With her debts pressing upon her and an array of lecture engagements ahead, Miss Anthony could neither pause to indulge her own grief nor to console and sympathize with the loved ones. The very night of the funeral she again set forth. By the New Year she had lessened her debt $1,600. This trip extended through New York and Pennsylvania, to Washington and into Virginia. Of the last she writes: "A great work to be done here but the lectures can not possibly be made to pay expenses." In Philadelphia she spoke in the Star course, was the guest of Anna Dickinson and was introduced to her audience by Lucretia Mott, then seventy-seven years old. The diary relates that Mrs. Mott came next morning before 8 o'clock to give her $20, saying it was very little but would show her confidence and affection. The lecture given on this tour was entitled "The False Theory" and was highly commended by the press. It never was written and probably never twice delivered in the same words, Miss Anthony always depending largely upon the inspiration of the occasion.
The middle of December she slipped back to Rochester to see her bereaved sister, and speaks of their receiving a letter of sympathy from Rev. J.K. McLean, which, she says, "is the first philosophical word that has been spoken." While at home she was invited to the Hallowells' to see Wendell Phillips, their first meeting since their sad difference of opinion concerning the Fourteenth Amendment. They had a cordial interview and she went with him to his lecture in the evening. The entry in the journal that night closes with the underscored sentence, "Phillips is matchless."
1. On the platform or in the audience were to be seen the beloved Quaker, Mrs. John J. Merrit, of Brooklyn, Margaret E. Winchester, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Edwin A. Studwell, Catharine Beecher—her plain face illuminated with the fire of indignation—Jenny June Croly, writing rapidly for the New York World, Cora Tappan, Hannah Tracy Cutler, president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association, Phoebe Couzins, Mrs. Benjamin F. Butler, Mrs. James Parton, better known as Fanny Fern, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Elizabeth B. Phelps, two nieces of Mrs. U. S. Grant, Laura Curtis Bullard. Frances Dietz Hallock, Ella Dietz Clymer, Anne Lynch Botta, Mary F. Gilbert, Mrs. Moses Beach, Julia Ward Howe, and many other well-known women.
2. The demands for woman everywhere today are for a wider range of employment, higher wages, thorough mental and physical education, and an equal right before the law in all those relations which grow out of the marriage state. While we yield to none in the earnestness of our advocacy of these claims, we make a broader demand for the enfranchisement of woman, as the only way in which all her just rights can be permanently secured. By discussing, as we shall incidentally, leading questions of political and social importance, we hope to educate women for an intelligent judgment upon public affairs, and for a faithful expression of that judgment at the polls. As masculine ideas have ruled the race for six thousand years, we especially desire that The Revolution shall be the mouth piece of women, to give the world the feminine thought in politics, religion and social life; so that ultimately in the union of both we may find the truth in all things. On the idea taught by the creeds, codes and customs of the world, that woman was made for man, we declare war to the death, and proclaim the higher truth that, like man, she was created by God for individual moral responsibility and progress here and forever. Our principal contributors this year are: Anna Dickinson, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Olive Logan, Mary Clemmer, Mrs. Theodore Tilton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Phoebe Couzins, Elizabeth Boynton and others; and foreign, Rebecca Moore, Lydia E. Becker and Madame Marie Goeg. The Revolution is an independent journal, bound to no party or sect, and those who write for our columns are responsible only for what appears under their own names. Hence, if old Abolitionists and Slaveholders, Republicans and Democrats, Presbyterians and Universalists, Catholics and Protestants find themselves side by side in writing on the question, of woman suffrage, they must pardon each other's differences on all other points, trusting that by giving their own views strongly and grandly, they will overshadow the errors by their side.
3. Frances Wright, from Scotland, in 1828 was the first woman to speak on a public platform in this country. Ernestine L. Rose, from Poland, gave political lectures in 1836; Mary S. Gove, of New York, lectured oil woman's rights in 1837; Sarah and Angelina Grimké, from South Carolina, commenced their anti-slavery speeches in 1837, and Abby Kelly, of Massachusetts, in 1839; Eliza W. Farnham, of New York, lectured in 1843; between 1840 and 1845 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Paulina Wright (afterwards Davis) and Ernestine L. Rose circulated petitions for a bill to secure property rights for married women, and several times addressed committees of the New York Legislature; Margaret Fuller gave lectures in Massachusetts, in 1845; Lucy Stone spoke for the rights of women in 1847. The first woman's rights convention was called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848; Susan B. Anthony made her first speech on temperance in 1849. From 1850 the number of women speakers rapidly increased.
Chapter XXII:
Mrs. Hooker's Convention—The Lecture Field
(1871)
Mrs. Hooker undertakes Washington Convention; amusing letters from Anthony, Stanton, Hooker, Wright; first appearance of Mrs. Woodhull; accounts by Philadelphia Press, Washington Daily Patriot and National Republican; resolution by Miss Anthony claiming right to vote under Fourteenth Amendment; Declaration signed by 80,000 women; Catharine Beecher and Mrs. Woodhull; Mrs. Stanton rebukes men who object to Mrs. Woodhull; hard life of a lecturer; Mrs. Griffing, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Hooker on political party attitude; Phoebe Couzins pleads for the National Association; Mrs. Woodhull at New York May Anniversary; charge of "free love" refuted; forcible letter from Miss Anthony declaring for one Moral Standard.
A large correspondence was conducted in regard to the Third National Convention, which was to be held in Washington in January, 1871. Isabella Beecher Hooker, who had all the zeal of a new convert, created some amusement among the old workers by offering to relieve them of the entire management of the convention, intimating that she would avoid the mistakes they had made and put the suffrage work on a more aristocratic basis. To Mrs. Stanton she wrote:
I have proposed taking the Washington convention into my own hands, expenses and all; arranging program, and presiding or securing help in that direction, if I should need it. I shall hope to get Robert Collyer, and a good many who might not care to speak for "the Union" but would speak for me. I should want from you a pure suffrage argument, much like that you made before the committee at Washington last winter. I know you are tired of this branch, but you are fitted to do a great work still in that direction.... Won't you promise to come to my convention, without charge save travelling expenses, provided I have one? I am waiting to hear from Susan, Mrs. Pomeroy and you, and then shall get Tilton's approval and the withdrawal of the society from the work, if they have undertaken it, and go ahead.
Mrs. Stanton consented gladly and wrote the other friends to do likewise, saying: "I should like to have Susan for president, as she has worked and toiled as no other woman has, but if we think best not to blow her horn, then let us exalt Mrs. Hooker, who thinks she could manage the cause more discreetly, more genteelly than we do. I am ready to rest and see the salvation of the Lord." On their rounds the letters came to Martha Wright, the gentle Quaker, who commented with the fine irony of which she was master: "It strikes me favorably. It would be a fine thing for Mrs. Hooker to preside over the Washington convention, while her sister, Catharine Beecher, was inveighing against suffrage, for the benefit of Mrs. Dahlgren and others. Perhaps she is right in thinking that Robert Collyer and a good many others who would not care to speak for 'the Union,' would speak for her—I for one would be glad to have her try it! If 'Captain Susan' would consent to be placed at the head of the association, there could not be a more suitable and just appointment."
Mrs. Stanton wrote that her lecture engagements would not permit her to go to Washington and she would send $100 instead. Mrs. Hooker replied:
Your