The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty YearsHarper, Ida Husted
History
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2): Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years
Harper, Ida Husted
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906
On the way to Saratoga Miss Anthony stopped at Utica for the State
Teachers' Convention and was appointed to read a paper at the next
annual meeting on "Educating the Sexes Together." This action showed
considerable advance in sentiment during the two years since this same
body at Rochester debated for half an hour whether a woman should be
allowed to speak to a motion. She called the Woman's Rights Convention
to order in Saratoga, August 15, 1855, and Martha C. Wright was made
president. The brilliant array of speakers addressed cultured audiences
gathered from all parts of the country at this fashionable resort. The
newspapers were very complimentary; the Whig, however, declared, "The
business of the convention was to advocate woman's right to do wrong."
It was here that Mary L. Booth, afterwards for many years editor of
Harper's Bazar, made her first public appearance, acting as secretary.
She decided to go for a while to the Worcester Hydropathic Institute
conducted by her cousin, Dr. Seth Rogers, and she found here complete
change and comparative rest, although occupying a great deal of her
time in sending out tracts and petitions. Her account-books show the
purchase of 600 one-cent stamps, each of which meant the addressing of
an envelope with her own hand, and her letters to her father are full
of directions for printing circulars, etc. She was, however, enabled to
take some recreation, a thing almost unknown in her busy life. On
September 18 she attended the Massachusetts Woman's Rights Convention,
and wrote home:
I went into Boston with Lucy Stone and stopped at Francis
Jackson's, where we found Antoinette Brown and Ellen Blackwell, a
pleasant company in that most hospitable home. As this was my first
visit to Boston, Mr. Jackson took us to see the sights; and then we
dined with his daughter, Eliza J. Eddy, returning in the afternoon.
In the evening, we attended a reception at Garrison's, where we met
several of the literati, and were most heartily welcomed by Mrs.
Garrison, a noble, self-sacrificing woman, loving and loved,
surrounded with healthy, happy children in that model home. Mr.
Garrison was omnipresent, now talking with and introducing guests,
now soothing some child to sleep, and now, with his wife, looking
after the refreshments. There we met Caroline H. Dall, Elizabeth
Peabody, Mrs. McCready, the Shakespearian reader, Caroline M.
Severance, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Charles F. Hovey, Wendell Phillips,
Sarah Pugh and others. Having worshipped these distinguished people
afar off, it was a great satisfaction to meet them face to face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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