The Women of the Suffrage Movement. Jane Addams

She then was followed by Mr. Train, who insisted that it would be one of the grossest outrages to give suffrage to the black man and not to the white woman, and pleaded earnestly that the women of Kansas should be enfranchised. In this he was sincere, as he believed thoroughly that women ought to have the ballot. He was an inimitable mimic and was unsparing in his ridicule of those Republicans who had battled so valiantly for equal rights but now demanded that American women should stand back quietly and approvingly and see the negro fully invested with the powers denied to themselves. He had a remarkable memory, an unequalled quickness of repartee, a peculiar gift of improvising epigrams and, while erratic, was a brilliant and entertaining speaker. He was at this time about thirty-five, nearly six feet tall, a handsome brunette, with curling hair and flashing dark eyes, the picture of vigorous health. He was exquisitely neat in person and irreproachable in habits, and had a fine courtliness of bearing toward women which suggested the old-school gentleman. Miss Anthony often said that all the severe criticisms made upon him for years had not been able to impair the respect with which he inspired her during that most trying campaign. Mrs. Stanton, essentially an aristocrat and severe in her judgment of men and manners, spoke most highly of Mr. Train in her Reminiscences.

Some of the friends in Kansas were opposed to the contemplated lecture tour, and letters were received from the East urging that it be abandoned. Mrs. Stanton was accustomed to defer to Miss Anthony in such matters.6 The latter felt that they had been deserted by their old friends and supporters and the breach was too wide to be soon healed. Here was a man of wealth and high personal character, who offered to arrange a lecture tour of the principal cities of the country, pay all expenses and at the end of the journey furnish capital for a paper. It seemed to her she could best serve the cause she placed above all else by accepting the offer, and she did so.

      As time was limited, Miss Anthony had to make arrangements for hall, etc., by telegraph, which cost Mr. Train $100. The series commenced in Omaha, November 19, and continued in Chicago, Springfield. St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Springfield (Mass.), Worcester, Boston and Hartford, ending with a great meeting in Steinway Hall, New York, December 14. Mr. Train engaged the most elegant suites of rooms in the best hotels for the ladies, secured the finest halls, and this was remembered as the only luxurious suffrage tour they ever had made. There was a railway wreck between Louisville and Cincinnati, and he chartered a special train in order that they might keep their engagement at the latter place. This trip cost him $3,000.

      Where heretofore the Democratic papers had been abusive and some, at least, of the Republican papers complimentary, the tone was now completely reversed. Because they had affiliated with Mr. Train, the former had nothing but praise, and for the same reason the latter were unsparing in their denunciations, and were bitterly indignant at the women for accepting from Mr. Train and other Democrats the help which they themselves had positively refused. They insisted that the Democrats only used woman suffrage as a club to beat negro suffrage, which doubtless was true of many, but Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton claimed the right to accept proffered aid without looking behind it for the motive. The opposition, however, did not arise alone from the press and the politicians. From the leading advocates of suffrage came a vehement protest against any partnership with George Francis Train. The old associates wrote scores of letters expressing their personal allegiance, but refusing to attend the meetings and repudiating the connection of Mr. Train with the woman suffrage movement. Miss Anthony was made to realize to the fullest extent the feeling which had been aroused, but the last entry in the diary says: "The year goes out, and never did one depart that had been so filled with earnest and effective work; 9,000 votes for woman in Kansas, and a newspaper started! The Revolution is going to be work, work and more work. The old out and the new in!"

1. Helen Skin Starrett, in her Kansas reminiscences, says: "Miss Anthony always looked after Mrs. Stanton's interests and comfort in the most cheerful and kindly manner. I remember one evening in Lawrence when the hall was crowded with an eager and expectant audience. Miss Anthony was there early, looking after everything, seats, lights, ushers, doorkeepers. Presently Governor Robinson said to her, 'Where's Mrs. Stanton? It's time to commence.' 'She's at Mrs.——'s waiting for some of you men to go for her with a carriage,' was the reply. The hint was quickly acted upon and Mrs. Stanton, fresh, smiling and unfatigued, was presented to the audience."

2. His intense feeling on the matter is thus described in the History of Woman Suffrage:

      "A few weeks after this he met Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony at one of Alice Cary's Sunday evening receptions. As he approached, both arose and with extended hands exclaimed most cordially, 'Good evening, Mr. Greeley.' But his hands hung limp by his side, as he said in measured tones: 'You two ladies are the most maneuvering politicians in the State of New York. I saw in the manner my wife's petition was presented, that Mr. Curtis was acting under instructions, and I saw the reporters prick up their ears.' Turning to Mrs. Stanton, he asked, 'You are so tenacious about your own name, why did you not inscribe my wife's maiden name, Mary Cheney Greeley, on her petition?' 'Because,' she replied, 'I wanted all the world to know that it was the wife of Horace Greeley who protested against her husband's report.' 'Well,' said he, 'I understand the animus of that whole proceeding, and I have given positive instructions that no word of praise shall ever again be awarded you in the Tribune, and that if your name is ever necessarily mentioned, it shall be as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton!' And so it has been to this day."

3. Womanhood suffrage is now a progressive cause beyond fear of cavil. It has won a fair field where once it was looked upon as an airy nothing, and it has gained champions and converts without number. The young State of Kansas is fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the signs of the agitation therein hardly allow a doubt that the citizenship of women will be ere long recognized in its laws. Fourteen out of twenty of its newspapers are in favor of making woman a voter.... The vitality of the Kansas movement is indisputable, and whether defeated or successful in the present contest, it will still hold strongly fortified ground.—New York Tribune, May 29, 1867.

4. From the Howe Sewing Machine Co., she got $150; from the Samuel Browning Washing Machine Co., $100; from Dr. Dio Lewis' Gymnasium, $100, and from Madame Demorest's Fine Millinery and Patterns, a considerable sum; besides a donation of $100 from Mr. and Mrs. E. D. Draper, of Massachusetts, and $150 from Sarah B. Shaw, mother of Mrs. George Wm. Curtis; and in this way raised partly enough to print 50,000 tracts.

5. Charles Robinson, S. N. Wood, Samuel C. Pomeroy, E. G. Ross, Sidney Clark, S. G. Crawford, Kansas; James W. Nye, Nevada; William Loughridge, Iowa; Robert Collyer, Illinois; George W. Julian, H. D. Washburn, Indiana; R. E. Trowbridge, John F. Driggs, Michigan; Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; J. W. Broomall, William D. Kelley, Pennsylvania; Henry Ward Beecher, Gerrit Smith, George William Curtis, New York; Dudley S. Gregory, George Polk, John G. Foster, James L. Hayes, Z. H. Pangborn, New Jersey; Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Samuel E. Sewall, Oakes Ames, Massachusetts; William Sprague, T. W. Higginson, Rhode Island; Calvin E. Stowe, Connecticut.

6. "I take my beloved Susan's judgment against the world, I have always found that when we see eye to eye we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong. After we discuss any point and fully agree, our faith in our united judgment is immovable, and no amount of ridicule and opposition has the slightest influence, come from what quarter it may."

      Chapter XVIII:

       Establishing the Revolution

       (1868)

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