Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York _Tribune_. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against woman suffrage and the _Antislavery Standard_ avoiding the subject as if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached the public.[183]
It was hard for Susan to forgive the _Antislavery Standard_ for what she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of political parties.
Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point again."[184]
FOOTNOTES:
[159] Daniel R. Anthony married Anna Osborne of Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, in 1864.
[160] Before buying the house on Madison Street, then numbered 7, Mrs. Anthony and Mary lived for a time at 69 North Street, Rochester. Hannah and Eugene Mosher bought the adjoining house on Madison Street in 1866. Aaron McLean took over his father-in-law's profitable insurance business.
[161] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 241.
[162] Feb. 14, 1865, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.
[163] Ms., Diary, April 27, 1862.
[164] Feb. 14, 1862, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.
[165] _Ibid._
[166] _Ibid._, April 19, 1862.
[167] Ms., Diary, April 26, 27, 1865.
[168] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 245.
[169] The _Liberator_ ceased publication, Dec. 29, 1865.
[170] Ms., Diary, June 30, July 3, 1865.
[171] Harper, _Anthony_, II, pp. 960-967.
[172] Stanton and Blatch, _Stanton_, II, p. 105.
[173] _Ibid._; Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 244.
[174] Ms., Diary, Aug. 7, Sept. 5, 20, 1865.
[175] _Ibid._, Nov. 26-27, 1865.
[176] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 251.
[177] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 96-97.
[178] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 260.
[179] _Ibid._, pp. 261, 323.
[180] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, pp. 322-324. One of Thaddeus Stevens' drafts read: "If any State shall disfranchise any of its citizens on account of color, all that class shall be counted out of the basis of representation." Then the question arose whether or not disfranchising Negro women would carry this penalty and the result was a rewording which struck out "color" and added "male."
[181] Beards, _The Rise of American Civilization_, II, pp. 111-112; Joseph B. James, _The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment_ (Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp. 59, 166, 196-200.
[182] _History of Woman Suffrage_, II, p. 103. Senator Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island, Susan B. Anthony's cousin, spoke and voted for woman suffrage.
[183] _Ibid._, p. 101. The New York _Post_, which had been friendly to woman suffrage under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant, now came out against it.
[184] John Albree, Editor, _Whittier Correspondence from Oakknoll_ (Salem, Mass., 1911), p. 158. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, Caroline H. Dall of Massachusetts, and Clarina Nichols of Kansas also supported woman suffrage at this time.
TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS
Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185]
This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the _Tribune_ to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186]
Convinced that this was also woman's hour, Susan disregarded his opinions and his threats and circulated woman suffrage petitions in all parts of the state. She won the support of the handsome, highly respected George William Curtis, now editor of _Harper's Magazine_ and also a convention delegate, and of the popular Henry Ward Beecher and Gerrit Smith. The sponsorship of the cause by these men helped mightily. New York women sent in petitions with hundreds of signatures, but the Republican party was at work, cracking its whip, and Horace Greeley was appointed chairman of the committee on the right of suffrage.
Both Susan and Mrs. Stanton spoke at the constitutional convention's hearing on woman suffrage, Susan with her usual forthrightness answering the many questions asked by the delegates, spreading consternation among them by declaring that women would eventually serve as jurors and be drafted in time of war. Assuming women unable to bear arms for their country, the delegates smugly linked the ballot and the bullet together, and Horace Greeley gleefully asked the two women, "If you vote, are you ready to fight?" Instantly, Susan replied, "Yes, Mr. Greeley, just as you fought in the late war--at the point of a goose quill." Then turning to the other delegates, she reminded them that several hundred women, disguised as men, had fought in the Civil War, and instead of being honored for their services and paid, they had been discharged in disgrace.[187]
Confident that Horace Greeley would sooner or later fall back on his oft-repeated, trite remark, "The best women I know do not want to vote," Susan had asked Mrs. Greeley to roll up a big petition in Westchester County, and believing heartily in woman suffrage she had complied. This gave Susan and Mrs. Stanton a trump card to play, should Horace Greeley present an adverse report as they were informed he would do.[188]
In Albany to hear the report, these two conspirators gloated over their plan as they surveyed the packed galleries and noted the many reporters who would jump at a bit of spicy news to send their papers. Just before Horace Greeley was to give his report, George William Curtis announced with dignity and assurance, "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and 300 other women, citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution."[189]
Ripples of amusement ran through the audience, and reporters hastily took notes, as Horace Greeley, the top of his head red as a beet, looked up with anger at the galleries, and then in a thin squeaky voice and with as much authority as he could muster declared, "Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women...." As a result, New York's new constitution enfranchised only male citizens.[190]
Horace Greeley justified his opposition to woman suffrage in a letter to Moncure D. Conway: "The keynote of my political creed is the axiom that 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed....' I sought information from different quarters ... and practically all agreed in the conclusion that _the women of our state do not choose to vote_. Individuals do, at least three fourths of the sex do not. I accepted their choice as decisive; just as I reported in favor of enfranchising the Blacks because they do wish to vote. The few may not; but the many do; and I think they should control the situation.... It seems but fair to add that female suffrage seems to me to involve the balance of the family relation as it has hitherto existed...."[191]