Susan B. Anthony Part 11

[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 Sc.r.a.pbook, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 att.i.tude 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 Was.h.i.+ngton," 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 citizens.h.i.+p.

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 Was.h.i.+ngton which was vividly described in the discouraging letters Mrs. Stanton received from her husband, now Was.h.i.+ngton 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. d.i.c.kinson.[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 enn.o.ble 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 surpa.s.ses 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 h.e.l.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Susan B. Anthony]

To the question of what to do with the emanc.i.p.ated 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 emanc.i.p.ation, which to an eager advocate of "immediate, unconditional emanc.i.p.ation" seemed like weakness and appeas.e.m.e.nt. 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 emanc.i.p.ation. Northern Democrats, charging Lincoln with incompetence and autocratic control, called for "The Const.i.tution 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 compet.i.tion 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 Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, issued January 1, 1863, roused her. It took a letter from Henry Stanton from Was.h.i.+ngton 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 n.o.body 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]