Instead of Mr. Train's securing writers and subscribers in Europe, he was arrested for complicity with the Fenians the moment he made his first speech, and spent the year in a Dublin jail. He wrote that the finding of fifty copies of The Revolution in his possession was an additional reason for his arrest, as the officials did not stop to read a word, the name was sufficient. While Mr. Train continued his contributions to the paper during his residence in jail, he was not able to meet his financial obligations to it. Mr. Melliss made heroic efforts to pay in his quota, but the days were full of anxiety for everybody connected with The Revolution. Miss Anthony was used to such care. She had been the financial burden-bearer of every reform with which she had been connected, but to this crushing weight was added such a persecution as she never had experienced before, even in the days of pro-slavery mobs. Then the attacks had been made by open and avowed enemies, and she had had a host of staunch supporters to share them and give her courage; now her persecutors were in ambush and were those who had been her nearest and dearest friends; and now she was alone except for Mrs. Stanton and Mr. Pillsbury. Even they were labored with, and besought to renounce one who seemed to have complete mastery over them and was leading them to destruction, but nothing could shake their allegiance. The excuse for this persecution was that the Equal Rights Association was injured by the publication of The Revolution.
That there should be a paper published in the interest of the rights of women had been the dream of the advocates for many years. Antoinette Blackwell had written Miss Anthony several years before: "I wish we had the contemplated paper for Mrs. Stanton's especial benefit. I am afraid it will be too late for her when we get it fairly established, which does not promise to be very soon. Lucy believes her own talents lie in other directions, and gives no approval to the plan for herself." Lucy Stone had written: "We must have a paper and dear, brave, sensible Mrs. Stanton must be the editor." And at another time: "I feel very proud of Mrs. Stanton, she is so strong and noble. When we have a new paper she must be the editor."
Mrs. Stanton, with her house and her large family, had no desire for this position. Miss Anthony herself was not a writer, and many times of late years had agitated the question of raising money to have Lucy Stone and her husband at the head of a paper, they having now signified their willingness to hold such a place. The founding of The Revolution was totally unexpected and its editors accepted it only because of the great need of a medium through which the cause of woman might be thoroughly advocated. There was not the slightest desire to enter into rivalry with anybody or to antagonize the Republicans. If the latter had been willing to furnish the money to start a paper, or had allowed space in their own publications, the favor would have been most gladly accepted. Had the members of the Equal Rights Association raised a fund to establish an organ, so much the better, but although the subject had been talked of for years, the capital had not been forthcoming. There was no attempt to make the association responsible for the opinions of The Revolution, as this letter from Mrs. Stanton indicates:
Susan and I, though members of the Equal Rights Association, do many things outside that body for which no one is responsible. The idea of starting a paper under its auspices, or as an organ for it, never entered our minds. We went to Kansas as individuals; personal friends outside that association gave us money to go and contributed the funds to start a paper. We object to that resolution of censure, first, because we were outside its province; second, because it was an outrage to repudiate Susan and me, who have labored without cessation for twenty years and had just returned from a hard three months' campaign. For any one to question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to crush us and our paper.
In showing how the women were sacrificed, The Revolution said:
Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, with one consent, bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, "One idea for a generation," to come up in the order of their importance. First negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight-hour movement, then woman suffrage. Three generations hence, woman suffrage will be in order! What an insult to the women who have labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads. Gerrit Smith, forgetting that our great American idea is "individual rights," on which Abolitionists have ever based their strongest arguments for emancipation, says: "This is the time to settle the rights of races; unless we do justice to the negro we shall bring down on ourselves another bloody revolution, another four years' war, but we have nothing to fear from woman, she will not avenge herself!" Woman not avenge herself? Look at your asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the insane, and there behold the results of this wholesale desecration of the mothers of the race! Woman not avenge herself? Go into the streets of your cities at the midnight hour, and there behold those whom God meant to be queens in the moral universe giving your sons their first lessons in infamy and vice. No, you can not wrong the humblest of God's creatures without making discord and confusion in the whole social system.
In regard to the bitter persecution waged upon the two women, Ellen Wright Garrison said in a letter to Miss Anthony: "This sitting in judgment upon those whose views differ from our own, pouring vials of wrath on their heads and calling in the outside and prejudiced public to help condemn, is unwise and un-Christian." Her mother, Martha Wright, who at first was inclined to blame, wrote in the spring of 1868: "As regards the paper, its vigorous pages are what we need. I regret the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Train, as they give occasion to the sons and daughters of the Philistines to rejoice, and the children of the uncircumcised only wanted a good excuse to triumph. Shall you be at the May meeting? I will not be there under any circumstances without you and Susan and our good friend Parker; so whatever may become of Mr. Train or of the paper, count me now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."
The following graphic description, by the correspondent, Nellie Hutchinson, was published in the Cincinnati Commercial:
There's a peculiarly resplendent sign at the head of the third flight of stairs, and obeying its directions I march into the north corridor and enter The Revolution office. Nothing so very terrible after all. The first face that salutes my vision is a youthful one—fresh, smiling, bright-eyed, auburn-crowned. It belongs to one of the employes of the establishment, and its owner conducts me to a comfortable sofa, then trips lightly through a little door opposite to inform Miss Anthony of my presence.
I glance about me. What editorial bliss is this! Actually a neat carpet on the floor, a substantial round table covered by a pretty cloth, engravings and photographs hung thickly over the clear white walls. Here is Lucretia Mott's saintly face, beautiful with eternal youth; there Mary Wollstonecraft looking into futurity with earnest eyes. In an arched recess are shelves containing books and piles of pamphlets, speeches and essays of Stuart Mill, Wendell Phillips, Higginson, Curtis. Two screens extend across the front of the room, inclosing a little space around the two large windows which give light, air and glimpses of City Hall park. Glancing around the corner we see editor Pillsbury seated at his desk by the further window. Opposite is another desk covered with brown wrappers and mailing books. Close against the screen stands yet another, at which sits the bookkeeper, an energetic young woman who ably manages all the business affairs of The Revolution. There's an atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy about the place; everything is refreshingly neat and clean, and suggestive of reform.
Ah! here comes Susan—the determined—the invincible, the Susan who is possibly destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State some of these days! What a delicious