Читать книгу The Life & Work of Susan B. Anthony - Ida Husted Harper - Страница 17

Table of Contents

Early Woman's Rights meetings not Suffrage conventions; Legal Status of Woman outlined by David Dudley Field; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as co-workers and writers; Tilton's description of the two; before the N.Y. Legislature; Married Woman's Property Law; woman's debt to Susan B. Anthony; Emerson on Lyceum Bureau; letters from Mary S. Anthony on injustice to school-teachers; Beecher's lecture on Woman's Rights; convention at Cooper Institute; Mrs. Stanton on Divorce; Phillips' objections; Mrs. Dall's proper convention in Boston; battle renewed at Progressive Friends' meeting; Miss Anthony's home duties; letter from her birthplace; Anti-Slavery depository at Albany; Agricultural address at Dundee; Miss Anthony's defiance of the law giving child to father.

During the first decade of its history the movement toward securing a larger liberty for women was known by the comprehensive term "woman's rights." At its inception, under the English common law which everywhere prevailed, woman was legally a part of man's belongings, one of his chattels. Restrained by custom from speaking in public or expressing herself through the newspapers, she had been silent under the oppression of ages. When at length she found her voice there were so many wrongs to be righted that she scarcely knew which first should receive attention. Those early meetings could not be called woman suffrage conventions, for many who advocated all the other reforms which they considered either disbelieved in or were indifferent to the franchise. It was only the Anthonys, Stantons, Stones, Roses, Garrisons, Phillips of this great movement for woman's liberty who were philosophical enough to see that the right of suffrage was the underlying principle of the whole question; so it was not for many years, not until practically all other demands had been granted, that they were finally resolved into a suffrage organization, pure and simple. At the beginning of 1860 the laws relating to women, as briefly stated by the great jurist, David Dudley Field, were as follows:

The elective franchise is confined entirely to men. A married woman can not sue for her services, as all she earns legally belongs to the husband, whereas his earnings belong to himself, and the wife legally has no interest in them. Where children have property and both parents are living, the father is the guardian. In case of the wife's death without a will, the husband is entitled to all her personal property and to a life interest in the whole of her real estate to the entire exclusion of the children, even though this property may have come to her through a former husband and the children of that marriage still be living. If the husband die without a will, the widow is entitled to one-third of the personal property and to a life interest in one-third only of the real estate. In case a wife be personally injured, either in reputation by slander, or in body by accident, compensation must be recovered in the joint name of herself and her husband, and when recovered it belongs to him. On the other hand, the wife has no legal claim in a similar case in regard to the husband. The father may by deed or will appoint a guardian for the minor children, who may thus be taken entirely away from the jurisdiction of the mother at his death. Where both parents are dead, the children shall be given to the nearest of kin and, as between relatives of the same degree of consanguinity, males shall be preferred. No married woman can act as administrator in any case.

One can not but ask why, under such laws, women ever would marry, but in those days virtually all occupations were closed to them and the vast majority were compelled to marry for support. In the few cases where women had their own means, they married because of the public sentiment which considered it a serious reproach to remain a spinster and rigorously forbade to her all the pleasures and independence that are freely accorded to the unmarried woman of today. And they married because it is natural for women to marry, and all laws and all customs, all restrictions and all freedom, never will circumvent nature.

On February 3 and 4, 1860, the State Woman's Rights Convention was held at Albany in Association Hall, an interesting and successful meeting. At its close, in a letter to Mrs. Wright, Miss Anthony said: "Mr. Anson Bingham, chairman of the judiciary committee, will bring in a radical report in favor of all our claims, but previous to doing so he wishes our strongest arguments made before the committee and says Mrs. Stanton must come. I wish you would slip over there and make her feel that the salvation of the Empire State, at least of the women in it, depends upon her bending all her powers to move the hearts of our law-givers at this time. I should go there myself this very night but I must watch and encourage friends here." Mrs. Stanton replied to her urgent appeal: "I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says cross the Alps, they are crossed. You must come here and start me on the right train of thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is wanted is everything in getting up the right document."

The readers of history never will be able to separate Miss Anthony's addresses from Mrs. Stanton's; they themselves scarcely could do it. Some of the strongest ever written by either were prepared without the assistance of the other, but most of their resolutions, memorials and speeches were the joint work of both. Miss Anthony always said, "Mrs. Stanton is my sentence maker, my pen artist." No one can excel Miss Anthony in logic of thought or vigor of expression; no one is so thoroughly supplied with facts, statistics and arguments, but she finds it difficult and distasteful to put them into written form. When, however, some one else has taken her wonderful stock of material and reduced it to shape, she is a perfect critic. Her ear is as carefully attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or phrase needed to give it poise and strength.

Mrs. Stanton had a large house and a constantly increasing family, making it exceedingly difficult to find time for literary work; so when a state paper was to be written, Miss Anthony would go to Seneca Falls. After the children were in bed, the two women would sit up far into the night arranging material and planning their work. The next day Mrs. Stanton would seek the quietest spot in the house and begin writing, while Miss Anthony would give the children their breakfast, start the older ones to school, make the dessert for dinner and trundle the babies up and down the walk, rushing in occasionally to help the writer out of a vortex. Many an article which will be read with delight by future generations was thus prepared. Mrs. Stanton describes these occasions in her charming Reminiscences:

It was mid such exhilarating scenes that Miss Anthony and I wrote addresses for temperance, anti-slavery, educational and woman's rights conventions. Here we forged resolutions, protests, appeals, petitions, agricultural reports and constitutional arguments, for we made it a matter of conscience to accept every invitation to speak on every question, in order to maintain woman's right to do so. It is often said by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she has been my good angel, always pushing and guiding me to work. With the cares of a large family, perhaps I might in time, like too many women, have become wholly absorbed in a narrow selfishness, had not my friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform, complacently deciding questions in which women had an equal interest without an equal voice, readily roused me to a determination to throw a fire-brand in the midst of their assembly.

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.1

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.2 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.

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.

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.

From here she went to Boston to attend a meeting of the Hovey fund committee and urged them to establish a "depository" at Albany with Lydia Mott in charge, which was done. This depot of supplies of literature, etc., for the anti-slavery cause, and central meeting place for its friends, was continued throughout the war. The Mott sisters, cousins of James, lovely and cultured Quaker women, had a little home in Maiden Lane and kept a gentlemen's furnishing store, making by hand the ruffled shirtbosoms and other fine linen. As their home had been so long the center for the reformers of the day, the committee were glad to put Lydia in charge of this depository, at a small salary, and she conducted an extensive correspondence for them during several years. Miss Anthony stayed with her till everything was arranged and in good running order. In July she had received the following invitation:

By a unanimous vote of the Union Agricultural Society of Dundee a resolution was passed to tender you an invitation to deliver the annual address at our next fair. We know it is a departure from established usage, but your experience as one of a brave band of radical reformers will have taught you that only by gradual steps and continued efforts can the prejudices of custom be overcome and the rights of humanity maintained. Woman's rights are coming to be respected more and more every year, and we hope you will aid us in demonstrating that a woman can deliver as profitable an address at an agricultural fair as can a lord of creation....

Yours respectfully, WILLIAM HOUSE, Secretary, per D. S. BRUNER.

To refuse such an opportunity was not to be thought of, so she accepted, and then wrote Mrs. Stanton, who answered: "Come on and we will grind out the speech. I shall expect to get the inspiration, thoughts and facts from you, and will agree to dress all the children you bring."

She found a cordial welcome when she reached Dundee, October 17. It rained so hard her address was deferred till the next day, as it had to be delivered out of doors, so she visited the "art" and "culinary" departments of the fair, and records in her diary: "I have just put an extra paragraph in my speech on bedquilts and bad cooking." Her stage was a big lumber wagon, and her desk the melodeon of James G. Clark, the noted singer and Abolitionist, who held an umbrella over her head to keep off the rain. The diary says: "More than 2,000 feet were planted in the mud, but I had a grand listening to the very end." The speech was a great success and was published in full in the Dundee Record, occupying the entire front page. It was a fine exposition of modern methods of farming and a strong plea for beautifying the home, giving the children books and music and making life so pleasant they would not want to leave the country for the city. These ideas at that time were new and attracted much attention and favorable comment. This was the first instance of a woman's making an address on such an occasion.

At the close of 1860 an incident occurred which attracted wide attention and strikingly illustrated Miss Anthony's unflinching courage and firm persistence when she felt she was right. One evening in December she was in Albany at the depository with Lydia Mott when a lady, heavily veiled, entered and in a long, confidential talk told her story, which in brief was as follows: She was the sister of a United States senator and of a prominent lawyer, and in her younger days was principal of the academy and had written several books. She married a distinguished member of the Massachusetts Senate and they had three children. Having discovered that her husband was unfaithful to her and confronted him with the proofs, he was furious and threw her down stairs, and thereafter was very abusive. When she threatened to expose him, he had her shut up in an insane asylum, a very easy thing for husbands to do in those days. She was there a year and a half, but at length, through a writ of habeas corpus, was released and taken to the home of her brother. Naturally she longed to see her children and the husband permitted the son to visit her a few weeks. When she had to give him up she begged for the thirteen-year-old daughter, who was allowed to remain for two weeks, and then the father demanded her return. The mother pleaded for longer time but was refused. She prayed her brother to interfere but he answered: "It is of no use for you to say another word. The child belongs by law to the father and it is your place to submit. If you make any more trouble about it we'll send you back to the asylum."

Then in her desperation she took the child and fled from the house, finding refuge with a Quaker family, where she stayed until she learned that her hiding-place was discovered, and now as a last resort she came to these women. They assured the unhappy mother that they would help her and, upon making careful inquiry among her friends, found that, while all believed her sane, no one was willing to take her part because of the prominence of her brothers and husband. Finally it was decided that Miss Anthony should go with the mother and child to New York and put them in a safe place, so they were directed to disguise themselves and be at the train on Christmas afternoon. Miss Anthony went on board and soon saw a woman in an old shawl, dilapidated bonnet and green goggles, accompanied by a poorly dressed child, and she knew that so far all was well, but she found the woman in a terrible state of nervousness. She had met her brother coming out of another car where he had just placed his young son to return to boarding-school, after a happy vacation at home, while his sister with her child was fleeing like a criminal; but fortunately he had not recognized her.

Miss Anthony and her charges reached New York at 10 o'clock at night and went through snow and slush to a hotel but were refused admittance because it did not take women "unaccompanied by a gentleman." They made their weary way to another, only to be met with a similar refusal. Finally she thought of an acquaintance who had had a wretched experience with a bad husband and was now divorced, and she felt that sympathy would certainly impel this woman to give them shelter. When they reached the house they found her keeping boarders and she said all would leave if they learned she was "harboring a runaway wife." It was then midnight. They went in the cold arid darkness to a hotel on Broadway, but here the excuse was made that the house was full. Miss Anthony's patience had reached its limit and she declared: "I know that is not so. You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this office all night." The clerk threatened to call the police. "Very well," was the reply, "we will sit here till they come and take us to the station." At last he gave them a room without a fire, and there, cold, wet and exhausted, they remained till morning. Then they started out again on foot, as they had not enough money left to hire a carriage.

They went to Mrs. Rose but she could not accommodate them; then to Abby Hopper Gibbons, who sent them to Elizabeth F. Ellet, saying if they could not find quarters to come back and she would care for them. Mrs. Ellet was not at home. All day they went from place to place but no one was willing to accept the responsibility of sheltering them, and at night, utterly worn out, they returned to Mrs. Gibbons. She promised to keep the mother and child until other arrangements could be effected, and Miss Anthony left them there and took the 10 o'clock train back to Albany. She arrived toward morning, tired out in mind and body, but soon was made comfortable by the ministrations of her faithful friend Lydia.

It was not long before the family became convinced that Miss Anthony knew the whereabouts of mother and child and then began a siege of persecution. She had at this time commenced that never-to-be-forgotten series of anti-slavery conventions which were mobbed in every town from Buffalo to Albany. In the midst of all this excitement and danger, she was constantly receiving threats from the brothers that they would have her arrested on the platform. They said she had broken the laws and they would make her pay the penalty; that their sister was an "ugly" woman and nobody could live with her. To this she replied: "I have heard there was Indian blood in your family; perhaps your sister has got a little of it as well as yourselves. I think you would not allow your children to be taken away from you, law or no law. There is no reason or justice in a woman's submitting to such outrages, and I propose to defy the law and you also."

If she had been harassed only by these men, it would have caused her no especial worry, but letters and telegrams from friends poured in urging her to reveal the hiding-place and, most surprising of all, both Garrison and Phillips wrote that she had abducted a man's child and must surrender it! Mr. Phillips remonstrated: "Let us urge you, therefore, at once to advise and insist upon this woman's returning to her relatives. Garrison concurs with me fully and earnestly in this opinion, thinking that our movement's repute for good sense should not be compromised by any such mistake." In a letter from Mr. Garrison covering six pages of foolscap, he argued: "Our identification with the woman's rights movement and the anti-slavery cause is such that we ought not unnecessarily involve them in any hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant, efforts of our own. We, at least, owe to them this—that if for any act of ours we are dragged before courts we ought to be able to show that we acted discreetly as well as with good intentions." Both men spoke kindly and affectionately but they were unable to view the question from a mother's or even from a woman's standpoint. Miss Anthony replied to them:

I can not give you a satisfactory statement on paper, but I feel the strongest assurance that all I have done is wholly right. Had I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself. In all those hours of aid and sympathy for that outraged woman I remembered only that I was a human being. That I should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any movement never crossed my mind, nor will I now allow such a fear to stifle my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel, inhuman treatment of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.

At the anti-slavery convention in Albany Mr. Garrison pleaded with her to give up the child and insisted that she was entirely in the wrong. He said: "Don't you know the law of Massachusetts gives the father the entire guardianship and control of the children?" "Yes, I know it," she replied, "and does not the law of the United States give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave? And don't you break it every time you help a slave to Canada?" "Yes, I do." "Well, the law which gives the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and I'll break it just as quickly. You would die before you would deliver a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child to its father." It was impossible for even such great men as Garrison and Phillips to feel for a wronged and outraged woman as they could for a wronged and outraged black man. Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "Only to think that in this great trial I should be hounded by the two men whom I adore and reverence above all others!" Through all this ordeal her father sustained her position, saying: "My child, I think you have done absolutely right, but don't put a word on paper or make a statement to any one that you are not prepared to face in court. Legally you are wrong, but morally you are right, and I will stand by you."

Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, author of Women of the Revolution and other works, cared for and protected the unfortunates, obtained sewing for the mother and helped her to live in peaceful seclusion for a year. She was placed in the family of a physician who watched her closely and testified, as did all connected with her, that she was perfectly sane. According to her letters still in existence, the husband took possession of her funds in bank, drew all the money due to her from her publishers and forbade them to pay her any more from the sale of her books, as he had a legal right to do. In this extremity one of the brothers sent her some money through Miss Mott, who stood as firm as Miss Anthony in the face of threat and persecution. At length, feeling safe, the mother let the little girl go to Sunday-school alone and at the door of the church she was suddenly snatched up, put into a close carriage and in a few hours placed in possession of the father. The mother and her friends made every effort to secure the child, but the law was on the side of the father and they never succeeded.

1. At Miss Anthony's request only such speeches are published in the appendix of this biography as were prepared entirely without the co-operation of Mrs. Stanton.

2. In a letter to Miss Anthony regretting that no action was taken on the suffrage question, Mr. Colvin wrote: "The more reflection I give, the more my mind becomes convinced that in a republican government we have no right to deny woman the privileges she claims. Besides, the moral element which those privileges would bring into action would, in my judgment, have a powerful influence in perpetuating our form of government."