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
If the Republicans had two grains of political sense, they would
see that for them to espouse the amendment and gain the glory, as
they surely would, of lifting the women of the State into full
suffrage, would give them new life, prestige and power greater and
grander than they ever possessed; and they would not be halting
and belittling themselves with such idiotic stuff and nonsense as
their advice to let the amendment go to the electors of the State
"on its own merits." But however politicians may waver, our
suffrage women must not have a doubt, but must persist in the
demand for full recognition in both platforms. We must exact
justice and if they do not give it, the curse be on their heads,
not ours.
The same month she wrote Mrs. Johns:
I can not tell you how more and more it is borne in upon me that
our one chance lies in securing the Republican pledge to carry us
to victory, for that will mean a Populist pledge, and both planks
will mean a clean-cut battle between the different elements of the
grand old party combined as one on this question--and the Democracy
of the State. Even with so solid an alliance of the two branches,
we shall have a hard enough fight of it. Every woman who listens to
the siren tongues of political wire-pullers and office-seekers not
to demand a plank, will thereby help to sell Kansas back into the
hands of the whiskey power. Behind every anti-plank man's word,
written or spoken, is his willingness to let Kansas return to
saloon rule. Sugar coat it as they may, that is the unsavory pill
in the motive of every one of them.
Sincerely and hopefully yours, trusting in good and keeping our
powder dry.
Enough has been quoted to show the situation. Miss Anthony, Mrs. Catt
and Miss Shaw went to Kansas to open the spring canvass, May 4, to
influence the State conventions. Miss Anthony had been advertised for
forty-three speeches. The women of New York, where a great campaign was
in progress, were highly indignant that she should leave her own State,
but she had put her heart into this Kansas campaign as never into any
other, and she fully believed that, if properly managed, the result
could not fail to be victory for the amendment. The three ladies held
the first meeting in Kansas City, May 4. Miss Anthony made a speech
which fairly raised the hair of her audience, demanding in unqualified
terms the endorsement of the amendment by the Republican and People's
parties. She closed by offering the following resolution, which was
unanimously adopted:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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