XLVII. THE CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN…

XLVII. THE CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN

1896.

In their State convention of 1894 the Republicans of California had adopted the strongest possible plank in favor of woman suffrage and, as the legislature the next year was Republican by a considerable majority, Clara Foltz and Laura de Force Gordon, attorneys, and Nellie Holbrook Blinn, at that time State president, Mrs. Peet, Madame Sorbier, Mrs. Bidwell, Mrs. Spencer, of Lassen county, and others made a determined effort to secure a bill enfranchising women. That failing, the legislature consented to submit an amendment to the constitution to be voted on in 1896. This bill was signed by Governor James H. Budd and the women then prepared to canvass the State to secure a favorable majority.

Out of the officers of the State suffrage association and the amendment committee, a joint campaign committee was formed and, in addition to this, a State central committee.[118] These two constituted the working force at State headquarters. There were also speakers and organizers, and a regularly officered society in each county, co-operating with the officials at headquarters.

At the request of the State committee Miss Anthony's niece, Lucy E., for seven years Miss Shaw's secretary and thoroughly experienced in planning and arranging meetings, went out early in February to assist Dr. Elizabeth Sargent in the preparations for the first series of conventions. She carried with her a complete list, made by Miss Anthony herself with great labor and care, of every town of over two hundred inhabitants in every county in the State, with instructions to plan for a meeting there during the campaign. One scarcely can describe the perplexing work of these young women in arranging this great sweep of conventions, two days in every county seat, each convention overlapping the next, getting the speakers from one to the other on time, finding women in each town or city who would take charge of local arrangements, and rounding up the whole series in season for the Woman's Congress in May. In March the campaign committee invited Mary G. Hay, who had had twelve years' experience in organization work, and Harriet May Mills, the State organizer of New York, to manage the conventions; and Rev. Anna Shaw and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates as speakers. It is impossible to follow these meetings in detail further than to say that, with but few exceptions, they were very successful, the audiences were large and cordial, clubs were formed, much suffrage sentiment was created, and the conventions considerably more than paid all expenses. The women of California possessed ability, energy, patriotism and desire for political freedom, but up to this time they had no conception of the immense amount of money and work which would be required for a campaign. As soon as they grasped the situation they were fully equal to its demands and never in all the history of the movement was so much splendid work done, or so large a fund raised, by the women of any State.

It was unanimously agreed that Miss Anthony should remain in San Francisco, answering the numerous calls for addresses in that city and the surrounding towns, and having general oversight of the campaign. Mrs. Sargent assigned to her the largest, sunniest room in her spacious home, but her hospitality and her services to the cause of the amendment did not end here. Another large apartment was appropriated to Rev. Anna Shaw and her secretary. The room formerly used as the senator's office was dedicated to the work, the typewriters ensconced there, and it soon was crowded with documents, newspapers and all the paraphernalia of a campaign. In a little while they encroached on the library and it was filled with the litter. Then a typewriter found its way into one corner of the long dining-room. The committee meetings were held in the drawing-room; and, during the whole eight months, there was scarcely a meal at which there were not from one to half a dozen speakers, members of committees, out-of-town workers and others besides her family at the table. Every hour of Mrs. Sargent's and Dr. Elizabeth's time was devoted to the campaign. The latter was placed at the head of the literary committee and also took entire charge of the petition work for the State, involving months of most exacting labor. In addition to all this, both gave most liberally in money. How much was accomplished by Mrs. Sargent's quiet influence, her wise and judicial advice, her many logical and dignified appeals in person and by letter, never can be estimated.

The State board and committees were composed of women of fine character and social standing, who commanded the highest respect; and during the long campaign they put aside every other duty and pleasure and devoted themselves, mind and body, to the success of the amendment. Across the bay in Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley were a large and active county society, Mrs. Isabel A. Baldwin, president, and city organizations of women of equal ability and prestige, who were in daily communication with State headquarters and performed the most valuable and conscientious work. What was true here was equally so of the women in all the counties from San Diego to Del Norte. It seems invidious to mention a single name where so many gave such excellent service. It must be admitted, however, that while hundreds of women worked for their political freedom, thousands contributed absolutely nothing in either money or service; and yet there were many among them who believed fully in the principle of woman suffrage. They simply allowed domestic duties or the demands of society or apathetic indifference to prevent their rendering any assistance, and they could not be prevailed upon even to give money to help those who performed the labor. If all such had lent their influence, the women of California today would be enfranchised; but they left the whole burden to be carried by the few, and these could not do the work necessary for success, because human nature has its limits.

The attitude of the press of California deserves especial mention because to it was largely due the marked consideration which the suffrage amendment received throughout the State. Miss Anthony met in California an acquaintance, Mrs. Ida H. Harper, recently of the editorial staff of the Indianapolis News, and requested her to act as chairman of the press committee. As the press of San Francisco could kill the amendment at the very start, if it chose to do so, they decided to call upon the editors of the daily papers in that city and ascertain their position. They visited the managing editors of the Call, Examiner, Chronicle, Post, Report and Bulletin and, without a single exception, were received with the greatest courtesy and assured that the amendment and the ladies who were advocating it would be treated with respect, that there would be no ridiculing, no cartooning and no attempt to create a sentiment in opposition.

The Post came out editorially in favor of the amendment and established a half-page department, headed "The New Citizen," which was continued daily during the campaign, the largest amount of space ever given by any paper to woman suffrage. Dr. Elizabeth Sargent assumed most of the responsibility for this department, assisted by members of the staff. The Report gave editorial endorsement and a double-column department entitled "The Woman Citizen," edited every Saturday by Winnifred Harper. The Bulletin expressed itself as friendly and later in the campaign opened a suffrage department conducted by Eliza D. Keith; but the paper contained editorials from time to time, which the friends did not construe as favorable to the measure. The managing editor gave the ladies to understand that there would be no opposition from the Chronicle, and during the campaign it contained several strong editorials, not advocating the amendment, but decidedly favorable to woman suffrage. This paper also gave a prominent place to a number of articles from Mrs. Harper and others. Two days before election, however, it advised its readers to vote against the amendment.

The Examiner was friendly and offered a column on the editorial page of the Sunday edition, throughout the campaign if Miss Anthony would fill it. She protested that she was not a writer, but it was only upon this condition that the space would be given. It was too valuable to be sacrificed and so she accepted it, and for seven months furnished Sunday articles of 1,600 words. These were widely copied, not only throughout the State, but in all parts of the country. Every possible influence was exerted to persuade William R. Hearst, the proprietor, who was residing in New York, to bring out the paper editorially in favor of the amendment. Miss Anthony wrote an earnest personal letter which closed: "So, I pray you for the love of justice, for the love of your noble mother, and for the sake of California--lead the way for the Democratic party of your State to advocate the suffrage amendment. The Examiner has done splendidly thus far in publishing fair and full reports of our meetings and articles from our leading suffrage women. The one and only thing we do ask is that it will editorially champion the amendment as it will every other measure it believes in which is to be voted upon next November." All pleadings were in vain and the great paper remained silent. It did not, however, contain a line in opposition.

During Miss Anthony's visit to San Francisco the previous year, the Monitor, the official Catholic organ of California, had come out in two editions with full-page editorials in favor of woman suffrage, as strong as anything ever written on that subject. When the two ladies called on the editor, he assured them of his full sympathy and agreed to accept a series of articles from the chairman of the press committee. These were published regularly for a time and then suddenly were refused, and every effort to ascertain the reason was unsuccessful. Miss Anthony called on him several times and waited for half an hour in his anteroom, but he declined to see her and, during the remainder of the campaign, the amendment received no recognition from the Monitor.

The response from the other papers of the State was most remarkable. The Populist press, without exception, was for woman suffrage. Every newspaper in Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley spoke in favor of the amendment. The majority of those in Los Angeles and San Diego counties endorsed it. All but one in San Jose, and all but one in Sacramento, did likewise. Before the campaign closed, 250 newspapers declared editorially for the suffrage amendment. Only two of prominence in the entire State came out boldly in opposition, the Record-Union, of Sacramento, and the Times of Los Angeles. The former ceased its opposition some time before election; the latter continued to the end, ridiculing, misrepresenting, denouncing, and even going to the extent of grossly caricaturing Miss Anthony.

The Star, the Voice of Labor and other prominent journals published in the interests of the wage-earning classes; those conducted by the colored people; the Spanish, French and Italian papers; the leading Jewish papers; the temperance, the A. P. A. and the Socialist organs; and many published for individual enterprises, agriculture, insurance, etc., spoke strongly for the amendment. The firm which supplied plate matter to hundreds of the smaller papers accepted a short article every week. There were very few newspapers in the State which did not grant space for woman suffrage departments, and these were ably edited by the women of the different localities. Matter on this question was furnished to the chairman of the press committee by the San Francisco Clipping Bureau, and these clippings were carefully tabulated and filed. At the close of the eight months' campaign they numbered 9,000, taken from the press of California alone. Twenty-seven papers came out in opposition; these included a number of San Francisco weeklies of a sensational character and a few published in small towns.

It must be remembered, in this connection, that the woman suffrage organization had not a dollar to pay for newspaper influence, had no advertising to bestow, and that even the notices for meetings were gratuitous. All this advocacy on the part of the papers was purely a free-will offering and represented the honest and courageous sentiments of the editors. It is deemed especially worthy of notice because there was never anything like it in previous suffrage campaigns. Toward the end, when the influence of the opposition began to do its fatal work, these papers were closely watched and in not one instance was there a defection.

Notwithstanding this splendid support of the press, Miss Anthony was firm in her decision that she would not remain through the campaign unless the amendment could secure the endorsement of the political parties, and every energy was directed toward this point. Several of the Republican county conventions declared for it, and a number of Republican leaders who were visited, announced themselves in favor of the plank. The State Convention was to be held May 5. On May 3, the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Call, the largest and most influential Republican paper in the State, came out with flaming headlines declaring boldly and unequivocally for woman suffrage! The sensation created was tremendous, and amendment stock went up above par. The Monday and Tuesday editions continued the editorial endorsement, declaring that the Republican party stood committed to woman suffrage, and that the Call constituted itself the champion and would carry it to victory.

Tuesday morning the Republican convention opened at Sacramento. The woman suffrage delegation, consisting of Mrs. Sargent, Mrs. John F. Swift, Mrs. Blinn, Mrs. Austin Sperry, Mrs. Knox Goodrich, Miss Anthony, Rev. Anna Shaw, Miss Hay, Miss Yates, Mrs. Harper, opened their headquarters at the Golden Eagle Hotel, decorated their parlor with flowers, spread out their literature and badges and waited for the delegates. They had not long to wait. With the influence of the Sunday Call, a copy of which had been laid on the seat of every delegate in the convention hall, they had a prestige which found favor in the eyes of the politicians. The visitors came early and stayed late; they went away and returned bringing their friends to be converted. The Call account said: "They went in twos and threes, in large groups and in entire delegations, to pay homage to their more modest workers and apparently to beg the privilege of serving them." The rooms were crowded until after midnight.

The delegates put on the badges, and when the convention opened 250 of them were wearing the little flag with its three stars. The ladies were given the best seats in the great building. The delegates were divided into two hostile camps, representing opposite wings of the party, and the women had to move very carefully, as it was by no means certain which faction would secure control of the convention. They also had to frame many non-committal answers to the question, "How do you stand on the A. P. A.?" The headquarters were thronged with reporters; every woman was interviewed at length and her opinions telegraphed to the great San Francisco dailies. Miss Anthony's interviews occupied a column in the Examiner, each day of the convention. Those alarmists who fear women will lose the respect of men when they are invested with political influence should have had this object lesson.

The chairman of the convention was considered not favorable to woman suffrage. Of the seven men appointed on the resolution committee, five were said to be opposed to the plank. The spirits of the ladies began to droop. In the evening permission was given them to address the platform committee. Mrs. Harper wrote the San Francisco Call:

I wish I could picture that scene. In the small room, seated around the table, were the seven men who held the fate of this question in their hands. At one end stood Miss Anthony, the light from above shining upon her silver hair until it seemed like a halo, and she spoke as no one ever heard her speak before. On the face of every delegate was an expression of the deepest seriousness, and before she had finished tears were in the eyes of more than one. She was followed by Miss Shaw, who stood there the embodiment of all that is pure, sweet and womanly, and in a low, clear voice presented the subject as no one else could have done. As we were about to leave the room, the chairman said, "Ladies, we will take the vote now, if you desire." We thanked him, but said no, we would withdraw and leave them to consider the matter at their leisure.

Within a very few minutes we had their decision--six in favor of the resolution and one opposed. Here I want to call attention to one thing. Eight women knew of the favorable action of the committee by 9 o'clock, but although we were besieged by reporters and delegates until nearly midnight we gave no sign, and the Wednesday morning papers could only say that it was probable there would be a woman suffrage plank. It is charged that women can not keep a secret, but this is one of those many ancient myths which take a long time to die.

The plank was adopted next day in the big convention with only one dissenting voice. The Woman's Congress was in session at San Francisco and when Mrs. Cooper, its president, stepped forward on the platform and read the telegram announcing the result, the enthusiasm hardly can be described. The ladies went down from Sacramento to the Congress the next day and received a continuous ovation throughout the rest of the meetings.

Among the pleasant letters which came to Miss Anthony was one from Abigail Scott Duniway, of Portland, Ore., in which she said: "Your triumphs in California are marvellous. Hurrah, and again, hurrah! I believe now the women of the Golden State will win. All honor to you and your noble confreres!" And one from Lucy Underwood McCann, of Santa Cruz, saying: "It is to you, most honored and revered of women, we owe the fact, because of your long martyrdom in this great reform, that we stand now, as we hope and pray, upon the brink of realization of our rights. This has been made possible only through the patient toil of such heroic souls as your own. Your wisdom in planning this campaign, in which we confidently expect a glorious victory, is our mainstay, upon which all other hopes depend."

Miss Anthony's happiness over the action of the Republicans knew no bounds, and she began with renewed courage to prepare for the Populist convention May 12. The prominent Populists who were visited assured the ladies that they need not waste time or money going to Sacramento to secure a plank in their platform, as woman suffrage was one of the fundamental principles of their party. The suffrage leaders felt, however, that this convention was entitled to the same courtesy as the others and they attended in a body, headed by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Sargent. When they entered the convention hall they were received with cheers and waving of hats, escorted to the front seats, invited to address the convention and surrounded by delegates during the recess. Without any solicitation the resolution committee reported and the convention adopted a strong woman suffrage plank, and then gave three cheers for the ladies. They were told that not half a dozen men in that body were opposed to the amendment.

From here they went to the Prohibition convention at Stockton, were met at the station by a delegation of ladies, and received with distinguished consideration by the convention. Miss Anthony was twice invited to address them, and the plank endorsing the amendment was adopted by a hearty and unanimous vote. A reception was then held at the hotel and over a hundred ladies called.

One convention yet remained, the Democratic. While a few of the leaders of this party were in favor of the amendment, most of them were opposed and gave no encouragement to the attempt to secure a plank. The ladies, however, carried out the program, and the same large delegation returned to Sacramento June 16, the number increased by Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. E. O. Smith, of San Jose, Mrs. Alice M. Stocker, of Pleasanton, and several others. A month had intervened and the opposition had had time to organize. Some of the county conventions had declared against the amendment and many of the delegates had been instructed to vote against it.

The suffrage representatives were disappointed in the hope that they might come to this convention with the editorial endorsement of the Examiner, but they were greatly pleased to receive from that paper, on the morning of the opening, a package of 2,000 woman suffrage leaflets. The Examiner had collected at its own expense a large amount of fresh and valuable testimony from the leading editors and officials of Colorado and Wyoming, as to its satisfactory practical working in those States, and had arranged it in large type on heavy cream-tinted paper, making the handsomest leaflet of the kind ever issued. These were placed in the hands of the delegates, and also distributed throughout the State.

The women's headquarters at the Golden Eagle were practically unvisited. A few lone delegates, and two or three delegations that had been instructed to vote for the amendment, strayed up to express their sympathy, but most of them were too well subjugated by the political bosses even to pay a visit of courtesy. A new element was introduced here in the person of a woman of somewhat unpleasant record who claimed to be the representative of the anti-suffrage organization. The platform committee consisted of thirty-five and met in a large room filled with spectators. The ladies presented a petition signed by 40,000 California men and women asking for woman suffrage. The entire delegation of speakers, with Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw at the head, was granted twenty minutes to present its claims, and the one woman above referred to was given the same amount of time. She did not occupy more than a minute of it, simply saying that her anti-suffrage league was going to organize all over the State and work for the Democratic party. The resolution was laid on the table, almost before they were out of the room.

A minority report was prepared by Charles Wesley Reed, of San Francisco, and signed by himself, Mr. Alford, chairman of the committee, and two others. In a letter to the Call, Mrs. Harper thus describes subsequent events:

Mr. Reed assured the ladies that he would bring this report before the convention and he kept his word, although he had other fights on hand and endangered them by standing for woman suffrage. This minority report, although properly drawn and signed by four members of the platform committee, including the chairman, was "smothered" by the secretary of the convention and its chairman, Mr. Frank Gould. Every other minority report was read and acted upon by the convention; that alone on woman suffrage was held back. In vain Mr. Reed protested; the chairman ignored him and called for a vote on the platform as a whole. It was adopted with a roar, and our fight was lost! It was near midnight. We had sat two long hot days in the convention, had slept but little, were worn out and very, very wrathy. At this juncture John P. Irish addressed the convention, stating that a distinguished lady was present, etc., and would they hear Miss Susan B. Anthony? Thinking it was too late for her to do any harm, she was received with loud applause.

It was impossible to say what the convention expected, but they got a rebuke for allowing such action on the part of their chairman and for treating the women of the State in this unjust and undemocratic manner, which caused a hush to fall upon the whole body. It was a dramatic and impressive scene, one not to be forgotten. At its conclusion there were loud cries for Anna Shaw. The little fighter was at the boiling point, but she stepped upon the platform with a smile, and with that sarcasm of which she is complete master supplemented Miss Anthony's remarks. As she stepped down, half the convention were on their feet demanding the minority report. The chairman stated that it was too late for that, but a resolution might be offered. The original resolution was at once presented, and then there was an attempt to take a viva-voce vote, but our friends demanded a roll-call. It resulted in 149 ayes and 420 noes. Mr. Gould's own county voted almost solidly in favor. Alameda county, led by W. W. Foote, gave 32 noes and 3 ayes, yet this county sent in the largest petition for woman suffrage of any in the State.

To secure more than a one-fourth vote of a convention which had been determined not to allow the question even to come before it, was not a total defeat.[119]

The battle was now fairly begun and it grew hotter with every passing week for the next five months. A few days after the last convention the women held a mass meeting in Metropolitan Temple to ratify the planks. The great hall was crowded to the doors and hundreds stood during all the long exercises. As the ladies who had been to the conventions came upon the stage, the building fairly rang with applause. The Republican, Populist, Prohibition, Democratic and Socialist-Labor parties were represented by prominent men who made strong suffrage speeches. Congressman James G. Maguire spoke for those individual Democrats who believed in woman suffrage, among whom he was always a staunch advocate. Miss Anthony was cheered to the echo and it seemed as if the audience could not get enough of her bright, pithy remarks, as she introduced the different speakers.

The suffrage advocates, elated with their victory in three conventions, opened headquarters in the large new Parrott building and swung their banner across the street.[120] Five rooms were filled with busy workers directed by Mary G. Hay, chairman of the State central committee, while the other members took turns in receiving the reporters, the people on business and the throngs of visitors from all parts of the State. To follow this campaign in detail, to name all of those most prominently connected with it, would be obviously impracticable. It would be utterly impossible to mention individually the hundreds of women who thoroughly canvassed their own precincts and deserve a full share of the credit for the large vote cast. A number of competent California women took up the organization of the different counties. Every woman in the State who could address an audience found her place and work. Mrs. Alice Moore McComas and Rev. Mila Tupper Maynard headed the list of Southern California speakers. Miss Sarah M. Severance spoke under the auspices of the W. C. T. U. Mrs. Naomi Anderson represented the colored women. Rev. Anna Shaw spoke every night during the campaign, except the one month when she returned East to fill engagements. She paid the salary of her secretary and donated her services to the headquarters for five months. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates, of Maine, made about one hundred speeches. The last two months Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, national organizer, gave several addresses each day. There were very few men who worked as hard during that campaign as did scores of the women, each according to her ability.

No description could give an adequate idea of the amount of labor performed by Miss Anthony during those eight months. There was scarcely a day, including Sundays, that she did not make from one to three speeches, often having a long journey between them. She addressed great political rallies of thousands of people; church conventions of every denomination; Spiritualist and Freethinkers' gatherings; Salvation Army meetings; African societies; Socialists; all kinds of labor organizations; granges; Army and Navy Leagues; Soldiers' Homes and military encampments; women's clubs and men's clubs; Y. M. C. A.'s and W. C. T. U.'s. She spoke at farmers' picnics on the mountaintops, and Bethel Missions in the cellars of San Francisco; at parlor meetings in the most elegant homes; and in pool-rooms where there was printed on the blackboard, "Welcome to Susan B. Anthony."

She was in constant demand for social functions, where her presence gave an opportunity for a discussion of the all-absorbing question. One of the handsomest of these was a breakfast of two hundred covers, given by the Century Club in the "maple room" of the Palace Hotel, where were gathered the leading women of San Francisco and other cities in the State. Miss Anthony sat at the right hand of the president and responded to the toast, "Those who break bread with us." The club privileges were extended to her and, at the close of the campaign, she was made an honorary member. This club was composed largely of conservative women, but its president, Mrs. Mary Wood Swift, was one of the most prominent of the suffrage advocates. She addressed the Woman's Press Association, the Laurel Hall Club, the Forum, Sorosis, Association of Collegiate Alumnæ and most of the other women's organizations of San Francisco. An invitation to luncheon was received from Mrs. Stanford signed, "Your sincere friend and believer in woman suffrage," and a very pleasant day was spent in her lovely home at Menlo Park.

A breakfast was given in her honor by the Ebell Club of Oakland, Mrs. G. W. Bunnell, president. She rode in a beautifully decorated carriage at the great Fabiola Fête, or floral festival, held annually in this city. Many social courtesies were extended in the towns around the bay, among them being dinner parties by Senator and Mrs. Fred Stratton, Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Moore, Mrs. Henry Vrooman, Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Smith, Mrs. Emma Shafter Howard, Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Havens, Mrs. Alice H. Wellman, of Oakland; Judge and Mrs. J. A. Waymire, of Alameda; Mr. and Mrs. William A. Keith, of Berkeley. All this would have been very enjoyable but for the fact that most of these occasions included a speech, and she was usually obliged to come from just having spoken, or to rush away to keep another engagement. One unique experience was a complimentary trip tendered, through Mrs. Lovell White, by the proprietors of the new Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway, to Miss Anthony and a large number of guests. From the top of this high peak, which overlooks the Golden Gate, they enjoyed a view that for beauty and grandeur is not surpassed in the world.

Miss Anthony visited also various towns throughout the central part of the State and along the coast, speaking in wigwams, halls, churches, schoolhouses and the open air, taking trains at all hours, travelling through heat and dust, wind and cold; and there was never a word of complaint during all the long campaign. She was always ready to go, always on time, always full of cheer and hope.

The first week in June she went to Portland to attend the Woman's Congress, Abigail Scott Duniway, president. Its officers were among the prominent women of the city, and she was royally received. She spoke a number of times during the nine sessions and was handsomely treated by the press. Sarah B. Cooper joined her here, on her way home from the National Federation of Clubs at Louisville, Ky. A number of receptions were given in their honor, among them one by the Woman's Club. There was an elaborate luncheon at "the Curtis;" and a reception was tendered by the managers of the Woman's Union. No effort was spared to make their visit in everyday delightful. Miss Anthony lectured in the opera house at Seattle under the auspices of the Woman's Century Club, and a reception was given by her hostess, Mrs. Kate Turner Holmes. Many inducements were offered for her to extend the visit, but she was desirous of returning to the field of work in California at the earliest possible moment and was absent only nine days.

Miss Anthony was invited by both Republican and Populist managers to address their ratification meetings in San Francisco, and received an ovation from the great audiences representing the two parties. One wing of the Democrats held their ratification meeting after night in the open air and of course she was not invited to speak, but the other wing extended a cordial invitation and she addressed them in Metropolitan Temple, receiving an enthusiastic greeting. The suffrage women themselves held a second mass meeting September 10, according to the Call, "amid a mighty outburst of popular enthusiasm, the like of which has seldom if ever been seen at a political meeting held in this city." Here again the part taken by prominent men from all political parties demonstrated the non-partisan character of the woman's campaign. This was Mrs. Catt's first appearance before a California audience and the papers said: "As she and the other ladies delivered their clear-cut, logical speeches, cheers rent the air and handkerchiefs and hats were waved with overmastering enthusiasm."

And so the months went by, with their cares and pleasures, their hopes and fears, their elation and depression. In her letters to her sister, Miss Anthony wrote: "Sometimes I have a homesick hour and feel as if I must leave all and rush back to my own hearthstone, but then I pull myself together and resolve to go through to the end." A similar campaign was in progress in Idaho and Mrs. Catt was there in August at the request of that State board, to represent the national association. They were very anxious that Miss Anthony should come also, but to their many letters she replied:

I should love dearly to go to Boise at once, as you request, and I should have been in Idaho during the last two months had it been possible for one human being to be in two places at the same time.... I learn that the men who believe in suffrage in your State, object to an open demand for party endorsement, but prefer a "still hunt." I have seen this tried before, but our opponents always can make a stiller hunt. Our only hope of success lies in open, free and full discussions through the newspapers and political party speakers.... Won't it be a magnificent feather in our cap if we get both California and Idaho into the fold this year? How beautiful the blue field will look with two more stars--five little gold stars! Remember that the woman suffrage stars are gold, not silver. Not that I think gold is better than silver, but it is a different color from the forty-five on the regular flag.[121]

There were, of course, some misrepresentations, both intentional and unintentional, of Miss Anthony's attitude. The fact of her speaking on the platforms of all political parties was something which many people could not comprehend, and the party organs could not refrain from twisting her remarks a little bit in the direction of their doctrines; then would come a storm of protests from the other side, and she would have to explain what she actually said. Thus, with the reporters constantly at her elbow, the public watching every utterance and the politicians on the alert to discover what party she and her fellow-workers really did favor, she lived indeed for many months in "the fierce light that beats upon a throne."

"O, that I had you by my side; what a team we would make!" she often wrote to Mrs. Stanton, who answered: "I read all the papers you send and watch closely the progress of the campaign. I feel at times as if I should fly to your help. We are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?"

In June the National Republican Convention was held at St. Louis. Miss Anthony could not make the long journey but she sent the following resolution and asked its adoption: "The Republican Party in national convention assembled hereby recommends that Congress shall submit an amendment to the Federal Constitution providing that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex."

The platform committee labored and this is what it brought forth: "The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of women. Protection of American industries includes equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the country from Democratic mismanagement and Populist misrule."

Miss Anthony's indignation, anger and contempt when she read this resolution can not be put into words. It required the combined efforts of those who were nearest her to prevent the expression of her opinion in reply to the many reporters and letters wanting to know how she regarded this plank. "You must not offend the Republicans and injure our amendment," they argued, and she would acquiesce and subside. Then, after thinking it over, she would again burst forth and declare the women of the country should not be compelled to submit to this insult without a protest from her. "Women want the suffrage as a sword to smite down Democratic and Populist misrule. Infamous!" she exclaimed again and again. "That climaxes all the outrages ever offered to women in the history of political platforms." To Mrs. Stanton she wrote: "O, that you were young and strong and free, and could fire off of the planet such ineffable slush as is being slobbered over our cause!" But she held her peace, and all the brainy women who were conducting this great campaign kept silent, although there was not one of them who did not feel exactly like Miss Anthony in regard to this plank. Nor was there a woman in the country, who was able to comprehend the resolution, that did not regard it as an insult and feel that she would prefer never again to have women mentioned in a national platform if the men who should make it had no higher conception of justice than this.

On October 11, Miss Anthony started on a southern tour, speaking first at San Luis Obispo to an audience which crowded the hall. From here to Santa Barbara, through the courtesy of Superintendent Johnson, of the narrow gauge railroad, the train was stopped at every station for a ten-minute address. At some places a stage had been extemporized, at others she spoke from the rear platform of the car. Her coming had been announced and, even in those rather thinly settled regions, there would be as many as a thousand people gathered at the station. When she concluded, quantities of flowers would be thrown in her pathway and the platform literally banked with them.[122] After a stage ride of forty miles she received an enthusiastic welcome at Santa Barbara, where she was the guest of Dr. Ida Stambach. The ovation was continued at all the towns visited in the southern part of the State.

A little flurry had been caused early in the campaign by the announcement that the National W. C. T. U. Convention would be held in San Francisco during the autumn of 1896. Miss Anthony had written Miss Willard that she thought this would be very injudicious. She then had agreed to postpone it until after the election, and Miss Anthony again had objected, saying:

I am glad you think it will be possible to postpone your convention to November; but, you see, even to do that all California will be full of your advertisements, and the papers all telling how the W. C. T. U. is going to bring its convention to San Francisco immediately after the women have the right to vote, so as to educate them to destroy the wine-growing and brandy-distilling business; in other words, that it is going to start in the first thing to ruin what today is the one means of livelihood for immense numbers of ranchmen throughout the State. So, I hope--nay, I beseech that you will withdraw the convention altogether from California for this year. I have had letters from the amendment campaign committee, and every one of them deplores the coming of the convention....

Now, my dear, hold your convention any place but in a State where we are trying to persuade every license man, every wine-grower, every drinker and every one who does not believe in prohibition, as well as every one who does, to vote "yes" on the woman suffrage question. If you only will do this, I am sure you will do the most effective work in the power of any mortal to secure the end we all so much desire.

Miss Willard replied in a cordial letter that she had not the slightest wish to antagonize her or the suffrage movement and would use her influence to have the place of the convention changed. To Mrs. B. Sturtevant Peet, president of the California W. C. T. U., who was somewhat in doubt as to the necessity for such change, Miss Anthony wrote:

What you say of the good influence of your national convention in San Francisco is true so far as concerns the actual Prohibition men; but we must consider those who are making their daily bread out of the manufacture as well as the sale of liquors. There are many excellent men in California who are not total abstainers, but who believe in wine as the people of Italy and France believe in it; and I think that, in waging our campaign, we should be careful not to run against the prejudices or the pecuniary interests of that class. As I have said before, if it were a Prohibition amendment which was pending I should think it exceedingly unwise to run that campaign under the banner of woman suffrage. The average human mind is incapable of taking in more than one idea at a time. The one we want to get into the heads of the voters this year is woman's enfranchisement, and we must pull every string with every possible individual man and class of men to secure their votes for this amendment. We should be extremely careful to base all our arguments upon the right of every individual to have his or her opinion counted at the ballot-box, whether it is in accordance with ours or not. Therefore, the amendment must not be urged as a measure for temperance, social purity, or any other reform, but simply as a measure to give to women the right to vote yea or nay on each and all of them. I want every woman in California to work for the amendment, but I want her to work in the name of suffrage, not of prohibition.

The national convention was withdrawn entirely from California, and the W. C. T. U. women, in most places, worked under the one banner of the suffrage amendment during the campaign. In proof that there was no feeling on the part of the leaders against Miss Anthony, it may be stated that she received official invitations to be present at the birthday celebration of Mrs. Peet, in April; to address the State W. C. T. U. Convention at Petaluma, in October; to attend the National Convention at St. Louis in November; and to join in the farewell reception to Miss Willard in New York on the eve of her departure for Europe.

The managers of the woman's campaign supposed of course that the endorsement by the Populist and Republican State Conventions meant not only that the speakers of those parties would advocate the suffrage plank just as they did the others in their respective platforms, but that they also would permit the women themselves to speak for it in their political meetings. When they applied to Mr. Wardall and the other members of the Populist Central Committee, the schedule was promptly furnished and they were assured that their speakers would be welcomed. When they applied to the Republican Central Committee, to their amazement, they were put off with an evasive answer. Meanwhile they had Miss Anthony, Miss Shaw, Mrs. Catt and other speakers waiting for engagements and did not dare make dates ahead lest it might interfere with the big Republican rallies which they wished them to address. Again and again they went to the Republican Central Committee and asked for the schedule of their meetings and the privilege of sending their speakers to them. Finally, after weeks of anxious waiting, the chairman, Major Frank McLaughlin, sent a letter to the suffrage headquarters saying in effect: "The committee had decided not to grant this privilege; in the language used at one time by Miss Anthony, it meant 'too many bonnets at their meetings,' and they wished to reach the voters."

He added that they were at liberty to make any arrangements they chose with the county chairmen. This meant, of course, that they must ascertain the name and address of every county chairman in the State, watch the papers for the announcements of meetings, hold their speakers in reserve, and beg the privilege of having them heard. All this, when the endorsement of the suffrage amendment was the first plank in the Republican platform unanimously adopted by the State convention! There was nothing, however, except to make the best of it; but when they attempted to arrange with the county chairmen, they found Major McLaughlin had written them not to allow the women speakers on their platforms! While many of them refused to obey his orders, he had practically destroyed the best opportunity for reaching the people.

The Republican State Convention had enthusiastically adopted a resolution declaring for "the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1." When the National Convention met in St. Louis soon afterwards it adopted a gold standard plank, and there they were! The Populists and Democrats who agreed on a financial plank saw here an opportunity and, in many counties, effected a fusion and held their meetings together. This, of course, nullified the permission given the women to put speakers on the Populist platform, since the Democrats, as a party, were opposed to woman suffrage, and there they were! If they attempted to hold simply suffrage meetings, they could get only audiences of women, because all the men were in attendance at the political rallies. So the only thing left was for the women in every city and town in the State, whenever a political mass meeting was advertised, to go to the managers and humbly beg to have one of their speakers on the platform.

This was not often refused, and it was just as easy to get this permission from Democrats as from Republicans. The former felt that if the amendment should carry they would not object to a little of the credit, and they soon found also that the women were a drawing card. Whenever there was a purely Populist meeting, a conspicuous place and all the time desired were given to the women, but at Republican, Democratic or Fusion meetings, they always were placed at the end of the program and allowed only five or, at most, ten minutes. In order simply to get this little word, the women speakers would make long journeys and sit on the platform until every long-winded male orator had finished his speech, and until they were ready to drop from their chairs. But the audience waited for them, no matter how late, and never failed to receive them with the wildest enthusiasm. Many times when the managers would have been willing to sandwich them between other speakers, the latter would object, saying the people would go home as soon as the women had finished!

As the campaign wore on it became a fight for life with the political parties. The Call, which had come out so valiantly for woman suffrage, had been struck in a vital part, i.e., in the counting-room, by the opponents of this measure, who withdrew valuable advertising and in every possible way sought to injure the paper. Its support was used by the other wing of the Republican party to create a prejudice against the candidates it advocated; the principal stockholders were not friendly to the amendment; as the organ of the Central Committee it was deprived of independent action. So it was not surprising that, long before the close of the campaign, the great fight which the Call agreed to make had dwindled to an occasional skirmish when the pleading of the women grew too strong to be resisted.

Almost without exception the Republican orators were silent on the question of woman suffrage, even those who personally favored it. The women wrote them, interviewed them and begged them to advocate the first plank in their platform as they did all the rest, and occasionally when they would go in a body and sit on the front seats to watch the speaker, he would say a few mild words in favor of the amendment, but there were several of the Democrats who did as much. Some of the Populists advocated it, but the most prominent, who always before had spoken for it, went through the entire campaign without so much as a mention, in order to secure Democratic support. When Thomas B. Reed came into the State, at the very end of the campaign, the women felt sure of an ally, as he had long been a pronounced advocate, but he did not so much as refer to the question in his tour of the State, although they bombarded him with letters which would have impressed a heart of stone. At the last grand rally in Oakland, the day before election, with Miss Anthony on one side of him and Miss Shaw on the other, he did say that he "knew of no more reason why a woman should not vote than why a man should not"--but the battle then was already lost.

Up to within a few weeks of election, in spite of all the drawbacks, it looked as if the amendment would win. The general sentiment throughout the State seemed to be in favor. The mere mention of the subject at any meeting was received with the greatest enthusiasm. Almost every delegate body which assembled in convention during that summer adopted a resolution of endorsement; this was true of most of the church conferences, the teachers' institutes, the State Grange and farmers' institutes, the Chautauqua assemblies and countless others. And still the women watched and waited! There was one element more powerful than all these combined, which had not yet shown its hand. It never had failed in any State to fight woman suffrage to the death, and there was no reason to believe it would not kill it in California.

Ten days before election the fatal blow came. The representatives of the Liquor Dealers' League met in San Francisco and resolved "to take such steps as were necessary to protect their interests." The political leaders, the candidates, the rank and file of the voters recognized the handwriting on the wall. From that moment the fate of the amendment was sealed. The women had determined, from the beginning of the campaign, that they would give the liquor business no excuse to say its interests were threatened, and therefore the temperance question had been kept out of the discussion as had the religious, the tariff and the financial questions. They took the sensible view that it had no more place than these in the demand for women's right to vote as they pleased on all subjects. Therefore the action of the liquor dealers had no justification in anything which the women had said or done. It simply showed that they considered woman suffrage a dangerous foe. The following letter, signed by the wholesale liquor firms of San Francisco, was sent to the saloon-keepers, hotel proprietors, druggists and grocers throughout the State:

At the election to be held on November 3, Constitutional Amendment No. Six, which gives the right to vote to women, will be voted on.

It is to your interest and ours to vote against this amendment. We request and urge you to vote and work against it and do all you can to defeat it.

See your neighbor in the same line of business as yourself, and have him be with you in this matter.

The men in the slums of San Francisco were taken in squads and, with sample ballots, were taught how to put the cross against the suffrage amendment and assured that if it carried there never would be another glass of beer sold in the city. When the chairman of the press committee went to a prominent editor, who was opposed to woman suffrage and knew that these things were being done, and asked if there were no way by which some suffrage literature could be given to those men so that they might see there was no ground for these threats, he said: "Most of them can not read and if they could the whiskey men would never allow a page of it to get into their hands." In what way the liquor dealers worked upon the political parties, it is not necessary to speculate. The methods were not new and are pretty well understood. They control tens of thousands of votes not only in California but in every State, which they can deliver to either of the great parties that does their bidding and regards their interests.

It is absurd, however, to attribute the defeat of the suffrage amendment wholly to the liquor dealers, or to the densely ignorant, or to the foreigners. In the wealthiest and most aristocratic wards of San Francisco and Oakland, where there were none of these, the proportion of votes against the amendment was just as great as it was in the slum wards of the two cities. Those respectable, law-abiding citizens who cast their ballots against the amendment, thereby voted to continue the power of the above mentioned classes.

For weeks before the election, the most frantic efforts were made by the politicians to register new voters and colonize them in the wards where they would be most needed.[123] Columns of appeals were issued in all the newspapers to get the vast numbers of lately arrived immigrants to come to the city hall and register. Men were sent around ringing big bells and calling upon them to do this, and interpreters were employed to explain that it would not cost them a cent. Finally the registry books were carried to the parks and other places where these men were employed, in order to secure their names.

Meanwhile the intelligent, order-loving, sober and industrious women of the State were making such efforts as never were made by any class of men, to secure this same privilege of placing in the ballot-box and having counted their opinions on questions relating to the public welfare;--opinions, one would think, that ought to be considered of as much value to the State as those which such strenuous attempts were being made to obtain. It seems, however, that intelligence, morality and thrift must wait the pleasure of ignorance, vice and idleness.

During the months of the early spring, through the efforts of a few women who worked without pay and used only their spare moments, the names of nearly 30,000 women were secured to a petition asking for the suffrage. This, of course, represented only a fraction of those which might have been obtained by continued effort, but a petition signed by even 30,000 men would have been considered worthy of attention. The vast majority of women have no money of their own and those who work for wages, as a rule, receive but a pittance, and yet there were raised in California for this amendment campaign almost $19,000, and the amount contributed by men was so small as not to be worth mentioning. The financial success was due very largely to the State treasurer, Mrs. Austin Sperry. She not only made a donation of $500, but borrowed from the bank on her personal note, when necessary, and signed blank checks to be used when the treasury was empty and repaid when outstanding pledges were collected. Mrs. Phoebe Hearst headed the list with $1,000. Mrs. Stanford gave almost as much in railroad transportation to the speakers and organizers. The next largest contributor was Mrs. Knox Goodrich, of San Jose, who for nearly thirty years had stood in California a faithful advocate of woman suffrage, giving time, money and influence. She added to her past donations nearly $500 for this campaign. Mrs. Sargent's munificence has been mentioned. A few women subscribed $100 each, but all the rest was given in sums ranging down to a few cents.

The true record of these contributions would wring the heart of every man in the State. A large photograph of Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw was given for every $2 pledge, and many poor seamstresses and washerwomen fulfilled their pledges in twenty-five cent installments, coming eight times with their mite. Often when there was not enough money on hand at headquarters to buy a postage stamp, there would come a timid knock at the door and a poorly dressed woman would enter with a quarter or half-dollar, saying, "I have done without tea this week to bring you this money;" or a poor little clerk would say, "I made a piece of fancy work evenings and sold it for this dollar." Many a woman who worked hard ten hours a day to earn her bread, would come to headquarters and carry home a great armload of circulars to fold and address after night. And there were teachers and stenographers and other workingwomen who went without a winter cloak in order to give the money to this movement for freedom. This pathetic story ought to be written in full and given to every man who eases his conscience by saying, "The majority of women do not want to vote;" and to every well-fed, well-clothed woman who declares in her selfish ease, "I have all the rights I want."

Knowing that if the suffrage amendment were placed first or last among the six which were to be voted on, it would be a target for those who could not read, the ladies wrote to the Secretary of State asking that it be placed in the middle of the list. He answered, June 26: "It shall be as you request and the suffrage amendment be third in order as certified by me to the various county clerks." When the tickets were printed, however, it was placed at the end of the list and thus necessarily at the end of the whole ticket, making it a conspicuous mark. The explanation given was that Governor Budd had directed the amendments to be placed on the ballot in the same order as they had appeared in his proclamation. As this had not been issued until July 20, a month after the official request of the ladies had been granted, one must conclude there was a mistake somewhere. The results were exactly what had been feared. In San Francisco alone hundreds of ballots were cast on which there was only one cross and that against the amendment; not even the presidential electors voted for.

There were 247,454 votes cast on the suffrage amendment; 110,355 for; 137,099 against; defeated by 26,734. The majority against in San Francisco was 23,772; in Alameda county, comprising Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley, 3,627; total, 27,399-665 votes more than the whole majority cast against the amendment. Berkeley gave a majority in favor, so in reality it was defeated by the vote of San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda.[124] Alameda is the banner Republican county and gave a good majority for the Republican ticket. There never had been a hope of carrying San Francisco for the amendment, but the result in Alameda county was a most unpleasant surprise, as the voters were principally Republicans and Populists, both of whom were pledged in the strongest possible manner in their county conventions to support the amendment, and every newspaper in the county had declared in favor of it. The fact remains, however, that a change of 13,400 votes in the entire State would have carried the amendment; and proves beyond question that, if sufficient organization work had been done, this might have been accomplished in spite of the combined efforts of the liquor dealers and the political bosses.

Near midnight of election day, a touching sight might have been witnessed on a certain street in San Francisco: two women over seventy years of age, one the beloved wife of a man whom California had selected as its representative in the United States Senate and whom the government had sent as its minister to the court of Germany; the other a woman universally admitted to be the peer of any man in the country in statesmanship and knowledge of public affairs--Mrs. A. A. Sargent and Susan B. Anthony. In the darkness of night, arm in arm, they went down the street, peering into the windows of the rough little booths where the judges and clerks of the election were counting votes. The rooms were black with tobacco smoke and in one they saw a man fall off his chair too drunk to finish the count. They listened to the oaths and jeers as the votes were announced against the suffrage amendment, to which they had given almost their lives. Then in the darkness they crept silently home, mournfully realizing that women must wait for another and better generation of men to give them the longed-for freedom.

The next morning when Miss Anthony came down to breakfast she found a group in the Sargent library reading the news of the election, and all looked at her in sorrowing sympathy. She stood still in the center of the room for a moment and then said sadly: "I don't care for myself, I am used to defeat, but these dear California women who have worked so hard, how can they bear it?"

Miss Anthony not only had donated her own services but had paid her secretary's salary of $75 per month and permitted her to give her entire time to the State headquarters for seven months, while she herself attended to the drudgery of her immense correspondence whenever she could get a spare hour. Even at the small sum of $25 for a regular speech, she would have contributed over $3,000 to this campaign, in addition to the scores of little parlor and club addresses. She gave her services freely and willingly and did not regret them, but often said that the California campaign was the most harmonious and satisfactory of any in which she ever was engaged. There was not the slightest friction between herself and the State association or State headquarters, and most of those prominent in the work were of such refinement and nobility of character that it was a pleasure to be associated with them. Not a day passed that she did not receive some token of affection from the women of the State. The Sargent home was filled with the flowers and baskets and boxes of fresh and dried fruits, etc., which were sent to her.[125]

On November 5, two days after the election, a large body of California women met in Golden Gate Hall to hold the annual State Suffrage Convention. Miss Anthony and all the national officers remained to help. There was not a trace of defeat or disappointment; all were brave, cheerful and ready to go to work again. Twelve hundred dollars were raised to settle all outstanding bills and the campaign closed without a dollar of indebtedness. As Mrs. Sargent was going abroad, a worthy presidential successor was elected, Mrs. Mary Wood Swift, wife of John F. Swift, minister to Japan, a fine presiding officer, a lady of much culture, travel and social prestige, who had rendered valuable service throughout the campaign. The next evening the suffrage forces held a grand rally in Metropolitan Temple. Every seat in that fine auditorium was occupied and the aisles were crowded. It was not a meeting of the adherents of a lost cause, but of one which had suffered only temporary defeat. Miss Anthony presided and was given a true California ovation and, as her voice rang out with all its old-time vigor, there was not one in that vast audience but hoped she might return to lead her hosts to victory.

Saturday evening at 6 o'clock the seven eastern women started homewards, laden with tokens of affection, accompanied across the bay by a large number of loving friends, and moving off amidst smiles and tears and a shower of fragrant blossoms.

FOOTNOTES:

[118] Joint campaign committee: Ellen C. Sargent, chairman; Sarah B. Cooper, vice-chairman; Ida H. Harper, corresponding secretary; Harriet Cooper, recording secretary; Mary S. Sperry, treasurer; Mary Wood Swift and Sarah Knox Goodrich, auditors. State central committee: Mrs. Sargent, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Swift, Mrs. Sperry, Mrs. Blinn, with Mary G. Hay, chairman.

[119] About 1 o'clock in the morning, after this eventful night, the ladies were awakened by loud laughter and women's voices. They arose and went to the window and there in the brilliantly lighted street in front of the hotel were two carriages containing several gaily dressed women. A number of the convention delegates came out and crowded around them, three or four climbed into the carriages, wine bottles were passed and finally, with much talk and laughter, they drove off down the street, the men with their arms about the women's waists. The ladies returned to their slumbers thoroughly convinced that they had not used the correct methods for capturing the delegates of a Democratic convention.

[120] The use of these rooms was donated by the manager of the Emporium, the large department store in the building. All through the summer and autumn a number of most capable young women, who were employed as stenographers, teachers, etc., gave every waking moment outside business hours to the work at headquarters, carrying home with them great packages of leaflets and circulars to be folded and addressed, looking after their own precincts, and rendering services which could not have been paid for in money. Although all were breadwinners they labored from love of the cause and without a thought of thanks or remuneration.

[121] In Idaho all political State conventions, Republican, Populist and Democratic, endorsed the amendment, it received a majority of the popular vote, and the women now have full suffrage.

[122] To commemorate this journey Miss Selina Solomons, of San Francisco, wrote a tender poem, beginning:

"She walks on roses! she whose feet Have trod so long the stony way, They tread who lead mankind to greet The coming of a brighter day."

[123] Some of the women going the rounds with suffrage petitions in San Francisco found a house consisting of one room with three cots, where were registered twenty-seven voters.

[124] Los Angeles gave a majority of 3,600 in favor of the amendment.

[125] In her president's report, at the next annual convention, Mrs. Sargent said: "Susan B. Anthony! We can never forget her labor of love and devotion to the cause of woman suffrage in California. She counted not her life dear to her so that she could help to awaken the interest of men and women in the great principle to which she has devoted her life. She was not cold, nor hungry, nor tired, nor sleepy, while there was a chance to push forward the work. Throughout the campaign Miss Anthony gave her own services and those of her secretary without money and without price. She reminds one of the great Niagara, which would be wonderful if its waters rolled and dashed for only a short period; but when they roll and dash on ceaselessly, nor ever stop to rest, there the wonder of it all comes in, and we can only gaze, admire and acknowledge the great law or power behind it."

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XLVIII. HER LETTERS--BIRTHDAY PARTY--BIOGRAPHY

1896-1897.

On the way home from California Miss Anthony and Mrs. Catt stopped at Reno, Nev., lecturing there Sunday, while Miss Shaw hastened on to speak at Salt Lake City. Then all met at Kansas City to attend the Missouri convention, where they were the guests of Mrs. Sarah Chandler Coates. The papers refer to Miss Anthony's speeches at this convention as being the very strongest she ever had made, and of her perfect physical condition at the close of an eight months' campaign.

She went from here directly home, and on November 19 a brilliant banquet was given in honor of Miss Shaw and herself at the Hotel Livingston by the Political Equality Club. Mary Lewis Gannett was toast-mistress and about 250 guests were seated at the tables. This was followed by the State convention at Rochester. After a few days' rest Miss Anthony went to the home of Mrs. Catt, near New York, where a business meeting was held of the national executive board. With Mrs. Avery she then took one of the great Sound steamers for Boston to attend a meeting of the National Woman's Council. A reception was given by Mrs. Charles W. Bond, of Commonwealth Avenue, and one at the Hotel Vendome. She ran up to Concord, N. H., for a few days' visit with her aged friends, Mr. and Mrs. Parker Pillsbury and Mrs. Armenia S. White. Then back again to the Garrisons', and out to Medford for a day with Mrs. Edward M. Davis, the daughter of Lucretia Mott.

She left Boston December 9, to fulfill a promise made to Elizabeth Buffum Chace, to spend her ninetieth birthday at her home in Valley Falls, R. I. Mrs. Chace had written a number of letters with her own trembling hand to arrange for this visit. It was only a family party, but the diary tells of the cake with ninety little candles, and other birthday features. Anna Shaw came in time for the supper, and the next day Mrs. Chace sent them in her carriage to Providence to attend the State convention. Here they were guests in the handsome old Eddy homestead, and Miss Anthony addressed a large audience in the evening. She stopped a day in New York to tell Mrs. Stanton about the California campaign, and Sunday morning reached her own dear home. Her old and loved friend, Maria Porter, had died the preceding night, and she attended the funeral services next day. On December 23 she went to Niagara Falls with her stenographer to secure reminiscences from her cousin, Sarah Anthony Burtis, aged eighty-six, who was a teacher in the home school at Battenville over sixty years before.

The year just closed had been busy but pleasant. It had brought the usual number of tokens of appreciation, one of which was notice of election as honorary member of the Chicago Woman's Club. Among the scores of invitations on file were one from Judge George F. Danforth to meet the justices of the appellate court at his home; and one to the golden wedding of her old fellow-laborers, Giles B. and Catharine F. Stebbins, at Detroit, the latter one of the secretaries of that famous first convention of 1848. Major James B. Pond, the well-known lecture manager, wrote Miss Mary Anthony: "Thank you for your kind letter and the excellent photograph of your great sister, whom I have admired and hoped and prayed for since I was a poor boy out in Kansas. I still believe she will be spared to witness a general triumph of her noble cause." The letter contained an offer of $100 for a parlor lecture by Miss Anthony at Jersey City.

A few of Miss Anthony's own letters, taken almost at random from copies on her file, will illustrate the vast scope of her correspondence and her peculiarly trenchant mode of expression. To one who wanted a testimonial from her that she might show in vindication of certain accusations, she wrote:

I went through all the fire of charges of stealing, and of every other crime in the whole calendar, twenty-five years ago--charges made, too, by people of vastly more influence than any of the women who are talking and writing today about you. I never made a public denial of one of them, through all the years of the bitterest kind of persecution, and believe I was greatly the gainer by working right on and ignoring them. It will be the mistake of your life if you go into print in your own defence. Your denial will reach a new set of people and start them to talking, while the ones who read the original charges will never see the refutation of them.

To one of the newly-enfranchised women of Utah:

The one word I should have to say to the women throughout your State would be, not so much to try to get women elected to the offices as to get the best persons, whether men or women. Naturally there will be a far less number of women than of men capable of holding office, from the very fact of their long disfranchisement. I do hope your women therefore will set a good example not only for Utah, but also for the States where they are not enfranchised; namely, that of proving it is not the spoils of office they are after. I think the women of Wyoming always have been wonderfully judicious in not being anxious to hold offices themselves, but mightily anxious as to what men hold them. It will be considered a strong objection to woman suffrage if the vast majority of your women should prove themselves mere partisans.

To a New York cousin: "Your little birthday present, the Book of Proverbs, came duly. Solomon's wise sayings, however, don't help me very much in my work of trying to persuade men to do justice to women. These men and their progenitors for generations back have read Solomon over and over again, and learned nothing therefrom of fair play for woman, and I fear generations to come will continue to read to as little purpose. At any rate, I propose to peg away in accordance with my own sense of wisdom rather than Solomon's. All those old fellows were very good for their time, but their wisdom needs to be newly interpreted in order to apply to people of today."

In answer to a letter from Illinois asking the secret of her success in life:

If I may be said to have made a success of my life, the one great element in it has been constancy of purpose--not allowing myself to be switched off the main road or tempted into bypaths of other movements. It always has been clear to me that woman suffrage is the one great principle underlying all reforms. With the ballot in her hand woman becomes a vital force--declaring her will for herself, instead of praying and beseeching men to declare it for her. It has been a long, hard fight, a dark, discouraging road, but all along the way here and there a little bright spot to cheer us on. And now we have four true republics, whose women are full-fledged citizens, and the prospects are hopeful for others soon to follow in the wake of those blessed four. One of the most cheering things in these days is the large number of young women who are entering the work, bringing to it a new, strong enthusiasm which will push on to victory. The women over all the country are waking up to the fact that truly to possess themselves, to have their opinions respected, they must have this right of suffrage.

A letter from the secretary of a national conference which was seeking to bring about a union of reformers, Prohibitionists, Free Silver advocates, etc., asked her assistance and called forth the following response:

It is all very well for you men, who have the power to make and unmake political parties, to form a third, fourth or fiftieth party, as the case may be; but as for myself and all who are of my class, disfranchised and helpless, we have nothing to do with any of them--old or new--except to ask each and all to put a woman suffrage plank in their platform and educate their members to place a ballot in the hands of women. I never have identified myself with any political party, but have stood outside of all, asking each to pledge itself to the enfranchisement of women. Whenever any one of them has asked me to speak in its meetings on the suffrage question, I have accepted the invitation, but I never have advocated the specific measures of any.

So, you see, I can be of no help to you, but I do know that no one of the reform political parties ever will amount to much standing alone, and that it would be a good thing for all of them to come together in one body. I might say, however, that least of all could I join yours, which makes "God the author of civil government." If such civil government as we have was made by God, what reason is there to expect any improvement in the future?

From a letter to Isabella Beecher Hooker:

Fortune indeed does not smile any too favorably upon us who feel so longingly the need to use money. I am crippled all the time and prevented from doing what I might by lack of funds. The old faith would say, I suppose, that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth financially, but seems to me I could better do His work and my own for the regeneration of the world, if I had the money to do it with.... What a fuss the men are making nowadays over "good government"--the idiots! Can't they see it is impossible to improve things until they get a new and better balance of power that will outweigh the one which now pulls down the political scales and makes decency kick the beam every time? It does try my soul that we can not make them see they are simply trying to lift themselves by their bootstraps. Well, they are born of disfranchised mothers, a subject class, and one can not expect different results.

If I could spare the time and money I would love to accept your invitation to sit with you and your dear John in your summer retreat, and chat over the world of work for our good cause. Of the before and the after I know absolutely nothing, and have very little desire and less time to question or to study. I know this seems very material to you, and yet to me it is wholly spiritual, for it is giving time and study rather to making things better in the between, which is really all that we can influence; but perhaps when I can no longer enter into active, practical work, I may lapse into speculations.

To a debating society asking her opinion on the question of "educated and property suffrage:"

I always have taken the negative; that is, have believed in universal suffrage without either property or educational qualification. I hold that every citizen has a right to a voice in the government under which he lives. While an education is highly desirable, yet a man may be unable to read but may attend political meetings, talk with his neighbors and form intelligent opinions. He may be honest and beyond bribery, and a more desirable voter than many wily and unscrupulous men who have a graduate's diploma. It is, however, the duty of the State to educate its citizens; and the Australian ballot, which has been largely adopted, is in itself an educational qualification.

As to a property qualification: while in the majority of cases, perhaps, the possession of property is evidence of ability and thrift, there are many who do not own property and yet are possessed of good sense and are more capable of casting an honest and intelligent ballot than some of the wealthy men of the country; then, too, those who have least are the ones who suffer most from the legislation of the rich, and need the ballot for self-protection. I am decidedly opposed to a property qualification.

To one who was in deep grief she said in an affectionate letter: "Do assure me that you are beginning to think of your dear one as he was when well and moving about in his always helpful and cheering manner. To get far enough from the sickness, the suffering and the death of our friends, so as to be able to have only the thought of them in their full vigor of life, is the greatest joy which possibly can come to those who have lost their beloved."

While Miss Anthony was thus constantly giving out from the vast wealth of her heart and brain, she was receiving, also, from all parts of the country the strong and loving tributes of noble souls. A beautiful one which shines on the pages of 1896 was pronounced by the eloquent Dr. H. W. Thomas, of Chicago, in the course of a Sunday sermon entitled "Progressive Greatness," delivered to a large audience assembled in McVicker's Theater:

A Washington and a Lincoln have come in our great century, and between their birthdays was born a Susan B. Anthony, whose grand life has been given to a noble cause; once the target for the cruel and bitter shafts of ridicule; now deemed the noblest among women. The task of Washington and Lincoln could not be complete till the crown was placed on the brow of woman as well as man; and when the angels shall call Susan B. Anthony to the life immortal, her name, her memory on earth should and will take its place among the martyrs and saints of liberty, not for man alone, but for woman and child."

To watch the old year out and the New Year in, Miss Anthony went to Geneva, and here spent a few days very pleasantly with Elizabeth Smith Miller and her guest, Harriot Stanton Blatch. Among the New Year's remembrances were $50 from Mrs. Elda A. Orr, of Reno, Nev.; $150 from Mrs. Gross, of Chicago; and $300 from Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey, of Orange, N. J. The usual number of congratulatory letters were received from all classes of people, high and low, old and young, white and colored.

To show their wide range two or three may be given. From Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs: "I send to you on the New Year a fraternal greeting and my best wishes that this may prove for you and the interests you represent, a year of fulfillment. We are all serving the same cause and we are surely among the happy ones of earth that we are enabled to assist, by even a slight impetus, the 'power which makes for righteousness.' ... Therefore I send you today my heartfelt wishes for the continued success of your cause and the peace and prosperity of your life."

Her friend of fifty years, John W. Hutchinson, the last of that never-equalled family of singers, sent his New Year's greetings and added: "I bless you and your work. Wonderful possibilities will be the result of this great movement, which you have led, for equal rights and the franchise for women." The president of the National Council of Women, Mary Lowe Dickinson, an earnest, efficient worker for humanity, said in the course of a long letter dated January 9:

I pray that all strength and blessing of every kind may crown this coming year of your life; and O, how earnestly I hope that in it you may see the fruition of some of the work that you have been struggling with these many, many years. When I run over in my mind the present situation of the cause you represent--which seems to me more and more the one cause which must succeed if we are going to have genuine success anywhere else--I see what ground you have for encouragement and what a vast advance has been made; but I see, too, how slow it must seem to you, and how weary of waiting you must become. I know no courage like yours, and I do that courage full honor.

She had received a telegram of greeting from Frances E. Willard as soon as she arrived home from California, and January 5 accepted her urgent invitation for a little visit with her at the sanitarium of Dr. Cordelia Green, Castile; and while there addressed a parlor gathering of the patients. On January 15 she was guest of honor at a luncheon given by the Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester, at the Genesee clubhouse, to the State executive committee of the Federation of Clubs. Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson spent a few days with her, and she arranged for her to hold Sunday evening services in the Unitarian church. On January 20 the two ladies, with Miss Mary, started for the twenty-ninth annual convention of the national association, which was to be held this year at Des Moines, Ia. The thermometer was 15° below zero, the snow very deep, and Miss Anthony's friends saw her set forth on the journey to this cold western city with much anxiety. All their protests, however, were not sufficient to keep her at home; but she thought with much longing of the clean, beautiful streets of Washington, the mild climate, the Congressional committees, the crowds of visitors there from various parts of the country who always came to the convention, and she felt more strongly than ever that it was a serious mistake to take it away from the national capital.

She stopped at Chicago for a few days, and a characteristic little entry in her diary says: "I slept on a $6,000 bed last night; my! how much good suffrage work could have been done with that money." On the afternoon of January 23, Miss Anthony addressed a large meeting of the Woman's Club and in the course of her remarks paid a tribute to that organization, in which she said: "This is the banner club of the United States, not because it has such nice women for members, and not even because it is located in Chicago, but because it is a club which does a large amount of practical work."

Mrs. Foster Avery joined the party at Chicago and they reached Des Moines January 24, where they found the rest of the executive board, and all were entertained in the suburban mansion of James and Martha C. Callanan. The meetings were held in the Central Christian church, whose pastor, Rev. H. O. Breeden, extended a cordial greeting. Notwithstanding the extreme severity of the weather, 24° below zero, the audience-room was crowded to its capacity at every public session, and overflow meetings were held. The convention was officially welcomed by Governor Francis M. Drake and Mayor John McVicar; Mrs. Adelaide Ballard, State president, made the opening address, and Mrs. Macomber spoke in behalf of the women's clubs of the city. State Senator Rowan was one of the speakers. Among the letters of greeting was one from Miss Kitty Reed, daughter of Speaker Thomas B. Reed. The memorial services showed that never in any previous year had so long a list of friends to the cause passed away as in 1896. There were thirty-seven names mentioned in the resolutions.[126]

In Miss Anthony's address she spoke of the great victories in 1896, as shown by the full enfranchisement of the women of Utah and Idaho. Mrs. M. C. Woods, from the latter State, presented an interesting account of the late campaign and an outline of their work for the future. Her mother, Emmeline B. Wells, made the report for Utah. Delegates were present from twenty States, and most of them were entertained in the hospitable homes of the city. A reception, attended by 500 guests, was tendered by Mr. and Mrs. Hubbell, at their elegant residence on Terrace Hill. An imaginative reporter on this occasion transformed Miss Anthony's historic garnet velvet gown, worn for the past fourteen years, into a "magnificent royal purple," and her one simple little pin into "handsome diamonds." A pleasant reception also was given by the Woman's Club in their commodious parlors. The daily newspapers contained excellent reports of the convention, but not one gave editorial endorsement of the cause it represented.

Those who believed in holding the alternate national conventions away from Washington were satisfied with the result; those who thought differently continued to hold the same opinion, and among the latter was Miss Anthony, who soon afterwards wrote to one of the business committee:

The conventions at Atlanta and Des Moines have but confirmed me in my judgment that our delegated body always should meet in Washington. For local propaganda both were undoubtedly good, but for effect in securing Congressional action, absolutely nil. I believe in resuming our old plan of holding at least two conventions every year, one for the election of officers and for its influence upon Congress in Washington every winter; the other in whatsoever State we have constitutional amendments pending, where we need to do our greatest amount of work in that direction. The best way for the national association to help create local sentiment is to build up and make a success of the different State annual meetings, and to have at least two of its ablest and most popular speakers attend as many of them as possible every year; and I think by this means we can do a great deal more to make the States feel that the national is mother to them, than by once in a lifetime holding a delegate convention within their borders. I am more and more convinced that some of the national officers must be present at every State annual meeting, and if well advertised there would be as many representatives of the local clubs present as go to our national convention.

On the way home from Des Moines Miss Anthony spent a few days at Indianapolis. The evening of February 3, Mrs. Sewall gave a reception in her honor, to which were invited the governor, members of the legislature, State officials and their wives, members of the Woman's Council and their husbands. At one end of the large drawing-room, on a slightly raised platform covered with rugs, sat Miss Anthony and Indiana's most revered woman, Zerelda G. Wallace, to whom Mrs. Sewall presented the guests. Later in the evening both of these ladies, from their "throne," as it was laughingly called, gave pleasant informal addresses, to which Senator Roots responded on behalf of the legislature. The next day Mrs. Wallace and Miss Anthony's old friend, Hon. George W. Julian, were entertained at luncheon and had a long afternoon chat. In the evening a reception was given for her by Mr. John C. and Mrs. Lillian Wright Dean at their pleasant home "The Pines."

The morning of February 5 Miss Anthony was invited to address a joint session of the Indiana legislature in the Assembly chamber. The judges of the supreme and appellate courts and most of the State officials were present, and all the visitors' seats on the floor and in the galleries were filled with Indianapolis ladies. Miss Anthony was introduced with words of praise by Representative Packard, and spoke for an hour, making her usual strong plea for a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women.

On February 6, at 9 A. M., in the midst of rain and sleet, she arrived in Rochester and, in less than an hour, reporters from every newspaper in the city were on hand for an interview. They had learned long since that they always were sure of a cordial reception at her cozy home, and that the returned traveller would not fail to tell them something which would make interesting reading. Miss Anthony was actuated by two motives in this: One was her desire to get as much suffrage news as possible into the papers, for no one could have a higher appreciation of the value of the press; the other was a strong sentiment of admiration and friendship for the faithful and industrious men and women who earn a living at newspaper work.

Sunday night, February 14, the birthday of Frederick Douglass was observed in the Plymouth Congregational Church. Miss Anthony presided over the large meeting and introduced the speakers.

There had been something in the air of Rochester for several weeks, something of a social nature in which most of the people in the city seemed interested, and it promised to culminate on the approaching 15th of February, when Miss Anthony should be eleven times seven years old. This famous birthday, which had been beautifully celebrated in New York, Washington and numbers of other cities and towns throughout the country, also had been often pleasantly observed in Rochester; but it was thought by many people here that it was time Miss Anthony's own city should hold a celebration which should eclipse all on record. The first intimation she had was the receipt of this invitation:

The woman's clubs of this city are planning to give a reception in your honor at Powers Hall on the evening of your seventy-seventh birthday, February 15, 1897. They have chosen this means of publicly expressing the great esteem in which they hold you, and the pride they feel in reckoning among their number a woman of national reputation. They trust that this date will be satisfactory, and this manner of showing their respect not distasteful to you. Very sincerely,

OLIVE DAVIS, Corresponding Secretary of the Committee on Arrangements.

The committee was composed of one member of each of the sixteen woman's clubs, and the admirable manner in which the affair was conducted certainly indicated that it was in the hands of representative women.[127] Most of the Rochester papers contained editorials of congratulation. Among others the Post-Express said of the celebration:

Its purpose is to indicate the esteem in which she is held by the people of the city of which she has, for many years, been a resident. It is not intended as a demonstration in behalf of the cause with which she has been especially identified. Its meaning is deeper and its scope is broader than this. It is the woman, rather than the advocate, who is to be honored....

Rochester is proud of Susan B. Anthony--proud that it can call her its citizen. It has come to appreciate her quality. It understands, not alone that she has stood in the front ranks of those who have done battle for the equality of woman with man at the ballot-box, but that she has also done much for the emancipation of woman from civil thralldom and social inferiority, and that in all good causes she has been distinguished--in philanthropies as in politics, in the reformation of moral abuses as in the righting of what seemed to her civic wrongs. As her work has proceeded, she has conquered prejudice and persuaded respect--respect for herself independent of and even superior to that for the causes in which she has enlisted. And so it occurs that the citizens of Rochester, without regard to the opinions they entertain upon woman suffrage and cognate movements, but wholly in admiration and affection for a noble woman, unite in the reception which awaits her, cordial and full of meaning. It will be a notable occasion, and one long to be remembered.

The daily papers gave long and elaborate reports of this great reception, headed, "Our beloved Susan; Two thousand hands grasped by the Grand Old Woman;" "Rochester Shows its Love for Her," etc., etc. A portion of the Herald account may be quoted as indicating the tone of all:

The reception accorded to Susan B. Anthony at Powers Hall by the woman's clubs of Rochester was one of the most brilliant events of the kind ever held in this city. All the prominent people of both sexes were there, and each vied with the others in doing honor to the woman whose splendid attributes of mind and heart have reflected so much credit on the city. But little preliminary work was needed, as it partook largely of the nature of a spontaneous tribute. Fully 2,000 people, representing the beauty, wealth and intelligence of the city, passed before this unostentatious, kindly woman during the evening and esteemed it an honor to press her hand.

The guests began to arrive at 8:30 o'clock and continued to come in a steady stream for two hours thereafter. Miss Anthony stood at the western end of the large room and around her were gathered the reception committee, composed of representatives from each of the woman's clubs in the city. The guests formed in line as they entered and each in succession took the hand of Miss Anthony. She greeted every one cordially and had a pleasant word for each. In one hand she held a beautiful bouquet of white and yellow roses sent by Miss Frances E. Willard.

There were more than Rochester's most distinguished citizens; hundreds of the poor and the humble, a number of colored people, men and women in all the walks of life, thronged the great hall surrounded with famous paintings and radiant with electric lights, flowers and beautiful costumes. They came to grasp the hand of one who had made no distinction of race or rank or belief in her fifty years' work of uplifting all humanity. If these had not been present, Miss Anthony would have felt that her own city had not offered its full tribute of recognition.

At the Anthony home the day was a happy one. Rev. Anna Shaw came to help celebrate. The house was filled with guests from out of town and many callers, and the bell was ringing all day for telegrams, letters and packages. There were potted plants and cut flowers, baskets of violets and hyacinths, and great bunches of roses and carnations. Letters and telegrams came from California and Massachusetts, and a number of States between. Clubs of many descriptions sent messages, and even Sunday-schools offered greetings. Mariana W. Chapman, president New York State Suffrage Association, expressed the congratulations of that body, and from all the National-American officers came words of appreciation. Among these were the following from the national organizer, Carrie Chapman Catt:

When a woman lives to be seventy-seven years old, having given a whole half-century and more to the cause of human liberty, her age becomes a crown of glory, before which every lover of progress bows in acknowledgment. Such a woman is she whom we know as "Saint Susan." Upon her birthday I have but one wish, and in this millions of grateful American women join with me; may she live in health and strength undiminished, until she witnesses the last woman in the United States blessed with all the political privileges of citizenship. If this wish might be fulfilled, I know it would bring the highest joy ever permitted a human being; therefore because I love her tenderly I make it, with gratitude for her years of service and with a reverence unspeakable for the woman whose courage, determination and adherence to principle made the service possible.

A few evenings later Miss Anthony attended a meeting held in Rochester by the Cuban League. As soon as she entered she was invited to a seat on the stage and then the audience insisted on a speech. Finally she came forward and said:

From the report of the first outrage in Cuba down to the present time, there has not been a moment but that its people have had my sympathy. Never since I began to know the meaning of the word "freedom" has anything taken a stronger hold on me than this struggle in Cuba. Even where all men are free, women are not, and I trust that when Cuban men achieve their independence and frame their constitution, they will not forget the women who have borne the struggle with them, as our Revolutionary fathers forgot the women who toiled by their side. The men of only four out of forty-five States of our republic have yet granted liberty to the women. I never can speak in a meeting like this without bearing testimony to the cowardice of the men of this nation in refusing to make the women free. I believe in liberty and equality for every human being under every flag, not for men alone but for women also.

The last of February a telegram announced the death of Maude, wife of Senator L. H. Humphrey, who but a few weeks before had visited the Anthony home, and stated that the husband desired Miss Anthony to speak at the funeral. She was a young and lovely wife and mother, treasurer of the State Federation of Clubs and an officer of the State and county suffrage associations. It was said that Miss Anthony spoke as one inspired of the woman in whose death everything good had lost a helpful hand, who had gone out of life with no fear for herself but only loving thoughtfulness for others. She told of her courage in following the truth wherever it might lead, of the freedom into which she had grown, and the beautiful faith and trust in which she had lived; she said that it was such who walked with God, and that her spiritual life could be comprehended only by those who lived on the same high plane. It was a deep regret to all who heard this exquisite eulogy that it was not preserved word for word.

Reference has been made in a preceding chapter to Miss Anthony's preparations for the writing of her biography, which were interrupted by the urgent call from California. All her letters from friends and many from strangers, for several years, had urged that it should not longer be deferred. But who should do it? That was the important question. There were a number of women who possessed the ability and the desire, but some were absorbed in family cares and others in breadwinning occupations; where was the one who could and would give a year or more of her life to this vast undertaking? The question was still unanswered when Miss Anthony laid everything else aside and plunged into the California campaign. Long before this had ended, she had exacted a promise from Mrs. Harper, who had charge of the State press during that long and trying period, to come to Rochester and write the biography. She herself agreed to remain at home till the work should be finished, and give every possible assistance from the storehouse of reminiscence and the wealth of material which had been so carefully garnered during all the years.

So the first of March, 1897, the work began. A little while before, Miss Anthony had written to a friend: "Some one soon will write the story of my life and will want everything she can get about me, but she will find there is precious little when she sits down to the task." What the biographer did find was two large rooms filled, from floor to ceiling, with material of a personal and historical nature. It seemed at first as if nothing less than a cyclopedia could contain what would have to be used. Ranged around the walls were trunks, boxes and bags of letters and other documents, dating back for a century and tied in bundles just as they had been put away from year to year. There were piles of legal papers, accounts, receipts and memoranda of every description, and the diaries and note-books of sixty years. The shelves were filled with congressional, convention and other reports; there were stacks of magazines and newspapers, large numbers of scrap-books and bushels of scraps waiting to be pasted. There was, in fact, everything of this nature which can be imagined, all carefully saved and put away, waiting for the leisure when they could be sorted and classified.

It was fortunate indeed that the two women, who went to work so cheerfully on that March morning, did not realize the task which was before them, or their courage might have wavered. With the assistance of their efficient secretary, Miss Genevieve Lel Hawley, the work went steadily on from daylight till dark for many days, until at length the sheep all were separated from the goats; the matter likely to be used placed in one room, and the remainder arranged conveniently for reference in the other. Every scrap of writing was pressed out and each year's quota not only placed in a separate box, but arranged according to months and days. The printed matter was carefully classified and the scrap-books all finished, a complete set of nearly fifty years.

Then commenced the far more difficult labor of culling the most important and interesting points from this great mass of material, and condensing them into such space as would permit the reading of the biography during at least an average lifetime. And thus was the task continued, day after day, and far into the night, for much more than a year. The snows of winter melted away; the bare branches of the tall chestnut trees which towered above the windows put forth their buds and burst into a wilderness of snowy blossoms; the birds built their nests among the green leaves, reared their young and flew away with them to warmer climes before the chill winds of approaching autumn; the luxuriant foliage faded and dropped to the earth; again the naked branches stretched out to a stormy sky, and the snow lay deep on the frozen ground; while the story followed the life and work of this great historic character through the slow unfolding out of the depths of the past; the development from the springtime of youth into the fruitful summer of maturity; the mellowing into the richness and beauty of autumn; the coming at last into the snowy spotlessness of serene and beautiful old age.

The attic workrooms were an ideal place for this long and exacting task, secluded from all interruption and dedicated so entirely to the work that not a book or paper ever was disturbed. A pretty description written by Mrs. Minette Cheshire Hair, of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle staff, and published in a number of papers, thus began:

Way up on the third floor of the cozy home at 17 Madison street, away from the dust and noise of the pavement, in a charming den admirably arranged for the purpose, two women have for months been busily engaged getting together material and putting it in shape for the publishers, which will give to the world a story--the story of a career as remarkable as any ever written. Pausing on the threshold, a description of the sanctum is not out of place, for the pleasant atmosphere and surroundings at once impress the visitor, so unconsciously have the occupants stamped it with their own strong individuality. It consists of two large and airy rooms which appear to be literally perched in the tree-tops, so close are the swaying branches, which seem to nod approval and encouragement to the two busy workers seated before a large bow window. Patches of the blue sky glimmer above and through them, and the scene without is restful and inspiring. Within is a large, low table where the writing is done, and an easy couch piled with pillows invites repose when the brain grows too weary.

The rooms are plain and ceiled above in natural wood, and on shelves arranged along the sides are boxes containing years of correspondence and documents, dating back to 1797--just one century. In the room beyond, three stenographers do their part of the work, and here also are large chests filled with the accumulations of years of public life. It would seem as if the task before these two dauntless women were almost endless, for every letter must be read and carefully noted, every newspaper clipping gleaned--and these alone would make volumes--old diaries perused, and the whole digested and woven into the fabric of facts which not only go to make the story of one woman, but the history of the great progressive movement of women during the past fifty years.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Among them were Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah B. Cooper, Drs. Hiram Corson and Caroline B. Winslow, Judges E. G. Merrick and O. P. Stearns, Mary Grew, J. Elizabeth Jones, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Sarah Southwick.

[127] The idea of giving the reception originated among the members of the Wednesday Club, some of whom conceived the thought that it was time for the women of Rochester in some way to recognize Miss Anthony's ability, energy and labors in behalf of her sex.... Reformers, as a rule, are not popular in their day, and Miss Anthony ran the gauntlet of derision and abuse years ago, but today the magnificent services she has rendered for woman are everywhere recognized.

The plans have been perfected upon a very elaborate scale. The following are represented in the movement: the Wednesday Club, the Ethical Society, the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, the Wellesley Association, the Cornell Association, the Coterie, the Woman's Saturday Club, the Holyoke Association, the Jewish Council, the Sisterhood of Berith Kodesh, the Ignorance Club, the Tuesday Reading Club, the Livingston Park Seminary Alumnæ, the Rochester Female Academy Alumnæ, the Ladies' Travellers' Club, and Mrs. Hall's Art Class.

The reception is not to women only, but it is expected that a large number of men will be present. [Then follows a list of names of many of the prominent ladies of Rochester, who acted as a reception committee, and of equally well-known young men, who served as ushers.]--Democrat and Chronicle.

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XLIX. CHARACTERISTIC VIEWS ON MANY QUESTIONS

1897.

Miss Anthony was strong in her determination to remain at home and devote herself to the biographical task, but found it almost an impossibility to resist the calls for her services which came from all directions. Occasionally she would slip out for a lecture, but long journeys and convention work for the most part were given up, and never during fifty years had she remained at home a fraction of the time that she spent here in 1897. Monday evening of each week was set apart to receive callers and the pleasant parlors often were crowded, many of the Rochester people declaring that this was their first chance of getting acquainted with their illustrious townswoman. There were two rôles, however, which she never could fill with any pleasure to herself, that of the society or the literary woman. While no one loves her friends more faithfully or better enjoys receiving visits from them, she cares for social life, in general, only so far as it can advance her cause. Although letter-writing is a pleasure, she hates the use of the pen for so-called literary work. Standing on the platform, words and ideas rush upon her more rapidly than she can give them utterance, but with pen in hand the thoughts still come but refuse to be formulated.

In the chapters describing the preparation of the History of Woman Suffrage was set forth in detail her restiveness at such confinement. "I love to make history but hate to write it," was her oft-repeated assertion. The years had brought no change of feeling and her correspondence shows how she chafed under the search of old records, the reading of faded letters. Many times she wrote: "There is so much to be done, so much more money is needed and so many more women are wanted for the present work, that half the time I feel conscience-smitten to be dwelling among the scenes and people of the past. There are so very few of my early co-workers now on this side of the big river, that I am really living with the dead most of the time; but as there is no way out of this job except through it--through it I must go." In the journal she says: "O, how it tires me to think over and talk over those old days, not only of my own labors, but of the never-ceasing efforts to stir up others to work."

The 9th of March Miss Anthony lectured before the Men's Club of the Central Church at Auburn. On the 12th she spoke at a meeting addressed by Booker Washington in the interest of the Tuskeegee Colored Institute. The 24th she went to Albany with Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Mrs. Catt, Elizabeth Burrill Curtis, daughter of George William Curtis, Mrs. Chapman, State president; and all addressed the senate judiciary committee in behalf of a woman suffrage amendment. Miss Anthony went to this hearing much against her will and, at its conclusion, declared she never again would stoop to plead her cause before one of these committees. She had made her appeals to their fathers and grandfathers, and she was tired of begging for her liberty from men not half her own age and with not a hundredth part of her knowledge of State and national affairs.

The seventieth birthday of the devoted sister Mary would occur on April 2, and Miss Anthony decided to have a home reception in her honor. When she broached the subject to a few intimate friends in the Unitarian church and the Political Equality Club, she found they already had such arrangements well under way and they insisted that she should leave the matter entirely in their hands. Anything which concerned the Anthony sisters interested Rochester, and the city papers contained extended notices. The Herald began a long interview as follows:

Seventy! It did not seem possible that the sprightly, energetic little woman who answered the reporter's ring could have reached the allotted threescore and ten. Old Father Time is certainly no more than a myth to Miss Mary Anthony. "Yes," said she, laughing, "I am about to make my debut. Just think of it, a real reception in my honor! By the time I'm eighty, my existence will probably have become one whirl of delicious excitement."

The reporter asked to see Miss Susan B. Anthony; five minutes would be sufficient; the matter was urgent and important.... Turning to her the reporter said: "The Herald would like you to give an account of your sister. You know she would never admit that she ever did anything worth mentioning, so it is from you that the true story must come."

She laughed as she took off her glasses, leaned back in her chair and asked, "Where shall I begin?"

"At the beginning, please."

"Well then, my sister was born in Battenville, the youngest of four daughters. One thing may surprise you. She, not I, is the suffrage pioneer in our family. She attended the first woman's rights convention, and when I came home from teaching school, I heard nothing but suffrage talk, and how lovely Lucretia Mott was, and how sweet Elizabeth Cady Stanton was. I didn't believe in it then, and made fun of it; but sister Mary was a firm advocate. My brother-in-law used to tell me that I could preach woman's rights, but it took Mary to practice them.

"For twenty-six consecutive years, from 1857 to 1883, she taught in our public schools. Many of the best citizens of Rochester once went to school to her; and it is perhaps her influence upon those minds and lives that my sister considers the most important part of her life-work. She has always been identified with the suffrage cause in this city and State, as I have with the national. For a number of years she was corresponding secretary of the State society, and for five years has been president of the city Political Equality Club.

"I can not tell you how she has helped and sustained me. She has kept a home where I might come to rest. From the very beginning, she has cheered and comforted me. She has looked after the great mass of details, my wardrobe, my business, etc., leaving me free. She is the unseen worker who ought to share equally in whatever of reward and praise I may have won."

The Democrat and Chronicle thus commenced a two-column account of the reception:

... The occasion was the seventieth anniversary of Miss Mary Anthony's birth and, in the afternoon and evening, crowds of her friends gathered to offer their congratulations and do homage to one who has done so much for the educational interests of the city and social and political equality for her sex. Miss Mary, to be sure, has not gained the national reputation which her famous sister enjoys, yet among the people of Rochester she is regarded as a sharer in the laurels won by Susan B. Whenever one is mentioned the personality of the other is immediately brought to mind.... It was with rare hospitality, interwoven with personal love and respect, that Dr. and Mrs. J. E. Sanford devoted their handsome home to the celebration of this birthday. Attired in black satin and duchesse lace, with a pretty bouquet of bride roses in her hand, Miss Mary presented a womanly and attractive appearance.

In the name of the club, Mrs. Sanford presented, with a felicitous little speech, a handsome, jetted broadcloth cape. She was followed by Mrs. Greenleaf, who tendered in affectionate words a purse containing $70, a golden tribute for each year from many friends.[128] John M. Thayer then made a witty and interesting address. He was followed by Rev. W. C. Gannett, who dwelt especially on the work done by Miss Mary in looking after the poor and needy for the past twenty years, not only as an officer of the city charitable association but in a private capacity, and closed by saying:

It takes two sorts of people to make a reform: One who become public speakers and bear the brunt of obloquy, and the other who in obscurity lend their assistance to the work. There are hundreds of this latter class that the world never hears about. It is the blessed silent side of life, and it seems to me that Mary is the very incarnation of the quiet majority of this great reform which is yet to celebrate its triumphs. In after years, when the story is written of this political equality movement, men will say that the battle was won by the two sisters, because there never could have been a Susan abroad if it had not been for a Mary at home.

If there ever was a time when Miss Anthony was speechless from supreme satisfaction it was on this occasion. All the honors ever bestowed upon herself had not afforded her the joy of this testimonial to her gentle, unassuming but strong and helpful sister, on whom she leaned far more than the world could ever know.

Miss Anthony assisted at the elegant golden wedding celebration of Mr. and Mrs. James Sargent, April 29; not one in the receiving line under seventy, and yet not one broken or enfeebled by age. The men erect and vigorous, the women beautifully dressed and full of animation, formed a striking illustration of the changed physical and social conditions of the last half-century.

Early in June Miss Anthony, Rev. Anna Shaw, Miss Emily Howland and Mrs. Harper went to Auburn to visit Eliza Wright Osborne, with whom Mrs. Stanton and her daughter, Mrs. Lawrence, were spending the summer. The days were delightfully passed, driving through the shaded streets of that "loveliest village of the plain" and walking about the spacious park and gardens surrounding the Osborne mansion; while in the evenings the party gathered in the large drawing-room and listened to chapters from the forthcoming biography, followed with delightful reminiscences by the two elder ladies and Mrs. Osborne, whose mother, Martha C. Wright, was one of their first and best-beloved friends and helpers. It was a rare and sacred occasion, and those who were present ever will cherish the memory of those two grand pioneers, sitting side by side--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony--the one just beyond, the other nearing the eightieth milestone of life, both having given to the world fifty years of unremitting service, and yet both as strong in mind, as keen in satire, as brimming with cheerfulness, as in those early days when they set about to revolutionize the prejudices and customs of the ages.[129]

The correspondence this year seemed heavier than ever before, letters pouring in from all parts of the United States and Europe. Even from far-off Moscow, in conservative Russia, came the cry of women for help. Pages written by the pen of another could not give so accurate an idea of Miss Anthony's opinions on various topics as single paragraphs culled from copies of her own letters, preserved, alas, only during the past few years since she has employed a stenographer. One scarcely knows which to select. To a newspaper inquiry she answered: "The 'greatest compliment' ever paid me was, that by my life-work I had helped to make the conditions of the world better for women." She wrote to an exasperated Ohio woman:

The plan you propose, of our getting all the members of suffrage clubs, and all individual women outside, in each State, to march to the polls every election day and attempt to deposit their ballots, sounds very well. But, my dear, it is impossible thus to persuade the women, after the Supreme Court of the United States has declared they have no right to vote under the National Constitution. Your suggestion means a revolution which women will not create against their own fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. A whole race of men under a foreign or tyrannical government, like the Cubans, may rise in rebellion, but for women thus to band themselves against the power enthroned in their own households is quite another matter. Hundreds have recommended your plan, so it is nothing new, but it is utterly impractical. There can be but one possible way for women to be freed from the degradation of disfranchisement, and that is through the slow processes of agitation and education, until the vast majority of women themselves desire freedom. So long as mothers teach their sons and daughters, by acquiescence at least, that present conditions need no improving, you can not expect men to change them. Therefore do not waste a single moment trying to devise any sort of insurrectionary movement on the part of the women.

In a letter to Mrs. Stanton she said:

Mrs. Besant lunched with us, and I heard her last evening for the second time. She is master of the English language, and whether or not one can believe she sees and hears from the world of the disembodied what she feels she does, one can not but realize that she is a great woman and has a wonderful theory of how human souls return to earth. But I tell her that it seems to me repellent that we have to come back here through Dame Nature's processes, after a period of such great freedom in the occult world, and again go through with teething, mumps, measles, and similar inflictions. The truth is, I can no more see through Theosophy than I can through Christian Science, Spiritualism, Calvinism or any other of the theories, so I shall have to go on knocking away to remove the obstructions in the road of us mortals while in these bodies and on this planet; and leave Madam Besant and you and all who have entered into the higher spheres, to revel in things unknown to me.... I will join you at Mrs. Miller's Saturday, and we'll chat over men, women and conditions--not theories, theosophies and theologies, they are all Greek to me.

There had been a question after the late election in Idaho whether the suffrage amendment required a majority of all the votes cast, or only a majority of those cast on the amendment. If the former, then it was defeated. The case was carried to the supreme court, which put the latter construction on the law. Miss Anthony wrote to the judges, Isaac N. Sullivan, Joseph W. Huston, Ralph P. Quarles, (John T. Morgan retired):

On behalf of the suffrage women of the United States, I thank you for the decision which you have rendered. I had studied over the clause a great deal and felt that if your judgments were biased by the precedents and prejudices which had controlled the decisions of the Supreme Courts of the United States, and of the different States, upon the extension of rights to women, you certainly would give the narrow interpretation. Instead of that, for the first time in the history of our judiciary, the broadest and most liberal interpretation possible has been given.

The Kentucky Daughters of the American Revolution, who were marking historic spots, she advised as follows:

I hope in your selections you will be exceedingly careful to distinguish those actions in which our Revolutionary mothers took part. Men have been faithful in noting every heroic act of their half of the race, and now it should be the duty, as well as the pleasure, of women to make for future generations a record of the heroic deeds of the other half. It is a splendid thing for your association to devote the Fourth of July to a commemoration of women. If I had the time, I too might be one of the "Daughters,"[130] for my Grandfather Read enlisted and fought on the heights of Quebec and at the battles of Bennington and Ticonderoga; but I have been, and must continue to be, so busy working to secure to the women of this day the paramount right for which the Revolutionary War was waged, that I can give neither time nor money to associations of women for any other purpose, however good it may be.

When the answer came that they were doing the very thing that she wished, she replied:

I am delighted; for however heroic our pioneer fathers may have been, our pioneer mothers, in the very nature of things, must have braved all the hardships of the men by their side with the added one of bearing and rearing children when deprived of even the vital necessities of maternity. Self-government is as necessary for the best development of women as of men. Sentiment never was and never can be a guarantee for justice, but with equal political power women will be able to secure justice for themselves. We have had chivalry and sentiment from the beginning of time, with some privileges granted as a favor. We now demand rights, guaranteed to us by codes and constitutions; and if their possession shall forfeit us gallantry, we will make the best of it. But I do not believe woman's utter dependence on man wins for her his respect; it may cause him to love and pet her as a child, but never to regard and treat her as a peer.

To Prof. C. Howard Young, of Hartford, Conn., for thirteen years an invalid and yet an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, she wrote: "I want you to feel that the dollar you have sent from year to year all this time for your membership in the national association has helped bring to us Idaho, for our organization committee's work in that State was a large factor in securing the victory. Every one who gives a dollar helps do the work where it is most needed to gain the practical result."

The following extracts are self-explanatory:

The vast majority of women easily can have their sympathies drawn upon to help personal and public charities, while very few are capable of seeing that the cause of nine-tenths of all the misfortunes which come to women, and to men also, lies in the subjection of woman, and therefore the important thing is to lay the axe at the root. Now, my dear, if you and all the women who are working for the different charities and reforms of your city, had the right to vote, how long do you suppose the brothels and gambling houses would be allowed to keep their doors open? Do you believe that if women could vote for every officer whose duty it is to enforce the laws, these dens would be licensed, or if not absolutely licensed, would be allowed to run year in and year out merely by the payment of fines from time to time? How long do you think our streets would be infested with men walking up and down seeking whom they might devour, and with women doing the same? While some of you must work, as you are doing, giving heart and soul to the mitigation of the horrors of our semi-barbaric conditions, I must strike at the cause which produces them.

To the women of Kansas:

I hope your State association won't do the foolish thing of wasting your time in asking the legislature to pass a law granting "presidential" suffrage to women. Our chances in your State have been postponed, if not absolutely killed, because of municipal suffrage, and now if you should induce your legislature to give "presidential" suffrage and the women should thwart the men's wishes in their votes for President, as they already have done with their limited franchise, you would be doomed never to get the right to vote for congressmen, governor and legislators. I wish women never would ask for any but full suffrage; and also that they would stop asking the legislatures to submit an amendment to the voters, until they have created public sentiment enough to get at least one of the leading parties to stand for it from year to year. We have been working at the top with the members of legislatures, delegates to conventions, etc., too long; it is now time to begin at the bottom with the voting precincts. Nothing short of this should be considered organization.

Miss Anthony received many poems every year from admiring friends of both sexes. This acknowledgment of one raises the suspicion that she was not so appreciative as she might have been: "I find in a very handsome lavender envelope a poem inscribed on lavender paper, addressed to Susan B. Anthony. Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that 'reap' and 'deep,' 'prayers' and 'bears,' 'ark' and 'dark,' 'true' and 'grew' do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you for poetizing over me--although the fact is that I am the most prosaic, matter-of-fact creature that ever drew the breath of life."

A relative in California wrote that "God would punish the people in that State who worked against the woman suffrage amendment," and Miss Anthony replied:

It is hardly worth while for you or anybody to talk about "God's punishing people." If He does, He has been a long time about it in a good many cases and not succeeded in doing it very thoroughly. He certainly didn't punish the liquor dealers of San Francisco; instead of that, He let them rejoice over us women because of their power to cheat us out of right and justice. I think it is quite time, at least for anybody who has Anthony blood in her, to see that God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, and that the tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch. Instead of that, good men stay away from the ballot-box or else form third, fourth and forty-'leventh parties, thus leaving the liquor men and vicious elements, who always know enough to stand together, a balance of power on the side of the candidate or the party that will do most for their interests. If the good men were as bright as the bad men, they would pull together instead of separately.

To the Jewish Woman's Council: "From day to day I read the press reports of your meetings, and was pleased to see how successful they were; especially was I glad at the answer one of your women made to the criticism of your holding a meeting on Sunday. It is time to teach some of our Protestant women that it is just as worthy to do a good thing on Sunday as on Monday or any other day in the week, and no worse to do a bad one. They should learn also that they have no more right to ask you to hold their Sunday sacred than you have to demand that they shall observe your Jewish Sabbath."

Some California women wrote her that the politicians were advising them to ask for "educated and property suffrage," and she replied:

I should answer them that it is quite difficult enough for women to push their demand for enfranchisement on an equal basis with men. They all know there is not a man who has any political aspirations or a party which hopes for success, that would take a public stand in favor of such a measure as they wish us to adopt. I do not agree with them that we have too many voters now. Instead of that, I say we have just half enough, for a majority of the opinions of all the people combined is sure to be better than the opinions of any one class. They call it a "mistake" giving to poor and uneducated men the right to vote; whereas, the greatest wrongs in our government are perpetrated by rich men, the wire-pulling agents of the corporations and monopolies, in which the poor and the ignorant have no part.

No, they can not persuade me that it would be a right or even a politic thing to ask that only educated, tax-paying women be enfranchised. It would antagonize not only every man who had neither property nor education but also every one whose wife had neither, and all such would vote against the enfranchisement of the rich and educated women. You can not start a demand for any sort of restrictive qualification for women which will not lose more votes for the measure in one direction than it can possibly gain in another.

The habit of many women of continually intruding their religious beliefs into their public work was a great annoyance to Miss Anthony. To a prominent speaker on the Prohibition platform with whom she was well acquainted, she wrote: "It seems to me that by your using constantly the words 'God' and 'Jesus' as if they were material beings, when to you they are no longer such, you impress upon your audience, grounded as the vast majority yet are in the old beliefs, that you still hold to the idea of their personality. The world, especially women, love to cling to a personal, material help--God a strong man, Jesus a loving man." And then a little further on, referring to the common habit of regarding physical misfortunes as the punishment of God, she said: "God is not responsible for our human ills and we should not believe or disbelieve in Him on account of our aches and pains. It surely is not the good people who escape bodily ailments. Certain fixed laws govern all, and those who come nearest to obeying these laws will suffer least; but even then we must suffer for the failures of our ancestors."

One of the leading women in a State where a suffrage amendment was pending, wrote her that she felt sure the Lord would interpose in its behalf and she should try to influence the voters by prayer. In response Miss Anthony said:

I think you do not fully realize that the vast majority of the men whom you have to convert to suffrage, neither know nor care whether you and the rest of the women who want to vote, are especially inspired by God to make the demand. Those who are good Methodists like yourself ought to believe in suffrage already, and therefore your appeals are to be made to the men who are not Methodists, possibly not even Christians, and would be repelled by your presenting any of the religious motives which are so powerful with you and other church members. To prevail with the rank and file of voters, you must appeal to their sense of justice. I am glad to have you tell me personally about your communings with the Lord, but for you to give that talk of "miraculous intervention" to the common run of voters would be, as the Good Book says, "casting pearls before swine."

To a nephew, D. R. Anthony, Jr., and his bride on the day of their wedding, she telegraphed the beautiful words of Lucretia Mott: "May your independence be equal, your dependence mutual, your obligations reciprocal."

In the winter of 1897 a great cry was raised about what was called "yellow" journalism, the mischievous sensationalism of certain metropolitan newspapers. The matter was taken up by the W. C. T. U. and Miss Willard sent out an address to prominent women asking that they should protest against this journalism and also against such spectacles as the recent Corbett-Fitzsimmons prize fight. When it reached Miss Anthony she answered:

Your circular letter came duly, proposing that women should refuse to patronize the so-called "yellow" newspapers, and also protest against prize fighting. It seems to me that for the women of the country to come out now with their little piping voices, after all the great daily papers of the nation have written the strongest kind of editorials against both these evils, would be very like the caricatures of the old Conkling-Platt fight in the United States Senate--the tall Conkling dealing his blow, and the little Platt peeping, "Me, too."

Instead of going around echoing one or another class of men, it is time for women to put their heads together and demand to have their opinions counted the same as those of the men who make possible "yellow journalism" and prize fighting. They who wish may waste their time trying to make bricks without straw--to change the conditions of society without votes--I shall go on clamoring for the ballot and trying not to antagonize any man or set of men. Don't you see, if women ever get the right to vote it must be through the consent of not only the moral and decent men of the nation, but also through that of the other kind? Is it not perfectly idiotic for us to be telling the latter class that the first thing we shall do with our ballots will be to knock them out of the enjoyment of their pet pleasures and vices? If you still think it wise to keep on sticking pins into the men whom we are trying to persuade to give women equal power with themselves, you will have to go on doing it. I certainly will not be one of your helpers in that particular line of work.

In reading these and scores of similar expressions of wisdom and philosophy, one can but echo the words of Rev. Anna Shaw, who wrote to Miss Anthony: "Your letters sound like a trumpet blast. They read like St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, so strong, so clear, so full of courage." Miss Anthony and Miss Willard always continued the best of friends, each great enough to respect the other's individuality. In reply to the above, Miss Willard wrote: "Dearest Susan, two women as settled in their opinions as you and I, show their highest wisdom when they mildly agree to differ and go on their way rejoicing, with mutual good word, good will, good heart. Ever yours with warm affection." A little later Miss Willard added to the official invitations to the World's and the National W. C. T. U. Conventions, her warm personal request for Miss Anthony's presence.

There was no end to the invitations which came by every mail: a banquet given by the New York Woman's Press Club; the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Woman's Club at Orange, N. J.; an anniversary breakfast of Sorosis, at the Waldorf; a reunion of the old Abolitionists in Boston; the Pilgrim Mothers' Dinner in the Astor Gallery; the dedication of the Mother Bickerdyke Hospital in Kansas; the opening reception of the Tennessee Centennial--the very answering of them consumed hours of precious time.[131] Neither was there any limit to the newspaper requests for opinions, such as, "Do you favor the use of birds for personal adornment? Why, or why not?" "Christ's message, 'Peace on earth, good will to men'--what has it done and what does it mean after nineteen centuries?" etc. She seldom attempted to answer such queries, but her comments while looking them over in her daily mail, if preserved by stenographer and historian, would make piquant reading.

An amusing letter turns up among the almost nine hundred received in 1897, in which a county official, not seventy-five miles from Rochester, asks these questions: "In how many cities have you spoken? How many lectures delivered? Have you ever spoken in Washington before Congress? Have you ever spoken in Albany before the legislature? How many people would you think you had addressed in your lifetime?" Miss Anthony responded: "It would be hard to find a city in the northern and western States in which I have not lectured, and I have spoken in many of the southern cities. I have been on the platform over forty-five years and it would be impossible to tell how many lectures I have delivered; they probably would average from seventy-five to one hundred every year. I have addressed the committees of every Congress since 1869, and our New York legislature scores of times."

As has been stated, she never replied to personal attacks, but during 1897 one so unjust and so bitter was made by a disgruntled woman of New York City in the St. Louis Republic, that she yielded to the importunity of friends and answered briefly:

I have been an officer in the National Suffrage Association since 1852, and its president since 1892. During that time I never have had one dollar of salary, nor have I ever received any money for my suffrage work from this association. I usually am paid for lectures by any society which sends for me to come to a special place. In all of the laborious State campaigns I have given my services without money and without price. The various bequests which have been left to me, to use at my discretion, all have been appropriated directly to the suffrage cause. Not one officer of the national association is or ever has been paid for her services, and most of them have contributed many years of hard work and a large amount of their own money.

By the middle of July the biography was so well advanced that the two workers felt entitled to a vacation during midsummer. The completed chapters were locked securely in the safety deposit vault and, with a fervent hope that the house would not catch fire and burn up the unwritten part of the book during their absence, they started, July 15, for a little tour, going first to the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Sargent on "Summerland," one of the loveliest of the Thousand Islands. Here Miss Anthony tried very hard for a whole week to do nothing. Even letter-writing was laid aside and she sat on the veranda and watched the great steamers and the pleasure boats go up and down the broad St. Lawrence; took long naps in the hammock swayed by the soft breezes; wandered through the picturesque ravine and along the water's edge; at evening watched the sun set in gorgeous splendor, leaving a trail of glory on the waters which slowly faded as the stars came out in the beauty of the night and were reflected in the still depths. Every day, with host and hostess and the other guests in the house, she boarded the little launch and sailed up the river, winding in and out among those wonderful islands with their diversity of hotels, clubhouses, elegant mansions and pretty cottages; but all surpassed by the adornments of nature, tall trees with luxuriant vines climbing to the very tops, and the great rocks of the ages, rent and cleft and covered with mosses and ferns.

It was a charming week but, although the stay might have been prolonged through the summer, Miss Anthony was far too busy a woman for much visiting, and on the 22d started for her old home at Adams, Mass., where a unique and long anticipated event took place, which will be described in the next chapter. A number of relatives, who had come from various parts of the country for this occasion, returned to Rochester with her. A little trip was made to Geneva to visit with Mrs. Stanton at Mrs. Miller's, and so the summer sped quickly and pleasantly away.

Miss Anthony attended the Ohio convention at Alliance, October 5, and was the guest of Mrs. Emma Cantine. While here, at the request of President Marsh, she addressed the students of Mount Union College on "The Progress of Women during my Lifetime." She had said again and again that she would not leave her work and go to this convention, but when at last a telegram was received, "For heaven's sake come; all depends on you"--she put on her bonnet and went, just as she had done a hundred times before.

She spoke, October 20, at the celebration of the hundredth birthday of Rev. Samuel J. May, in the beautiful church erected to his memory in Syracuse. She had known Mr. May intimately from 1850 to the time of his death, and those who have read the first chapters of this book and seen what he was to her in those early days of abolitionism and woman's rights when the enemies far outnumbered the friends, can imagine how eloquently she voiced the love and gratitude in her heart.

The next evening Miss Anthony left Rochester for ten days at Nashville, Tenn. The Woman's Board had invited a number of national organizations to hold conventions during the Exposition, and the last week was set apart for the Woman's Council. This was not a suffrage meeting; it was simply a national council where each one of the speakers asked for the suffrage to enable her association to do its work. Headquarters were at the Maxwell House, and the officers and many other notable women came from various parts of the country for the week. The public sessions were held in the Woman's Building, which was crowded to its capacity. Although suffrage was a comparatively new subject in this city, the announcement of Miss Anthony's address filled the assembly-room and she was received with enthusiasm.

They met with a hearty greeting from the people of Nashville. Among the elegant receptions given in their honor was one by Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Berry at Vauxhall Place. The president of the Exposition, Mr. John W. Thomas, and his wife gave a handsome entertainment, of which the American's account said: "By the hostess stood her honored guest, Miss Susan B. Anthony, in simple attire. Warm was the reception accorded this gray-haired woman, and her grand face impressed all with the noble part she had played in this century." At the close of the council the visitors, as the guests of the lady directors, were driven in tally-ho and carriages to the beautiful country-seat of the president of the board, Mrs. Van Leer Kirkman, where they were royally received.

Miss Anthony spoke also before the Liberal Congress of Religions in session at this time, and was introduced by the president, Dr. Thomas, as "one who had stood for the cause of liberty when it cost something to stand, and had borne the storm of calumny and abuse for fifty years." While she was in Nashville President Erastus M. Cravath, of Fiske University, called with his carriage and took her to that institution, where she addressed the faculty and 600 students, speaking, by request, on "The Early Days of Abolitionism."

After a day or two at home Miss Anthony attended the New York Suffrage Convention at Geneva, November 3. Here she made a speech criticising the women of New York City for having gone so actively into partisan politics during the recent campaign, although none of the parties advocated giving them the right of suffrage, and pointed out the absurdity of hoping for "good government" from any party until it was reinforced by the votes of women. The speech created something of a sensation, and when she reached home a reporter was waiting for her, to whom she gave an interview which intensified the original excitement. Not only did she review the political situation in New York, but she declared also that no movement could succeed unless it were managed by a so-called "ring." Leaders must be surrounded by those who are in sympathy with their ideas and willing to carry out their methods, or nothing can be accomplished. In commenting, the paper quoted the remark so often made, "When Susan B. Anthony was born a woman, an adroit statesman was lost to the world."

On November 11 Miss Anthony started on a great swing of western conventions, or conferences, stopping on her way to the railroad station to attend the golden wedding reception of her friends of nearly fifty years, Dr. and Mrs. Edward M. Moore. These conferences--Miss Anthony, Mrs. Catt, Miss Shaw, speakers--were for the purpose of arousing interest and raising money for the suffrage celebration to be held in Washington in the winter of 1898. They began at Minneapolis and continued for two days each in Madison, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Toledo. At the first city Miss Anthony addressed the students of the State University, introduced by President Cyrus Northrop. A reception was given in the public library building by the local Woman's Council.

At each of the cities visited the ladies were entertained by prominent residents, the audiences were large and appreciative, and the newspapers contained long and favorable reports. There was not a discord in the chorus of pleasant welcome; not a disrespectful word of either the speakers or the cause they advocated. The question was treated with the same consideration and dignity as others before the public for discussion, and it required no more courage to present it than to talk of any other reform of the day.

If one desire an illustration of the progress made by women during half a century, let him turn to the early chapters of this book and read the story of those first meetings where Miss Anthony, rising timidly in her seat and asking to make a remark, was literally howled down because no woman was allowed to speak in public; and then let him read these closing chapters of her ovations extending from ocean to ocean. From a canvass of New York State in a sleigh, speaking to little handfuls of people in country schoolhouses, ridiculed by the newspapers and outlawed by society--to an endless series of conventions and congresses in all the great cities of the country, with no hall large enough to hold the audiences and with almost the unanimous approval of press and people! Only a short period of less than fifty years, scarcely a second in the eons of history, and yet in that brief time a revolution in public sentiment, an overturning of the customs and prejudices of the ages, the release of womanhood from unknown centuries of bondage!

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Among other birthday remembrances were a diamond pin from Miss Shaw, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Louise Mosher James and Lucy E. Anthony; $50 from Mrs. Gross; many smaller gifts and quantities of flowers.

[129] During this month a fine medallion of Miss Anthony was made for the Political Equality Club of Rochester and put on sale to obtain money for the suffrage fund. Some time before, a handsome souvenir spoon was designed by Mrs. Millie Burtis Logan, of Rochester.

[130] Later Miss Anthony was made honorary member of Irondequoit Chapter, D. A. R. (Rochester).

[131] Miss Anthony was this year made honorary member of the Cuban League, the Rochester Historical Society, the Ladies of the Maccabees, and various other organizations.

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L. HOME LIFE--THE REUNION--THE WOMAN

1897.

The unsurpassed powers of endurance, which have enabled Miss Anthony to work without ceasing for more than sixty years, are due to her perfect physical condition. She comes of a long-lived race, in which centenarians have been not unusual. Her paternal grandfather lived past the age of ninety-seven, able to oversee his farm to the very last; the grandmother lived beyond sixty-seven; both the maternal grandparents died in their eighty-fourth year; her father at sixty-nine, and her mother at eighty-six. She never has abused her inheritance of a fine, strong constitution. Travelling so much of the time, she has not been able to observe regular hours and, being usually entertained in private families, has not had a choice of food, but nevertheless, as far as possible, she has observed the laws of health which she made for herself in youth.

She never fails to take each morning, regardless of the weather, a cold sponge bath from head to foot, followed by a brisk rubbing, which puts the skin in excellent condition. She has a good appetite, drinks tea and coffee moderately and eats always the simplest food, cereals, bread and butter, vegetables, eggs, milk, a little meat once a day, plenty of fruit at every meal, whatever is in season, and never can be tempted by rich salads, desserts or fancy dishes. Whenever it is possible she rests a short time after each meal, and lies down for an hour during the afternoon, even if she can not sleep; retires at nine or ten and rises at six or seven. She travels by night, when convenient, as she thus can avoid much of the fatigue of the journey. When travelling in the daytime she reads very little, never writes or dictates letters on the train, as many busy people do, but makes herself comfortable and dozes and rests.

An invariable rule, with which nothing is allowed to interfere, is plenty of fresh air and exercise, and she regards these as the mainspring of her long years of health and activity. If she has been on the cars all day, she walks from the station to her stopping-place. After a speech, she walks home. When in Rochester she often writes until nearly 10 o'clock at night, then puts on a long cloak, ties a scarf over her head, goes out to the mail box, and walks eight or ten blocks, returning in a warm glow; gives herself a thorough rubbing, and is ready for a night's rest in a room where the window is open at all seasons. The policemen are accustomed to the late pedestrian and often speak a word of greeting as she passes. It is not an unusual thing for her to take up a broom, when it has been snowing all the evening, and sweep the walks around and in front of the house, just before going to bed. While not an adherent of any special "sciences" or "cures," she believes thoroughly in not dwelling upon either mental or bodily ills; giving disagreeable things and people only such attention as is absolutely necessary, and then putting them out of mind; observing the laws of hygiene with regard to the body and then banishing it also from the thoughts. Over and above all else is she an advocate of work, employment for mind and body, as a means of salvation.

In dress Miss Anthony is extremely particular. She considers it poor economy to wear cheap material, always buys the best fabrics, linings and trimmings, and employs a competent dressmaker. She has one gown a year and often this is a present from some loving friend. While she wears only black silk or satin in public, she loves color and her house dress is usually maroon or soft cardinal. Her laces and few pieces of jewelry are gifts from women. The slender little ring, worn on the "wedding finger," was placed there thirty years ago by her devoted friend, Dr. Clemence Lozier. She never in a lifetime has changed the style of wearing her hair, once dark brown, glossy and abundant, now thin and fine and shining like spun silver, which is always evenly parted, combed over the ears and coiled low at the back, thus showing the fine contour of her head. In all the details of the toilet she is most fastidious, and a rent, a missing button or a frayed edge is considered almost an unpardonable sin.

Miss Anthony attends Unitarian church but retains her membership in the Society of Quakers. On the rare occasions when she needs a physician, she consults some woman of the homeopathic school, but she is opposed to much medicine, believing that proper diet and exercise are the best cure for most maladies. Although pleased always to welcome callers, she makes few visits, except to the faithful friends of olden times whose names so often have been mentioned in these pages. She finds the days all too short and too few for the great work whose demands increase with every year. While Miss Anthony feels an abiding interest in household affairs, the details and management necessarily devolve upon her sister Mary, who also looks carefully after the finances, to see that the modest income is not all appropriated to the cause of woman suffrage. In matters of a material nature she is the needed complement to the life of her gifted sister. On all vital questions, suffrage, religion, the various reforms, the two are in perfect accord and, as they sit together in the quiet home for the usual twilight chat before the lamps are lighted, there is none of that dwelling in the past, to which old people are so prone, but all is of the present, the live topics of the day, and the plans and hopes which they share alike.

The Anthony home in Rochester stands in Madison street, one of the nicely paved, well-shaded avenues in the western part of that beautiful city. It is a plain, substantial two-and-a-half story brick house of thirteen rooms, with modern conveniences, and belongs to Miss Mary. It is furnished with Quakerlike simplicity but with everything necessary to make life comfortable. In the front parlor are piano, easy chairs and many pictures and pieces of bric-a-brac, given by friends. Over the mantel hangs a fine, large painting of the Yosemite, presented to Miss Anthony in 1896 by William Keith, the noted artist of California. Beneath it stand three fine photographs, Mary Wollstonecraft, Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass. Between the windows is the very mahogany table upon which were written the call and resolutions for the first woman's rights convention ever held--the gift of Mrs. Stanton. In the back parlor the most conspicuous object is the library table strewn with the papers and magazines which come by every mail. This is surrounded with arm-chairs, tempting one to pause awhile and enjoy this luxury of literature. On one side are the bookcases, and on the walls large engravings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and a handsome copy of Murillo's Madonna, while in one corner stands the mother's spinning-wheel. Opening out of this room is Miss Mary's study, the big desk filled with work pertaining to the Political Equality Club of 200 members, whose efficient president she has been for a number of years; and here she spends several hours every day looking after her own work and relieving her sister of a part of hers. There is a sewing-machine here also, and a big, old-fashioned haircloth sofa, suggesting a nap and a dream of bygone days.

In the dining-room is a handsomely carved mahogany sideboard, a family heirloom, containing china and silver which belonged to mother and grandmother, and here hang very old steel engravings of Washington and Lincoln. The large, light kitchen, with its hard coal range, is a favorite apartment, and Miss Anthony especially enjoys sitting there in a low rocking-chair while she reads the morning paper. The front room upstairs, with little dressing-room attached, is the guest chamber. It contains a great chest of drawers, a dressing-table and mirror which were part of the mother's wedding outfit over eighty years ago, a mahogany bedstead and a modern writing-desk and rocking-chairs. On the walls are several paintings, the work of loved hands long since at rest, and two engravings, over one hundred years old, such as used to hang in every Abolitionist's parlor in early days. They are copies of paintings by G. Morland, engraved in 1794, by "J. R. Smith, King St., Covent Garden, engravers to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales." One is entitled "African Hospitality," and represents a ship wrecked off the coast of Africa with the white passengers rescued and tenderly cared for by the natives; the other is named "The Slave Trade," and shows these same negroes loaded with chains and driven aboard ship by the white men whom they had saved. These pictures have little meaning to the present generation, but one can imagine how they must have fired the hearts of those who were laboring to eradicate the curse of slavery from the nation.

Back of the guest chamber, in this interesting home, is Miss Mary's sleeping-room, with quaint old furniture and family pictures; then the maid's room, another guest chamber and, in the southwest corner, next the bathroom, the pleasant bedroom of Miss Anthony with the pictures of those she loves best, and the dresser littered with the little toilet articles of which she is very fond. The most attractive room in the house, naturally, is Miss Anthony's study in the south wing on the second floor. It is light and sunshiny and has an open gas fire. Looking down from the walls are Benjamin Lundy, Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Abby Kelly Foster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucy Stone, Lydia Maria Child and, either singly or in groups, many more of the great reformers of the past and present century. On one side are the book shelves, with cyclopedia, histories and other volumes of reference; on another an inviting couch, where the busy worker may drop down for a few moment's repose of mind and body. By one window is the typewriter, and by the other the great desk weighted with letters and documents.

Each morning, as soon as the postman arrives, Miss Anthony sits down at her desk and, going over the piles of letters, puts to one side those which can wait, dictates replies to those requiring the longest answers and, while they are being typewritten, plunges with her pen into the rest. Many hours every day and often into the night she writes steadily, but the pile never diminishes. As president of the National-American Association not only must she direct the work for suffrage, which is being carried on in all parts of the country to a much greater extent than the public imagines, but she also must keep in touch with the hundreds of individuals each of whom is helping in a quiet but effective way. There are few days that do not bring requests from libraries, associations, colleges, high schools or clubs for literature and other information concerning woman suffrage, which is now the subject of debate from the great universities down to the cross roads schoolhouse. In past years libraries have been very deficient in matter upon this question because there was no general call for it, but now the demand is so large that it scarcely can be supplied, and all instinctively turn to Miss Anthony for information.

Some idea has been given of the scope of her correspondence of a public nature, but it hardly would be possible to describe the private letters. Standing for half a century as the friend and defender of women, and known so widely through her travels and newspaper notices, she is overwhelmed with appeals for advice and assistance. From the number of wives, and husbands also, who pour the tale of their domestic grievances into her ears, she would be fully justified in believing marriage a failure. She is daily requested to sign petitions for every conceivable purpose, and begged for letters of recommendation by people of whom she never heard. Women entreat her to obtain positions for their husbands and children and to help themselves get pensions, or damages, or wages out of which they have been defrauded. Girls and boys want advice about their plans for the future. Women, and men too, without education or experience, insist upon being placed as speakers on the suffrage platform. Authors send books asking for a review. People write of their business ventures, their lawsuits, their surgical operations, their diseases and those of all their family, and of every imaginable household matter. Scores of letters ask for a "word of greeting" on all sorts of occasions. Editors of papers and pamphlets, advocating every ology and ism under the sun, send them with the entreaty that she will examine and express an opinion, each insisting that "it will take only a few hours of her time." She is besieged to dress dolls and make aprons for fairs, to write her name upon pieces to be used for quilts and cushions, and to furnish scraps of her gowns for the same purpose. Babies are named for her and she is asked to send a letter of acknowledgment and a little keepsake. Requests for autographs outnumber the days of the year.

She is constantly importuned to examine MSS., and not only to do this but to secure a publisher. During the year 1897 one man sent an article of sixty-eight closely typewritten pages of legal cap, asking that she give it a careful reading, revise it, and send it where it would be published; and no postage stamps accompanied this nervy request. A woman whose grammar and rhetoric were most defective announced that she had written a book called "The Intemperate Life of my Father;" also two stories and a play. She would send all of them to Miss Anthony, to 'fix up just as if they were her own and help her sell them; she wanted the proceeds to assist her brothers who had failed in business.' It is a common occurrence for persons to ask, without so much as enclosing a stamp, that she prepare an address on woman suffrage and send for them to read as their own production. One enthusiastic poem begins:

"When the grain is ripe we will gather the sheaves, And weave a crown for your brow of laurel leaves."

A man from the great Northwest sends a long article entitled, "Sun and Moon Bathed in Blood! Ring, Ring the Bells!" desiring that it be put in the "index of the biography," meaning the appendix. One writes: "You are said to be very good about assisting helpless girls; now you could not find one more helpless than I am;" and then requests that she select, have made and pay for a school outfit for her. Another has a great scheme for starting a "workingwoman's home" and wants Miss Anthony to furnish the money. The list might be extended almost indefinitely and, while one is amused and disgusted by turns, there are among this vast correspondence many letters which touch the heart. During the tariff debate in Congress in 1897 a paragraph was widely published that a tax was to be placed on tea, and this note, evidently written by a child, was received: "My mamma goes out to work while I go to school and she loves her cup of tea. Our groceryman tells us we will have to pay more for it now. I have heard how good you are to the poor, do please spare time to write to the President and ask him not to make our tea dearer. Tell him to put the tax on beer and whiskey."

Miss Anthony is very conscientious about answering letters, too much so, her friends think, for she is a slave to her correspondence. Sometimes, however, she reaches the point of exasperation, as when she opened eight pages of a faintly written scrawl beginning, "My heart goes out to you in sympathy." "Well, I wish it would go out in blacker ink," she exclaimed, and threw it into the waste-basket. Invitations to lecture and to attend all sorts of gatherings pour in, and she often says to the younger workers, "If I might but transfer them to you, how much good you could accomplish." Every mail brings also loving and appreciative letters which illuminate the whole day, take the sting out of the unkind ones and lighten the burdens never entirely lifted. The women who have come into the work in late years continually ask, "How have you borne it so long?" Sometimes when their own endurance ceases they write her that they will have to resign, and she makes answer: "If all the young women fail, then the octogenarian must work the harder till a new reserve comes to the rescue;" and of course they are ashamed and redouble their labors to show their loyalty.

With all her hours of toil she is never satisfied with what she has accomplished, but always feels that she might have done a little more, that something or somebody has been neglected. In looking over the mention made in these chapters of a few of the most valuable gifts and noteworthy letters, she said with sadness: "And no notice has been taken of the hundreds of little tokens of affection which cost far more of sacrifice on the part of the givers, and of the thousands of letters from obscure but faithful women, without which I never could have had the courage to do my work."

While Miss Anthony has remained at home more days in 1897 than in any previous year for half a century it has been one of the busiest in regard to letter-writing. It is the dream of her life to raise a permanent fund to be placed in the hands of trustees, after the manner of the famous Peabody fund, the income to be used to further the cause of woman suffrage. To accomplish this she is exerting her strongest powers of appeal. During all these years of labor for humanity she has had to beg practically every dollar she has used, and she longs to relieve the workers of the future from this drudgery and humiliation, by providing an assured income, so they may not be obliged to expend half their time and strength in obtaining the money with which to do the work. In addition to this Standing Fund, she is endeavoring also to secure enough money for the early establishment of a Press Bureau for the purpose of taking up and answering, day by day, the false statements made in regard to woman suffrage, its ultimate aims and actual results; to furnish news and arguments where they are desired; and to enlist the support of the press for this question, which is now acknowledged to be one of the leading issues of the day.

The event of 1897 which gave Miss Anthony more pleasure than all others, in fact one of the happiest incidents of her life, was the Anthony Reunion at Adams, Mass., the last of July. The Historical and Scientific Society of Berkshire had for many years held an annual meeting at some one of the historic spots for which that county is especially noted. In 1895 this had been held in the dooryard of the old Anthony homestead, and she had been invited to be present, but was otherwise engaged. It had been the custom to eulogize her highly at these gatherings but it was determined that now she must come and speak for herself, therefore the invitation was repeated for 1896, but then she was in California. In 1897 the letter from the president, A. L. Perry, said: "The present writing is to give you a formal and official invitation, in the name of the people of the entire county, whose representatives we are, to be present and participate in our next meeting. You may be sure of a warm welcome from your old neighbors who remain, and from the generation of Berkshire people, men and women, now on the stage."

The meeting was to be held in Lee, and she wrote that if they would again hold it at the old Anthony homestead she would put aside everything else and come. She soon received this answer from Rev. A. B. Whipple: "It gives me pleasure, as vice-president of the Berkshire Historical Society, to inform you that we have decided to gratify your 'bit of sentiment' as well as our own inclination to meet again 'in that old dooryard,' to do you honor as one of the natives of Berkshire whose historic lives are finding a deserved and permanent record in our society."

Miss Anthony ever wanted her friends to share in her joys and was anxious that everybody should know her friends, so she wrote that she would like to have the Berkshire people hear Miss Shaw and others among the noted speakers. After some exchange of letters the officers of the society requested her to take charge of the program of the day, and promised to second all her arrangements. As she always combined business with pleasure she appointed a meeting of the national suffrage committee that week, and thus brought to Adams her "body guard," Miss Shaw, Miss Blackwell, Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Upton[132] and, by invitation, Mrs. Sewall, Mrs. Colby and Mrs. Harper. She had decided also to have at this time a family reunion, and for many weeks had been writing far and wide to the Anthonys, the Laphams, the Reads and the Richardsons, bidding all come to Adams on the 29th of July, and as a result the "Old Hive" swarmed as it never had done, even in the early days. She went on a week ahead and joined forces with her cousin, Mrs. Fannie Bates, who lived in the house. Albert Anthony, another cousin and near neighbor, put himself, his horses and vehicles at their service; other relatives came to their assistance, beds were set up, provisions laid in; and for a week fifteen people picnicked in the old homestead. The overflow was received in the hospitable homes of other relatives in the neighborhood, and even Hotel Greylock, in the village, was pressed into service to entertain the guests, who came from Kansas, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire and other States.

The suffrage committee meetings were held during several days and evenings preceding the Historical Society celebration. It was a picture always to be remembered, that group of distinguished women, standing at the very head of the greatest progressive movement of the age, gathered in serious conclave in those old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms built over a century ago, concocting schemes which would have filled their Quaker owners with holy horror. It seemed almost as if they would come back from the dim past to ask what it all meant. And yet, when one recalled that the Quakers never commanded their women to keep silence in the meeting house, but recognized their full equality there and elsewhere, and stood for liberty in a world given over to religious and political tyranny, it seemed indeed most fitting that the representatives of this great association for securing freedom to all, should come together under the roof of one of these old Friends. One felt as if the ancient door-latch should lift, and Aunt Hannah, the wise and gentle Quaker preacher, should glide in and take her seat among these other women whom the Spirit also had moved. But the most remarkable feature of this unique occasion was that the woman presiding over the deliberations of this body of reformers, should have carried on her childish games in this very room, seventy-five years before, and listened with awe to parents and grandparents as they discussed the burning questions of intemperance, slavery and religious intolerance.

An unseasonable storm of several days' duration had made it necessary to transfer the meeting of the Historical Society to the pavilion in Plunkett's Park. The ladies of Adams and vicinity, with Mrs. Susan Anthony Brown at their head, had prepared a bountiful luncheon for the officers of the society and the fifty invited guests, and here, at noon on July 29, Miss Anthony sat at the upper end of the long table with Rev. Anna Shaw on one hand and Rev. A. B. Whipple on the other. At the conclusion of the luncheon, the officers and speakers took seats on the stage in the large pavilion, which soon was filled with an audience that had come from Williamstown, North Adams, Pittsfield, Great Barrington, Lee and other surrounding towns. The Adams Freeman said: "If the group of women speakers were brilliant, the audience that honored them, while less so perhaps in renown, was equal in intellectual attainments. It was a cultured assembly, including the most progressive people of Berkshire."[133]

In a few words of welcome Rev. Louis Zahner, the Episcopal minister, spoke of the Anthony family as having laid the foundations of the schools, the industries and the prosperity of Adams, and of the community's indebtedness to them for the best it has today. Mr. Whipple, in a cordial address, then introduced Miss Anthony and placed the meeting in her charge. Can any pen describe her pride and happiness in returning thus to the loved home of her birth and childhood, to meet this warm and appreciative welcome and to introduce in turn her cabinet of eminent women?

After relating some very interesting recollections of her ancestors and of early events, which were especially appreciated by the old residents, she introduced Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who said in the course of a graceful address:

There is no citizen of this great nation who would not be delighted with the privilege of visiting these Berkshire hills, famed for their beauty, but it is not because of this that most of us have made this pilgrimage to Adams; rather have we come with much of that spirit which led the thousands upon thousands of Christians in the early centuries to Jerusalem, or which later prompted thousands of Mohammedans to make their pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. We have come to Adams because it is the birthplace of the greatest woman of our time.

Many centuries ago, on the 15th of February, there was born a man whose name is familiar to every school-child throughout the civilized world, and yet that man never knew a happy day. He was reviled, persecuted, martyred, tried, condemned, and died sorrowful and broken-hearted. And what was his offense? He declared that this earth turned upon its axis and that it moved around the sun. There were no newspapers in that day, but every pulpit thundered its denunciation against the great Galileo. When he was condemned to die he was compelled to renounce this belief, but under his breath he said, "The world does move!" A century after he had gone, not a pulpit in Christendom, not a scholar, was there but knew that he had told the truth.

It is a curious coincidence that upon the anniversary of the birthday of Galileo there was born Susan B. Anthony. She also perceived a great truth and the world did not agree with her. It reviled her for the belief she had propounded, but in this century she never renounced that belief, but thundered back to the pulpit and to the newspapers that the world does move and the time will come when women shall be free; the time will come when they shall have every right, every privilege, every liberty which any man enjoys.... We, today, are making the first pilgrimage to the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony, but I prophesy that in another quarter of a century there will be many pilgrimages hither, and no child will be so illiterate as not to know that in this county it was this greatest of American women was born.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery followed with an entertaining account of her trip abroad with Miss Anthony and the latter's utter indifference to the titles of the nobility. As she never could get them right she discarded all of them and insisted on calling everybody plain "Mr." and "Mrs." She then related this incident:

We had in our party for a few weeks a couple of English ladies. When driving in Rome, one of them, a great dame of noble lineage, was admiring an old palace belonging to some very ancient Roman family and made the statement that this same family owned five other famous palaces in Italy. Miss Anthony seemed to be making a mental calculation, and finally said with enthusiasm, "What a magnificent orphan asylum that would make."

"Why, Miss Anthony, do you mean that you would actually turn the home of this old family into an orphan asylum?"

"Yes," said she, "I think about 700 of these little ragamuffins could be put in there. Think of the streets just full of them, and all these big houses vacant! I don't see a better use to which these old palaces could be put."

Mrs. Upton in her bright, humorous way related some amusing stories which she had heard from her ancestors, who were born in Berkshire, and adroitly turned them into an argument for woman suffrage. A beautiful poem was read, entitled "Pioneers," dedicated to Miss Anthony by her old friend John M. Thayer, of Rochester. Col. D. R. Anthony created great mirth by telling among other stories that eighty years ago his father had a cotton mill of twenty-six looms; one day all of them suddenly stopped and, rushing out to ascertain the cause, he found that his wife, in rinsing her mop in the stream, had stopped the power which moved the machinery! He then referred to the Plunkett factories with 2,600 looms, and the other great mills of Adams, as illustrating the progress of the century. In an address which glowed with beauty and eloquence, Mrs. May Wright Sewall thus compared Miss Anthony's character with the scenes amidst which she was born:

We, who own and follow our general, know that she goes where Liberty leads, where Justice calls, where Love whispers his divine commands; and we have found in her the gravity of your stately mountains, the yearning for freedom of your lofty hills lifted toward the sky spaces. We have found in her the impetuosity of your mountain streams, which, fretting against narrow bounds, broke through them, widening and widening ever the channel of the life of American womanhood; and so we, who love appropriateness, gaze with delight upon this scenery, the environment of her infancy and the nurturing influence of her childhood, as a fine illustration of the eternal fitness of things.

One of the most exquisite addresses of the day was made by Mrs. Clara B. Colby, who said in part:

Miss Anthony's love of justice links her with the divine. This has been her impelling motive, and her patient endurance has been the secret of her success. No matter how keen might have been her sense of the injustice done to women, no matter how courageously she might have set out to right the wrong, had she lacked endurance, she had never been the one to lead us to victory. As justice is the root of the tree of character, and patience the stalk from which all growth proceeds, so tenderness is the outflowering of the divinity within. By her tenderness Miss Anthony has made herself loved where she might have only been honored.

It was perhaps the drop hardest to swallow from the cup of bitterness which was ever pressed to the lips of the early woman suffragists, that they were destroyers of the home. To Miss Anthony, the home and kindred-lover--homeless only for the sake of the homes of the mother-half of the race--this must have been especially hard to bear. There are such all over the land where she has been a tender and sympathetic friend and where she is enshrined in the hearts of the homekeepers.... Thus Miss Anthony, justice-loving, patient and tender, has erected for herself a lasting monument in the hearts of the women of this nation. May the time be long deferred when she shall pass from the leadership of her now triumphant host, but when that day comes, let there be, as she has enjoined upon us, no tears, but only glad thankfulness for a great life-work wrought in courage, fidelity and tenderness.

Mrs. Colby urged the Historical Society to purchase the old homestead, if possible, as a depository not only for relics of the Anthony family but for mementoes of suffrage work and workers. No report ever can give an adequate idea of the eloquence of Anna Shaw, so artistically diversified by delicious bits of humor and keen points of satire. A portion of her address was as follows:

Amidst all the eulogy which has surrounded Miss Anthony this afternoon, her brother said to me, "Don't you think they will turn Susan's head?" I answered, "No, she has had so many years of misrepresentation and abuse that if they keep on eulogizing her as long as she lives, it won't balance the other side." There is no danger in this world that the leader of an unpopular cause ever will die of overpraise, for, in America as in Jerusalem, the prophets of God have always been received with stones. We who know her best love her most, and to me the truest and deepest love of my existence, since my mother entered the life beyond, is that which I cherish for Susan B. Anthony.

The remonstrants today tell us that our movement will destroy the affectionate tenderness of the womanly nature and unsex woman until she becomes a weak man. I believe in men, and I do not believe that all the love, the tenderness, the power to sacrifice is feminine. I believe that the love of man is as true and deep and tender as the love of woman. I will not accept the theory that "man is the head" and "woman is the heart." I believe that when God created head and heart for the human race He divided them equally and gave man his part and woman hers, and both have kept their own all the way down the centuries.

The part of Miss Anthony's life which is dearest to us is that into which she has admitted the few who belong to the sacred inner circle, who have seen her toil, her suffering, her soul's anguish and travail for the freedom, the larger growth, the diviner possibilities of womanhood; and if there is any evidence that living in the world, working for its uplift, does not destroy this trait in human character, it is shown in the life of Miss Anthony. There is no human being whom I have ever known who had more tenderness for the erring and greater willingness to overlook the frailties of human life. In this she shows that contact with the most disagreeable side of the reformer's work, makes the real woman not less but more womanly. I believe that if the principles which she advocates, the ideals for which she stands, were embodied in all womankind, we would have a motherhood diviner than any this world has ever known, a motherhood such as God had in his thought when he created woman to be the mother of the race....

It is not a name we love today, it is not a person we revere, but a great, an ideal life of a woman who has battled with the world, who has been misunderstood, who has borne its scorn, who has been ostracised, and who, in the midst of all, has kept her life sweet, her heart young, her love tender; and when the best thing shall be said of her which men and women can say, it will be--she was true, she was noble, she was woman.

The day after the meeting of the Historical Society, occurred the Anthony Reunion at the old homestead, when eighty of the clan sat down at the long tables spread in grandfather's room, the keeping-room and the weaving-room; and what a dinner the famous cooks of the Anthony-Lapham-Read-Richardson families had prepared for this great occasion! Not the least important features were the eighteen apple-pies eaten with the world-renowned Berkshire cheese; and then the sweet bread and butter, the fried chicken, the baked beans, the rich preserves and cream, the delicious cake--but why attempt to describe a New England dinner prepared by New England women? Those who have eaten know what it is; those who have not, can not be made to understand.

Where Susan B. Anthony sat was the head of the table; at her right hand, the brother Daniel R.; at her left, the brother Merritt; and close by, the quiet, smiling sister Mary; and then all along down the line, the cousins, the nephews, the nieces, three and four generations, who had joined so heartily with her for the success of this rare occasion. Before the dinner began, Miss Anthony asked that, in accordance with the custom of their ancestors, there might be a moment of silent thanks; and at the close of the meal, when the chatter and mirth were stilled, she arose and in touching words paid tribute to the loved and gone who once blessed these rooms by their presence. She then called upon the representatives of the different branches, old and young, who, in prose or poetry, with wit or pathos, made delightful response.

After all had finished they adjourned to the dooryard and a reception commenced which even the roomy old house could not have accommodated. For several hours a long line of carriages wound up the hill--the people of Adams and vicinity coming to pay respect to their illustrious townswoman and her relatives and friends. The immediate members of the family were photographed in a group on the old porch, as was also the dinner party gathered in the historic dooryard. The mountain air was sweet and invigorating, and the view in every direction most enchanting. A more picturesque spot scarcely can be imagined: in front, the long range of Berkshire hills, a spur of the Green mountains of Vermont whose faint outlines are visible in the distance; at the back, glorious "Old Greylock," the highest peak in the State; at the right, the steep, winding road leading down to the village a mile below, through a ravine perfectly bewildering in its beauty of overhanging trees, moss-grown rocks and fern-bordered brook tumbling over the massive boulders in its rapid descent to join the Hoosac; and then united they flow through the pretty town of Adams, turning the countless wheels of the great mills and factories.

The next day after the reunion a merry party of thirty, the guests of a cousin, William Anthony, started in two great coaches, each drawn by six horses, for the all-day trip to the top of Mount Greylock. The gayest and happiest of them all was Miss Anthony, with her red shawl over her shoulders, and her heart as light as when she used to climb these mountainsides, a little, barefooted girl, more than seventy years ago. Several days thereafter were spent visiting the pleasant homes of the relatives, and going with her friends to point out the various places of interest. Every spot connected with her early life was as sacred to them as it was dear to her. Together they went to the deserted Quaker meeting house, a century and a half old, and were shown the very spot where sat the grandfather, the father, mother and little ones; and the raised bench occupied by the grandmother, who was a "high-seat Quaker," and Aunt Hannah Hoxie, the preacher. They strolled through the little graveyard, with its lines of unmarked mounds. They visited the site of the old mill, built by Daniel Anthony at the very beginning of the manufacturing industry, where now only a few sunken stones mark the foundation. They rested beneath the great trees which stand like sentinels in front of the girlhood home of the mother, the house long since crumbled away. They gazed curiously at the ancient Bowen's Tavern, the favorite stopping-place of the mountaineers in early days.

And then they went with Miss Anthony into her own old home. They stepped reverently into the very room where she was born. They climbed to the garret and she pointed out the exact spot by the tiny window where she used to sit with her simple playthings. They stood with her by the little stream which still ran merrily through the dooryard, and listened with misty eyes as she recalled many touching incidents of days long past; but, however her own heart might have ached with tender recollections, there were no words of vain longing, no useless tears for those who had fulfilled their mission and passed away, leaving to her their legacy of hope and courage and determination. Strong, brave and cheerful, she honored the memory of the dead in showing herself by her works to be the worthy descendant of a noble race. And here, where the story of this pure, single-hearted, self-sacrificing life began, it shall be ended.

* * * * *

The usual fate of reformers is "praise when the ear has grown too dull to hear, fame when the heart it should have thrilled is numb." Seldom it is, indeed, that they live to see the fulfillment of the end for which they labored, and even recognition usually is deferred until it can be given only to a memory, but there are a few happy exceptions. While true reformers seek no personal reward, those who love them rejoice when they are spared to receive the honors they have earned. Susan B. Anthony's self-imposed task, for almost half a century, has been to secure equal rights for women--social, civil and political. When she began her crusade, woman in social life was "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," to an extent which scarcely can be conceived by the present independent and self-reliant generation; in law she was but little better than a slave; in politics, a mere cipher. Today in society she has practically unlimited freedom; in the business world most of the obstacles have been removed; the laws, although still unjust in many respects, have been revolutionized in her favor; in four States women have the full franchise, in one the municipal ballot, in twenty-five a vote on school questions, and in four others some form of suffrage; while in each campaign their recognition as a political factor grows more marked. Miss Anthony's part in securing these concessions may be judged from the record of these pages. She is the only woman who has given her whole time and effort to this one end, with no division of interest in behalf of husband and children, no diversion of other public questions. Is there an example in all history of either man or woman who devoted half a century of the hardest, most persistent labor for one reform?

"Of the dead naught shall be spoken except good," is a rule so universally observed that post mortem compliments have little weight, but when beautiful things are said of those who still live and toil, they are full of meaning. Not only is it a delight to her contemporaries, but it will be a pleasure to future generations who shall read her history, that Miss Anthony lived to receive her meed of appreciation. While not all of even the enlightened minds of today have progressed far enough to accept her doctrine of perfect equality, which will be universally admitted by the next generation, there are few who do not recognize and honor the splendid character of the woman and the service she has rendered. Just as these closing words are being written, the State superintendent of public works, George W. Aldridge, announces that he has ordered her face to be carved in the Capitol at Albany, one of the magnificent public buildings of the world. Here, wrought in imperishable stone, amidst those of the country's greatest warriors and statesmen, it will look down forever upon that grand staircase whose marble steps were so many times pressed by her weary feet, as she made her annual pilgrimage to plead for liberty.

The sweetest strains in this great oratorio are the tributes of women voicing their love and gratitude. They come from those in all the walks of life, and a distinguishing feature is that they who have known her longest and best are most loyal and devoted. The secret of this is perfectly expressed by May Wright Sewall, when she says:

Mortals with all their consciousness of their own infirmities are exacting of one another. It is a proof of the infinite possibilities involved in the human soul, and a foundation for the infinite hope which sustains us, that we are satisfied with nothing less than perfection in other people. Is a woman great? To please us she must be also good. Is a woman both great and good? We are not satisfied unless she be likewise loving and lovable. No one can come near to the life of Miss Anthony without realizing how responsive she is to personal needs; how lively in her sympathies; how instinctive her outreaching of the helping hand. The same fidelity and single-minded loyalty which have characterized her public career, distinguish her in all private relations. Others may forget us in our griefs, she never forgets. Others may forget us in our pleasures, she never forgets.

It is indeed true that Miss Anthony never forgets. In her letters to hundreds of people, she recollects always to send a message to the different members of the family, to refer to some agreeable incident of their acquaintance, and to express either pleasure or regret over personal affairs which any one else would have failed to remember amidst such a pressure of work and responsibility.

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

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

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

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

A number of years ago, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her own unsurpassed beauty of language, said:

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

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

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

Steadfast! No other word so fitly defines the keystone of the arch of noble attributes upon which this heroic life is founded--as constant to a principle as to a friendship. There is nothing of the martyr in Miss Anthony's nature and she refuses to consider herself in the light of a vicarious sacrifice. "I do not look back upon a hard life," she says; "I have been continually at work because I enjoyed being busy. Had this never-ending toil made me wretched in mind or body, I have no doubt that in some way I should have gotten out of it." "What thanks did you receive for the stand you made?" once was asked her. "I had my own thanks for retaining my self-respect," was the reply. Again one inquired, "Did you not grow discouraged in those olden times?" "Never," she answered; "I knew that my cause was just, and I was always in good company." Her character, instead of growing embittered by the hard experiences of early days, has been sweetened and strengthened by the high moral purpose which has dominated her life. She is a philanthropist in her love of mankind and her work for humanity, but she is governed by philosophy rather than emotion, ever examining causes and effects by the pure light of reason and logic.

Susan B. Anthony has been called the Napoleon of the woman suffrage movement and, in the planning of campaigns and the boldness and daring of carrying them forward, there may be the qualities of that famous general, but in character and principles the comparison fails utterly. She has been termed the Gladstone among women, and in statesmanlike ability and long years of distinguished service, there may be points of resemblance, but she would repudiate the sacrifice of justice to party expediency, oftentimes charged against the noted English politician. It has been said that she has been the great Liberator of women, as Lincoln was of the negroes. There is indeed something in her countenance and manner which reminds one of Lincoln, the same unconscious dignity, the same rugged endurance, the same strong, resolute face, softened by lines of weariness and care and spiritualized by an expression of infinite patience and indescribable pathos. She has not, however, the conservatism, the forbearance, the reverence for existing laws and constitutions, which made Lincoln slow to act and tolerant almost to the point of criticism.

She has been described as being to the cause of woman's emancipation, what Garrison was to that of the slave. She has, perhaps, more of the characteristics of Garrison than of the other three conspicuous figures of the century. His motto, "No Compromise," has been her watchword. Like Garrison, she strikes a body-blow straight from the shoulder. She recognizes no such word as expediency and accepts no halfway measures. Theoretically a non-resistant, she fights to the last ditch and never accepts a defeat as final. She has the natural gift of selecting always the strongest word, and the power of carrying conviction to her audience. She is conventional in outward observances, but most radical in thought and speech. She detests all forms of cruelty and oppression, but it is the action, not the person, that she censures, and she is most charitable in excuses for the faults and failings of others. She bears the ills of life with cheerful fortitude, and accepts the blessings with fine humility. There is no need of comparison. She has her own strong individuality, which has made its indelible impress upon history and secured for her a place among the immortals. Now, in life's evening, her world is illumined with the beauty of a sunset undimmed by clouds--and as she contemplates the infinite, she takes no heed of the gathering darkness of night, but looking into a clear sky beholds only the ineffable glory of other spheres.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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XIV. PAGE 229

ADDRESS TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

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

... We ask not for ourselves or our friends redress of specific grievances or posts of honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge the loyal women of the Republic to freedom and our country. We come to strengthen you with earnest words of sympathy and encouragement. We come to thank you for your proclamation, in which the nineteenth century seems to echo back the Declaration of Seventy-six. Our fathers had a vision of the sublime idea of liberty, equality and fraternity; but they failed to climb the heights which with anointed eyes they saw. To us, their children, belongs the work to build up the living reality of what they conceived and uttered. It is not our mission to criticise the past. Nations, like individuals, must blunder and repent. It is not wise to waste our energy in vain regret, but from each failure we should rise up with renewed conscience and courage for nobler action. The follies and faults of yesterday we cast aside as the old garments we have outgrown. Born anew to freedom, slave creeds and codes and constitutions all now must pass away. "For men do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break and the wine runneth out and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles and both are preserved."

Our special thanks are due to you, that by your proclamation 2,000,000 women are freed from the foulest bondage humanity ever suffered. Slavery for man is bad enough, but the refinements of cruelty ever must fall on the mothers of the oppressed race, defrauded of all the rights of the family relation and violated in the most holy instincts of their nature. A mother's life is bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and ambitions. But the slave-mother in her degradation rejoices not in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present and future all are wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows the wine-press she treads those tender feet must tread alone. For, by the law of slavery, "the child follows the condition of the mother."

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

You are the first President ever borne on the shoulders of freedom into the position you now fill. Your predecessors owed their elevation to the slave oligarchy, and in serving slavery they did but obey their masters. In your election, northern freemen threw off the yoke, and with you rests the responsibility that our necks never shall bow again. At no time in the annals of the nation has there been a more auspicious moment to retrieve the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to slavery. The Constitution has been repudiated and the compact broken by the southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the first gun on Sumter released the North from all constitutional obligations to slavery. It left the government, for the first time in our history, free to carry out the declaration of our Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact what we ever have claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

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

Northern power and loyalty never can be measured until the purpose of the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm ever is based on a grand idea, and unity of action demands a definite end. At this time our greatest need is not men or money, valiant generals or brilliant victories, but a consistent policy, based on the principle that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our declaration of rights nor under any laws, human or divine, by which free men can be made slaves; and therefore that your pledge to the slaves is irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

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

When Fremont on the western breeze proclaimed a day of jubilee to the bondmen within our gates, the women of the nation echoed back a loud amen. When Hunter freed a million men and gave them arms to fight our battles, justice and mercy crowned that act and tyrants stood appalled. When Butler, in the chief city of the southern despotism, hung a traitor we felt a glow of pride; for that one act proved that we had a government and one man brave enough to administer its laws. And when Burnside would banish Vallandigham to the Dry Tortugas, let the sentence be approved and the nation will ring with plaudits. Your proclamation gives you immortality. Be just, and share your glory with men like these who wait to execute your will.

On behalf of the Women's National Loyal League,

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

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XV. PAGE 247

RECONSTRUCTION.

Address Delivered at Ottumwa, Kansas, July 4, 1865.

Mr. President, and Men and Women of Kansas:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am sure you, who have given the best blood of Kansas to put down the slaveholders' rebellion against the rightful rule of the majority, will never by your silence give seeming consent to a reorganization of those rebel States on any basis save that of the ballot to all loyal citizens, black and white. You will never consent that loyal Union soldiers and friends, for no crime but the color of their skin, shall be made subjects, if not slaves, to disloyal rebel soldiers and enemies, with no virtue but that of belonging to the "governing race," as the President's North Carolina appointee calls the white faces. No, no, you will make these grand old prairies ring with your thunder-toned protests until they shall be felt and feared in the legislative halls at Washington. Then will your honorable and honored representative say for you on the floor of the next Congress, as he has said here today in the shadow of these mighty oaks of your Neosho, "no reconstruction except on the basis of the ballot in every loyal hand, black and white." Then will your senator[135] echo your voice from his seat in the Capitol, as he did the other day in old, Faneuil Hall, when he said, "the price of our victories is lost unless we give the negro the homestead, the musket, and the ballot."

And then will your other senator,[136] who has not spoken since he, with his colleagues in the Senate, said, "colonize" the faithful, loyal blacks; since he said, admit Louisiana and Arkansas back into the Union on the vote of the merest minority of their freshly-oathed white men--then will he say "no reconstruction without negro suffrage." But, good people, I charge you, suffer not this man to return to his seat in the Senate, until he has not only repented and confessed, but given sure promise forever to forsake his old sins of "white suffrage" and "black colonization." You owe it to yourselves and your country to see that your entire representation in the next Congress is right on this one vital question of reunion. Tell your senator if he must advocate a class and caste government in the rebel States, it must be loyal blacks, not disloyal whites. If he must colonize somebody, it must be the cowed, unconverted rebels, the anti-negro-equality white faces. Tell him henceforth to speak and vote to disfranchise, and drive out if need be, the persons who make war and oppress and outrage, and are resolved not to give "fair play" to peaceable, industrious citizens. You have but to speak and you will be obeyed, for it is the people's will, not that of their servants, which is law.

Now, a word on your State legislature: One of the first reports that met my ear on my arrival in your State last winter, was that the Republicans of Kansas, almost in a body, had voted against a bill for "negro suffrage," and that they voted thus for the reason that the question was introduced and urged by the opposition party of the State. My humble but earnest advice to you is that you permit those delegates who voted against right, against justice, against equality to all men, for so paltry a reason, henceforth to remain quietly at home. Teach them and all other aspirants for your suffrages that your representatives must speak and vote for the right, though the arch-demon from the pit below shall present the measure. That miserable political quibbling at Topeka last winter lost Kansas the place which of right belonged to her--that of being the first of the loyal States to give her freedmen their inalienable right to self-protection.

Our hope of salvation from the fatal errors that are now fastening themselves upon the plan and the policy of reorganization, lies in the prompt and right action of the coming Congress. The delegates from any and all of the rebel States, sent up to Washington by "free white loyal male" suffrages to knock for admission into the Union, must be sent home with instructions that no member will be admitted to Congress except he be elected by a majority of all the loyal men of the State, black as well as white. To the end that Congress may thus reject the amnestied white suffrage delegates, the people, all over the country, should unite in one mighty voice and demand that their representatives shall thus speak and thus vote. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." If we sleep now, all is lost; for on this one question of the negro hangs the future of our republic.

Since the firing of the first gun of the rebellion there has been no hour fraught with so much danger as is the present. To have been vanquished on the field of battle would have involved much of misery; but to be foiled now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories, and to re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of negro disfranchisement, negro serfdom, would be a defeat and disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars, equalled only by that which the Revolutionary fathers entailed upon their descendants by their fatal compromises with slavery. It would leave the final triumph of the great principles of republicanism, universal freedom and equality, "taxation and representation inseparable," the "consent of the governed," to be worked out and established in each of those old slave States, through a fearful re-enactment of the early struggles which you of Kansas so well remember.

If Congress shall admit the rebel representatives on the basis of white suffrage, those States will have added to their old representation the other two-fifths of what used to be "all other persons," which will give them an increase of fourteen votes in the House as a reward for their four years of fire and sword against the government. With this added power on the floor of Congress united to their political aiders and abettors from the Northern States, there is scarcely any project they may not be able to carry through in their own time and way. Nor is there room for a doubt, that it is the spirit and purpose of the slave oligarchy, whipped and cowed as they say by force of might, not right, to make a most desperate political fight to regain their old supremacy in the legislation of the country.

I base my estimate of the nature and intentions of the to-be-restored representation of the South, on the results of the elections already held in several of the rebel States, and from the efforts everywhere among the old planters again to reduce the black freedmen, as nearly as possible, to the status of slavery. In Virginia, the elections gave a legislature largely secession and almost wholly anti-negro. The planters have solemnly leagued themselves together to pay only five dollars per month to able field hands, each laborer to furnish his own clothes and pay his own doctor bills. This, too, when these same planters used to pay or receive for the hire of these same laborers, the sum of fifteen dollars and upwards. In South Carolina, Gen. Rufus Saxton reports that the old planters are actually driving the freedmen to work in the fields in chain gangs, and that the woods are strewn with the bodies of negroes shot dead in their efforts to escape the cruel torture. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the city election resulted in a secession mayor and common council. The only Union success I have noticed is that of Fernandina, Florida, and there the negroes were allowed to vote. Even the loyal State of Missouri saved her free constitution by less than two thousand votes.

The result of white suffrage can not be other than the election of large majorities of anti-negro, if not absolutely secession State and National representatives. Tennessee, the President's own State, of the loyalty of whose people we have heard much, has adopted a free constitution, and under it framed a new code of anti-negro laws; and we can hardly expect any rebel State to do better, for these new free State law-makers are the persecuted loyal men of Tennessee who have been outraged in their homes, hunted to the caves and mountains, or for a time driven out of the State altogether by the secessionists. One of these new free State laws says, the testimony of no "free colored person shall be received in court against any white person." By this enactment, the meanest white man may enter the home of the bravest black soldier, or wealthiest colored citizen, may murder his sons, ravish his wife and daughters, pillage and burn his house, commit any and every possible crime against him and his, and yet, if no human eye but his own, or that of his family, or his colored friends, witness the barbarisms, that black man, the father, the husband, the land-holder, outraged beyond measure, has no possible legal redress in the courts of Tennessee.

Then again, in case a free colored person is imprisoned and unable to pay his jail fees, he may be apprenticed out to labor until the sum be paid. And yet again, the courts may apprentice colored children as they see proper. The law does not even say friendless or orphan children. Is not that slavery under a new form? Thus, to leave those devoted black men's lives, liberties and property to be protected by white men, whose loyalty to the government is because it is a means to secure power to themselves, not from any love of its republican principles, is to doom them to all the ignominies and cruelties of slavery itself.

Let us not be deceived by the wicked wiles of politicians who tell us that President Johnson can not give the right to the ballot to the black loyalists of the South; for it is but the new "refuge of lies" to which slavery resorts. The same men told us that Lincoln had not the power to emancipate the slaves; that the government had no right to arm the negro, etc. If President Johnson has constitutional authority, either civil or military, to take away a man's right to vote, as a punishment for disloyalty, he must have power to give a man the same right, as a reward for loyalty; if the President may disfranchise a rebel soldier in order to enable the loyal people of a State to organize a republican form of government, he may also enfranchise a Union soldier to accomplish the same purpose. If the President has not the right nor the power to give the ballot to any person not entitled to it under the old order of slavery, how will he organize South Carolina, by whose old constitution no person was allowed to vote unless he owned ten slaves or was worth ten thousand dollars? Of course nobody owns ten slaves, and how many men, think you, who remained loyal at home, or how many returned soldiers or amnestied civilians have the requisite ten thousand dollars? In South Carolina, therefore, the President will be compelled to create voters; and, if he shall enfranchise any of the white non-voters, can he not also enfranchise the loyal black non-voters?

Let us watch and pray without ceasing. Let us hope that the day will dawn, and that soon, when law shall be found on the side of justice to the black race. These objectors never questioned McClellan's military right to put down slave insurrections with an "iron hand," or Halleck's infamous Order No. 3 to drive all negroes outside the military lines. It was only when Generals Fremont, Hunter and others declared the slaves free, that they might cripple the rebel armies and add them to our Union forces, that the cry of no law, no power was raised. Thus it is clear that the blindness and inability to find rightful authority, civil or military, first to emancipate, then to arm, and now to enfranchise the negroes, have the one source. Slavery perpetrated the "sum of all villainies" on the negroes, and then, to justify its wickedness, filled the whole land with atrocious lies of their depraved and degraded nature. The American people consented to the outrage; and their continued prejudice against that oppressed race but proves the adage, "we hate those whom we have injured."

Last of all comes the objection that the old masters will influence the vote of the negroes, and that, therefore, to enfranchise them will but give increased power to the old lords of the lash. Do not believe such nonsense. Think you, men who for four years have withstood every possible temptation and torture to induce them to fight for the slave oligarchy, can now be wheedled into voting for it? No, no. Those loyal, brave, black men who have known enough to fight on the right side will know enough to vote on the right side; and it is because the aiders and abettors of the old slave power believe and know that the negroes will be an invincible host on the side of equality, that they thus fear them.

We never from the beginning have had a genuine republican form of government in any State in the Union; for in no State have "the people" ever been permitted to elect their representatives. Even in Massachusetts and Vermont, the States nearest republican, only one-half of the people, the "male inhabitants," are allowed to vote. In other States it is only all "free white male persons," and in others still, all "free white male inhabitants owning so many slaves or so much property." It is not true therefore that the people have ever exercised the right to prescribe the qualifications of voters or officers. From the beginning, Congress always has settled the question in its organic act. That of your own Territory read, "Every free, white, male inhabitant shall vote at the first election, and be eligible to any office within the Territory." Thus you see Congress, not you, the people, decided who should and who should not vote in Kansas. And when the delegates of the prescribed "free, white, male" order met in convention, they proved themselves nothing above human, very like the so-elected conventions of other States, and retained all legislative power within the limits of the original congressional permit. The same is true of the rebel States, in which the President now finds the people destitute of all civil government; when he specifies who may vote, when he excludes any class from the ballot-box, he makes it impossible for "the people" to form a republican government.

When the loyal black men are not allowed their right to vote in the first election of the rebel States, their governments are thrown into the hands of a very small minority, and that too of very doubtful loyalty. The President by adhering to the old slave definition of "the people," rules that all our brave black Union soldiers and our best friends and allies, without whose aid we should still be struggling with rebels in arms, shall be subjects, not citizens, of the government they have rescued from the Confederate usurpers. It is not in human nature that a people fanatically believing themselves a superior race, and thereby rightful legislators over another and inferior race, shall execute justice and equality toward those whom they decree shall be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." No, the black man's guarantee to the protection of his inalienable rights to "life, liberty and property," is bound up in his right to the ballot.

When I speak of the inalienable rights of the negro, I do not forget that these belong equally to woman. Though the government shall be reconstructed on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, it yet will not be a true republic. Still one-half of the people will be in subjection to the other half, and the time will surely come when the whole question will have to be reopened and an accounting made with this other subject class. There will have to be virtually another reconstruction, based on the duty of the national government to guarantee to every citizen the right of self-protection, and this right, for woman as for man, is vested in the ballot.

That this superior "white male" class may not be trusted even to legislate for their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, the cruel statutes in nearly all the States, both slave and free, give ample proof. In scarcely a State has a married woman the legal right to the control of her person, to the earnings of her hands or brain, to the guardianship of her children, to sue or be sued, or to testify in the courts, and by these laws women have suffered wrongs and outrages second only to those of chattel slavery itself. If this be true, that this so-called superior class can not legislate justice even to those nearest and dearest in their own hearts and homes, is it not a crime to place a separate race, one hated and despised, wholly at the will of that governing class?

It must not be; and the one great work for the people at this hour, and every hour, between this and next December, is to agitate this question until the entire nation shall speak in tones not to be mistaken, which shall compel the coming Congress to refuse admission to every representative from the rebel States, who is sent there by the so-called "loyal white male" people.

"No reorganization without Negro Suffrage" is the word to send back to every rebel State. Until Congress shall define and settle this question, it can not in the future, as it has not in the past, perform its duty--guarantee a republican form of government in each of the States. When Congress shall thus decide, there will be work to do in most of the loyal States. Let us all labor to that end.

Men and women of Kansas, what say you, shall new loyal States or old rebel States be admitted into the Union until they present constitutions and laws truly republican, until they send representatives to Washington elected by a majority of all the people--white and black, men and women? You say No; your blood-enriched prairies, your battle-fought ravines, your sacked and burned cities, say No; your martyred dead, your own immortal John Brown, their freed souls all gloriously marching on, say No!

My friends, there is one word more I must leave with you. There is yet another danger. The reverence, the almost idolatry of the American people for their martyred President, is being used and abused by the political managers at Washington, and over all the country. The people are lulled to sleep over the most startling propositions, by insidious whisperings that President Lincoln originated or approved them. Almost every reconstruction plan is sent over the wires "sugar-coated" with, "President Johnson, in this, is but carrying out the spirit and purpose of Mr. Lincoln!" And there is no disguising or denying the fact, that the people are today accepting, and that too without questioning, the anti-negro reorganization plans already inaugurated, because of these wily, insinuating appeals to their reverence for the memory of their sacred dead.

If the four years' administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people any one lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and proclaim, and that he, as President, was bound to execute their will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he did four years ago, "I wait the voice of the people." The stern logic of the events of today would guide him, not those of yesterday. Therefore let us not be thrown off our watch by any of these appeals to our reverence for the opinions and plans of our departed President. If his freed spirit is permitted today to hover over each and all of the vast gatherings of the loyal people throughout the nation, it is beckoning every soul upward and onward in the path of equal justice to all; it is urging the great heart of the nation to plant our new Union on the everlasting rock of republicanism--universal freedom and universal suffrage.

FOOTNOTES:

[134] Sidney Clark, of Lawrence.

[135] S. C. Pomeroy.

[136] James H. Lane.

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