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
There never can be an adequate portrayal of the services rendered by
the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny
that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and
self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison of values is impossible,
but women's labors supplemented those of men, and together they wrought
out the freedom of the slave and the salvation of the Union. Among the
great body of women, a few stand out in immortal light. The plan of the
vital campaign of the Tennessee, one of the great strategic movements
of history, was made by Anna Ella Carroll. The work of Dorothea Dix,
government superintendent of women nurses, with its onerous and
important duties, needs no eulogy. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, fresh from
England and an intimacy with Florence Nightingale, originated the
Sanitary Commission. No name is held in more profound reverence than
that of Clara Barton, for her matchless services upon the battlefield
among the dead and dying. To Josephine S. Griffing belongs the full
credit of founding the Freedmen's Bureau, which played so valuable a
part in the help and protection of the newly emancipated negroes. Who
of all the public speakers rendered greater aid to the Union than the
inspired Anna Dickinson? Yet not one of these ever received the
slightest official recognition from the government. In the cases of
Miss Carroll, Dr. Blackwell and Mrs. Griffing, the honors and the
profits all were absorbed by men. Neither Dorothea Dix nor Clara Barton
ever asked for a pension. All of these women at the close of the war
appealed for the right of suffrage, a voice in the affairs of
government; but such appeals were and still are treated with
contemptuous denial. The situation was thus eloquently summed up by
that woman statesman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
The lessons of the war were not lost on the women of this nation;
through varied forms of suffering and humiliation, they learned
that they had an equal interest with men in the administration of
the government, alike enjoying its blessings or enduring its
miseries. When in the enfranchisement of the black men they saw
another ignorant class of voters placed above their heads, and
beheld the danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever
involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and
demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that
woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be
expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man
had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died
for his country.
[Footnote 32: See Appendix for this address.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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