 CHAPTER IX. THE NEGRO'S HOUR. Susan's thoughts now turned to Kansas, as they had many times since her brothers had settled there. Daniel and Annie, his young wife from the east, urged her to visit them. Daniel was well established in Kansas, the publisher of his own newspaper and the mayor of Leavenworth. He had served a little over a year in the Union Army in the first Kansas cavalry. She longed to see him in the west that he loved. Now for the first time she felt free to make the long journey, for her mother and Mary had sold the farm on the outskirts of Rochester and had moved into the city, buying a large red brick house shaded by maples and a beautiful horse chestnut. It had been a wrench for Susan to give up the farm with its memories of her father, but there were compensations in the new home on Madison Street, for Guelma, her husband Aaron McLean, and their family lived with them there. Hannah and her family had also settled in Rochester, and when they bought the house next door Susan had the satisfaction of living again in the midst of her family. She was particularly devoted to Guelma's twenty-three year old daughter, Anne Eliza, whose merry laugh and bright joyous presence brought new life into the household. Anne Eliza was a stimulating, intelligent companion, and Susan looked forward to seeing many of her own dreams fulfilled in her niece. Then suddenly, in the fall of 1864, Anne Eliza was taken ill, and her death within a few days left a great void. In the midst of this sorrow, Daniel sent Susan a ticket and a check for a trip to Kansas. Hesitating no longer, she waited only until her tip-top Rochester dressmaker made up the new five-dollar silk which she had bought in New York. Before leaving for Kansas in January 1865, she pasted on the first page of her diary a clipping of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, something left undone, which seemed so perfectly to interpret her own feelings. Labor with what zeal we will, something still remains undone, something uncompleted still waits the rising of the sun, till at length it is or seems greater than our strength can bear as the burden of our dreams pressing on us everywhere. With the burden of her dreams pressing on her, Susan traveled westward. The future of the Negro was much on her mind, for the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had just been sent to the States for ratification. That it would be ratified she had no doubt, but she recognized the responsibility facing the North to provide for the education and rehabilitation of thousands of homeless bewildered Negroes trying to make their way in a still unfriendly world, and she looked forward to taking part in this work. Beyond Chicago, where she stopped over to visit her uncle Albert Dickinson and his family, her journey was rugged, and when she reached Leavenworth, she reveled in the comfort of Daniel's neat little snow-white cottage with green blinds. She liked Daniel's wife Annie at once, admired her gaiety and the way she fearlessly drove her beautiful black horse across the prairie. They have a real Aunt Chloe in the kitchen, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, and a little darky boy for errands and table-waiter. I never saw a girl to match. The more I see of the race, the more wonderful they are to me. There was always good companionship in Daniel's home, for friends from both the East and the West found it a convenient stopping-place, and there was much discussion of politics, the Negro question, and the future of the West. Business was booming in Leavenworth, then the most thriving town between St. Louis and San Francisco. Eight years before, when Daniel had first settled there, it boasted a population of four thousand. Now it had grown to twenty-two thousand, was lighted with gas, and was building its business blocks of brick. As Susan drove through the busy streets with Annie, she saw emigrants coming in by steamer and train to settle in Kansas and watch for the covered wagons that almost every day stopped in Leavenworth for supplies before moving on to the far West. Driving over the wide prairie, sometimes a warm brown, then again white with snow under a wider expanse of deep blue sky than she had ever seen before, she relaxed, as she had not in many a year, and began to feel the call of the West. She even thought she might like to settle in Kansas until she was caught up by the sharp realization of how she would miss the stimulating companionship of her friends in the East. When Daniel was busy with his campaign for his second term as mayor, she helped him edit the bulletin. He warned her not to fill his paper up with women's rights, and in spite of his sympathy for the Negro, forbade her to advocate Negro suffrage in his paper. I wish I could talk through it the things I'd like to say to the young martyr state, she wrote Mrs. Stanton. The legislature gave but six votes for Negro suffrage the other day, the idea of Kansas refusing her loyal Negroes. Again and again she was shocked at the prejudice against Negroes in Kansas, as when Daniel employed a Negro typesetter, and the printers, refusing to admit him to their union, went out on strike until he was discharged. In this city, she reported to Mrs. Stanton, there are four thousand ex-Missouri slaves who have sought refuge here within the three past years. Making it her business to learn what was being done to help them and educate them, she visited their schools, their Sunday schools, and the colored home, and gave much of her time to them. To encourage them to demand their rights, she organized an equal rights league among them. This was one thing she could do, even if she could not plead for Negro suffrage in Daniel's newspaper. Then one breathtaking piece of news followed another. Lee's surrender, April 9th, 1865, and in less than a week Lincoln's assassination, his death, and Andrew Johnson's succession to the presidency. Susan looked upon Lincoln's assassination and death as an act of God. She wrote to Mrs. Stanton, was there ever a more terrific command to a nation to stand still and know that I am God since the world began? The old book's terrible exhibitions of God's wrath sink into nothingness, and this fell blow just at the very hour he was declaring his willingness to consign those five million faithful, brave and loving loyal people of the South to the tender mercies of the ex-slave lords of the Lash. She longed to go out and do battle for the Lord once more, but when she could have expressed her opinions at the big mass meeting held in memory of Lincoln, she remained silent. My soul was full, she confessed to Mrs. Stanton, but the flesh not equal to stemming the awful current, to do what the people have called make an exhibition of myself, so quenched the spirit and came home ashamed of myself. Then she added, dear of me, how over-full I am and how I should like to be nestled into some corner away from every chick and child with you once more. Disturbing news came from the east of dissension in the anti-slavery ranks of Garrison's desire to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and of Philip's insistence that it continue until freedom for the Negro was firmly established. While Garrison maintained that northern states, denying the ballot to the Negro, could not consistently make Negro suffrage a requirement for re-admitting rebel states to the Union, Philip's demanded Negro suffrage as a condition of re-admission. Immediately abolitionists took sides. Parker Pillsbury, Lydia and Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Anna E. Dickinson, the Stantons and others lined up with Philip's, whose vehement and scathing criticism of re-construction policies seemed to them the need of the hour. Susan also took sides, praising dear ever glorious Philip's and writing in her diary, the disbanding of the American Anti-Slavery Society is fully as untimely as General Grants and Sherman's granting parole and pardon to the whole rebel armies. To her friends in the east, she wrote, how can anyone hold that Congress has no right to demand Negro suffrage in the returning rebel states because it is not already established in all the loyal ones? What would have been said of abolitionists ten or twenty years ago had they preached to the people that Congress had no right to vote against admitting a new state with slavery because it was not already abolished in all the old states? It is perfectly astounding this seeming eagerness of so many of our old friends to cover up and apologize for the glaring hate toward the equal recognition of the manhood of the black race. She rejoiced when word came that the American Anti-Slavery Society would continue under the presidency of Philips, with Parker Pillsbury as editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard, but she was saddened by the withdrawal of Garrison, whom she had idolized for so many years and whose editorials in the Liberator had always been her inspiration. As she read the weekly New York Tribune, which came regularly to Daniel, she grew more and more concerned over President Johnson's Reconstruction Policy and more and more convinced of the need of a crusade for political and civil rights for the Negro. Asked to deliver the 4th of July oration at Otoumoa, Kansas, she decided to put into it all her views on the controversial subject of Reconstruction. Traveling by stage the 125 miles to Otoumoa, she found good company and route, and great talk on politics, Negro equality and temperance, and thought the grand old prairies perfectly splendid and the timber-skirted creeks delightful. Before a large gathering of Kansas pioneers, many of whom had driven forty or fifty miles to hear her, she stood tall, straight, and earnest, as she reminded them of the noble heritage of Kansas. Of the bloody years before the war, when in the free state fight, Kansas men and women taught the nation anew the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Lashing out with the vehemence of Phillips against President Johnson's Reconstruction Policy, she warned, there has been no hour fraught with so much danger as the present. 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, would be a disaster, a cruelty, and crime, which would surely bequeath to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars. She then cited the results of the elections in Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, to prove her point that unless Negroes were given the vote, rebels would be put in office and a new code of laws apprenticing Negroes passed, establishing a new form of slavery. She urged her audience to be awake to the politicians who were using the people's reverence and near idolatry of Lincoln to push through anti-Negro legislation under the guise of carrying out his policies. Then, putting behind her the prejudice and impatience with Lincoln, which she had felt during his lifetime, she added, if the administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people one lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and proclaim, and that he, as their 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. In her special pleading for the Negro, she did not forget women, calling attention to the fact that our nation had never been a true republic, because the ballot was exclusively in the hands of the free white male, she asked for a government of the people, men and women, white and black, with Negro suffrage and women's suffrage as basic requirements. So enthusiastic were the Republicans over her speech that they urged her to prepare it for publication, suggesting, however, that she delete the passage on women's suffrage. This was her first intimation that Republicans might balk at enfranchising women. So great had been women's contribution to the winning of the war, and so indebted were the Republicans to women for creating sentiment for the thirteenth amendment that she had come to expect, along with Mrs. Stanton, that the ballot would, without question, be given them as a reward. It was soon obvious to Susan that politicians in the East, as well as in Kansas, were shying away from women's suffrage. Mrs. Stanton reported that even Wendell Phillips was back sliding, not wishing to campaign for Negro suffrage and women's suffrage at the same time. While I could continue, as here to four, arguing for women's rights, just as I do for temperance every day, he had written, still I would not mix the movements. I think such mixture would lose for the Negro far more than we should gain for the woman. I am now engaged in abolishing slavery in a land where the abolition of slavery means conferring or recognizing citizenship, and where citizenship supposes the ballot for all men. Such reasoning filled Susan with despair, for she firmly believed that women who had been asking for full citizenship for seventeen years deserved precedence over the Negro. Mrs. Stanton agreed. To them Negro suffrage, without women's suffrage, was unthinkable, an unbearable humiliation. Half of the Negroes were women, and manhood's suffrage would fasten upon them a new form of slavery. How could Wendell Phillips, they asked each other, fail to recognize not only the timeliness of women's suffrage, but the fact that women were better qualified for the ballot than the majority of Negroes, who, because of their years in slavery, were illiterate easy prey of unscrupulous politicians. By all means and franchise Negroes, they argued with him. But enfranchise women as well, and if there must be a limitation on suffrage, let it be on the basis of literacy, not on the basis of sex. Among Republican members of Congress and abolitionists, there was serious discussion of a fourteenth amendment to extend to the Negro civil rights and the ballot. Susan, reading about this in Kansas, and Mrs. Stanton discussing it in New York with her husband, Wendell Phillips and Robert Dale Owen, saw in such a revision of the Constitution a just and logical opportunity to extend women's rights at the same time. Previously committed to state action on women's suffrage, but only because it had then seemed the necessary first step, both women welcomed the more direct road offered by an amendment to the Constitution. Only they, of all the old women's rights workers, were awake to this opportunity. Throughout the United States, people were thinking about the Constitution as Americans had not done since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Not only were amendments to the Federal Constitution in the air, not only were rebel states being readmitted to the Union with new constitutions, but state constitutions in the North were being revised, and Western territories sought statehood. In Susan's opinion, the time was ripe to proclaim equal rights for all. This, clearly, was women's hour. Come back and help pleaded Elizabeth Stanton, who grew more and more alarmed as she saw all interest in women's suffrage crowded out of the minds of reformers by their zeal for the Negro. I have argued constantly with Phillips and the whole fraternity, but I fear one and all will favor and franchising the Negro without us. Women's cause is in deep water. There is pressing need of our women's rights convention. Susan's spirits revived at the prospect of holding a women's rights convention, and plans for the future began to take shape as she read the closing lines of Mrs. Stanton's letter. I hope in a short time to be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready for you. I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you scold me for all my sins and shortcomings. Oh Susan, you are very dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and all my future plans are based on you as co-agitor. Yes, our work is one. We are one in aim and sympathy and should be together. Come home. Parker Pillsbury also added his plea. Why have you deserted the field of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost twenty centuries? It is not for me to decide your field of labor. Kansas needed John Brown and may need you, but New York is to revise her constitution next year. And if you are absent, who is to make the plea for women? During her newspaper a few days later she found that the politicians had made their first move, introducing in the House of Representatives a resolution writing the word male into the qualifications of voters in the second section of the proposed fourteenth amendment. She started at once for the East. In the long journey back, in the heat of August, traveling by stage and railroad with many stops to make the necessary connections, Susan not only visited her many relatives who had moved to the West, but also called on anti-slavery and women's suffrage workers, and held meetings to plead for free schools for Negroes and for the ballot for Negroes and women. She found people relieved to have the war over and busy with her own affairs, but with prejudices smoldering. Public speaking was still an ordeal for her and she confessed to her diary, made a labored talk, had a struggle to get through with speech, and again had a hard time, thoughts nor words would come, stagger through. However, she was a determined woman. The message must be carried to the people and she would do it whether she suffered in the process or not. Late in September she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester, but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton deep in a serious discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for women's suffrage at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now passed since the last National Women's Rights Convention, and the workers were scattered. Some had lost interest, and others thought only of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with Lucy confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with her. Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey fund she went to New England to revive interest there, and in Concord talked with the Emerson's, Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he thought it wise to demand women's suffrage at this time, he replied, Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide for me in practical matters. Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same time. Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and women's suffrage, gave Susan five hundred dollars from the Hovey fund to finance the petitions, but many of the petitions upon whom she had counted needed a verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for women's suffrage now she was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for women's suffrage would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures. However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in January 1866, the very first demand ever made for congressional action on women's suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up four hundred thousand signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under protest as most inopportune, a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, who for years had been his valiant aide in anti-slavery work. And Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to women's suffrage and ever zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically friendly to women's suffrage, were determined to devote themselves wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's influence she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to present politicians, and she made use of him, although he was regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead, and although he was now advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate as well as in the House, a few because they saw justice in the demands of the women, others because they believed white women should have political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw in their support of women's suffrage an opportunity to harass the Republicans. During 1866, petitions for women's suffrage with 10,000 signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans. In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young editor of The Independent. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his flair for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in December 1865, he had proposed that the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Women's Rights Group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association, which would fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and women's suffrage. Wendell Phillips he suggested for president, and the Anti-Slavery Standard as the paper of the new organization. This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips, however, was cooled to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of amending the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society before any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually oppose their plan. Susan expected this would be taken care of. But when she convened her Women's Rights Convention in New York in May 1866, simultaneously with that of the American Anti-Slavery Society, she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union had been given to the members of the Anti-Slavery Group, and therefore there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the Women's Rights Convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the Negro. To her this seemed a natural development, as she had always thought of women's rights as part of the larger struggle for human rights. For twenty years, she declared, we have pressed the claims of women to the right of representation in the government. Up to this hour, we have looked only to state action for the recognition of our rights. But now, by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage hurts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation in a Republic form of government. There is, there can be, but one true basis, she continued. Taxation and representation must be inseparable, hence our demand must now go beyond women. We therefore wish to broaden our women's rights platform and make it in name of what it has ever been in spirit, a human rights platform. The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton, with all their hearts, wanted this experiment to succeed. And yet, as they resolved their women's rights organization into the American Equal Rights Association, they were apprehensive. They did not have to wait long for disillusionment. Meeting Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton in the Office of the Anti-Slavery Standard to plan a campaign for the Equal Rights Association, they discussed with them what should be done in New York, preparatory to the revision of the State Constitution. Emphatically, Wendell Phillips declared that the time was ripe for striking the word white out of the Constitution but not the word male. This could come, he added, when the Constitution was next revised, some twenty or thirty years later. To their astonishment Theodore Tilton heartily agreed. Then he added, the question of striking out the word male, we, as an Equal Rights Association, shall of course present as an intellectual theory, but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention. Completely unprepared for such an attitude on Tilton's part, Susan retorted with indignation, I would sooner cut off my right hand than ask for the ballot for the black man and not for women. Then telling the two men just what she thought of them for their betrayal of women, she swept out of the office to keep another appointment. Equally exasperated with these men, Mrs. Stanton stayed on, hoping to heal the breach. But when Susan returned to the Stanton home that evening, she found her highly indignant, declaring she was through boosting the Negro over her own head. Then and there they vowed that they would devote themselves with all their might and main to women's suffrage and to that alone. By this time, Congress had passed a civil rights bill over President Johnson's veto, conferring the rights of citizenship upon freedom and a Fourteenth Amendment to make these rights permanent was now before Congress. The latest developments regarding the various drafts of the Fourteenth Amendment were passed along to Susan and Mrs. Stanton by Robert Dale Owen. Senator Sumner, he reported, had yielded to party pressure and now supported the Fourteenth Amendment. Although in the past he had always maintained such an amendment wholly unnecessary since there was already enough justice, liberty, and equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen. Senator Sumner opposed and defeated a clause in the amendment referring to race and color, words which had never previously been mentioned in the Constitution, but he raised no serious objection to the introduction of the word mail as a qualification for suffrage, which was also unprecedented. That he tried time and time again to avoid the word mail when he was redrafting the amendment or that Thaddeus Stevens tried to substitute legal voters for male citizens was no comfort to Susan and Mrs. Stanton as they saw the Fourteenth Amendment writing discrimination against women into the Federal Constitution for the first time. As they carefully read over the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which conferred citizenship on every person born or naturalized in the United States, women's rights seemed assured. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Then in the controversial Second Section, which provided the penalty of reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by the words male inhabitants and male citizens used to define legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to women, there was no doubt. With determination, Susan and Mrs. Stanton fought this injustice. Were they not persons born in the United States, they asked? Were they forever to be regarded as children or as lower than persons along with criminals, idiots and the insane? Were women not counted in the basis of representation and should they not have a voice in the election of those representatives whose office their numbers helped to establish? As Susan studied the Constitution, she saw that the question of suffrage had up to this time been left to the states and that there were no provisions defining suffrage or citizenship or limiting the right of suffrage. Only now was the precedent being broken by the 14th Amendment which conferred citizenship on Negroes and limited suffrage to males. How could this be constitutional? she reasoned when the first lines of the Constitution read We, the people of the United States, in order to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Of course the people must include women if the English language meant what it said. The 14th Amendment with the limiting word male was passed by Congress and referred to the state for ratification in June 1866. As never before, Susan felt the curse of the tradition of the unimportance of women. Once more, politicians and reformers ignored women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesmen of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the 14th Amendment's broad term of persons. Yet according to statements made in later years by John A. Bingham and Roscoe Conkling both sponsors of the amendment and concerned with its drafting, the possibility was considered of protecting corporations and the property of individuals from the interference of state and municipal legislation through the federal control extended by this amendment. At any rate, they wrought well for the corporations which have received abundant protection under the 14th Amendment along with all male citizens while women were left outside the pail. Tactfully, the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage could not be definitely spelled out in the 14th Amendment if it were to be accepted by the people and added that Negro suffrage was all the strain that the Republican Party could bear at this time. But neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come and could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be considered since they had nothing to offer politically. They would vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted. Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican Party Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania whom the abolitionists had labeled the Watchdog of Slavery. When Benjamin wades Bill to enfranchise each and every male person in the District of Columbia without any distinction on account of color or race was discussed on the Senate floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking out the word male and thus leaving the door open for women. He stated the case for women's suffrage well and with eloquence and although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud the issue he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the three-day debate which followed Senator Wilson of Massachusetts declared emphatically he was opposed to connecting the two issues women and Negro suffrage but would at any time support a separate bill for women's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it with women's suffrage but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his approval of women's suffrage even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's amendment as did B. Gratz-Brown of Missouri. In the final vote nine votes were counted for women's suffrage and 37 against. Susan recorded even this defeat as progress for women's suffrage had for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent senators had treated it with respect. The Republican press however was showing definite signs of disapproval even Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Almost unbelieving she read Greeley's editorial A Cry from the Females in which she said talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the glance of an eye. With the Democratic press as always solidly against women's suffrage and the anti-slavery standard avoiding the subject as if it did not exist no words favorable to votes for women now reached the public. It was hard for Susan to forgive the anti-slavery standard for what she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund it owed allegiance, she believed to women as well as the Negro. In protest Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor but among the leading men in the anti-slavery ranks only he, Samuel J. May James Mott and Robert Purvis cultured wealthy Philadelphia Negro were willing to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for women's suffrage at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the Republicans although in the past they had always been distrustful of political parties. Discouraging as this was for Susan their influence upon the anti-slavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one temporarily deserted the women's rights cause persuaded that this was the Negro's hour and that they must be generous renounce their own claims and work only for the Negro's civil and political rights. Less than a dozen remained steadfast among them Lucretia Mott C. Wright Ernestine Rose and for a time Lucy Stone who wrote John Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867 you know Mr. Phillips takes the ground that this is the Negro's hour and that the women, if not criminal are at least not wise to urge their own claim. Now so sure am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given by which the country can be saved is that of women that I want to ask you to use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the charm which compels all men willing or unwilling to listen when he speaks. Mr. Phillips used to say take your part with the perfect and abstract right and trust God to see that it shall prove expedient. Now he needs someone to help him see that point again. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Susan B. Anthony by Alma Lutz This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 The Times That Tried Women's Souls Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights Association. Signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the amendment as utterly inadequate. This protest made she turned her attention to New York's constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for writing women's suffrage into the new constitution. First, she saw it in interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support, which was more important than ever, since he had been chosen a delegate to this convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the Tribune to advocate women's suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he emphatically replied, No. You must not get up any agitation for that measure. Help us get the word white out of the constitution. This is the Negro's hour. Your turn will come next. Convinced that this was also women's hour, she disregarded his opinions and his threats and circulated women's suffrage petitions in all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly respected George William Curtis, now editor of Harper's Magazine and also a convention delegate and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and Garrett Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of signatures, but the Republican Party was at work, cracking its whip, and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the right of suffrage. Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's hearing on women's suffrage. Susan, with her usual forthrightness, answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two women, if you vote, are you ready to fight? Instantly Susan replied, yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war at the point of a goose quill. Then, turning to the other delegates, she reminded them that several hundred women disguised as men had fought in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and paid, they had been discharged in disgrace. Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his oft-repeated trite remark, the best woman I know do not want to vote, Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in Westchester County, and believing heartily in women's suffrage, she had complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton some card to play, should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed he would do. In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries, and noted the many reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. Just before Horace Greeley would give his report, George William Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and three hundred other women, citizens of Westchester, asking that the word mail be stricken from the Constitution. Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head, read as a beat, looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin, squeaky voice, and with as much authority as he could muster declared. Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women. As a result, New York's new Constitution and franchised only mail citizens. Horace Greeley justified his opposition to women's suffrage in a letter to Mankure D. Conway. The keynote of my political creed is the axiom that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. I sought information from different quarters, and practically all agreed in the conclusion that the women of our state do not choose to vote. Individuals do, at least three-fourths of the sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive, just as I reported in favour of enfranchising the blacks because they do wish to vote. The few may not, but the many do. And I think they should control the situation. It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto existed. Horace Greeley never forgave Susan and Mrs. Stanton for humiliating him in the Constitutional Convention or for the headlines in the Evening Papers which coupled his adverse report with his wife's petition. When they met again in New York a few weeks later, at one of Mrs. Kerry's popular evening receptions, he ignored their friendly greeting and brusquely remarked, you two ladies are the most maneuvering politicians in the State of New York. While Susan's work in New York State was at its height, appeals for help had reached her from Republicans in Kansas where in November 1867 two amendments were devoted upon and franchising women and negroes. Unable to go to Kansas herself at that time or to spare Elizabeth Stanton, she rejoiced when Lucy Stone consented to speak throughout Kansas and when she and Lucy as trustees of the Jackson Fund out voting Wendell Phillips were able to appropriate $1,500 for this campaign. Lucy was soon sending enthusiastic reports to Susan from Kansas where she and her husband Henry Blackwell were winning many friends for the cause. I fully expect we shall carry the State, Lucy confidently wrote Susan. The women here are grand and it will be a shame past all expression if they don't get the right to vote. But the negroes are all against us. These men ought not to be allowed to vote before we do because they will be just so much dead weight to lift. One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to withdraw their support from the women's suffrage amendment they had sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan but the New York Tribune and the Independent, both widely read in Kansas published not one word favorable to women's suffrage. For these two papers with their influence and prestige could readily, they believed, win the ballot for women not only in Kansas but throughout the nation. Soon the temper of the Republican press changed from indifference to outright animosity striking at Lucy and Henry Blackwell by calling them free lovers because Lucy was traveling with her husband as Lucy Stone and not as Mrs. Henry B. Blackwell. Still Lucy was hopeful believing the Democrats were ready to take them up but she reminded Susan it will be necessary to have a good force all and you will have to come. Never for a moment did the importance of the selection in Kansas escape Susan and her estimate of it was also that of John Stuart Mill who wrote from England to the sponsor of the Kansas Women's Suffrage Amendment Samuel N. Wood. If your citizens next November give effect to the enlightened views history will remember one of the youngest states in the civilized world has been the first to adopt a measure of liberation destined to extend all over the earth and to be looked back to as one of the most fertile and beneficial consequence of all improvements yet affected in human affairs. Susan fully expected Kansas to be a pioneer for women's suffrage just as it had taken its stand against slavery when the rest of the country held back. Her first problem however was to raise the money to get herself and Elizabeth Stanton there. The grant from the Jackson fund had been spent by the Blackwells and Olympia Brown of Michigan who most providentially volunteered to continue their work when they returned to the east. Olympia Brown recently graduated from Antioch College and ordained as a minister in the Universalist Church was a new recruit to the cause. Young and indefatigable she reached every part of Kansas during the summer driving over the prairies with the singing Hutchinson's. Olympia Brown's valiant help was waiting in New York easier for Susan as she tried in every way to raise money. Further grants from the Jackson fund were cut off by an unfavorable court decision and the trustees of the Hovey fund established to further the rights of both Negroes and women refused to finance a women's suffrage campaign in Kansas. We are left out a dollar, she wrote State Senator Samuel N. Wood. Every speaker who goes to Kansas must now pay her own expenses out of her own private purse unless money should come from some unexpected source. I shall run the risk as I told you and draw upon almost my last hundred to go. I tell you this that you may not contract under the impression that our association can pay for them for it cannot. She did find a way to finance the printing of leaflets so urgently needed for distribution in Kansas. Soliciting advertisements up and down Broadway during the heat of July and August, she collected enough to pay the printer for sixty thousand tracks with the result that along with the dignified, eloquent speeches of Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Parker, George William Curtis and John Stuart Mill went advertisements of house sewing machines, Mademoiselle Demarest's millinery and patterns, Browning's washing machines and decker piano fortes to attract the people of Kansas. With both New York and Kansas on her mind Susan had little time to be with her family, although she had often longed to slip out to Rochester for a visit with her mother and Guelma who had been ill for several months. Finally she spent a few days with them on her way to Kansas. On the long train journey from Rochester to Kansas with such a congenial companion as Elizabeth Stanton she enjoyed every new experience, particularly the new palace cars advertised as the finest, most luxurious in the world costing forty thousand dollars each. The comfortable daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to those two good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort they were to enjoy for many years they were to enjoy for many a day. As soon as they reached Kansas they set out immediately on a two week speaking tour of the principal towns and as usual Susan starred Mrs. Stanton while she herself acted as general manager advertising the meetings finding a suitable hall sweeping it out if necessary distributing and selling tracks and perhaps making a short speech herself the meetings were highly successful but traveling by stage and wagon was rugged most of the food served them was green with soda or floating in grease and the hotels were infested with bed bugs Susan wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the tormentors out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses. Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food as when they stopped at the railroad hotel and Selina and found it run by mother Bikerdijk who marching through Georgia with General Sherman had nursed and fed his soldiers at such times Kansas would take on a rosy glow and Susan could report we are getting along splendidly just the frame of a Methodist church with sightings and roof and rough cottonwood boards for seats was our meeting place last night and a perfect jam it was with men crowded outside at all the windows our tracks do more than half the battle reading matter is so very scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind all that great trunkful were sold and given away at our first fourteen meetings and we in return received one hundred and ten dollars which a little more than paid our railroad fare eight cents per mile and hotel bills our collections thus far fully equal those at the east I have been delightfully disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas meetings the reputation of both women proceeded them to Kansas Susan had to win her way against prejudice built up by newspaper jibes of past years which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old maid but gradually her friendliness hominess and sincerity these preconceptions Kansas soon respected this tall slender energetic woman who as she overrode obstacles showed a spirit akin to that of the frontiersmen Mrs. Stanton on the other hand was welcomed at once with enthusiasm the fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a brilliant orator she was the way for her she was good to look at a queenly woman at 52 with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully curled soft white hair her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor built up a bond of understanding with her audiences people were eager to see her hear her, talk with her and entertain her this preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy she sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small towns and settlements far from the railroad along with their popular and faithful Republican ally Charles Robinson first free state governor of Kansas counting on these two to build up goodwill in the meantime taking her headquarters in Lawrence she reorganized the campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas Republicans availed little as the state was predominantly Republican the prospects were gloomy for the Democrats had not yet taken them up as Lucy Stone had predicted but still opposed both the Negro and women's suffrage amendments a new liquor law which it was thought women would support further complicated the situation aligning the liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against votes for women while Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the Democrats from an unexpected source the St. Louis Suffrage Association urged George Francis train to come to the aid of women in Kansas and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause he telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own expenses knowing little about him except that he was wealthy eccentric and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice although she herself welcomed his help they wired him the people want you the woman want you and he came into the state in a burst of glory speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes flashily dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons white vest black trousers patent leather boots and lavender kid gloves he was a sight worth driving miles to see and he gave his audiences the best entertainment they had had in many a day shouting jingles at them in the midst of his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans here was none of the boredom of most political speeches none of the long sonorous sentences with classical illusions which the big name orators of the day poured out his bold statements his clipped rapid-fire sentences held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not when he spoke in Leavenworth the hall was packed with Irishmen who were building the railroad to the west they hissed when he mentioned women's suffrage but before long he had won them over and they cheered when he shook his finger at them and shouted every man in Kansas who throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother his daughter and his wife at once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification calling train a copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits and eastern Republicans fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in Kansas by their opposition to women's suffrage tried to make last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas to support both amendments even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a Tribune editorial which Susan read with disgust it is plain that the experiment of female suffrage is to be tried and while we regard it with distrust we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas she is a young state and has a memorable history wherein her women have born an honorable part if then a majority of them really desire to vote we if we lived in Kansas should vote to give them the opportunity upon a full and fair trial we believe they would conclude that the right of suffrage for women was on the whole rather a plague than a profit and vote to resign it into the hands of their husbands and fathers these half-hearted appeals were too late for the political machine in Kansas had already done its work and Susan turning her back on such fair weather friends cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously when a Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train on a speaking tour failed him and took his place when Train demurred at the strenuous task ahead she announced she would undertake it alone always the gallant gentleman he accompanied her and continued with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber wagons over rough roads through mud and rain to the remotest settlements far from the railroads because it was a necessity traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not at all unconventional though it was she took charge of the meetings opening them herself with a short sincere plea for both the women and Negro suffrage amendments and then she introduced George Francis Train who, no matter how late they arrived or how tiring the day he changed his wrinkled gray traveling suit for his resplendent platform costume the expectant crowd never failed to respond with a gasp of surprise and immediately the fun began as Train with his wit and his mimicry entertained them calling for their support of women's suffrage and advocating as well some of his own pet ideas as well as paying our national debt in greenbacks establishing an eight hour day in industry and even nominating himself for president amused by his dramatics and often amazed at his conceit Susan found neither as objectionable as the outright falsehood circulated by opponents of women's suffrage and the days went by with their continued hardships and increasing fatigue she marveled at his unfailing courteousness his pluck and good cheer while he in turn admired her courage her endurance and her zeal for her cause and between them a bond of respect and loyalty was built up which could not be destroyed by the pressures of later years during the long hours on the road he entertained her with the story of his life and his travels and adventure story of a poor boy who had made good building clipperships introducing American goods in Australia traveling in India China and Russia promoting street railways in England and now building the Union Pacific he had a wealth of information to impart their views on the Negro differed sharply raiding the whole race as inferior and incapable of improvement he naturally opposed and franchising Negroes before women she on the other hand had always regarded Negroes as her equals and in campaigning with train she had to make her choice between Negroes and women she chose women just as her abolitionist friends in the east had chosen the Negro and their indifference and opposition to women's suffrage at this crucial time was as unforgivable to her as was his valuation of the Negro to them they called him a copperhead remembering his southern wife and his hatred of abolitionists his vocal resistance to the draft and his demands for immediate unconditional peace they ignored entirely his defense of the Union in England during the Civil War when he publicly debated with Englishmen who supported the Confederacy they abused him in their newspapers and he, not to be outdone ridiculed them in his speeches shouting where is Wendell Phillips today lost cast everywhere inconsistent in all things cowardly in this where is Horace Greeley in this Kansas war for liberty pitching the women's suffrage idea out of the convention and bailing out Jeff Davis where is William Lloyd Garrison being padded on the shoulders by his employers our enemies abroad for his faithful work in trying to destroy our nation where is Henry Ward Beecher writing a story for Bonner's ledger they never forgave him this estimate of them nor did they forgive Susan for associating herself with him on one of the last days of the Kansas campaign while she was driving over the prairie with him he suddenly asked her why the women's suffrage people did not have a paper of their own not lack of brains but lack of money she tersely replied they talked for a while about the good such a paper would do about the people who should edit and write for it what name it should have then he said simply I will give you the money because a women's suffrage paper had been her cherished dream for so many years she did not dare regard this as more than a gallant gesture soon to be forgotten but to her amazement that very evening she heard train announce to his audience when Miss Anthony gets back to New York she is going to start a women's suffrage paper it's name is to be the revolution it's motto men their rights and nothing more women their rights and nothing less this paper is to be a weekly price? $2 per year it's editors Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury it's proprietor Susan B. Anthony let everybody subscribe for it Election Day brought both Susan and Mrs. Stanton back to Leavenworth to Daniel's home the verdict of the people of Kansas as the returns came in their hope of seeing Kansas become the first women's suffrage state quickly faded neither their amendment nor the Negroes polled enough votes for adoption their women's suffrage amendment however received only 1,773 votes less than the republican sponsored Negro amendment and to have accomplished this in a hard fought bitter campaign against powerful opponents gave them confidence in themselves and in their judgment of men and events no longer need they depend upon Wendell Phillips or other abolitionist leaders for guidance from now on they would chart their own course this led, they believed to Washington they must gain support among members of congress for a federal women's suffrage amendment few if any republicans would help them but already one democrat had come forward george frances train had offered to pay their expenses if they would join him on a lecture tour on their way east to Susan who had to raise every penny spent in her work answered to prayer as did his proposal to finance a women's suffrage paper for them by this time their abolitionist friends in the east were writing them indignant letters blaming the defeat of the Negro amendment on george frances train and warning them not to link women's suffrage with an unbalanced charlatan even their devoted friends in Kansas including Governor Robinson advised them against further association with train they did not make their decision lightly nor was it easy to go against the judgment of respected friends but of this they were confident that with or without train they would estrange most of their old friends if they campaigned for women's suffrage now without him their work limited by lack of funds would be ineffectual with his financial backing they not only had the opportunity of spreading their message in all the principal cities on their way back to New York but had the promise of a paper now so desperately needed when other news channels were closed to them that train was eccentric they agreed they also admitted that possibly some of his financial theories were unsound they believed he was ahead of his time when he advocated the eight hour day and the abolition of standing armies but at least he looked forward not backward Susan had found him to be a man of high principles she had heard him make speeches on women's suffrage that could be equaled only by John B. Goff well-known temperance crusader train's radical ideas did not disturb her their association with anti-slavery extremists prior to the Civil War had made her impervious to the criticism and accusations of conservatives she was aware that on this proposed lecture tour train probably wanted to make use of her executive ability and of Mrs. Stanton's popularity as a speaker but on the other hand his generosity to them was beyond anything they had ever experienced for Susan there was only one choice to work for women's suffrage with the financial backing of train Mrs. Stanton agreed and as she expressed it I have always found that when we see eye to eye we are sure to be right and when we pull together we are strong I take my beloved Susan's judgment against the world traveling homeward with George Francis train Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke in Chicago St. Louis Louisville Cincinnati Cleveland Rochester Hartford and other important cities which had never before listened to a discussion of women's suffrage most of their old friends among the suffragists and abolitionists shunned them for they had been warned against this folly by their colleagues in the east the lively meetings rated plenty of publicity complimentary in the Democratic papers but sarcastic and hostile in the Republican press usually women's suffrage got the headlines but sometimes it was women's suffrage and greenbacks or train for president handbills the printing of which Susan supervised scattered trains rhymes and epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all meetings would be turned over to the women's rights cause Susan also arranged for the printing of trains widely distributed pamphlet the great epigram campaign of Kansas with this jingle so uncomplementary to the eastern abolitionists on its cover the garrisons, philipses, grelies and beechers false prophets, false guides false teachers and preachers left Mrs. Stanton Miss Anthony, Brown and Stone to fight the Kansas battle alone while your Rosses Pomerois and your Clarks stood on the fence or basely fled while women was saved by a copperhead even more unforgivable than this to the abolitionist suffragists with a back page advertisements of a new woman's suffrage paper The Revolution and of women's rights tracks should be purchased from Susan B. Anthony secretary of the American Equal Rights Association that Susan would presume to line up this organization in any way with George Francis train aroused the indignation of Lucy Stone who felt the cause was being trailed in the dust while Susan and Mrs. Stanton traveled homeward enjoying the comfort of the best hotels and the applause of enthusiastic audiences a coalition against them was being formed in the East all the old friends with scarce an exception are sure we are wrong Susan wrote in her diary January 1st, 1868 only time can tell but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed End of Chapter 10