The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 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 2 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
From the hour when she learned that a Constitutional Convention would be
held, up to the opening of this convention, Miss Anthony had believed
that it would incorporate a suffrage amendment which, in all
probability, would be allowed by the voters to pass with the rest of the
constitution. She found herself outwitted by the politicians, as she had
been so many times before, but while this defeat was the bitterest
disappointment of her life, it did not crush her dauntless spirit. It
is related of her that as she came down the steps of the Capitol with
the other ladies at midnight, after the vote had been taken, she began
planning another campaign.
Among the many appreciative and sympathetic letters she received at this
time was one from Isabella Charles Davis, secretary International King's
Daughters, saying for herself and Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson: "I do not
believe you know how tenderly we love you and in what high respect and
honor we hold you. Mrs. Dickinson was present at one of those meetings
at Sherry's, and she said the only thing lacking to make the occasion
perfect was dear Miss Anthony's strong, brave face looking down upon the
great multitude." Henry B. Blackwell wrote: "You are to be congratulated
on having made a splendid fight in New York. To have secured 600,000
petitions is itself a victory."
In answer to a letter from Isabel Howland, the efficient State recording
secretary, she expressed the welcome recognition which she always
extended to young workers: "Well, I am truly glad for the discovery of
our twin New York girls, Harriet May Mills and Isabel Howland, who
promise to take up the laboring oar and pull us to the promised land.
Give my warmest regards to your precious mother and aunt Emily; how I
have learned to know and love the two!" She went as a guest of the
Howlands for a few brief days in the Catskills, and they drove over to
Eagle's Nest, in Twilight Park, where Miss Willard and Lady Henry
Somerset were spending the summer.
Miss Anthony lectured at Keuka College, August 7, and on the 22d, gave
the annual address on suffrage, at Cassadaga lake. The next day she
found herself thus reported in the Buffalo Express:
If, instead of Spiritualists, this great body of people had been
Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists or Catholics, their praises for
the firm stand they have taken for the enfranchisement of half the
people of this country, would have been everywhere sung in song and
told in story. But the suffrage women of America always have been
afraid to give voice to the "thank you" in their hearts, for
Spiritualism has been fully as unpopular as woman suffrage; and
they feared if they displayed too much gratitude for this
endorsement the public would at once pronounce them Spiritualists
and they would thus be doubly damned. But there are a few of our
members who are brave enough to rejoice in the damnation of
orthodox religions and orthodox politics!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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