The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 2

THE LEGACY--NEBRASKA CAMPAIGN--OFF FOR EUROPE.

1881-1882-1883.

It had been decided this year of 1881 to take the anniversary meeting into the very heart of New England, and for the first time the National a.s.sociation went to Boston, opening in Tremont Temple, May 26. The address of welcome was made by Harriet H. Robinson, wife of "Warrington," the well-known newspaper correspondent, and there were several new speakers in the convention, including A. Bronson Alcott, Mary F. Eastman, Anna Garlin Spencer, Frank Sanborn, ex-Governor Lee, of Wyoming, the noted politician, Francis W. Bird, Harriette Robinson Shattuck and Rev. Ada C. Bowles. The ladies had no cause to complain of the hospitality of this conservative New England center. The Boston Traveller expressed the general sentiment in saying:

The National Suffrage a.s.sociation has reason to congratulate itself on one of the most notable and successful conventions ever held.

Boston's att.i.tude to her distinguished guests has been uniformly hospitable, the audiences have been large and enthusiastic, the press co-operative in every sense. The eminent women who are its leaders are ladies whose acquaintance is an unmixed pleasure, and not least in importance have been the friends.h.i.+ps formed and renewed at this meeting. The business management of the convention has been superb; the sympathy between audience and speakers reciprocal.

The guests received an invitation from Governor John D. Long to visit the State House and were received by him in person. In his remarks he said he believed women should vote, not because they are women but because they are a part of the people and government should be of the people regardless of s.e.x; he thought the extension of suffrage to women could not fail to give stability to the government. Mrs. Hooker thanked him for coming to their support and in her letter describing the occurrence she says: "Miss Anthony standing close to the governor said in low; pathetic tones, 'Yes, we are tired, we are weary with our work.

For thirty years some of us have carried this burden, and now if we might put it in the hands of honorable men, such as you, how happy we would be.'" The ladies also accepted an invitation from Mayor Prince to visit the city hall and were cordially received by him. They were invited to inspect the great dry goods store of Jordan, Marsh & Co. and see the arrangements for the comfort and pleasure of the employes many of whom were women. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Robinson were entertained at the Parker House by the famous Bird Club.

Miss Anthony received several beautiful floral offerings during the convention, and also a handsome pin in the shape of a Greek cross. The golden bar from which it was suspended bore the letters S. B. A., on the points were the initials N. W. S. A., and on the reverse was engraved, "Presented by the Citizens' Suffrage a.s.sociation of Philadelphia as a token of grat.i.tude for her life-long devotion to the interests of woman." The little presentation speech was made in a most tender and graceful manner by May Wright Sewall. The Boston Globe in describing the scene pays this compliment:

Miss Anthony was as deeply touched as she was surprised. Recovering herself, she responded eloquently and in her usual interesting and magnetic manner. Of all the eminent women who are here, no one is such a favorite with a Boston audience as Susan B. Anthony. Her courage and strength and the patient devotion of a life consecrated to the advancement and the elevation of womanhood, her invincible honor, her logic and her power to touch and sway all hearts, are felt and reverently recognized. The young women of the day may well feel that it is she who _has made life possible_ to them; who has trodden the th.o.r.n.y paths and, by her unwearied devotion, has opened to them the professions and higher applied industries; nor is this detracting from those who now share with her the labor and the glory. Each and all recognize the individual devotion, the purity and singleness of purpose that so eminently distinguish Miss Anthony.

The convention closed with a reception at the elegant home of Mrs. Fenno Tudor, on Beacon Hill.

After leaving Boston, this distinguished body of women, made the sweep of New England, holding conventions in Providence, R. I.; Portland, Me.; Dover, Concord and Keene, N. H.; Hartford and New Haven, Conn. The national board of officers received an infusion of new blood this year through the election of May Wright Sewall, chairman executive committee, and Rachel Foster, corresponding secretary. Miss Anthony writes, "It is such a relief to roll off part of the burden on stronger, younger shoulders." This entire round of conventions was arranged by Miss Foster, a remarkable work for an inexperienced girl.

At Concord Miss Anthony was entertained in the family of her old friend and co-laborer, Parker Pillsbury, and after her departure Mrs. Pillsbury wrote: "I am so very happy to know you personally, and I thank you for the compliment you bestow in asking me to enroll my name among the most grand and n.o.ble women of our land. I shall enjoy being counted worthy to place it in company with dear Miss Anthony. Mr. Cogswell says many men (some members of the Legislature among them) in talking with him have expressed unexpected satisfaction in the speeches of the convention just holden--especially in yours, and he says, 'She is a host in herself, I like her practical common sense.'"

There was comfort in a letter received at this time from Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, president of the Illinois Suffrage a.s.sociation and one of the Inter-Ocean staff:

Before entering upon our usual business talk, I want to wish you all beautiful and peaceful things this summer morning, and tell you of a rare and genuine tribute to yourself which brought tears of gladness to my own eyes when I heard it. In talking to some of the old workers, I referred to your life-long sacrifice and wondered how we could develop a similar spirit in our younger women, when Mrs. Zerelda Wallace said with great impressiveness: "My dear sisters, I want to say this, and to say it with a profound realization of all that it means, that to me, the person who, next to Jesus Christ himself, has shown to the world a life of perfect unselfishness, is Susan B. Anthony." I tell you this, my dear friend, because I believe such a tribute from such a woman will lighten some of the burdens.

Many similar letters were now received every year, and were as sweet and fragrant flowers in a pathway which had contained more thorns than roses.

In the hot summer of 1881 Miss Anthony went again to Albany to spend the last weeks with another friend, Phebe Hoag Jones, who pa.s.sed away July 27. She was the intimate a.s.sociate of Lydia Mott and the last of that little band of Abolitionists so conspicuous in the Democratic stronghold of Albany for many years preceding the war. At her death Miss Anthony felt that she had no longer an abiding place in the State capital, and expressed this feeling in a letter to Mrs. Spofford, who replied: "You speak of no longer having a home in Albany. Why, the best homes in that city should be gladly opened to you, and some day those people will wake up and wonder why they did not take you in their arms and hearts and help you in your work."[5]

All the letters during this summer are filled with sorrow over the a.s.sa.s.sination, long suffering and death of President Garfield. After all was ended Miss Anthony wrote to a friend:

In the reported death-bed utterances of our President, the only one which has grated on my ears was that in answer to the query whether he had made a will: "No, and he did not wish one, as he could trust the courts to do justice to his wife and children." How little even the best of men see and feel the dire humiliation and suffering to the wife, the widow, who is left to the justice of the courts! My heart aches because of man's insensibility to the cruelty of thus leaving woman. How can we teach them the lesson that the wife suffers all the torment under the law's a.s.suming her rights to her property and her children, which the husband would, should it a.s.sume similar owners.h.i.+p and control over him, his property and children after his wife's death.

What a twelve weeks these have been, and what a funeral pall has rested upon us the past week. Every nook and corner, every mountaintop and valley is shrouded in sorrow for this crime against the nation. Today the ministers are preaching their sermons on the life and character of Garfield. Our Unitarian, Mr. Mann, made his special point on the fact that all the people of every sect had united in endors.e.m.e.nt of Garfield's religion, which was most emphatically one of life and action, natural, without cant or observance of the outward rites and ceremonies. There is no report of even a minister's being asked to pray with him. When the bells told of the people's day of special prayer for his life, he exclaimed, "G.o.d bless the people," but covered his face, as much as to say, "Nothing but science can determine this case."

In the late summer and fall Mrs. Stanton had a tedious and alarming attack of malarial fever, and Miss Anthony was greatly distressed because some of her family insisted that it was produced by the long, hard strain of the work on the History. She writes: "It is so easy to charge every ill to her labors for suffrage, while she knows and I know that it is her work for woman which has kept her young and fresh and happy all these years. Mrs. Stanton has written me that during her illness 'she suffered more from her fear that she never should finish the History than from the thought of parting with all her friends.'"

The National Prohibition Alliance, which met in New York, October 18, invited her to take an official part in its proceedings. She declined to do so but attended the meeting and, after a visit to Mrs. Stanton, went to Was.h.i.+ngton to the national convention of the W. C. T. U. She had three reasons for this: 1st, she understood there was to be an attempt to supersede Miss Willard, to whom she had become very much attached; 2d, an effort was to be made to commit the a.s.sociation to woman suffrage; and 3d, she had made up her mind to see President Arthur on business connected with her own organization. She sat in the convention through all the three days' sessions and, on motion of Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, was invited to address it and was introduced by Miss Willard in words of strong approval. A prominent woman who was opposed to Miss Willard's re-election went among the delegates, a.s.suring them in the most solemn manner that Miss Willard had insulted every one of them by introducing Miss Anthony on the platform, as she did not recognize G.o.d.

"Well," replied one of them, an Indianapolis woman, "I don't know about that, but I do know that G.o.d has recognized her and her work for the last thirty years."

She had the pleasure of seeing Miss Willard triumphantly re-elected, an equal suffrage resolution adopted and a department of franchise established. "So the Christian craft of that great organization has set sail on the wide sea of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt," she comments. At the close of the convention this amusing card was sent to the press: "All presidents of State delegations represented in the National W. C. T. U.

desire to explain, in refutation of a statement in the Post of October 31, that, so far from 'capturing the convention,' Miss Susan B. Anthony made no effort to influence their delegations in public or in private, and is not, nor ever has been, a member of the W. C. T. U., either local, State or national, hence has had no part in its deliberations."

The President, who was an old schoolmate of her brother Daniel R., granted her a pleasant interview, arranged by Senator Jones, of Nevada, in which she urged him to recommend in his message to Congress a standing committee on the rights of women and also a Sixteenth Amendment which should enfranchise them. The reporters learned of this interview and, as a result, newspapers throughout the country used a portion of their valuable s.p.a.ce in describing "how President Arthur squeezed Susan B. Anthony's hand!"

On the way home she stopped in Philadelphia and, with Rachel Foster and Adeline Thomson, called on George W. Childs, who gave to her $50 for "the cause," and to each of them one of his rare china cups and saucers.

On November 7 work on the History was again resumed. The 29th was Wendell Phillips' seventieth birthday and Miss Anthony wrote him a letter of congratulation, telling him that she always had found comfort in the thought that, when there were differences between them, she had had his respect if not his approval. He replied with the following affectionate note: "Hearty thanks for your congratulations. The band grows smaller month by month. We ought to stand closer together. You and I have differed as all earnest souls must. I trust each always believed the other to be true in spirit. I know I always did, touching yourself.

You are good to a.s.sure me you have had the same faith in me, and I hope when you reach threescore and ten, some kind friend will cheer you with equally generous and welcome words."

The last entry in the diary for 1881 says: "The year closes down on a wilderness of work, a swamp of letters and papers almost hopeless." She attacked it, however, with that sublime courage which was ever her strongest characteristic, and at the end of the first week of the new year the heaviest part of the burden was lifted from her shoulders by the receipt of this letter from Mr. Phillips:

DEAR SUSAN: Our friend Mrs. Eliza Eddy, Francis Jackson's daughter, died a week ago Thursday. At her request, I made her will some weeks before. Her man of business, devoted to her for twenty-five years, Mr. C. R. Ransom (ex-president of one of our banks) is the executor. He and I were present and consulted, and we know all her intentions and wishes from long talks with her in years gone by.

After making various bequests, she ordered the remainder divided equally between you and Lucy Stone. There is no question whatever that your portion will be $25,000 or $28,000. I advised her, in order to avoid all lawyers, to give this sum to you outright, with no responsibility to any one or any court, only "requesting you to use it for the advancement of the woman's cause."

After all the years of toil without financial recompense, of struggling to accomplish her work with wholly insufficient means, of depending from month to month on the few dollars which could be gathered in, Miss Anthony's joy and grat.i.tude scarcely could find expression in words. She answered at once:

Your most surprising letter reached me last evening. How worthy the daughter of Francis Jackson! How it carries me back to his generous gift of $5,000; to that n.o.ble, fatherly man and that quiet, lovely daughter in his home. Never going to Boston during the past fifteen years, I had lost sight of her, though I had not forgotten her by any means. How little thought have I had all these years that she cherished this marvellous trust in me, and now I recognize in her munificent legacy your own faith in me, for such was her confidence in you that I feel sure she would not have thus willed, if you had not fully endorsed her wish. So to you, my dear friend, as to her, my unspeakable grat.i.tude goes out. May I prove worthy the care and disposal of whatever shall come into my hands. Will you, as my friend and Mrs. Eddy's, ever feel free to suggest and advise me as to a wise use thereof? I am very glad it was your privilege to be with her through these years of her loneliness. I am pleased that you and Mr. Ransom propose to appropriate something to her faithful brother James, and most cheerfully do I put my name to the paper you enclose, with the fullest confidence that you would ask of me nothing but right and justice to all parties.

A few days afterwards she received another letter from Mr. Phillips:

You remember Mrs. Bacon (Mrs. Eddy's daughter) died about a week after she did. Her husband (who Mrs. Eddy knew would disturb her will if he could) is trying ostensibly to break it, really to force you and Lucy Stone to buy him off. The grounds on which he objects to the will are "that she was of unsound mind; that I and her executor exercised over her an undue influence in urging her to leave her money as she did; and that she did not know how much she was willing away." The truth is, we never said one word to her. It was her own plan entirely to leave it to woman's rights. Mr. Bacon knows there is not a ghost of a chance of his succeeding. The executor and I have retained Benjamin F. Butler and mean to fight to have Mrs. Eddy's will executed as she wished. The Misses Eddy sustain the will and wish it carried out to the letter, and say if it is broken they shall give their portion to the woman's rights cause, to you and Lucy. I'll tell you when any news is to be had.

We are doing our best to protect your interests.

This was the beginning of litigation which continued for three years, and was a source of annoyance to Miss Anthony in other respects besides being deprived of the money. The fact of the bequest naturally being heralded far and wide by the newspapers, appeals and demands for a share of it poured in from all quarters, and she had much difficulty in persuading people that she had not the money already in her hands to be divided.

In company with Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton January 16, 1882, to attend the Fourteenth Annual Convention. The effort to secure a special committee on woman suffrage which had failed in the Forty-sixth Congress was successful in the Forty-seventh, through the champions.h.i.+p of Senators h.o.a.r and John A. Logan, Representatives John D.

White, of Kentucky, Thomas B. Reed and others. There was bitter opposition by Senator Vest, of Missouri, who declared it to be "a step toward the recognition of woman suffrage, which has nothing in it but mischief to the inst.i.tutions and to the society of the whole country."

In his zeal he dropped into poetry, saying,

"A woman's n.o.blest station is retreat, Her fairest virtues fly from public sight,"

and so, of course, she had no need of a special committee. It was vigorously opposed also by Senator Beck, of Kentucky, who said "the colored women's votes could be bought for fifty cents apiece;" and by Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who made a stump speech on "dissevered homes, disbanded families, pot-house politicians seated at the fireside with another man's wife, women fighting their way to the polls through crowds of negroes and ruffians," etc.[6] It was carried in the Senate by a vote of 35 to 23; in the House, a month later, by a vote of 115 to 84.

Miss Anthony says of this in her diary: "If the best of worldly good had come to me personally, I could not feel more joyous and blest."

In addition to the usual distinguished array of speakers were Rev.

Frederick Hinckley, Representative G. S. Orth, of Indiana, Senator Saunders, of Nebraska, Clara B. Colby, Harriette R. Shattuck and Helen M. Gougar, all new on the National platform. The Senate committee on woman suffrage just appointed, granted a hearing January 20, and at its close expressed a desire to hear other speakers among the ladies on the following day. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton presented each of the members of the committee with the first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage.

The convention closed with the usual handsome reception at the Riggs House and immediately afterwards most of the speakers went to Philadelphia, where Rachel Foster had arranged for another convention.[7] This was held at St. George's Hall, January 23, 24, 25, welcomed by Rev. Charles G. Ames, and was highly successful. A pleasant feature of this occasion was a luncheon given by that revered Quaker and temperance worker, Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, of Germantown, to twelve of the prominent speakers.

The two historians hastened back to their work, which was interrupted only by Miss Anthony's going to the New York State Suffrage Convention held in Chickering Hall, February 1. Calls for her presence and help came from many parts of the country. "O, how I long to be in the midst of the fray," she writes, "and here I am bound hand and foot. I shall feel like an uncaged lion when this book is off my hands." On February 15, her birthday was celebrated by suffrage clubs in many places,[8] but she refused to be drawn out of her retreat, where she was remembered with telegrams, newspaper notices and gifts. In quoting a complimentary reference from the Rochester Herald, the Elmira Free Press commented:

The Herald says too little. Miss Anthony has labored for the most part without money, and from pure love of the principle to which she has devoted her life. She is as good a knight as has enlisted in any crusade, and has sacrificed as much and been as faithful and true. She has been thrice true, indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps had as many of the frowns of this "good gray poet" of the woman's cause as anybody. It has seen enough of them to know, however, that behind that somewhat frigid exterior is a sensitiveness which would well become a girl of sixteen rather than a lady of sixty-two and which shows that the woman is always the woman; and it wants to present its compliments to the bravest and grandest old lady within the circle of its acquaintance.

The Was.h.i.+ngton Republic furnished another example of the pleasant things said:

Miss Anthony, whom we know well and of whom we can speak from personal experience, is so broad in her charity, so cosmopolitan in her sympathies, that she will stand, without fearing speck or soil, beside any publican or sinner whose eyes have been opened to see the good in woman's rights, and who is willing to help on the work in his own way. For herself she never deviates from the principles she espoused when, stepping upon the rostrum to plead for disfranchised women, she determined that her life work should be endeavoring to procure for her s.e.x all the rights and privileges of which exclusively male legislation had for ages defrauded them.

With eyes steadily fixed upon the goal she has in view, neither the jeers nor ridicule of the crowds without, nor the jealous asides of those claiming to be workers in the same cause, have had power to distract her attention or make her turn from her labor to answer or rebuke.

The last of April the second volume of the History was completed and its editors found to their dismay that they still had enough material on hand for a third huge volume. Mrs. Stanton sailed for Europe with her daughter Harriot, and after Miss Anthony had read the last bit of proof and seen all safe at the publishers, she obeyed an urgent call from the women at Was.h.i.+ngton and hastened thither to look after the congressional committees on woman suffrage.

She was fortunate in her friends at court at this time, having two cousins, Elbridge G. Lapham and Henry B. Anthony, in the United States Senate, and her lawyer, John Van Voorhis, of Rochester, in the House of Representatives, all in favor of woman suffrage, and the two cousins on the "select committee" of the Senate. On June 5, 1882, this committee made a report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States, signed by the Republican senators, E. G. Lapham, T.

W. Ferry, H. W. Blair and H. B. Anthony. The minority report took the ground that suffrage was a matter which should be regulated solely by the States, not by Congress, and was signed by J. Z. George and Howell E. Jackson (Dems.), and James G. Fair (Rep.).

The following year, March 1, 1883, the House committee, John D. White, chairman, presented a favorable report. This was the first time woman suffrage had received a majority report from a Senate or House committee.[9]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "Very sincerely, John D. White"]

When Miss Anthony returned home she found this bright note from Harriot Stanton, dated Paris: "... Dear Susan, you often seem to me like a superb warhorse. You are completely swallowed up in an idea, and it's a glorious thing to be. Carlyle says, 'The end of man is an Action, not a Thought,' and what a realization of that truth has your life been. You have never stopped for idle culture or happy recreations. You are possessed by a moral force, and you act. You are a Deed, not a Thinking.... I should love to be your biographer. You are to other women of your time just what Greek architecture is to Gothic. I long to carve your literary image, and know I could."