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
In the autumn the anti-slavery meetings were resumed, and Miss Anthony
was unsparing of herself and everybody else. Parker Pillsbury
complained: "What a task-mistress our general agent is proving herself.
I expect as soon as women get command, an end will have come to all our
peace. We shall yet have societies for the protection of men's rights,
in the cause of which many of us will have to be martyrs." Her brother,
Daniel R., was sending frequent letters from Kansas containing graphic
descriptions of the terrible condition of affairs in that unhappy
territory, and scathing denunciations of the treachery of northern
"dough faces," thus fanning the fires of patriotism that glowed in her
breast and filling her with renewed zeal for the cause to which she was
giving her time and strength. During these days she wrote a cherished
sister:
Though words of love are seldom written or spoken by one of us to
the other, there must ever remain the abiding faith that the heart
still beats true and fond. Our family is now so widely separated
that our enjoyment must consist in soul communing. Indeed, I almost
believe in the power of affection to draw unto itself the yearning
heart of the absent one. What the modern Spiritualist tells of
feeling the presence of departed friends and enjoying their loving
ministrations, I sometimes imagine to be true, not of the spirits
of those gone hence, but of those still in the body who are
separated from us. I often pass blessed moments in these sweet,
silent communings.... Every day brings to me new conceptions of
life and its duties, and it is my constant desire that I may be
strong and fearless, baring my arm to the encounter and pressing
cheerfully forward, though the way is rough and thorny.
I have just returned from the hardest three weeks' tour of
anti-slavery meetings I have had yet, so cold and disheartening.
The masses seem devoid of conscience and looking only for some new
expedient to accomplish the desired good; but in every town there
are some true spirits who walk in God's sunlight and do what is
right, trusting results to the great Immutable Law.... I wish all
the dear ones would write me more often. Though I am sure of their
affection, yet when the soul is burdened and one is surrounded by
strangers, a letter from a loved one brings healing to the spirit,
and I need it more than I can tell.
There is scarcely a letter to her own family, in the large number
preserved, which does not express a longing for love and sympathy, a
craving that no public career, no devotion to any cause, however
absorbing, ever eradicates from the human soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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