XXXIII. CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS--VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS…

XXXIII. CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS--VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS

1884-1885.

Most of the newspapers had a welcome for Miss Anthony. In a two-column report in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle she is quoted as saying:

"I can scarcely tell you of the hospitality extended, the dinners, teas and receptions given in our honor. I had no idea we were so well-known in Great Britain or that there was such cordial feeling toward us. Of course, I met chiefly those known as Liberals and the sympathizers with our cause. Public sentiment there is rapidly growing in our favor. In the discussion I heard in Parliament not a Conservative uttered a word against the suffrage already possessed by women but relied upon the hackneyed argument that when married women were included there would be trouble."

"You saw the Queen, I suppose?"

"No; I thought more of seeing the Bright family than the Queen and I never happened to be near where she was. I really had very little leisure to look around. I am ashamed to say I did not visit Westminster until the morning before I came away, but it was simply for lack of time. The social idea was of more importance to me."

The New York Evening Telegram said editorially: "The statement of Miss Susan B. Anthony, in another column, illustrates the superb determination of that champion of woman's political rights. In the struggle which has constituted her life-work she has the rare advantage of not being able to comprehend defeat. Battling under the inspiration of an enthusiast--of a fanatic, some may be disposed to say--she knows no such word as fail. The most disheartening reverses appear to her inspired imagination but steps in an undeviating march of progress. It was enthusiasm such as this that made the career of Joan of Arc. Without it, not even the broad intellect and strong soul of Miss Anthony could sustain the burden of the struggle which she is called upon to lead." The Washington correspondent of the Cleveland Leader thus began a long interview:

Susan B. Anthony is back from Europe, and is here for the winter's fight in behalf of woman suffrage. She seems remarkably well, and has gained fifteen pounds since she left last spring. She is sixty-three, but looks just the same as twenty years ago. There is perhaps an extra wrinkle in her face, a little more silver in her hair, but her blue eyes are just as bright, her mouth as serious and her step as active as when she was forty. She would attract attention in any crowd. She is of medium height and medium form but her face is wonderfully intellectual, and she moves about like the woman of a purpose that she is. She says she experiences far different treatment by public men now from what she did years ago. The statesman of the past always came to her with a smirk on his face as though he considered woman's rights nonsensical and thought himself wonderfully condescending to take notice of her at all. "Now," says she, "public men look upon our mission as a matter of business, and we are considered from that standpoint."

The interview closed:

"One question more, Miss Anthony. Will you please tell me what is your highest ideal of the woman of the future?"

"It is hard to say," was the reply. "The woman of the future will far surpass the one of the present, even as the man of the future will surpass the one of today. The ages are progressive, and I look for a far higher manhood and womanhood than we now have. I think this will come through making the sexes co-equal. When women associate with men in serious matters, as they do now in frivolous, both will grow stronger and the world's work will be better done. I look for the day when the woman who has a political or judicial brain will have as much right to sit in the Senate or on the Supreme Bench as men have; when women will have equal property, business and political rights with men; when the only criterion of excellence or position shall be the ability and character of the individual; and this time will come. All of the Western colleges are now open to women, and send forth more than 2,000 women graduates every year. Think of the effect upon the race to come! The woman of the future will be a better wife, mother and citizen than the woman of today."

There were, however, some discordant notes in the symphony of pleasant things which by 1883 had become customary in the newspapers. For instance, the Cincinnati Times-Star headed its interview: "Susan Speaks--Miss Anthony Corralled by a Times-Star Correspondent--The Old Lady Wears Good Clothes and Stops at First-class Hotels--Bubbling about the Ballot." The smart reporter described the size of her foot, devoted a paragraph to the question whether her teeth were natural or artificial, and said: "There must be money in being a reformer, for Miss Anthony lives at the Riggs House in good style, and expects to be there all winter, and this, after a summer in Europe, would be a pretty severe drain on any but a long purse." When one thinks of Miss Anthony's uniform kindness and courtesy to reporters, always granting an interview no matter how tired or how busy she might be, and assisting them in every possible way with information and suggestions, it is astonishing that any one of them could indulge in petty, personal criticism and innuendoes.

Miss Anthony had now another friend at court, Col. Halbert S. Greenleaf, of Rochester, having been elected to Congress. Both he and his wife were strong and influential advocates of suffrage, and her warm personal friends. The diary shows that every day of December she was conferring with officials and their wives who were friendly to the cause, making converts wherever possible and co-operating actively with the District committee in all the drudgery of detail necessary to a successful convention. It is only by reading her diary that one can understand what a mental agony it was for Miss Anthony to press this matter upon congressmen, year after year, to be repulsed by those who were opposed and only tolerated by those in favor, who had many other matters on hand which to them seemed of much greater importance. "Oh, if men only could know how hard it is for women to be forever snubbed when they attempt to plead for their rights! It is perfectly disheartening that no member feels any especial interest or earnest determination in pushing this question of woman suffrage, to all men only a side issue," she writes in this little confidant; but not even in her letters is there ever a note of discouragement. To the world at large and to those who were associated with her, she was always brave, bright and hopeful. It causes a keen heartache to reflect upon how she crucified herself for fifty years, unfaltering and uncomplaining, in order to make conditions better for womankind. To Hon. William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who believed in woman suffrage and voted for it, but did not feel enough interest to push the matter in Congress, she wrote, January 6, 1884:

No one shrinks more from making herself obnoxious than I do, and but for the sake of all women, your darling Florence included, I should never again say a word to you on the subject of using your influence to secure the passage of a Sixteenth Amendment proposition. Last winter you put off my appeal for help with, "This is the short session and the tariff question is of momentous importance." Now, since this is the "long session," will you not take hold of this work, and with the same earnestness that you do other questions?

It is cruel for you to leave your daughter, so full of hope and resolve, to suffer the humiliations of disfranchisement she already feels so keenly, and which she will find more and more galling as she grows into the stronger and grander woman she is sure to be. If it were your son who for any cause was denied his right to have his opinion counted, you would compass sea and land to lift the ban from him. And yet the crime of denial in his case would be no greater than in that of your daughter. It is only because men are so accustomed to the ignoring of woman's opinions, that they do not believe women suffer from the injustice as would men; precisely as people used to scout the idea that negroes, whose parents before them always had been enslaved, suffered from that cruel bondage as white men would.

Now, will you not set about in good earnest to secure the enfranchisement of woman? Why do not the Republicans push this question? The vote on Keifer's resolution showed almost a party line. Of the 124 nays, only 4 were Republicans; while of the 85 yeas, only 13 were Democrats. Even should you fail to get another committee, the discussion and the vote would array the members and set each man and party in their true places to be seen of all men, and all women too.

The term of the select committee on woman suffrage having expired with the close of the Forty-seventh Congress, a new one was appointed by the Senate of the Forty-eighth. The House committee on rules refused to report such a committee but placed the question in the hands of Representative Warren Keifer, of Ohio, who made a gallant fight for it on the floor, during which he said: "Is not the right of petition a constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least, risen above the rim and horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances great questions of property, to present her appeals to this national council and have them wisely and judiciously considered? I think it is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially reach the ear of this great nation."

He was ably assisted by Mr. Belford, of Colorado. The measure to appoint this committee was bitterly opposed by Mr. Reagan, of Texas, who said in a long speech: "When woman so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to working on the roads and making rails and serving in the militia and going into the army, I want to protect her against it." The vote resulted--yeas, 85, nays, 124; absent or not voting, 112.

Immediately after the return of members from the holiday recess, Miss Anthony wrote to each of the 112 asking how he would vote if the question came up again. To these letters 52 replies were received, 26 from Republicans, all of whom would vote yes; 26 from Democrats, 10 of whom would vote yes, 10, no; while 6 did not know how they would vote. As these 36 affirmative votes added to the 85 yeas would so nearly have overcome the adverse majority, John D. White, of Kentucky, at the solicitation of Miss Anthony, made another earnest effort in February to secure the desired committee, but the Democrats refused to allow the question to come to a vote. She was greatly disappointed at the failure to get the select committee, but afterwards became of the opinion that it was more advantageous to return to the old plan of working through the judiciary committee.

Miss Anthony had to be continually on the alert to head off zealous but injudicious women who were determined to commit the suffrage movement to the various ologies and isms of the day, and especially to personal matters. Even a woman so intellectually great as Mrs. Stanton could not be relied upon always to make her individual opinions subserve what was demanded of her position as president of the National Association. In January Miss Anthony received a document which Mrs. Stanton had prepared as an "open letter," to be signed by both of them officially and given to the press, congratulating Frederick Douglass upon his marriage to a white woman and sympathizing with him because of the adverse criticism it had called out! She especially urged that he be given a prominent place on the program at the approaching convention. Miss Anthony replied at once:

I do hope you won't put your foot into the question of intermarriage of the races. It has no place on our platform, any more than the question of no marriage at all, or of polygamy, and, so far as I can prevent it, shall not be brought there. I beg you therefore not to congratulate him publicly. Were there a proposition to punish the woman and leave the man to go scot free, then we should have a protest to make against the invidious discrimination.

The question of the amalgamation of the different races is a scientific one, affecting women and men alike. I do not propose to have it discussed on our platform. Our intention at this convention is to make every one who hears or reads believe in the grand principle of equality of rights and chances for women, and if they see on our program the name of Douglass every thought will be turned toward the subject of amalgamation and away from that of woman and her disfranchised. Neither you nor I have the right thus to complicate or compromise our question, and if we take the bits in our teeth in one direction we must expect our compeers to do the same in others. You very well know that if you plunge in, as your letter proposes, your endorsement will be charged upon me and the whole association. Do not throw around that marriage the halo of a pure and lofty duty to break down race lines. Your sympathy has run away with your judgment. Lovingly and fearfully yours.

It is hardly necessary to say that the "open letter" was not published.

Everybody's burdens were laid upon Miss Anthony's shoulders. In looking over the mass of correspondence it seems as if each writer wanted something and looked to her to supply it. All expected her to take the lead, to do the planning, to bear the responsibility, and usually she was equal to the demand, but even her brave spirit could not resist an occasional groan on the pages of the diary. When a new accession to the ranks, from whom she expected great assistance, wrote, "I do not know how to plan but tell me what to do and I will obey," she says, "My heart sinks within me; so few seem to use their brain-power on ways and means." And again: "This drain of helpless women, able and willing to work but utterly ignorant of how to do it, wears me out body and soul." She was greatly distressed because so many of the younger women were frequently incapacitated by illness, and writes: "O, the weak-bodied girls of the present generation, they make me heart-sick!"

But never did the women themselves know of these feelings. To the younger ones she wrote: "Don't give up 'beat' at any of those places till I have dropped my plummet into them.... Your young shoulders will have to learn to bear the crotchets of all sorts of people and not bend or break under them.... Put all the blame on me; they may abuse me but not you.... It makes my heart ache every minute to see you so tired.... Vent all your ill-feelings on me but keep sweet as June roses to everybody else. It does not pay to lose your temper.... You will have to learn to let people pile injustice on you and then trust to time to right it all." If on rare occasions she spoke a word of censure, it was followed by a letter in the next mail, full of sorrow and repentance. She always signed herself, even in the darkest hours, "Yours with love and hope." Beautiful optimism, sublime courage!

Sunday, February 3, 1884, Miss Anthony read in the morning papers of the sudden death of Wendell Phillips. He had been to her always the one being without a peer, the purest, sweetest, best of men. The news overwhelmed her with grief and she wrote at once to Robert Purvis:

How cut down I am at the telegram, "Wendell Phillips is dead," and I know you are equally so. I hope you can go on to Boston to the funeral, and help tenderly to lay away that most precious human clay. Who shall say the fitting word for Wendell Phillips at this last hour as lovingly and beautifully as he has done so many, many times for the grand men and women who have gone before him? There seem none left but you and Parker Pillsbury to pour out your souls' dearest love in his memory. Would that I had the tongue of an angel and could go and bear my testimony to the grandeur of that noblest of God's works! I can think of no one who can rightly and fully estimate that glorious character. What a sad hour for his beloved wife! He said to me on my last visit: "My one wish has come to be that I may live to bury Ann." He doubtless knew of his impending disease of the heart. On whose shoulders will fall the mantle of Wendell Phillips? When will the children of men ever listen to such a matchless voice? How poor the world seems! In sorrow I am with you.

She could not stay away and, inclement as was the weather, went to Boston three days later to look for the last time upon the loved face.

At the request of many ladies in Washington the National Convention was held in March, instead of earlier in the winter, to avoid the social distractions which always precede the Lenten season. The ladies were pleasantly received by President Arthur.[19] This was an exceptionally brilliant convention, a noteworthy feature being the large number of letters containing the greetings of the distinguished men and women of Great Britain, whom Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton had met and interested during their trip abroad. The following was read from Matthew Simpson, senior bishop in the Methodist church, among his last public utterances, as he died a few months later:

For more than thirty years I have been in favor of suffrage for woman. I was led to this position, not by the consideration of the question of natural rights or of alleged injustice or of inequality before the law, but by what I believed would be her influence on the great moral questions of the day. Were the ballot in the hands of women, I am satisfied that the evils of intemperance would be greatly lessened; and I fear, without that ballot, we shall not succeed against the saloons and kindred evils in large cities. You will doubtless have many obstacles placed in your way; there will be many conflicts to sustain; but I have no doubt that the coming years will see the triumph of your cause, and that our higher civilization and morality will rejoice in the work which enlightened women will accomplish.[20]

Both Senate and House committees granted hearings, and eloquent addresses were made by delegates from many States. Miss Anthony said in part:

This is the fifteenth year we have appeared before Congress in person, and the nineteenth by petitions, asking national protection for women in the exercise of their right to vote. In the winter of 1865 and 1866 we sent your honorable body a ten-thousand prayer, asking you not to put "male" in the second section of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment; and again we appealed to you by thousands of petitions that you would add "sex" after "race or color" in the Fifteenth, but all to no avail. Then by an eighty-thousand petition in 1871 we demanded the enactment of a declaratory law that women had the right to vote under the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. This, too, was denied us, not only by Congress but by the Supreme Court, which held that the framers of the amendment had only "colored men" in their thought, therefore none others could come within its purview. From 1876 to the present we have from year to year poured into Congress hundreds of thousands of petitions asking you to take the initiative step for another amendment which shall specifically prohibit the disfranchisement of women.

But, you say, why do you not go to your several States to secure this right? I answer, because we have neither the women nor the money to make the canvasses of the thirty-eight States, school district by school district, to educate each individual man out of the old belief that woman was created to be his subject. Four State legislatures submitted the question of striking "male" from their constitutions--Kansas, Michigan, Colorado and Nebraska--and we made the best canvass of each which was possible for a disfranchised class outside of all political help. Negro suffrage was again and again overwhelmingly voted down in various States; and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the ballot until the majority of white men, particularly the foreign born, had voted "yes," he would have gone without it until the crack of doom. It was because of this prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the people. We now appeal to you to lift the decision of our question from the vote of the populace to that of the legislatures, that thereby you may be as considerate and just to the women of this nation as you were to the freedmen.

Every new privilege granted to woman has been by the legislatures. The liberal laws for married women, the right of the wife to own and control her inherited property and separate earnings, the right of women to vote at school elections in a dozen States, full suffrage in two Territories, all have been gained through the legislatures. Had any one of these beneficent propositions been submitted to the vote of the rank and file do you believe a majority would have placed their sanction upon it? I do not; and I beg you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that you will at once recommend to the House the submission of the proposition now before you, and thus place the decision of this great constitutional question of the right of one-half the people of this republic to a voice in the government, with the legislatures of the several States. You need not fear that our enfranchisement will come too suddenly or too soon by this method. After the proposition shall have passed Congress by the requisite two-thirds vote, it may require five, ten or twenty years to secure its ratification by the necessary three-fourths of the State legislatures; but, once submitted by Congress, it always will stand until ratified by the States.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My plan is to get away from here the minute I can do so without letting our work suffer in Congress. A week ago the House Judiciary Committee voted down a motion to print our "hearing" speeches. Yesterday I went up and called out a Democrat who I knew had voted "no," and hence could move to reconsider, and he promised to go back and thus move, and did so, and Mr. Browne, of Indiana, asked leave of the House to print them. I wish you would write to Mr. Browne that he is splendid and our main help now in the committee. Cockrell has been trying to prevent printing the Senate "hearing," but Blair, Lapham, Palmer and Anthony are bound it shall be printed. Still, all would fall flat and dead if some one were not here to keep them in mind of their duty to us.

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

The middle of May, after two years' interruption, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton set themselves diligently to finish the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, all the boxes and trunks of material having been shipped from Tenafly. Although submerged in the avalanche of old documents, Miss Anthony's mind was full of current events. She writes in her journal June 2: "I wait with bated breath the news from Oregon, where today the men are voting on the question of woman's enfranchisement. My heart almost stands stills. I hope against hope, but still I hope." When the news of the defeat comes, she says: "Dear Mrs. Duniway, with all that debt left on her shoulders, which she assumed to carry on the campaign! I felt so agonized for her that on the very day of election I rushed to the bank and sent her $100. We must not leave her to carry it alone, after all her brave work. I have written a dozen letters to friends asking them to give her assistance. I feel like a lion champing the bars of his cage, shut up here digging and delving among the records of the past when I long to be out doing the work of the present." In a letter received from Senator Palmer at this time he says:

I fully sympathize with your regret and chagrin over the reverse in Oregon but hardly with your conclusion, viz., that "the women should stop asking legislatures to submit this question to the electors, to have it killed by the majority, made up of ignorance and whiskey, native and foreign, and all go to Congress for success," etc. It seems to me that nothing is to be lost and much to be gained by local discussions and temporary defeats. You know in 1850 Webster, in his unfortunate Revere House speech, stigmatized the anti-slavery movement as "a rub-a-dub agitation," and Wendell Phillips closed his masterly philippic thereon with what was accepted as a motto: Agitate! Agitate!! Agitate!!! Another decade of that rub-a-dub agitation sufficed to divide the continent in a political earthquake and from out the chasm the negro emerged to citizenship. It may still require years to educate a majority of our women to demand the franchise and a majority of our men or their representatives in Congress and the legislatures, to proclaim it, but that the way leads through constant agitation I make no doubt. The still pool casts nothing to shore.

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

The national political conventions in the summer of 1884 received the usual appeal to recognize the claims of women. The Republican, Democratic, Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties equivocated, although the last two nominated Benjamin F. Butler, an avowed advocate of woman suffrage; the Prohibition convention relegated the question to the States[23]. The American party put in a plank and nominated S. C. Pomeroy, a champion of woman suffrage, but it had too small a following to offer any hope of success. Blaine was not a friend, Logan was an earnest one; Cleveland was not acceptable to many women, Hendricks had never shown himself favorable. In the midst of such a conglomeration the wise thing for all women would have been to remain non-partisan and take no share in the campaign. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, however, watching events from their secluded nook, issued a manifesto urging women to stand by the Republican party. They were led to take this action by the tendency of large numbers to rush to the support of the Prohibitionists, because of their suffrage plank; and they believed that if women were determined to work for some political party, the Republican at that time held out most hope. This aroused the antagonism of the Prohibitionists and Democrats, both men and women, and afforded the strongest possible object lesson to Miss Anthony of the wisdom of henceforth adhering to her policy of non-partisanship until one of the dominant parties should declare unmistakably for woman suffrage and advocate it by means of press and platform.

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

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

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

The public, which always longed for a sensation at these suffrage conventions and was disappointed if it did not come, seized upon this resolution, and press and pulpit made it a text. The following Sunday W. W. Patton, D. D., president of Howard University, preached in the Congregational church of Washington a sermon entitled, "Woman and Skepticism." He took the ground that as soon as women depart from their natural sphere they become skeptical if not immoral. He gave as examples Hypatia, Madame Roland, Harriet Martineau, Frances Power Cobbe and George Eliot! Then turning his attention to America he said that "the recent convention of woman suffragists gave evidence of atheism and immorality," and that "Victoria Woodhull was the representative of the movement in this country"[25]. And this when Mrs. Woodhull had not been on the suffrage platform for thirteen years! Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton occupied front seats and at the close of the sermon went forward, shook hands with the preacher and Miss Anthony remarked earnestly: "Doctor, your mother, if you have one, should lay you across her knee and give you a good spanking for that sermon." "O, no," said Mrs. Stanton quickly, "allow me to congratulate you. I have been trying for years to make women understand that the worst enemy they have is in the pulpit, and you have illustrated the truth of it." Then, while the great divine was trying to recover his breath, they walked out of the church. The nine days' commotion which this produced can be imagined better than described. After some reflection Miss Anthony regretted that she should have been provoked into her remark, but Mrs. Stanton wrote: "Don't worry a moment. The more I think about it, the better I like it, because it was the most contemptuous thing which could have been said. Like that shot at Lexington, it will go round the world."

On February 6, Thomas W. Palmer called up in the Senate the resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment and supported it by that masterly speech which ever since has been one of the strongest suffrage campaign documents. At the request of Miss Anthony thousands of copies were sent out under his frank. She went from Washington to Boston to attend a meeting of the National branch of the Massachusetts association, and soon afterwards, on March 2, started for the New Orleans Exposition. She was warmly welcomed by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, wife of Judge E. T. Merrick, at whose lovely home she was entertained during part of her stay. It was her first visit to the Crescent City and she was soon deluged with invitations to speak and received many charming tokens of the justly-famed southern hospitality.

She spoke before the Woman's Club in the hall of the Continental Guards, with May Wright Sewall, representative from Indiana; gave seven addresses, in as many days, before schools and colleges and, by invitation of the Press Association, spoke in Agricultural Hall at the exposition and visited the headquarters of the different papers. The next day, by request of Commissioner Truman, she gave an address and held a reception at the New York headquarters. Her last appearance was at Tulane Hall under the auspices of the teachers of the city schools. She was everywhere beautifully received, although her doctrines were new and unpopular, and at the close of each meeting her audience crowded about her with words of appreciation and cordiality. Miss Anthony here met for the first time "Catherine Cole," of the editorial staff, and Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, owner and manager of the Picayune. The latter presented her with an Indian basket filled to overflowing with orange blossoms, and this tribute was paid in her paper:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Anthony experienced a great disadvantage in being so far away from her publisher, the more especially as she had to send a chapter at a time, read proofs of each as soon as it was set up, send back corrected proof, get the revises, etc., and she soon found it necessary to spend about half her time in Rochester. The women who were preparing the chapters for their respective States delayed the work, neglecting to send them when promised; many occupied twice as much space as had been assigned them and were highly indignant when Mrs. Stanton used the blue pencil unsparingly on their productions. They vented their feelings on Miss Anthony, knowing that nothing they could say would ruffle Mrs. Stanton's equipoise, and she writes in her diary: "To decide between the two has almost torn me in twain. People who can write are so tenacious, each thinking her own style better than any other, while poor I don't know which is the best."

Every few weeks she was obliged to rush over to Fayetteville to confer with Mrs. Gage, who was industriously preparing her part of the work. Urgent appeals came from women in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Indiana that they could not possibly make a success of their State conventions unless she came to their assistance, but she steeled her heart against them and stuck closely to her task. From the lecture bureau came a list of ten engagements at $50 a night, but she refused them. Some of the expressions in her letters of those busy days show the state of her mind better than could volumes of description:

All the work of today put aside to grope into the old past. I feel like rushing to you this very minute, but here Mrs. Stanton and I are, scratching, scratching every hour, not each other's eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write--I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history but hate to write it.

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

[19] An official request was sent to the heads of the departments to permit the women employes to attend one session of this convention but it was refused. A few days later permission was given them to go to Mrs. McElroy's reception at the White House, and the male employes were given a half-holiday to attend the exercises on St. Patrick's Day.

[20] The Methodist bishops Bowman, Warren, Newman, Haven, Turner and Walters have favored woman suffrage.

[21] Signed by Maybury, Michigan; Poland, Vermont; Tucker, Virginia; Hammond, Georgia; Culbertson, Texas; Moulton, Illinois; Broadhead, Missouri; Dorsheimer, New York; Collins, Massachusetts; Seney, Ohio; Bisbee, Florida.

[22] Miss Anthony's letters show how desirous she was that everybody who assisted at these conventions should have full measure of credit: "They are earnest and anxious to do for woman's cause and I want them treated fairly and leniently as to all mistakes." Again she writes: "Since Oregon was never before represented in our conventions, her speakers must have more room in the report than we old stagers."

[23] When Miss Anthony learned that this action had been taken with the sanction of Frances E. Willard, she pointed out to her in vigorous language how the Prohibition-Republicans had left that party this year because a temperance resolution had failed in the platform committee and had gone over to the Prohibition party, charging that the Republicans were cowardly. Yet the very first act of this Prohibition convention, to which Miss Willard was a delegate, was to abandon the idea of National Supremacy and accept that of State Rights in order to conciliate the southern members. She further said: "When the time comes in which it will be political expediency for the Prohibition party to throw woman suffrage overboard altogether, over it will go." Miss Willard lived to see this prophecy fulfilled at the National Prohibition Convention of 1896.

[24] Apropos of this discussion, an amusing anecdote is related of Miss Anthony. When confronted, in an argument, with the passage of scripture, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands," etc., she replied: "Gentlemen, no one objects to the husband being the head of the wife as Christ was the head of the church--to crucify himself; what we object to is his crucifying his wife."

[25] This account of the sermon is taken from the reports of half a dozen reputable newspapers.

[26] This is the only instance where a woman has bequeathed a large amount of money to the cause of equal rights, although a number of small bequests have been made. Women have given millions of dollars to churches, charities, and colleges for men but comparatively nothing to secure freedom for those of their own sex.

[27] In one of Miss Anthony's letters she relates with amusement that Mr. Stanton had just come in and, seeing his wife lying on the couch, remarked, "Ah, resting, I see." "No," she replied, "I am exercising by lying down."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIV. MANY TRIPS--FIRST VOTE ON SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT

1886-1887.

Miss Anthony started for Washington toward the last of January, 1886, with a lighter heart than she had possessed for many years. The dreadful burden of the labor on the History was lifted, all the bills were paid, she had given a helping hand to several of the old workers, which made her very happy, and she had one or two good dresses in her trunk. There was nothing which the paragrapher who hated what Miss Anthony represented, liked so well as to make disagreeable flings at her clothes, and yet it is an indisputable fact of history that she was one of the most perfectly dressed women on the platform, although her tastes were very plain and simple. A lady once wrote her asking if it would not be possible to make the suffrage conventions a little more æsthetic, they were so painfully practical. She sent the letter to Mrs. Stanton, who commented: "Well now, perhaps if we could paint injustice in delicate tints set in a framework of poetical argument, we might more easily entrap the Senator Edmunds and Oscar Wilde types of Adam's sons. Suppose at our next convention all of us dress in pale green, have a faint and subdued gaslight with pink shades, write our speeches in verse and chant them to a guitar accompaniment. Ah me! alas! how can we reform the world æsthetically?"

The members of Congress always knew when Miss Anthony had arrived in Washington. Other women accepted their word that they were going to do something, and waited patiently at home. Miss Anthony followed them up and saw that they did it. If she could not find them at the Capitol, she went to their homes. If they promised to introduce a certain measure on a certain day, she was in the gallery looking them squarely in the face. If they failed to do it, they found her waiting for them at the close of the session. Senator Blair wrote this humorous note January 15: "I thought just as likely as not you would come fussing round before I got your amendment reported to the Senate. I wish you would go home. Cockrell has agreed to let me know soon whether he won't allow the report to be made right off without any bother, and I have been to him several times before. I don't see what you want to meddle for, anyway. Go off and get married!"

Miss Anthony has been directly connected with every action taken by Congress or by any congressional committee on the question of woman suffrage. There are on file among her papers hundreds of letters from members during the past thirty years, showing her energy and persistence in compelling attention to this subject, in learning who were its friends, in attempting to convert the doubters and in spurring the believers to effort. This is something for the women of the future to remember.

The Eighteenth Annual Convention opened February 17. Prominent features were a fine address by Rev. Rush R. Shippen, of All Souls church, and the first appearance on the platform of Mary F. Eastman, Ada C. Sweet, the pension agent, the eloquent southern speakers, Mrs. Elizabeth A. Meriwether and Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, and the talented German, Madame Clara Neymann. Among many letters was one from George W. Childs to Miss Anthony, saying: "I am always glad to hear from you and I keep track of your continued good work. Do not be discouraged. I take pleasure in sending the enclosed check ($100) with my sincere regards and very best wishes."

The crowds were so great that policemen had to be stationed at the door to prevent late comers from trying to enter during the evening sessions. The resolutions scored the bill before Congress proposing to disfranchise all Utah women, both Gentile and Mormon, to punish the crime of polygamy. The usual hearing was granted before the congressional committees. The fight for woman suffrage in the Forty-ninth Congress was conducted by Ezra B. Taylor, of Ohio, who prepared the favorable minority report of the House Judiciary Committee. The adverse majority report was signed by John Randolph Tucker, of Virginia.

On March 25 "the general" slipped up to New York City, to assist her forces at the State convention, and then hastened back to Washington to direct the main line of attack. The diary says:

March 30.--Went to House of Representatives, saw Messrs. Tucker and Taylor of judiciary committee; both promised to report soon. Then went to Senate, saw Messrs. Blair, Stanford and Bowen; all agreed to work to bring up our bill by May 1. In the evening took a cab and went in a pouring rain to Senator Stanford's, where I spent an hour. How keen and true are his perceptions in regard to public questions!

March 31.--Pouring rain, dark and muggy. I went to the Senate; sat with Mrs. Dolph and Mrs. Stanford; heard Senator Dolph's fine speech on the admission of Washington Territory as a State and his splendid word for woman suffrage. Mrs. Dolph took me home in her carriage.

April 1.--Went to the Senate again to secure pledges for votes and speeches for the Sixteenth Amendment Bill. Got Senator Dolph's strongest paragraphs, and at 8 P. M. went to the top floor of the Associated Press rooms and gave them to Mr. Boynton, who sent them over the wires.

April 9.--The United States Senate today voted down Eustis' motion to refuse to admit Washington Territory unless the woman suffrage clause were eliminated from its constitution, 25 to 12. Senator Ingalls was the only Republican who voted with the enemy.

A few days later Miss Anthony received the following from Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, of New Orleans: "... I feel defrauded that I never knew you until last year. Judge Merrick says you are the most sensible person he ever met (without any sex qualifications, of course). Like you, I was indignant at Mr. Eustis in regard to his course toward Washington Territory. I was ashamed and blushed for my Louisiana senator that time. Thanks for your sympathy in my illness. When my head lies low I pray that you may find another and even better friend in my State, who will come to the front in the cause of equal rights for women." An extract from a letter of Rev. Olympia Brown to Mrs. Stanton shows how much the old workers as well as the young depended upon Miss Anthony: "I wish to inquire what has become of Susan? You know she is my North Star. I take all my bearings from her, and when I lose sight of her I wander helplessly, uncertain of my course."

The diary of April 30 says: "Heard Phoebe Couzins had been taken to Hot Springs, terribly crippled with rheumatism. Wrote her at once and enclosed $100, telling her I wanted it used to provide delicacies and make her comfortable. I have thought it would be Phoebe whom I should take with me on my southern tour next year, but I fear her work is done."

By the middle of May, 1886, the last bit of History proof was read, and unlimited leave of absence was granted Miss Anthony by her publisher, while the indexer and binder completed the work which was begun in 1876. On the 19th she started for Kansas, stopping for the usual visit in Chicago with her cousins. In Kansas she visited her brothers at Leavenworth and Fort Scott for nearly two months, making an occasional speech. On the morning of July 4, under the auspices of the W. C. T. U., she addressed a large audience at Salina on, "The powerlessness of woman so long as she is dependent on man for bread." In the hot afternoon, as she was about to enjoy a nap, word came that a hundred people had united in a request that she should speak again, as they had come from ten to twenty miles on purpose to hear her; so she returned to the grove, and Mrs. Griffith, State evangelist, kindly yielded her hour. On July 11 Miss Anthony went again to Chicago, and on the 14th spoke at Lake Bluff Camp Meeting, which was under the management of Frances E. Willard. She then visited the summer homes of her cousins and of Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, at Lake Geneva. On this trip she was accompanied by her dearly-loved niece, Susie B., who went with her to Rochester and spent the summer. The diary briefly records:

September 28.--Left Chicago at noon and lunched with Miss Willard at Rest Cottage, Evanston. Her mother bright and charming at eighty-two, and Anna Gordon sweet as ever. It was very good to see Miss Willard under her own roof. Reached Racine in time for the State convention, was met by a delegation of ladies and taken to the home of Martha Parker Dingee, niece of the great Theodore Parker, a lovely woman. Fine audiences.

October 2.--Reached St. Louis at 8 A. M. As I was looking for my trunk I heard some one cry out, "Is that you, Susan?" and there were Phoebe Couzins and her father. I had made my trip that way for the special purpose of seeing her, expecting to find her confined to the house; so I went home and breakfasted with them.

October 4.--Reached Leavenworth and found Mrs. Colby and Mrs. Saxon ready to begin the campaign for arousing public sentiment to demand a bill from the next legislature to secure Municipal suffrage for women. Dr. Ruth M. Wood is the mainspring of the movement here.

This series of conventions was held in the congressional districts from October 5 to November 3, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, manager, assisted by Mrs. Anna C. Wait, president of the State Association, and by a number of capable and energetic Kansas women at each place visited. Under date of October 11, Miss Anthony wrote to eastern friends: "We are having the loveliest weather you ever dreamed of and the most magnificent audiences--no church or hall holding them. If our legislators, State or national, could only see these gatherings and look into the earnest faces of these people, coming so many miles in wagons to see and hear and get fresh courage, they would surely answer our demands by something else than silence." The press corroborated this description and the following special dispatch may be taken as a fair specimen:

The seventh district convention, the third of the series, has just closed in Lincoln, and was a beautiful ovation to Miss Anthony. Crowded houses greeted her--every available foot of space filled with chairs, window-sills utilized for seats, and conveyances drawn up outside of windows and filled with listeners. People came thirty, forty and fifty miles in buggies and wagons to shake hands with the pioneer suffragist. Grizzly-headed opposers succumbed to Miss Anthony's logic and came up to grasp her hand and say God bless her, and proved the depth of their fervor by generous financial aid to the cause she so ably represents. It is seldom that the beginner of a great reform lives to see such fruitage of her labors as does she. People often descant upon the indifference of women to the question of their own enfranchisement and to political matters generally; but there is serious doubt of greater interest ever having been shown by men in political meetings than women exhibit in these conventions....

On the evening of the second day the house was so densely packed that a messenger for a glass of water had to go out through a window. But in spite of all discomfort and the many standing, the audience maintained perfect order and gave the utmost attention throughout Miss Anthony's speech of two hours. Learning that she would remain in Lincoln over Sunday the people importuned her to speak that afternoon in the Presbyterian church, which she did to a large audience.

The diary relates: "A mother brought her four-weeks-old girl baby twenty-five miles in a carriage, so she might tell it, when grown, that Susan B. Anthony had taken it in her arms. 'And the trip has not hurt baby a particle,' she said brightly." And again it tells, with a good deal of gusto, that one Baptist minister was determined the suffrage speakers should not have his church and only yielded after several of the richest pew-holders declared they never would pay another dollar towards his salary if he did not. He then made his appearance at the meeting, opened it with his blessing and closed it with his benediction! Miss Anthony was not always able to speak to her own satisfaction. At Salina she lectured for the Y. M. C. A. and writes: "I went to the opera house and found a fine audience. Tried to give 'Moral Influence vs. Political Power,' but the spirit wouldn't soar; its wings flapped on the earth perpetually for the whole hour. I took my $25 from the treasurer and went home with a heavy heart. It is beyond my knowledge why, after speaking every day for a whole week, freely and decently, my wits should desert me and my tongue be tied just at the time when I am most anxious to do my best."

Two days' meetings were held at Abilene, Florence, Hutchinson, Wichita, Anthony, Winfield, Independence, Lawrence and Fort Scott. The speakers were entertained by prominent families, suffrage societies were formed at each place, the vast majority of public sentiment seemed favorable, and the collections paid all the expenses of the conventions.

In November and December a number of other speakers made a canvass of the State, and the following winter the legislature passed a bill conferring Municipal suffrage upon the women of Kansas. The bill was introduced in the Senate by R. W. Blue (Rep.) of Linn county; and in the House by T. T. Taylor (Rep.) of Reno county. It passed the Senate, 25 ayes, all Republicans; 13 noes, 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats; in the House 90 ayes, 84 Republicans and 6 Democrats; 21 noes, 5 Republicans and 16 Democrats. The bill was signed by Governor John A. Martin, February 15, 1887; and under its provisions women in that State have voted ever since at Municipal elections.[28]

Without a day's rest, Miss Anthony went direct from Kansas to Sandwich, Ill., to attend the State convention. After three days there and a Sunday in Chicago, Monday, November 8, found her at Racine, Wis., ready to begin a tour of conventions in every congressional district. That evening a reception was given her by Hon. and Mrs. M. B. Erskine, and the hospitality of their handsome home was offered for every day which she could spend in the city.

With Mrs. Colby and Rev. Olympia Brown, assisted by local speakers, meetings were held at Waukesha, Ripon, Oshkosh, Green Bay, Grand Rapids, Eau Claire, LaCrosse, Evansville, Milwaukee and Madison. At the last place the ladies spoke in the Senate chamber of the State House to an audience containing a number of dignitaries, among them President Bascom, of the State University, and his wife, who from this time were Miss Anthony's steadfast friends. Mrs. Colby gives a graphic description of Miss Anthony's sudden outburst here, when several members had exasperated her by their remarks, which closes: "I was writing at the secretary's desk and as I looked up I realized the full grandeur of the scene. It was woman standing at the bar of the nation, pleading for the recognition of her citizenship. Miss Anthony seemed positively Titanic as she leaned far over from the speaker's desk. Her tone and manner were superb, and the vast and sympathetic audience caught the electric thrill...." In this city she was the guest of an old schoolmate, Elizabeth Ford Proudfit. The meetings closed December 3, and Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Spofford:

I intend now to make straight for Washington without a stop. I shall come both ragged and dirty. Think of two solid months of conventions, speaking every night! Don't worry about me. I was never better or more full of hope and good work. Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who will patch me together so I shall be presentable. Now for the Washington convention: Before settling upon the Universalist church, you would better pocket the insults and refusals of the Congregational church powers that be and send your most lovely and winning girls to ask for that. If you can't get it or the Metropolitan or the Foundry or the New York Avenue or any large and popular church, why take the Universalist, and then tell the saints of the fashionable churches that we dwell there because they refused us admission to their holy sanctuaries. Don't let us go into the heterodox houses, much as I love them, except because we are driven away from the orthodox.

In December the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage at last was ready for the public, another book of nearly 1,000 pages. It completed the story up to 1884, and like its predecessors was cordially received by the press. The money swallowed up by this work hardly will be credited. Mrs. Stanton not being able or willing to revise the last volume until it was put into proof slips, and then making extensive changes, the cost for re-setting type was over $900. The fifty fine steel engravings and the prints made from them cost over $6,000. For proof reading $500 was paid, and for indexing, $250. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage, seeing that there never would be any profits from the books and that Miss Anthony proposed to give most of them away, sold out their rights to her, the former for $2,000 and the latter for $1,000. She also, as has been stated, bought out the interest of Fowler & Wells. When the first edition of the three mammoth volumes finally came into her sole possession, they represented an outlay on her part of $20,000.

While there were many criticisms from certain quarters as to various errors and so-called misstatements, and many threats to write a history which should be free from all imperfections, the fact remains that, although fifty years have passed since the inception of the great movement to secure equal rights for women, there never has been another attempt to preserve the story. But for Miss Anthony's careful collecting and saving of newspaper accounts, manuscripts of speeches, published reports and the correspondence of half a century, her persistent and determined effort for ten years to have them put into readable shape, and Mrs. Stanton's fine ability to do it, the student never would have been able to trace the evolution of woman from a chattel in the eye of the law to a citizen with legal and social rights very nearly equal to those of man. While there is necessarily some repetition, so long a time elapsing between the writing of the different volumes, and perhaps a little prolixity, there is not a dull page in the whole work and the reader will find it difficult to reach a place where she is willing to stop. It contains a resumé of early conditions; the persecutions endured by the pioneers in the struggle for freedom; the progress in each separate State, and in foreign countries; the action taken by different legislatures and congresses; the grand arguments made for equal rights; the position of woman in church and State. Into whatever library the student may go seeking information upon this question, it is to these volumes he must look to find it in collected and connected form. If Miss Anthony had done no other work but to produce this History, she would deserve a prominent place on the list of immortal names.

It was necessary to put so high a price upon it, $15 a set in cloth and $19.50 in leather binding, as to make a large sale impossible. Miss Anthony did not undertake it as a money-making scheme, and when the receipt of Mrs. Eddy's bequest enabled her to discharge all indebtedness connected with it, she felt herself at liberty to use it as a most valuable means of educating the people into an understanding of the broad principle of equality of rights. At her own expense she placed the History in over 1,000 of the libraries of Europe and America, including the British Museum, the university libraries of Oxford, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Finland, Melbourne, Toronto, and many of the university and public libraries of the United States. The members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in several Congresses were presented with sets, and there are hundreds of letters on file from prominent persons in England and this country acknowledging the receipt of the books.

Chapters might be made of commendatory letters received from officials, writers, public workers and friends in private life. A few specimens must suffice. A letter from Senator H. B. Anthony to his "dear cousin," closed by saying: "The three volumes form a valuable history of the important enterprise in which you have borne so conspicuous and honorable a part, and you have added to the reputation of the name that we both bear."

Mary L. Booth, the gifted editor of Harper's Bazar, thus expressed her opinion of the work:

You and your colleagues have industriously placed on record a copious mass of documentary evidence which will be of the utmost value when the time arrives to sum up the final results. When this era comes, you will be foremost among the band of heroic pioneers who have endured discomfort, obloquy and privation of much that is dear to women for the sake of those who will profit by your labors while failing to recognize them. Posterity will do you this justice, whether your contemporaries do or not; but indeed, it is universally known to those with any knowledge of the facts, that among all the champions of women, none has been more distinguished for utter self-abnegation, single-heartedness and devotion to her life-work than Susan B. Anthony.

As you know, I have always felt the deepest interest in the elevation of women, which is synonymous with that of humanity, for man must be always on the plane of his wife, sister and mother.... The antagonism to political equality is rapidly disappearing, as it is beginning to be recognized that in politics, as in everything else, woman's help is needed, and the republic can not afford to have her stand aloof. But this phase of the subject has been so much misunderstood, both by men and women, that time is needed to clear away the mists of misconception which envelop it; and to prove that the co-operation of women in political life is not only just and expedient, but absolutely indispensable to the public weal.

No family in Rochester stood more steadfastly by Miss Anthony during all her long and eventful life than the Wilders--Carter, Samuel, Mrs. Maria Wilder Depuy and D. Webster. The last, in acknowledging the receipt of the books, wrote: "How much you have contributed to history in this grand publication! With woman as a part of humanity, what a revolution will be wrought! Changes everywhere--in social life, in morals, politics, business--and all for the better. In this world-revolution you have done a great work. My children are proud of the fact that you are my personal friend. I fully appreciate your gift. It will be a Bible in my home." From the philanthropist, Sarah B. Cooper, revered for her work in the kindergartens on the Pacific coast, came this tribute:

This book is the fruitage of all the years of your faith and work. It tells of the long preparation--the opening up of the forest; the blazing of the trail; the clearing of the underbrush; the deep sub-soiling; the lying fallow; the ploughing, sowing, harrowing, the patient tillage--and now comes the harvest. What courage, endurance, fidelity and faith! The pioneers of new thoughts and principles are the loneliest of mortals. Those who live ahead of their time must wait for the honors and plaudits of posterity to get their full meed of appreciation and reward. But after all, dear, honored friend, the richest reward of such a life as yours is to have lived it.

The History also was given to the libraries of those towns whose women would raise a certain amount towards various State suffrage campaigns, and in every possible way it always has been used for missionary work.[29]

The first week in 1887, in most inclement weather and against the protest of friends, Miss Anthony went all the way to Nebraska, to keep a promise to Mrs. Colby and other women of that State to attend their annual convention, January 7. She found a pleasant letter awaiting her at Lincoln, from her old friend, Mary Rogers Kimball, daughter of the noted Abolitionist, Nathaniel P. Rogers, and wife of the General Passenger Agent of the Union Pacific R. R., now living at Omaha, which closed: "How I wish you could come to us and rest a few days. Mr. Kimball would welcome you, as would every one of this household. You ought to make our home happy by coming once in a while.... Mother, who is able to walk a little and is interested in all you do and say, sends her love and hopes to see you." She spoke at Chicago, January 13, in the First Methodist church, where she was introduced by the well-known Rev. H. W. Thomas.[30] She went from there to the Michigan convention at Lansing, January 14, and here was presented to the audience by Governor Cyrus G. Luce.

She reached Washington January 17, 1887, and rushed the preparations for the Nineteenth National Convention, which opened on the 25th at the Metropolitan M. E. church. Zerelda G. Wallace gave a noteworthy address; Senator Carey, of Wyoming, made an able speech and Mrs. Carey sat by Miss Anthony during the proceedings. The second day of the convention, January 26, marked a great epoch, the first vote ever taken in Congress on a Sixteenth Amendment. The previous month, December 8, 1886, Henry W. Blair had asked the Senate to consider the following joint resolution: "The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." He supported this in a long and comprehensive speech covering the whole ground on which the demand is based, quoting from the favorable reports of the judiciary committees, exposing the weakness and fallacy of the objections, and making an unanswerable argument on the justice of granting political liberty to women.

At the urgent request of opposing senators the matter had been postponed until January 25, when it was again called up by Mr. Blair. The opposition was led by Joseph A. Brown, of Georgia, who described in detail the intentions of the Creator when he made woman, and declared that females had not the physical strength to perform military duty, build railroads, raise crops, sit on juries or attend night caucuses, but that God had endowed men with strength and faculties for all these things. He stated that it was a grave mistake to say that woman is taxed without being represented, and added, "It is very doubtful whether the male or the female sex has more influence in the administration of the affairs of government and the enactment of laws!" He asserted that "the baser class of females would rush to the polls, and this would compel the intelligent, virtuous and refined females, including wives and mothers, to relinquish for a time their God-given trust and go, contrary to their wishes, to the polls and vote to counteract the other class;" and followed this by saying that "the ignorant female voters would be at the polls en masse, while the refined and educated, shrinking from public contact, would remain at home." He continued: "The ballot will not protect females against the tyranny of bad husbands, as the latter will compel them to vote as they dictate;" then in the next breath he declared: "Wives will form political alliances antagonistic to the husbands, and the result will be discord and divorce." In his entire speech Senator Brown ignored the existence of unmarried women and widows. He closed with copious extracts from "Letters from a Chimney Corner," written by some Chicago woman.

Senator Dolph, of Oregon, followed in a clear, concise argument, brushing away these sophistries by showing that such evils did not exist where women were enfranchised and voted at every election. He was interrupted by Senator Eustis, of Louisiana, who inquired whether he thought "it would be a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and lock her up all night with a jury?" Senator Dolph replied that there was not a judge in the world who would not excuse a woman under such circumstances, just as there were many causes which exempted men. He continued:

Government is but organized society.... It can only derive its just powers from the consent of the governed, and can be established only under a fundamental law which is self-imposed. Every citizen of suitable age and discretion has, in my judgment, a natural right to participate in its formation. The fathers of the republic enunciated the doctrine "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." It is strange that any one in this enlightened age should be found to contend that this is true only of men, and that a man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights not possessed by a woman. The lamented Lincoln immortalized the expression that ours is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," and yet in reality it is far from that. There can be no government by the people where half of them are allowed no voice in its organization and control.... God speed the day when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny, and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance; not only in respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer and equal of her brother, man.

Senator Vest, of Missouri, came to the rescue of Senator Brown and in the course of his speech said:

I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence of woman, with the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable? For my part, I want when I go to my home--when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world--I want to go back, not to be received in the masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the Constitution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic life and domestic love.

I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from woman suffrage. I care not whether the mother is called upon to decide as a juryman, or a jurywoman, rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is "mewling and puking" in solitary confinement at home. There are other considerations more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a sex. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which God has intended them. The great evil in this country today is emotional suffrage. Women are essentially emotional. What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling.[31]

He presented a remonstrance against giving the ballot to women, signed by nearly 200 New England men, headed by President Eliot, of Harvard University, and including nearly fifty names prefixed by "Rev." He next drew from his budget a letter from Clara T. Leonard, of Boston, praying that the suffrage should not be granted to women, and Mr. Hoar remarked that the lady herself had been holding public office for a number of years.

Continuing Senator Vest said: "If we are to tear down all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our mothers, wives and sisters, and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution!" He now produced a document, entitled "The Law of Woman Life," and said: "This is signed Adeline D. T. Whitney--I can not say whether she be wife or mother. It contains not one impure or unintellectual aspiration. Would to God that I knew her so I could thank her in behalf of the society and politics of the United States. I shall ask that it be printed, as my strength does not suffice for me to read it."[32] It proved to be a long and involved essay begging that the ballot should not be given to women, and saying: "Are the daughters and granddaughters about to leap the fence, leave their own realm little cared for, undertake the whole scheme of outside creation, or contest it with the men? Then God help the men! God save the commonwealth!" Mr. Vest concluded with a blood-curdling picture of the French Revolution which would be repeated in this country if women were enfranchised.

Senator Blair then offered the appeal of the W. C. T. U. for the ballot, representing over 200,000 women, presented by Zerelda G. Wallace, who had reared thirteen children and grandchildren, among them the author of Ben Hur. He submitted also the matchless arguments which had been made by the most intellectual women of the nation before the congressional committees from year to year, including that of Miss Anthony in 1880, and urged that the question should be submitted to the legislatures of the various States for settlement.

The vote was taken on the question of submitting a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution to the State legislatures for ratification, and resulted in 16 yeas and 34 nays, 26 absent.[33] Of the affirmative votes, all were Republican; of the negative, 24 Democratic and 10 Republican. Senator Farwell, of Illinois, was roundly denounced by the Chicago Tribune for his affirmative vote. Senators Chace, Dawes and Stanford, who were paired, and Plumb, who was absent, announced publicly that they would have voted "aye."

Over fifty of the distinguished women in attendance at the convention were in the Senate gallery during this debate. The most sanguine of them had not expected the necessary two-thirds, but had worked to obtain a vote simply for the prestige of a discussion in the Senate, the printing of the speeches in the Congressional Record and the wide agitation of the question through the medium of press and platform which was sure to follow. They felt especially incensed at Senator Ingalls, as the sentiment of his State had just shown itself to be overwhelmingly in favor of woman suffrage, and they did not hesitate to score him in public and in private. As soon as the news of the vote reached the convention Miss Anthony roundly denounced him from the platform. In the evening she received a note from him saying: "Will you do me the favor to designate an hour at which it would be convenient for you to give me a brief interview?" She did not answer, and on the 31st she received another: "I called Thursday and Friday mornings, but was not able to reach you with my card. My errand was personal and I hope I may be more fortunate when you are again in the city." When she did see him she found his purpose was to declare a truce, which she declined, as he already had done the cause all the harm possible for him.

From Washington Miss Anthony went to assist at a convention in Philadelphia, and "felt guilty for days," she says in her diary, because she refused to go on to Connecticut. She enjoyed a brief visit with Professor Maria Mitchell at Vassar College; and hastened to Albany to address the legislature in regard to the Constitutional Convention, "just as I did twenty years ago in the old Capitol," she writes. Then back to Washington to look after matters there, and thus on and on, never allowing herself to be delayed by weather, fatigue or social demands, month after month, year after year, with but one object in view, never losing sight of it for a moment, and making all else subservient to this single purpose.

In April she was terribly distressed at the malicious falsehoods which were sent out from Leavenworth in regard to the first voting of the women in Kansas, and says, "It will take oceans of breath and ink to counteract the baneful effects." On May 11, 1887, Frances E. Willard wrote her: "Will you please send me the form of resolution which would be the least that would satisfy you as a plank in the platform of the Prohibition party, or as a resolution to be adopted by the W. C. T. U.? I write this without authorization from any quarter, simply because I would like to find out what is the angle of vision along which you are looking." To this Miss Anthony replied:

What is the full significance of "would satisfy you?" Do you mean so satisfy me that I would work, and recommend all women to work, for the success of the Third party ticket? Or do you mean the least that I think it should say for its own sake? If the first, I am not sure that the fullest endorsement would cause me to throw all my sympathies and efforts into line with the Prohibition party, any more than if the same full suffrage plank should be put into the platform of the great Labor or Fourth party, which is pretty sure to take part in the presidential contest of 1888.

I can not answer for others, but I shall not pray or speak or work for the defeat of the nominees of the party of which every United States Senator who voted for us last winter is a leading member, and to which belongs every man but six in the Kansas Legislature who made the overwhelming vote giving municipal suffrage to the women of that State. Not until a third party gets into power or is likely to do so, which promises a larger per cent. of representatives on the floor of Congress and in the several State legislatures who will speak and vote for woman's enfranchisement, than does the Republican, shall I work for it. You see, as yet there is not a single Prohibitionist in Congress, while there are at least twenty Republicans on the floor of the United States Senate, besides fully one-half of the members of the House of Representatives, who are in favor of woman suffrage. For the women of Kansas or Iowa to work for any third party would be ungrateful and suicidal.

Since I hope to live to see a Sixteenth Amendment Bill through Congress and three-fourths of the State legislatures, I do not propose to work for the defeat of the party which thus far has furnished nearly every vote in that direction. If you will pardon me, I think it will be quite as suicidal a policy for the temperance women of the nation to work to defeat the party which contains so nearly all of their best friends and helpers. What it seems to me should be done by all women who want reforms in legislation, is to appoint committees to confer with leading Republicans asking them to make pledges in the direction of suffrage and temperance, with the assurance of our support in case of the insertion of the planks we ask in their platform. I fear, however, you are already pledged to the Third party, come what may, and if so it is of no use for me to advise.[34]

In May Miss Anthony again journeyed westward, though she says in her diary: "It never was harder for me to start. A heavy nothingness is upon head and heart." She went first to the State Suffrage Convention at Indianapolis, where as usual she was a guest in the beautiful home of Mr. and Mrs. Sewall. A reception was given her at the Bates House and she was cordially greeted by several hundred ladies. She went to meetings at Evansville, Richmond and Lafayette, and then to the Ohio convention at Cleveland; here, as always, the guest of her loved friend, Louisa Southworth.

She writes May 26: "Arrived home at 8 P. M. and found all well--the all consisting of sister Mary, the only one left." She was invited to meet with a large and conservative society of women who did not believe in equal suffrage. All made nice little addresses and when Miss Anthony was called on she said: "Ladies, you have been doing here today what I and a few other women were denounced as 'unsexed' for doing thirty years ago--speaking in public;" and then proceeded to point the moral. She attended the commencement exercises of a young ladies' seminary, whose principal would not acknowledge a handsome gift from her pupils by a few remarks because she "considered it would look too strong-minded." Miss Anthony comments on the graduates' essays: "They had as much originality as Baedecker's Guide-book."

In July she went as the guest of her friend Adeline Thomson, of Philadelphia, for two weeks at Cape May and here had her first experience in sea-bathing, although she always had lived within a short distance of the ocean. She says: "This is my first seaside dissipation. It seems very odd to be one of the giddy summer resort people!" She took Miss Thomson with her up into the Berkshire hills of northwestern Massachusetts to Adams, her birthplace, and visited the home of her grandfather. In the early days of her peregrinations she used to come often to this picturesque spot, but it now had been twenty years since her last visit. Time does not bring many changes to the New England nooks or the people who live in them, and she greatly enjoyed the nine days spent with uncles, aunts and cousins, exploring the well-remembered spots. They went from here to Magnolia for a two weeks' visit at the seaside cottage of Mr. and Mrs. James Purinton, of Lynn, Mass. At this time, in answer to a request for advice, Miss Anthony wrote to Olympia Brown and Mrs. Almedia Gray, of Wisconsin:

I have your letters relative to bringing suits under the school suffrage law, and hasten to say to you that Mrs. Minor's and my own experience in both suing and being sued on the Fourteenth Amendment claim leads me to beseech you not to make a test case unless you know you will get the broadest decision upon it. If you get the narrow one restricting the present law simply to school-district voting, there it will rest and no judge or inspector will transcend the limit of the decision. My judgment would be to say and do nothing about the law, but through the year keep up the educational work, showing that such and such cities allowed women to vote for mayor, common council, etc., and by the next election many others will let women vote; and so in a few years all will follow suit. Let what you have alone and try for more; for all your legislature has power to give. It will be vastly more likely to grant municipal suffrage than your supreme court will be to give a decision that the school law already allows women to vote for mayor, council, governor, etc.

They thought best, however, to bring the suits; the exact results which were predicted followed, and the school suffrage even was restricted until it was practically worthless.

During this summer Miss Anthony undertook to arrange her many years' accumulation of letters, clippings, etc., and knowing her reluctance ever to destroy a single scrap, Mrs. Stanton wrote from Paris: "I am glad to hear that you have at last settled down to look over those awful papers. It is well I am not with you. I fear we should fight every blessed minute over the destruction of Tom, Dick and Harry's epistles. Unless Mary, on the sly, sticks them in the stove when your back is turned, you will never diminish the pile during your mortal life. (Make the most of my hint, dear Mary.)" It is safe to say it was just as large at the end of the examination as at the beginning.

In September, 1887, Miss Anthony again made a circuit of conventions in every congressional district in Wisconsin and then turned her attention to Kansas. The officers of the State association had arranged a series of conventions for the purpose of demanding a constitutional amendment conferring full suffrage on women. Miss Anthony, with Mrs. Johns, Mrs. Letitia V. Watkins, State organizer, Rev. Anna Shaw and Rachel Foster, gave the month of October to this canvass. Senator Ingalls, in a speech at Abilene, had attempted to defend his vote in the Senate against the Sixteenth Amendment, and Miss Anthony took this as a text for the campaign. She had ample material for the excoriating which she gave him in every district in Kansas, as the Senator had declared: 1st, that suffrage was neither a natural nor a constitutional right, but a privilege conferred by the State; 2d, that no citizens should be allowed to participate in the formation of legislatures or the enactment of laws, who could not enforce their action at the point of a bayonet; 3d, that no immigrants should be allowed to enter the United States from any country on earth for the next twenty-five years; 4th, that negro suffrage had been an absolute and unqualified failure; 5th, that while there were thousands of women vastly more competent than men to vote upon questions of morality, they never should be allowed to do so--simply because they were women.

It hardly need be said that Miss Anthony found little difficulty in reducing to tatters these so-called arguments, and that her audiences were in hearty sympathy. To borrow her own expression, she "tried to use him up so there was not an inch of ground under his feet." When the convention was held at Atchison Mrs. Ingalls invited sixteen of the ladies to a handsome luncheon, where the senator placed Miss Anthony at his right hand and made her the guest of honor. She proposed that he debate the question of woman suffrage with her but he refused on the ground that he could not attack a woman, so she served up this objection in her speech that evening. To a reporter he is said to have given the reason that he "would not stoop to the intellectual level of a woman."

The month of November was given to holding a two days' convention in each of the thirteen congressional districts of Indiana. These meetings were arranged by the State secretary, Mrs. Ida H. Harper, and the strong force of speakers, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Sewall and Mrs. Gougar, aroused great enthusiasm and made many converts.[35] This ended three months of constant travelling and speaking almost every day and evening. On the first of December Miss Anthony writes: "I have laid me down to sleep in a new bed nearly every night of this entire time."

But the 10th found her in Washington fresh and vigorous for the work of the coming winter. She was anxious to know whether the reports of the Senate debate had been franked and sent out as promised and, to her inquiry, Senator Blair answered with his usual little joke: "I have had the speeches, etc., attended to and trust that the mails will do you justice if the males do not. But remember that men naturally fight for their lives, and on the same principle, you shall for yours!"

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Miss Anthony notes in her diary that she made her first Kansas campaign in '67 and the suffrage bill was signed on her sixty-seventh birthday. She received a letter of congratulation on the signing of the bill from Chief-Justice Horton, of Kansas.

[29] The total amount received from sales has been only $7,000. Now, however, in order to give the History the widest possible circulation, the price has been so reduced as to enable it to be placed in the hands of the reading public. It is the hope of Miss Anthony to publish the fourth volume in the year 1900, bringing the History up to that date.

[30] At this meeting a yellow dog came on the platform and Miss Anthony is quoted as afterwards making this apt comment: "She says that, at least where women are concerned, the reporters are sure to seize upon some triviality and ring its changes to the exclusion of serious matters. She mentioned that when she spoke in Chicago last a dog ran across the stage and, springing up, laid his nose on her shoulder. 'I prophesied to the audience then,' she continued, 'that the dog would figure in the press reports more conspicuously than anything that was said or done, and so he did. He occupied half of the space in nearly every paper.'"

[31] Both Senator Vest and Senator Brown had appealed wholly to the emotions in their speeches upon this question, which were overflowing with sentiment and "gush."

[32] This hardly corresponds with Senator Brown's glowing description of the physical strength conferred by the Creator on man so that he could do the voting for the family.

[33] Yeas: Blair, Bowen, Cheney, Conger, Cullom, Dolph, Farwell, Hoar, Manderson, Mitchell of Oregon, Mitchell of Pennsylvania, Palmer, Platt, Sherman, Teller, Wilson of Iowa. Nays: Beck, Berry, Blackburn, Brown, Call, Cockrell, Coke, Colquitt, Eustis, Evarts, George, Gray, Hampton, Harris, Hawley, Ingalls, Jones of Nevada, McMillan, McPherson, Mahone, Morgan, Morrill, Payne, Pugh, Saulsbury, Sawyer, Sewell, Spooner, Vance, Vest, Walthall, Whitthorne, Williams, Wilson of Maryland. Absent: Aldrich, Allison, Butler, Frye, Gibson, Gorman, Miller, Plumb, Ransom, Camden, Cameron, Chace, Dawes, Edmunds, Fair, Hale, Harrison, Jones of Arkansas, Jones of Florida, Kenna, Maxey, Riddleberger, Sabin, Stanford, Van Wyck, Voorhees.

[34] The skeptical can not but wonder whether the Republican party ever will have the grace and wisdom to justify the confidence which Miss Anthony has steadfastly placed in it, as regards this question, from the day of its birth.

[35] Conventions were held at Evansville, Vincennes, Bloomington, Kokomo, Logansport, Wabash, Lafayette, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Muncie, Anderson, Madison and New Albany. The largest of the series was at Terre Haute, where the opera house, donated by the citizens, was crowded both evenings with an audience representing the culture and intelligence of the city, and the convention was welcomed by the mayor, Jacob C. Kolsom.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXV. UNION OF ASSOCIATIONS--INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL

1888.

A preceding chapter described the forming in 1869 of the American Woman Suffrage Association at Cleveland, O., the overtures for union by the National Association the next year, and their rejection. No further efforts were made and each body continued to work in its own way. At the annual meeting of the American Association in Philadelphia, October 31, 1887, the following resolution from the business committee was unanimously adopted:

WHEREAS, The woman suffragists of the United States were all united until 1868 in the American Equal Rights Association; and whereas, The causes of the subsequent separation into the National and American Woman Suffrage Societies have since been largely removed by the adoption of common principles and methods; therefore

Resolved, That Mrs. Lucy Stone be appointed a committee of one from the American Woman Suffrage Association to confer with Miss Susan B. Anthony of the National and, if on conference it seems desirable, that she be authorized and empowered to appoint a committee of this association to meet a similar committee appointed by the National to consider a satisfactory basis of union, and refer it back to the executive committee of both associations for final action.

HENRY B. BLACKWELL,

Corresponding Secretary, A. W. S. A.

After conferring with the officers of the National Association, Miss Anthony informed Mrs. Stone that she would meet her in Philadelphia any time until December 9, and after that in Washington. She replied that she was not able to travel even so far as Philadelphia and, after some correspondence, Miss Anthony agreed to go to Boston. On the afternoon of December 21, 1887, accompanied by Rachel Foster, corresponding secretary of the National, she met Mrs. Stone and Alice Stone Blackwell, at No. 3 Park street, Boston, and held an extended conference in regard to the proposed union. Two days later Mrs. Stone sent to Miss Anthony, who was still in that city, the following:

In thinking over the points raised at our informal conference, it seems to me that the substantial outcome is this: The committees appointed by us respectively, if we conclude to appoint them, must each agree upon a common name, a common constitution and a common list of officers for the first year. A subsequent acceptance of these by each association will thereafter constitute the two societies one society. If you think there is a fair probability of coming to an agreement I will proceed to appoint my committee.

As the formal overtures for union have come from the American Association, it will be appropriate that our committee should draw up the plan for union which appears to them the most feasible, and forward it to Miss Foster, to be submitted to yours. Then your committee will suggest such modifications as they may think needful; and, if a mutually satisfactory result can be reached, the name, constitution and list of officers will go to the executive committee of each association for final action.

Christmas Day Miss Blackwell sent to Miss Foster a comprehensive plan for a union of the two societies, closing as follows: "Since many members of the National society regard Mrs. Stone as the cause of the division, and many members of the American regard Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony as the cause of it, Mrs. Stone suggested that it would greatly promote a harmonious union, for those three ladies to agree in advance that none of them would take the presidency of the united association." Early in January this formal announcement and letter were sent to Miss Foster:

The committee of the National to sit in counsel with that of the seven appointed by Lucy Stone, of the American, shall be: May Wright Sewall, Chairman, Harriette R. Shattuck, Olympia Brown, Helen M. Gougar, Laura M. Johns, Clara B. Colby, Rachel G. Foster, Secretary.[36]

I hope all will sink personalities and exalt principles, seeking only the best good for woman's enfranchisement, and that surely will come through the union of all the friends of woman suffrage into one great and grand national association which shall enable them to present a solid front to the enemy. This must be based on the principle of a genuine democracy, which shall give to each of its members a voice in all its deliberations, either in person or through representatives chosen by them, and to a constitution thus based I am sure each of my seven chosen ones will contribute her aid. Hoping that a consolidation of all our forces will be the result of this overture from Lucy Stone and her society, I am, very sincerely,

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

On January 18, Miss Foster received from Miss Blackwell the list of the conference committee appointed by Mrs. Stone: Julia Ward Howe, Chairman, Wm. Dudley Foulke, Margaret W. Campbell, Anna H. Shaw, Mary F. Thomas, H. M. Tracy Cutler, Henry B. Blackwell, Secretary.

Miss Anthony again wrote Miss Foster: "I can not think of any stipulation I wish to make the basis of union save that we unite, and after that discuss all measures and ways and means, officers and newspapers, and cheerfully accept and abide by the rule of the majority. I do not wish to exact any pledges from Lucy Stone and her adherents, nor can I give any for Mrs. Stanton and her followers. When united we must trust to the good sense of each, just as we have trusted during the existence of the division. As Greeley said about resuming specie payment, 'the way to unite is to unite' and trust the consequences."

It is not essential for the completeness of this work to reproduce in detail the official proceedings, which extended through two years and caused Miss Anthony often to write, "I shall be glad when this frittering away of time on mere forms is past." A basis of agreement finally was reached, and the union was practically completed at the National Convention which met in Washington, January 21, 1889. A committee of thirteen was selected to confer with the committee from the American. This consisted of Miss Anthony and Mesdames Hooker, Minor, Duniway, Johns, Sewall, Perkins, Colby, Spofford, Brown, Blake, Gougar and Foster Avery. The Woman's Tribune thus described the result:

At the business session, January 24, 1889, they reported in substance as follows:

Name, etc.--The association to be called the National-American W. S. A. The annual convention to be held at Washington.

Chronology.--The next annual meeting of the joint society to be--as it would be for the National--the twenty-second annual Washington convention.

Work.--To be for National and State legislation protecting women in the exercise of their right to vote.

Representation.--As provided in the new National constitution.

Where two associations exist in one State and will not unite, both are to be accepted as auxiliary societies.

An earnest debate followed. Miss Anthony threw her influence strongly in favor of union and carried many with her, even those who openly expressed themselves that their judgment would be to continue the two societies. The vote was then taken on union, thirty voting for, eleven against.

Miss Alice Stone Blackwell and Rev. Anna H. Shaw were present on behalf of the American Association, accepted the deviations from the propositions as presented by that association, and felt reasonably certain that it would endorse their action.

No one person contributed so much toward effecting the union of these two societies as Alice Stone Blackwell. On February 17, 1890, both bodies met in Washington and it was decided that the official boards of the two should form the voting force until the joint temporary organization was completed. Councils were held in the great parlor and dining-room of the Riggs House. Both Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton had been willing, from the beginning of negotiations, to accept the proposition of the Americans that neither one of them, nor Lucy Stone, should take the presidency of the united association, but from the Nationals in every part of the country came a cry of dissent. Letters poured in declaring that Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton had borne the brunt of the battle for forty years, that they had not once lowered the flag or made the question of woman suffrage subservient to any other, that they were the head and heart of the movement, and that for them to be deposed was out of the question.[37] It soon became evident that unless this point were conceded all hope of union would have to be banished. While most of the delegates agreed that, in respect to seniority in years and work and also in consideration of her commanding ability, Mrs. Stanton should be president, there were many who thought that, because of her advanced age and the fact that she spent most of her time abroad, it would be better to elect Miss Anthony. The latter was distracted by such a thought and at the final meeting of National delegates preliminary to the joint convention, with all the earnestness of her strong nature and in a voice vibrating with emotion, she said:

I appeal to every woman who has any affection for the old National or for me not to vote for Susan B. Anthony for president. I stand in a delicate position. I have letters which accuse me of having favored the union solely for personal and selfish considerations, and of trying to put Mrs. Stanton out. Now what I have to say is, don't vote for any human being but Mrs. Stanton. There are other reasons why I wish her elected, but I have these personal ones: When the division was made twenty years ago, it was because our platform was too broad, because Mrs. Stanton was too radical; a more conservative organization was wanted. If we Nationals divide now and Mrs. Stanton is deposed from the presidency, we virtually degrade her. If you have any love for our old association, which, from the beginning, has stood like a rock in regard to creeds and politics, demanding that every woman should be allowed to come upon our platform to plead for her freedom--if you have any faith in that grand principle--vote for Mrs. Stanton....

The National always has allowed the utmost liberty. Anything and everything which stood in the way of progress was likely to get knocked off our platform. I want every one who claims to be a National to continue to stand for this principle. We have come now to another turning-point and, if it is necessary, I will fight forty years more to make our platform free for the Christian to stand upon whether she be a Catholic and counts her beads, or a Protestant of the straitest orthodox creed, just as I have fought for the rights of the infidels the last forty years. These are the principles I want you to maintain, that our platform may be kept as broad as the universe, that upon it may stand the representatives of all creeds and no creeds--Jew or Christian, Protestant or Catholic, Gentile or Mormon, pagan or atheist.

At the joint executive session after the union was formally declared to be consummated, the vote was: For president, Mrs. Stanton, 131; Miss Anthony, 90; for vice-president-at-large, Miss Anthony, 213. Lucy Stone was unanimously elected chairman of the executive committee; Rachel Foster Avery, corresponding secretary; Alice Stone Blackwell, recording secretary;[38] Jane H. Spofford, treasurer; Eliza T. Ward and Rev. Frederick W. Hinckley, auditors. This uniting of the two associations was begun in 1887 and finished in 1890, in the most thoroughly official manner, according to the most highly approved parliamentary methods, and the final result was satisfactory to a large majority of the members of both societies, who since that time have worked together in unbroken harmony.

The action of the American Association was almost unanimous, but the members of the National were widely divided. Letters of protest were received from many States, and several of its members attempted to form new organizations. The executive sessions in Washington were the most stormy in the history of the association, and only the unsurpassed parliamentary knowledge of the chairman, May Wright Sewall, aided by the firm co-operation of Miss Anthony, could have harmonized the opposing elements and secured a majority vote in favor of the union. There had been no time during the twenty years' division when Miss Anthony was not ready to sink all personal feeling and unite the two societies for the sake of promoting the cause which she placed before all else in the world; and from the first prospect of combining the forces, she used every effort toward its accomplishment. It was a source of especial gratification that this was practically assured by the winter of 1888, when the International Council of Women met in Washington, as it enabled the American Association to accept the invitation and send representatives to this great convocation--which will now be considered.

It had long been the dream of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton to form an International Suffrage Association for purposes of mutual helpfulness and the strength of co-operation. During 1883, when in Great Britain, they discussed this subject with the women there and, as a result, a large committee of correspondence had been established to promote the forming of such an association. After a time it was judged expedient to enlarge its scope and make it an International Council, which should represent every department of woman's work. This was called to meet at Washington in 1888, the fortieth anniversary of the first organized demand for the rights of women, the convention at Seneca Falls, and active preparations had been in progress for more than a year. It was decided at the suffrage convention held the previous winter that the National Association should assume the entire responsibility for this International Council and should invite the participation of all organizations of women in the trades, professions, reforms, etc.

Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford were in Europe and this herculean task was borne principally by Miss Anthony, May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster.[39] Miss Anthony stayed in Washington for two months preceding the council, perfecting the last arrangements. The amount of labor, time, thought and anxiety involved in this year of preparation can not be estimated. Nothing to compare with it ever had been attempted by women. Not the least part of the undertaking was the raising of the $13,000 which were needed to defray expenses, all secured by personal letters of appeal and admission fees, and disbursed with careful economy and judgment. The intention was to give the suffrage association the same prominence as other organizations and no more. An entry in Miss Anthony's diary says: "I have just received proof of the 'call' for the council and struck out the paragraph saying, 'no one would be committed to suffrage who should attend.' I can't allow any such apologetic invitation as that! There is no need to say anything about it." To her old friend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who asked if only those women ministers who had been regularly ordained were to be heard, Miss Anthony wrote:

I have felt all along that we ought to give a chance for the expression of the highest and deepest religious thought of those not ordained of men. Your wish to give the result of your research opens the way for us to make the last day--Easter Sunday--voice the new, the purer, the better worship of the living God. We'll have a real symposium of woman's gospel. It is not fair to give only the church-ordained women an opportunity to present their religious thoughts, and now it shall be fixed so that the laity may have the same. I don't want a controversy or a lot of negations, but shall tell each one to give her strongest affirmation. This forever saying a thing is false and failing to present the truth, is to me a foolish waste of time, when almost everybody feels the old forms, creeds and rituals to be only the mint, anise and cumin.

So, my dear, I am very, very glad that you and Lucy are both to be on our platform, and we are to stand together again after these twenty years. But none of the past! Let us rejoice in the good of the present, and hope for more and more in the future.

In response to her letter asking him to take part on Pioneer Day, Frederick Douglass wrote:

I certainly shall, if I live and am well. The cause of woman suffrage has under it a truth as eternal as the universe of thought, and must triumph if this planet endures. I have been calling up to my mind's eye that first convention in the small Wesleyan Methodist church at Seneca Falls, where Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Mott and those other brave souls began a systematic and determined agitation for a larger measure of liberty for woman, and how great that little meeting now appears! It seems only yesterday since it took place, and yet forty years have passed away and what a revolution on this subject have we seen in the sentiment of the American people and, in fact, of the civilized world! Who could have thought that humble, modest, maiden convention, holding its little white apron up to its face and wiping away the tear of sympathy with woman in her hardships and the sigh of her soul for a larger measure of freedom, would have become the mother of an International Council of Women, right here in the capital of this nation?

Maria Mitchell, who was in feeble health (and died the next year) in expressing her regrets said: "I am taking a rest. I have worked more than a half-century and, like stronger people, have become tired. I am meaning to build my small observatory and keep up a sort of apology for study--because I am too old to dare do nothing. I wish I felt able to take the journey and hear what others have to say and are ready to do. The world moves, and I have full faith it will continue to move and to move, for better and better, even when we have put aside the armor."

During the winter, Mrs. Stanton had written Miss Anthony: "We have jogged along pretty well for forty years or more. Perhaps mid the wreck of thrones and the undoing of so many friendships, sects, parties and families, you and I deserve some credit for sticking together through all adverse winds, with so few ripples on the surface. When I get back to America I intend to cling to you closer than ever. I am thoroughly rested now and full of fight and fire, ready to travel and speak from Maine to Florida. Tell our suffrage daughters to brace up and get ready for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together when I come back."

What then were her amazement, anger and grief to receive another letter from Mrs. Stanton a short time before the council, saying that a voyage across the Atlantic so filled her with dread that she had about decided not to undertake it! A fortieth anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention without the woman who called it! And this when she had counted on Mrs. Stanton to make the greatest speech of the whole meeting and cover the National Association with immortal glory! She says in her journal: "I am ablaze and dare not write tonight." The next entry: "I wrote the most terrific letter to Mrs. Stanton; it will start every white hair on her head." And then the following day the little book records: "Well, I made my own heart ache all night, awake or asleep, by my terrible arraignment, whether it touches her feelings or not." Ten days later she writes: "Received a cablegram from Mrs. Stanton, 'I am coming,' so she has my letter. My mind is so relieved, I feel as if I were treading on air."

On Mrs. Stanton's arrival a few days before the convention, Miss Anthony learned, to her consternation, that she had prepared no speech for the occasion! She shut her up in a room at the Riggs House with pen and paper, kept a guard at the door, permitted no one to see her, and when the time arrived she was ready with her usual magnificent address.

The council opened Sunday, March 25, in Albaugh's new opera house, with religious services conducted entirely by women, Revs. Phebe A. Hanaford, Ada C. Bowles, Antoinette Blackwell, Amanda Deyo, and a matchless sermon by Rev. Anna H. Shaw, "The Heavenly Vision." It would be wholly impossible to enter into a detailed account of this council, the greatest woman's convention ever held.[40] Although twenty-five cents admission was charged, and fifty cents for reserved seats, the opera house was crowded during the eight days and evenings, and seats were at a premium. Miss Anthony presided over eight of the sixteen sessions. While every speaker was allowed the widest latitude, there was not at any time the slightest friction. Letters were read from celebrated people in most of the countries of Europe and all parts of America. At the pioneer's meeting were eight men and thirty-six women who had been connected with the movement for woman suffrage forty years.[41]

Among the social courtesies extended to this distinguished body of women, were a reception at the White House by President and Mrs. Cleveland; handsome entertainments by Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford, and Senator and Mrs. T. W. Palmer; a reception at the Riggs House; many smaller parties, dinners and luncheons; and numerous social gatherings of women doctors, lawyers, etc. At all of the large functions Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone stood at the left hand of the hostess, while the other officials and the foreign delegates were also in the "receiving line." At the White House Miss Anthony made the presentations to the President. As every newspaper in the country had complimentary notices of this council and the prominent ladies connected with it, it is scarcely possible to discriminate. The Baltimore Sun said:

The council began its deliberations in the finest humor with everybody, particularly with that prime favorite, Susan B. Anthony. This lady daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council. Miss Anthony when in repose looks worn with the conflict she has waged, though when she goes into action her angular face loses its tired look and becomes all animation. Her word is the parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without murmur or dissent. The women of the council are saved any parliamentary discussions such as arise in the meetings of men; they acknowledge that she is an autocrat. All are agreed that no better system than the absolute control of Susan B. Anthony can be devised.

The New York World commented:

If ever there was a gay-hearted, good-natured woman it is certainly Miss Anthony. From the beginning of this council it is she who has kept the fun barometer away up. The gray-headed friends of her youth are all "girls" to her, and she is a girl among them. Parliamentary rules have been by no means so severe as to keep even the regular proceedings free from her lively interpolation and comment. When Miss Anthony has felt the public pulse or looked at her watch and seen that a speech has gone far enough, she says under her breath, "Your time's about up, my dear." If the speaker continues, the next thing is, "I guess you'll have to stop now; it's more than ten minutes." When this fails, she usually begins to hang gently on the orator's skirt, and if pluckings and pullings fail, she then subsides with a quizzical smile, or stands erect and uncompromising by the speaker's side. There is none of the rude beating of the gavel, nor any paraphrase of "The gentleman's time is up," which marks the stiff proceedings of men "in congress assembled." To an unprejudiced eye this free-and-easy method of procedure might lack symmetry and dignity, but there is not the slightest doubt that Miss Anthony has been as wise as a serpent while being as gentle as a dove.

When Frances E. Willard rose to address the council, she laid her hand tenderly on Miss Anthony's shoulder and said: "I remember when I was dreadfully afraid of Susan, and Lucy too; but now I love and honor them, and I can not put into words my sense of what it means to me to have the blessing of these women who have made it possible for more timid ones like myself to come forward and take our part in the world's work. If they had not blazed the trees and pioneered the way, we should not have dared to come. If there is one single drop of chivalric blood in woman's veins, it ought to bring a tinge of pride to the face that Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe and these other grand women, our leaders and our foremothers, are here for us to greet; that they, who heard so much that was not agreeable, may hear an occasional pleasant word while they are alive." Very few of the speakers failed to express their deep feeling of personal obligation and the indebtedness of all women to the early labors of Miss Anthony and the other pioneers.

In her letter to the Union Signal, Miss Willard gave this bit of description: "The central figure of the council was Susan B. Anthony, in her black dress and pretty red silk shawl, with her gray-brown hair smoothly combed over a regal head, worthy of any statesman. Her mingled good-nature and firmness, her unselfish purpose and keen perception of the right thing to do, endeared her alike to those whom she admonished and those whom she praised. In her sixty-ninth year, dear 'Susan B.' seems not over fifty-five. She has a wonderful constitution, and the prodigies of work she has accomplished have forever put to rout the ignorant notion that women lack physical endurance."

In the year of preliminary work for this great council, the thought came many times to May Wright Sewall that it ought to result in something more than one brief convention, and she conceived the idea of a permanent International and also a permanent National Council of Women. During the week in Washington she presented her plan to a large number of the leaders who regarded it with approval. Miss Anthony, chairman of the meeting, by request, appointed a committee of fifteen who reported in favor of permanent councils, and Miss Willard presented an outline of constitutions. After a number of meetings of the delegates the councils were officially formed, March 31, 1888, "to include the organized working forces of the world's womanhood," in the belief that "such a federation will increase the world's sum total of womanly courage, efficiency and esprit de corps, widen the horizon, correct the tendency of an exaggerated impression of one's own work as compared with that of others, and put the wisdom and experience of each at the service of all." A simple form of constitution was adopted, and it was decided that the National Council should meet once in three years and the International once in five.[42]

Immediately upon the close of the council, the National Suffrage Association held its twentieth annual convention and, as many of the delegates remained, the meetings were nearly as crowded as those of the council had been. A local paper remarked "that it seemed as if the Washington people could never hear enough about woman suffrage." A fine address by Caroline E. Merrick was an especial feature, as it presented the question from the standpoint of a southern woman. The Senate committee granted a hearing, the speakers being presented by Miss Anthony. Mrs. Stanton made the principal address, a grand plea for human equality, and the grave and dignified committee gave her a round of applause. She was followed by Frances E. Willard and Julia Ward Howe; Laura Ormiston Chant and Alice Scatcherd, England; Isabelle Bogelot, France; Sophia Magelsson Groth, Norway; Alli Trygg, Finland; Bessie Starr Keefer, Canada.

Miss Anthony received many pleasant letters after the council; among them one from her friend Mrs. Samuel E. Sewall, of Boston, in which she said: "We want to congratulate you upon the very satisfactory and gratifying result of the council. I hear from the delegates on all sides most enthusiastic accounts of the whole affair, and of your wonderful powers and energy. Mr. Blackwell is loud in your praise. All this might be expected from the delegates, but what pleases me still more is the respectful tone of nearly all the newspapers. Even the sneering Nation has admitted an article in praise of the council." In all Miss Anthony's own letters there was not the slightest reference to any feeling of fatigue or desire for rest, but she seemed only to be stimulated to greater energy. It was impossible for her to respond to half the invitations which came from all parts of the country, but usually she selected the places where she felt herself most needed, without any regard to her own pleasure or comfort. She did, however, accept a cordial invitation to attend the annual Boston Suffrage Festival, and was royally entertained for several days.

On the afternoon of June 9, Central Music Hall, Chicago, was packed with an audience of representative men and women. Frances E. Willard presided,[43] prayer was offered by Rev. Florence Kollock, and Mrs. Ormiston Chant gave a wonderfully electric address on the "Moral Relations of Men and Women to Each Other." She was followed by Dr. Kate Bushnell in a thrilling talk on "Legislation as it Deals with Social Purity." Miss Anthony closed the program with a ringing speech showing the need of the ballot in the hands of women to remedy such evils as had been depicted by the other speakers. No abstract can give an idea of her magnetic force when profoundly stirred by such recitals as had been made at this meeting.

A few days afterwards a largely-attended reception was given by the Woman's Club of Chicago to Miss Anthony, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Baroness Gripenberg, of Finland.

In the summer of 1888, the National Association as usual sent delegates to each of the presidential conventions, asking for a suffrage plank, and as usual they were ignored by Republicans and Democrats. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Hooker had headquarters in the parlors of Mrs. Celia Whipple Wallace, at the Sherman House, Chicago, during the Republican convention in June. They issued an open letter citing the record of the party in regard to women, and asking for recognition, but received no consideration. In the Woman's Tribune, Miss Anthony made this forcible statement:

Had the best representative suffrage women of every State in the Union been in Chicago, established in national headquarters, working with the men of their State delegations, as well as with the resolution committee, I have not a doubt that the Republican platform would have contained a splendid plank, pledging the party to this broad and true interpretation of the Constitution. Every other reform had its scores and hundreds of representatives here, pleading for the incorporation of its principles in the platform and working for the nomination of the men who would best voice their plans. Women never will be heard and heeded until they make themselves a power, irresistible in numbers and strength, moral, intellectual and financial, in all the formative gatherings of the parties they would influence. Therefore, I now beg of our women not to lose another opportunity to be present at every political convention during this summer, to urge the adoption of woman suffrage resolutions and the nomination of men pledged to support them. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" for women as well as for men.

From Chicago Miss Anthony went directly to Indianapolis and, with Mrs. Sewall, called at the Harrison residence. She says: "We met a most cordial reception and while the general did not declare himself in favor of woman's enfranchisement, he expressed great respect for those who are seeking it." The two ladies then addressed an open letter to General Harrison, urging that in accepting the nomination he would interpret as including women that plank in the Republican platform which declared: "We recognize the supreme and sovereign right of every lawful citizen to cast one free ballot in all public elections and to have that ballot duly counted;"[44] but this reasonable request was politely ignored.

Sarah Knox Goodrich and Ellen Clark Sargent, of California, sent the following telegram to their fellow-citizen, Morris M. Estee, chairman of the National Republican Convention: "Please ascertain, for many interested women, if the clause in the platform concerning the sovereign right of every lawful citizen to a free ballot, includes the women of the United States." To this Mr. Estee telegraphed reply, "I do not think the platform is so construed here." This ended the battle of 1888, as far as women were concerned, and those who might have been the ablest advocates which any political party could put upon its platform were relegated to silence during the campaign.

On August 7, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spoke at Byron Center, and were entertained by Mrs. Newton Green. Miss Anthony addressed a large audience at Jamestown on the 10th and was the guest of Mrs. Reuben E. Fenton. During part of the summer, for a little recreation, she took hold of the great heterogeneous mass of bills and receipts of the National W. S. A. for the past four years and compiled them into a neat, accurate financial report of seventeen pages, in which every dollar received and disbursed during that time was acknowledged and accounted for, without any "sundries" or other makeshifts for the sake of accuracy. As the total amount reached nearly $18,000, a large part of which had been received in sums of one or two dollars, the labor involved may be appreciated. Miss Anthony did this, as she did many other disagreeable things, not because they were officially her duty, but because they ought to be done and there was no one else ready to undertake them. She always was restive under red tape regulations. For many years she was forced to take the lead in all departments of the suffrage work and when they finally became systematized, with a head at each, she sometimes grew impatient at delay and usurped the functions of others without intending any breach of official etiquette. And so when this financial statement was completed, she published it without waiting for money or authority, and wrote to the national treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, who had recently returned from Europe:

Andrew Jackson-like, I decided to assume the responsibility of sending to each member of the association a copy of the Council Report with one of the National's financial statement. I am writing a personal letter to all, explaining our double keeping of our pledge and asking them to return contributions, if they are able, for this permanent and nice report. I do not know what results in cash will come of it to the National, but I do know that the poorest and hardest-working women who pinched out their dollars to send, think that we promised them therefor this book-report of the council. So all in all I decided, against Miss Foster, Mrs. Stanton and your own dear self, to give each the report, leaving her to do as she feels most comfortable about sending to the treasurer payment in return.

A few days later she writes: "I mailed 800 letters yesterday, and we have sent over 1,500 Reports, with 800 more promised." Could any pen give an adequate idea of the amount of work accomplished by that tireless brain and those never-resting hands?

Miss Anthony spoke on Woman's Day, October 12, at the Centennial Celebration in Columbus, O. A newspaper correspondent drew this contrast between her address and those of the women of the W. C. T. U.:

Each prayer started heavenward was weighted with politics--political prohibition. When the eloquent speakers of the afternoon dealt a stinging blow under the belt to one of the leading political parties, the applause was tremendous, cheers and "amens" mingling in a sacrilegious chorus of approval. On the other hand, when Miss Anthony made her calm, strong and really logical argument in favor of woman suffrage, giving each party, so far as related to action of States, just praise or censure, she was received coldly. It did not seem to count for anything that she had been a pioneer in the cause of temperance. That white record was stained because she cast their idol down--she showed that prohibition had failed in Kansas in the large cities, whether under a Democratic or a Republican governor, or under St. John, the Prohibition governor; in every administration it was a failure, because even there women had only a restricted vote, and public sentiment without the ballot counted for naught. There were no little graves in her speech, no weeping willows by winding streams where lay broken hearts in tombs unmarked. It was a simple statement of the cause a brave woman had at heart.

She attended the State conventions at Ames, Ia., and at Emporia, Kan., where she was the guest of Senator and Mrs. Kellogg. From there she went to Leavenworth, and later to Omaha for the Nebraska convention. She then engaged for the fall and winter with the Slayton Lecture Bureau at $60 a night, and began again the tiresome round throughout the Western States.

In this autumn of 1888, Miss Anthony received a severe shock in the announcement of the approaching marriage of Rachel Foster to Cyrus Miller Avery, of Chicago. He had attended the International Council the preceding spring with his mother, Rosa Miller Avery, known prominently in suffrage and other public work in Illinois. Here he had seen Miss Foster in her youth and beauty, carrying a large part of the responsibility connected with that important gathering, and had fallen in love with her at first sight. During her long life Miss Anthony had seen one young girl after another take up the work of woman's regeneration, fit herself for it, grow into a power, then marry, give it all up and drop out of sight. "I would not object to marriage," she wrote, "if it were not that women throw away every plan and purpose of their own life, to conform to the plans and purposes of the man's life. I wonder if it is woman's real, true nature always to abnegate self." Miss Foster had developed unusual ability and for a number of years had been Miss Anthony's mainstay in the suffrage work, and had grown very close into her heart; it is not surprising, therefore, that she learned of the coming marriage with dismay. She accepted the situation as gracefully as possible, however, and, although too far away to attend the wedding, sent most cordial wishes for the happiness of the newly-married.[45]

The year 1888 brought to Miss Anthony many honors, but it brought also the usual quota of the bereavements which come with every passing year when one nears threescore and ten. Her cherished friend, Dr. Clemence Lozier, had passed away; Edward M. Davis, whose faithful friendship never had failed, was no more; A. Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa had gone to test the truth of the new philosophy; and other dear ones had dropped out of the narrowing circle. But as a partial compensation, there had come into her life some new friends who were destined, if not to fill the place of those who were gone, to make another for themselves in her affections and her labors quite as helpful and important. Chief among these was Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who, from the time of the International Council, gave her deepest love and truest allegiance. Until then she had not been near enough Miss Anthony to realize the nobility and grandeur of her character, but thenceforth she accorded to her all the devotion and reverence of her own strong and beautiful nature. In a letter written after she had returned to her home in Boston, she said: "From my heart I pray that I may always be worthy your love and confidence. To know you is a blessing; to be trusted by you is worth far more than my efforts for our work have cost me."

FOOTNOTES:

[36] To these afterwards were added from the executive committee, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Chairman, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mary B. Clay, Sarah M. Perkins, Lillie Devereux Blake, Mary F. Eastman, Clara Neymann, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert.

[37] Many letters are on file making these declarations. It is not practicable to quote them here, but a place may be made for an extract from that of Zerelda G. Wallace to Miss Anthony: "While they do not under-estimate the work of any of the pioneers, the hearts of the women all over the country are turning to you. They feel that they are yours, and you are theirs. The suffrage women look to you with as much loyalty and affection as the temperance women to Miss Willard. There are thousands of them who would rally around you with an enthusiasm which no one else can inspire. You will do me the credit to believe that I speak solely for the good of the work to which you have given your life."

[38] Mrs. Avery and Miss Blackwell have continued ever since to fill these positions most acceptably to the association.

[39] The magnitude of the work of the council may be better appreciated by the mention of a few figures in this connection. There were printed and distributed by mail 10,000 calls and 10,000 appeals; sketches were prepared of the lives and work of speakers and delegates and circulated by a press committee of over ninety persons in many States; March 10, the first edition (5,000) of the sixteen-page program was issued; this was followed by five other editions of 5,000 each and a final seventh edition of 7,000. About 4,000 letters were written. Including those concerning railroad rates, not less than 10,000 more circulars of various kinds were printed and distributed. A low estimate of the number of pages thus issued gives 672,000. During the week of the council and the week of the convention of the National W. S. A. the Woman's Tribune was published by Mrs. Colby eight times (four days sixteen pages, four days twelve pages), the daily edition averaging 12,500.

An international convention of men, held in Washington the same year, cost in round numbers $50,000.--Official Report.

[40] One session each was given to Education, Philanthropy, Temperance, Industries, Professions, Organizations, Legal Conditions, Social Purity, Political Conditions, etc., which were discussed by the women most prominent in the several departments. Fifty-three different national organizations of women were represented by eighty speakers and forty-nine delegates from England, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, Canada and the United States.

[41] The fine stenographic reports of this council were made by Mary F. Seymour and a corps of women assistants. The official proceedings, with speeches in full, may be obtained of the corresponding secretary of the National-American W. S. A.

[42] National Council: President, Frances E. Willard; vice-president-at-large, Susan B. Anthony; corresponding secretary, May Wright Sewall; recording secretary, Mary F. Eastman; treasurer, M. Louise Thomas.

[43] This meeting was arranged by Dr. Frances Dickinson, who had persuaded Miss Anthony to make the journey to Chicago in order to preside over it. On the way to the hall she was detained at a drawbridge and Miss Willard kindly took her place.

[44] See Appendix for full text of letter.

[45] Mrs. Foster Avery has proved an exception to the rule and, during the ten years since her marriage, has performed as much work, to say the least, as any of the younger generation of women, besides contributing thousands of dollars.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVI. CONVENTIONS FROM WASHINGTON TO SOUTH DAKOTA

1889.

The eleventh of January, 1889, found Miss Anthony in her usual pleasant suite of rooms at the Riggs House. She plunged at once into preparations for the approaching convention, interviewing congressmen, calling at the newspaper offices and conferring with local committees. The Twenty-first National Convention opened January 21, in the Congregational church, with the speakers as bright and full of hope as they had been through all the score of years. The opening address was given by Hon. A. G. Riddle and, during the sessions, excellent speeches were made by Hon. William D. Kelley, Senator Blair, Rev. Alexander Kent and State Senator Blue, of Kansas. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made her first appearance on the National platform and delivered her splendid oration, "The Fate of Republics." Laura M. Johns gave a practical and pleasing talk on "Municipal Suffrage in Kansas;" and there was the usual array of talent. Miss Anthony presided, putting every speaker to the front and making a substantial background of her own felicitous little speeches, each containing an argument in a nutshell.

While in Washington she was entertained at dinner by the "Six O'clock Club," and seated at the right hand of its president Dr. Wm. A. Hammond. The subject for the evening was "Robert Elsmere" and, in giving her opinion, she said she had found nothing new in the book; all those theological questions had been discussed and settled by the Quakers long ago. What distressed her most was the marriage of Robert and Catherine, who, any outsider could have seen, were utterly unfitted for one another, and she wondered if there could be any way by which young people might be able to know each other better before marrying.

On February 11, Miss Anthony spoke in Cincinnati to an audience of 2,000, under the management of A. W. Whelpley, city librarian.[46] The Commercial Gazette commented: "Miss Susan B. Anthony had every reason for congratulation on the audience, both as to quality and quantity, which greeted her Sunday afternoon at the Grand Opera House. Her discourse proved to be one of the most entertaining of the Unity Club lectures this season, and if she did not succeed in gaining many proselytes to her well-known views regarding woman's emancipation, she certainly reaped the reward of presenting the arguments in an interesting and logical manner. Every neatly turned point was received with applause and that good-natured laughter that carries with it not a little of the element of conviction. As of old, this pioneer of the woman's cause is abundantly able to return sarcasm for sarcasm, as well as to present an array of facts in a manner which would do credit to the most astute of our politicians."

Miss Anthony was much gratified at the cordial reception given her in Cincinnati and the evident success of her speech, and Tuesday morning, with a happy heart, took the train for her western lecture tour. She settled herself comfortably, glanced over her paper and was about to lay it aside when her eye caught the word "Leavenworth." A hasty glance told her of the drowning the day before of Susie B. Anthony, while out skating with a party of schoolmates! Susie B., her namesake, her beloved niece, as dear as a daughter, and with many of her own strong characteristics--she was almost stunned. Telegraphing at once to cancel her engagements, she hastened to Leavenworth. Just six months before, Colonel and Mrs. Anthony had lost a little daughter, five years old, and now the sudden taking away of this beautiful girl in her seventeenth year was a blow of crushing force. She found a stricken household to whom she could offer but small consolation out of her own sorrowing heart. After the last services she attempted to fill her engagements in Arkansas, speaking in Helena, Fort Smith and Little Rock; at the last place being introduced to the audience by Governor James B. Eagle. She was so filled with sympathy for her brother and his wife that she gave up her other lectures and returned to Leavenworth, where she remained for two months, going away only for two or three meetings.

She lectured in Memorial Hall, St. Louis, March 5,[47] and a brilliant reception was given her at the Lindell Hotel. On March 9, she spoke at Jefferson City, where the Daily Tribune contained a full synopsis of her address, beginning as follows: "The hall of the House of Representatives was crowded last night as never before, with ladies and gentlemen--State officials, members of the general assembly, clerks of the departments and of the legislature, and all the students from Lincoln Institute.... Miss Anthony was received with applause, and plunged at once into the subject which for many years has made her name a household word in every English-speaking country on the globe."

Leavenworth was in the midst of an exciting municipal campaign and Colonel Anthony had been nominated for mayor by the Republicans. Miss Anthony made a number of speeches, at Chickering Hall, the Conservatory of Music, the different churches, meetings of colored people, etc. The night of the last great rally she writes in her diary: "It does seem as if the cause of law and order and temperance ought to win, but the saloon element resorts to such tricks that honest people can not match them." So it seemed in this case, and Colonel Anthony was defeated. The Republicans, both men and women, were divided amongst themselves with the usual results.

Her grief over the untimely death of Susie B. was still fresh, and in a letter to a friend who had just suffered a great bereavement, she said: "It is a part of the inevitable and the living can not do otherwise than submit, however rebellious they may feel; but we will clutch after the loved ones in spite of all faith and all philosophy. By and by, when one gets far enough away from the hurt of breaking the branch from its tree, there does, there must, come a sweet presence of the spirit of the loved and gone that soothes the ache of the earlier days. That every one has to suffer from the loss of loving and loved ones, does not make our anguish any the less."

To the sorrowing father she wrote after she returned home: "Can you not feel when you look at those lonely mounds, that the spirits, the part of them that made life, are not there but in your own home, in your own heart, ever present? It surely is more blessed to have loved and lost than never to have loved.... Which of us shall follow them first we can not tell, but if it should be I, lay my body away without the heartbreak, the agony that must come when the young go. Try to believe that all is well, that however misunderstood or misunderstanding, all there is clear to the enlarged vision. Whenever I have suffered from the memory of hasty or unkind words to those who have gone, my one comfort always has been in the feeling that their spirits still live and are so much finer that they understand and forgive."

Miss Anthony went from Leavenworth to Indianapolis for a few days' conference with Mrs. Sewall on matters connected with the National Suffrage Association and National Council of Women. She writes in her diary: "Mrs. Sewall introduced me to the girls of her Classical School as one who had dared live up to her highest dream. I did not say a word for fear it might not be the right one." From here she journeyed to Philadelphia, stopping, she says, "with dear Adeline Thomson, whose door is always open to those who are working for women;"[48] thence to New York for the State convention April 26.

The preceding evening a reception was tendered Miss Anthony at the Park Hotel, where she notes, "I wore my garnet velvet and point lace." This did not suit the correspondent of the Chicago Herald, who said: "Her futile efforts to adjust her train with the toe of her number seven boot, instead of the approved backward sweep of heel, demonstrated that she certainly was not 'to the manner born.'" He then continued to sneer at the suffrage women for "adopting the social elegancies of life inaugurated by Mrs. Ashton Dilke, at the council last winter;" evidently unaware that Miss Anthony had been wearing her velvet gown since 1883. But the same day the New York Sun had a long and serious editorial to the effect that "equal suffrage never would be successful until it was made fashionable." This illustrates how hard it is to please everybody, and also how prone men are to make a woman's work inseparable from her garments, always giving more prominence to what she wears than to what she says and does, and then censuring her because she "gives so much time and thought to her clothes." Even from far-off Memphis the Avalanche tumbled down on Miss Anthony for wearing point lace "when the women who wore their lives out making it were no better than slaves." Doubtless the editor abjured linen shirt-bosoms because the poor Irishwomen who bleach the flax are paid starvation wages. The Brooklyn Times also jumped into the breach and, in a column editorial, attempted to prove that "the ballot for woman is as superfluous as a corset for a man." Thus does the male mind illustrate its superiority!

On May 17, Miss Anthony addressed the Woman's Political Equality Club of Rochester, in the Unitarian church, which was crowded to its capacity. She spoke in Warren, O., May 21, the guest of Hon. Ezra B. Taylor and his daughter, Mrs. Upton. The next day the two ladies went to the Ohio State Convention at Akron and were entertained at the palatial home of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Miller. A dinner was given to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace and Rev. Anna Shaw by Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Schumacher.

A report went the rounds of the newspapers at this time saying that "Miss Anthony had renounced woman suffrage." It was started doubtless by some one who supposed her to be so narrow as to abandon a great principle because her brother had been defeated in a city where women had the suffrage. The Portland Oregonian having used this alleged renunciation as the basis for a leading editorial, the ladies of Tacoma, Wash., where women had been arbitrarily disfranchised by the supreme court, sent a telegram to Miss Anthony asking if the rumor were true. She telegraphed in reply: "Report false; am stronger than ever and bid Washington restore woman suffrage."

She went to Philadelphia to attend the wedding, June 21, of one of her family of nieces, who filled the place in her great heart which would have been given to her daughters, had she chosen marriage instead of the world's work for all womankind. When her sister Hannah had died years before, Miss Anthony had brought the little orphan, Helen Louise Mosher, to her own home, where she had remained until grown. For some time she had been a successful supervisor of kindergarten work in Philadelphia and today she was the happy bride of Alvan James, a prominent business man of that city.[49] Miss Anthony was pleased with the marriage and the young couple started on their wedding tour with her blessing.

In July a charming letter was received from Madame Maria Deraismes, president of the French Woman's Congress, conveying "the greetings of the women of France to the leader of women in America." On the Fourth Miss Anthony addressed a Grangers' picnic, at Lyons, held under the great trees in the dooryard of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Bradley, who were her hosts. One hot week this month was spent with Dr. Sarah A. Dolley, a prominent physician of Rochester, in her summer home at Long Pond. Early in August, with her niece Maud, she took a very delightful trip through the lake and mountain regions of New York. After a visit at Saratoga they went up Mount McGregor, and Miss Anthony writes in her diary: "Here we saw the room where General Grant died, the invalid chair, the clothes he wore, medicine bottles, etc.--very repulsive. If the grand mementoes of his life's work were on exhibition it would be inspiring, but these ghastly reminders of his disease and death are too horrible."

They spent a few days at the Fort William Henry Hotel on beautiful Lake George, and she says: "Several of the colored waiters formerly at the Riggs House recognized me the moment I entered the dining-room, and one of them brought me a lovely bouquet." They sailed through Lake Champlain to Montreal, stopping at the Windsor, visiting the grand cathedrals and enjoying the glorious view from the summit of the Royal mountain. Then they journeyed to the Berkshire hills and enjoyed many visits with the numerous relatives scattered throughout that region. At Brooklyn they were the guests of the cousins Lucien and Ellen Hoxie Squier.

Early in July Miss Anthony had accepted an invitation to address the Seidl Club, who were to give a luncheon at Brighton Beach, the fashionable resort on Coney Island. The invitation had been extended through Mrs. Laura C. Holloway, one of the editorial staff of the Brooklyn Eagle and a valued friend of many years' standing, who wrote: "Not nearly all our members are suffragists, but all of them honor you as a great and noble representative of the sex. You can do more good by meeting this body of musical and literary women than by addressing a dozen out-and-out suffrage meetings. You will find many old friends to greet you, and a loving and proud welcome from yours devotedly." She addressed the club August 30, after an elegant luncheon served to 300 members and guests. She selected for her subject, "Woman's Need of Pecuniary Independence," and her remarks were received with much enthusiasm. "Broadbrim's" New York letter thus describes the occasion:

The Seidl Club had an elegant time down at Coney Island this week, and dear old Susan B. Anthony addressed the members, many of whom are among the representative women of the land. It was the custom in years gone by for a lot of paper-headed ninnies, who write cheap jokes about mothers-in-law, to fire their paper bullets at Susan B. She has lived to see about one-half of them go down to drunkard's graves, and the other half are either dead or forgotten, while she today stands as one of the brightest, cheeriest women, young or old, to be found in our own or any other land. What a tremendous battle she has fought, what a blameless life she has led, rejoicing in the strength which enabled her to mingle with the weak and erring of her sex when necessary without even the smell of smoke on her garments. She made an address, and what an address it was, with more good, sound, hard sense in it than you would find in fifty congressional speeches, and how the women applauded her till they made the roof ring! Susan B. Anthony was by all odds the lioness of the day.

A few days were given to Mrs. Stanton, who was spending the summer with her son Gerrit and his wife at Hempstead, L. I., and they prepared the call for the next national convention. She reached home in time to speak on September 9 at Wyoming, where she was a guest at the delightful summer home of Mrs. Susan Look Avery for several days, as long as she could be persuaded to stay. She then hastened back to New York to visit Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, president of Sorosis, for a day or two, and arrange National Council affairs, and down to Philadelphia to plan suffrage work with Rachel Foster Avery.[50] Just as she was leaving she received a letter from Margaret V. Hamilton, of Ft. Wayne, announcing that her mother, Emerine J. Hamilton, had bequeathed to Miss Anthony for her personal use $500 in bank stock, a testimonial of her twenty years of unwavering friendship. While grieved at the loss of one whose love and hospitality she had so long enjoyed, she rejoiced in the thought that from the daughters she still would receive both in the same unstinted degree.

September 27 saw her en route for the West once more and by October 1 she was at Wichita, ready for the Kansas State Convention. The Woman's Tribune had said: "It is the greatest boon to the president of a State convention to have the presence and counsel of Miss Anthony." At this meeting the committee reported a set of resolutions beginning, "We believe in God," etc., when she at once protested on the ground that "the woman suffrage platform must be kept free from all theological bias, so that unbelievers as well as evangelical Christians can stand upon it."

The 10th of October Miss Anthony, fresh, bright and cheery, reported for duty at the Indiana State Convention held at Rushville. On October 14, strong and vigorous as ever, she announced herself at Milwaukee, ready for the Wisconsin State Convention, where she spoke at each of the three days' sessions. In one of her addresses here she said that she did not ask suffrage for women in order that they might vote against the liquor traffic--she did not know how they would vote on this question--she simply demanded that they should have the same right as men to express their opinions at the ballot-box. Immediately the report was sent broadcast that Miss Anthony had said "as many women would vote for beer as against it."

Then down to Chicago she journeyed to talk over the "Isabella Memorial" with her cousin, Dr. Frances Dickinson, who was a prime factor of this movement. While there she had a charming visit with Harriet Hosmer, the great sculptor, who afterwards wrote her:

It was a real treat to see you once more.... How well do I remember our first meeting in the office of The Revolution. I do not know of anything that would give me so much pleasure as being present at the Washington convention, and if I am in America next January you may rest assured I shall be there.... Yes, you are quite right; there ought to be a National Art Association of women who are real artists, and it would be a good thing all round. There is nothing which has impressed me so much and so favorably since my return here as the number of helpful clubs and associations which are of modern growth, and one of the best fruits of the work that has been done among women. Not only are they full of pleasantness but where unity is there is strength.

Now that we have come together, don't let us permit a vacuum of twenty years to intervene again; we have a great deal to say to each other.

Miss Anthony went from Milwaukee to the Minnesota State Convention at Minneapolis, and addressed the students of the university. She also visited the Bethany Home for the Friendless and writes in her journal: "I saw there over forty fatherless babes, and twenty or thirty girls who must henceforth wear the scarlet letter over their hearts, while the men who caused their ruin go forth to seek new recruits for the Bethany homes!" At Duluth she was the guest of her faithful friends, Judge J. B. and Sarah Burger Stearns, speaking here in the Masonic Temple. The judge introduced Miss Anthony in these words: "The first quality we look for in men is courage; the next, ability; the third, benevolence. It is my pleasure to present to you tonight a woman who has exhibited, in a marked degree, all three."

On November 11, 1889, at the beginning of the northern winter, she went from here to South Dakota. A woman suffrage amendment had been submitted to be voted on in 1890, and Miss Anthony had been receiving urgent letters from the members of the State Suffrage Association to assist them in a preliminary canvass and advise as to methods of organization, etc. "Every true woman will welcome you to South Dakota," wrote Philena Johnson, one of the district presidents. "My wife looks upon you as a dependent child upon an indulgent parent; your words will inspire her," wrote the husband of Emma Smith DeVoe, the State lecturer. "We are very grateful that you will come to us," wrote Alonzo Wardall, the vice-president.

Miss Anthony began the canvass at Redfield, November 12, introduced by Judge Isaac Howe. The Supreme Court decision allowing "original packages" of liquor to come into the State had just been announced, and the old minister who opened this meeting devoted all of his prayer to explaining to the Almighty the evils which would follow in the wake of these "original packages!" She held meetings throughout the State, had fine audiences and found strong friends at each place. There was much public interest and the comments of the press were favorable in the highest degree.[51]

She addressed the Farmers' Alliance at their State convention in Aberdeen; they were very cordial and officially endorsed the suffrage amendment. In a letter at this time she said: "I have learned just what I feared--the Prohibitionists in their late campaign studiously held woman suffrage in the background. The W. C. T. U. woman who introduced me last night publicly proclaimed she had not yet reached woman suffrage. Isn't it discouraging? When I get to Washington, I shall see all of the South Dakota congressmen and senators and learn what they intend to do. The Republican party here stood for prohibition, and if it will stand for woman suffrage we can carry it, and not otherwise." Her fine optimism did not desert her, however, and to the Woman's Tribune she wrote:

I want to help our friends throughout this State to hold the canvass for woman suffrage entirely outside all political, religious or reform questions--that is, keep it absolutely by itself. I advise every man and woman who wishes this amendment carried at the ballot-box next November to wear only the badge of yellow ribbon--that and none other. This morning I cut and tied a whole bolt of ribbon, and every woman went out of the court-house adorned with a little sunflower-colored knot.

The one work for the winter before our good friends in South Dakota, should be that of visiting every farmhouse of every school district of every county in the State; talking and reading over the question at every fireside these long evenings; enrolling the names of all who believe in woman suffrage; leaving papers and tracts to be read and circulated, and organizing equal suffrage committees in every district and village. With this done, the entire State will be in splendid trim for the opening of the regular campaign in the spring of 1890.

She started eastward the very day her canvass ended, reaching Chicago on Thanksgiving evening, and went directly to Detroit where she spoke November 29, and was the guest of her old friends of anti-slavery days, Giles and Catharine F. Stebbins. Her nephew, Daniel R. Jr., came over from Michigan University to hear her and accompanied her back to Ann Arbor, where she was entertained by Mrs. Olivia B. Hall. He thus gives his impressions to his parents:

Aunt Susan spoke here for the benefit of the Ladies, Library Association, and had an excellent audience; and Sunday night she spoke at the Unitarian church. It was jammed full and people were in line for half a block around, trying to get inside. At the beginning of her lecture Aunt Susan does not do so well; but when she is in the midst of her argument and all her energies brought into play, I think she is a very powerful speaker.

Dr. Sunderland, the Unitarian minister, invited her to dinner and, as I was her nephew, of course I had to be included. The Halls are very fine people and as I took nearly every meal at their house while she was here, I can also testify that they have good things to eat. I brought Aunt Susan down to see where I lived. It being vacation time of course the house was closed and hadn't been aired for a week, and some of the boys having smoked a good deal she thought the odor was dreadful, but that otherwise we were very comfortably fixed.

Miss Anthony spoke at Toronto December 2, introduced by the mayor and entertained by Dr. Augusta S. Gullen, daughter of Dr. Emily H. Stowe. She addressed the Political Equality Club of Rochester in the Universalist church, December 5. During the past three months she had travelled several thousand miles and spoken every night when not on board the cars. Three days later she started for Washington to arrange for the National convention, and from there wrote Rachel Foster Avery:

I have done it, and to my dismay Mrs. Colby has announced my high-handedness in this week's Tribune, when I intended to keep my assumption of Andrew Jackson-like responsibility a secret. One night last week the new Lincoln Hall was opened and when I saw what a splendid audience-room it is, I just rushed the next day to the agent and found our convention days not positively engaged; then rushed to Mr. Kent and from him to Mr. Jordan and got released from the little church, and then back I went and had the convention booked for Lincoln Hall. I did not mean to have any notice of the change of place go out over the country, because it makes no difference to friends outside of Washington. Well, no matter. I couldn't think of taking our convention into any church when we had a chance to go back to our old home, and that in a new and elegant house reared upon the ashes of the old. So if killed I am for this high-handed piece of work, why killed I shall be!

A letter will illustrate her efforts for South Dakota: "I have 50,000 copies of Senator Palmer's speech ready to go to the Senate folding-room, and thence to the South Dakota senators and representatives to be franked, and then back to me to be addressed to the 25,000 men of the Farmers' Alliance, etc. If suffrage literature does not penetrate into every single family in every town of every county of South Dakota before another month rolls round, it will be because I can not get the names of every one. I am securing also the subscription lists of every county newspaper. If reading matter in every home and lectures in every school house of the State will convert the men, we shall carry South Dakota next November with a whoop! I do hope we can galvanize our friends in every State to concentrate all their money and forces upon South Dakota the coming year. We must have no scattering fire now, but all directed to one point, and get everybody to thinking, reading and talking on the subject."

And again she writes: "With my $400 which I have contributed to the National this year, I have made life members of myself, nieces Lucy E. and Louise, and Mrs. Stanton. Now I intend to make Mrs. Minor, Olympia Brown, Phoebe Couzins and Matilda Joslyn Gage life members. I had thought of others, but these last four are of longer standing, were identified with the old National and have suffered odium and persecution because of adherence to it."

In the diary's mention of busy days is one item: "Went to the Capitol to the celebration of the centennial of the First Congress. Justice Fuller made a beautiful oration on the progress of the century but failed to have discovered a woman all the way down;" and another: "This morning called on Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Stanford and Mrs. Manderson to talk about having women represented in the Columbian Exposition of 1892. All are in favor of it."

Every hour was filled with business, and with social duties undertaken solely because of the influence they might have on the great and only question. The last day of 1889 she went to pay the final honors to the wife of her faithful ally, Hon. A. G. Riddle. Death had robbed her of many friends during the past year. On February 1 her old co-worker Amy Post, of Rochester, was laid to rest, one of the veteran Abolitionists who commenced the work in 1833 with Garrison, and who had stood by the cause of woman as faithfully as by that of the slave. In March passed away in the prime of womanhood, Mary L. Booth, editor of Harper's Bazar from its beginning in 1867. In June died Maria Mitchell, the great astronomer, in the fullness of years, having completed threescore and ten. In November was finished the work of Dinah Mendenhall, the venerable Quaker and philanthropist, wife of Isaac Mendenhall, whose home near Philadelphia had been for sixty years the refuge of the poor and oppressed, without regard to sex, color or creed.[52]

At the close of the old year, the Washington Star in a long interview, headed "A Leader of Women," said.

Miss Anthony is now at the capital, ready for the regular annual agitation before Congress of the proposed Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. She is one of the remarkable women of the world. In appearance she has not grown a day older in the past ten years. Her manner has none of the excitement of an enthusiast; never discouraged by disappointment, she keeps calmly at work, and she could give points in political organization and management to some of the best male politicians in the land. Her face is strong and intellectual, but full of womanly gentleness. Her gold spectacles give her a motherly rather than a severe expression, and a stranger would see nothing incongruous in her doing knitting or fancy-work. In no sense does she correspond with the distorted idea of a woman's rights agitator. In conversation her manner is that of perfect repose. She is always entertaining, and the most romantic idealizer of women would not expect frivolity in one of her age and would not charge it to strong-mindedness that she is sedate.... Speaking of the Columbus celebration, she said she understood it was probable that the board of promotion at the capital would decide to permit women a part in the organization and management of the enterprise.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] In response to a letter of introduction from Mr. Spofford, of the Riggs, Miss Anthony was the guest of the Burnet House with a fine suite of apartments. In a letter home she writes: "The chambermaid said, 'Why, you have had more calls than Mrs. Hayes had when she occupied these rooms.'"

[47] Mrs. Minor managed this meeting and also tried to arrange for Miss Anthony to address a large Catholic gathering but was unsuccessful. She writes: "The vicar-general was on the side of your lecture and spoke in complimentary terms of you and your work."

[48] In a letter Miss Thomson wrote: "I want you to know that my heart is warmer for you than for any other mortal, my thoughts follow you wheresoever you go, and I am always glad when your footsteps turn toward me."

[49] A little incident showed the family spirit. When her lover was about to present her with a handsome diamond engagement ring, she requested that instead the money should be given to the National Suffrage Association, which was done.

[50] In a letter to Mrs. Avery relative to some pressing work, Miss Anthony wrote: "I would not for anything have you drudge on this during your husband's vacation. No, no, there is none too much of life and happiness for any of us, so plan to go and be and do whatever seemeth best unto the twain made so beautifully one."

[51] She spoke at Huron, Mitchell, Yankton, Sioux Falls, Madison, Brookings, DeSmet, Watertown, Parker, Pierre, St. Lawrence and Aberdeen, and presented a full set of the History of Woman Suffrage to libraries in each of these towns.

[52] The year previous Mrs. Mendenhall had given Miss Anthony and Frances Willard each her note for $1,000 payable after her death, to be used for the cause of woman suffrage and temperance, but the heirs refused to honor the notes.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVII. AT THE END OF SEVENTY YEARS

1890.

Miss Anthony received New Year's calls in the Red Parlor of the Riggs House, January 1, 1890, entertained a party of friends at dinner in the evening, and had the usual number of pleasant gifts and loving letters. While busy with preparations for the national convention, she learned of the project to celebrate her seventieth birthday on February 15. Supposing it to be simply a tribute from her friends, like the observance of her fiftieth anniversary twenty years before in New York, she was pleased at the compliment, but after the arrangements were commenced she learned that it was to take the form of an elegant banquet at the Riggs and tickets were to be sold at $4 each. Her feelings were expressed in a letter to May Wright Sewall and Rachel Foster Avery, who had the matter in charge:

I write in utter consternation, hoping it is not too late to recall every notice sent for publication. I never dreamed of your doing other than issuing pretty little private invitations signed by Mrs. Stanton and yourselves as officers of the National Association. If its official board is too far dissolved for this, please let the whole matter drop, and I will invite a few special friends to sup with me on my birthday. I know Mr. and Mrs. Spofford would love to unite with you in a personal entertainment of this kind. I may be wrong as to the bad taste of issuing a notice, just like a public meeting, and letting those purchase tickets who wish; but it seems to me the very persons least desired by us may be the first to buy them. I should be proud of a banquet with invited guests who would make it an honor, but with such persons as will pay $5, more or less, it resolves itself into a mere matter of cash. I would vastly prefer to ask those we wanted and foot the entire bill myself.

Mrs. Sewall wrote at once to Mrs. Avery, "This letter strikes dismay to my soul. I will share with you the expense of the banquet." In a day or two Miss Anthony's heart smote her and she wrote again: "I have blown my bugle blast and I know I have wounded your dear souls, but I can not see the plan a bit prettier than I did at first. I may be very stupid or supersensitive. If it were to honor Mrs. Stanton, I would be willing to charge for tickets." And then a few days later: "Have I killed you outright? I can not tell you how much I have suffered because I can not see this as you do, but I would rather never have a mention of my birthday than to have it in that way. I know you meant it all lovely for me, but you did not look at it outside your own dear hearts. Do tell me that I have not alienated the two best-beloved of all my girls."

They finally effected a compromise on the money feature by sending out handsomely engraved invitations to those whom they wished as guests and letting them pay $4 a plate if they came. Although they proved to Miss Anthony that this always was done in such cases, she assented very unwillingly, and begged that they would ask the friends to contribute $4 apiece to the fund for South Dakota instead of the birthday banquet. Finally, when all her scruples had been overcome, she made out so long a list of people whom she wished to have complimentary invitations that they would have filled every seat in the dining hall. She also was so anxious that no one should be slighted in a chance to speak that Mrs. Avery wrote: "The banquet would have to last through eternity to hear all those Miss Anthony thinks ought to be heard."

On the evening of the birthday over 200 of her distinguished friends were seated in the great dining-room of the Riggs House, including a delegation from Rochester and a number of relatives from Leavenworth, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. Miss Anthony occupied the place of honor, on her right hand were Senator Blair and Mrs. Stanton; on her left, Robert Purvis, Isabella Beecher Hooker and May Wright Sewall. (Mrs. Foster Avery was detained at home.) The room was beautifully decorated and the repast elaborate, but with such an array of intellect, the after-dinner speeches were the distinguishing feature of the occasion. The Washington Star, in a long account, said:

A company of the most remarkable women in the world were assembled. As she sat there, surrounded by the skirted knights of her long crusade, Miss Anthony looked no older than fifty, but she had got a good start into her seventy-first year before the dinner ended. May Wright Sewall presided. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that venerable and beautiful old stateswoman, sat at the right of Senator Blair, looking as if she should be the Lord Chief-Justice, with her white hair puffed all over her head, and her amiable and intellectual face marked with the lines of wisdom. Isabella Beecher Hooker, who reminds one of her great brother, with the stamp of genius on her brow and an energy of intellect expressed upon her face, sat at the left of Miss Anthony. Old John Hutchinson, the last of the famous singing family, his white hair and beard forming a fringe about his shoulders; Clara Barton, her breast sparkling with Red Cross medals; and many other women of wide fame were present. Before the banquet the guests assembled in the Red Parlor of the Riggs, where a levee was held and congratulations were offered. It was after 10 o'clock when the line was formed and the guests marched down to the dining-room, Miss Anthony, on the arm of Senator Blair, leading the way.

The correspondent of the New York Sun said in a brilliant description: "The dining-room was a splendid scene, long to be remembered. The American flag was everywhere and, with tropical flowers and foliage, made bright decorations.... It was a notable gathering of women world-wide in fame, and of distinguished men. The lady with a birthday--seventy of them indeed--was of course the star on which all others gazed. She never looked better, never happier, and never so much like breaking down before her feelings. No wonder, with such a birthday party! Friends of her youth calling her 'Susan,' affectionate deference from everybody, and all saying she deserved a thousand just such birthdays--young in heart, beautiful in spirit."

Phoebe Couzins replied to the toast "St. Susan," making a witty contrast between the austere St. Anthony of old and the St. Anthony of today, representing self-abnegation for the good, the beautiful, the true. Rev. Anna Shaw made a delightfully humorous response to "The Modern Peripatetic," referring to the ancient philosopher who had founded the school of men, and Miss Anthony who had founded the modern school of women peripatetics, ready to grab their grips and start around the world at a moment's notice. Matilda Joslyn Gage responded to "Miss Anthony as a Fellow-worker;" Clara Bewick Colby to "Miss Anthony as a Journalist;" Laura Ormiston Chant, of England, to "American Womanhood;" Mrs. Jane Marsh Parker, sent by the Ignorance Club of Rochester, to "Miss Anthony at Home," beginning: "To have brought to Miss Anthony all the testimonials which Rochester would have laid at her feet tonight would have made me appear at the banquet like the modern Santa Claus--the postman at Christmastide." Rev. Frederick W. Hinckley, of Providence, began his graceful address by saying:

King Arthur, sword in hand, is not at the head of the table, but Queen Susan is, the silver crown of seventy honorable years upon her brow; and we gather here from every quarter of the Union, little knights and great knights, without distinction of sex, to take anew at her hands the oath of loyal service to the cause of universal liberty. Those of us who have followed her through all these years know that she has been a knight without reproach, that her head has been level and her heart true. Faithful to the cause of her sex, she has been broad enough to grasp great general principles. She has been not only an advocate of equal rights, but the prophet of humanity; and a better advocate of equal rights because a prophet of humanity. There never has been a time when Whittier's lines concerning Sumner would not have been applicable to her:

"Wherever wrong doth right deny, Or suffering spirits urge their plea, Here is a voice to smite the lie, A hand to set the captive free."

Nineteenth century chivalry renders all honor to that type of womanhood of which she is an illustrious example.

Robert Purvis eloquently referred to Miss Anthony's grand work for the abolition of slavery, which, he said, was still continued in the vaster and more complicated work for the freedom of women. Mrs. Stanton's two daughters, Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Blatch, made sparkling responses. Representative J. A. Pickler said in part:

Five years since, when a member of the Dakota legislature and in charge of the bill giving full suffrage to women, I was characterized in the public press as "Susan B. Pickler." I look upon this as one of the greatest honors ever bestowed upon me. I have never learned how Miss Anthony regarded it....

Unswerved by the shafts of ridicule, without love of gain, she has sublimely borne through all these years ridicule and reproach for principle, for humanity, for womanhood. The soldier battles amid the plaudits of his countrymen, the statesman supported by his party, the clergyman sanctioned by his church, but alone, this great woman has stood for half a century, contending for the rights of women. Says Professor Swing: "Mark any life pervaded by a worthy plan, and how beautiful it is! Webster, Gladstone, Sumner, Disraeli; fifty years were these temples in the building!" How aptly these words describe our great advocate of woman. Gratifying it must be to Susan B. Anthony; gratifying, we bear witness, it is to her friends, that in her maturer years we see this cause, long hated by others but by her always loved, now respected by all; and herself, its representative and exponent, revered, loved and honored by a whole nation.

The main address was made by Mrs. Stanton, who responded to the sentiment "The Friendships of Women," in an oration full of humor, and closed:

If there is one part of my life which gives me more intense satisfaction than another, it is my friendship of more than forty years' standing with Susan B. Anthony. Ours has been a friendship of hard work and self-denial.... Emerson says, "It is better to be a thorn in the side of your friend than his echo." If this add weight and stability to friendship, then ours will endure forever, for we have indeed been thorns in the side of each other. Sub rosa, dear friends, I have had no peace for forty years, since the day we started together on the suffrage expedition in search of woman's place in the National Constitution. She has kept me on the war-path at the point of the bayonet so long that I have often wished my untiring coadjutor might, like Elijah, be translated a few years before I was summoned, that I might spend the sunset of my life in some quiet chimney-corner and lag superfluous on the stage no longer.

After giving up all hope of her sweet repose in Abraham's bosom, I sailed some years ago for Europe. With an ocean between us I said, now I shall enjoy a course of light reading. I shall visit all the wonders of the old world, and write no more calls, resolutions or speeches for conventions--when lo! one day I met Susan face to face in the streets of London with a new light in her eyes. Behold there were more worlds to conquer. She had decided on an international council in Washington, so I had to return with her to the scenes of our conflict.... Well, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection; for I do believe that I have developed into much more of a woman under her jurisdiction, fed on statute laws and constitutional amendments, than if left to myself reading novels in an easy-chair, lost in sweet reveries of the golden age to come without any effort of my own.

As Mrs. Stanton concluded, "The Guest of the Evening" was announced and, amidst long continued applause and waving of handkerchiefs, Miss Anthony arose and made one of those little speeches that never can be reported, in which she said:

I have been half inclined while listening here to believe that I had passed on to the beyond. If there is one thing I hope for more than another, it is that, should I stay on this planet thirty years longer, I still may be worthy of the wonderful respect you have manifested for me tonight. The one thought I wish to express is how little my friend or I could have accomplished alone. What she said is true; I have been a thorn in her side and in that of her family too, I fear. I never expect to know any joy in this world equal to that of going up and down the land, getting good editorials written, engaging halls, and circulating Mrs. Stanton's speeches. If I ever have had any inspiration she has given it to me, for I never could have done my work if I had not had this woman at my right hand. If I had had a husband and children, or opposition in my own home, I never could have done it. My father and mother, my brothers and sisters, those who are gone and those who are left, all have been a help to me. How much depends on the sympathy and co-operation of those about us! It is not necessary for all to go to the front. Every woman presiding over her table in the homes where I have been, has helped sustain me, I wish they could know how much.

Poems were read or sent by Harriet Hosmer, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Alice Williams Brotherton and a number of others. At the close of Mrs. Hooker's verses entitled "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?" the entire company arose and sang two stanzas of "Auld Lang Syne," led by the venerable John Hutchinson. From the many letters received only a few extracts can be given:

Allow me to congratulate you on your safe arrival at the age of threescore and ten. How much we may congratulate ourselves on the great gains that have come to woman during these years; gains for which you have worked so hard and so long! Hoping that you may still be on this planet when the ballot is the sure possession of our sex, I am very truly your co-worker,

LUCY STONE.

None can more heartily congratulate thee on thy threescore and ten years nobly devoted to the welfare of humanity, to unremitting labor for temperance, for the abolition of slavery and for equal rights of citizenship, irrespective of sex or color. We have lived to see the end of slavery, and I hope thou wilt live to see prohibition enforced in every State in the Union, and sex no longer the condition of citizenship. God bless thee and give thee many more years made happy by works of love and duty. I am truly thy friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER.

My heart honors, loves and blesses you. Every woman's would if she only knew you. You'll have a statue some day in the Capitol at Washington, but your best monument is built already in your countrywomen's hearts. God bless you, brave and steadfast elder sister! Accept this as the only valentine I ever wrote. May you live a hundred years and vote the last twenty-five, is the wish and prediction of your loyal sister,

FRANCES E. WILLARD.

Miss Anthony's sole and effective fidelity to the cause of the equal rights of her sex is worthy of the highest honor, and I know that it will be eloquently and fitly acknowledged at the dinner, which I trust will be in every way successful. Very respectfully yours,

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

It is a grief to me that I can not be present to honor the birthday of our dear Susan B. Anthony; long life to her! I should have been delighted to respond to the toast proposed, and to bear my heartfelt tribute of respect and love for the true and unselfish reformer, to whom women are no more indebted than are men. "Time shall embalm and magnify her name." Very sincerely yours,

WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

I know her great earnestness in every righteous cause, especially that most righteous of all, woman suffrage, which I hope may receive a new impulse from your gathering. As I grow older I feel assured, year by year, that the granting of suffrage to women will remedy many evils which now are attendant on popular government; and if we are to despair of that cause we must despair of the final establishment of justice as the controlling power in the political affairs of mankind. I am faithfully yours,

GEORGE F. HOAR.

I can not venture to promise to be present at the dinner to be given to Miss Anthony, but I should be sorry to lose an opportunity to express my admiration of her life and character. In themselves they are ample refutation of the charges made by the unthinking that participation in public affairs would make women unwomanly. If any system of subjection has enabled any woman to preserve more thoroughly the respect and affectionate regard of all her friends than has Miss Anthony amid the struggles of an active and strenuous life I have yet to learn of it. With sincere hope that she may have many years still left to her, I am yours sincerely,

THOMAS B. REED.

I think I express the feeling of most if not all the workers in our cause when I say that the women of America owe more to Susan B. Anthony than to any other woman living. While Mrs. Stanton has been the standard bearer of liberty, announcing great principles, Miss Anthony has been the power which has carried those principles on toward victory and impressed them upon the hearts of the people. Yours truly,

OLYMPIA BROWN.

May you live many years longer to enjoy the results of your herculean work, and score as many triumphs in the future as you have in the past. On the morning of the 15th some flowers will be sent you with my love. I wish they were as imperishable as your name and fame. Affectionately,

MRS. JOHN A. LOGAN.

How good to have lived through the laugh of the world into its smiles of welcome and honor--how much better to have reached these with a heart gentle and humble like hers--how best of all to care, as she must, scarce a rush for the personal honor and accept it only as an honor to the cause for which she has given so many of the seventy years. Truly yours,

W. C. AND MARY LEWIS GANNETT.

With the hope that you may live to one hundred or until, like ancient Simeon, you behold what you hope for, I am yours very truly,

T. W. PALMER.

My wife and I send you our hearty congratulations on your birthday. May you have many happy returns of the day, with increasing honor and affection from your numerous friends, amongst whom we hope you will let us count ourselves. Yours very truly,

CHARLES NORDHOFF.

I congratulate you with all my heart upon your health and happiness on this your seventieth birthday, and wish to say that I believe no woman lives in the United States who has done more for her sex, and for ours as well, than yourself. The great advancement of women, not alone in the direction of suffrage, but in every field of labor and every department of the better and nobler life of manhood and womanhood, during the past generation, has sprung from the work which you inaugurated years ago. Mrs. Carpenter joins me in congratulations and good wishes. Very truly yours,

FRANK G. CARPENTER.

Cordial greetings were received from Neal Dow and Senator Dawes, and letters and telegrams came from distinguished individuals and societies in every State and from many foreign countries. Over 200 of these are preserved among other mementoes of this occasion. Among the telegrams were these, representing the great labor organization of the country:

We congratulate you on the seventieth anniversary of a useful and successful life. May you enjoy many years of health and happiness.

HANNAH POWDERLY, T. V. POWDERLY.

May your noble, self-sacrificing life be spared to participate in your heart's dearest wish--woman's full emancipation.

LEONORA M. BARRY, Grand Organizer K. of L.

Mrs. Colby issued a birthday edition of the Woman's Tribune containing a history of Miss Anthony's trial, a fine biographical sketch written by herself and many beautiful tributes from other friends, among them this from Laura M. Johns: "Always to efface herself and her own interests and to put the cause to the fore; to be striving to place a crown upon some other brow; to be receiving and giving, but never retaining; ever enriching the work but never herself; to be busy through weariness and difficulty and resting only in a change of labor; to bear the stinging hail of ridicule which fell on this movement, and to receive with surprised tears the flowers that bloomed in her thorny path; to be in the heat of the noonday harvest field at seventy, with years of activity and usefulness still remaining to add to her glorious life and crown it with such dignity as belongs to few--this is the story of Susan B. Anthony."

Miss Anthony carried in her arms seventy pink carnations with the card, "For she's the pink o' womankind and blooms without a peer," from Miss Cummings, of Washington. Flowers were sent in profusion, and there was no end of lovely little remembrances of jewelry, water colors, books, portfolios, card cases, handkerchiefs, fans, satin souvenirs, fancy-work, the gifts of loving women in all parts of the country.[53] The evening was one of the proudest and happiest of a life which, although filled with toil and hardship, had been brightened, as had that of few other women, with the bountiful tributes and testimonials not only of personal friends but of people in all parts of the world who knew of her only through her work for humanity. The next day she sat down to Sunday dinner at a table which, thanks to Mrs. Spofford's thoughtfulness, had been arranged especially for the occasion, surrounded by twenty-five of her own relatives who had come to Washington to celebrate her birthday.

Among many newspaper editorials upon this celebration, an extract from the Boston Traveller, which bears the impress of the gifted Lilian Whiting, may be taken as an example of the general sentiment:

Without any special relay of theories on the subject, Miss Susan B. Anthony discovered early in life the secret of imperishable youth and constantly increasing happiness--a secret that may be translated as personal devotion to a noble purpose. To devote one's self to something higher than self--this is the answer of the ages to those who would find the source of immortal energy and enjoyment. It is a statement very simply and easily made but involving all the philosophy of life. Miss Anthony recognized it intuitively. She translated it into action with little consciousness of its value as a theory; but it is the one deepest truth in existence, and one which every human soul must sometime or somewhere learn.

On February 15, 1820, when Susan B. Anthony was born, Emerson was a youth of seventeen; Henry Ward Beecher was a child of seven and Harriet Beecher Stowe a year his junior; Wendell Phillips was nine, Whittier thirteen, and Wm. Lloyd Garrison fifteen years of age. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was four years old, and Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and James Russell Lowell were Miss Anthony's predecessors in this world only by one or two years. Margaret Fuller was ten, Abraham Lincoln was eleven, and thus, between 1803-20, inclusive, were born a remarkable group of people--a galaxy whose influence on their century has been unequalled in any age or in any country, since that of Pericles and his associates in the golden age of Greece. It is only now, as the work of these immortals begins to assume something of the definite outline of completeness; as some results of the determining forces for which this great galaxy has stood, begin to be discerned, that we can adequately recognize how important to the century their lives have been. There are undoubtedly high spirits sent to earth with a definite service to render to their age and generation; a service that prepares the way for the next ascending round on the great cycle of progress, and it is no exaggeration to say that Susan B. Anthony is one of these....

Even brief quotations must be omitted for want of space, but this from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Charles E. Fitch, editor, is entitled to a place as the sentiment in the city where Miss Anthony had made her home for nearly half a century:

The occasion is a notable one. It is in honor of one of the noblest women of her time. The day is past when Susan B. Anthony is met with ridicule. She is honored everywhere. Consistent earnestness will, at the last if not at the first, command respect. Slowly but surely, Miss Anthony has won that respect from her countrymen. The cause of the emancipation of women, for which she has labored so long and so zealously, is not yet triumphant, nor is it probable that she will live to see woman suffrage the rule of the land; but at threescore years and ten, she may freely cherish the faith that it is a conquering cause, destined some day to be vindicated in the organic law of the separate American commonwealths and the Federal union.

But it is not alone for the service which Miss Anthony has rendered to the cause of woman suffrage that she is highly honored. She is honored because of her womanhood, because she has ever been brave without conceit and earnest without pretense, because she has the heart to sympathize with suffering humanity in its various phases, and the will to redress human wrongs. She has revealed a true nobility of soul, and has ever been patient under abuse and misrepresentation. She has allied herself with all good causes, and has been the friend of those struggling against the dominion of appetite as well as of those who have sought to free themselves from political thralldom. She has earned the esteem even of those who were diametrically opposed to her views. Within the movements which she has urged, she has been an administrator rather than an orator, although on occasions her speech has been informed with the eloquence of conviction. In private life she has constrained affection by a gentleness with which the world would hardly credit her; but those who best know her, best know also the gracious womanhood which illustrates itself in acts of unselfishness and beneficence.

The birthday was celebrated by individuals and clubs in many states with luncheons, teas, receptions and literary entertainments. After all these pleasant happenings, Miss Anthony felt new courage and hope to enter upon the Twenty-second National Suffrage Convention, February 18, at Lincoln Music Hall. This was to be an important meeting, as it was to consummate the union of the National and American organizations, and she was anxious for a large attendance. "Do come," she wrote to the most influential friends, "if you stay away forever afterwards. This will be the crucial test whether our platform shall continue broad and free as it has been for forty years. Some now propose secession because it is to be narrow and bigoted; others left us twenty years ago because it was too liberal. Some of the prominent women are writing me that the union means we shall be no more than an annex to the W. C. T. U. hereafter; others declare we are going to sink our identity and become sectarian and conservative. There is not the slightest ground for any of these fears, but come and be our stay and support."

She also had the annual struggle to secure the presence of Mrs. Stanton, who was about to sail with her daughter for England, but, after the usual stormy correspondence, the day of departure was postponed and she wrote: "You will have me under your thumb the first of February." As her time was limited, Miss Anthony arranged for the hearing before the Senate committee on February 8, which was held in the new room assigned to the committee on woman suffrage. A few days later the ladies spoke before the House Judiciary Committee.

The union of the two organizations was effected before the opening of the convention and Mrs. Stanton elected president.[54] She faced a brilliant assemblage at the opening of the National-American Convention and made one of the ablest speeches of her life, stating in the first sentence that she considered it a greater honor to go to England as the president of this association than to be sent as minister plenipotentiary to any court in Europe. She closed by introducing her daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, who captivated the audience.[55] Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, ex-president of the American Association, then delivered an eloquent and scholarly address. At its close Mrs. Stanton was obliged to leave, as she sailed for Europe the next morning. When she arose to say farewell the entire audience joined in the waving of handkerchiefs, the clapping of hands, and the men in three rousing cheers.

The usual corps of National speakers received a notable addition in Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe, Henry B. Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Hon. J. A. Pickler and Alice Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone, being detained at home by illness, sent a letter of greeting. When Miss Anthony, as vice-president-at-large, took the chair after Mrs. Stanton's departure, a great bouquet of white lilies was presented to her.

A woman suffrage amendment was pending in South Dakota, and the claims of the new State were presented by Representative and Mrs. Pickler and Alonzo Wardall, secretary of the Farmer's Alliance and vice-president of the suffrage association, all of whom felt confident that with financial help the amendment could be carried but, as the State was poor, most of this would have to come from outside. The convention became very enthusiastic and a South Dakota campaign committee was formed; Susan B. Anthony, chairman, Clara B. Colby, Alice Stone Blackwell. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made a stirring appeal for money. Miss Anthony pledged all that she could raise between then and the November election. Mrs. Clara L. McAdow, of Montana, headed the list with $250. A number of ladies followed with pledges for their respective States. In a short time it seemed evident that a large sum could be raised and, at Miss Anthony's request, the association directed all contributions to be sent to its treasurer, Mrs. Spofford, at Washington, and she herself agreed to devote a year's work to Dakota.[56]

Miss Anthony remained in Washington several weeks, looking after various matters: first of all, a representation of women in the management of the Columbian Exposition; then there were the reports of the Senate and the House committees, upon which she always brought to bear as much as possible of that "indirect influence" which women are said to possess. Just now the admission of Wyoming as a State with woman suffrage in its constitution was hanging in the balance, but on March 26 she had the inexpressible pleasure of witnessing, from her seat in the gallery of the House, the final discussion and passage of the bill.[57] She also was arranging for the incorporation of the National-American Association, the old National, which had been a corporate body for a number of years, having added American to its name. The bills of the convention were to be settled,[58] and there were still other subjects claiming her attention before she started for the far West to inaugurate the South Dakota campaign.

Miss Anthony was a welcome guest at dinners and receptions in the homes of many of the dignitaries in Washington, but accepted these invitations only when she saw an opportunity thereby to further the cause of woman suffrage. She realized fully that one important step in the work was to interest women of influence, socially and financially, and the high plane of respectability which this question had now attained was at least partly due to her winters in Washington, where, at the Riggs House and in society, she met and made friends with prominent men and women from all parts of the country and converted them to her doctrines, which they disseminated in their various localities upon returning home.

She writes her sister, in describing social events, of a dinner at the handsome home of John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who in person brought the invitation, while his wife, the daughter of General Beale, looked after her "as if she had been the Queen of Sheba." Here she met Senator and Mrs. Payne of Ohio, Senator and Mrs. Cockrell of Missouri, Senator and Mrs. Butler of South Carolina, Speaker and Mrs. Reed of Maine, Justice and Mrs. Field and other notables. Then she speaks of a meeting of the Cobweb Club, composed of women in official life, where, at the close of her informal talk, they crowded around her and exclaimed: "Why, Miss Anthony, we never understood this question before; of course we believe in it." Mrs. Hearst, wife of the Senator, said: "Had any one ever presented this subject to me as you have done today, you should have had my help long ago." "And so you see," she writes, "that at this juncture of our movement much could be accomplished by accepting such invitations, but it costs me more courage than to face an audience of a thousand people."

While Miss Anthony was still in Washington she sat for her bust by a young sculptor, Adelaide Johnson. "So marble and canvas both are to tell the story," she wrote, "for I have sat also for a painting. The time draws near when I must start out campaigning and O, how I dread it!" During this winter she received an invitation from a State W. C. T. U. to bring a suffrage convention to their city and they would bear the expenses, stipulating only that she herself should be present, and that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity." She wrote Miss Shaw: "Won't that prevent your going, Rev. Anna? I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma. The boot is all on one foot with the dear religious bigots--but if they will all pull together with us for suffrage we'll continue to bear and forbear, as we have done for the past forty years."

In this winter of 1890 many loving letters passed between Miss Anthony and Rachel Foster Avery, almost too sacred to be quoted, and yet a few sentences may be used to show the maternal tenderness in the nature of the great reformer:

Of course I miss you from my side, but do not feel for a moment that any doubt of your love and loyalty ever crosses my mind. No, my dear, you and all of us must consider only the best interests of the loved though not yet seen. Banish anxiety and let the rest of us take all the work and care. Be happy in the new life you are molding; avoid all but lovely thoughts; let your first and nearest and dearest feelings be for the precious little one whose temperament and nature you are now stamping. Your every heartbeat, not only of love and peace and beauty, but of the reverse as well, is making its mark on the unborn.... I feel much better satisfied to know Sister Mary is with you for a few days. If her presence is comforting, why don't you ask her to stay with you till the wee one arrives?

And so the serene and helpful sister Mary remains until a telegram is sent to the anxious one, by that time in far-off Dakota, announcing the birth of a daughter. "My heart bounded with joy," wrote Miss Anthony, "to hear the ordeal was passed and the little, sassie Rose Foster Avery safely launched upon the big ocean of time." And in a little while the mother replied: "Darling Aunt Susan, when I lie with baby Rose in my arms, I think so often of what she and I and all women, born and to be born, owe to you, and my heart overflows with love and gratitude."

FOOTNOTES:

[53] There were also more substantial tokens, an Irish wool shawl from Mrs. Chant; a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary from Mrs. Colby, with the inscription, "The words in this volume can not express what women owe you;" a silk dress pattern from brother Daniel R.; a $50 check from sister Mary; $200 from Sarah Willis of Rochester, and $100 from the Woman's Political Equality Club of that city; seventy golden dollars from the Toledo Suffrage Club; $50 from Mrs. Arthur A. Mosher of St. Louis, and enough $5 bills in friendly letters to bring the amount to over $500. The very next day Miss Anthony gave a part of this to friends who were ill or needy, including $50 to Phoebe Couzins.

[54] Described in detail in Chapter XXXV.

[55] Miss Anthony wrote in her journal that night: "Harriot said but a few words, yet showed herself worthy her mother and her mother's life-long friend and co-worker. It was a proud moment for me."

[56] Among those who contributed largely to this fund were Senator Stanford, $300; Rachel Foster Avery, $300; George C. Lemon, Washington City; Hon. Ezra V. Meeker, Puyallup; Rev. Anna H. Shaw; Isabella Hedenberg, Chicago; Alice Stone Blackwell; Emily Howland, Sherwood, N. Y.; O. G. and Alice Peters, Columbus, O.; John L. Whiting, Boston; Senator R. F. Pettigrew, Sioux Falls; Albert O. Willcox, New York, $100 each; Mary H. Johnson, Louisville, $115, which she earned by knitting wool shawls and fascinators; May Wright Sewall sent nearly $200, collected from Indiana friends; James and Martha Callanan, Des Moines, $150; Mary Grew, $143 for the Pennsylvania society. Other women sent their jewelry to be sold, and one offered a gift of western land. The rest of the $5,500 was sent in smaller amounts, and all receipts and expenditures were carefully entered on the national treasurer's books for 1890. When later some carping individuals complained at so much money passing through Miss Anthony's hands, Mrs. Livermore silenced them by saying: "Susan would use every dollar for suffrage if millions were given to her."

[57] Mary Grew wrote her immediately: "All hail and congratulations! I read in this morning's paper that you were in the House yesterday; and I have no doubt that today you are doing something to promote the passage of the bill through the Senate.... One object of this letter is to urge you to take more care of your health. Emily Howland reports that you are very much overworked and exhausted. Pray stop awhile and rest yourself, for the sake of the cause as well as for your own and your friends'."

[58] I will authorize you to add my signature to yours in approving any bills relating to the expenses of the National-American convention just past. It will save time and trouble. You are on the spot and know all about the bills. Yours sincerely,

LUCY STONE.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us