Part 18

Not only did the large and enthusiastic audiences show a growing interest in votes for women, but two great victories for women in 1869, one in Great Britain and the other in the United States, brought to the convention a feeling of confidence. Women taxpayers had been granted the right to vote in municipal elections in England, Scotland, and Wales, through the efforts of Jacob Bright. In the Territory of Wyoming, during the first session of its legislature, women had been granted the right to vote, to hold office, and serve on juries, and married women had been given the right to their separate property and their earnings. This progressive action by men of the West turned Susan's thoughts hopefully to the western territories, and early in 1870 when the Territory of Utah enfranchised its women, she had further cause for rejoicing.

To celebrate these victories for which her twenty years' work for women had blazed the trail, some of her friends held a reception for her in New York at the Women's Bureau on her fiftieth birthday. She was amazed at the friendly attention her birthday received in the press. "Susan's Half Century," read a headline in the _Herald_. The _World_ called her the Moses of her sex. "A Brave Old Maid," commented the _Sun_. But it was to the _Tribune_ that she turned with special interest, always hoping for a word of approval from Horace Greeley and finding at last this faint ray of praise: "Careful readers of the _Tribune_ have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said that her methods were as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years of disputation and struggling. Miss Anthony has thoroughly impressed friends and enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her purpose...."[253]

To Anna E. Dickinson, far away lecturing, Susan confided, "Oh, Anna, I am so glad of it all because it will teach the young girls that to be true to principle--to live an idea, though an unpopular one--that to live single--without any man's name--may be honorable."[254]

A few of Susan's younger colleagues still insisted that a merger of the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations might be possible. Again Theodore Tilton undertook the task of mediation and Lucretia Mott, who had retired from active participation in the woman's rights movement, tried to help work out a reconciliation. Susan was skeptical but gave them her blessing. Representatives of the American Association, however, again made it plain that they were unwilling to work with Susan and Mrs. Stanton.[255]

By this time _The Revolution_ had become an overwhelming financial burden. For some months Mrs. Stanton had been urging Susan to give it up and turn to the lecture field, as she had done, to spread the message of woman's rights. Susan hesitated, unwilling to give up _The Revolution_ and not yet confident that she could hold the attention of an audience for a whole evening. However, she found herself a great success when pushed into several Lyceum lecture engagements in Pennsylvania by Mrs. Stanton's sudden illness. "Miss Anthony evidently lectures not for the purpose of receiving applause," commented the Pittsburgh _Commercial_, "but for the purpose of making people understand and be convinced. She takes her place on the stage in a plain and unassuming manner and speaks extemporaneously and fluently, too, reminding one of an old campaign speaker, who is accustomed to talk simply for the purpose of converting his audience to his political theories. She used plain English and plenty of it.... She clearly evinced a quality that many politicians lack--sincerity."[256]

For each of these lectures on "Work, Wages, and the Ballot," she received a fee of $75 and was able as well to get new subscribers for _The Revolution_. She now saw the possibilities for herself and the cause in a Lyceum tour, and when the Lyceum Bureau, pleased with her reception in Pennsylvania wanted to book her for lectures in the West, she accepted, calling Parker Pillsbury back to _The_ _Revolution_ to take charge. All through Illinois she drew large audiences and her fees increased to $95, $125, and $150. In two months she was able to pay $1,300 of _The Revolution's_ debt.

When she returned to New York, she realized that she could not continue to carry _The Revolution_ alone, in spite of increased subscriptions. Its $10,000 debt weighed heavily upon her. Parker Pillsbury's help could only be temporary; Mrs. Stanton's strenuous lecture tour left her little time to give to the paper; and Susan's own friends and family were unable to finance it further.

Fortunately the idea of editing a paper appealed strongly to the wealthy Laura Curtis Bullard, who had the promise of editorial help from Theodore Tilton. Susan now turned the paper over to them completely, receiving nothing in return but shares of stock, while she assumed the entire indebtedness.

Giving up the control of her beloved paper was one of the most humiliating experiences and one of the deepest sorrows she ever faced. _The Revolution_ had become to her the symbol of her crusade for women. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, she confided to her diary on the date of the transfer, "It was like signing my own death warrant," and to a friend she wrote, "I feel a great, calm sadness like that of a mother binding out a dear child that she could not support."[257]

She made a valiant announcement of the transfer in _The Revolution_ of May 26, 1870, expressing her delight that the paper had at last found financial backing and a new, enthusiastic editor. "In view of the

## active demand for conventions, lectures, and discussions on Woman

Suffrage," she added, "I have concluded that so far as my own personal efforts are concerned, I can be more useful on the platform than in a newspaper. So, on the 1st of June next, I shall cease to be the _sole_ proprietor of _The Revolution_, and shall be free to attend public meetings where ever so plain and matter of fact an old worker as I am can secure a hearing."[258]

Financial backing, however, did not put _The Revolution_ on its feet, although its forthright editorials and articles were replaced by spicy and brilliant observations on pleasant topics which offended no one. Before the year was up, Mrs. Bullard was making overtures to Susan to take the paper back. Susan wanted desperately "to keep the Old Ship Revolution's colors flying"[259] and to bring back Mrs. Stanton's stinging editorials. She also feared that Mrs. Bullard on Theodore Tilton's advice might turn the paper over to the Boston group to be consolidated with the _Woman's Journal_. As no funds were available, she had to turn her back on her beloved paper and hope for the best. "I suppose there is a wise Providence in my being stripped of power to go forward," she wrote at this time. "At any rate, I mean to try and make good come out of it."[260]

For one more year, _The Revolution_ struggled on under the editorship of Mrs. Bullard and Theodore Tilton and then was taken over by the _Christian Enquirer_. The $10,000 debt, incurred under Susan's management, she regarded as her responsibility, although her brother Daniel and many of her friends urged bankruptcy proceedings. "My pride for women, to say nothing of my conscience," she insisted, "says no."[261]

FOOTNOTES:

[240] Lucy Stone to Frank Sanborn, Aug. 18, 1869, Alma Lutz Collection.

[241] Lucy Stone to Esther Pugh, Aug. 30, 1869, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

[242] Mary Livermore to W. L. Garrison, Oct. 4, 1869, Boston Public Library. Wendell Phillips did not sign the call or attend the convention for "reasons that are good to him," wrote Lucy Stone to Garrison, Sept. 27, 1869, Boston Public Library.

[243] _The Revolution_, IV, Oct. 21, 1869, p. 265.

[244] _Ibid._, p. 266.

[245] The Empire Sewing Machine Co., Benedict's Watches, Madame Demorest's dress patterns, Sapolio, insurance companies, savings banks, the Union Pacific, offering first mortgage bonds.

[246] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 354-355. In 1873, Anson Lapham cancelled notes, amounting to $4000, and praised Susan for her continued courageous work for women.

[247] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 2, 1869, p. 343.

[248] Harriet Beecher Stowe to Susan B. Anthony, Dec., 1869, Alma Lutz Collection.

[249] _The Revolution_, IV, Dec. 23, 1869, p. 385.

[250] _Woman's Journal_, Jan. 8, 1870.

[251] Ms., Diary, Jan. 18, 1870.

[252] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, pp. 124-125.

[253] _The Revolution_, V, Feb. 24, 1870, pp. 117-118. Susan attributed the _Tribune_ editorial to Whitelaw Reid. Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, Library of Congress.

[254] Feb. 21, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress. Anna E. Dickinson sent Miss Anthony generous checks to help finance _The Revolution_. Although she lectured at Cooper Union for the National Woman Suffrage Association shortly after it was organized, she never became a member of the organization or attended its conventions. This was a great disappointment to Miss Anthony.

[255] Finally, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton against their best judgment were persuaded by younger members of the National Woman Suffrage Association to drop the name National and replace it with Union and then to try to negotiate further with the American Association. Theodore Tilton was elected president of the Union Woman Suffrage Society. This proved to be an organization in name only, and in a short time these same younger members clamored for the return to office of Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton and reestablished the National Woman Suffrage Association.

[256] _The Revolution_, V, March 10, 1870, p. 153. Mrs. Stanton's Lyceum lectures were undertaken to finance the education of her 7 children.

[257] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 362.

[258] _The Revolution_, V, May 26, 1870, p. 328.

[259] Sept. 19, 1870, Anna E. Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress.

[260] To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[261] To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. Anthony Collection

A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay off _The Revolution's_ debt, she was pondering a new approach to the enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor.

Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis Minor's arguments in _The Revolution_ and also his suggestion that some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional committee in 1870.

With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however, she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled before the House judiciary committee the very morning the convention opened.

[Illustration: Victoria C. Woodhull]

Convinced that she and her colleagues must attend that hearing, Susan consulted with her friends in Congress and overrode Mrs. Hooker's hesitancy about associating their organization with so questionable a woman as Victoria Woodhull. She engaged a constitutional lawyer, Albert G. Riddle,[262] to represent the 30,000 women who had petitioned Congress for the franchise. Then she and Mrs. Hooker attended the hearing and asked for prompt action on woman suffrage. This was the first Congressional hearing on federal enfranchisement. Previous hearings had considered trying the experiment only in the District of Columbia.

Susan had never before seen Victoria Woodhull. Early in 1870, however, she had called at the brokerage office which Victoria and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, had opened in New York on Broad Street. The press had been full of amused comments regarding the lady bankers, and Susan had wanted to see for herself what kind of women they were. Here she met and talked with Tennessee Claflin, publishing their interview in _The Revolution_, and also an advertisement of Woodhull, Claflin & Co., Bankers and Brokers.[263]

About six weeks later, these prosperous "lady brokers" had established their own paper, _Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly_, an "Organ of Social Regeneration and Constructive Reform," but Susan had barely noticed its existence, so burdened had she been by the impending loss of her own paper and by pressing lecture engagements. She was therefore unaware that this new weekly explored a field wider than finance, advocating as well woman suffrage and women's advancement, spiritualism, radical views on marriage, love, and sex, and the nomination of Victoria C. Woodhull for President of the United States.

Now in a committee room of the House of Representatives, Susan listened carefully as the dynamic beautiful Victoria Woodhull read her Memorial and her arguments to support it, in a clear well-modulated voice. Simply dressed in a dark blue gown, with a jaunty Alpine hat perched on her curls, she gave the impression of innocent earnest youth, and she captivated not only the members of the judiciary committee, but the more critical suffragists as well. For the moment at least she seemed an appropriate colleague of the forthright crusader, Susan B. Anthony, and her fashionable friends, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. They invited Victoria and her sister, Tennessee Claflin, to their convention, and asked her to repeat her speech for them.

At this convention Susan, encouraged by the favorable reception among politicians of the Woodhull Memorial, mapped out a new and militant campaign, based on her growing conviction that under the Fourteenth Amendment women's rights as citizens were guaranteed. She urged women to claim their rights as citizens and persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, to register and prepare to vote at the next election, and to bring suit in the courts if they were refused.

* * * * *

So enthusiastic had been the reception of this new approach to woman suffrage, so favorable had been the news from those close to leading Republicans, that Susan was unprepared for the adverse report of the judiciary committee on the Woodhull Memorial. She now studied the favorable minority report issued by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts and William Loughridge of Iowa. Their arguments seemed to her unanswerable; and hurriedly and impulsively in the midst of her western lecture tour, she dashed off a few lines to Victoria Woodhull, to whom she willingly gave credit for bringing out this report. "Glorious old Ben!" she wrote. "He surely is going to pronounce the word that will settle the woman question, just as he did the word 'contraband' that so summarily settled the Negro question.... Everybody here chimes in with the new conclusion that we are already free."[264]

Far from New York where Victoria's activities were being aired by the press, Susan thought of her at this time only in connection with the Memorial and its impact on the judiciary committee. To be sure, she heard stories crediting Benjamin Butler with the authorship of the Woodhull Memorial, and rumors reached her of Victoria's unorthodox views on love and marriage and of her girlhood as a fortune teller, traveling about like a gypsy and living by her wits. Even so, Susan was ready to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt until she herself found her harmful to the cause, for long ago she had learned to discount attacks on the reputations of progressive women. In fact, Victoria Woodhull provided Susan and her associates with a spectacular opportunity to prove the sincerity of their contention that there should not be a double standard of morals--one for men and another for women.

Returning to New York in May 1871, to a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Susan found that Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Stanton, and Mrs. Davis had invited Victoria Woodhull to address that convention and to sit on the platform between Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton.

Through them and others more critical, Susan was brought up to date on the sensational story of Victoria Woodhull, who had been drawing record crowds to her lectures and whose unconventional life continuously provided reporters with interesting copy. Victoria's home at 15 East Thirty-eighth Street, resplendent and ornate with gilded furniture and bric-a-brac, housed not only her husband, Colonel Blood, and herself but her divorced husband and their children as well, and also all of her quarrelsome relatives. Here many radicals, social reformers, and spiritualists gathered, among them Stephen Pearl Andrews, who soon made use of Victoria and her _Weekly_ to publicize his dream of a new world order, the Pantarchy, as he called it. Victoria, herself, was an ardent spiritualist, controlled by Demosthenes of the spirit world to whom she believed she owed her most brilliant utterances and by whom she was guided to announce herself as a presidential candidate in 1872. Needless to say, with such a background, Victoria Woodhull became a very controversial figure among the suffragists.

In New York only a few days, it was hard for Susan to separate fact from fiction, truth from rumor and animosity. Even Demosthenes did not seem too ridiculous to her, for many of her most respected friends were spiritualists. Nor did Victoria's presidential aspirations trouble her greatly. Presidential candidates had been nothing to brag of, and willingly would she support the right woman for President. If Victoria lived up to the high standard of the Woodhull Memorial, then even she might be that woman. After all, it was an era of radical theories and Utopian dreams, of extravagances of every sort. Almost anything could happen.

Whatever doubts the suffragists may have had when they saw Victoria Woodhull on the platform at the New York meeting of the National Association, she swept them all along with her when, as one inspired, she made her "Great Secession" speech. "If the very next Congress refuses women all the legitimate results of citizenship," she declared, "we shall proceed to call another convention expressly to frame a new constitution and to erect a new government.... We mean treason; we mean secession, and on a thousand times grander scale than was that of the South. We are plotting revolution; we will overthrow this bogus Republic and plant a government of righteousness in its stead...."[265]

Susan, who felt deeply her right to full citizenship, who herself had talked revolution, and who had so often listened to the extravagant antislavery declarations of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Parker Pillsbury, was not offended by these statements. She was, however, troubled by the attitude of the press, particularly of the _Tribune_ which labeled this gathering the "Woodhull Convention" and accused the suffragists of adopting Mrs. Woodhull's free-love theories.

Having experienced so recently the animosity stirred up by her alliance with George Francis Train, Susan resolved to be cautious regarding Victoria Woodhull and was beginning to wonder if Victoria was not using the suffragists to further her own ambitions. Yet many trusted friends, who had talked with Mrs. Woodhull far more than she had the opportunity to do, were convinced that she was a genius and a prophet who had risen above the sordid environment of her youth to do a great work for women and who had the courage to handle subjects which others feared to touch.

Free love, for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did she actually advocate promiscuity?

With these questions puzzling her, she left for Rochester and the West. Almost immediately the papers were full of Victoria Woodhull and her family quarrels which brought her into court. This was a disillusioning experience for the National Woman Suffrage Association which had so recently featured Victoria Woodhull as a speaker, and Susan began seriously to question the wisdom of further association with this strange controversial character. Nevertheless, Victoria still had her ardent defenders among the suffragists, particularly Isabella Beecher Hooker and Paulina Wright Davis. Even the thoughtful judicious Martha C. Wright wrote Mrs. Hooker at this time, "It is not always 'the wise and prudent' to whom the truth is revealed; tho' far be it from me to imply aught derogatory to Mrs. Woodhull. No one can be with her, see her gentle and modest bearing and her spiritual face, without feeling sure that she is a true woman, whatever unhappy surroundings may have compromised her. I have never met a stranger toward whom I felt more tenderly drawn, in sympathy and love."[266]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke her mind in Theodore Tilton's new paper, _The Golden Age_: "Victoria C. Woodhull stands before us today a grand, brave woman, radical alike in political, religious and social principles. Her face and form indicate the complete triumph in her nature of the spiritual over the sensuous. The processes of her education are little to us; the grand result everything."[267]

Victoria was in dire need of defenders, for the press was venomous, goading her on to revenge. Susan, now traveling westward, lecturing in one state after another, thinking of ways to interest the people in woman suffrage, was too busy and too far away to follow Victoria Woodhull's court battles.

* * * * *

Mrs. Stanton met Susan in Chicago late in May 1871, to join her on a lecture tour of the far West. Together they headed for Wyoming and Utah, eager to set foot in the states which had been the first to extend suffrage to women. The long leisurely days on the train gave these two old friends, Susan now fifty-one and Mrs. Stanton, fifty-six, ample time to talk and philosophize, to appraise their past efforts for women, and plan their speeches for the days ahead. While their main theme would always be votes for women, they decided that from now on they must also arouse women to rebel against their legal bondage under the "man marriage," as they called it, and to face frankly the facts about sex, prostitution, and the double standard of morals. In Utah, in the midst of polygamy fostered by the Mormon Church, they would encounter still another sex problem.