Part 51

Susan, for example, was often troubled because women suffrage and temperance were more and more linked together in the public mind, thus confusing the issues and arousing the hostility of those who might have been friendly toward woman suffrage had they not feared that women's votes would bring in prohibition. She did her best to make it clear to her audiences that she did not ask for the ballot in order that women might vote against saloons and for prohibition. She demanded only that women have the same right as men to express their opinions at the polls. Such an attitude was hard for many temperance women to understand and to forgive.

Over women's support of specific political parties, Susan and Frances Willard were never able to agree. Susan had never been willing to ally herself with a minority party. Therefore, to Frances Willard's disappointment, she withheld her support from the Prohibition party in 1880, although their platform acknowledged woman's need of the ballot and directed them to use it to settle the liquor question, and in 1884 when they recommended state suffrage for women. Finding women eager to support the Prohibitionists in gratitude for these inadequate planks, Susan even issued a statement urging them to support the Republicans, who held out the most hope to them even if woman suffrage had not been mentioned in their platform. Her experience in Washington had proved to her the friendliness and loyalty of individual Republicans, and she was unwilling to jeopardize their support.

Her judgment was confirmed during the next few years when friendly Republicans spoke for woman suffrage in the Senate, and when in 1887 the woman suffrage amendment was debated and voted on in the Senate. In the Senate gallery eagerly listening, Susan took notice that the sixteen votes cast for the amendment were those of Republicans.

Still hoping to win Susan's endorsement of the Prohibition party in 1888, Frances Willard asked her to outline what kind of plank would satisfy her.

"Do you mean so satisfy me," Susan replied, "that I would work, and recommend to all women to work ... for the success of the third party ticket?... Not until a third party gets into power ... which promises a larger per cent of representatives, on the floor of Congress, and in the several State legislatures, who will speak and vote for women's enfranchisement, than does the Republican, shall I work for it. You see, as yet there is not a single Prohibitionist in Congress while there are at least twenty Republicans on the floor of the United States Senate, besides fully one-half of the members of the House of Representatives who are in favor of woman suffrage.... I do not propose to work for the defeat of the party which thus far has furnished nearly every vote in that direction."

Nor was she lured away when, in 1888, the Prohibition party endorsed woman suffrage and granted Frances Willard the honor of addressing its convention and serving on the resolutions committee.

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The temperance issue also cropped up in the annual Washington conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association, preparations for which Susan now left to Rachel Foster, May Wright Sewall, a capable young recruit from Indiana, and Jane Spofford. However, she still supervised these conventions, prodding and interfering, in what she called her most Andrew Jackson-like manner. She always returned to Washington with excitement and pleasure, and with the hope of some outstanding victory, and the suite at the Riggs House, given her by generous Jane Spofford, was a delight after months of hard travel in the West. "I shall come both ragged and dirty," she wrote Mrs. Spofford in 1887. "Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who will patch me together so that I shall be presentable."

Open to all women irrespective of race or creed, the National Woman Suffrage Association attracted fearless independent devoted members. They welcomed Mormon women into the fold, and when the bill to disfranchise Mormon women as a punishment for polygamy was before Congress in 1887, they did their utmost to help Mormon women retain the vote, but were defeated.

They welcomed as well many temperance advocates. A few delegates, however, among them Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Mrs. Colby, scorned what they called the "singing and praying" temperance group and protested that temperance and religion were getting too strong a hold on the organization. Abigail Duniway from Oregon contended that suffragists should not join forces with temperance groups and blamed the defeat of woman suffrage in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, in 1887, on men's fear that women would vote for prohibition.

Often Susan was obliged to act as arbiter between the temperance and nontemperance groups. She did not underestimate the momentum which the well-organized W.C.T.U. had already given the suffrage cause, particularly in states where the National Association had only a few and scattered workers. She needed and wanted the help of these temperance women and of Frances Willard's forceful and winning personality. She also saw the importance of breaking down with Frances Willard's aid the slow-yielding opposition of the church.

Occasionally enthusiastic workers undertook projects which to her seemed unwise. She told them frankly how she felt and left it at that, but most of them had to learn by experience. When Belva Lockwood, one of her most able colleagues in Washington, accepted the nomination for President of the United States, offered her by the women of California in 1884 and by the women of Iowa in 1888 through their Equal Rights party, she did not lend her support or that of the National Association, but followed her consistent policy of no alignment with a minority party. Nevertheless, she heartily believed in women's right and ability to hold the highest office in the land.

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Ever since her trip to Europe in 1883, Susan had been planning for an international gathering of women. Interest in this project was kept alive among European women by Mrs. Stanton during her frequent visits with her daughter Harriot in England and her son Theodore in France. It was Susan, however, who put the machinery in motion through the National Woman Suffrage Association and issued a call for an international conference in Washington, in March 1888, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. Ten thousand invitations were sent out to organizations of women in all parts of the world, to professional, business, and reform groups as well as to those advocating political and civil rights for women, and an ambitious program was prepared. Most of the work for the conference and the raising of $13,000 to finance it fell upon the shoulders of Susan, Rachel Foster, and May Wright Sewall, but they also had the enthusiastic cooperation of Frances Willard, who, with her nation-wide contacts, was of inestimable value in arousing interest among the many and varied women's organizations and the labor groups. Another happy development was Clara Colby's decision to publish her Woman's Tribune in Washington during the conference. Mrs. Colby's Tribune, established in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1883, had since then met in a measure Susan's need for a paper for the National Association and she welcomed its transfer to Washington.

Women from all parts of the world assembled in Albaugh's Opera House in Washington for the epoch-making international conference which opened on Sunday, March 25, 1888, with religious services conducted entirely by women, as if to prove to the world that women in the pulpit were appropriate and adequate. Fifty-three national organizations sent representatives, and delegates came from England, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, India, and Canada.

Presiding over all sixteen sessions, Susan rejoiced over a record attendance. Her thoughts went back to the winter of 1854 when she and Ernestine Rose had held their first woman's rights meetings in Washington, finding only a handful ready to listen. The intervening thirty-four years had worked wonders. Now women were willing to travel not only across the continent but from Europe and Asia to discuss and demand equal educational advantages, equal opportunities for training in the professions and in business, equal pay for equal work, equal suffrage, and the same standard of morals for all. Aware of their responsibility to their countries, they asked for the tools, education and the franchise, to help solve the world's problems. They were listened to with interest and respect, and were received at the White House by President and Mrs. Cleveland.

Through it all, a dynamic, gray-haired woman in a black silk dress with a red shawl about her shoulders was without question the heroine of the occasion. "This lady," observed the Baltimore Sun, "daily grows upon all present; the woman suffragists love her for her good works, the audience for her brightness and wit, and the multitude of press representatives for her frank, plain, open, business-like way of doing everything connected with the council.... Her word is the parliamentary law of the meeting. Whatever she says is done without murmur or dissent."

A permanent International Council of Women to meet once every five years was organized with Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England as president, and a National Council to meet every three years was formed as an affiliate with Frances Willard as president and Susan as vice-president at large. Emphasizing education and social and moral reform, the International Council did not rank suffrage first as Susan had hoped. Nevertheless, she was happy that an international movement of enterprising women was well on its way. They would learn by experience.

Of all the favorable results of the International Council of Women, two were of special importance to Susan, meeting Anna Howard Shaw and overtures from Lucy Stone for a union of the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations.

Prejudiced against Anna Howard Shaw, who had aligned herself with Mary Livermore and Lucy Stone, and who she assumed, was a narrow Methodist minister, Susan was unprepared to find that the pleasing young woman in the pulpit on the first day of the conference, holding her audience spellbound with her oratory, was Anna Howard Shaw. Here was a warm personality, a crusader eager to right human wrongs, and above all a matchless public speaker. Anna too had heard much criticism of Susan and had formed a distorted opinion of her which was quickly dispelled as she watched her preside. They liked each other the moment they met.

Anna Howard Shaw had grown up on the Michigan frontier, her indomitable spirit and her eagerness for learning conquering the hardships and the limitations of her surroundings. Encouraged by Mary Livermore, who by chance lectured in her little town, she worked her way through Albion College and Boston University Theological School, from which she graduated in 1878. She then served as the pastor of two Cape Cod churches, but was refused ordination by the Methodist Episcopal church because of her sex. Eventually she was ordained by the Methodist Protestant church. During her pastorate, she studied medicine at Boston University, and because of her ability as a speaker was in demand as a lecturer for temperance and woman suffrage groups. Through the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she met an inspiring group of reformers, and their influence and that of Frances Willard, in whose work she was intensely interested, led her to leave the ministry for active work in the temperance and woman suffrage movements. After several years as a lecturer and organizer for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was placed at the head of the franchise department of the W.C.T.U. This was her work when she met Susan B. Anthony.

The more Susan talked with Anna, the better she liked her, and the feeling was mutual. This wholesome woman of forty-one, with abundant vitality, unmarried and without pressing family ties to divert her, seemed particularly well fitted to assist Susan in the arduous campaigns which lay ahead. A natural orator, she could in a measure take the place of Mrs. Stanton, who could no longer undertake western tours. Before the International Council adjourned, Susan had Anna's promise that she would lecture for the National Association.

One of Susan's nieces, Lucy E. Anthony, also felt drawn to Anna after meeting her at the International Council. A warm friendship quickly developed and continued throughout their lives. Within a few years they were living together, Lucy serving as Anna's secretary and planning her lecture tours and campaign trips. Educated in Rochester through the help of her aunts, Susan and Mary, living in their home and loving them both, Lucy readily made their interests her own and devoted her life to the suffrage movement. Neither a public speaker nor a campaigner, she put her executive ability to work, and her tasks, though less spectacular, were important and freed both Susan and Anna from many details.

Just as the International Council of Women had broken down Anna Howard Shaw's prejudice regarding Susan B. Anthony and her National Woman Suffrage Association, just so it clarified the opinions of other young women, now aligning themselves with the cause. Admiring the leaders of both factions, these young women saw no reason why the two groups should not work together in one large strong organization, and this seemed increasingly important as they welcomed women from other countries to this first international conference. Unfamiliar with the personal antagonisms and the sincere differences in policy which had caused the separation after the Civil War, they did not understand the difficulties still in the way of union. So strongly, however, did they press for a united front that the leaders of both groups felt themselves swept along toward that goal. Susan herself had long looked forward to the time when all suffragists would again work together, but since the unsuccessful overtures of her group in 1870, she had made no further efforts in that direction. She was completely taken by surprise when in the fall of 1887 the American Association proposed that she and Lucy Stone confer regarding union.

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The negotiations revived old arguments in the minds of zealous partisans, and in the Woman's Journal, the Woman's Tribune, and elsewhere, attempts were made to fasten the blame for the twenty-year-old rift upon this one and that one; but so strong ran the tide for union among the younger women that this excursion into the past aroused little interest.

The election of the president of the merged organizations was the most difficult hurdle. Lucy Stone suggested that neither she, Mrs. Stanton, nor Susan allow their names to be proposed, since they had been blamed for the division, but this was easier said than done. The clamor for Susan and Mrs. Stanton was so strong and continuous among the younger members that it soon became apparent that unless one or the other were chosen, there would be no hope of union. The odds were in Susan's favor. Her popularity in the National Association was tremendous. Although Mrs. Stanton was revered as the mother of woman suffrage and admired for her brilliant mind and her poise as presiding officer, she now spent so much time in Europe with her daughter Harriot that many who might otherwise have voted for her felt that the office should go to Susan, who was always on the job.

Most of the American Association regarded Susan as safer and less radical than Mrs. Stanton, less likely to stray from the straight path of woman suffrage, and Henry Blackwell recommended her election.