[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby]
* * * * *
During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway, although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs. Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the vote because it would wreck marriage and the home.
Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure for the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery. Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right track--the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you, though between you and me, I still think the individual States must lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State. But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."[334]
The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increasing number of naturalized immigrants, who had little understanding of democratic government or sympathy with the rights of women. A federal amendment, on the other hand, depending for its adoption upon Congress and ratifying legislatures, was in the hands of a far more liberal, intelligent, and preponderantly American group. "We have puttered with State rights for thirty years," she sputtered, "without a foothold except in the territories."[335]
Year by year she continued her Washington conventions, convinced that these gatherings in the national capital could not fail to impress Congressmen with the seriousness of their purpose. As women from many states lobbied for the Sixteenth Amendment, reporting a growing sentiment everywhere for woman suffrage, as they received in the press respectful friendly publicity, Congressmen began to take notice. At the large receptions held at the Riggs House, through the generosity of the proprietors, Jane Spofford and her husband, Congressmen became better acquainted with the suffragists, finding that they were not cranks, as they had supposed, but intelligent women and socially charming.
Mrs. Stanton's poise as presiding officer and the warmth of her personality made her the natural choice for president of the National Woman Suffrage Association through the years. Her popularity, now well established throughout the country after her ten years of lecturing on the Lyceum circuit, lent prestige to the cause. To Susan, her presence brought strength and the assurance that "the brave and true word" would be spoken.[336] A new office had been created for Susan, that of vice-president at large, and in that capacity she guided, steadied, and prodded her flock.
The subjects which the conventions discussed covered a wide field going far beyond their persistent demands for a federal woman suffrage amendment. Not only did they at this time urge an educational qualification for voters to combat the argument that woman suffrage would increase the ignorant vote, but they also protested the counting of women in the basis of representation so long as they were disfranchised. They criticized the church for barring women from the ministry and from a share in church government. They took up the case of Anna Ella Carroll,[337] who had been denied recognition and a pension for her services to her country during the Civil War, and they urged pensions for all women who had nursed soldiers during the war. They welcomed to their conventions Mormon women from Utah who came to Washington to protest efforts to disfranchise them as a means of discouraging polygamy.
Susan injected international interest into these conventions by reading Alexander Dumas's arguments for woman suffrage, letters from Victor Hugo and English suffragists, and a report by Mrs. Stanton's son, Theodore, now a journalist, of the International Congress in Paris in 1878, which discussed the rights of women. Occasionally foreign-born women, now making new homes for themselves in this country, joined the ranks of the suffragists, and a few of them, like Madam Anneké and Clara Heyman from Germany contributed a great deal through their eloquence and wider perspective. These contacts with the thoughts and aspirations of men and women of other countries led Susan to dream of an international conference of women in the not too distant future.[338]
FOOTNOTES:
[327] Ms., Diary, June 18, 1876.
[328] Katherine D. Blake and Margaret Wallace, _Champion of Women, The Life of Lillie Devereux Blake_ (New York, 1943), pp. 124-126.
[329] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, pp. 31, 34. The Woman's Journal surprised Susan with a friendly editorial, "Good Use of the Fourth of July," written by Lucy Stone, July 15, 1876.
[330] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 43. The Philadelphia _Press_ praised the Declaration of Rights and the women in the suffrage movement. The report of the New York _Post_ was patronizingly favorable, pointing out the indifference of the public to the subject.
[331] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 485-486.
[332] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.
[333] This amendment was re-introduced in the same form in every succeeding Congress until it was finally passed in 1919 as the Nineteenth Amendment. It was ratified by the states in 1920, 14 years after Susan B. Anthony's death. When occasionally during her lifetime it was called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by those who wished to honor her devotion to the cause, she protested, meticulously giving Elizabeth Cady Stanton credit for making the first public demand for woman suffrage in 1848. She also made it clear that although she worked for the amendment long and hard, she did not draft it. After her death, during the climax of the woman suffrage campaign, these facts were overlooked by the younger workers who made a point of featuring the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, both because they wished to immortalize her and because they realized the publicity value of her name.
[334] Harper, _Anthony_, I, p. 484.
[335] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 66.
[336] Harper, _Anthony_, II, p. 544.
[337] _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 153; II, pp. 3-12, 863-868; Sarah Ellen Blackwell, _A Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland_ (Washington, D.C., 1891), I, pp. 153-154.
[338] "Woman Suffrage as a Means of Moral Improvement and the Prevention of Crime" by Alexander Dumas, _History of Woman Suffrage_, III, p. 190. Theodore Stanton, foreign correspondent for the New York _Tribune_, now lived in Paris.
RECORDING WOMEN'S HISTORY
Recording women's history for future generations was a project that had been in the minds of both Susan and Mrs. Stanton for a long time. Both looked upon women's struggle for a share in government as a potent force in strengthening democracy and one to be emphasized in history. Men had always been the historians and had as a matter of course extolled men's exploits, passing over women's record as negligible. Susan intended to remedy this and she was convinced that if women close to the facts did not record them now, they would be forgotten or misinterpreted by future historians. Already many of the old workers had died, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott, whom Susan had nursed in her last illness, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison. There was no time to be lost.[339]
In the spring of 1880, Susan's mother died, and it was no longer necessary for her to fit into her schedule frequent visits in Rochester. Her sister Mary, busy with her teaching, was sharing her home with her two widowed brothers-in-law and two nieces whose education she was supervising.[340] Mrs. Stanton had just given up the strenuous life of a Lyceum lecturer and welcomed work that would keep her at home. Susan, who had managed to save $4,500 out of her lecture fees, felt she could afford to devote at least a year to the history.
She now shipped several boxes of letters, clippings, and documents to the Stanton home in Tenafly, New Jersey.[341] As they planned their book, it soon became obvious that the one volume which they had hoped to finish in a few months would extend to two or three volumes and take many years to write. They called in Matilda Joslyn Gage to help them, and the three of them signed a contract to share the work and the profits.