The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Volume I Part 40

1874.

Miss Anthony's case continued to attract widespread attention, Judge Hunt's arbitrary action finding few apologists even among opponents of woman suffrage. It was finally decided by her counsel and herself to make an appeal to Congress for the remission of the fine, which, if granted, would be in effect a declaration of the illegality of Judge Hunt's act and a precedent for the future. Judge Selden based his authority for such an appeal on a case in the United States Statutes at Large, chap. 45, p. 802, where a fine of $1,000 and costs, illegally imposed upon Matthew Lyon under the Alien and Sedition Laws, 1799, were refunded with interest to his heirs. Mr. Van Voorhis found an authority also in an act pa.s.sed by the British Parliament in 1792, correcting the departure from the common law, in respect to the rights of juries, by Lord Mansfield and his a.s.sociates in the cases of Woodfall and s.h.i.+pley.

This act was pa.s.sed through the exertions of Lord Camden and Mr. Fox in order to prevent the erroneous decisions of the judges from becoming the law of England.

Both of the attorneys keenly resented the action of Judge Hunt, Mr.

Selden p.r.o.nouncing it "the greatest judicial outrage ever perpetrated in the United States;" and Mr. Van Voorhis a.s.serting that "trial by jury was completely annihilated in this case, and there is no remedy except to appeal to the justice of Congress to remit the fine and declare that trial by jury does and shall exist in this country." The appeal, or pet.i.tion, was prepared and Miss Anthony carried it to Was.h.i.+ngton when she went to the National Convention, January 15, 1874.

It was an able doc.u.ment, reciting the facts in the case and the action of the judge, and concluding:

Your pet.i.tioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings, she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Const.i.tution to all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury and the right to have the a.s.sistance of counsel for their defense. It is a mockery to call hers a trial by jury; and, unless the a.s.sistance of counsel may be limited to the argument of legal questions, without the privilege of saying a word to the jury upon the question of the guilt or innocence in fact of a party charged, or the privilege of ascertaining from the jury whether they do or do not agree to the verdict p.r.o.nounced by the Court in their name, she has been denied the a.s.sistance of counsel for her defense.

Of the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of your pet.i.tioner to vote, she makes no complaint. It was a question properly belonging to the Court to decide, was fully and fairly submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right or wrong, your pet.i.tioner is well aware she can not here complain. But in regard to her conviction of crime, which she insists, for the reasons above given, was in violation of the principles of the common law, of common morality, of the statute under which she was charged, and of the Const.i.tution--a crime of which she was as innocent as the judge by whom she was convicted--she respectfully asks, inasmuch as the law has provided no means of reviewing the decisions of the judge, or of correcting his errors, that the fine imposed upon your pet.i.tioner be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal that her conviction was unjust.

This was presented in the Senate by A.A. Sargent, of California, and in the House by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and was referred to the judiciary committees. In May, Lyman Tremaine, from the House Judiciary Committee, reported adversely on the pet.i.tion in a lengthy doc.u.ment, which incorporated a letter from District-Attorney Crowley, urging the committee "not to degrade a just judge and applaud a criminal;" and declaring that "Miss Anthony's trial was fair and const.i.tutional and by an impartial jury." (!) Mr. Tremaine's report said: "Congress can not be converted into a national court of review for any and all criminal convictions where it shall be alleged the judge has committed an error." Thus did he deliberately ignore the point at issue, the refusal of a trial by jury. It concluded by saying: "Since the discussion of this question has arisen in the committee, the President has pardoned Miss Anthony for the offense of which she was convicted and this seems to furnish a conclusive reason why no further action should be taken by the judiciary committee." (!) The learned gentleman probably referred to the pardon of the inspectors by the President. Miss Anthony had not asked executive clemency for herself.

Benjamin F. Butler presented an able and exhaustive minority report which closed with the following declaration: "Therefore, because the fine has been imposed by a court of the United States for an offense triable by jury, without the same being submitted to the jury, and because the court a.s.sumed to itself the right to enter a verdict without submitting the case to the jury, and in order that the judgment of the House of Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the committee, may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its determination to sustain in its integrity the common law right of trial by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the pet.i.tioner be granted."

In June George F. Edmunds made an adverse report from the Senate Judiciary Committee in this remarkable language: "That they are not satisfied that the ruling of the judge was precisely as represented in the pet.i.tion, and that if it were so, the Senate could not legally take any action in the premises, and they move that the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the pet.i.tion, and that the bill be postponed indefinitely."

Senator Matthew II. Carpenter presented a long and carefully prepared minority report which concluded:

Unfortunately the United States has no "well-ordered system of jurisprudence." A citizen may be tried, condemned and put to death by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and no court can grant him relief or a new trial. If a citizen have a cause involving the t.i.tle to his farm, if it exceed $2,000 in value, he may bring his cause to the Supreme Court; but if it involve his liberty or his life, he can not. While we permit this blemish to exist on our judicial system, it behooves us to watch carefully the judgments inferior courts may render; and it is doubly important that we should see to it that twelve jurors shall concur with the judge before a citizen shall be hanged, incarcerated or otherwise punished.

I concur with the majority of the committee that Congress can not grant the precise relief prayed for in the memorial; but I deem it to be the duty of Congress to declare its disapproval of the doctrine a.s.serted and the course pursued in the trial of Miss Anthony; and all the more for the reason that no judicial court has jurisdiction to review the proceedings therein.

I need not disclaim all purpose to question the motives of the learned judge before whom this trial was conducted. The best of judges may commit the gravest of errors amid the hurry and confusion of a nisi prius term; and the wrong Miss Anthony has suffered ought to be charged to the vicious system which denies to those convicted of offenses against the laws of the United States a hearing before the court of last resort--a defect it is equally within the power and the duty of Congress speedily to remedy.

When Miss Anthony returned to Rochester in February, she found the inspectors were about to be put into jail because, acting under advice, they still refused to pay their fines. She wrote Benjamin F. Butler, who replied under date of February 22: "I would not, if I were they, pay, but allow process to be served; and I have no doubt the President will remit the fine if they are pressed too far." They were imprisoned February 26. Miss Anthony went at once to the jail and urged them not to pay the fine, for the sake of principle, promising to see that they were soon released. She waded through a heavy snow to consult her attorneys and then to the newspaper offices to talk with the editors in regard to the prisoners, reaching home at dark, and in her diary that night she writes, "I could not bear to come away and leave them one night in that dolorous place."

She went out for a few lectures in neighboring towns, and at the Dansville Sanitarium was presented by the patients with a purse of $62.

Arriving in Rochester at 7 A. M., March 2, she went straight to the jail and breakfasted with the inspectors; then to see the marshal and succeeded in having them released on bail. She did not reach home till 1 p. M., and here she found this telegram from Senator Sargent: "I laid the case of the inspectors before the President today. He kindly orders their pardon. Papers are being prepared." Benjamin F. Butler also had interceded with the President and sent Miss Anthony a telegram of congratulation on the result. In a few days the inspectors were pardoned and their fines remitted by President Grant. They were in jail just one week and during that time received hundreds of calls, while each day bountiful meals were sent them by the women whose votes they had accepted. After their pardon a reception was given them at the home of Miss Anthony's sister, Mrs. Mosher, by the ladies of the Eighth ward, and in the spring they were re-elected by a handsome majority.

Miss Anthony's fine stands against her to the present day.

This case was the dominating feature of the National Convention at Was.h.i.+ngton in the winter of 1874; the key-note of all the speeches and the arguments before the judiciary committees was woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. The women did not relinquish this claim until all ground for it was destroyed by a decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1875, in the case of Virginia L. Minor, of St.

Louis. Francis Minor, a lawyer of that city, was the first to a.s.sert that women were enfranchised by both the letter and the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, acting under his advice, his wife attempted to register for the presidential election of 1872. Her name was refused and she brought suit against the inspector for the purpose of making a test case. After an adverse decision by the lower courts, the case was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and argued before that tribunal by Mr. Minor, at the October term, 1874. It is not too much to say that no const.i.tutional lawyer in the country could have improved upon this argument in its array of authorities, its keen logic and its impressive plea for justice.[78]

The decision was adverse, the opinion of the court being delivered March 29, 1875, by Chief-Justice Waite, himself a strong advocate of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. The court admitted that "women are persons and citizens," but found that the "National Const.i.tution does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United States has no voters of its own creation. The National Const.i.tution does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the pa.s.sage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the States had the power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These amendments, ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination, but did not forbid that against s.e.x."

This is in direct contradiction to the decision of Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case: "The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms and mean the same thing; they describe the _political body who, according to our republican inst.i.tutions, form the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through their representatives_. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a const.i.tuent member of this sovereignty."

Although Miss Anthony and her co-workers still believed that, with a true interpretation, women were voters under these amendments, they were obliged to accept the decision of the highest court of appeal.

They then returned to the work of pet.i.tioning Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Const.i.tution which should prohibit disfranchis.e.m.e.nt on account of s.e.x. They continued also the original plan of endeavoring to secure amendments to the const.i.tutions of the different States abolis.h.i.+ng the word "male" as a qualification for voting.[79] Bitterly disappointed at the decision of the Supreme Court, it was nevertheless a source of pride to the women that they had made their claim for representation in the government, carried it to the highest tribunal and gone down in honorable defeat.

[Ill.u.s.tration HW: Yours truly Virginia L. Minor]

Miss Anthony never hesitated to ask the most distinguished men to speak on the woman suffrage platform, and Henry Wilson writes from the chamber of the Vice-President his regrets that he can not accept her invitation. Benjamin F. Butler replies: "As a rule I have refused to take part in any convention in the District of Columbia about any matter which might come before Congress. I have gone farther out of my way in that regard in the matter of woman suffrage than in any other.

Having given evidence that I am most strongly committed to the legality, propriety and justice of granting the ballot to woman, I do not see how I can add anything to it. Hoping that your cause may succeed, I have the honor to be, very truly yours."

Her cousin, Elbridge G. Lapham, M. C., of New York, says in a letter: "I am persuaded the time is fast hastening when woman will be accorded the exercise of the right your a.s.sociation demands. With that secured, many other advantages, now denied, will surely and speedily follow. I can see no valid objection to the right of suffrage being conferred, while there are many and very cogent reasons in favor of it. As has been said, you may go on election day to the most degraded elector you can find at the polls, who would sell his vote for a dollar or a dram, and ask him what he would take for his _right to vote_ and you couldn't purchase it with a kingdom."

[Autograph: Elbridge G. Lapham]

She found it possible even to interview the President of the United States on this question. During a conversation with General Grant one day on Pennsylvania Avenue, she said, "Well, Mr. President, what are you going to do for woman suffrage?" In a hearty, pleasant way he answered, "I have already done more for women than any other President, I have recognized the right of 5,000 of them to be postmasters." There were always distinguished men to champion this cause, but the chief drawback was expressed in a letter from that staunch supporter, Hon.

A.G. Riddle, in 1874:

There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the courts; and just as little from politicians. They never will take up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never--till the thing is done. The Republicans want no new issues or disturbing elements. The Democrats are certain that the Republicans are about to dissolve; and they want to hold on as they are. Both think this thing may, perhaps will come, but now is not the time; and with both, there never will be a "now." The trouble is that below all this lies the fact that man can govern alone and that, though woman has the right, man wants to do it; and if she wait for him to ask her, she will never vote.

There never was a cause with so much unembodied strength, and with so little working power; and the problem is how to vitalize and organize it. One of two things, I think, must occur; either man must be made to see and feel, as he never has done yet, the need of woman's help in the great field of human government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as she never has, and take her place. I still think that one of the main hindrances is with women. The fact is, that the worst bugbear is the never-seen, ever-felt law of caste which has always walled woman around, and which few have the courage to step over.

[Autograph:

Sincerely yours A.G. Riddle]

At the close of the convention Miss Anthony accepted the invitation of Mrs. Hooker, the State president, to join her in a month's tour through Connecticut. They spoke in nineteen different cities and towns, Mrs. Hooker a.s.suming all financial responsibility and paying Miss Anthony $25 for each lecture. They had excellent audiences and were entertained in many beautiful homes. In Miss Anthony's diary, March 11, she says: "Senator Sumner died today, the n.o.blest Roman of them all; true to the negro, but never a public word for woman.

How I have pleaded with him for years, and he always admitted that his principles logically carried out gave woman an equal guarantee with man."

In the spring of 1874 the women's temperance crusade began in Rochester and, although their methods were very different from those Miss Anthony would have employed, she met with them at their request to help them organize. After this was effected they called on her for a speech and she said in brief:

I am always glad to welcome every a.s.sociation of women for any good purpose, because I know that they will quickly learn the impossibility of accomplis.h.i.+ng any substantial end. Women never realize their inability to effect a reform until they attempt it, and then they find how closely interwoven with politics are all such matters, and how entirely without political power are they themselves.... Now my good women, the best thing this organization will do for you will be to show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. You never can talk down or sing down or pray down an inst.i.tution which is voted into existence. You never will be able to lessen this evil until you have votes.

Frederick Dougla.s.s used to tell how, when he was a Maryland slave and a good Methodist, he would go into the farthest corner of the tobacco field and pray G.o.d to bring him liberty; but G.o.d never answered his prayers until he prayed with his heels. And so, dear friends, He never will answer yours for the suppression of the liquor traffic until you are able to pray with your ballots.[80]

Miss Anthony's sentiments on this question are further expressed in a letter to her brother Daniel R., editor Leavenworth Times:

I like the Times' article on the women's whiskey war. Emerson says, "G.o.d answers only such prayers as men themselves answer." After ignorant and helpless mothers have transmitted to their children the drunkard's appet.i.te, G.o.d can not answer their prayers to prevent them from gratifying it. But this crusade will educate the women who engage in it to use the one and only means of regulating or prohibiting the traffic in liquor--that of the ballot. As soon as they find this crusade experiment a failure, which they certainly will, because all spasmodic, sensational religious efforts are transient and fleeting, they will realize the enduring strength and usefulness of the franchise. However little that is permanent may come of this movement, it is good in itself because anything is better for women than tame submission to the evils around them; and when they find kind words, entreaties and tears avail nothing, they will surely try the virtue of stones (votes) to bring down the great demon that desolates their homes.

An entry in the journal made soon afterward says: "I dropped into the Industrial Congress today and was invited to speak. I told the men that the degraded labor of women made them quite as heavy a millstone round the necks of working-men as is the Heathen Chinese." And a few days later: "Dr. Dio Lewis called today, and I went to hear him speak this evening. Same old story--men make and break the laws, and women by love and persuasion must soften their hearts to abandon their wickedness.

Never a hint that women should have anything to do with the making and enforcing of the laws. They must only coax."

The diary shows over one hundred letters written by Miss Anthony's own hand in arranging for the May Anniversary in New York, while she sat at the bedside of her mother, who was very ill. Many cordial answers were received, among them one from Josephine E. Butler, of England. Mary L.

Booth thus closed her reply: "Pray believe that I always hold you in affectionate remembrance as one of the most sincere, earnest and disinterested women whom it has ever been my fortune to meet, and whom I shall always be glad to hear from or to see." Mrs. Stanton sent an extract from a letter of Martha C. Wright, saying: "Our only hope is in the gradual accession of thinking men and women, and in our indomitable Susan."

At Miss Anthony's earnest desire, Mrs. Wright was elected president of the a.s.sociation and this proved to be her last appearance on that platform which she had graced for many years. An interesting feature of the meeting was the presence of the veteran worker, Ernestine L. Rose, who was back from England on a visit. During this May meeting a telegram was sent over the country stating: "Miss Anthony stalked down the aisle with faded alpaca dress to the top of her boots, blue cotton umbrella and white cotton gloves, perched herself on the platform, crossed her legs, pulled out her snuff-box and pa.s.sed it around. On the platform were Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Rose and other noted women, all dressed in unmentionables cut bias, and smoking penny drab cigars. Susan was quite drunk." The New York Herald, which rarely had a good word for the suffrage conventions, in a long and respectful account of this same meeting, said:

There was a perfume of Fifth Avenue about the audience. Carriages in livery rolled up to the door. The striking contrast of this audience with that of other years, in the almost perfect conformity of the manner and dress of the women to those of other women who rule in the fas.h.i.+onable world and are supposed to look down upon these knights-errant of the s.e.x, was not greater than that between the treatment of Miss Anthony now and in other times. In former years they came to scoff at this wiry and resolute champion of her s.e.x. Now every word she utters is received with almost reverent rapture. Yesterday brought together as intelligent and perhaps as refined an audience of ladies as might he gathered in the city.

Miss Anthony was dressed with her usual simplicity in black silk.

She read the call for the convention and made thereon one of her characteristic addresses, full of fire and prophecy.

During the summer of 1874 Miss Anthony lectured in many places in Ma.s.sachusetts and New York, striving to pay the interest and reduce by a little her pressing debts, and slipping home occasionally to see her mother who was carefully tended by the devoted sister Mary. At one of these times she writes in her diary: "It is always so good to get into my own humble bed." August 22 she sent a letter of congratulation on his fiftieth birthday to her brother Daniel R. After referring to the $50 he sent to her at the close of her half century, she says:

Though I can not return my love and wishes in the same kind, they are none the less for your joy and peace in the future, neither is my rejoicing less over the success of your first half of life. From your many experiences, whether they have been such as you would have chosen or not, strength, growth, discipline have resulted, and sometimes I think all the adverse winds of life are needed to check our ever-rising vain-glory in our own power and success....

Whatever comes to those closely united by marriage or by blood, the one lesson from recent developments in Brooklyn is that none of the parties ever should take in an outside person as confidant. If the twain can not themselves restore their oneness, none other can. If parents and children, brothers and sisters, can not adjust their own differences among themselves, it is in vain they look to friends outside.

What lessons we are having that not only is honesty the best policy, but that there is nothing but most dreadful disaster in any policy which is not based on absolute honesty. The fact is, nothing is worth the getting, if that has to be done by cunning, falsehood, deception. Whether it be wealth, position, office or the society of one we love, if we have to steal it, though it may be sweet and seemingly real and lasting, the exposure of the illicit means of gaining it is sure to come, and then the thing itself turns to dross. When will the children of men learn this fact, that nothing pays but that which is obtained fairly, openly and honestly?

This year the Michigan Legislature submitted a woman suffrage amendment to the voters, and Miss Anthony decided to canva.s.s the State. To do this would ruin her own lecture season for the autumn, and those in charge of the suffrage campaign could offer her no salary. She did not hesitate, however, but without any financial guarantee, began her work there September 24. On the eve of going she wrote to a friend: "I leave home without having had one single week of rest this summer--not this year, indeed, nor for twenty-five years." She made a forty days'

canva.s.s, taking out three days for the Illinois convention at Chicago, and during that time spoke in thirty-five different places. Everywhere she addressed immense and enthusiastic crowds. She was frequently preceded by Senator Zach. Chandler, speaking for the Republican party, and often her audiences were much larger than the senator's.[81] Toward the close of the campaign she wrote home:

If these meetings of mine were only by and in favor of an enfranchised cla.s.s, they would carry almost the solid vote of every town for the measure advocated; but alas, they are for a cla.s.s powerless to help or hinder any party for good or for evil. It is wonderful to see how quickly the prejudices yield to a little common sense talk. If only we had speakers and time, we could carry the vote of this State, but we have neither, and so all we can hope for is a respectable minority. I enclose $200 left above travelling expenses, hall rent, etc., from collections and the sale of my trial pamphlets. If I could have had even a twenty-five cents admission, I should have cleared over $1,000, but I could not have it said that I went to Michigan, at such a crisis, to make money for myself; it would have ruined the moral effect of my work. Now they are calling on me from Was.h.i.+ngton to stay in that city all next winter to get our measure considered by Congress, but I ought to go to work to earn money, for I need it if ever anybody did. If I have to get it, however, at the cost of losing our golden opportunity there, it will be too dear a price to pay.