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 a letter to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton said: "We are right. My
reason, my experience, my soul proclaim it. Our religion, laws,
customs, all are founded on the idea that woman was made for man. I am
a woman, and I can feel in every nerve where my deepest wrongs are
hidden. The men know we have struck a blow at their greatest
stronghold. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth I have
uttered. One word of thanks from a suffering woman outweighs with me
the howls of Christendom."
Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony wrote Mr. Phillips
for money from the Hovey fund to publish the report of the convention
containing these very resolutions, and he sent it accompanied with a
cordial letter. With his generous disposition he soon recognized the
fact that it was eminently proper to agitate this question of divorce,
in order to make it possible for a woman to secure release from a
habitual drunkard, or a husband who treated her with personal violence
or willfully abandoned her, and to have some claim on their property
and a right to their children, if she were the innocent party. Before
three months he wrote Miss Anthony, "Go ahead, you are doing grandly,"
and he spoke many times afterwards on their platform. During the height
of this discussion Miss Anthony was in Albany and Rev. Mayo, thinking
to annihilate her, said: "You are not married, you have no business to
be discussing marriage." "Well, Mr. Mayo," she replied, "you are not a
slave, suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."
As a result of this agitation a little clique of women in Boston, led
by Caroline H. Dall, announced that they would hold a convention which
should not be open to free discussion but should be "limited to the
subjects of Education, Vocation and Civil Position." They drew to
themselves a small body of conservatives and it was thought might start
a new movement, but the meeting had no permanent results. Parker
Pillsbury said of it: "With the exception of Phillips, no soul kindled
with volcanic fire was permitted a solitary spark. O, such a meeting!
Beautiful as parlor theatricals, but as a bold shriek for freedom or a
protest against tyrant laws, not a sparrow on the housetop could have
been more harmless." Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "Cautious,
careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and
social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really
in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's
estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their
sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and
bear the consequences."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account