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
A feeling of sadness, almost of suffocation, has been mine ever
since the first announcement that the anti-slavery meeting was
postponed. I can not welcome the demon of expediency or consent to
be an abettor, by silence any more than by word or act, of wicked
means to accomplish an end, not even for the sake of emancipating
the slaves. I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone
remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have
insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony
but one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The
Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all
the world that they are out of time and place, hence should hold
their peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to
me seems most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of
expediency not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for
the abandonment of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed
and sad that even the little Apostolic number have yielded to the
world's motto--"the end justifies the means."
As the long, hard winter's work had left her very tired she gladly
turned to that haven of refuge, the farm-home. The father, who was
willing always to put the control of affairs into her capable hands,
took this opportunity to make a long-desired trip to Kansas, going the
first of May and returning in September. She assumed the entire
management of the farm, put in the crops, watched over, harvested and
sold them; assisted her mother with the housework and the family sewing
and, by way of variety, pieced a silk quilt and wove twenty yards of
rag carpet in the old loom. She found time, more-over, to go to the
Progressive Friends' meeting at Junius and to attend the State
Teachers' Convention at Watertown. She also managed a large
anti-slavery Fourth of July meeting at Gregory's grove, near Rochester,
securing a number of distinguished speakers. In writing her, relative
to this meeting, Frederick Douglass said: "I rejoice not in the death
of any one, yet I can not but feel that, in the death of Stephen A.
Douglas, a most dangerous person has been removed. No man of his time
has done more than he to intensify hatred of the negro and to
demoralize northern sentiment. Since Henry Clay he has been the King of
Compromise. Yours for the freedom of man and of woman always."
[Autograph: Frederick Douglass]
From her diary may be obtained an idea of the busy life which only
allowed the briefest entries, but these show her restlessness and
dissatisfaction:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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