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
She is entirely unlike Mrs. Stanton, notwithstanding the twain have
been fast friends and diligent co-laborers for a quarter of a
century.... Miss Anthony is a woman whom no one can know thoroughly
without respect. Entirely honest, fearfully in earnest, energetic,
self-sacrificing, kind-hearted, scorning difficulties of whatever
magnitude, and rigidly sensible, she is the warm friend of the
poor, oppressed, homeless and friendless of her own sex. Her labors
in their behalf are tireless and judicious. You think her plain
until she smiles, and then the worn face lights up so pleasantly
and benignly that you forget to criticise and your heart warms
towards her. Knowing her great goodness, and how she has devoted
her life to hard, unpaid work for the negro slave and for woman, we
can never read jibes and jeers at her expense without a twinge of
pain. Let the press laugh at her as it may, she is a mighty power
among both men and women, and those who really love as well as
respect her are a host.
In this winter of 1869 the Press Club of New York made the startling
innovation of giving a dinner to which ladies were invited. Among the
guests were Phoebe and Alice Gary, Mary L. Booth, Elizabeth Oakes
Smith, Olive Logan, Mary Kyle Dallas and Miss Anthony. J. W. Simonton,
of the Associated Press, was toast-master. Not having had the slightest
intimation that she was expected to speak, Miss Anthony was called upon
to respond to the question, "Why don't the women propose?" Without a
moment's hesitation she arose and said: "Under present conditions, it
would require a good deal of assurance for a woman to say to a man,
'Please, sir, will you support me for the rest of my life?' When all
avocations are open to woman and she has an opportunity to acquire a
competence, she will then be in a position where it will not be
humiliating for her to ask the man she loves to share her prosperity.
Instead of requesting him to provide food, raiment and shelter for her,
she can invite him into her home, contribute her share to the
partnership and not be an utter dependent. There will be also another
advantage in this arrangement--if he prove unworthy she can ask him to
walk out." It will be seen by this original and daring reply that Miss
Anthony could not attend a dinner party even without creating a
sensation.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and the
Fourteenth establishing the citizenship of the negro, did not prove
sufficient to protect him in his right of suffrage and, although Sumner
and other Republican leaders contended that another amendment was not
necessary for this, the majority of the party did not share this
opinion and it became evident that one would have to be added.[48]
Those proposed by Pomeroy and Julian securing universal suffrage were
brushed aside without debate, and the following was submitted by
Congress to the State legislatures, February 27, 1869:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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