The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 15

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

CONVENTIONS FROM WAs.h.i.+NGTON TO SOUTH DAKOTA.

1889.

The eleventh of January, 1889, found Miss Anthony in her usual pleasant suite of rooms at the Riggs House. She plunged at once into preparations for the approaching convention, interviewing congressmen, calling at the newspaper offices and conferring with local committees. The Twenty-first National Convention opened January 21, in the Congregational church, with the speakers as bright and full of hope as they had been through all the score of years. The opening address was given by Hon. A. G.

Riddle and, during the sessions, excellent speeches were made by Hon.

William D. Kelley, Senator Blair, Rev. Alexander Kent and State Senator Blue, of Kansas. Rev. Anna H. Shaw made her first appearance on the National platform and delivered her splendid oration, "The Fate of Republics." Laura M. Johns gave a practical and pleasing talk on "Munic.i.p.al Suffrage in Kansas;" and there was the usual array of talent.

Miss Anthony presided, putting every speaker to the front and making a substantial background of her own felicitous little speeches, each containing an argument in a nutsh.e.l.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "Very truly yours, Wm D Kelley"]

While in Was.h.i.+ngton she was entertained at dinner by the "Six O'clock Club," and seated at the right hand of its president Dr. Wm. A.

Hammond. The subject for the evening was "Robert Elsmere" and, in giving her opinion, she said she had found nothing new in the book; all those theological questions had been discussed and settled by the Quakers long ago. What distressed her most was the marriage of Robert and Catherine, who, any outsider could have seen, were utterly unfitted for one another, and she wondered if there could be any way by which young people might be able to know each other better before marrying.

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

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

She lectured in Memorial Hall, St. Louis, March 5,[47] and a brilliant reception was given her at the Lindell Hotel. On March 9, she spoke at Jefferson City, where the Daily Tribune contained a full synopsis of her address, beginning as follows: "The hall of the House of Representatives was crowded last night as never before, with ladies and gentlemen--State officials, members of the general a.s.sembly, clerks of the departments and of the legislature, and all the students from Lincoln Inst.i.tute....

Miss Anthony was received with applause, and plunged at once into the subject which for many years has made her name a household word in every English-speaking country on the globe."

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

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

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

Miss Anthony went from Leavenworth to Indianapolis for a few days'

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

The preceding evening a reception was tendered Miss Anthony at the Park Hotel, where she notes, "I wore my garnet velvet and point lace." This did not suit the correspondent of the Chicago Herald, who said: "Her futile efforts to adjust her train with the toe of her number seven boot, instead of the approved backward sweep of heel, demonstrated that she certainly was not 'to the manner born.'" He then continued to sneer at the suffrage women for "adopting the social elegancies of life inaugurated by Mrs. Ashton Dilke, at the council last winter;" evidently unaware that Miss Anthony had been wearing her velvet gown since 1883.

But the same day the New York Sun had a long and serious editorial to the effect that "equal suffrage never would be successful until it was made fas.h.i.+onable." This ill.u.s.trates how hard it is to please everybody, and also how p.r.o.ne men are to make a woman's work inseparable from her garments, always giving more prominence to what she wears than to what she says and does, and then censuring her because she "gives so much time and thought to her clothes." Even from far-off Memphis the Avalanche tumbled down on Miss Anthony for wearing point lace "when the women who wore their lives out making it were no better than slaves."

Doubtless the editor abjured linen s.h.i.+rt-bosoms because the poor Irishwomen who bleach the flax are paid starvation wages. The Brooklyn Times also jumped into the breach and, in a column editorial, attempted to prove that "the ballot for woman is as superfluous as a corset for a man." Thus does the male mind ill.u.s.trate its superiority!

On May 17, Miss Anthony addressed the Woman's Political Equality Club of Rochester, in the Unitarian church, which was crowded to its capacity.

She spoke in Warren, O., May 21, the guest of Hon. Ezra B. Taylor and his daughter, Mrs. Upton. The next day the two ladies went to the Ohio State Convention at Akron and were entertained at the palatial home of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Miller. A dinner was given to Miss Anthony, Mrs.

Zerelda G. Wallace and Rev. Anna Shaw by Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Schumacher.

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

She telegraphed in reply: "Report false; am stronger than ever and bid Was.h.i.+ngton restore woman suffrage."

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

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

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

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

The Seidl Club had an elegant time down at Coney Island this week, and dear old Susan B. Anthony addressed the members, many of whom are among the representative women of the land. It was the custom in years gone by for a lot of paper-headed ninnies, who write cheap jokes about mothers-in-law, to fire their paper bullets at Susan B.

She has lived to see about one-half of them go down to drunkard's graves, and the other half are either dead or forgotten, while she today stands as one of the brightest, cheeriest women, young or old, to be found in our own or any other land. What a tremendous battle she has fought, what a blameless life she has led, rejoicing in the strength which enabled her to mingle with the weak and erring of her s.e.x when necessary without even the smell of smoke on her garments. She made an address, and what an address it was, with more good, sound, hard sense in it than you would find in fifty congressional speeches, and how the women applauded her till they made the roof ring! Susan B. Anthony was by all odds the lioness of the day.

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

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

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

Then down to Chicago she journeyed to talk over the "Isabella Memorial"

with her cousin, Dr. Frances d.i.c.kinson, who was a prime factor of this movement. While there she had a charming visit with Harriet Hosmer, the great sculptor, who afterwards wrote her:

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph: "Keep me in your heart as I keep you in mine and hold me even [illegible] H. Hosmer."]

Miss Anthony went from Milwaukee to the Minnesota State Convention at Minneapolis, and addressed the students of the university. She also visited the Bethany Home for the Friendless and writes in her journal: "I saw there over forty fatherless babes, and twenty or thirty girls who must henceforth wear the scarlet letter over their hearts, while the men who caused their ruin go forth to seek new recruits for the Bethany homes!" At Duluth she was the guest of her faithful friends, Judge J. B.

and Sarah Burger Stearns, speaking here in the Masonic Temple. The judge introduced Miss Anthony in these words: "The first quality we look for in men is courage; the next, ability; the third, benevolence. It is my pleasure to present to you tonight a woman who has exhibited, in a marked degree, all three."

On November 11, 1889, at the beginning of the northern winter, she went from here to South Dakota. A woman suffrage amendment had been submitted to be voted on in 1890, and Miss Anthony had been receiving urgent letters from the members of the State Suffrage a.s.sociation to a.s.sist them in a preliminary canva.s.s and advise as to methods of organization, etc. "Every true woman will welcome you to South Dakota," wrote Philena Johnson, one of the district presidents. "My wife looks upon you as a dependent child upon an indulgent parent; your words will inspire her,"

wrote the husband of Emma Smith DeVoe, the State lecturer. "We are very grateful that you will come to us," wrote Alonzo Wardall, the vice-president.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Anthony spoke at Toronto December 2, introduced by the mayor and entertained by Dr. Augusta S. Gullen, daughter of Dr. Emily H. Stowe.

She addressed the Political Equality Club of Rochester in the Universalist church, December 5. During the past three months she had travelled several thousand miles and spoken every night when not on board the cars. Three days later she started for Was.h.i.+ngton to arrange for the National convention, and from there wrote Rachel Foster Avery:

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

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

And again she writes: "With my $400 which I have contributed to the National this year, I have made life members of myself, nieces Lucy E.

and Louise, and Mrs. Stanton. Now I intend to make Mrs. Minor, Olympia Brown, Phoebe Couzins and Matilda Joslyn Gage life members. I had thought of others, but these last four are of longer standing, were identified with the old National and have suffered odium and persecution because of adherence to it."