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
Sister Mary and I passed New Year's Day, 1859, most quietly and
happily in the dear farm-home. Mother is in the East with sister
Hannah, and father dined in the city with sister Guelma, who sent
us a plate of her excellent turkey.... In the afternoon Mary and I
drove to Frederick Douglass' and had a nice visit; stayed to tea
and listened to a part of his new lecture on "Self-Made Men."...
Father and Mary gone to their work in the city, and I am writing on
my lecture "The True Woman." Ground out four commercial-note pages
in five mortal hours, but they are strong.... Ten degrees below
zero. Mother home; no writing today; all talk about the eastern
folks.... Antoinette Blackwell preached here yesterday, and we have
had a good visit together today. Just helped two fugitive slaves,
perhaps genuine and perhaps not.... Went to the city to hear A.A.
Willit's lecture on "A Plea for Home." Gives woman a place only in
domestic life--sad failure.... Twenty letters written and mailed
today. Took tea with the Hallowells. Am glad to learn that the
money forwarded to the Anti-Slavery Bazar and lost was sent by a
man instead of a woman.... Heard Bayard Taylor on "Life in
Lapland." Hundreds could not gain admittance. Curtis lectured on
"Fair Play for Women"; great success, but I feel that he has not
yet been tried by fire. Afterwards visited with Curtis and Taylor,
and Mr. Curtis said: "Rather than have a radical thinker like Mrs.
Rose at your suffrage conventions, you would better give them up.
With such speakers as Beecher, Phillips, Theodore Parker, Chapin,
Tilton and myself advocating woman's cause, it can not fail."
[Autograph:
Respectfully yours,
E.H. Chapin"]
Miss Anthony did not hesitate to criticise even Mr. Curtis, writing him
in reference to his great lecture, "Democracy and Education": "When all
the different classes of industrial claimants for a voice in the
government were enumerated, there was not one which could be
interpreted to represent womanhood. Hence only the few who know that
with George William Curtis, the words 'man,' 'people,' 'citizens,' are
not, as with the vast majority of lecturers, mere glittering
generalities, can understand that his grand principles of democracy are
intended to be applied to woman equally with man. I listen for the
unthinking masses and pray that every earnest, manly spirit shall help
make women free." In reply Mr. Curtis closed a long and cordial letter
by saying: "Believe me that I have thought of the point you make but
the greater statement must inevitably include the less." She scribbled
a comment on the back of this for her own satisfaction: "Men still the
greater, women the less."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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