Susan B. Anthony

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Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and
breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of
abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these
evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them
successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics,
revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a
foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence
rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously
mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against
England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for
New York and Washington and which she described as licensed
prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social
corruption.

Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as
the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more
statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work
formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually
taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a
living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were
supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet
their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and
comfortable shelter into an immoral life.

Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who
now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell
themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she
told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of
financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence.
Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women
like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322]

"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals.
Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees,
legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there
must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers,
doctors--that wherever women go to seek counsel--spiritual, legal,
physical--there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest
of their own sex to minister to them."

Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a
necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will
cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the
equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions."

She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make
the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise,
rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them,
have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges,
jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our
courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married
woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence.

Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity
presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause
was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott,
fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling
approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott
declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner,
truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323]

She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas,
and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the
issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed
by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper
observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the
sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the
subject."[324]

* * * * *

Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief
turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her
message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw
justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the
East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new.
Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had
brought to lonely bleak western towns--better homes, cleanliness,
comfort, then schools, churches, law and order--and many of them were
willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to
translate that willingness into law.

As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her
family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending
to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she
recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have
paid the last dollar of the _Revolution_ debt."[325]

Even the press took notice, the Chicago _Daily News_ commenting, "By
working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could
earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors
of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan
B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326]

FOOTNOTES:

[314] Ms., Diary, Nov. 4, 1874.

[315] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 457. Frances Willard took her stand for
woman suffrage in the W.C.T.U. in 1876.

[316] Ms., Diary, Sept., 1877.

[317] To James Redpath, Dec. 23, 1870, Alma Lutz Collection.

[318] New York _Graphic_, Sept. 12, 1874. Mrs. Hooker believed her
half-brother guilty and repeatedly urged him to confess, assuring him
she would join him in announcing "a new social freedom." Kenneth R.
Andrews, Nook Farm (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 36-39. Rumors that
Mrs. Hooker was insane were deliberately circulated.

[319] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 463.

[320] _Ibid._ Only a few entries relating to the Beecher-Tilton case
remain in the Susan B. Anthony diaries, now in the Library of
Congress, and the diary for 1875 is not there.

[321] _Ibid._, p. 462.

[322] _Ibid._, II, pp. 1007-1009.

[323] _Ibid._, I, p. 468.

[324] _Ibid._, p. 470. Miss Anthony interrupted her lecturing for nine
weeks to nurse her brother Daniel after he had been shot by a rival
editor in Leavenworth.

[325] _Ibid._, p. 472.

[326] _Ibid._, p. 473.

A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT

Like everyone else in the United States in 1876, Susan now turned her
attention to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which was
proclaiming to the world the progress this new country had made. Susan
pointed out, however, that one hundred years after the signing of the
Declaration of Independence, women were still deprived of basic
citizenship rights.

As an afterthought, a Woman's Pavilion had been erected on the
exposition grounds and exhibited here she found only women's
contribution to the arts but nothing which would in any way show the
part women had played in building up the country or developing
industry. She longed to explain so that all could hear how the skilled
work of women had contributed to the prosperous textile and shoe
industries, to the manufacture of cartridges and Waltham watches, and
countless other products. Could she have had her way, she would have
made the Woman's Pavilion an eloquent appeal for equal rights, but
unable to do this, she established a center of rebellion for the
National Woman Suffrage Association at 1431 Chestnut Street, in
parlors on the first floor. Here she spent many happy hours directing
the work, often sleeping on the sofa so that she could work late and
save money for the cause.

Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott.
Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a
comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs.
Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in
June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary,
"Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."[327]

Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national
conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of
enfranchising women in this centennial year. But no woman suffrage
plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs.
Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a
document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed
for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for
presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in
Independence Square.

Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made
plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as
reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth _Times_. Mrs.
Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so
indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the
Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First
Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan
by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of
her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah
Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they
pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that
bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the
platform.

By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting
Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony.
Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made
one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for
permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather
than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her
four friends on the platform.

"We ... sat there waiting ..." reported Mrs. Blake. "The heat was
frightful.... Amid such a throng it was difficult to hear anything ...
We decided that our presentation should take place immediately after
Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the
Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document,
and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was
exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice
was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,'
and cried, 'Now is the time.'

"We all four rose, Miss Anthony first, next Mrs. Gage, bearing our
engrossed Declaration, and Mrs. Spencer and myself following with
hundreds of printed copies in our hands. There was a stir in the
crowd just at the time, and General Hawley who had been keeping a wary
eye on us, had relaxed his vigilance for a moment, as he signed to the
band to resume playing. He did not see us advancing until we reached
the Vice President's dais. There Miss Anthony, taking the parchment
from Mrs. Gage, stepped forward and presented it to Mr. Ferry, saying,
'I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of
the United States.'"[328]

Nonplussed, Mr. Ferry bowed low and received the Declaration without a
word. Then the four intrepid women filed out, distributing printed
copies of their declaration while General Hawley boomed out, "Order!
Order!"

Leaving the square and mounting a platform erected for musicians in
front of Independence Hall, they waited until a curious crowd had
gathered around them. Then while Mrs. Gage held an umbrella over Susan
to shield her from the hot sun, she read the Women's Declaration in a
loud clear voice that carried far.

"We do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of
self-government," she began. "Our faith is firm and unwavering in the
broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as
abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot
forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and
clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of
citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the
degradation of disfranchisement."[329]

Then she enumerated women's grievances and the crowd applauded as she
drove home point after point.

"Woman," she continued, "has shown equal devotion with man to the
cause of freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense.
Together they have made this country what it is.... We ask our rulers,
at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges.... We ask
justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights
that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us
and our daughters forever."

Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which
eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her
four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager
audience awaited their report and hailed their courage.

[Illustration: Aaron A. Sargent]

The New York _Tribune_, commenting on Susan's militancy, prophesied
that it foreshadowed "the new forms of violence and disregard of order
which may accompany the participation of women in active partisan
politics."[330]

* * * * *

Nor was Congress impressed by Susan's centennial publicity demanding a
federal woman suffrage amendment. She had gathered petitions from
twenty-six states with 10,000 signatures which were presented to the
Senate in 1877. The majority of the Senators found these petitions
uproariously funny, and Susan in the visitors' gallery at the time of
their presentation was infuriated by the mirth and disrespect of these
men. "A few read the petitions as they would any other, with dignity
and without comment," reported the popular journalist, Mary Clemmer,
in her weekly Washington column, "but the majority seemed intensely
conscious of holding something unutterably funny in their hands....
The entire Senate presented the appearance of a laughing school
practicing sidesplitting and ear-extended grins." After a few humorous
and sarcastic remarks the petitions were referred to the Committee on
Public Lands. Only one Senator, Aaron A. Sargent of California, was
"man enough and gentleman enough to lift the petitions from this
insulting proposition.... He ... demanded for the petition of more
than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be given any
other."[331]

Although his words did not deter the Senators, Susan was proud of this
tall vigorous white-haired Californian and grateful for his
spontaneous support in this humiliating situation. He had been a
trusted friend and counselor ever since she had shared with him and
his family the long snowy journey from Nevada in 1872. She looked
forward to the time when woman suffrage would have more such advocates
in the Congress and when she would find there new faces and a more
liberal spirit.

Disappointment only drove Susan into more intensive activity. Between
lectures she now nursed her sister Hannah who was critically ill in
Daniel's home in Leavenworth. After Hannah's death in May 1877, Susan
worked off her grief in Colorado, where the question of votes for
women was being referred to the people of the state.

The suffragists in Colorado were headed by Dr. Alida Avery, who had
left her post as resident physician at the new woman's college,
Vassar, to practice medicine in Denver. Making Dr. Avery's home her
headquarters, Susan carried her plea for the ballot to settlements far
from the railroads, traveling by stagecoach over rough lonely roads
through magnificent scenery. Holding meetings wherever she could, she
spoke in schoolhouses, in hotel dining rooms, and even in saloons,
when no other place was available, and always she was treated with
respect and listened to with interest. Occasionally only a mere
handful gathered to hear her, but in Lake City she spoke to an
audience of a thousand or more from a dry-goods box on the court-house
steps. She was equal to anything, but the mining towns depressed her,
for they were swarming with foreigners who had been welcomed as
naturalized, enfranchised citizens and who almost to a man opposed
extending the vote to women. This precedence of foreign-born men over
American women was not only galling to her but menaced, she believed,
the growth of American democracy.

Woman suffrage was defeated in Colorado in 1877, two to one. With the
Chinese coming into the state in great numbers to work in the mines,
the specter that stalked through this campaign was the fear of putting
the ballot into the hands of Chinese women.

From Colorado, Susan moved on to Nebraska with a new lecture, "The
Homes of Single Women." Although she much preferred to speak on "Woman
and the Sixteenth Amendment" or "Bread and the Ballot," she realized
that, in order to be assured of return engagements, she must
occasionally vary her subjects, but she was unwilling to wander far
afield while women's needs still were so great. By means of this new
lecture she hoped to dispel the widespread, deeply ingrained fallacy
that single women were unwanted helpless creatures wholly dependent
upon some male relative for a home and support. Aware that this
mistaken estimate was slowly yielding in the face of a changing
economic order, she believed she could help lessen its hold by
presenting concrete examples of independent self-supporting single
women who had proved that marriage was not the only road to security
and a home. She told of Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose home in New York
City was a rendezvous for writers, artists, musicians, and reformers;
of Dr. Clemence Lozier, the friend of women medical students; of Mary
L. Booth, well established through her income as editor of _Harper's
Bazaar_; and of her beloved Lydia Mott, whose home had been a refuge
for fugitive slaves and reformers.[332]

In Nebraska, she made a valuable new friend for the cause, Clara
Bewick Colby, whose zeal and earnest, intelligent face at once
attracted her. Within a few years, Mrs. Colby established in Beatrice,
Nebraska, a magazine for women, the _Woman's Tribune_, which to
Susan's joy spoke out for a federal woman suffrage amendment.

Because Susan's contract with the Slayton Lecture Bureau allowed no
break in her engagements, she was obliged to leave the Washington
convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in the hands of
others in 1878. It was much on her mind as she traveled through
Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, and she sent a check for $100
to help with the expenses of the convention. Particularly on her mind
was a federal woman suffrage amendment, for since 1869 when a
Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women had been introduced in
Congress and ignored, no further efforts along that line had been
made. Now good news came from Mrs. Stanton, who had attended the
convention. She had persuaded Senator Sargent to introduce in the
Senate, on January 10, 1878, a new draft of a Sixteenth Amendment,
following the wording of the Fifteenth. It read, "The right of
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of sex."[333]

[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby]

* * * * *

During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway,
although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking
the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging
as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of
several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return
Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a
newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs.
Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the
refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the
vote because it would wreck marriage and the home.

Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure for
the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the
American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts
for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement
into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man
who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery.
Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right
track--the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you,
though between you and me, I still think the individual States must
lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State.
But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."[334]

The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state
method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for
experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced
the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increasing number of naturalized
immigrants, who had little understanding of democratic government or
sympathy with the rights of women. A federal amendment, on the other
hand, depending for its adoption upon Congress and ratifying
legislatures, was in the hands of a far more liberal, intelligent, and
preponderantly American group. "We have puttered with State rights for
thirty years," she sputtered, "without a foothold except in the
territories."[335]

Year by year she continued her Washington conventions, convinced that
these gatherings in the national capital could not fail to impress
Congressmen with the seriousness of their purpose. As women from many
states lobbied for the Sixteenth Amendment, reporting a growing
sentiment everywhere for woman suffrage, as they received in the press
respectful friendly publicity, Congressmen began to take notice. At
the large receptions held at the Riggs House, through the generosity
of the proprietors, Jane Spofford and her husband, Congressmen became
better acquainted with the suffragists, finding that they were not
cranks, as they had supposed, but intelligent women and socially
charming.

Mrs. Stanton's poise as presiding officer and the warmth of her
personality made her the natural choice for president of the National
Woman Suffrage Association through the years. Her popularity, now well
established throughout the country after her ten years of lecturing
on the Lyceum circuit, lent prestige to the cause. To Susan, her
presence brought strength and the assurance that "the brave and true
word" would be spoken.[336] A new office had been created for Susan,
that of vice-president at large, and in that capacity she guided,
steadied, and prodded her flock.

The subjects which the conventions discussed covered a wide field
going far beyond their persistent demands for a federal woman suffrage
amendment. Not only did they at this time urge an educational
qualification for voters to combat the argument that woman suffrage
would increase the ignorant vote, but they also protested the counting
of women in the basis of representation so long as they were
disfranchised. They criticized the church for barring women from the
ministry and from a share in church government. They took up the case
of Anna Ella Carroll,[337] who had been denied recognition and a
pension for her services to her country during the Civil War, and they
urged pensions for all women who had nursed soldiers during the war.
They welcomed to their conventions Mormon women from Utah who came to
Washington to protest efforts to disfranchise them as a means of
discouraging polygamy.

Susan injected international interest into these conventions by
reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from
Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's
son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in
Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women. Occasionally
foreign-born women, now making new homes for themselves in this
country, joined the ranks of the suffragists, and a few of them, like
Madam Anneke and Clara Heyman from Germany contributed a great deal
through their eloquence and wider perspective. These contacts with the
thoughts and aspirations of men and women of other countries led Susan
to dream of an international conference of women in the not too
distant future.[338]

FOOTNOTES:

[327] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1876.

[328] Katherine D. Blake and Margaret Wallace, _Champion of Women, The
Life of Lillie Devereux Blake_ (New York, 1943), pp. 124-126.

[329] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, pp. 31, 34. The Woman's
Journal surprised Susan with a friendly editorial, "Good Use of the
Fourth of July," written by Lucy Stone, July 15, 1876.

[330] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 43. The Philadelphia
_Press_ praised the Declaration of Rights and the women in the
suffrage movement. The report of the New York _Post_ was patronizingly
favorable, pointing out the indifference of the public to the subject.

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