Susan B. Anthony

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The Fourteenth Amendment with the limiting word "male" was passed by
Congress and referred to the states 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 had ignored
women's inherent rights as human beings. In spite of women's
intelligence and their wartime service to their country, no statesman
of power or vision felt it at all necessary to include women under the
Fourteenth 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 Fourteenth Amendment, along
with all male citizens, while women were left outside the pale.[181]

Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage
could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth 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 Wade's 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 woman 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 that he was opposed to connecting the two
issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a
separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas
objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it
with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his
approval of woman 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 woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182]

Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman 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 he 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
woman suffrage and the _Antislavery Standard_ avoiding the subject as
if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached
the public.[183]

It was hard for Susan to forgive the _Antislavery 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 antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and
Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing
to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman 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
antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one
temporarily deserted the woman'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 Negroes' civil and political rights.
Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha
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 WOMAN, 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."[184]

FOOTNOTES:

[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's
Vineyard, in 1864.

[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs.
Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester.
Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street
in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable
insurance business.

[161] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 241.

[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.

[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862.

[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.

[165] _Ibid._

[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862.

[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.

[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245.

[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.

[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.

[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967.

[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105.

[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244.

[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.

[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865.

[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251.

[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97.

[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260.

[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323.

[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus
Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its
citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of
the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not
disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was
a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."

[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112;
Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana,
Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.

[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B.
Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted
for woman suffrage.

[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to
woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came
out against it.

[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_
(Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H.
Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported
woman suffrage at this time.

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."[185]

This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's
constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for
writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an
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 woman 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."[186]

Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his
opinions and his threats and circulated woman 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
Gerrit 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 woman 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.[187]

Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his
oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women 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 woman suffrage she had
complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play,
should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed
he would do.[188]

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 was to 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 300 other women,
citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from
the Constitution."[189]

Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily
took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet,
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 enfranchised only
male citizens.[190]

Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter
to Moncure 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
favor 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...."[191]

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
Alice Cary'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."[192]

* * * * *

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 would be voted upon, enfranchising 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, outvoting 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."[193]

One cloud now appeared on the horizon. Republicans in Kansas began to
withdraw their support from the woman suffrage amendment they had
sponsored. It troubled Lucy and Susan that the New York _Tribune_ and
the _Independent_, both widely read in Kansas, published not one word
favorable to woman 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 here in the fall, and you will have
to come."

Never for a moment did the importance of this election 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 woman
suffrage amendment, Samuel N. Wood, "If your citizens next November
give effect to the enlightened views of your Legislature, 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 in
beneficial consequences of all improvements yet effected in human
affairs."[194]

Susan fully expected Kansas to pioneer for woman 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 Hutchinsons.[195]

Olympia Brown's valiant help made 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 woman suffrage campaign in
Kansas.

"We are left without 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 _debts_ under the impression that _our_ Association can pay
for them--_for it cannot_."[196]

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 60,000 tracts, 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 Howe sewing machines, Mme. Demorest's millinery and
patterns, Browning's washing machines, and Decker pianofortes to
attract the people of Kansas.

* * * * *

With both New York and Kansas on her mind, Susan had 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 $40,000 each. The comfortable
daytime seats transformed into beds at night and the meals served by
solicitous Negro waiters were of the greatest interest to these two
good housekeepers and the last bit of comfort 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 tracts, 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 bedbugs. Susan
wrote her family of sleepless nights and of picking the "tormentors"
out of their bonnets and the ruffles of their dresses.[197]

Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when
they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by
Mother Bickerdyke, 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 sidings 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 tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very
scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that
great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings,
and we in return received $110 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."[198]

The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win
her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years
which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old
maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke
down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender
energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin
to that of the frontiersman.

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 opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a
queenly woman at fifty-two, 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 good will. In
the meantime, making 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
woman 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, help came 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
women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory,
speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences.
A tall 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 allusions 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 woman
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, his sister, and his wife."[200]

[Illustration: George Francis Train]

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 woman suffrage, tried to make
last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters 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 borne 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...."[201]

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