The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume II Part 22

[71] After the convention Miss Balgarnie wrote: "It has been one of the most genuine pleasures of my life to meet you, my dear Miss Anthony. I felt 'strength go out of you,' as it were, directly you took my hand."

[72] Miss Anthony was equally generous in regard to speakers of less renown. She wrote to Mrs. Blake during this year: "I felt so happy to give half of my hour at Syracuse to Mrs. C., so that splendid audience might see and hear her. And I am always glad to surrender my time to any unknown speakers whom we find promising; but first they ought to have tried their powers at their home meetings and in rural districts."

CHAPTER XL.

IGNORED BY THE PARTIES--APPOINTED TO OFFICE.

1892.

On her way to the convention of 1892, Miss Anthony stopped in New York in response to an urgent letter from Mrs. Stanton, now comfortably ensconced in a pleasant flat overlooking Central Park, saying that unless she came and took her bodily to Was.h.i.+ngton she should not be able to go. "All the influences about me urge to rest rather than action,"

she wrote--exactly what Miss Anthony had feared. She was now in her seventy-seventh year and naturally her children desired that she should give up public work; but Miss Anthony knew that inaction meant rust and decay and, as her fellow-worker was in the prime of mental vigor, she was determined that the world should continue to profit by it. Her address this year was ent.i.tled "The Solitude of Self," considered by many one of her finest papers.

Mrs. Stanton received a great ovation at the opening session, January 16, but this proved to be her last appearance at a national convention.

For more than forty years she had presided with a grace and dignity which never had been surpa.s.sed, and now she begged that the scepter, or more properly speaking the gavel, might be transferred to Miss Anthony, whose experience had been quite as extended as her own. The delegates yielded to her wishes and Miss Anthony was elected national president.

The office of chairman of the executive committee was abolished; Mrs.

Stanton and Lucy Stone were made honorary presidents, and Rev. Anna H.

Shaw vice-president-at-large.

Miss Anthony presided over the ten sessions of the convention and they required a firm hand, for the discussions were spirited, as the questions considered were important. Among them were the work to be done at the World's Fair; the opening of the fair on Sunday; the proposition to hold every alternate convention in some other city than Was.h.i.+ngton; the plan to carry suffrage work into the southern States; the advisability of making another campaign in Kansas; and other matters on which there was a wide difference of opinion.

John B. Allen, of Was.h.i.+ngton, had introduced in the Senate, and Halbert S. Greenleaf in the House, a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Const.i.tution extending the right to women to vote at all federal elections. The House Judiciary Committee, January 18, granted a hearing to such speakers as should be selected by the national convention then in session. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Hooker were chosen. This was the first Democratic committee before whom an appeal had been made; they listened courteously, but brought in no report on the question.

The Senate committee granted a hearing January 20, and three-minute addresses were made by eighteen women representing as many States.

Before they left the room, Senator h.o.a.r moved that the committee make a favorable report and the motion was seconded by Senator Warren, Senator Blair also voting in favor. Senators Vance, of North Carolina, and George, of Mississippi, voted in the negative. Senators Quay and Carlisle were absent.

During the convention the district suffrage society gave a reception in the parlors of the Wimodaughsis club house. Later, Mrs. n.o.ble, wife of the Secretary of the Interior, issued cards for a reception in honor of Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone. It was attended by members of the Cabinet, Senate, House, diplomatic corps and many others prominent in official and social life.

As Miss Anthony had no longer her comfortable quarters at the Riggs House free of all expense, she did not linger in Was.h.i.+ngton, but went to Philadelphia for a week with the friends there and reached home February 6. "I send congratulations, I always wanted you to be president," wrote Mrs. Johns. "Now can't you come to our Kansas City Inter-State Convention? We do need you so and there wouldn't be standing room if you were there." And later: "Do any of my wails reach you? The Kansas City people plead for you to come if only to be looked at. Is there any hope?" Miss Anthony was perfectly willing to make a winter campaign in Kansas, but her friends insisted that there were plenty of younger women to do this work and she should wait till spring. So Anna Shaw, Mary Seymour Howell and Florence Balgarnie, of England, went to the a.s.sistance of the women there, and Rachel Foster Avery gave $1,000 to this canva.s.s.

Every day at home was precious to Miss Anthony. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon she went to Mount Hope, on whose sloping hillsides rest the beloved dead of her own family and many of the friends of early days;[73] or she walked down to the long bridge which spans the picturesque Genesee river and commands a fine view of the beautiful Lower Falls. Occasionally a friend called with a carriage and they took the charming seven-mile drive to the sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario. Sunday mornings she listened to Mr. Gannett's philosophical sermons; and through the week there were quiet little teas with old friends whom she had known since girlhood, but had seen far too seldom in all the busy years. Instead of forever giving lectures she was able to hear them from others; and she could indulge to the fullest, on the big new desk, her love of letter-writing, while the immense work of the national a.s.sociation was always pressing. She had a number of applications for articles from various magazines and newspapers, but her invariable reply was, "I have no literary ability; ask Mrs. Stanton;" and no argument could convince her that she could write well if she would give the time to it.

She addressed the New York Legislature in April in reference to having women sit as delegates in the approaching Const.i.tutional Convention. In response to a request from the Rochester Union and Advertiser, she wrote an earnest letter advocating the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday, and giving many strong reasons in favor. On April 22, she joined Miss Shaw, who was lecturing at Bradford, Penn., and Sunday afternoon addressed an audience which packed the opera house. The next day she organized a suffrage club of seventy members among the influential women of that city. After leaving there Rev. Anna Shaw, herself an ordained Protestant Methodist minister, wrote her that she had been shut out of several churches because she had addressed an audience at the Lily Dale Spiritualist camp meeting. She said: "I told them that I would speak to 5,000 people on woman suffrage anywhere this or the other side of Hades if they could be got together."

The first week in May, at the urgent invitation of her good friends, Smith G. and Emily B. Ketcham, of Grand Rapids, Miss Anthony attended their silver wedding. From this pleasant affair she went to the Michigan Suffrage Convention at Battle Creek, where she visited an old schoolmate, Mrs. Sarah Hyatt Nichols. She reached Chicago in time for the biennial meeting of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs. Special trains were run from New York and Boston, Central Music Hall was crowded and numerous elegant receptions were given for the 300 delegates from all parts of the country. Many eminent women sat upon the platform, among them the president of the federation, Mrs. Charlotte Emerson Brown, Frances E. Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, May Wright Sewall, Jenny June Croly and Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, all of whom were heard at different times during the convention. Miss Anthony was the guest of Lydia Avery c.o.o.nley, whose mother wrote to Mary Anthony:

I have been intending for several days to tell you that however your sister may have been regarded forty years ago, she is today the most popular woman in these United States. The federation closed, as you probably know, on Friday night. During the meetings she was several times asked to come forward on the platform, which she did to the manifest gratification of the people, saying something each time which "brought down the house." On the last night a note was sent to the president asking that "Susan B.,"

Julia Ward Howe and Ednah D. Cheney would please step forward. They came, but only your sister spoke and what she said was vociferously cheered over and over again.

The business committee of the National Council--Miss Willard, Mrs.

Sewall, Mrs. Foster Avery, Miss Anthony and others--met in Chicago the same week, the princ.i.p.al subject of consideration being the Woman's Congress to be held the next year during the World's Fair. While in the city Miss Anthony gave a number of sittings to Lorado Taft, the sculptor. Miss Willard had asked that he might make the bust to be placed in the gallery of famous women at the World's Fair, she herself to be responsible for all expenses. "Come and spend a week with me in my home," she wrote, "while he prepares a model of that statesmanlike head, the greatest of them all." Desirous of pleasing her, Miss Anthony agreed, but at once many of the strong-minded protested that the bust must be made by a woman.

A number of amusing letters were exchanged. From Miss Willard: "Mr. Taft is the most progressive believer in woman and admirer of you, dear Susan, that I know. He is in full sympathy with all of our ideas. I am sure that as a friend of mine, appreciated by me as highly as you are by any woman living, you will not place me in the position of declining to have this work done. Please do not take counsel of women who are so prejudiced that, as I once heard said, they would not allow a male gra.s.shopper to chirp on their lawn; but out of your own great heart, refuse to set an example to such folly."

Mr. Taft himself wrote Miss Anthony: "I can put myself in your place sufficiently to appreciate in part the objections which you or your friends may feel toward having the work done by a man. My only regret is that I am not to be allowed to pay this tribute to one whom I was early taught to honor and revere.... Come to think of it, I believe I am provoked after all. s.e.x is but an accident, and it seems to me that it has no more to do with art than has the artist's complexion or the political party he votes with." Again from Miss Willard: "Do you not see, my friend and comrade, that having engaged a n.o.ble and large-minded young man, who believes as we do, to make that bust, engaged him in good faith and announced it to the public, it is a 'little rough on me,' as the boys say, for my dear sister to wish me to break my contract? We can not have too many busts of you, so let Miss Johnson go on and make hers, and let me have mine, and let those other women make theirs, and we will yet have one of them in the House of Representatives at Was.h.i.+ngton, the other in the Senate, the third in the White House!... My dear mother and Anna wish to be remembered to you, knowing that you are one of our best and most trusted friends, only I must say that you are a naughty woman in this matter of the 'statoot.'" Miss Anthony's common sense finally induced her to waive objections and she gave Mr. Taft as many sittings as he desired. When the work was finished Miss Willard wrote: "My beloved Susan, your statue is perfect. Lady Henry and I think that _one_ man has seen your great, benignant soul and shown it in permanent material."

The 25th of May Miss Anthony attended a meeting of the Ohio a.s.sociation at Salem, where had been held in April, 1850, the second woman's rights convention in all history. There was present one of the pioneers who had called that convention, Emily, wife of Marius Robinson, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle. Miss Anthony read her paper for her, as she was over eighty years old, and added her own strong comments, of which the report of the secretary said: "Her burning words can never be forgotten, and many a soul must have responded to her call for workers to carry to glorious completion what was begun in such difficulty."

There was some talk at this time of holding a Southern Woman's Council and Miss Anthony wrote to the Arkansas Woman's Chronicle:

The New England States hold an annual suffrage convention and have done so for nearly thirty years, and I do not see any valid reason why the States of any section may not have a society or a convention. Larger numbers from the six New England States can meet and help each other in Boston, than could possibly go to Was.h.i.+ngton to get the soul-refres.h.i.+ng which comes through the gathering together of kindred spirits from the entire nation.

As I shall be glad to see the women of the South, of all possible aims and ends, meet in council, so I should rejoice to see them hold a southern States' suffrage convention. I say this because I want you to know that my heartiest sympathy goes with you in your effort to call together the women of your section of the Union; and I shall rejoice to see the women of the far-off northwestern States doing the same thing. Women should have their local societies and meetings, their county, State and section conventions, and then, for our great national gathering, each State should send its representatives to Was.h.i.+ngton, there to confer together and go before the committees of Congress to urge our claims. What a power women would be if all could but see eye to eye in their struggle for freedom!

She remained at home long enough to prepare the memorials to the national political conventions, and June 4 found her at Minneapolis ready for the Republican gathering. She was entertained by Mr. and Mrs.

T. B. Walker, and found Mrs. J. Ellen Foster also a guest in that hospitable home. The memorial presented by the National-American W. S.

A. contained the same unanswerable arguments for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women which had been made for so many years, and asked for the following plank: "As a voice in the laws and the rulers under which we live is the inalienable right of every citizen of a republic, we pledge ourselves, when again in power, to place the ballot in the hand of every woman of legal age, as the only weapon with which she can protect her person and property and defend herself against all aggressive legislation."

Miss Anthony was notified that she could have a hearing before the platform committee on the evening of June 8. She was promptly on hand and was kept standing in the hall outside of the committee room until after 9 o'clock. Finally she was so tired she sent for one of the committee to ask how much longer she would have to wait. She learned that its chairman, J. B. Foraker, of Ohio, refused to preside or call the committee to order to hear any argument on woman suffrage. Senator Jones, of Nevada, then hunted him up and asked if he might preside in his place, and permission being given she was invited into the room. She spoke for thirty minutes as only a woman could speak who had suffered the persecution of an Abolitionist before the Republican party was born, who had been loyal to that party throughout all the dark days of the Civil War, who had not once repudiated its principles in all the years which had since elapsed. She pleaded that now she and the women she represented might have its support and recognition in their right to representation at the ballot-box. This committee was composed of twoscore of the most prominent men in the Republican party and, at the close of Miss Anthony's address, every one in the room arose and many crowded about her, giving her the most earnest a.s.surance of their belief in the justice of her cause, but telling her frankly that they could not put a woman suffrage plank in their platform as the party was not able to carry the load! The plank eventually adopted read as follows:

We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public elections, and that such ballot shall be counted as cast; that such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign, white or black, this sovereign right guaranteed by the Const.i.tution. The free and honest popular ballot, the just and equal representation of all the people, as well as their just and equal protection under the laws, are the foundation of our republican inst.i.tutions, and the party will never relax its efforts until the integrity of the ballot and the purity of elections shall be guaranteed and protected in every State.

This was identical with the one adopted in 1888, at which time a number of women had telegraphed the chairman asking if the convention intended it to apply to women, and he had answered that he did not understand it to have any such intention. Therefore the women who went to the Republican convention of 1892 asking for bread, received instead "the water in which the eggs had been boiled."

There were present at this convention two regularly appointed women delegates from Wyoming, and the difference in the attention bestowed upon them and upon those who came to press the claims of the great cla.s.s of the disfranchised, ought to have been an object lesson to all who a.s.sert that women will lose the respect of men when they enter politics. Not a newspaper in the country had a slur to cast on these women delegates. The Boston Globe made this pertinent comment: "An elective queen in this country is no more out of place than one seated by hereditary consent abroad. It is no rash prediction to a.s.sert that the child is now born who will see a woman in the presidential chair.

Thomas Jefferson will not be fully vindicated until this government rests upon the consent of all the governed."

After just five days at home Miss Anthony left for Chicago to attend the Democratic National Convention, June 21, which was requested to adopt the following plank: "Whether we view the suffrage as a privilege or as a natural right, it belongs equally to every citizen of good character and legal age under government; hence women as well as men should enjoy the dignity and protection of the ballot in their own hands."

Miss Anthony and Isabella Beecher Hooker took rooms at the Palmer House and the latter made arrangements for the hearing before the resolution committee, which was a.s.sembled in one of the parlors, Henry Watterson, of Louisville, chairman. The ladies made their speeches, were courteously heard, politely bowed out, and the platform was as densely silent on the question of woman suffrage as it had been during its whole history. Mrs. Hooker remained alone in the convention until 2 o'clock in the morning, hoping to get a chance to address that body. She had not been fooled as many times as Miss Anthony, who returned to the hotel and went to bed.

The Union Signal, Frances E. Willard, editor, spoke thus of the occasion:

That heroic figure, Susan B. Anthony, sure to stand out in history as plainly as any of our presidents, has given added significance to the two great political conventions of the year. Neither party has recognized her plea, but both have innumerable adherents who openly declare themselves in favor of her principles. She states that this year she felt for the first time that she had a pivot on which to hang her quadrennial plea, and that pivot was Wyoming, the men of that equal-minded State in both conventions holding up her hands. Miss Anthony's pathetic eyes reveal that she has attained to loneliness--the guerdon of great spirits who struggle from any direction toward the mountain tops of human liberty. But on the heights such souls meet G.o.d, and one day all women shall call her blessed.

The National Prohibition Convention at Cincinnati, June 30, was not visited by Miss Anthony, as she felt that the women of this party needed no a.s.sistance in looking after the interests of suffrage. The third plank in the platform there adopted read: "No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of s.e.x."

From Chicago she went directly to Kansas to look after the fences in that State. Mrs. Johns and Anna Shaw joined her and they spoke before the Chautauqua a.s.sembly at Ottawa, June 27, going thence to Topeka, as Miss Anthony expressed it, "to watch the State Republican Convention."

They received a hearty greeting and she was invited to address the convention June 30. The Capital said: "There were loud calls for Susan B. Anthony and as she advanced to the platform she was greeted with the most cordial applause." In the evening a reception was given in the Senate chamber to the ladies in attendance at the convention. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Johns and Mrs. May Belleville Brown addressed the resolution committee. The platform was reported with a plank favoring the submission to the voters of a woman suffrage amendment, which was enthusiastically adopted--455 to 267--in the largest Republican convention ever held in Kansas.[74]

Miss Anthony and Miss Shaw then hastened to Omaha for the first national convention of the People's party July 4. They arrived about 9 P. M., July 2, to find they were booked for speeches at the Unitarian church that evening and the audience had been waiting since 7:30, so they rushed thither, hot, dusty and tired, and made their addresses. Sunday afternoon they went to a workingwomen's meeting in the exposition building and heard Master Workman Powderly for the first time. At his invitation Miss Anthony also spoke.

The People's party, from its inception, had recognized women as speakers and delegates and claimed to be the party of morality and reform, but after a day at the convention Miss Anthony writes in her diary: "They are quite as oblivious to the underlying principle of justice to women as either of the old parties and, as a convention, still more so." The resolution committee refused to grant the ladies even an opportunity to address them, which had been done willingly by the Republicans and Democrats. Their platform contained no reference to woman suffrage except that in the long preamble occurred the sentence: "We believe that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward until every wrong is righted, and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country." This sentiment, however, was universally accepted by the delegates as including the right of suffrage.

Miss Anthony spoke at the Beatrice Chautauqua a.s.sembly, and then returned to Rochester. She had some time before received a letter from Chancellor John H. Vincent saying: "The subject of woman suffrage will be presented at Chautauqua on Sat.u.r.day, July 30, 1892. A prominent speaker will be secured to present the question as forcibly as possible.

In behalf of the Chautauqua management, I take pleasure in extending to you a hearty invitation to be present and take a place upon the platform on that occasion. Trusting that you will be able to accept this invitation, I am, faithfully yours."

She had had a long, hot and fatiguing trip and her cool, s.p.a.cious home was so restful that she decided to defer her visit to Chautauqua until later in the season.[75] On August 8, Miss Shaw, Mrs. Foster Avery and Miss Anthony, who had been having a little visit together, started from Rochester for Chautauqua, where the Reverend Anna was to debate the question of woman suffrage with Rev. J. M. Buckley, editor New York Christian Advocate. She gave her address amidst a succession of cheers and applause, Miss Anthony sitting on the platform with her, an honor rarely accorded at the a.s.sembly. In the evening a delightful reception was given to the three ladies in the Hall of Philosophy. Dr. Buckley made his reply the next day to an audience so cold that even his supreme self-satisfaction was disturbed. If any one thing ever has been demonstrated at Chautauqua, by those speeches and all preceding and following them on the same question, it is that the sentiment of the vast majority of the people who annually visit this great a.s.sembly is in favor of woman suffrage.

After speaking at the Ca.s.sadaga Lake camp meeting, August 24, Miss Anthony went in September to the Mississippi Valley Conference at Des Moines. It was thought that possibly by holding a great convention in the West, large numbers in that section of the country and the States along the Mississippi could attend who would find it inconvenient to go to Was.h.i.+ngton. She was glad to give her co-operation and spoke and worked valiantly through all the sessions. From Des Moines she went to Peru, Neb., at the urgent invitation of President George L. Farnham, to address the State Normal School.[76]

Early in October she began her tour of the State of Kansas under the auspices of the Republican central committee. She was accompanied one week by Mrs. Johns, and then each went with some of the men who were canva.s.sing the State. Mrs. Johns made Republican speeches; Miss Anthony described the record of the party on human freedom and urged them to complete that roll of honor by enfranchising women. The campaign managers were very much dissatisfied because she talked suffrage instead of tariff and finance, but as she was paying her own travelling expenses and contributing her services, she reserved the right to speak on the only subject in which she felt a vital interest. If the Republicans had won the election, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Johns expected that of course they would take up the question of woman suffrage and carry it to success; but the State was carried by the newly formed People's party.

As soon as she was thoroughly rested and renovated in her own home, after this hard campaign, Miss Anthony left for the State convention at Syracuse, November 14.[77] The Standard, intending to compliment the ladies, said: "The loud-voiced, aggressive woman of other days was not here. In her place were low-voiced, quietly-dressed, womanly women, and those who expected to see the 'woman rioter' of the past failed to find one of the sort. The graceful, dignified and quiet woman of today bears no likeness to some who have gone before, who thought to break through and gain their desires."