Various - "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327"

Emile Zola - "La Conquete De Plassans"

Lisle de Vaux Matthewman - "Crankisms"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Susan B. Anthony

A >> Alma Lutz >> Susan B. Anthony




Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany
where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick
Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher,
was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming
opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists,
safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his
knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered
through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the
day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and
begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the
meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little
group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob
trailing behind them.

Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of
mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so
bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans
had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or
interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the
attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they
were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address
prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or
indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states
where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have
no inclination to do so."[130] To her the future looked dark when
statesmen would save the Union at such a price.

"No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as
well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with
Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others.
They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the
hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had
started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with
Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to
them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly
respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three
children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was
unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had
insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an
insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to
communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent
Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus,
took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children
to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced
the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law
which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and
their children.

Well aware of how often her friends of the Underground Railroad had
defied the Fugitive Slave Law and hidden and transported fugitive
slaves, Susan decided she would do the same for this cultured
intelligent woman, a slave to her husband under the law. Without a
thought of the consequences, she took the train on Christmas Day for
New York with Mrs. Phelps and her thirteen-year-old daughter, both in
disguise, hoping that in the crowded city they could hide from Dr.
Phelps and the law. Arriving late at night, they walked through the
snow and slush to a hotel, only to be refused a room because they were
not accompanied by a gentleman. They tried another hotel, with the
same result, and then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a
divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused
them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway
wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a
Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but
Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as much to the clerk,
adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this
office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she
retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to
the station."[131] Finally he relented and gave them a room without
heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her
friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and
finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the
Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive
wife into her home.

Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and
threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers,
because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child.
Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding
place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through
western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all.

When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging
her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any
"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard
for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and
dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest
assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had
I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I
should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any
movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle
my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment
of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the
slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."[132]

When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing
his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan,
"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the
entire guardianship and control of the children?"

"Yes, I know it," she answered. "Does not the law of the United States
give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break
it every time you help a slave to Canada? Well, the law which gives
the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and
I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before you would deliver
a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child
to its father."

Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could
not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap
his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a
divorce through the help of her friends.

The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of
Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to
recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also
essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but
when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision
was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's
divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing
laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they
sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it,
Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to
sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or
was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like
themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have
yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."[133]


FOOTNOTES:

[109] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I. p. 689. Henry Ward Beecher's
speech, _The Public Function of Women_, delivered at Cooper Union,
Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract.

[110] April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of
Congress.

[111] June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.

[112] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 717.

[113] _Ibid._, p. 725.

[114] _Ibid._, p. 732.

[115] _Ibid._, p. 735.

[116] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 196.

[117] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, _Eighty Years and More_ (New York,
1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in the
midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the convention
will sustain you."

[118] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 195.

[119] _Ibid._, p. 197.

[120] Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College
Library.

[121] Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to speak for
emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican Convention.

[122] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.

[123] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.

[124] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.

[125] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 504; Beards, _The Rise of
American Civilization_, II, p. 63.

[126] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 508.

[127] Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library.

[128] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 210.

[129] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress.

[130] Carl Sandburg, _Abraham Lincoln, The War Years_ (New York,
1939), I, p. 125.

[131] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a more
permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet.

[132] _Ibid._, pp. 203-204.

[133] _Ibid._, p. 198.




A WAR FOR FREEDOM


Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded
early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This
breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the
minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union.
Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must
go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention
in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help
her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter
and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists
called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize
that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour.

Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the
solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of
abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was
not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for
guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an
audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a
nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the
government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the
North"[134] a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions
and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand
by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize
Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but
to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those
abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until
it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the
front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union
with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all
violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion,
and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I
am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135]

She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these
men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few,
among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of
them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone
remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have
insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but
one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The
Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all
the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their
peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems
most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency,
not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment
of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even
the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the
end justifies the means.'"[136]

Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge,
traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas,
with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and
his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a
release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work.
"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary.
"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order....
Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the
frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my
calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of
Harriet Tubman."[137]

Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times
seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas
with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone
feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great
presences to which I have been so long accustomed."

The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's _Tribune_ and
the Rochester _Democrat_. The news was discouraging--the tragedy of
Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union
armies. General Fremont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only
to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border
states.

"How not to do it seems the whole study of Washington," she wrote in
her diary. "I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom
to every slave and call on every able-bodied Negro to enlist in the
Union Army.... To forever blot out slavery is the only possible
compensation for this merciless war."[138]

To satisfy her longing for a better understanding of people and
events, she turned to books, first to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
_Casa Guidi Windows_, which she called "a grand poem, so fitting to
our terrible struggle," then to her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, and
George Eliot's popular _Adam Bede_, recently published. More serious
reading also absorbed her, for she wanted to keep abreast of the most
advanced thought of the day. "Am reading Buckle's _History of
Civilization_ and Darwin's _Descent of Man_," she wrote in her diary.
"Have finished _Origin of the Species_. Pillsbury has just given me
Emerson's poems."[139]

Eager to thrash out all her new ideas with Elizabeth Stanton, she went
to Seneca Falls for a few days of good talk, hoping to get Mrs.
Stanton's help in organizing a woman's rights convention in 1862; but
not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this
time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the
war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship.
Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best
women were so willing to be swept aside by the onrush of events.

Although opposed to war, Susan was far from advocating peace at any
price, and was greatly concerned over the confusion in Washington
which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton
received from her husband, now Washington correspondent for the New
York _Tribune_. Both she and Mrs. Stanton chafed at inaction. They had
loyalty, intelligence, an understanding of national affairs, and
executive ability to offer their country, but such qualities were not
sought after among women.

* * * * *

In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a
new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting
the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of
discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young
eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.[140] Susan listened with pride and joy
while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the
issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth,
her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's
motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became
devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous
correspondence.

Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence
in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she
herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she
studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet
Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble
breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and
elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of
Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal
painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by
a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other
artists."[141]

This confidence was soon dispelled, however, when a letter came from
Lydia Mott containing the crushing news that the New York legislature
had amended the newly won Married Woman's Property Law of 1860, while
women's attention was focused on the war, and had taken away from
mothers the right to equal guardianship of their children and from
widows the control of the property left at the death of their
husbands.

"We deserve to suffer for our confidence in 'man's sense of justice,'"
she confessed to Lydia. " ... All of our reformers seem suddenly to
have grown politic. All alike say, 'Have no conventions at this
crisis!' Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Stanton,
etc. say, 'Wait until the war excitement abates....' I am sick at
heart, but cannot carry the world against the wish and will of our
best friends...."[142]

Unable to arouse even a glimmer of interest in woman's rights at this
time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to
make people understand that this war, so abhorrent to her, must be
fought for the Negroes' freedom. "I cannot feel easy in my conscience
to be dumb in an hour like this," she explained to Lydia, adding, "It
is so easy to feel your power for public work slipping away if you
allow yourself to remain too long snuggled in the Abrahamic bosom of
home. It requires great will power to resurrect one's soul.[143]

"I am speaking now extempore," she continued, "and more to my
satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not
do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely
off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by the war."

Feeling particularly close to Lydia at this time, she gratefully
added, "What a stay, counsel, and comfort you have been to me, dear
Lydia, ever since that eventful little temperance meeting in that
cold, smoky chapel in 1852. How you have compelled me to feel myself
competent to go forward when trembling with doubt and distrust. I can
never express the magnitude of my indebtedness to you."

In the small towns of western New York, people were willing to listen
to Susan, for they were troubled by the defeats northern armies had
suffered and by the appalling lack of unity and patriotism in the
North. They were beginning to see that the problem of slavery had to
be faced and were discussing among themselves whether Negroes were
contraband, whether army officers should return fugitive slaves to
their masters, whether slaves of the rebels should be freed, whether
Negroes should be enlisted in the army.

Susan had an answer for them. "It is impossible longer to hold the
African race in bondage," she declared, "or to reconstruct this
Republic on the old slaveholding basis. We can neither go back nor
stand still. With the nation as with the individual, every new
experience forces us into a new and higher life and the old self is
lost forever. Hundreds of men who never thought of emancipation a year
ago, talk it freely and are ready to vote for it and fight for it
now.[144]

"Can the thousands of Northern soldiers," she asked, "who in their
march through Rebel States have found faithful friends and generous
allies in the slaves ever consent to hurl them back into the hell of
slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter
in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree
of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently
endure the old life of bondage with all its degradation, its
cruelties, and wrong? No, No, there can be no reconstruction on the
old basis...." Far less degrading and ruinous, she earnestly added,
would be the recognition of the independence of the southern
Confederacy.

[Illustration: Susan B. Anthony]

To the question of what to do with the emancipated slaves, her quick
answer was, "Treat the Negroes just as you do the Irish, the Scotch,
and the Germans. Educate them to all the blessings of our free
institutions, to our schools and churches, to every department of
industry, trade, and art.

"What arrogance in _us_," she continued, "to put the question, What
shall _we_ do with a race of men and women who have fed, clothed, and
supported both themselves and their oppressors for centuries...."

Often she spoke against Lincoln's policy of gradual, compensated
emancipation, which to an eager advocate of "immediate, unconditional
emancipation" seemed like weakness and appeasement. She had to admit,
however, that there had been some progress in the right direction, for
Congress had recently forbidden the return of fugitive slaves to their
masters, had decreed immediate emancipation in the District of
Columbia, and prohibited slavery in the territories.

President Lincoln's promise of freedom on January 1, 1863, to slaves
in all states in armed rebellion against the government, seemed wholly
inadequate to her and to her fellow-abolitionists, because it left
slavery untouched in the border states, but it did encourage them to
hope that eventually Lincoln might see the light. Horace Greeley wrote
Susan, "I still keep at work with the President in various ways and
believe you will yet hear him proclaim universal freedom. Keep this
letter and judge me by the event."[145]

It troubled her that public opinion in the North was still far from
sympathetic to emancipation. Northern Democrats, charging Lincoln with
incompetence and autocratic control, called for "The Constitution as
it is, the Union as it was." They had the support of many northern
businessmen who faced the loss of millions of credit given to
southerners and the support of northern workmen who feared the
competition of free Negroes. They had elected Horatio Seymour governor
of New York, and had gained ground in many parts of the country. A
militant group in Ohio, headed by Congressman Vallandigham, continued
to oppose the war, asking for peace at once with no terms unfavorable
to the South.

All these developments Susan discussed with her father, for she
frequently came home between lectures. He was a tower of strength to
her. When she was disillusioned or when criticism and opposition were
hard to bear, his sympathy and wise counsel never failed her. There
was a strong bond of understanding and affection between them.

His sudden illness and death, late in November 1862, were a shock from
which she had to struggle desperately to recover. Her life was
suddenly empty. The farm home was desolate. She could not think of
leaving her mother and her sister Mary there all alone. Nor could she
count on help from Daniel or Merritt, both of whom were serving in the
army in the West, Daniel, as a lieutenant colonel, and Merritt as a
captain in the 7th Kansas Cavalry. For many weeks she had no heart for
anything but grief. "It seemed as if everything in the world must
stop."[146]

Not even President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued January
1, 1863, roused her. It took a letter from Henry Stanton from
Washington to make her see that there was war work for her to do. He
wrote her, "The country is rapidly going to destruction. The Army is
almost in a state of mutiny for want of its pay and lack of a leader.
Nothing can carry through but the southern Negroes, and nobody can
marshal them into the struggle except the abolitionists.... Such men
as Lovejoy, Hale, and the like have pretty much given up the struggle
in despair. You have no idea how dark the cloud is which hangs over
us.... We must not lay the flattering unction to our souls that the
proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and have a
dissolution of the Union. Here then is work for you, Susan, put on
your armor and go forth."[147]

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