Part 35

In addition to all the responsibilities connected with publishing her weekly paper, advertising, subscriptions, editorial policy, and raising the money to pay the bills, Susan was also holding successful conventions in Saratoga and Newport where men and women of wealth and influence gathered for the summer; she was traveling out to St. Louis, Chicago, and other western cities to speak on woman suffrage, making trips to Washington to confer with Congressmen, getting petitions for the Sixteenth Amendment circulated, and through all this, building up the National Woman Suffrage Association.

The Revolution office became the rallying point for a forward-looking group of women, many of whom contributed to the hard-hitting liberal sheet. Elizabeth Tilton, the lovely dark-haired young wife of the popular lecturer and editor of the Independent, selected the poetry. Alice and Phoebe Cary gladly offered poems and a novel; and when Susan was away, Phoebe Cary often helped Mrs. Stanton get out the paper. Elizabeth Smith Miller gave money, encouragement, and invaluable aid with her translations of interesting letters which The Revolution received from France and Germany. Laura Curtis Bullard, the heir to the Dr. Winslow-Soothing-Syrup fortune, who traveled widely in Europe, sent letters from abroad and took a lively interest in the paper. Another new recruit was Lillie Devereux Blake, who was gaining a reputation as a writer and who soon proved to be a brilliant orator and an invaluable worker in the New York City suffrage group. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, unfailingly gave her support, and her calm assurance strengthened Susan. The wealthy Paulina Wright Davis of Providence, Rhode Island, who followed Parker Pillsbury as editor, when he felt obliged to resign for financial reasons, gave the paper generous financial backing.

It was Mrs. Davis who brought into the fold the half sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, a queenly woman, one of the elect of Hartford, Connecticut. Hoping to break down Mrs. Hooker's prejudice against Susan and Mrs. Stanton, which had been built up by New England suffragists, Mrs. Davis invited the three women to spend a few days with her. After this visit, Mrs. Hooker wrote to a friend in Boston, "I have studied Miss Anthony day and night for nearly a week.... She is a woman of incorruptible integrity and the thought of guile has no place in her heart. In unselfishness and benevolence she has scarcely an equal, and her energy and executive ability are bounded only by her physical power, which is something immense. Sometimes she fails in judgment, according to the standards of others, but in right intentions never, nor in faithfulness to her friends.... After attending a two days' convention in Newport, engineered by her in her own fashion, I am obliged to accept the most favorable interpretation of her which prevails generally, rather than that of Boston. Mrs. Stanton too is a magnificent woman.... I hand in my allegiance to both as leaders and representatives of the great movement."

From then on, Mrs. Hooker did her best to reconcile the Boston and New York factions, hoping to avert the formation of a second national woman suffrage organization.

FOOTNOTES:

The Revolution, II, Dec. 24, 1868, p. 385.

George W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1840-1872 (Chicago, 1884), pp. 324-325.

The Revolution, III, March 11, 1869, p. 148.

The very proper Sorosis would not meet at the Women's Bureau while it housed the radical Revolution, and as women showed so little interest in her project, Mrs. Phelps gave it up after a year's trial.

The Revolution, III, May 20, 1869, pp. 305-307.

History of Woman Suffrage, II, p. 392.

Harper, Anthony, I, pp. 327-328.

Ibid., p. 332.

A HOUSE DIVIDED

"I think we need two national associations for woman suffrage so that those who do not oppose the Fifteenth Amendment, nor take the tone of The Revolution may yet have an organization with which they can work in harmony." So wrote Lucy Stone to many of her friends during the summer of 1869, and some of these letters fell into Susan's hands.

"The radical abolitionists and the Republicans could never have worked together but in separate organizations both did good service," Lucy further explained. "There are just as distinctly two parties to the woman movement.... Each organization will attract those who naturally belong to it--and there will be harmonious work."

When the ground had been prepared by these letters, Lucy asked old friends and new to sign a call to a woman suffrage convention, to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, in November 1869, "to unite those who cannot use the methods which Mrs. Stanton and Susan use...."

Those feeling as she did eagerly signed the call, while others who knew little about the controversy in the East added their names because they were glad to take part in a convention sponsored by such prominent men and women as Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and William Lloyd Garrison. Still others who did not understand the insurmountable differences in temperament and policy between the two groups hoped that a new truly national organization would unite the two factions. Even Mary Livermore, who had been active in the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was by this time responding to overtures from the Boston group, writing William Lloyd Garrison, "I have been repelled by some of the idiosyncrasies of our New York friends, as have others. Their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, the buffoonery of George F. Train, the loose utterances of the Revolution on the marriage and dress questions--and what is equally potent hindrance to the cause, the fearful squandering of money at the New York headquarters--all this has tended to keep me on my own feet, apart from those to whom I was at first attracted.... I am glad at the prospect of an association that will be truly national and which promises so much of success and character."

Neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton received a notice of the Cleveland convention, but Susan, scanning a copy of the call sent her by a solicitous friend, was deeply disturbed when she saw the signatures of Lydia Mott, Amelia Bloomer, Myra Bradwell, Gerrit Smith, and other good friends.

The New York World, at once suspecting a feud, asked, "Where are those well-known American names, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It is clear that there is a division in the ranks of the strong-minded and that an effort is being made to ostracize The Revolution which has so long upheld the cause of Suffrage, through evil report and good...."

The Rochester Democrat, loyal to Susan, put this question, "Can it be possible that a National Woman's Suffrage Convention is called without Susan's knowledge or consent?... A National Woman's Suffrage Association without speeches from Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton will be a new order of things. The idea seems absurd."

To Susan it also seemed both absurd and unrealistic, for she remembered how almost single-handed she had held together and built up the woman suffrage movement during the years when her colleagues had been busy with family duties. She was appalled at the prospect of a division in the ranks at this time when she believed victory possible through the action of a strong united front.

Confident that many who signed the call were ignorant of or blind to the animus behind it, she did her best to bring the facts before them. She put the blame for the rift entirely upon Lucy Stone, believing that without Lucy's continual stirring up, past differences in policy would soon have been forgotten. The antagonism between the two burned fiercely at this time. Susan was determined to fight to the last ditch for control of the movement, convinced that her policies and Mrs. Stanton's were forward-looking, unafraid, and always put women first.

Susan now also had to face the humiliating possibility that she might be forced to give up The Revolution. Not only was the operating deficit piling up alarmingly, but there were persistent rumors of a competitor, another woman suffrage paper to be edited by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe.

Susan had assumed full financial responsibility for The Revolution because Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, both with families to consider, felt unable to share this burden. Mrs. Stanton had always contributed her services and Parker Pillsbury had been sadly underpaid, while Susan had drawn out for her salary only the most meager sums for bare living expenses.

With a maximum of 3,000 subscribers, the paper could not hope to pay its way even though she had secured a remarkably loyal group of advertisers. Reluctantly she raised the subscription price from $2 to $3 a year. Her friends and family were generous with gifts and loans, but these only met the pressing needs of the moment and in no way solved the overall financial problem of the paper.

Appealing once again to her wealthy and generous Quaker cousin, Anson Lapham, she wrote him in desperation, "My paper must not, shall not go down. I am sure you believe in me, in my honesty of purpose, and also in the grand work which The Revolution seeks to do, and therefore you will not allow me to ask you in vain to come to the rescue. Yesterday's mail brought 43 subscribers from Illinois and 20 from California. We only need time to win financial success. I know you will save me from giving the world a chance to say, 'There is a woman's rights failure; even the best of women can't manage business!' If only I could die, and thereby fail honorably, I would say, 'Amen,' but to live and fail--it would be too terrible to bear." He came to her aid as he always had in the past.

Susan's sister Mary not only lent her all her savings, but spent her summer vacation in New York in 1869, working in The Revolution office while Susan, busy with woman suffrage conventions in Newport, Saratoga, Chicago, and Ohio, was building up good will and subscriptions for her paper. Concerned for her welfare, Mary repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged her to give up. Daniel added his entreaties to Mary's, begging Susan not to go further into debt, but to form a stock company if she were determined to continue her paper. She considered his advice very seriously for he was a practical businessman and yet appreciated what she was trying to do. For a time the formation of a stock company seemed possible, for the project appealed to three women of means, Paulina Wright Davis, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Laura Curtis Bullard, but it never materialized.