity, your faith and confidence shine through all. O, Susan, you are very dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being from this earth. You are intertwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and all my future plans are based on you as a coadjutor. Yes, our work is one, we are one in aim and sympathy and we should be together. Come home.

Miss Anthony's own heart yearned to return, but the workers were so few in Kansas and so many in the Eastern States. that she scarcely knew where the call of duty was strongest. At the close of the war her mind grasped at once the full import of the momentous questions which would demand settlement and she felt the necessity of placing herself in touch with those who would be most powerful in moulding public sentiment. The threatened division in the Abolitionist ranks and the reported determination of Mr. Garrison to disband the Anti-Slavery Society, filled her with dismay and she sent back the strongest protests she could put into words:

How can any one hold that Congress has no right to demand negro suffrage in the returning rebel States because it is not already established in all the loyal ones? What would have been said of Abolitionists ten or twenty years ago, had they preached to the people that Congress had no right to vote against admitting a new State with slavery, because it was not already abolished in all the old States? It is perfectly astounding, this seeming eagerness of so many of our old friends to cover up and apologize for the glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the manhood of the black race. Well, you will be in New York to witness, perhaps, the disbanding of the Anti-Slavery Society—and I shall be away out here, waiting anxiously to catch the first glimpse of the spirit of the meeting. But Phillips will be glorious and genial to the end. All through this struggle he has stood up against the tide, one of the few to hold the nation to its vital work—its one necessity, moral as military—absolute justice and equality for the black man. I wish every ear in this country might listen to his word.

A letter from Mr. Phillips said: "Thank you for your kind note. I see you understand the lay of the land and no words are necessary between you and me. Your points we have talked over. If Garrison should resign, we incline to Purvis for president for many, many reasons. We (Hovey Committee) shall aid in keeping our Standard floating till the enemy comes down." All the letters received by Miss Anthony during May and June were filled with the story of the dissension in the Anti-Slavery Society.

It is not a part of this work to go into the merits of that discussion. In brief, Mr. Garrison and his followers believed that, with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was forever abolished in the United States and there was no further need of the Anti-Slavery Society which he himself had founded. Phillips and his following held that "no emancipation can be effectual and no freedom real, unless the negro has the ballot and the States are prohibited from enacting laws making any distinction among their citizens on Account of race or color." There were minor differences of opinion respecting men and measures, but the above are the fundamental points which led to the first breach that had occurred for a quarter of a century in the ranks of the great anti-slavery leaders, who had borne a persecution never equalled in the history of our country. It resulted, at the May Anniversary in New York, in Garrison's declining a re-election to the presidency of the society, which he had held for thirty-two years, and in the election of Phillips.

Those most intimately connected with Miss Anthony sustained the position of Mr. Phillips—Mrs. Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Robert Purvis, Charles Remond, Stephen Foster, Lucretia and Lydia Mott, Anna Dickinson, Sarah Pugh—and she herself was his staunchest defender. Believing as strongly as she did that the suffrage is the very foundation of liberty, that without it there can be no real freedom for either man or woman, she could not have done otherwise, and yet, so great was her reverence and affection for Mr. Garrison, it was with the keenest regret she found herself no longer able to follow him. She writes: "I am glad I was spared from witnessing that closing scene. It will be hard beyond expression to leave him out of our councils, but he never will be out of our sympathies. I hope you will refrain from all personalities. Pro-slavery signs are too apparent and too dangerous at this hour for us to stop for personal adjustments. To go forward with the great work pressing upon the society, without turning to the right or the left, is the one wise course."

Parker Pillsbury was made editor of the Standard in place of Oliver Johnson, and was assisted by George W. Smalley, who had married an adopted daughter of Wendell Phillips. Mr. Pillsbury wrote Miss Anthony soon after the anniversary:

We could not see how the colored race were to be risked, shut up in the States with their old masters, whom they had helped to conquer and out of whose defeat their freedom had come; so we voted to keep the machinery in gear until better assurances were given of a free future than we yet possess. We have offended some by our course. I am sorry, but it was Mr. Garrison who taught me to be true to myself. To my mind, suffrage for the negro is now what immediate emancipation was thirty years ago. If we emancipate from slavery and leave the European doctrine of serfdom extant, even in the mildest form, then the colored race, or we, or perhaps both, have another war in store. And so my work is not done till the last black man can declare in the full face of the world, "I am a man and a brother."

In June, as the expected little stranger had arrived safe, Miss Anthony accepted an invitation to deliver the Fourth of July address at Ottumwa, and then went through her inevitable agony whenever she had a speech to prepare. She took the stage for Topeka, finding among her fellow-passengers her relative, Major Scott Anthony, with Mr. Butterfield of the Overland Dispatch, and the long, hot, dusty ride was enlivened by an animated discussion of the political questions of the day. During this drive over the unbroken prairies, she made the prediction that, given a few decades of thrift, they would be dotted with farms, orchards and villages and the State would be a paradise.

Miss Anthony was among the first of the Abolitionists to declare that the negroes must have the suffrage, one of the most unpopular ideas ever broached, and she writes: "As fearless, radical and independent as my brother is, he will not allow my opinions on this subject to go into his paper." At Topeka she spoke to a large audience in the Methodist church on this question. In order to reach Ottumwa she had to ride 125 miles by stage in the heat of July, and her expenses were considerable. No price had been guaranteed for her address, but she learned to her surprise that she was expected to make it a gratuitous offering, as was the custom on account of the poverty of the people. They came from miles around and were enthusiastic over her speech on "President Johnson's Mississippi Reconstruction Proclamation." The Republicans insisted that she should put her notes in shape for publication, but urged her to leave out the paragraph on woman suffrage.[34]

The other speakers were Sidney Clark, M.C., and a professor from Lawrence University. They were entertained by a prominent official who had just built a new house, the upper story of which was unfinished. It was divided into three rooms by hanging up army blankets, and each of the orators was assigned to one of these apartments. Miss Anthony was so exhausted from the long stage-ride, the speaking and the heat, that she scarcely could get ready for bed, but no sooner had she touched the pillow than she was assailed by a species of animals noted for the welcome they extended to travellers in the early history of Kansas. Her dilemma was excruciating. Should she lie still and be eaten alive, or should she get up, strike a light and probably rouse the honorable gentlemen on the other side of the army blankets? A few minutes decided the question; she slipped out of bed, lighted her tallow dip and reconnoitered. Then she blew out her light, and sat by the window till morning.

She spoke at Lawrence in the Unitarian and the Congregational churches, and August 1, the thirty-first anniversary of England's emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, she addressed an immense audience in a grove near Leavenworth. She discussed the changed condition of the colored people and their new rights and duties, and called their attention to the fact that not one of the prominent politicians advertised was there; pointed out that if they possessed the ballot and could vote these men into or out of office, all would be eager for an opportunity to address them; and then drew a parallel between their political condition and that of women. At this time she received a second intimation of what was to come, when prominent Republicans called upon her and insisted that hereafter she should not bring the question of woman's rights into her speeches on behalf of the negro.

A few days afterwards Miss Anthony was seated in her brother's office reading the papers when she learned to her amazement that several resolutions had been offered in the House of Representatives sanctioning disfranchisement on account of sex. Up to this time the Constitution of the United States never had been desecrated by the word "male," and she saw instantly that such action would create a more formidable barrier than any now existing against the enfranchisement of women. She hesitated no longer but started immediately on her homeward journey, stopping in Atchison, where she was the guest of ex-Mayor Crowell. Senator Pomeroy called, accompanied her to church and arranged for her to address the colored people next day. She lectured also in St. Joseph, Mo. At Chillicothe one of the editors sent word that if she would not "lash" him he would print her handbills free of charge. Here she addressed a great crowd of colored people in a tobacco factory. At Macon City she spoke to them in an abandoned barracks, and slept in a slab house. Her night's experience at Ottumwa was repeated here, except that the army of invaders were fleas. The next day she was invited to the Methodist minister's home and his church placed at her disposal, where she addressed a large white audience. Of her speech in St. Louis she wrote:

Sunday afternoon I spoke to the colored people in an old slave church in which priests used to preach "Servants, obey your masters;" and in which slaves never dared breathe aloud their hearts' deepest prayer for freedom. The church was built by actual slaves with money they earned working odd hours allowed them by their masters. The greatest danger for these people now lies in being duped by the priests and Levites who used to pass them by on the other side but who, now that they have become popular prey, wildly run to and fro to do them good—that is, get their money and give themselves easy, fat posts as superintendents, missionaries, teachers, etc. The country is full of these soul-sharks, men who haven't had brains enough to find pulpits or places in the free States.

As Miss Anthony took the train for Chicago, a woman-thief picked her pocket but she caught her and, without any appeal to the police, compelled her to deliver up the stolen goods. At Chicago she lectured several times, visited the Freedmen's Commission, heard General Howard, called on General Sherman, went to the board of trade, where she was greatly shocked at the roaring of the "bulls and bears," and had pleasant visits with relatives in the city and adjacent towns, speaking at a number of these places. She lectured at Battle Creek and Ann Arbor, arriving at Rochester September 23. Pausing only for a brief visit, she went on to New York to fulfill the purpose which brought her eastward. She stopped at Auburn to counsel with Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Worden, but found both very dubious about reviving interest in woman's rights at this critical moment. After a night of mapping out the campaign with Mrs. Stanton, she started out bright and early the next morning on that mission which she was to follow faithfully and steadfastly, without cessation or turning aside, for the next thirty years—to compel the Constitution of the United States to recognize the political rights of woman! The days were spent in hunting up old friends and supporters of the years before the war and enlisting their sympathies in the great work now at hand; and the evenings were occupied with Mrs. Stanton in preparing an appeal and a form of petition praying Congress to confer the suffrage on women.[35] This was the first demand ever made for Congressional action on this question. The Fourteenth Amendment, as proposed, contained in Section 2, to which the women objected, the word "male" three times, and read as follows:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for president and vice-president of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

If it had been adopted without this word "male," all women would have been virtually enfranchised, as men would have let women vote rather than have them counted out of the basis of representation. Thaddeus Stevens made a vigorous attempt to have women included in the provisions of this amendment.

[Autograph: Thaddeus Stevens]

A letter written by Mrs. Stanton to Martha Wright is a sample of hundreds which were sent to friends in all parts of the country:

I enclose you the proof of the memorial which Susan and I have just been getting up for Congress. I have been writing to Mr. Garrison to make some mention of us, "the only disfranchised class now remaining," in his last Liberator. It is fitting that we should be recognized in his valedictory. We have now boosted the negro over our own heads, and we had better begin to remember that self-preservation is the first law of nature. Will you see if you can get our petition in your city and county papers? Sign it yourself and send it to your representatives in Senate and Congress, and then try to galvanize the women of your district into life. Some say: "Be still; wait; this is the negro's hour." We believe this is the hour for everybody to do the best thing for reconstruction.

Miss Anthony found the leaders among the men so absorbed with their interest in the male negro that they had given little thought to the suffrage as related to women; but the Hovey Committee appropriated $500 to begin the petition work. She went to Concord and held a parlor meeting attended by Emerson, Alcott, Sanborn and other sages of that intellectual center, stating what the women desired to accomplish. After she finished, Emerson was appealed to for an opinion but said: "Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide for me in practical matters." Mrs. Emerson replied without hesitation that she fully agreed with Miss Anthony in regard to the necessity for petitioning Congress at once to enfranchise women, either before this great body of negroes was invested with the ballot or at the same time. Mr. Emerson and the other gentlemen then assured her of their sympathy and support.

[Autograph: R. Waldo Emerson]

She presented her claims at the annual anti-slavery meeting in Westchester and at many other gatherings. She went also to Philadelphia to visit James and Lucretia Mott and interest Mary Grew and Sarah Pugh and all the friends in that locality; then back to New York with tireless energy and unflagging zeal. She wrote articles for the Anti-Slavery Standard, sent out petitions and left no stone unturned to accomplish her purpose. The diary shows the days to have been well filled:

Went to Tilton's office to express regrets at not being able to attend their tin wedding. He read us his editorial on Seward and Beecher. Splendid!... Went to hear Beecher, morning and evening. There is no one like him.... Spent the day at Mrs. Tilton's and went with her to Mrs. Bowen's.... Listened to O.B. Frothingham, "Justice the Mother of Wisdom."... Put some new buttons on my cloak. This is its third winter.... Excellent audience in Friends' meeting house, at Milton-on-the-Hudson. Visited the grave of Eliza W. Farnham.... Went over to New Jersey to confer with Lucy Stone and Antoinette Blackwell.... Called at Dr. Cheever's, and also had an interview with Robert Dale Owen.... Went to Worcester to see Abby Kelly Foster and from there to Boston.... Found Dr. Harriot K. Hunt ready for woman suffrage work. Took dinner at Garrison's. Saw Whipple and May, then went to Wendell Phillips'.... Spent the day with Caroline M. Severance, at West Newton. She is earnest in the cause of women.... Returned to New York and commenced work in earnest. Spent nearly all the Christmas holidays addressing and sending off petitions.

Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton entered heartily into the plans of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Mr. Tilton proposed that they should form a National Equal Rights Association, demanding suffrage for negroes and for women, that Mr. Phillips should be its president, the Anti-Slavery Standard its official organ; and Mr. Beecher agreed to lecture in behalf of this new movement. Mr. Tilton came out with a strong editorial in the Independent, advocating suffrage for women and paying a beautiful tribute to the efficient services in the past of those who were now demanding recognition of their political rights:

A LAW AGAINST WOMEN.—The spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing this creature's mossy legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington are seeking to fix these upon the Federal Constitution, to make that instrument walk backward in like style. For instance, the Constitution has never laid any legal disabilities upon woman. Whatever denials of rights it formerly made to our slaves, it denied nothing to our wives and daughters. The legal rights of an American woman—for instance, her right to her own property, as against a squandering husband; or her right to her own children as against a malicious father—have grown, year by year, into a more generous and just statement in American laws. This beautiful result is owing in great measure to the persistent efforts of many noble women who, for years past, both publicly and privately, by pen and speech, have appealed to legislative committees and to the whole community for an enlargement of the legal and civil status of their fellow-countrywomen. Signal, honorable and beneficent have been the works and words of Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Kelly Foster, Frances D. Gage, Lucy Stone, Caroline H. Ball, Antoinette Blackwell, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and many others. Not in all the land lives a poor woman or a widow who does not owe some portion of her present safety under the law to the brave exertions of these faithful laborers.

All forward-looking minds know that, sooner or later, the chief public question in this country will be woman's claim to the ballot. The Federal Constitution, as it now stands, leaves this question an open one for the several States to settle as they choose. Two bills, however, now lie before Congress proposing to array the fundamental law of the land against the multitude of American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a whole sex. To this injustice we object totally! Such an amendment is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted on the most tender and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics. If the present Congress is not called to legislate for the rights of women, let it not legislate against them. Americans now live who shall not go down into the grave till they have left behind them a republican government; and no republic is republican that denies to half its citizens those rights which the Declaration of Independence and a true Christian democracy make equal to all. Meanwhile, let us break the legs of the spider-crab.

[Footnote 34: See Appendix for full speech.]

[Footnote 35: As the question of suffrage is now agitating the public mind, it is the hour for woman to make her demand. Propositions already have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as to exclude women from a voice in the government. As this would be to turn the wheels of legislation backward, let the women of the nation now unitedly protest against such a desecration of the Constitution, and petition for that right which is at the foundation of all government, the right of representation. Send your petition when signed to your representative in Congress, at your earliest convenience.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, LUCY STONE.]



CHAPTER XVI.

THE NEGRO'S HOUR.

1866.

The reconstruction period of our government was no less trying a time than the four years of warfare which preceded it. The Union had been preserved but the disorganization of the Southern States was complete. Lincoln, whose cool judgment, restraining wisdom and remarkable genius for understanding and persuading men never had been more needed, was dead by the hand of an assassin. In his place was a man, rash, headlong, aggressive, stubborn, distrusted by the party which had placed him in power. This chief executive had to deal not only with the great, perplexing questions which always follow upon the close of a war, but with these rendered still more difficult by the great mass of bewildered and helpless negroes, ignorant of how to care for themselves, with no further claims upon their former owners, and yet destined to live among them. The immense Republican majority in Congress found itself opposed by a President, southern in birth and sympathy and an uncompromising believer in State Rights.

The southern legislatures, while accepting the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery, passed various laws whose effect could not be other than to keep the negro in a condition of "involuntary servitude." To the South these measures seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence to retain at least temporary control of a race unfitted for a wise use of liberty; to the North they appeared a determination to evade the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and Congress decided upon more radical measures. One wing of the old Abolitionists, under the leadership of Phillips, had steadfastly insisted that there could be no real freedom without the ballot. Several attempts had been made to secure congressional action for the enfranchisement of the negro, which the majority of Republicans had now come to see was essential for his protection, and these resulted finally in the submission of the Fourteenth Amendment. Charles Sumner stated that he covered nineteen pages of foolscap in his effort so to formulate it as to omit the word "male" and, at the same time, secure the ballot for the negro.

When Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton sounded the alarm, the old leaders in the movement for woman's rights came at once to their aid, but they were soon to meet with an unexpected and serious disappointment. In January Miss Anthony went to the anti-slavery meeting at Boston, full of the new idea of consolidating the old Anti-Slavery and the Woman's Rights Societies under one name, that of the Equal Rights Association. She was warmly supported by Tilton, Lucy Stone, Powell and others, but to their amazement they found Mr. Phillips very cool and discouraging. He said this could be done only by amending the constitution of the Anti-Slavery Society, which required three months' notice. Still they did not dream of his opposing the proposition and so deputized Mr. Powell to give the formal notice, in order that it might be acted upon at the coming May Anniversary. On the way back the New York delegation discussed this new plan enthusiastically, and Miss Anthony wrote home that there was a strong wish in the society to widen its object so as to include universal suffrage, believing this to be the case. The necessary steps at once were taken for calling a national woman's rights meeting to convene in New York the same week as the Anti-Slavery Anniversary, and the following call was issued setting forth its principal objects:

Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the deep gulf between our broad theory and our partial legislation; do not see that our government for the last century has been but a repetition of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence the failure is not in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our part to apply it. The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system to reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis which never yet has been tried—Equal Rights to All?

From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we have not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for, while our representatives at Washington are discussing the right of suffrage for the black man as the only protection to life, liberty and happiness, they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman, by proposing to introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution. In securing suffrage but to another shade of manhood, while disfranchising 15,000,000 women, we come not one line nearer the republican idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman and dignity on her brow, more unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an American Congress pay less honor to the daughter of a President than a British Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our petitions command as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as a speech of Victoria in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that here all men and women are nobles—all heirs apparent to the throne? The fact that this backward legislation has roused so little thought or protest from the women of the country but proves what some of our ablest thinkers already have declared, that the greatest barrier to a government of equality is the aristocracy of its women; for while woman holds an ideal position above man and the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry and distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation never can realize the divine idea of equality.

To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the same upheavings we now see in the state; for while our egotism, selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose life was a sacrifice, while at the family altar we are taught to worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is vain to talk of a republican government. The fair fruits of liberty, equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud till cherished in the heart of woman. At this hour the nation needs the highest thought and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery of its life; and woman needs a broader, deeper education such as a pure religion and lofty patriotism alone can give. From the baptism of this second Revolution should she not rise up with new strength and dignity, clothed in all those "rights, privileges and immunities" which shall best enable her to fulfill her highest duties to humanity, her country, her family and herself?

On behalf of the National Woman's Rights Central Committee,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President; SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Secretary.

Letters both encouraging and discouraging were received. Robert Purvis, one of the most elegant and scholarly colored men our country has known, whose father was a Scotchman and mother a West Indian with no slave blood, sent this noble response: "....I can not agree that this or any hour is 'especially the negro's.' I am an anti-slavery man because I hate tyranny and in my nature revolt against oppression, whatever its form or character. As an Abolitionist, therefore, I am for the equal rights movement, and as one of the confessedly oppressed race, how could I be otherwise? With what grace could I ask the women of this country to labor for my enfranchisement, and at the same time be unwilling to put forth a hand to remove the tyranny, in some respects greater, to which they are subjected? Again wishing you a successful meeting, I am very gratefully yours."

[Autograph: Robert Purvis]

Anna Dickinson, who had come upon the scene of action since the last woman's rights convention five years before, wrote Miss Anthony that she should be present but was not sure that she was yet ready to speak: "I'm a great deal of a Quaker—I don't like to take up any work till I feel called to it. My personal interest is perhaps stronger in that of which thee writes me than in any other, but my hands are so full just now. I see what I shall do in the future, and I hope the near future. Wait for me a little—forbear, and I honestly believe I'll do thee some good and faithful service; I don't mean wait for me, but be patient with me. I write this out of my large love for and confidence in thee. I will talk to thee more of it by end of the month when I see thee in Boston and put my mite in thy hands; till then believe me, dear friend, affectionately and truly thine."

At the business meeting of the anti-slavery convention the proposition was made by the National Woman's Rights Committee that, as all there was left for the society to do was to secure suffrage for the negro, and as the woman's society also was working for universal suffrage, they should merge the two into one, and in that way the same conventions, appeals, petitions, etc., would answer for both. To this Mr. Phillips vigorously objected because the necessary three months' notice had not been given! As Mr. Powell had been delegated the previous January to give this, there could be no other conclusion than that he had refrained from doing so. There was considerable discussion on the question but, as president of the Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Phillips' influence was supreme and the coalition was declined.

The Woman's Rights Convention met in Dr. Cheever's church, May 10, 1866, with a large audience present. It was their first meeting since before the war, and while it had many elements of gladness, yet it was not unmixed with sorrow. Mr. Garrison was absent, the first rift had been made in the love and gratitude in which for many years Mr. Phillips had been held, and a vague feeling of distrust and alarm was beginning to creep over the women, lest, after all these years of patient work, they were again to be sacrificed.

Miss Anthony presented a ringing set of resolutions, and splendid addresses were given by Mrs. Stanton, Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher. Mr. Phillips then made a long and eloquent speech which was rapturously received by the audience, but which filled the leaders with sadness, because of the skillful evasion of the disputed question which they never had expected from this staunch friend. Miss Anthony read an address to Congress[36] which was adopted with unanimous approval. At the close of the convention a business session was held, at which she offered a resolution declaring that, since by the act of emancipation and the Civil Rights Bill, the negro and woman now had the same civil and political status, alike needing only the ballot, therefore the time had come for an organization which should demand universal suffrage; and that hereafter their society should be known as the American Equal Rights Association. She supported this by an able speech in which she said:

For twenty years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right of representation in the government. Each successive year after 1848, conventions were held in different States, until the beginning of the war. Up to this hour we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; but now, by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation in a republican form of government. There is, there can be, but one true basis, viz.: that taxation and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go beyond woman—it must extend to the farthest limit of the principle of the "consent of the governed," as the only authorized or just government. We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights platform and make it in name what it ever has been in spirit, a human rights platform. As women we can no longer claim for ourselves what we do not for others, nor can we work in two separate movements to get the ballot for the two disfranchised classes, negroes and women, since to do so must be at double cost of time, energy and money.... Therefore, that we may henceforth concentrate all our forces for the practical application of our one grand, distinctive, national idea—universal suffrage—I hope we will unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus resolving ourselves into the American Equal Eights Association.

Notwithstanding the rebuff they had received from the Anti-Slavery Society, this resolution was unanimously adopted and the Woman's Rights Society which had existed practically for sixteen years was merged into the American Equal Rights Association to work for universal suffrage. A constitution was adopted and officers chosen.[37] Mrs. Stanton thus describes the last moments of the convention: "As Lucretia Mott uttered her few parting words of benediction, the fading sunlight through the stained windows falling upon her pure face, a celestial glory seemed about her, a sweet and peaceful influence pervaded every heart, and all responded to Theodore Tilton when he said this closing meeting was one of the most beautiful, delightful and memorable which any of its participants ever enjoyed."

A short time thereafter Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Tilton were in the Standard office discussing the work. Mr. Phillips argued that the time was ripe for striking the word "white" out of the New York constitution, at its coming convention, but not for striking out "male." Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction to all he had so warmly advocated only a few weeks before, and said what the women should do was to canvass the State with speeches and petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the women to come afterward, presumably twenty years later, when there would be another revision of the constitution. Mrs. Stanton, entirely overcome by the eloquence of these two gifted men, acquiesced in all they said; but Miss Anthony, who never could be swerved from her standard by any sophistry or blandishments, was highly indignant and declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not for woman. After Phillips had left, she overheard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, "What does ail Susan? She acts like one possessed." Mrs. Stanton replied, "I can not imagine; I never before saw her so unreasonable and absolutely rude."

She was obliged to leave immediately to keep an engagement, but as soon as she was at liberty went straight to Mrs. Stanton's home, and found her walking up and down the long parlors, wringing her hands. She threw her arms around Miss Anthony, exclaiming: "I never was so glad to see you. Do tell me what is the matter with me? I feel as if I had been scourged from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet!" They sat down together and went over the whole conversation, and she then saw and felt most keenly the insult and degradation concealed in the proposition of the two men, and agreed with Miss Anthony that she would sacrifice her life before she would accept it.

This incident illustrates one marked difference in these two women, each so strong in her own characteristics. Mrs. Stanton in the presence of brilliant intellect and elegant culture at times would seem to be entirely psychologized, even though the arguments used were in direct conflict with her own instincts and judgment. On the contrary, no eloquence, no persuasiveness of manner, no magnetic power could induce Miss Anthony for one moment to abandon her convictions of truth and justice. Mrs. Stanton's disposition was one of extreme suavity which loved to please, while Miss Anthony's nature was rugged, unflinching and stern in upholding the right without regard to expediency.

On May 31 both the Anti-Slavery Society and the Equal Rights Association held large meetings in Boston. The latter, in conformity with its new name, announced that "any member of the audience, man or woman, was entitled to speak on the topics under debate and would be made welcome." This had been the rule always in the old woman's rights conventions, but it was reaffirmed now in order to show the broad and catholic spirit of the new organization. At this Boston meeting Anna Dickinson made her first speech for the rights of woman. It was one of those bursts of inspiration which no pen can reproduce, and was received by the audience with cheer upon cheer. She gave $100 to the cause, assuring them of her services henceforth, and Miss Anthony wrote of her, "She is sound to the heart's core."

The great work of rolling up petitions, not only to Congress but to the New York Constitutional Convention, was then commenced. The executive board of the Standard offered to lease to the Equal Rights Association office-room and a certain amount of space in the paper. These, however, were put at such a price and placed under such restrictions as it was thought unwise to accept. All the matter submitted would be subject to "editorial revision," even though the association paid for the space, and as Mr. Pillsbury had resigned the editorship and Mr. Powell had taken it, they decided they could not trust the "editorial revision." The women had done so vast an amount of gratuitous work for the Standard in past years, that they felt themselves entitled to more liberal treatment. The editor had written, only a short time before, of the excellent service Miss Anthony had rendered in straightening out the accounts. She also had secured numerous subscribers, sending in as many as thirty at a time from some of her meetings.

For the purpose of arousing public interest in the approaching New York Constitutional Convention, an equal rights meeting was held at Albany, in Tweddle Hall, November 21. To make this a success Miss Anthony spent many weeks of hard work. The diary notes that, among other things, she directed and sent out 1200 complimentary tickets.[38] At this Albany convention political differences began to appear. Mrs. Stanton complimented the Democrats for the assistance they had rendered; Frederick Douglass objected to their receiving any credit, branding their advocacy as a trick of the enemy, and there were frequent sharp encounters. Miss Anthony made an extended speech, of which there is but this newspaper report:

She referred to the assertion of Horace Greeley, that while women had the abstract right to suffrage the great majority of them did not wish it. So they told us when we said the negro ought to be free; he did not wish it; he was contented and happy. As we replied relative to the negro, so do we regarding women. If they do not desire the right to vote, it is an evidence of the depth to which they have been degraded by its deprivation. A woman clerk, in the New York Mercantile Library, told her that during the war the salaries of the male clerks all had been raised, but not those of the women, and a man's, who held an inferior position, had been increased to $300 more than her own. The clerk said that if she had been a voter she did not believe such injustice would have been perpetrated. In Rochester the salaries of the male teachers in the public schools were raised $100 per annum while the small salaries of the women were still further reduced. In Auburn $200 additional compensation was voted to the male teachers and $25 to the women, who thereupon held a meeting and passed an ironical resolution thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult, and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can protect herself.

A form of petition was approved asking that women might be members of the coming Constitutional Convention and vote on the new constitution. Respectful reports were made by the New York papers with the exception of the World, which said in a long and abusive article:

Altogether the ablest, most dignified and best-balanced man in the body is Frederick Douglass, and there is a deep feeling for him for United States senator in spite of the drift of the convention, which is evidently in favor of Susan B. Anthony; notwithstanding which Elizabeth Cady Stanton is likewise a candidate with considerable strength, favoring as she does the Copperheads, the Democratic party and other dead and buried remains of alleged disloyalty. Susan is lean, cadaverous and intellectual, with the proportions of a file and the voice of a hurdy-gurdy. She is the favorite of the convention. Mrs. Stanton is of intellectual stock, impressive in manner and disposed to henpeck the convention which of course calls out resistance and much cackling.... Susan has a controlling advantage over her in the fact that she is unencumbered with a husband. As male members of Congress rarely have wives in Washington, so female members will be expected to be without husbands at the capital....

Parker Pillsbury, one of the notabilities of the body, is a good-looking white man naturally, but has a cowed and sneakish expression stealing over him, as though he regretted he had not been born a nigger or one of these females.... Lucy Stone, the president of the convention, is what the law terms a "spinster." She is a sad old girl, presides with timidity and hesitation, is wheezy and nasal in her pronunciation and wholly without dignity or command.... Mummified and fossilated females, void of domestic duties, habits and natural affections; crack-brained, rheumatic, dyspeptic, henpecked men, vainly striving to achieve the liberty of opening their heads in presence of their wives; self-educated, oily-faced, insolent, gabbling negroes, and Theodore Tilton, make up the less than a hundred members of this caravan, called, by themselves, the American Equal Rights Association.

On December 6 and 7 a mass meeting was held in Cooper Institute, Miss Anthony presiding. There were the usual effective speeches and large and appreciative audiences present at every session. From New York the speakers went at once to Rochester and held a two days' convention there. The forces then divided and, under the management of Miss Anthony, held meetings in a large number of the towns of western and central New York, to arouse public sentiment in favor of giving women a representation at the Constitutional Convention.

Meanwhile the petitions asking Congress to include women in the proposed Fourteenth Amendment were rapidly pushed, and as soon as ten or twelve thousand names were secured they were sent at once to Washington, as the resolution was then under discussion. And here came the revelation which had been for some time foreshadowed—the Republicans refused to champion this cause! From the founding of the Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, women had been always its most loyal supporters, bearing their share of the odium and persecution of early days. When the Republican party was formed, the leading women of the country had allied themselves with it and given faithful service during the long, dark years which followed. All the Abolitionists and prominent Republicans had upheld the principle of equal rights to all, and now, when the test came, they refused to recognize the claims of woman! Some of the senators and representatives declined to present the petitions sent from their own districts; others offered them merely as petitions for "universal suffrage," carefully omitting the word "woman" and trusting that it would be inferred they meant suffrage for the negro men.

Even Charles Sumner, who so many times had acknowledged his indebtedness to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and the other women who were now asking for their rights, presented a petition from Massachusetts, headed by Lydia Maria Child, with the declaration that he did it under protest and that it was "most inopportune." Mrs. Child was the first and one of the ablest editors of the Anti-Slavery Standard, and had battled long and earnestly for the freedom of the slave at the cost of her literary popularity; but now when she asked that she might receive the rights of citizenship at least at the same time they were conferred upon the freedman, her plea was declared "most inopportune."

The Democrats in Congress, who never had favored or assisted in any way the so-called woman's rights doctrines, seized upon this opportunity to harass the Republicans and defeat negro suffrage. They not only presented the women's petitions but made long and eloquent speeches in their favor, using with telling force against the Republicans their own oft-repeated arguments for equal rights to all. In the midst of this agitation, the District of Columbia Suffrage Bill being under discussion, Edgar Cowan, a Pennsylvania Democrat, moved to strike out the word "male," and thus precipitated a debate which occupied three entire days in the Senate. Among the Republicans Benjamin F. Wade and B. Gratz Brown made splendid arguments for woman suffrage and announced their votes in favor of the measure. Senator Wilson, from Massachusetts, declared himself ready at any and all times to vote for a separate bill enfranchising women, but opposed to connecting it with negro suffrage. The vote in the Senate to strike the word "male" from the proposed bill resulted: yeas, 9; nays, 47; in the House, yeas, 49; nays, 74—68 not voting. A number of members in both Houses who believed in woman suffrage voted "no" because they preferred to sacrifice the women rather than the negroes.[39]

[Autograph: B.F. Wade]

[Autograph: With the respects of B. Gratz Brown]

The Republican press was equally hostile to the proposition to enfranchise women. Mr. Greeley, who in times past had been so staunch a supporter of woman's rights, now said in the New York Tribune:

A CRY FROM THE FEMALES,—.... Our heart warms with pity towards these unfortunate creatures. We fancy that we can see them, deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her eye! There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern monarch, that his wife was sovereign of the empire, because she ruled his little ones and his little ones ruled him. The sure panacea for such ills as the Massachusetts petitioners complain of, is a wicker-work cradle and a dimple-cheeked baby.

The New York Post, which under Mr. Bryant's editorship had favored the enfranchisement of women, also took ground against it now, and this was the attitude of Republican papers in all parts of the country. The Democratic press was opposed, except when it could make capital against the Republicans by espousing it.

In November Miss Anthony went to a great anti-slavery meeting in Philadelphia. Between the two sessions, Lucretia Mott invited about twenty of the leading men and women to lunch with her. At her request Miss Anthony acted as spokesman and, in behalf of the women, begged Mr. Phillips to reconsider his position and make the woman's and the negro's cause identical, but here, in the presence of the women who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in all his hard-fought battles of the last twenty years, he again refused, declaring that their time had not yet come. Miss Anthony sent the most impassioned appeals to the Joint Committee of Fifteen, with Thaddeus Stevens as chairman, which had charge of the congressional policy on reconstruction, urging that if they could not report favorably on the petitions, at least they would not interpose any new barrier against woman's right to the ballot; but, although Mr. Stevens had ever been friendly to the claims of women, he refused to recognize them now. Everywhere they were met by the cry, "This is the negro's hour!"

It was a long time before the women could believe that the Republicans and Abolitionists, who had advocated their cause for years, would forsake them at this critical moment. The letters written during this period showed the agony of spirit they endured as they beheld one after another repudiating their demands and setting them aside in favor of the negro. Not only did the men thus abandon the cause of equal rights but, by their specious arguments, they persuaded many of the women that it was their duty to sacrifice their own claims and devote themselves to securing suffrage for the colored men. This indignant letter from Mrs. Stanton to one of the "old guard," who at first declined to circulate petitions, will serve as an example of many which were sent to the women:

I have just read your letter, and it would have been a wet blanket to Susan and me were we not sure that we are right. With three bills before Congress to exclude us from all hope of representation in the future, I thank God that two women of the nation felt the insult and decided to rouse the rest to use the only right we have in the government—the right of petition. If the petition goes with our names alone, ours be the glory, and the disgrace to all the rest! We have sent out 1,000 franked by Representative James Brooks, of the New York Express, and if they come back to us empty, Susan and I will sign all of them, that every Democratic member may have one to shame those hypocritical Republicans. When your granddaughters hear that against such insults you made no protest, they will blush for their ancestry.

This letter from Lucretia Mott shows that some men remained true to the woman's cause: "My husband and myself cordially hail this movement. The negro's hour came with his emancipation from cruel bondage. He now has advocates not a few for his right to the ballot. Intelligent as these are, they must see that this right can not be consistently withheld from women. We pledge $50 toward the necessary funds." At this time Miss Anthony in a strong and earnest letter showed the injustice of the Standard's behavior:

How I do wish the good old Standard would preach the whole gospel of the whole loaf of republicanism; but I am sorry to say the present indications are that it will extend even less favor to us than ever before. I gather this from Mr. Powell's announcement to me last week that henceforth, if I were not going to give my personal efforts to the Standard, he should not publish notices of our meetings except at "full advertising rates." I was not a little startled but answered: "Of course I shall say the Standard is the truest and best paper for negro suffrage; but I can not say that it is so for woman suffrage." He said he saw this and hereafter we must pay for all notices.



Now, I do complain of this and with just cause, so long as $2,000 of the sainted Hovey's money are sunk annually in the struggle to keep the Standard afloat, while Mr. Hovey's will expressly says: "In case chattel slavery should be abolished before the expenditure of the full amount, the residue shall be applied toward securing woman's rights," etc. Mr. Pillsbury told the Hovey Committee last winter, after abolition was proclaimed, that he could not in conscience accept his salary from them as editor of the Standard for another year unless it should advocate woman's claims equally with those of the negro.

In her diary she writes: "Even Charles Sumner bends to the spirit of compromise and presents a constitutional amendment which concedes the right to disfranchise law-abiding, tax-paying citizens." Robert Purvis again expressed his cordial sympathy: "I am heartily with you in the view 'that the reconstruction of the Union is a work of greater importance than the restoration of the rebel States;' and that it should be in accordance with the true republican idea of the personal rights of all our citizens, without regard to sex or color. If the settlement of this question upon the comprehensive basis of equal rights and impartial justice to all should require the postponement of the enfranchisement of the colored man, I am willing for the delay, though it should take a decade of years to 'fight it out on that line.'" Mr. Purvis frequently said in the debates of those days that he would rather his son never should be enfranchised than that his daughter never should be, as she bore the double disability of sex and color and, by every principle of justice, should be the first to be protected.

As the struggle for the enfranchisement of the negro grew more intense, and the entire burden of it fell upon the Republican party, its members became more and more insistent that the women should not jeopardize the claims of the colored man by pressing their own. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and a few others of the stronger and more independent women declared they would not suffer in silence the injustice and insult of having this great body of ignorant men granted the political rights which were denied intelligent women; nor would they submit without protest to having a million ballots added to the mass which already were sure to be cast against the enfranchisement of women if ever the question came to a popular vote. As a result of their stand for justice, they found themselves utterly deserted by all the great leaders with whom they had labored so earnestly and harmoniously for many years—Garrison, Phillips, Greeley, Curtis, Tilton, Higginson, Douglass, Gerrit Smith. Of all the old Abolitionists only four—Samuel J. May, Robert Purvis, Parker Pillsbury and Stephen S. Foster—remained loyal to their standard. There was not one of the men repudiating them who did not believe thoroughly in the principle of woman's full right to the ballot. The women simply were sacrificed to political expediency; set aside without a moment's hesitation in obedience to the party shibboleth. "This is the negro's hour!"

[Footnote 36: See Appendix for this address.]

[Footnote 37: 'WHEREAS, by the war, society is once more resolved into its original elements, and in the reconstruction of our government we again stand face to face with the broad question of natural rights, all associations based on special claims for special classes are too narrow and partial for the hour; therefore, from the baptism of a second Revolution, purified and exalted by suffering, seeing with a holier vision that the peace, prosperity and perpetuity of the republic rest on Equal Rights to All, we, today assembled in our Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, bury the woman in the citizen, and our organization in that of the American Equal Rights Association.

President, Lucretia Mott; vice-presidents, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodore Tilton, Frederick Douglass, Josephine S. Griffing, Frances D. Gage, Robert Purvis, Martha C. Wright, Rebecca W. Mott; corresponding secretaries, Susan B. Anthony, Caroline M. Severance, Mattie Griffith; treasurer, Ludlow Patton; recording secretary, Henry B. Blackwell.]

[Footnote 38: Mr. Beecher was invited to one of the preliminary meetings held during the summer and thus replied: "I can not come to Syracuse, much as I should like to, for I am, from the middle of August, a victim of ophthalmic catarrh, often called hay-fever or hay cold, which unfits me for any serious duty except that of sneezing and crying. That which the prophet longed for—that his eyes might become a fountain of tears—I have, unlonged for, and I am persuaded that Jeremiah would never have asked for it a second time, if he had but once tried it. The visit to Gerrit Smith's is tempting but at this, like many another good thing, I look and pass on."]

[Footnote 39: See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II; p. 103.]



CHAPTER XVII.

CAMPAIGNS IN NEW YORK AND KANSAS.

1867.

The first three months of 1867 were spent by Miss Anthony and a corps of speakers in a series of conventions throughout the State of New York in order to secure for women a representation in the Constitutional Convention. The history of these was that of many which had preceded them, large crowds and much enthusiasm in some places, small audiences and chilling receptions at others. The press comments were generally fair, but occasionally there was a weak attempt at wit or satire. For instance, the editor of the Buffalo Commercial thus replied through his columns to a polite note from Miss Anthony enclosing an advertisement of the convention and requesting that the blank space left be filled with the names of places where tickets usually were sold, the bill to be sent to her:

By reference to the notice which we publish elsewhere, it will be seen that we have complied with the request of Susan, except in giving the names of places where tickets are to be had. "The bars of the principal hotels" suggested itself; but then it occurred to us that perhaps some of our strong-minded female fellow-citizens might not like to go to these places for cards of admission. Then we thought of inserting "for freight or passage apply to the captain on board;" but we did not know whether Susan or Elizabeth was captain, and a row might have resulted, in which case the former would probably become "black-eyed Susan." We finally concluded not to meddle with the matter but to let Susan and Elizabeth do as the man insisted upon doing who enacted the part of the king in the play, and who profanely declared that as he was king, he would die just where he d—— pleased. The girls can sell tickets just where "they've a mind ter." We may not be able to give the proposed meeting "frequent editorial notice;" still the probabilities are that we shall allude to it if we live and do well, and we shan't charge Susan a cent for our services. We would not have it said, nor would we have you, "O Susan, Susan, lovely dear," imagine that we are ag'in "the one true basis of a genuine republic."

And yet, after all this, the freedom-loving General Rufus Saxton had the courage to preside at the meeting and introduce the speakers. He subsequently wrote: "I pray that God will bless your noble work and that, sooner than you think, woman shall be admitted to her proper place, where God intended she should be, and to exclude her from which must, like any other great wrong, bring misery and sorrow." The Troy Times said:

The last time we heard Miss Anthony speak was in 1861, shortly after the election of Lincoln when, it will be remembered, she was mobbed from city to city. Since then time and the various undertakings in which she has engaged have apparently had no effect upon her, unless to render her more eloquent and more sanguine of the ultimate righting of all wrongs, and to inspire additional enthusiasm for a cause to which she has clung with a perseverance deserving admiration. She is very choice in the selection of words and phrases, speaks in an earnest, attractive monotone, and really made one of the most eloquent and sensible speeches for female suffrage to which we ever listened.

At Fairfield, Herkimer Co., Miss Anthony spoke in the presence of a large number of students from the academy and, at the close of her address, there were vigorous calls for the wife of the principal, who was known to be opposed to any phase of so-called woman's rights. She finally responded and, in the course of her remarks, said that when she was a teacher she used to believe that women should receive the same salary as men, but since she had married and realized the responsibilities of a man of family, she had been converted to the belief that men should receive more than women. Miss Anthony at once retorted: "It would seem then, that so long as you were earning your own living you wanted a good salary, but so soon as you give your services to a husband, you want him to receive the value of both your work and his own, regardless of those women who still have to support themselves and very often a family." The fact that the lady was her hostess did not save her from this merited rebuke, which was heartily appreciated and enjoyed by the students.

In these tours the burden of the preliminary arrangements always was assumed by Miss Anthony. When Mrs. Stanton and she reached a place where a meeting was to be held, the former would go at once to bed, while the latter rushed to the newspaper offices to look after the advertising, then to the hall to see that all was in readiness, and usually conducted the afternoon session alone. In the evening Mrs. Stanton would appear, rested and radiant, and read a carefully written address, while Miss Anthony, exhausted and having had no time to prepare a speech, would make a few impromptu remarks as best she could. Then the papers would comment on the difference between the beautiful and amiable Mrs. Stanton and the aggressive and jaded Miss Anthony, and attribute it to the fact that one was a wife and the other a spinster.[40]

At Albany Miss Anthony arranged with Charles J. Folger, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, for an address by Mrs. Stanton, which was given January 13, 1867, before the joint committees, in the Assembly chamber, crowded with men and women. She based her claim on the assumption that when a new constitution is demanded, the State is resolved into its original elements and all the people have a right to a voice in its reconstruction, supporting her position by an imposing array of legal authorities. Of the discussion by the legislators, which followed the address, Mr. Pillsbury wrote to the Hallowells: "Their arguments against universal suffrage Susan could have extinguished with her thimble."

While Miss Anthony was in Albany she learned that a member from New York City had presented a bill to license houses of ill-repute, and she protested to Judge Folger. He told her that this was a subject which could not be publicly discussed, especially by women. She replied that if there were any attempt to pass the bill she would arouse the women and it should be discussed from one end of the State to the other. The bill never was taken up.

In answer to an invitation to be present at Albany, Mr. Beecher sent his regrets as follows:

I should certainly come and contribute my share of influence if I were not tied hand and foot. I am to preside and speak on Wednesday night in my own church; on Thursday I preside and introduce a lecturer at the Academy of Music, in Brooklyn; on Friday, at Cooper Institute, I have a speech to make for the starving people of the South; and on Saturday, at the same place, a speech for the Cretans. These are but the punctuations of my main business, which, just now, is to write a novel for Bonner, at which I am working every forenoon. I have also a matter of two sermons every week to prepare. I write these details, because our friend Studwell intimates to me that you feel I do not care to be identified with this movement in such a way as to take the unpopularity of the women chiefly engaged in it. I should be unwilling to have you think so. I have never belonged even to an anti-slavery society, Christian or heathen. I am willing to take my stand with anybody on great issues or objects, but in regard to the organizations and instruments by which to attain the end, I have always let others work their way and I mine. I think there is a touch of wildness in my blood (some of my ancestors must have nursed an Indian breast) which is impatient of the harness and so I have always worked on my own hook. I am surprised to see how rapidly the thoughts of intelligent men and women are ameliorating on this question. It needs only that women should have a conscience educated to this duty of suffrage, and it will be yielded.

Early in March the Legislature of Kansas submitted two amendments, one enfranchising the negroes and one the women. State Senator Samuel N. Wood wrote Miss Anthony that an equal rights convention had been called to meet in Topeka, April 2, and urged her to send out the strongest speakers to canvass the State in behalf of the woman suffrage amendment. This was the first time the enfranchisement of women ever had been presented for a popular vote and its advocates were most anxious that it should be carried. Neither Miss Anthony nor Mrs. Stanton could go to Kansas at this time, so they appealed to Lucy Stone, begging her to make the campaign. Since her marriage, twelve years before, she had been practically out of public work, insisting that she had lost her power for speaking. Miss Anthony assured her that if she would take the platform it would come back to her, and Mr. Blackwell joined in the entreaty. He gave up his business position to accompany his wife and they made a thorough canvass of that State during April and May. Mr. Phillips was unwilling that any money from the Jackson fund should be used for this purpose, as he did not want the question agitated at this time, but as Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone constituted a majority of the committee, they appropriated $1,500 for it. Even thus early in the contest the Republican managers began to show their hand. Lucy Stone wrote from Atchison May 9:

I should be glad to be with you tomorrow at the equal rights convention in New York and to know this minute whether Phillips has consented to take the high ground which sound policy, as well as justice and statesmanship require. Just now there is a plot here to get the Republican party to drop the word "male," and canvass only for the word "white." A call has been signed by the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, for a meeting at Topeka on the 15th, to pledge the party to that single issue. As soon as we saw it and the change of tone in some of the papers, we sent letters to all those whom we had found true, urging them to be at Topeka and vote for both words. Till this action of the Republicans is settled, we can affirm nothing. Everywhere we go, we have the largest and most enthusiastic meetings and any one of our audiences would give a majority for women; but the negroes are all against us. These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do because they will be so much more dead weight to lift.

Again she wrote of the situation in Kansas:

The Tribune and Independent alone, if they would urge universal suffrage as they do negro suffrage, could carry this whole nation upon the only just plane of equal human rights. What a power to hold and not use!.... They must take it up. I shall see them the very first thing when I get home. At your meeting next Monday evening, I think you should insist that all of the Hovey fund used for the Standard and anti-slavery purposes since slavery was abolished, must be returned with interest to the three causes which by the express terms of the will were to receive all of the fund when slavery should be ended. I trust you will not fail to rebuke the cowardly use of the terms "universal," "impartial" and "equal," applied to hide a dark skin and an unpopular client.... I hope not a man will be asked to speak at the convention. If they volunteer, very well, but I have been for the last time on my knees to Phillips, Higginson or any of them. If they help now, they should ask us and not we them.

On May 9 and 10 the Equal Rights Association held its first anniversary in New York, at the Church of the Puritans. Cordial and encouraging letters were received from Lydia Maria Child, Anna Dickinson, Clara Barton, Mary A. Livermore and many other distinguished women. While there were the usual number of able speeches, the strongest discussion was on the following resolution, offered by Miss Anthony: "The proposal to reconstruct our government on the basis of manhood suffrage, which emanated from the Republican party and has received the recent sanction of the American Anti-Slavery Society, is but a continuation of the old system of class and caste legislation, always cruel and proscriptive in itself and ending, in all ages, in national degradation and revolution." Henry Ward Beecher spoke eloquently in its favor, saying in part:

[Autograph:

Yours truly, L. Maria Child.]

I am not a farmer, but I know that spring comes but once in the year. When the furrow is open is the time to put in your seed, if you would gather a harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot plowshare of war has opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to put in the seed. If any say to me, "Why will you agitate the woman question when it is the hour for the black man?" I answer, it is the hour for every man and every woman, black or white. The bees go out in the morning to gather the honey from the morning-glories. They take it when they are open, for by 10 o'clock they are shut, never to open again. When the public mind is open, if you have anything to say, say it. If you have any radical principles to urge, any higher wisdom to make known, don't wait until quiet times come, until the public mind shuts up altogether.

We are in the favored hour; and if you have great principles to make known, this is the time to advocate them. I therefore say whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this nation, let it be spoken now—let it be enforced now. The truth that I have to urge is not that women have the right of suffrage—not that Chinamen or Irishmen have that right—not that native born Yankees have it—but that suffrage is the inherent right of mankind.... I do not put back for a single day the black man's enfranchisement. I ask not that he should wait. I demand that this work should be done, not upon the ground that it is politically expedient now to enfranchise black men; but I propose that you take expediency out of the way, and put a principle which is more enduring in the place of it—manhood and womanhood suffrage for all. That is the question. You may just as well meet it now as at any other time. You will never have so favorable an occasion, so sympathetic a heart, never a public reason so willing to be convinced as today.... I believe it is just as easy to carry the enfranchisement of all as of any one class, and easier than to carry it class after class.

[Autograph:

and believe me very truly yours, H. W. Beecher]

The resolution was adopted unanimously, as was also a memorial to Congress, written by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, asking most earnestly that the negro should be enfranchised, but just as earnestly that the suffrage should be conferred on woman at the same time. The leading thought was expressed in these beautiful words:

We believe that humanity is one in all those intellectual, moral and spiritual attributes out of which grow human responsibilities. The Scripture declaration is, "So God created man in his own image, male and female created he them," and all divine legislation throughout the realm of nature recognizes the perfect equality of the two conditions; for male and female are but different conditions. Neither color nor sex is ever discharged from obedience to law, natural or moral, written or unwritten. The commandments thou shalt not steal, or kill, or commit adultery, recognize no sex; and hence we believe that all human legislation which is at variance with the divine code, is essentially unrighteous and unjust....

Women and colored men are loyal, liberty-loving citizens, and we can not believe that sex or complexion should be any ground for civil or political degradation. Against such outrage on the very name of a republic we do and ever must protest; and is not our protest against this tyranny of "taxation without representation" as just as that thundered from Bunker Hill, when our Revolutionary fathers fired the shot which shook the world?... We respectfully and earnestly pray that, in restoring the foundations of our nationality, all discriminations on account of sex or race may be removed; and that our government may be republican in fact as well as form; A GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE; FOR THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE.

This was the last convention ever held in the old historic Church of the Puritans. It soon passed into other hands, and where once sparkled and scintillated flashes of repartee and gems of oratory, now glitter and shine the magnificent jewels in the great establishment of Tiffany.

After this May Anniversary Miss Anthony prepared to go before the New York Constitutional Convention with speeches and petitions for the recognition of women in the new constitution. The necessary arrangements involved an immense amount of labor, and her diary says: "My trips from Albany to New York and back are like the flying of the shuttle in the loom of the weaver." At this hearing, June 27, 1867, after Mrs. Stanton had finished her address she announced that they would answer any questions, whereupon Mr. Greeley said in his drawling monotone: "Miss Anthony, you know the ballot and the bullet go together. If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly she retorted: "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war—at the point of a goose-quill!" After the merriment had subsided, he continued: "When should this inalienable right of suffrage commence for young men and foreigners? Have we the right to say when it shall begin?" Miss Anthony replied: "My right as a human being is as good as that of any other human being. If you have a right to vote at twenty-one, then I have. All we ask is that you shall take down the bars and let the women and the negroes in, then we will settle all these matters." The Tribune report said this was received with "loud and prolonged applause."

Miss Anthony continued with great vivacity: "Can you show me any class possessed of the franchise which is shut out of schools or degraded in the labor market, or any class but women and negroes denied any privilege they show themselves possessed of capacity to attain? Since you refuse to grant woman's demand, tell her the reason why. Men sell their votes; but did any one ever hear of their selling their right to vote? We demand that you shall recognize woman's capacity to vote." The newspaper account ended: "She closed by demanding the right to vote for women as an inalienable one, and predicted that from its exercise would follow the happiest results to man, to woman, to the country, to the world at large; and took her seat amidst warm expressions of approval." In writing to her mother of this occasion she said:



We had to rush up by Wednesday night's boat, without any preparation, and passed the ordeal last night, members asking questions and stating objections. At the close the cheerful face and cordial hand of our good Mr. Reynolds were presented to me. Mr. Ely also came up to be introduced, saying he knew my father and brother well, but had never had the pleasure of my acquaintance. Ah, when my "wild heresies" become "fashionable orthodoxies," won't my acquaintance be a pleasure to other Rochester people, too? George William Curtis was delighted—said the impression made upon the members was vastly beyond anything he had imagined possible. It is always a great comfort to feel that we have not distressed our cultured friends.

Mrs. Stanton is going to slip out to Johnstown to spend Sunday with her mother. How I wish I could slip out to Rochester to sit a few hours in my mother's delightful east chamber, but I must hie me back to New York by tonight's boat instead.

In a letter from George William Curtis, he declared: "You may count upon me not to be silent when, whether by my action or another's, this question comes before the convention." Petitions were presented by various members, signed by 28,000 men and women, asking that the constitution be so amended as to secure the right of suffrage to the women of New York. One of these was headed by Margaret Livingston Cady, mother of Mrs. Stanton, one by Gerrit Smith, one by Henry Ward Beecher, and all contained many influential names. Mr. Greeley was chairman of the committee on suffrage and, as Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton knew he would seize upon this occasion to repeat his hackneyed remark, "The best women I know do not want to vote," they wrote Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in Westchester. So she got out her old chaise and, with her daughter Ida, drove over the county, collecting signatures. After all the others had been presented, Mr. Curtis arose and said: "Mr. Chairman, I hold in my hand a petition signed by Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women of Westchester asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the constitution." As Mr. Greeley was about to make an adverse report, his anger and embarrassment, as well as the amusement of the audience, may be imagined.[41]