Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but realize the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights now more than twenty years, feel precisely as you would under such circumstances. One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator Sumner) said to me two winters ago, after our hearing before the committee of the District: "I never realized before that you or any woman could feel the disgrace, the degradation of disfranchisement precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had conspired to deprive me of my right to vote." Although I am a Quaker and take no oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I will never again beg my rights, but will come to Congress each year and demand the recognition of them under the guarantees of the National Constitution.
What we ask of the Republican party is simply to take down its own bars. The facts in Wyoming show how it is that a Republican party can exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the first election sent one Republican to Congress and seven to the Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of a Republican party there was formed through the enfranchisement of women. The Democrats, seeing this, are now determined to disfranchise them. Can you Republicans so utterly stultify yourselves, can you so entirely work against yourselves, as to refuse us a declaratory law? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs. Hooker has said, "favorably, if you can; adversely, if you must." We can wait no longer.
The committee reported adversely on the question of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
At the close of the convention, Miss Anthony hastened to her home in Rochester, which she had not seen since her departure to California eight months before. Soon after her arrival she was invited to meet a number of her acquaintances at the home of her dear friend, Amy Post, and give them an account of her experiences on the Pacific slope. At its conclusion she was surprised by the presentation of a purse containing $50, with a touching address by Mrs. Post asking her to accept it as a testimonial of the appreciation in which her friends and neighbors held her work for woman and humanity. At the same time she received a gift of money from Sarah Pugh, in an envelope marked, "For thine own dear self." In her acknowledgment she says:
The tears started when I read your sweet letter. Were it not for the loving sympathy and confidence of the little handful of ever-faithful such as you, my spirit, I fear, would have fainted long ago. There are yourself, dear Lucretia and her equally dear sister, Martha, who never fail to know just the moment when my purse is drained to the bottom and to drop the needed dollar into it. It is really wonderful how I have been carried through all these years financially. I often feel that Elijah's being fed by the ravens was no more miraculous than my being furnished with the means to do the great work which has been for the past twenty years continuously presenting itself—yes, presenting itself, for it has always come to me. My thought has been to escape the hardships but they come ever and always, and so I try to accept the situation and work my way through as best I can.
She was soon off again, lecturing in various cities and towns, going as far west as Nebraska. Early in April, while waiting at a little railroad station in Illinois, a gentleman came in and handed her a copy of Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly containing this double-leaded announcement:
The undersigned citizens of the United States, responding to the invitation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, propose to hold a convention at Steinway Hall, in the city of New York, the 9th and 10th of May. We believe the time has come for the formation of a new political party whose principles shall meet the issues of the hour and represent equal rights for all. As women of the country are to take part for the first time in political action, we propose that the initiative steps in the convention shall be taken by them.... This convention will declare the platform of the People's party, and consider the nomination of candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, who shall be the best possible exponents of political and industrial reform....
| ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, | SUSAN E. ANTHONY, |
| ISABELLA B. HOOKER, | MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE. |
It was followed by the call of Mrs. Woodhull and others for a delegate convention to form a new party. Miss Anthony was thunderstruck. Not only had she no knowledge of this action, but she was thoroughly opposed both to the forming of a new party and to the National Association's having any share in such a proceeding. She immediately telegraphed an order to have her name removed from the call, and wrote back indignant letters of protest against involving the association in such an affair. A month prior to this, on March 13, she had written Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker from Leavenworth:
We have no element out of which to make a political party, because there is not a man who would vote a woman suffrage ticket if thereby he endangered his Republican, Democratic, Workingmen's or Temperance party, and all our time and words in that direction are simply thrown away. My name must not be used to call any such meeting. I will do all I can to support either of the leading parties which may adopt a woman suffrage plank or nominee; but no one of them wants to do anything for us, while each would like to use us....
I tell you I feel utterly disheartened—not that our cause is going to die or be defeated, but as to my place and work. Mrs. Woodhull has the advantage of us because she has the newspaper, and she persistently means to run our craft into her port and none other. If she were influenced by women spirits, either in the body or out of it, in the direction she steers, I might consent to be a mere sail-hoister for her; but as it is, she is wholly owned and dominated by men spirits and I spurn the control of the whole lot of them, just precisely the same when reflected through her woman's tongue and pen as if they spoke directly for themselves.
After sending this letter she had supposed the question settled until she saw this notice, hence her anger and dismay can be imagined.
The regular anniversary meeting of the National Association was to begin in New York on May 9, and on the 6th Miss Anthony reached the city to prevent, if possible, the threatened coalition with the proposed new party. She engaged the parlors of the Westmoreland Hotel for headquarters and then hastened over to Tenafly to get Mrs. Stanton. As soon as the suffrage committee opened its business session, Mrs. Woodhull and her friends appeared by previous arrangement made during Miss Anthony's absence in the West, and announced that they would hold joint sessions with the suffrage convention the next two days at Steinway Hall. It was only by Miss Anthony's firm stand and indomitable will that this was averted, and that the set of resolutions which they brought, cut and dried, was defeated in the committee. She positively refused to allow them the use of Steinway Hall, which had been rented in her name, and at length they were compelled to give up the game and engage Apollo Hall for their "new party" convention. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker called her narrow, bigoted and headstrong, but the proceedings of the "people's convention" next day, which nominated Mrs. Woodhull for President, showed how suicidal it would have been to have had it under the auspices of the National Suffrage Association.
The forces of the latter, however, were greatly demoralized, the attendance at the convention was small, and Mrs. Stanton refused to serve longer as president. Miss Anthony was elected in her stead and, just as she was about to adjourn the first evening session, to her amazement Mrs. Woodhull came gliding in from the side of the platform and moved that "this convention adjourn to meet tomorrow morning at Apollo Hall!" An ally in the audience seconded the motion, Miss Anthony refused to put it, an appeal was made from the decision of the chair, Mrs. Woodhull herself put the motion