Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers, because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child. Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all.
When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any "hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any movement never crossed my mind, nor will I 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."[132]
When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan, "Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the entire guardianship and control of the children?"
"Yes, I know it," she answered. "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? 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."
Susan escaped arrest as she thought she would, for Dr. Phelps could not afford the unfavorable publicity involved. He managed to kidnap his child on her way to Sunday School, but his wife eventually won a divorce through the help of her friends.
The most trying part of this experience for Susan was the attitude of Garrison and Phillips, who, had now for the second time failed to recognize that the freedom they claimed for the Negro was also essential for women. They believed in woman's rights, to be sure, but when these rights touched the institution of marriage, their vision was clouded. Just a year before, they had fought Mrs. Stanton's divorce resolutions because they were unable to see that the existing laws of marriage did not apply equally to men and women. Now they sustained the father's absolute right over his child. What was it, Susan wondered, that kept them from understanding? Was it loyalty to sex, was it an unconscious clinging to dominance and superiority, or was it sheer inability to recognize women as human beings like themselves? "Very many abolitionists," she wrote in her diary, "have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights."[133]
FOOTNOTES:
[109] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I. p. 689. Henry Ward Beecher's speech, _The Public Function of Women_, delivered at Cooper Union, Feb. 2, 1860, was widely distributed as a tract.
[110] April 16, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.
[111] June 16, 1857, Blackwell Papers, Edna M. Stantial Collection.
[112] _History of Woman Suffrage_, I, p. 717.
[113] _Ibid._, p. 725.
[114] _Ibid._, p. 732.
[115] _Ibid._, p. 735.
[116] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 196.
[117] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, _Eighty Years and More_ (New York, 1898), p. 219. Samuel Longfellow whispered to Mrs. Stanton in the midst of the debate, "Nevertheless you are right and the convention will sustain you."
[118] Harper, _Anthony_, I. p. 195.
[119] _Ibid._, p. 197.
[120] Aug. 25, 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College Library.
[121] Charles Sumner was the First prominent statesman to speak for emancipation, Oct., 1861, at the Massachusetts Republican Convention.
[122] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.
[123] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[124] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 198.
[125] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 504; Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, p. 63.
[126] Garrisons, _Garrison_, III, p. 508.
[127] Jan. 18, 1861, Antislavery Papers, Boston Public Library.
[128] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 210.
[129] Susan B. Anthony Scrapbook, 1861, Library of Congress.
[130] Carl Sandburg, _Abraham Lincoln, The War Years_ (New York, 1939), I, p. 125.
[131] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 202. Mrs. Phelps later found a more permanent home with the author, Elizabeth Ellet.
[132] _Ibid._, pp. 203-204.
[133] _Ibid._, p. 198.
A WAR FOR FREEDOM
Six more southern states, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, following the lead of South Carolina, seceded early in 1861 and formed the Confederate States of America. This breaking up of the Union disturbed Susan primarily because it took the minds of most of her colleagues off everything but saving the Union. Convinced that even in a time of national crisis, work for women must go on, she tried to prepare for the annual woman's rights convention in New York, but none of her hitherto dependable friends would help her. Nevertheless, she persisted, even after the fall of Fort Sumter and the President's call for troops. Only when the abolitionists called off their annual New York meetings did she reluctantly realize that woman's rights too must yield to the exigencies of the hour.
Influenced by her Quaker background, she could not see war as the solution of this or any other crisis. In fact, the majority of abolitionists were amazed and bewildered when war came because it was not being waged to free the slaves. Looking to their leaders for guidance, they heard Wendell Phillips declare for war before an audience of over four thousand in Boston. Garrison, known to all as a nonresistant, made it clear that his sympathies were with the government. He saw in "this grand uprising of the manhood of the North"[134] a growing appreciation of liberty and free institutions and a willingness to defend them. Calling upon abolitionists to stand by their principles, he at the same time warned them not to criticize Lincoln or the Republicans unnecessarily, not to divide the North, but to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion, and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135]
She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few, among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency, not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the end justifies the means.'"[136]
Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge, traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas, with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work. "Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary. "The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order.... Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman."[137]
Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone feeling will creep over me. It is such a fast after the feast of great presences to which I have been so long accustomed."
The war was much on her mind. Eagerly she read Greeley's _Tribune_ and the Rochester _Democrat_. The news was discouraging--the tragedy of Bull Run, the call for more troops, defeat after defeat for the Union armies. General Frémont in Missouri freeing the slaves of rebels only to have Lincoln cancel the order to avert antagonizing the border states.