In her usual racy style Phoebe Couzins concluded her description by saying: "It seems very strange that when you are not about, things generally break loose and no woman can be found who unites the moderation, brains and common sense necessary to carry matters to a respectable conclusion. That meeting was like those they used to have in the District of Columbia. Not until the National Association, in the persons of Mrs. Stanton and yourself, came to the rescue and raised them to a dignified standard did they attain any degree of hearing from the thoughtful people of the capital." And so Miss Anthony determined that no lecture bureau should keep her away from another National convention.
The entire year of 1878, with the exception of the three summer months, was spent in the lecture field. On July 19 Miss Anthony and other workers arranged a celebration at Rochester of the thirtieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention. This was held in place of the usual May Anniversary in New York and was attended by a distinguished body of women. The Unitarian church, in spite of the intense heat, was filled with a representative audience. The noble Quaker, Amy Post, now seventy-seven years old, who had been the leading spirit in the convention of thirty years before, assisted in the arrangements. The usual brilliant and logical speeches were made by Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs, Gage, Dr. Lozier, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Sargent, Frederick Douglass, Miss Couzins and others. This was the first appearance on the National platform of Mrs. May Wright Sewall, of Indianapolis, from that time one of the leaders of the movement. Almost one hundred interesting and encouraging letters were received from Phillips, Garrison, Senator Sargent, Frances E. Willard, Clara Barton and many others in this country and in England.
This was the last convention Lucretia Mott ever attended, and she had made the journey hither under protest from her family, for she was nearly eighty-six years old, but her devoted friend Sarah Pugh accompanied her. She spoke several times in her old, gentle, half-humorous but convincing manner and was heard with rapt attention. As she walked down the aisle to leave the church, the whole audience arose and Frederick Douglass called out with emotion, "Good-by, Lucretia." The convention received a telegram of congratulation from the International Congress at Paris, presided over by Victor Hugo. Mrs. Stanton was re-elected president and Miss Anthony chairman of the executive committee. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle said:
The assemblage was composed of as fine a body of American women as ever met in convention or anywhere else. Among them were many noted for their culture and refinement, and for their attainments in the departments of literature, medicine, divinity and law. As Douglass said, to which the president bowed her acquiescence, any cause which could stand the test of thirty years' agitation, was bound to succeed. The foremost ladies engaged in the movement today are those who initiated it in this country and have bravely and grandly upheld their cause from that day to this. Among them we must first speak of Susan B. Anthony, one of the most sensible and worthy citizens of this republic, a lady of warm and tender heart but indomitable purpose and energy, and a resident of whom Rochester may well be proud.
Miss Anthony was very tired after the labors of this convention and was glad to remain with the invalid mother while sister Mary went to the White mountains for rest and change. She received an invitation from the board of directors to address the Kansas State Fair in September, and also one from Col. John P. St. John, Republican candidate for governor, to speak at a Grand National Temperance Camp Meeting near Lawrence, but was obliged to decline both.
During the summer of 1878 reports were so constantly circulated declaring woman suffrage a failure in Wyoming that Miss Anthony wrote to J.H. Hayford, postmaster and editor of the Sentinel at Laramie City, in regard to one of these in the New York World, which paper declared it would vouch for the integrity of the writer. She received the following answer:
The enclosed slander upon Wyoming women I had seen before, but did not deem it worthy reply. Some of my Cheyenne friends took pains to ascertain the writer and they assure me (and the Cheyenne papers have published the fact) that he is a worthless, drunken dead-beat, who worked out a ten days' sentence on the streets of that city with a ball and chain to his leg.
I have not time to go into a detailed history of the practical working of woman suffrage in Wyoming, but I can add my testimony to the fact that its effect has been most salutary and beneficial. Not one of the imaginary evils which its opponents predicted has ever been realized here. On this frontier, where the roughest element is supposed to exist, and where women are so largely in the minority—even here, under these adverse circumstances, woman's influence has redeemed our politics. Our elections are conducted as quietly and civilly as any other public gatherings. Republicans are not always elected, the most desirable men are not always elected, perhaps; but the influence of our women is almost universally given for the best men and the best laws, and we would as soon be without woman's assistance in the government of the family as in that of the Territory.
After having tried the experiment for nine years, it is safe to say there is not one citizen of the Territory—man or woman—who desires good order, good laws and good government, who would be willing to see it abolished. Woman's influence in the government of our Territory is a terror only to evil-doers, and they, and they only, are the ones who desire its repeal. Such base slanders as the specimen you sent me excite in the minds of Wyoming citizens only feelings of disgust and contempt for the author, and wonder at the ignorance of any one who is gullible enough to believe them.
In August she received a letter from Lucy Stone, asking if she had been correctly reported by the papers as saying that "the suffragists would advocate any party which would declare for woman suffrage," to which she replied:
I answer "yes," save that I used the pronoun "I" instead of the word "suffragists." I spoke for myself alone, because I know many of our women are so much more intensely Republican or Democratic, Hard-Money or Green-back, Prohibition or License, than they are "Equal Rights for All," that now, as in the past, they will hold the question of woman's enfranchisement in abeyance, while they give their money and their energies to secure the success of one or another of the contending parties, even though it wholly ignore their just claim to a voice in the government. It is not that I have no opinions or preferences on the many grave questions which distract and divide the parties; but it is that, in my judgment, the right of self-government for one-half the people is of far more vital consequence to the nation than any or all other questions.
This has been my position ever since the abolition of slavery, by which the black race were raised from chattels to citizens, and invested also with civil rights equally with the cultured, tax-paying, white women of the country. Have you forgotten the cry "This is the negro's hour," which came back to us in 1866, when we urged the Abolitionists to make common cause with us and demand suffrage as a right for all United States citizens, instead of asking it simply as an expediency for only another class of men? Do you not remember, too how the taunt "false to the negro" was flung into the face of every one of us who insisted that it was "humanity's hour," and that to talk of "freedom without the ballot" was no less "mockery" to woman than to the negro?
If, in those most trying reconstruction years, I could not subordinate the fundamental principle of "Equal Rights for All" to Republican party necessity for negro suffrage—if, in that fearful national emergency, I would not sacrifice the greater to the less—I surely can not and will not today hold any of the far less important party questions paramount to that most sacred principle of our republic. So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as their political equals, duly register our names and respectfully count our opinions at the ballot-box, as a constitutional right—not as a high crime, punishable with "$500 fine or six months' imprisonment, or both, at the discretion of the court."
If all the "suffragists" of all the States could see eye to eye on this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and politician