She rises; "Come, let me introduce you to Mrs. Stanton." And we walk into the inner sanctum, a tiny bit of a room, nicely carpeted, one-windowed and furnished with two desks, two chairs, a little table—and the senior editor, Mrs. Stanton. The short, substantial figure, with its handsome black dress and silver crown of curls, is sufficiently interesting. The fresh, girlish complexion, the laughing blue eyes and jolly voice are yet more so. Beside her stands her sixteen-year-old daughter, who is as plump, as jolly, as laughing-eyed as her mother. We study Cady Stanton's handsome face as she talks on rapidly and facetiously. Nothing little or mean in that face; no line of distrust or irony; neither are there wrinkles of care—life has been pleasant to this woman.
We hear a bustle in the outer room—rapid voices and laughing questions—then the door is suddenly thrown open and in steps a young Aurora, habited in a fur-trimmed cloak, with a jaunty black velvet cap and snowy feather set upon her dark clustering curls. What sprite is this, whose eyes flash and sparkle with a thousand happy thoughts, whose dimples and rosy lips and white teeth make so charming a picture? "My dear Anna," says Susan, starting up, and there's a shower of kisses. Then follows an introduction to Anna Dickinson. As we clasp hands for a moment, I look into the great gray eyes that have flashed with indignation and grown moist with pity before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, intellectual, large-hearted, high-souled—a mother of men; the grave, energetic old maid—an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for all, and prophesies like an oracle of old.
May we not hope that America's coming woman will combine these salient qualities, and with all the powers of mind, soul and heart vivified and developed in a liberal atmosphere, prove herself the noblest creature in the world? And so I leave them there—the pleasant group—faithful in their work, happy in their hopes.
On May 14, 1868, the American Equal Rights Association held its second anniversary in Cooper Institute. Mrs. Stanton, who had a wholesome dread of anything disagreeable, was determined not to go, but Miss Anthony declared that to stay away would be showing the "white feather" and that, as their enemies had been many weeks working up a sentiment against them, their presence would prove they had nothing to fear. When the convention assembled, Lucretia Mott, the president, being absent on account of the recent death of her husband, Colonel Higginson said to Miss Anthony: "Now we want everything pleasant and peaceable here, do we not?" "Certainly," she replied. "Well then, we must have Lucy Stone open this meeting." "Why so," asked Miss Anthony, "when Mrs. Stanton is first vice-president? It would be not only an insult to her but a direct violation of parliamentary usage. I shall never consent to it." Finding that, nevertheless, there was a scheme to carry out this plan, she put Mrs. Stanton on the alert and, as the officers filed on the platform, gave her a gentle push to the front, whereupon she opened the convention with the utmost suavity.
It was here that these pioneers of the movement for woman suffrage had the humiliation of hearing Frederick Douglass announce that it was women's duty to take a back seat and wait till the negro was enfranchised before they put in their claim. Rev. Olympia Brown and Lucy Stone both declared the Republican party false to its principles unless it protected women as well as colored men in their right to vote, and in his report on the Kansas campaign, Mr. Blackwell, after speaking of the splendid work of Lucy Stone, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown, said: "Their eloquence and determination gave great promise of success; but, in an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and others saw fit in the Constitutional Convention to report adversely to woman suffrage in New York, which influenced the sentiment in the younger western State and its enterprise was crushed. Even the Republicans in Kansas set their faces against the extension of suffrage to women."
Throughout the entire convention there was much resentment on the part of the women at the manner in which they had been abandoned in favor of the negro. During the same week, at the anti-slavery meeting in Steinway Hall, Anna Dickinson, in the midst of an impassioned speech, declared: "The position of the black woman today is no better than before her emancipation from slavery. She has simply changed masters from a white owner to a black husband in many cases." She demanded freedom and franchise for woman as for man, irrespective of color; and, while giving Mr. Phillips credit for his years of service in the cause of woman, took occasion to enter her protest against the tenor of a portion of his morning address—in effect, that woman's rights must be set aside until the rights of the black man were fully secured.
As there was so much cavilling and faultfinding on the part of many of the Equal Rights Association at every forward and radical step taken by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, they formed an independent committee of themselves, Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith, Mrs. Horace Greeley and Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac T. Hopper, the noted Abolitionist, and wife of a prominent banker. These ladies sent a memorial to the Republican National Convention, which met in Chicago and nominated General Grant, but it never saw the light after reaching there. Snubbed on every hand by the Republicans, they determined to appeal to the Democrats. On June 27 Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton attended a mass convention addressed by Governor Seymour, calling out the following editorial from the New York Sun:
The fact that Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony were the only ladies admitted upon the platform at Cooper Institute, may be regarded as not only committing them to Governor Seymour's views, but as committing the approaching Democratic convention, in whose behalf he spoke, to the doctrine of woman suffrage. Therefore, whether Miss Anthony is received as a delegate to the July convention, it is clear that female suffrage must be incorporated among the planks of the national Democratic platform; and if Governor Seymour, who is a remarkably fine-looking man, is nominated, he will receive the undivided support of the women of the North, which will more than compensate for the loss of the negro vote of the South.
At the meeting of the Equal Rights Committee, held in New York, a half-sarcastic resolution was offered by Theodore Tilton and adopted by the committee declaring that as "Miss Susan B. Anthony, through various published writings in The Revolution, had given the world to understand that the hope of the woman's rights cause rests more largely with the Democratic party than with any other portion of the people; therefore she be requested to attend the approaching National Democratic Convention in New York for the purpose of fulfilling this cheerful hope by securing in the Democratic platform a recognition of woman's right to the elective franchise."
Miss Anthony ignored the sarcasm, and with Mrs. Stanton at once prepared a memorial.1 The convention met and dedicated Tammany Hall on July 4, 1868. This was the first time since the war that the southern Democrats had joined with the northern in national convention and, conservative as they naturally were and separated as they had been from all the woman's rights agitation which had kept the North stirred up for the past decade, one can imagine their amazement when Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and a few other ladies walked into the great hall and occupied reserved seats at the left of the platform. Their memorial was sent to the president, Horatio Seymour, and by him handed to the secretary, who read it amid jeers and laughter. It was then referred to the resolution committee where it slept the sleep of death. The special correspondent of the Chicago Republican