Susan B. Anthony Part 3

Sensing Susan's interest in the antislavery cause and hoping to make an active worker of her, Abby and Stephen suggested that she join them on a week's tour, during which she marveled at Abby's ability to hold the attention and meet the arguments of her unfriendly audiences and wondered if she could ever be moved to such eloquence.

Not yet ready to join the ranks as a lecturer, she continued her apprentices.h.i.+p by attending antislavery meetings whenever possible and traveled to Syracuse for the convention which the mob had driven out of New York. Eager for more, she stopped over in Seneca Falls to hear William Lloyd Garrison and the English abolitionist, George Thompson, and was the guest of a temperance colleague, Amelia Bloomer, an enterprising young woman who was editing a temperance paper for women, _The Lily_.

To her surprise Susan found Amelia in the bloomer costume about which she had read in _The Lily_. Introduced in Seneca Falls by Elizabeth Smith Miller, the costume, because of its comfort, had so intrigued Amelia that she had advocated it in her paper and it had been dubbed with her name. Looking at Amelia's long full trousers, showing beneath her short skirt but modestly covering every inch of her leg, Susan was a bit startled. Yet she could understand the usefulness of the costume even if she had no desire to wear it herself. In fact she was more than ever pleased with her new gray delaine dress with its long full skirt.

Seneca Falls, however, had an attraction for Susan far greater than either William Lloyd Garrison or Amelia Bloomer, for it was the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton whom she had longed to meet ever since 1848 when her parents had reported so enthusiastically about her and the Rochester woman's rights convention. Walking home from the antislavery meeting with Mrs. Bloomer, Susan met Mrs. Stanton. She liked her at once and later called at her home. They discussed abolition, temperance, and woman's rights, and with every word Susan's interest grew. Mrs. Stanton's interest in woman's rights and her forthright, clear thinking made an instant appeal. Never before had Susan had such a satisfactory conversation with another woman, and she thought her beautiful. Mrs. Stanton's deep blue eyes with their mischievous twinkle, her rosy cheeks and short dark hair gave her a very youthful appearance, and it was hard for Susan to realize she was the mother of three lively boys.

Susan listened enthralled while Mrs. Stanton told how deeply she had been moved as a child by the pitiful stories of the women who came to her father's law office, begging for relief from the unjust property laws which turned over their inheritance and their earnings to their husbands. For the first time, Susan heard the story of the exclusion of women delegates from the World's antislavery convention in London, in 1840, which Mrs. Stanton had attended with her husband and where she became the devoted friend of Lucretia Mott. She now better understood why these two women had called the first woman's rights convention in 1848 at which Mrs. Stanton had made the first public demand for woman suffrage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her "Bloomer costume"]

They talked about the bloomer costume which Mrs. Stanton now wore and about dress reform which at the moment seemed to Mrs. Stanton an important phase of the woman's rights movement, and she pointed out to Susan the advantages of the bloomer in the life of a busy housekeeper who ran up and down stairs carrying babies, lamps, and buckets of water. She praised the freedom it gave from uncomfortable stays and tight lacing, confident it would be a big factor in improving the health of women.

Thoroughly interested, Susan left Seneca Falls with much to think about, but not yet converted to the bloomer costume, or even to woman suffrage. Of one thing, however, she was certain. She wanted this woman of vision and courage for her friend.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Anthony Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rochester, New York.

[22] Hannah Anthony married Eugene Mosher, a merchant of Easton, New York, on September 4, 1845.

[23] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection, Rochester, New York.

[24] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 48.

[25] _Ibid._, p. 50.

[26] May 28, 1848, Lucy E. Anthony Collection.

[27] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 53.

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

[29] _Report of the International Council of Women_, 1888, p. 327.

[30] To Nora Blatch, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Va.s.sar College Library, Poughkeepsie, New York.

[31] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 52.

[32] Amy H. Croughton, _Antislavery Days in Rochester_ (Rochester, N.Y., 1936). Anyone implicated in the escape of a slave was liable to $1000 fine, to the payment of $1000 to the owner of the fugitive, and to a possible jail sentence of six months.

FREEDOM TO SPEAK

Susan was soon rejoicing at the prospect of meeting Lucy Stone and Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York _Tribune_. Mrs. Stanton had invited her to Seneca Falls to discuss with them and other influential men and women the founding of a people's college. Unhesitatingly she joined forces with Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone to insist that the people's college be opened to women on the same terms as men. Lucy had proved the practicability of this as a student at Oberlin, the first college to admit women, and was one of the first women to receive a college degree. However, to suggest coeducation in those days was enough to jeopardize the founding of a college, and Horace Greeley stood out against them, his babylike face, fringed with throat whiskers, getting redder by the moment as he begged them not to agitate the question.

The people's college did not materialize, but out of this meeting grew a friends.h.i.+p between Susan, Elizabeth Stanton, and Lucy Stone, which developed the woman's rights movement in the United States. Susan discovered at once that Lucy, like Mrs. Stanton, was an ardent advocate of woman's rights. Brought up in a large family on a farm in western Ma.s.sachusetts where a woman's lot was an unending round of hard work with no rights over her children or property, Lucy had seen much to make her rebellious. Resolving to free herself from this bondage, she had worked hard for an education, finally reaching Oberlin College. Here she held out for equal rights in education, and now as she went through the country, pleading for the abolition of slavery, she was not only putting into practice woman's right to express herself on public affairs, but was scattering woman's rights doctrine wherever she went. Listening to this rosy-cheeked, enthusiastic young woman with her little snub nose and soulful gray eyes, Susan began to realize how little opposition in comparison she herself had met because she was a woman. Not only had her father encouraged her to become a teacher, but he had actually aroused her interest in such causes as abolition, temperance, and woman's rights, while both Lucy and Mrs. Stanton had met disapproval and resistance all the way.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lucy Stone]

She found Lucy, as well as Mrs. Stanton, in the bloomer dress, praising its convenience. As Lucy traveled about lecturing, in all kinds of weather, climbing on trains, into carriages, and walking on muddy streets, she found it much more practical and comfortable than the fas.h.i.+onable long full skirts. Nevertheless, there was discomfort in being stared at on the streets and in the chagrin of her friends.

This reform was much on their minds and they discussed it pro and con, for Mrs. Stanton was facing real persecution in Seneca Falls, with boys screaming "breeches" at her when she appeared in the street and with her husband's political opponents ridiculing her costume in their campaign speeches. Both women, however, felt it their duty to bear this cross to free women from the bondage of c.u.mbersome clothing, hoping always that the bloomer, because of its utility, would win converts and finally become the fas.h.i.+on. Susan admired their courage, but still could not be persuaded to put on the bloomer.

Fired with their zeal, she began planning what she herself might do to rouse women. The idea of a separate woman's rights movement did not as yet enter her mind. Her thoughts turned rather to the two national reform movements already well under way, temperance and antislavery.

While a career as an antislavery worker appealed strongly to her, she felt unqualified when she measured herself with the courageous Grimke sisters from South Carolina, or with Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone, and the eloquent men in the movement. She had made a place for herself locally in temperance societies, and she decided that her work was there--to make women an active, important part of this reform.

That winter, as a delegate of the Rochester Daughters of Temperance, she went with high hopes to the state convention of the Sons of Temperance in Albany, where she visited Lydia Mott and her sister Abigail, who lived in a small house on Maiden Lane. Both Lydia and Abigail, because of their independence, interested Susan greatly. They supported themselves by "taking in" boarders from among the leading politicians in Albany. They also kept a men's furnis.h.i.+ngs store on Broadway and made hand-ruffled s.h.i.+rt bosoms and fine linen accessories for Thurlow Weed, Horatio Seymour, and other influential citizens.

Their political contacts were many and important, and yet they were also among the very few in that conservative city who stood for temperance, abolition of slavery, and woman's rights. Their home was a rallying point for reformers and a refuge for fugitive slaves. It was to be a second home to Susan in the years to come.

When Susan and the other women delegates entered the convention of the Sons of Temperance, they looked forward proudly, if a bit timidly, to taking part in the meetings, but when Susan spoke to a motion, the chairman, astonished that a woman would be so immodest as to speak in a public meeting, scathingly announced, "The sisters were not invited here to speak, but to listen and to learn."[33]

This was the first time that Susan had been publicly rebuked because she was a woman, and she did not take it lightly. Leaving the hall with several other indignant women delegates, amid the critical whisperings of those who remained "to listen and to learn," she hurried over to Lydia's shop to ask her advice on the next step to be taken. Lydia, delighted that they had had the spirit to leave the meeting, suggested they engage the lecture room of the Hudson Street Presbyterian Church and hold a meeting of their own that very night.

She went with them to the office of her friend Thurlow Weed, the editor of the _Evening Journal_, who published the whole story in his paper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Susan B. Anthony at the age of thirty-four]

Well in advance of the meeting, Susan was at the church, feeling very responsible, and when she saw Samuel J. May enter, she was greatly relieved. He had read the notice in the _Evening Journal_ and persuaded a friend to come with him. To see his genial face in the audience gave her confidence, for he would speak easily and well if others should fail her. Only a few people drifted into the meeting, for the night was snowy and cold. The room was poorly lighted, the stove smoked, and in the middle of the speeches, the stovepipe fell down. Yet in spite of all this, a spirit of independence and accomplishment was born in that gathering and plans were made to call a woman's state temperance convention in Rochester with Susan in charge.

All this Susan reported to her new friend, Elizabeth Stanton, who promised to help all she could, urging that the new organization lead the way and not follow the advice of cautious, conservative women.

Susan agreed, and as a first step in carrying out this policy, she asked Mrs. Stanton to make the keynote speech of the convention. Soon the Woman's State Temperance Society was a going concern with Mrs.

Stanton as president and Susan as secretary. There was no doubt about its leading the way far ahead of the rank and file of the temperance movement when Mrs. Stanton, with Susan's full approval, recommended divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, declaring, "Let us pet.i.tion our State government so to modify the laws affecting marriage and the custody of children that the drunkard shall have no claims on wife and child."[34]

Such independence on the part of women could not be tolerated, and both the press and the clergy ruthlessly denounced the Woman's State Temperance Society. Susan, however, did not take this too seriously, familiar as she was with the persecution antislavery workers endured when they frankly expressed their convictions.

Now recognized as the leader of women's temperance groups in New York, Susan traveled throughout the state, organizing temperance societies, getting subscriptions for Amelia Bloomer's temperance paper, _The Lily_, and attending temperance conventions in spite of the fact that she met determined opposition to the partic.i.p.ation of women. Impressed by the success of political action in Maine, where in 1851 the first prohibition law in the country had been pa.s.sed, she now signed her letters, "Yours for Temperance Politics."[35] She appealed to women to pet.i.tion for a Maine law for New York and brought a group of women before the legislature for the first time for a hearing on this prohibition bill. Realizing then that women's indirect influence could be of little help in political action, she saw clearly that women needed the vote.

However, it was the woman's rights convention in Syracuse, New York, in September 1852, which turned her thoughts definitely in the direction of votes for women. It was the first woman's rights gathering she had ever attended and she was enthusiastic over the people she met. She talked eagerly with the courageous Jewish lecturer, Ernestine Rose; with Dr. Harriot K. Hunt of Boston, one of the first women physicians, who was waging a battle against taxation without representation; with Clarina Nichols of Vermont, editor of the _Windham County Democrat_, and with Matilda Joslyn Gage, the youngest member of the convention. All of these became valuable, loyal friends in the years ahead. Susan renewed her acquaintance with Lucy Stone, and met Antoinette Brown who had also studied at Oberlin College and was now the first woman ordained as a minister. With real pleasure she greeted Mrs. Stanton's cousin, Gerrit Smith, now Congressman from New York, and his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller, the originator of the much-discussed bloomer. Best of all was her long-hoped-for meeting with James and Lucretia Mott and Lucretia's sister, Martha C. Wright. Only Paulina Wright Davis of Providence and Elizabeth Oakes Smith of Boston were disappointing, for they appeared at the meetings in short-sleeved, low-necked dresses with loose-fitting jackets of pink and blue wool, shocking her deeply intrenched Quaker instincts. Although she realized that they wore ultrafas.h.i.+onable clothes to show the world that not all woman's rights advocates were frumps wearing the hideous bloomer, she could not forgive them for what to her seemed bad taste. How could such women, she asked herself, hope to represent the earnest, hard-working women who must be the backbone of the equal rights movement? Always forthright, when a principle was at stake, she expressed her feelings frankly when James Mott, serving with her on the nominating committee, proposed Elizabeth Oakes Smith for president. His reply, that they must not expect all women to dress as plainly as the Friends, in no way quieted her opposition. To her delight, Lucretia Mott was elected, and her dignity and poise as president of this large convention of 2,000 won the respect even of the critical press. Susan was elected secretary and so clearly could her voice be heard as she read the minutes and the resolutions that the Syracuse _Standard_ commented, "Miss Anthony has a capital voice and deserves to be clerk of the a.s.sembly."[36]

[Ill.u.s.tration: James and Lucretia Mott]

Not all of the newspapers were so friendly. Some labeled the gathering "a Tomfoolery convention" of "Aunt Nancy men and brawling women"; others called it "the farce at Syracuse,"[37] but for Susan it marked a milestone. Never before had she heard so many earnest, intelligent women plead so convincingly for property rights, civil rights, and the ballot. Never before had she seen so clearly that in a republic women as well as men should enjoy these rights. The ballot a.s.sumed a new importance for her. Her conversion to woman suffrage was complete.

This new interest in the vote was steadily nurtured by Elizabeth Stanton, whom Susan now saw more frequently. Whenever she could, Susan stopped over in Seneca Falls for a visit. Here she found inspiration, new ideas, and good advice, and always left the comfortable Stanton home ready to battle for the rights of women. While Susan traveled about, organizing temperance societies and attending conventions, Mrs.

Stanton, tied down at home by a family of young children, wrote letters and resolutions for her and helped her with her speeches.

Susan was very reluctant about writing speeches or making them. The moment she sat down to write, her thoughts refused to come and her phrases grew stilted. She needed encouragement, and Mrs. Stanton gave it unstintingly, for she had grown very fond of this young woman whose mental companions.h.i.+p she found so stimulating.

During one of these visits, Susan finally put on the bloomer and cut her long thick brown hair as part of the stern task of winning freedom for women. It was not an easy decision and she came to it only because she was unwilling to do less for the cause than Mrs. Stanton or Lucy Stone. Comfortable as the new dress was, it always attracted unfavorable attention and added fuel to the fire of an unfriendly press. This fire soon scorched her at the World's Temperance convention in New York, where women delegates faced the determined animosity of the clergy, who held the balance of power and quoted the Bible to prove that women were defying the will of G.o.d when they took part in public meetings. Obliged to withdraw, the women held meetings of their own in the Broadway Tabernacle, over which Susan presided with a poise and confidence undreamed of a few months before. A success in every way, they were nevertheless described by the press as a battle of the s.e.xes, a free-for-all struggle in which shrill-voiced women in the bloomer costume were supported by a few "male Betties."

The New York _Sun_ spoke of Susan's "ungainly form rigged out in the bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to laughter and ridicule by her very motions on the platform."[38] Untruth was piled upon untruth until dignified ladylike Susan with her earnest pleasing appearance was caricatured into everything a woman should not be. Less courageous temperance women now began to wonder whether they ought to a.s.sociate with such a strong-minded woman as Susan B. Anthony.

There were rumblings of discontent when the Woman's State Temperance Society met in Rochester for its next annual convention in June 1853, and Susan and Mrs. Stanton were roundly criticized because they did not confine themselves to the subject of temperance and talked too much about woman's rights. Not only was Mrs. Stanton defeated for the presidency but the by-laws were amended to make men eligible as officers. Men had been barred when the first by-laws were drafted by Susan and Mrs. Stanton because they wished to make the society a proving ground for women and were convinced that men holding office would take over the management, and women, less experienced, would yield to their wishes.