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The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) by Ida Husted Harper

I >> Ida Husted Harper >> The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2)




Thus, whenever I saw that stately Quaker girl coming across my lawn
I knew that some happy convocation of the sons of Adam were to be
set by the ears with our appeals or resolutions. The little
portmanteau stuffed with facts was opened and there we had what
Rev. John Smith and Hon. Richard Roe had said, false interpretation
of Bible texts, statistics of women robbed of their property, shut
out of some college, half-paid for their work, reports of some
disgraceful trial--injustice enough to turn any woman's thoughts
from stockings and puddings. Then we would get out our pens and
write articles for papers, a petition to the Legislature, letters
to the faithful here and there, stir up the women in Ohio,
Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, call on the Lily, the Una, the
Liberator, the Standard, to remember our wrongs. We never met
without issuing a pronunciamento on some question.

In thought and sympathy we were one, and in the division of labor
we exactly complemented each other. In writing we did better work
together than either could do alone. While she is slow and
analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the
better writer, she the better critic. She supplied the facts and
statistics, I the philosophy and rhetoric, and together we made
arguments which have stood unshaken by the storms of nearly fifty
long years.[29]

In 1878 Theodore Tilton gave this graphic description: "These two
women, sitting together in their parlors, have for the last thirty
years been diligent forgers of all manner of projectiles, from
fireworks to thunderbolts, and have hurled them with unexpected
explosion into the midst of all manner of educational, reformatory,
religious and political assemblies, sometimes to the pleasant surprise
and half welcome of the members; more often to the bewilderment and
prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the
gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious
incendiaries in the whole country; nor will they themselves deny the
charge. In fact, this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum
for keeping up what Daniel Webster called 'the rub-a-dub of
agitation.'"

On March 19, 1860, Mrs. Stanton presented her address to a joint
session of the Legislature at Albany, occupying the speaker's desk and
facing as magnificent an audience as ever assembled in the old Capitol.
It was a grand plea for a repeal of the unjust and oppressive laws
relating to women, and it was universally said that its eloquence could
not have been surpassed by any man in the United States. A bill was
then in the hands of the judiciary committee, simply an amendment of
the Property Law of 1848, to which Andrew J. Colvin objected as not
liberal enough. Miss Anthony gave him a very radical bill just
introduced into the Massachusetts Legislature, which he examined
carefully, adding several clauses to make it still broader. It was
accepted by the committee, composed of Messrs. Hammond, Ramsey and
Colvin, reported to the Senate and passed by that body in February. It
was concurred in by the Assembly the day following Mrs. Stanton's
speech, and signed by Governor Edwin D. Morgan.[30] This new law
declared in brief:

Any property, real and personal, which any married woman now owns,
or which may come to her by descent, etc., shall be her sole and
separate property, not subject to control or interference by her
husband.

Any married woman may bargain, sell, etc., carry on any trade or
perform any services on her own account, and her earnings shall be
her sole and separate property and may be used or invested by her
in her own name.

A married woman may buy, sell, make contracts, etc., and if the
husband has willfully abandoned her, or is an habitual drunkard, or
insane, or a convict, his consent shall not be necessary.

A married woman may sue and be sued, bringing action in her own
name for damages and the money recovered shall be her sole
property.

Every married woman shall be joint guardian of her children with
her husband, with equal powers, etc., regarding them.

At the decease of the husband the wife shall have the same property
rights as the husband would have at her death.

This remarkable action, which might be termed almost a legal
revolution, was the result of nearly ten years of laborious and
persistent effort on the part of a little handful of women who, by
constant agitation through conventions, meetings and petitions, had
created a public sentiment which stood back of the Legislature and gave
it sanction to do this act of justice. While all these women worked
earnestly and conscientiously to bring about this great reform, there
was but one, during the entire period, who gave practically every month
of every year to this purpose, and that one was Susan B. Anthony. In
storm and sunshine, in heat and cold, in seasons of encouragement and
in times of doubt, criticism and contumely, she never faltered, never
stopped. Going with her petition from door to door, only to have them
shut in her face by the women she was trying to help; subjecting
herself to the jeers and insults of men whom she need never have met
except for this mission; held up by the press to the censure and
ridicule of thousands who never had seen or heard her; misrepresented
and abused above all other women because she stood in the front of the
battle and offered herself a vicarious sacrifice--can the women of New
York, can the women of the nation, ever be sufficiently grateful to
this one who, willingly and unflinchingly, did the hardest pioneer work
ever performed by mortal?

Miss Anthony divided the winter of 1860 between the anti-slavery and
the woman's cause. As she had very little on hand (!) she arranged
another course of lectures for Rochester, inviting A.D. Mayo, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Thomas Starr King and others. These speakers were in the
employ of the lyceum bureau, but were so restricted by it that they
could give their great _reform_, lectures only under private
management. At the close of Emerson's he said to Miss Anthony that he
had been instrumental in establishing the lyceum for the purpose of
securing a freedom of speech not permitted in the churches, but he
believed that now he would have to do as much to break it up, because
of its conservatism, and organize some new scheme which would permit
men and women to utter their highest thought. She was in the habit of
arranging many of her woman's rights meetings in different towns when
Phillips or others were to be there for a lyceum lecture, thus securing
them for a speech the following afternoon.

[Autograph: Cordially yours, T.S. King]

A letter received this winter from her sister Mary is interesting as
showing that the belief in equal rights for women was quite as strong
in other members of the family. She had been requested by the board of
education to fill the place of one of the principals who was ill, and
gives the following account:

I was willing to do the best I could to help out, so the next
morning, with fear and trembling, I faced the 150 young men and
women, many of whom, like their fathers and mothers before them,
felt that no woman had the ability to occupy such a place. All went
well until it was noised about that I should expect as much salary
as had been paid the principal. To establish such a precedent would
never do, so a man from a neighboring town was sent for post-haste,
but the moment he began his administration the boys rebelled. After
slates and books had been thrown from the window and I had been
obliged to guard him from their snowballs on his way home, he
decided teaching, in that place at least, was not his "sphere" and
refused to return.

Next morning the committee asked me to resume the management. I
answered: "No person can fill the place of a long-tried teacher,
but I in a measure succeeded--yet not one of you would entertain
the idea of paying me as much as the principal. You sent to another
town for a man, who has made an absolute failure, and yet you do
not hesitate to pay him the full salary for the time he was here.
If you will be as just to me, I will resume the work and do my
best--on any other conditions I must decline." They agreed to the
proposition, I finished the term and for the first time on record a
woman received a principal's salary!

A little later Miss Mary continues the story:

You know the principal of Number Ten has been ill nearly two
months. I asked him if Miss Hayden, who took his place, was to
receive his salary. He replied: "Do you think after the money has
been audited to me, I ought to turn around and give it all to her?"
Said I: "If the board are willing to pay you $72 a month while you
are sick and pay her the same, all right; but if only one is to
receive that salary, I say, and most emphatically, she is the one."
He wanted to know if I was not aware that mine was the only case
where such a thing had been done in Rochester. I told him I was
heartily glad I had been the means of having justice done for once,
and was really in hopes other women teachers would follow my
example and suffer themselves no longer to be duped.

Miss Hayden however was obliged to accept $25 a month for doing exactly
the work for which the man received $72 during all his illness. To keep
her from making trouble, the board gave her a small present with the
understanding that it was not to be considered as salary. A short time
afterwards Miss Mary wrote again: "A woman teacher on a salary of $20 a
month has just been ill for a week and another was employed to take her
place; when she recovered, she was obliged to have the supply teacher's
salary deducted from her own. So I posted down to the superintendent's
office and had another decidedly plain talk. He owned that it was
unjust but said there was no help for it."

In the winter of 1860, Henry Ward Beecher delivered his great woman's
rights speech at Cooper Institute, New York. At that time his name was
a power in the whole world and his masterly exposition of the rights of
women is still used as one of the best suffrage leaflets. Miss Anthony
tells in her diary of meeting Tilton and of his amusing account of the
struggle they had to get this speech published in the Independent. Her
little visits to New York and Boston always inspired her with fresh
courage, for here she would meet Theodore Parker, Frothingham, Cheever,
Chapin, Beecher, Greeley, Phillips, Garrison, the great spirits of that
age, and all in perfect sympathy with what she represented.

The Tenth National Woman's Rights Convention assembled in Cooper
Institute, May 10, 1860. Miss Anthony called it to order and read a
full and interesting report of the work and progress of the past year.
The usual eloquent speeches were made by Phillips, Mrs. Rose, Rev.
Beriah Green, Mary Grew, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, brother of the poet,
and others. The warmest gratitude was expressed "toward Susan B.
Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and executive ability the
recent laws for women were secured." A hearty laugh was enjoyed at the
expense of the man who shouted from the audience, "She'd a great deal
better have been at home taking care of her husband and children." The
proceedings were pleasant and harmonious, but next morning the whole
atmosphere was changed and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did it with a little
set of resolutions declaring that, under certain conditions, divorce
was justifiable. She supported them by an address which for logic of
argument, force of expression and beauty of diction never has been,
never can be surpassed. No such thoughts ever before had been put into
words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the
wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat
breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, burst into
long-continued applause:

We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past but from the
solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of
the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mold of ages,
no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal
sons and daughters of the great I Am--rightful heirs of the joys of
time and joint heirs of the glories of eternity. If in marriage
either party claim the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother
of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one
long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there
is no Moses, Christ or Paul--no Michael Angelo, Beethoven or
Shakespeare--no Columbus or Galileo--no Locke or Bacon. Behold
those mighty minds so grand, so comprehensive--they themselves are
_our_ great works! Into you, O sons of earth, goes all of us that
is immortal. In you center our very life, our hopes, our intensest
love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing
that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious
resurrection of thought and life.

This speech set the convention on fire. Antoinette Blackwell spoke
strongly in opposition, Mrs. Rose eloquently in favor. Mr. Phillips was
not satisfied even with the motion to lay the resolutions on the table
but moved to expunge them from the journal of the convention, which, he
said, had nothing to do with laws except those that rested unequally
upon women and the laws of divorce did not. It seems incredible that
Mr. Phillips could have taken this position, when by the law the wife
had no legal claim upon either property or children in case of divorce,
and, even though the innocent party, must go forth into the world
homeless and childless; in the majority of States she could not sue for
divorce in her own name nor could she claim enough of the community
property to pay the costs of the suit. Miss Anthony said:

I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion. It would be contrary
to all parliamentary usage that when the speeches which advocated
them are published in the proceedings, the resolutions should not
be. I wholly dissent from the point that this question does not
belong on our platform. Marriage has ever been a one-sided
contract, resting most unequally upon the sexes. Woman never has
been consulted; her wish never has been taken into consideration as
regards the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment
and religion, woman never has been thought of other than as a piece
of property to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. This
very hour, by our statute books, by our so-called enlightened
Christian civilization, she has no voice whatever in saying what
shall be the basis of this relation. She must accept marriage as
man proffers it, or not at all.

And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is
perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we
complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the marriage
laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her children
and make her the slave of the man she marries. I hope, therefore,
the resolutions will be allowed to go out to the public, that there
may be a fair report of the ideas which actually have been
presented here and that they may not be left to the mercy of the
press.

Abby Hopper Gibbons supported Mr. Phillips, but Mr. Garrison favored
the publication of the resolutions. The motion to expunge them from the
minutes was lost.

[Autograph:

Yours affectionately
Ernestine L. Rose]

This discussion stirred the country from center to circumference, and
all the prominent newspapers had editorials favoring one side or the
other. It produced the first unpleasantness in the ranks of those who
had stood together for the past decade. Greeley launched thunderbolts
against the right of divorce under any circumstances, and Mrs. Stanton
replied to him in his own paper. Lucy Stone, who just before the
convention had written to Mrs. Stanton, "That is a great, grand
question, may God touch your lips," now took sides with Phillips. To
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony came letters from far and wide, both
approving and condemning. Mrs. William H. Seward and her sister, Mrs.
Worden, wrote that it not only was a germane question to be discussed
at the convention but that there could be no such thing as equal rights
with the existing conditions of marriage and divorce. From Lucretia
Mott came the encouraging words: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense
of the resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the
united judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad
they are so vigorous in the work." Parker Pillsbury sent a breezy note:
"What a pretty kettle of hot water you tumbled into at New York! Your
marriage and divorce speeches and resolutions you must have learned in
the school of a Wollstonecraft or a Sophie Arnaut. You broke the very
heart of the portly Evening Post and nearly drove the Tribune to the
grave."

For the censure of the world at large they did not care, but Phillips'
defection almost broke their hearts. He was their ideal of the brave
and the true and always before they had had his approval and assistance
in every undertaking. Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton: "It is not for
you or for me, any more than for Mr. Phillips, to dictate our platform;
that must be fixed by the majority. He is evidently greatly distressed.
I find my only comfort in that glorious thought of Theodore Parker:
'All this is but the noise and dust of the wagon bringing the harvest
home.' These things must be, and happy are they who see clearly to the
end." And to her friend Amy Post: "It is wonderful what letters of
approval we are receiving, some of them from the noblest women of the
State, not connected in any way with our great movement but
sympathizing fully with our position on the question of divorce. I only
regret that history may not see Wendell Phillips first and grandest in
the recognition of this great truth; but he is a man and can not put
himself in the position of a wife, can not feel what she does under the
present marriage code. And yet in his relations to his own wife he is
the embodiment of chivalry, tenderness and love."

In a letter to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton said: "We are right. My
reason, my experience, my soul proclaim it. Our religion, laws,
customs, all are founded on the idea that woman was made for man. I am
a woman, and I can feel in every nerve where my deepest wrongs are
hidden. The men know we have struck a blow at their greatest
stronghold. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth I have
uttered. One word of thanks from a suffering woman outweighs with me
the howls of Christendom."

Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony wrote Mr. Phillips
for money from the Hovey fund to publish the report of the convention
containing these very resolutions, and he sent it accompanied with a
cordial letter. With his generous disposition he soon recognized the
fact that it was eminently proper to agitate this question of divorce,
in order to make it possible for a woman to secure release from a
habitual drunkard, or a husband who treated her with personal violence
or willfully abandoned her, and to have some claim on their property
and a right to their children, if she were the innocent party. Before
three months he wrote Miss Anthony, "Go ahead, you are doing grandly,"
and he spoke many times afterwards on their platform. During the height
of this discussion Miss Anthony was in Albany and Rev. Mayo, thinking
to annihilate her, said: "You are not married, you have no business to
be discussing marriage." "Well, Mr. Mayo," she replied, "you are not a
slave, suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."

As a result of this agitation a little clique of women in Boston, led
by Caroline H. Dall, announced that they would hold a convention which
should not be open to free discussion but should be "limited to the
subjects of Education, Vocation and Civil Position." They drew to
themselves a small body of conservatives and it was thought might start
a new movement, but the meeting had no permanent results. Parker
Pillsbury said of it: "With the exception of Phillips, no soul kindled
with volcanic fire was permitted a solitary spark. O, such a meeting!
Beautiful as parlor theatricals, but as a bold shriek for freedom or a
protest against tyrant laws, not a sparrow on the housetop could have
been more harmless." Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "Cautious,
careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and
social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really
in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's
estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their
sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and
bear the consequences."

In June she and Mrs. Stanton went to a large meeting of Progressive
Friends at Waterloo, where the latter read this same speech on divorce
and then, to quote Miss Anthony's own words, "As usual when she had
fired her gun she went home and left me to finish the battle." In this
case it lasted several days, but Mrs. Stanton knew she could count upon
her friend to defend her to the last ditch. Miss Anthony was always on
the skirmish line. She would interview the married women who could not
leave home and children, get their approval of her plans and then go to
the front. Once or twice a year she would gather her hosts for a big
battle, but the rest of the time she did picket duty, acted as scout
and penetrated alone the enemy's country. Between meetings she would
find her way home, make over her old dresses and on rare occasions get
a new one. This she called "looking after the externals." Then, as her
mother was an invalid, she would clean the house from top to bottom and
do a vast amount of necessary work.

In her diary are many such entries as these: "Washed all the shutters.
Took up the carpet this morning.... Whitewashed the kitchen today....
Helped the girl wash this morning; in the afternoon ironed six shirts,
and started for New York at 4 o'clock. Was a little bit tired." At one
time, with the help of a seamstress, she made fourteen shirts,
stitching by hand all the collars, bosoms and wristbands, and, as this
woman had worked in the Troy laundry, she taught Miss Anthony to
clear-starch and iron them. Each summer she managed to be home long
enough to assist with the canning, pickling and preserving. The little
journal gives the best glimpses of her daily life, usually only a hasty
scrawl of a few lines but containing many flashes of humor and wisdom.
Thus the records run:

Crowded house at Port Byron. I tried to say a few words at opening,
but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is a terrible
martyrdom for me to speak.... Very many Abolitionists have yet to
learn the A B C of woman's rights.... The Boston Congregationalist
has a scurrilous article. Shall write the editor.... It is
discouraging that no man does right for right's sake, but
everything to serve party.... I find such comfort in Aurora Leigh
when I am sorely pressed.... Heard Stephen A. Douglas today; a low
spectacle for both eye and ear.... Gave my lecture on "The True
Woman" at Penn Yan teachers' institute. Some strange gentleman
present supported my plea for physical culture for girls.... Had a
talk with Frederick Douglass. He seems to have no faith in simple
and abstract right.... Lost patience this morning over a lamp and
suffered vastly therefor. Why can I not learn self-control?...
Company came and found me out in the garden picking peas and
blackberries--and hoopless.... A fine-looking young colored man on
train presented me with a bouquet. Can't tell whether he knew me or
only felt my sympathy.... Am reading Buckle's History of
Civilization and Darwin's Descent of Man. Have finished his Origin
of Species. Pillsbury has just given me Emerson's poems....

Miss Anthony did not fail to put aside everything long enough to attend
the State Teachers' Convention at Syracuse. The right of women to take
part had now become so well established that it needed no further
defense, but she still fought for equal pay for equal services, and
equal advantages of education for colored children, and each year found
her views gaining a stronger support from both men and women. After
this convention she continued her meetings, anti-slavery and woman's
rights, and during the summer visited again her birthplace at Adams,
Mass., writing home:

Found grandfather working in the oat field, just think of it,
ninety-and-a-half years old! But in honor of my arrival he remained
home and visited all the afternoon. How hard the women here work,
and how destitute they are of all the conveniences. It is perfectly
barbarous when they have plenty of money. I borrowed a calico dress
and sunbonnet and with the cousins climbed to the very top of Old
Greylock. Later I visited the "Daniel House," as grandfather calls
our old home. I rambled through the orchard, but the spice-apple
tree is dead and the little tree in the corner that we children
loved so well. I visited the old spring up in the pasture, and
thought how many times the tired feet of mother and grandmother had
trod those paths--and the little brook runs over the stones as
merry and beautiful as ever.

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