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
One can not but ask why, under such laws, women ever would marry, but
in those days virtually all occupations were closed to them and the
vast majority were compelled to marry for support. In the few cases
where women had their own means, they married because of the public
sentiment which considered it a serious reproach to remain a spinster
and rigorously forbade to her all the pleasures and independence that
are freely accorded to the unmarried woman of today. And they married
because it is natural for women to marry, and all laws and all customs,
all restrictions and all freedom, never will circumvent nature.
On February 3 and 4, 1860, the State Woman's Rights Convention was held
at Albany in Association Hall, an interesting and successful meeting.
At its close, in a letter to Mrs. Wright, Miss Anthony said: "Mr. Anson
Bingham, chairman of the judiciary committee, will bring in a radical
report in favor of all our claims, but previous to doing so he wishes
our strongest arguments made before the committee and says Mrs. Stanton
must come. I wish you would slip over there and make her feel that the
salvation of the Empire State, at least of the women in it, depends
upon her bending all her powers to move the hearts of our law-givers at
this time. I should go there myself this very night but I must watch
and encourage friends here." Mrs. Stanton replied to her urgent appeal:
"I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says
cross the Alps, they are crossed. You must come here and start me on
the right train of thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is
wanted is everything in getting up the right document."
The readers of history never will be able to separate Miss Anthony's
addresses from Mrs. Stanton's; they themselves scarcely could do it.
Some of the strongest ever written by either were prepared without the
assistance of the other, but most of their resolutions, memorials and
speeches were the joint work of both. Miss Anthony always said, "Mrs.
Stanton is my sentence maker, my pen artist." No one can excel Miss
Anthony in logic of thought or vigor of expression; no one is so
thoroughly supplied with facts, statistics and arguments, but she finds
it difficult and distasteful to put them into written form. When,
however, some one else has taken her wonderful stock of material and
reduced it to shape, she is a perfect critic. Her ear is as carefully
attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician
to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a
sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or
phrase needed to give it poise and strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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