At this meeting Robert Laird Collyer (not the distinguished Robert Collyer) made a long address against the enfranchisement of women, mixing up purity, propriety and pedestals in the usual incoherent fashion. He was so completely annihilated by Anna Dickinson that no further defense of the measure was necessary. Suffrage societies were organized in Chicago, Milwaukee and Toledo. In her account of this convention, Mrs. Livermore wrote of Miss Anthony:
She is entirely unlike Mrs. Stanton, notwithstanding the twain have been fast friends and diligent co-laborers for a quarter of a century.... Miss Anthony is a woman whom no one can know thoroughly without respect. Entirely honest, fearfully in earnest, energetic, self-sacrificing, kind-hearted, scorning difficulties of whatever magnitude, and rigidly sensible, she is the warm friend of the poor, oppressed, homeless and friendless of her own sex. Her labors in their behalf are tireless and judicious. You think her plain until she smiles, and then the worn face lights up so pleasantly and benignly that you forget to criticise and your heart warms towards her. Knowing her great goodness, and how she has devoted her life to hard, unpaid work for the negro slave and for woman, we can never read jibes and jeers at her expense without a twinge of pain. Let the press laugh at her as it may, she is a mighty power among both men and women, and those who really love as well as respect her are a host.
In this winter of 1869 the Press Club of New York made the startling innovation of giving a dinner to which ladies were invited. Among the guests were Phoebe and Alice Gary, Mary L. Booth, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Olive Logan, Mary Kyle Dallas and Miss Anthony. J. W. Simonton, of the Associated Press, was toast-master. Not having had the slightest intimation that she was expected to speak, Miss Anthony was called upon to respond to the question, "Why don't the women propose?" Without a moment's hesitation she arose and said: "Under present conditions, it would require a good deal of assurance for a woman to say to a man, 'Please, sir, will you support me for the rest of my life?' When all avocations are open to woman and she has an opportunity to acquire a competence, she will then be in a position where it will not be humiliating for her to ask the man she loves to share her prosperity. Instead of requesting him to provide food, raiment and shelter for her, she can invite him into her home, contribute her share to the partnership and not be an utter dependent. There will be also another advantage in this arrangement—if he prove unworthy she can ask him to walk out." It will be seen by this original and daring reply that Miss Anthony could not attend a dinner party even without creating a sensation.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and the Fourteenth establishing the citizenship of the negro, did not prove sufficient to protect him in his right of suffrage and, although Sumner and other Republican leaders contended that another amendment was not necessary for this, the majority of the party did not share this opinion and it became evident that one would have to be added.1 Those proposed by Pomeroy and Julian securing universal suffrage were brushed aside without debate, and the following was submitted by Congress to the State legislatures, February 27, 1869:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
Amendment XIV had settled the status of citizenship. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Now came the next measure to protect the citizen's right to vote, which proposed to guard against any discrimination on account of race, of color, of previous condition, but by the omission of the one word "sex," all women still were left disfranchised. At this time the leading Republicans believed in universal suffrage. Garrison, Phillips, Greeley, Sumner, Tilton, Wilson, Wade, Stevens, Brown, Julian and many others had publicly declared their belief in the right of woman to the ballot, but now driven by party necessity, they repudiated their principles, and deferred the day of her freedom for generations. Yet it was not forgotten still carefully to include her in the basis of representation, fully to make her amenable to the laws, and strictly to hold her to her share of taxation. In reference to this The Revolution said:
The proposed amendment for "manhood suffrage" not only rouses woman's prejudices against the negro, but on the other hand his contempt and hostility toward her.... Just as the Democratic cry of a "white man's government" created the antagonism between the Irishman and the negro, which culminated in the New York riots of 1863, so the Republican cry of "manhood suffrage" creates an antagonism between black men and all women, which will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern States. While we fully appreciate the philosophy that every extension of rights prepares the way for greater freedom to new classes and hastens the day of liberty to all, we at the same time see that the immediate effect of class enfranchisement is greater tyranny and abuse of those who have no voice in the government. Had Irishmen been disfranchised in this country, they would have made common cause with the negro in fighting for his rights, but when exalted above him, they proved his worst enemies. The negro will be the victim for generations to come, of the prejudice engendered by making this a white man's government. While the enfranchisement of each new class of white men was a step toward his ultimate freedom, it increased his degradation in the transition period, and he touched the depths when all men but himself were crowned with citizenship.
Just so with woman, while the enfranchisement of all men hastens the day for justice to her, it makes her degradation more complete in the transition state. It is to escape the added tyranny, persecutions, insults, horrors which will surely be visited upon her in the establishment of an aristocracy of sex in this republic, that we raise our indignant protest against this wholesale desecration of woman in the pending amendment, and earnestly pray the rulers of this nation to consider the degradation of disfranchisement. Our Republican leaders see that it is a protection and defense for the black man, giving him new dignity and self-respect, and making his rights more sacred in the eyes of his enemies. It is mockery to tell woman she is excluded from all political privileges on the ground of respect; since the laws and constitutions for her, in common with all disfranchised classes, harmonize with the degradation of the position.
In their protest against this discrimination and their insistence that the word "sex" should be included in the Fifteenth Amendment, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton stood practically alone. Most of the other women allowed themselves to be persuaded by the politicians that it was their duty to step aside and wait till the negro was invested with this highest attribute of citizenship.
In the first issue of The Revolution for 1869 appeared this letter from George Francis Train, who had just been released from the Dublin jail and had returned to America:
....I knew the load I had to carry in the woman question, but you did not know the load you had to carry in Train. When the poor man's horse fell and broke his leg, the crowd sympathized. "How much you pity?" asked the Frenchman; "I pity man $20." I saw that the theoretical breeching had broken in Kansas, and with voice, with pen, with time and, what none of your old friends did, with purse, I threw myself into the battle.
With your remarkable industry and extraordinary executive ability you have astonished all by your success. You remember I begged you never to stop to defend me but to push on to victory. Now both parties are neck and neck to see who shall lead the army of in-coming negro voters. Woman already begins to creep. Soon she will walk and legislate. No sneers, no low jokes, no obscene remarks are now bandied about. The iceberg of prejudice is moving down the Gulf Stream of a wider liberty and will melt away with the bigotry of ages. The ball is rolling down the hill. You no longer need my services. The Revolution is a power. Would