Part 8

Such controversial activities were of course eagerly reported in the press, and Henry Stanton, reading his newspaper, pointed them out to his wife, remarking drily, "Well, my dear, another notice of Susan. You stir up Susan and she stirs up the world."[98]

* * * * *

The best method of arousing women and spreading new ideas, Susan decided, was holding woman's rights conventions, for the discussions at these conventions covered a wide field and were not limited merely to women's legal disabilities. The feminists of that day extolled freedom of speech, and their platform, like that of antislavery conventions, was open to anyone who wished to express an opinion. Always the limited educational opportunities offered to women were pointed out, and Oberlin College and Antioch, both coeducational, were held up as patterns for the future. Resolutions were passed, demanding that Harvard and Yale admit women. Women's low wages and the very few occupations open to them were considered, and whether it was fitting for women to be doctors and ministers. At one convention Lucy Stone made the suggestion that a prize be offered for a novel on women, like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, to arouse the whole nation to the unjust situation of women whose slavery, she felt, was comparable to that of the Negro. At another, William Lloyd Garrison maintained that women had the right to sit in the Congress and in state legislatures and that there should be an equal number of men and women in all national councils. Inevitably Scriptural edicts regarding woman's sphere were thrashed out with Antoinette Brown, in her clerical capacity, setting at rest the minds of questioning women and quashing the protests of clergymen who thought they were speaking for God. Usually Ernestine Rose was on hand, ready to speak when needed, injecting into the discussions her liberal clear-cut feminist views. Nor was the international aspect of the woman's rights movement forgotten. The interest in Great Britain in the franchise for women of such men as Lord Brougham and John Stuart Mill was reported as were the efforts there among women to gain admission to the medical profession. Distributed widely as a tract was the "admirable" article in the _Westminster Review_, "The Enfranchisement of Women," by Harriet Taylor, now Mrs. John Stuart Mill.

In New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, where state conventions were held annually, women carried back to their homes and their friends new and stimulating ideas. National conventions, which actually represented merely the northeastern states and Ohio and occasionally attracted men and women from Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas, were scheduled by Susan to meet every year in New York, simultaneously with antislavery conventions. Thus she was assured of a brilliant array of speakers, for the Garrisonian abolitionists were sincere advocates of woman's rights.

Both Elizabeth Stanton and Lucy Stone were a great help to Susan in preparing for these national gatherings for which she raised the money. Elizabeth wrote the calls and resolutions, while Lucy could not only be counted upon for an eloquent speech, but through her wide contacts brought new speakers and new converts to the meetings. However, national woman's rights conventions would probably have lapsed completely during the troubled years prior to the Civil War, had it not been for Susan's persistence. She was obliged to omit the 1857 convention because all of her best speakers were either having babies or were kept at home by family duties. Lucy's baby, Alice Stone Blackwell, was born in September 1857, then Antoinette Brown's first child, and Mrs. Stanton's seventh.

[Illustration: Lucy Stone and her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell]

Impatient to get on with the work, Susan chafed at the delay and when Lucy wrote her, "I shall not assume the responsibility for another convention until I have had my ten daughters,"[99] Susan was beside herself with apprehension. When Lucy told her that it was harder to take care of a baby day and night than to campaign for woman's rights, she felt that Lucy regarded as unimportant her "common work" of hiring halls, engaging speakers, and raising money. This rankled, for although Susan realized it was work without glory, she did expect Lucy to understand its significance.

Mrs. Stanton sensed the makings of a rift between Susan and these young mothers, Lucy and Antoinette, and knowing from her own experience how torn a woman could be between rearing a family and work for the cause, she pleaded with Susan to be patient with them. "Let them rest a while in peace and quietness, and think great thoughts for the future," she wrote Susan. "It is not well to be in the excitement of public life all the time. Do not keep stirring them up or mourning over their repose. You need rest too. Let the world alone a while. We cannot bring about a moral revolution in a day or a year."[100]

But Susan could not let the world alone. There was too much to be done. In addition to her woman's rights and antislavery work, she gave a helping hand to any good cause in Rochester, such as a protest meeting against capital punishment, a series of Sunday evening lectures, or establishing a Free Church like that headed by Theodore Parker in Boston where no one doctrine would be preached and all would be welcome. There were days when weariness and discouragement hung heavily upon her. Then impatient that she alone seemed to be carrying the burden of the whole woman's rights movement, she complained to Lydia Mott, "There is not one woman left who may be relied on. All have first to please their husbands after which there is little time or energy left to spend in any other direction.... How soon the last standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia) will lay down the individual 'shovel and de hoe' and with proper zeal and spirit grasp those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I declare to you that I distrust the powers of any woman, even of myself to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!"[101]

To Elizabeth Stanton she confessed, "I have very weak moments and long to lay my weary head somewhere and nestle my full soul to that of another in full sympathy. I sometimes fear that _I too_ shall faint by the wayside and drop out of the ranks of the faithful few."[102]

* * * * *

Susan thought a great deal about marriage at this time, about how it interfered with the development of women's talents and their careers, how it usually dwarfed their individuality. Nor were these thoughts wholly impersonal, for she had attentive suitors during these years. Her diary mentions moonlight rides and adds, "Mr.--walked home with me; marvelously attentive. What a pity such powers of intellect should lack the moral spine."[103] Her standards of matrimony were high, and she carefully recorded in her diary Lucretia Mott's wise words, "In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal."[104]

Marriage and the differences of the sexes were often discussed at the many meetings she attended, and when remarks were made which to her seemed to limit in any way the free and full development of woman, she always registered her protest. She had no patience with any unrealistic glossing over of sex attraction and spurned the theory that woman expressed love and man wisdom, that these two qualities reached out for each other and blended in marriage. Because she spoke frankly for those days and did not soften the impact of her words with sentimental flowery phrases, her remarks were sometimes called "coarse" and "animal," but she justified them in a letter to Mrs. Stanton, who thought as she did, "To me it [sex] is not coarse or gross. If it is a fact, there it is."[105]

She was reading at this time Elizabeth Barrett Browning's _Aurora Leigh_, called by Ruskin the greatest poem in the English language, but criticized by others as an indecent romance revolting to the purity of many women. Susan had bought a copy of the first American edition and she carried it with her wherever she went. After a hard

## active day, she found inspiration and refreshment in its pages. No

matter how dreary the hotel room or how unfriendly the town, she no longer felt lonely or discouraged, for Aurora Leigh was a companion ever at hand, giving her confidence in herself, strengthening her ambition, and helping her build a satisfying, constructive philosophy of life. On the flyleaf of her worn copy, which in later years she presented to the Library of Congress, she wrote, "This book was carried in my satchel for years and read and reread. The noble words of Elizabeth Barrett, as Wendell Phillips always called her, sunk deep into my heart. I have always cherished it above all other books. I now present it to the Congressional Library with the hope that women may more and more be like Aurora Leigh."

The beauty of its poetry enchanted her, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's feminism found an echo in her own. She pencil-marked the passages she wanted to reread. When her "common work" of hiring halls and engaging speakers seemed unimportant and even futile, she found comfort in these lines:

"Be sure no earnest work Of any honest creature, howbeit weak Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much, It is not gathered as a grain of sand To enlarge the sum of human action used For carrying out God's end.... ... let us be content in work, To do the thing we can, and not presume To fret because it's little."[106]

Glorying in work, she read with satisfaction:

"The honest earnest man must stand and work: The woman also, otherwise she drops At once below the dignity of man, Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work; Who ever fears God, fears to sit at ease."

Could she have written poetry, these words, spoken by Aurora, might well have been her own:

"You misconceive the question like a man, Who sees a woman as the complement Of his sex merely. You forget too much That every creature, female as the male, Stands single in responsible act and thought, As also in birth and death. Whoever says To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,' Will get fair answers, if the work and love Being good of themselves, are good for her--the best She was born for."

Inspired by _Aurora Leigh_, Susan planned a new lecture, "The True Woman," and as she wrote it out word for word, her thoughts and theories about women, which had been developing through the years, crystallized. In her opinion, the "true woman" could no more than Aurora Leigh follow the traditional course and sacrifice all for the love of one man, adjusting her life to his whims. She must, instead, develop her own personality and talents, advancing in learning, in the arts, in science, and in business, cherishing at the same time her noble womanly qualities. Susan hoped that some day the full development of woman's individuality would be compatible with marriage, and she held up as an ideal the words which Elizabeth Barrett Browning put into the mouth of Aurora Leigh:

"The world waits For help. Beloved, let us work so well, Our work shall still be better for our love And still our love be sweeter for our work And both, commended, for the sake of each, By all true workers and true lovers born."

She expressed this hope in her own practical words to Lydia Mott: "Institutions, among them marriage, are justly chargeable with many social and individual ills, but after all, the whole man or woman will rise above them. I am sure my 'true woman' will never be crushed or dwarfed by them. Woman must take to her soul a purpose and then make circumstances conform to this purpose, instead of forever singing the refrain, 'if and if and if.'"[107]

* * * * *

Late in 1858, Susan received a letter from Wendell Phillips which put new life into all her efforts for women. He wrote her that an anonymous donor had given him $5,000 for the woman's rights cause and that he, Lucy Stone, and Susan had been named trustees to spend it wisely and effectively.

The man who felt that the woman's rights cause was important enough to rate a gift of that size proved to be wealthy Francis Jackson of Boston, in whose home Susan had visited a few years before with Lucy and Antoinette. Jubilant over the prospects, she at once began to make plans. She wanted to use all of the fund for lectures, conventions, tracts, and newspaper articles; Lucy thought part of the money should be spent to prove unconstitutional the law which taxed women without representation and Antoinette was eager for a share to establish a church in which she could preach woman's rights with the Gospel.

Both Wendell Phillips and Lucy Stone agreed that Susan should have $1,500 for the intensive campaign she had planned for New York, and for once in her life she started off without a financial worry, with money in hand to pay her speakers. She held meetings in all of the principal towns of the state, making them at least partially pay for themselves. Her lecturers each received $12 a week and she kept a like amount for herself, for planning the tour, organizing the meetings, and delivering her new lecture, "The True Woman."

"I am having fine audiences of thinking men and women," she wrote Mary Hallowell. "Oh, if we could but make our meetings ring like those of the antislavery people, wouldn't the world hear us? But to do that we must have souls baptized into the work and consecrated to it."[108]

Some souls were deeply stirred by the woman's rights gospel. One of these was the wealthy Boston merchant, Charles F. Hovey, who in his will left $50,000 in trust to Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley Foster, and others, to be spent for the "promotion of the antislavery cause and other reforms," among them woman's rights, and not less than $8,000 a year to be spent to promote these reforms. With all this financial help available, Susan expected great things to happen.

* * * * *

During the winter of 1860 while the legislature was in session, Susan spent six weeks in Albany with Lydia Mott, and day after day she climbed the long hill to the capitol to interview legislators on amendments to the married women's property laws. When these amendments were passed by the Senate, Assemblyman Anson Bingham urged her to bring their mutual friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to Albany to speak before his committee to assure passage by the Assembly.

Once again Susan hurried to Seneca Falls, and unpacking her little portmanteau stuffed with papers and statistics, discussed the subject with Mrs. Stanton in front of the open fire late into the night. Then the next morning while Mrs. Stanton shut herself up in the quietest room in the house to write her speech, Susan gave the children their breakfast, sent the older ones off to school, watched over the babies, prepared the desserts, and made herself generally useful. By this time the children regarded her affectionately as "Aunt Thusan," and they knew they must obey her, for she was a stern disciplinarian whom even the mischievous Stanton boys dared not defy.

These visits of Susan's were happy, satisfying times for both these young women. A few days' respite from travel in a well-run home with a friend she admired did wonders for Susan, giving her perspective on the work she had already done and courage to tackle new problems, while for Mrs. Stanton this short period of stimulating companionship and freedom from household cares was a godsend. "Miss Anthony" had long ago become Susan to Elizabeth, but Susan all through her life called her very best friend "Mrs. Stanton," playfully to be sure, but with a remnant of that formality which it was hard for her to cast off.

The speech was soon finished. Mrs. Stanton's imagination, fired by her sympathetic understanding of women's problems, had turned Susan's cold hard facts into moving prose, while Susan, the best of critics, detected every weak argument or faltering phrase. They both felt they had achieved a masterpiece.

Mrs. Stanton delivered this address before a joint session of the New York legislature in March 1860. Susan beamed with pride as she watched the large audience crowd even the galleries and heard the long loud applause for the speech which she was convinced could not have been surpassed by any man in the United States.

The next day the Assembly passed the Married Women's Property Bill, and when shortly it was signed by the governor, Susan and Mrs. Stanton scored their first big victory, winning a legal revolution for the women of New York State. This new law was a challenge to women everywhere. Under it a married woman had the right to hold property, real and personal, without the interference of her husband, the right to carry on any trade or perform any service on her own account and to collect and use her own earnings; a married woman might now buy, sell, and make contracts, and if her husband had abandoned her or was insane, a convict, or a habitual drunkard, his consent was unnecessary; a married woman might sue and be sued, she was the joint guardian with her husband of her children, and on the decease of her husband the wife had the same rights that her husband would have at her death.

Susan did not then realize the full significance of what she had accomplished--that she had unleashed a new movement for freedom which would be the means of strengthening the democratic government of her country.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 173-174, 198.

[91] _Ibid._, p. 160.

[92] May 26, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College Library.

[93] _Ibid._, June 5, 1856. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was often called Nette.

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

[95] 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[96] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. A notation on this ms. reads, "Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton--Delivered by Susan B. Anthony."

[97] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 143.

[98] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 71.

[99] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 162.

[100] June 10, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[101] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 171.

[102] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[103] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 175.

[104] Ms., Diary, 1855.

[105] Sept. 27, 1857, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[106] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, _Aurora Leigh_ (New York, 1857), p. 316; quotations following, pp. 53-54, pp. 364-365.

[107] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 170.

[108] _Ibid._, p. 177. Mary Hallowell, a liberal Rochester Quaker, always interested in Susan B. Anthony and her work.

THE ZEALOT

With a spirit of confidence inspired by her victory in New York State, Susan looked forward to the tenth national woman's rights convention in New York City in May 1860. At this convention she reported progress everywhere. Four thousand dollars from the Jackson and Hovey funds had been spent in the successful New York campaign, and similar work was scheduled for Ohio. In Kansas, women had won from the constitutional convention equal rights and privileges in state-controlled schools and in the management of the public schools, including the right to vote for members of school boards; mothers had been granted equal rights with fathers in the control and custody of their children, and married women had been given property rights. In Indiana, Maine, Missouri, and Ohio, married women could now control their own earnings.

"Each year we hail with pleasure," she continued, "new accessions to our faith. Brave men and true from the higher walks of literature and art, from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, and legislative halls are now ready to help woman wherever she claims to stand." She was thinking of the aid given her by Andrew J. Colvin and Anson Bingham of the New York legislature, of the young journalist, George William Curtis, just recently speaking for women, of Samuel Longfellow at his first woman's rights convention, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher who, just a few months before, had delivered his great woman's rights speech, thereby identifying himself irrevocably with the cause. She announced with great satisfaction the news, which the papers had carried a few days before, that Matthew Vassar of Poughkeepsie had set aside $400,000 to found a college for women equal in all respects to Harvard and Yale.[109]

Progress and good feeling were in the air, and the speakers were not heckled as in past years by the rowdies who had made it a practice to follow abolitionists into woman's rights meetings to bait them. Into this atmosphere of good will and rejoicing, Susan and Elizabeth Stanton now injected a more serious note, bringing before the convention the controversial question of marriage and divorce which heretofore had been handled with kid gloves at all woman's rights meetings, but which they sincerely believed demanded solution.

* * * * *

Divorce had been much in the news because several leading families in America and in England were involved in lawsuits complicated by stringent divorce laws. Invariably the wife bore the burden of censure and hardship, for no matter how unprincipled her husband might be, he was entitled to her children and her earnings under the property laws of most states.

In New York efforts were now being made to gain support for a liberal divorce bill, patterned after the Indiana law, and a variety of proposals were before the legislature, making drunkenness, insanity, desertion, and cruel and abusive treatment grounds for divorce. Horace Greeley in his _Tribune_ had been vigorously opposing a more liberal law for New York, while Robert Dale Owen of Indiana wrote in its defense. Everywhere people were reading the Greeley-Owen debates in the _Tribune_. Through his widely circulated paper, Horace Greeley had in a sense become an oracle for the people who felt he was safe and good; while Robert Dale Owen, because of his youthful association with the New Harmony community and Frances Wright, was branded with radicalism which even his valuable service in the Indiana legislature and his two terms in Congress could not blot out.

Susan and Mrs. Stanton had no patience with Horace Greeley's smug old-fashioned opinions on marriage and divorce. In fact these Greeley-Owen debates in the _Tribune_ were the direct cause of their decision to bring this subject before the convention, where they hoped for support from their liberal friends. They counted especially on Lucy Stone, who seemed to give her approval when she wrote, "I am glad you will speak on the divorce question, provided you yourself are clear on the subject. It is a great grave topic that one shudders to grapple, but its hour is coming.... God touch your lips if you speak on it."[110]