Mr. Train and David M. Melliss furnish funds for starting Woman Suffrage newspaper, The Revolution; comments of press; Mr. Train in Dublin jail; Mrs. Stanton defends The Revolution; how women were sacrificed; bright description of paper and editors; Equal Rights Association divided between claims of woman and negro; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton delegates to Democratic National Convention at Tammany Hall; their reception; Miss Anthony represents Workingwomen's Association at National Labor Congress in New York; her suffrage resolution rejected; her advice to women typesetters; sad case of Hester Vaughan; S. C. Pomeroy and George W. Julian present Woman Suffrage Amendments in Senate and House of Representatives.
The first entry in the diary of 1868, January 1, reads: "All the old friends, with scarce an exception, are sure we are wrong. Only time can tell, but I believe we are right and hence bound to succeed." Immediately after the meeting at Steinway Hall, Mr. Train had brought with him to call on Miss Anthony, David M. Melliss, financial editor of the New York World, and they entered into an agreement by which the two men were to supply the funds for publishing a paper until it was on a paying basis. It was to be conducted by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the interests of women, and Mr. Train and Mr. Melliss were to use such space as they desired for expressing their financial and other opinions. The first number was issued January 8, a handsome quarto of sixteen pages.
Ten thousand copies were printed and, under the congressional frank of Representative James Brooks, of New York, were sent to all parts of the country. The advent of this element in the newspaper world created a sensation such as scarcely ever has been equalled by any publication. From hundreds of clippings a few characteristic examples are selected. The New York Sunday Times said:
THE LADIES MILITANT.—It is out at last. If the women as a body have not succeeded in getting up a revolution, Susan B. Anthony, as their representative, has. Her Revolution was issued last Thursday as a sort of New Year's gift to what she considered a yearning public, and it is said to be "charged to the muzzle with literary nitre-glycerine." If Mrs. Stanton would attend a little more to her domestic duties and a little less to those of the great public, perhaps she would exalt her sex quite as much as she does by Quixotically fighting windmills in their gratuitous behalf, and she might possibly set a notable example of domestic felicity. No married woman can convert herself into a feminine Knight of the Rueful Visage and ride about the country attempting to redress imaginary wrongs without leaving her own household in a neglected condition that must be an eloquent witness against her. As for the spinsters, we have always said that every woman has a natural and inalienable right to a good husband and a pretty baby. When, by proper "agitation," she has secured this right, she best honors herself and her sex by leaving public affairs behind her, and endeavoring to show how happy she can make the little world of which she has just become the brilliant center.
The New York Independent, the great organ of the Congregationalists, had this breezy editorial:
The Revolution is the martial name of a bristling and defiant new weekly journal, the first number of which has just been laid on our table. When we mention that it is edited by Mr. Parker Pillsbury and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all the world will immediately know what to expect from it. Those two writers can never be accused of having nothing to say, or of backwardness in saying it. Each has separately long maintained a striking individuality of tongue and pen. Working together, they will produce a canvas of the Rembrandt school—Mrs. Stanton painting the high lights and Mr. Pillsbury the deep darks. In fact, the new journal's real editors are Hope and Despair. Beaumont and Fletcher were intellectually something alike; but Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury are totally different. The lady is a gay Greek, come forth from Athens; the gentleman is a sombre Hebrew, bound back to Jerusalem. We know of no two more striking, original, and piquant writers. What keen criticisms, what knife-blade repartees, what lacerating sarcasms we shall expect from the one! What solemn, reverberating, sanguinary damnations we shall hear from the other!
Conspicuous among the new journal's contributors is that great traveller, hotel-builder, epigrammatist and kite-flyer, Mr. George Francis Train. So The Revolution, from the start, will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex and nonplus its friends. But it will compel attention; it will conquer a hearing. Its business management is in the good hands of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who has long been known as one of the most indefatigable, honest, obstinate, faithful, cross-grained and noble-minded of the famous women of America. It only remains to add that, as "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," so the price of The Revolution is two dollars a year.
The Cincinnati Enquirer in a complimentary notice said: "Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Revolution grows with each additional number more spicy, readable and revolutionary. It hits right and left, from the shoulder and overhand, at every body and thing that opposes the granting of suffrage to females as well as males. The Revolution is mourning over no lost cause, but is aggressive, bold and determined to win one dear to its heart." New York's society paper, the Home Journal, commented: "The Revolution is plucky, keen and wide awake, and although some of its ways are not at all to our taste, we are glad to recognize in it the inspiration of the noblest aims, and the sagacity and talent to accomplish what it desires. It is on the right track, whether it has taken the right train or not;" while the Chicago Workingman's Advocate declared: "We have no doubt it will prove an able ally of the labor reform movement." The Boston Commonwealth observed approvingly: "It is edited by Mrs. E.C. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, whose names are guarantees of ability and character. Their effusions are able, pertinent and courageous."
To quote from Mrs. Stanton: "Radical and defiant in tone, it awoke friends and foes alike to action. Some denounced it, some ridiculed it, but all read it. It needed just such clarion notes, sounded forth long and loud each week, to rouse the friends of the movement from the apathy into which they had fallen after the war." Miss Anthony went to Washington to introduce the paper and returned with a list of distinguished subscribers, including President Johnson himself! The following from Mrs. Stanton will show how criticising letters usually were answered:
I know that you would feel that we were right if I could talk with you. If George Francis Train had done for the negro all that he has done for woman the last three months, the Abolitionists would enshrine him as a saint. The attacks on Susan and me by a few persons have been petty and narrow, but we are right and this nine days' wonder will soon settle itself. Of course, people turn up the whites of their eyes, but time will bring them all down again. We have reason to congratulate ourselves that we have shocked more friends of the cause into life than we ever dreamed we had—persons who never gave a cent or said a word for our movement are the most concerned lest Susan and I should injure it. Mr. Train has some extravagances and idiosyncrasies, but he is willing to devote his energies to our cause when no other man is, and we should be foolish not to accept his aid. To think of Boston women holding a festival to aid the Anti-Slavery Standard, while their own petitions are ignored in the Senate of the United States! Women have been degraded so long they have lost all self-respect. If we love the black man as well as ourselves we shall fulfill the Bible injunction. The anti-slavery requirement to love him better is a little too much for human nature.
A few members of the executive board of the Equal Rights Association made a strong attempt to prevent the editors of The Revolution from occupying the room at No. 37 Park Row, used for their headquarters. Miss Anthony soon showed, however, that she had made herself personally responsible for the rent, that while she was overwhelmed with the work of the Kansas campaign letters were continually sent her asking if she could not somehow get the money to pay it, and that as soon as she returned, she borrowed $100 on her own note and paid it in full. So she held possession and the committee, after voting itself out at one session, voted itself back at the next, and finally abandoned the room.
On the very day the first copy of The Revolution appeared, Mr. Train announced that he was going to England immediately. Miss Anthony says in her diary: "My heart sank within me; only our first number issued and our strongest helper and inspirer to leave us! This is but another discipline to teach us that we must stand on our own feet." Mr. Train gave her $600 and assured her that he had arranged with Mr. Melliss to supply all necessary funds during his short absence, but she felt herself invested with a heavy responsibility. A few days later Mrs. Stanton said in a letter to a friend:
Our paper has a monied basis of $50,000 and men who understand business