Susan B. Anthony

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At first in Oregon she was apprehensive about facing an audience
because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton,
"But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in
store for me."[273] She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's
right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to
be self-supporting, and clearly and logically she marshaled her facts
and her arguments. Occasionally she obliged with a temperance speech,
or gathered women together to talk to them about the social evil,
relieved when they responded to this delicate subject with earnestness
and gratitude. Practice soon made her an easy, extemporaneous speaker.
Yet she was only now and then satisfied with her efforts, recording in
her diary, "Was happy in a real Patrick Henry speech."[274]

The proceeds from her lectures were disappointing, as money was scarce
in the West that winter, and she had just decided to return to the
East to spend Christmas with her mother and sisters when she was urged
to accept lecture engagements in California. Putting her own personal
longings behind her, she took the stage to California, sitting outside
with the driver so that she could better enjoy the scenery and learn
more about the people who had settled this new lonely overpowering
country. "Horrible indeed are the roads," she wrote her mother, "miles
and miles of corduroy and then twenty miles ... of black mud.... How
my thought does turn homeward, mother."[275]

This time she was warmly received in San Francisco. The prejudice, so
vocal six months before, had disappeared. "Made my Fourteenth
Amendment argument splendidly," she wrote in her diary. "All delighted
with it and me--and it is such a comfort to have the friends feel that
I help the good work on."[276]

She was gaining confidence in herself and wrote her family, "I miss
Mrs. Stanton. Still I can not but enjoy the feeling that the people
call on me, and the fact that I have an opportunity to sharpen my wits
a little by answering questions and doing the chatting, instead of
merely sitting a lay figure and listening to the brilliant
scintillations as they emanate from her never-exhausted magazine.
There is no alternative--whoever goes into a parlor or before an
audience with that woman does it at a cost of a fearful overshadowing,
a price which I have paid for the last ten years, and that cheerfully,
because I felt our cause was most profited by her being seen and
heard, and my best work was making the way clear for her."[277]

Starting homeward through Wyoming and Nevada where she also had
lecture engagements, she wrote in her diary on January 1, 1872, "6
months of constant travel, full 8000 miles, 108 lectures. The year's
work full 13,000 miles travel--170 meetings." On the train she met the
new California Senator, Aaron A. Sargent, his wife Ellen, and their
children. A warm friendship developed on this long journey during
which the train was stalled in deep snow drifts. "This is indeed a
fearful ordeal, fastened here ... midway of the continent at the top
of the Rocky mountains," she recorded. "The railroad has supplied the
passengers with soda crackers and dried fish.... Mrs. Sargent and I
have made tea and carried it throughout the train to the nursing
mothers."[278] The Sargents had brought their own food for the journey
and shared it with Susan. This and the good conversation lightened the
ordeal for her, especially as both Senator and Mrs. Sargent believed
heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for
the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage.

This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was
the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These
men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the
dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice
of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country.

* * * * *

Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking
her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped
to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the
national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for
which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She
found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism
and dissension.

Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention: "I have
been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?'
Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to
Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to
Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the
judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was
young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to
capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."[279]

"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs.
Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I
did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of
Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about
Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they
make themselves."

Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this
convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches
calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate
her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had
concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and
she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly
she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President
toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right
to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

This time it was Susan, not Victoria, who was granted a hearing before
the Senate judiciary committee. "At the close of the war," Susan
reminded the Senators, "Congress lifted the question of suffrage for
men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the
deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the
Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed ... we rushed to you with
petitions praying you not to insert the word 'male' in the second
clause. Our best friends ... said to us: 'The insertion of that word
puts no new barrier against women; therefore do not embarrass us but
wait until we get the Negro question settled.' So the Fourteenth
Amendment with the word 'male' was adopted.[280]

"When the Fifteenth was presented without the word 'sex,'" she
continued, "we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends
declared that the absence of the word was no hindrance to us, and
again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war,
saying, 'After we have enfranchised the Negro, we will take up your
case.'

"Have they done as they promised?" she asked. "When we come asking
protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men
say to us ... to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in
the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void
the word 'male' in the Fourteenth and supply the want of the word
'sex' in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon
yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the
end a bloody revolution...."

Unconvinced of the urgency or even the desirability of votes for
women, the Senate judiciary committee promptly issued an adverse
report, but Susan was assured that her cause had a few persistent
supporters in Congress when Benjamin Butler presented petitions to the
House for a declaratory act for the Fourteenth Amendment and
Congressman Parker of Missouri introduced a bill granting women the
right to vote and hold office in the territories.

* * * * *

Susan now turned to the more sympathetic West to take her plea for
woman suffrage directly to the people. Speaking almost daily in
Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, she had little time to think of
the work in the East; the glamor of Victoria Woodhull faded, and she
realized that her own hard monotonous spade work would in the long run
do more for the cause than the meteoric rise of a vivid personality
who gave only part of herself to the task.

When letters came from Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker showing plainly
that they were falling in with Victoria's plans to form a new
political party, Susan at once dashed off these lines of warning: "We
have no element out of which to make a political party, because there
is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he
endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's, or Temperance
party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown
away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting."[281]

Then she added, "Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has
the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her
port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits ... I
might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is she is
wholly owned and dominated by _men_ spirits and I spurn the whole lot
of them...."

A few weeks later, as she looked over the latest copy of _Woodhull &
Claflin's Weekly_, she was horrified to find her name signed to a call
to a political convention sponsored by the National Woman Suffrage
Association. Immediately she telegraphed Mrs. Stanton to remove her
name and wrote stern indignant letters begging her and Mrs. Hooker not
to involve the National Association in Victoria Woodhull's
presidential campaign. Although she herself had often called for a new
political party while she was publishing _The Revolution_, she was
practical enough to recognize that a party formed under Victoria
Woodhull's banner was doomed to failure.

Returning to New York, she found both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker
still completely absorbed in Victoria's plans. Bringing herself up to
date once more on the latest developments in the colorful life of
Victoria Woodhull, she found that she had been lecturing on "The
Impending Revolution" to large enthusiastic audiences and that she had
again been called into court by her family. Goaded to defiance by an
increasingly virulent press, Victoria had also begun to blackmail
suffragists who she thought were her enemies, among them Mrs. Bullard,
Mrs. Blake, and Mrs. Phelps. This made Susan take steps at once to
free the National Association of her influence.

When Victoria Woodhull, followed by a crowd of supporters, sailed into
the first business session of the National Woman Suffrage Association
in New York, announcing that the People's convention would hold a
joint meeting with the suffragists, Susan made it plain that they
would do nothing of the kind, as Steinway Hall had been engaged for a
woman suffrage convention. With relief, she watched Victoria and her
flock leave for a meeting place of their own. Disgruntled at what she
called Susan's intolerance, Mrs. Stanton then asked to be relieved of
the presidency. Elected to take her place, Susan was now free to cope
with Victoria, should this again become necessary.

Not to be outmaneuvered by Susan, Victoria made a surprise appearance
near the end of the evening session and moved that the convention
adjourn to meet the next morning in Apollo Hall with the people's
convention. Quickly one of her colleagues seconded the motion. Susan
refused to put this motion, standing quietly before the excited
audience, stern and somber in her steel-gray silk dress. Beside her on
the platform, Victoria, intense and vivid, put the motion herself, and
it was overwhelmingly carried by her friends scattered among the
suffragists. Declaring this out of order because neither Victoria nor
many of those voting were members of the National Association, Susan
in her most commanding voice adjourned the convention to meet in the
same place the next morning. Victoria, however, continued her demands
until Susan ordered the janitor to turn out the lights. Then the
audience dispersed in the darkness.

With these drastic measures, Susan rescued the National Woman Suffrage
Association from Victoria Woodhull, who had her own triumph later at
Apollo Hall, where, surrounded by wildly cheering admirers, she was
nominated for President of the United States by the newly formed Equal
Rights party.

Reading about Victoria's nomination in the morning papers, Susan
breathed a prayer of gratitude for a narrow escape, recording in her
diary, "There never was such a foolish muddle--all come of Mrs. S.
[Stanton] consulting and conceding to Woodhull & calling a People's
Con[vention].... All came near being lost.... I never was so hurt with
the folly of Stanton.... Our movement as such is so demoralized by
letting go the helm of ship to Woodhull--though we rescued it--it was
as by a hair breadth escape." She was surprised to find no
condemnation of her actions in _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_ but only
the implication that the suffragists were too slow for Victoria's
great work.[282]

The attitude of some of the leading suffragists toward Victoria
Woodhull remained a problem. Fortunately Mrs. Stanton came back into
line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under
Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood,
campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria
Woodhull.

* * * * *

While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the
sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of
financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication
of her _Weekly_, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and
Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the
liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George
W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored
woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a
persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better.
Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated
Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this
coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go
the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a
plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which
Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important,
powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform.

"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its
obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to
the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is
received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of
citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful
consideration."[283]

Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her
Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready
to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown
around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the
two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and
work together for "the living, vital issue of today--freedom to
women."

She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward
to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school
district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were
generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New
York, Philadelphia, Rochester, and other large cities. For speakers
she sought both Lucy Stone and Anna E. Dickinson, but Lucy made it
plain in letters to Mrs. Stanton that she would take no part in
Republican rallies conducted by Susan, and Anna responded with a
torrent of false accusations.[284] Only Mary Livermore of the American
Association consented to speak at Susan's Republican rallies; but with
Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Olympia Brown to call upon, Susan did
not lack for effective orators.

In an _Appeal to the Women of America_, financed by the Republicans
and widely circulated, she urged the election of Grant and Wilson and
the defeat of Horace Greeley, whom she described as women's most
bitter opponent. "Both by tongue and pen," she declared, "he has
heaped abuse, ridicule, and misrepresentation upon our leading women,
while the whole power of the _Tribune_ had been used to crush our
great reform...."[285]

Beyond this she was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time
friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and
defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not
join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding
Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the
Democracy.... My sense of justice and truth is outraged by the
Harper's cartoons of Greeley and the general falsifying tone of the
Republican press. It is not fair for us to join in the cry that
everybody who is opposed to the present administration is either a
Democrat or an apostate."[286]

Susan sensed a change in the Republicans' attitude toward women, as
they grew increasingly confident of victory. Not only did they refuse
further financial aid, but criticized Susan roundly because in her
speeches she emphasized woman suffrage rather than the virtues of the
Republican party. She ignored their complaints, and wrote Mrs.
Stanton, "If you are willing to go forth ... saying that you endorse
the party on any other point ... than that of its recognition of
woman's claim to vote, _I_ am not...."[287]

FOOTNOTES:

[262] A former Congressman from Ohio, a personal friend of Senator
Benjamin Wade who was a loyal friend of woman suffrage.

[263] _The Revolution_, V, March 19, 1870, pp. 154-155, 159.

[264] Clipping from _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Susan B. Anthony
Scrapbook, Library of Congress.

[265] Emanie, Sachs, _The Terrible Siren_ (New York, 1928), p. 87.
After hearing Victoria Woodhull speak at a woman suffrage meeting in
Philadelphia, Lucretia Mott wrote her daughters, March 21, 1871, "I
wish you could have heard Mrs. Woodhull ... so earnest yet modest and
dignified, and so full of faith that she is divinely inspired for her
work. The 30 or 40 persons present were much impressed with her work
and beautiful utterances." Garrison Papers, Sophia Smith Collection,
Smith College.

[266] May 20, 1871, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington
Library.

[267] _The Golden Age_, Dec., 1871.

[268] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 388.

[269] _Ibid._, pp. 389-390.

[270] _Ibid._, pp. 391-394. Laura Fair, who reportedly had been the
mistress of Alexander P. Crittenden for six years, was acquitted of
his murder on the grounds that his death was not due to her pistol
shot but to a disease from which he was suffering. Julia Cooley
Altrocchi, _The Spectacular San Franciscans_ (New York, 1949).

[271] Ms., Diary, July 13-23, 1871.

[272] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396.

[273] _Ibid._

[274] Ms., Diary, Oct. 13, 1871.

[275] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 403.

[276] Ms., Diary, Dec. 15, 1871.

[277] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 396.

[278] Ms., Diary, Jan. 2, 1872.

[279] _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, Jan. 23, 1873.

[280] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 410-411.

[281] _Ibid._, p. 413.

[282] Ms., Diary, May 8, 10, 12, 1872.

[283] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 416-417.

[284] Ms., Diary, Sept. 21, 1872. Lucy Stone wrote in the _Woman's
Journal_, July 27, 1872, "We are glad that the wing of the movement to
which these ladies belong have decided to cast in their lot with the
Republican party. If they had done so sooner, it would have been
better for all concerned...."

[285] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 519. The Republicans
financed a paper, _Woman's Campaign_, edited by Helen Barnard, which
published some of Susan's speeches and which Susan for a time hoped to
convert into a woman suffrage paper.

[286] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 422.

[287] _Ibid._

TESTING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

Susan preached militancy to women throughout the presidential campaign
of 1872, urging them to claim their rights under the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments by registering and voting in every state in the
Union.

Even before Francis Minor had called her attention to the
possibilities offered by these amendments, she had followed with great
interest a similar effort by Englishwomen who, in 1867 and 1868, had
attempted to prove that the "ancient legal rights of females" were
still valid and entitled women property holders to vote for
representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in
Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the
case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that
"every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This
legal contest had been fully reported in _The Revolution_, and
disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to
establish justice as an indication of a great awakening and uprising
among women.

There had also been heartening signs in her own country, which she
hoped were the preparation for more successful militancy to come. She
had exulted in _The Revolution_ in 1868 over the attempt of women to
vote in Vineland, New Jersey. Encouraged by the enfranchisement of
women in Wyoming in 1869, Mary Olney Brown and Charlotte Olney French
had cast their votes in Washington Territory. A young widow, Marilla
Ricker, had registered and voted in New Hampshire in 1870, claiming
this right as a property holder, but her vote was refused. In 1871,
Nannette B. Gardner and Catherine Stebbins in Detroit, Catherine V.
White in Illinois, Ellen R. Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz, California,
and Carrie S. Burnham in Philadelphia registered and attempted to
vote. Only Mrs. Gardner's vote was accepted. That same year, Sarah
Andrews Spencer, Sarah E. Webster, and seventy other women marched to
the polls to register and vote in the District of Columbia. Their
ballots refused, they brought suit against the Board of Election
Inspectors, carrying the case unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court of
the United States.[289] Another test case based on the Fourteenth
Amendment had also been carried to the Supreme Court by Myra Bradwell,
one of the first women lawyers, who had been denied admission to the
Illinois bar because she was a woman.

With the spotlight turned on the Fourteenth Amendment by these women,
lawyers here and there throughout the country were discussing the
legal points involved, many admitting that women had a good case. Even
the press was friendly.

Susan had looked forward to claiming her rights under the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments and was ready to act. She had spent the
thirty days required of voters in Rochester with her family and as she
glanced through the morning paper of November 1, 1872, she read these
challenging words, "Now Register!... If you were not permitted to vote
you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face
death for it...."[290]

This was all the reminder she needed. She would fight for this right.
She put on her bonnet and coat, telling her three sisters what she
intended to do, asked them to join her, and with them walked briskly
to the barber shop where the voters of her ward were registering.
Boldly entering this stronghold of men, she asked to be registered.
The inspector in charge, Beverly W. Jones, tried to convince her that
this was impossible under the laws of New York. She told him she
claimed her right to vote not under the New York constitution but
under the Fourteenth Amendment, and she read him its pertinent lines.
Other election inspectors now joined in the argument, but she
persisted until two of them, Beverly W. Jones and Edwin F. Marsh, both
Republicans, finally consented to register the four women.

This mission accomplished, Susan rounded up twelve more women willing
to register. The evening papers spread the sensational news, and by
the end of the registration period, fifty Rochester women had joined
the ranks of the militants.

On election day, November 5, 1872, Susan gleefully wrote Elizabeth
Stanton, "Well, I have gone and done it!!--positively voted the
Republican ticket--Strait--this A.M. at 7 o'clock--& swore my vote in
at that.... All my three sisters voted--Rhoda deGarmo too--Amy Post
was rejected & she will immediately bring action against the
registrars.... Not a jeer not a word--not a look--disrespectful has
met a single woman.... I hope the mornings telegrams will tell of many
women all over the country trying to vote.... I hope you voted
too."[291]

* * * * *

Election day did not bring the general uprising of women for which
Susan had hoped. In Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Connecticut, as in
Rochester, a few women tried to vote. In New York City, Lillie
Devereux Blake and in Fayetteville, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage had
courageously gone to the polls only to be turned away. Elizabeth
Stanton did not vote on November 5, 1872, and her lack of enthusiasm
about a test case in the courts was very disappointing to Susan.

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