Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the attitude of the Republicans to offer even a glimmer of hope that they were capable of governing in this crisis. Lincoln's inaugural address prejudiced her at once, for he said, "I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do so."[130] To her the future looked dark when statesmen would save the Union at such a price. "No Compromise" was Susan's watchword these days, as a feminist as well as an abolitionist, even though this again set her at odds with Garrison and Phillips, the two men she respected above all others. They were now writing her stern letters urging her to reveal the hiding place of a fugitive wife and her daughter. Just before she had started on her antislavery crusade and while she was in Albany with Lydia Mott, a heavily veiled woman with a tragic story had come to them for help. She was the wife of Dr. Charles Abner Phelps, a highly respected member of the Massachusetts Senate, and the mother of three children. She had discovered, she told them, that her husband was unfaithful to her, and when she confronted him with the proof, he had insisted that she suffered from delusions and had her committed to an insane asylum. For a year and a half she had not been allowed to communicate with her children, but finally her brother, a prominent Albany attorney, obtained her release through a writ of habeas corpus, took her to his home, and persuaded Dr. Phelps to allow the children to visit her for a few weeks. Now she was desperate as she again faced the prospect of being separated from her children by Massachusetts law which gave even an unfaithful husband control of his wife's person and their children.