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 — John Shaqi
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
What a twelve weeks these have been, and what a funeral pall has
rested upon us the past week. Every nook and corner, every
mountaintop and valley is shrouded in sorrow for this crime against
the nation. Today the ministers are preaching their sermons on the
life and character of Garfield. Our Unitarian, Mr. Mann, made his
special point on the fact that all the people of every sect had
united in endorsement of Garfield's religion, which was most
emphatically one of life and action, natural, without cant or
observance of the outward rites and ceremonies. There is no report
of even a minister's being asked to pray with him. When the bells
told of the people's day of special prayer for his life, he
exclaimed, "God bless the people," but covered his face, as much as
to say, "Nothing but science can determine this case."
In the late summer and fall Mrs. Stanton had a tedious and alarming
attack of malarial fever, and Miss Anthony was greatly distressed
because some of her family insisted that it was produced by the long,
hard strain of the work on the History. She writes: "It is so easy to
charge every ill to her labors for suffrage, while she knows and I know
that it is her work for woman which has kept her young and fresh and
happy all these years. Mrs. Stanton has written me that during her
illness 'she suffered more from her fear that she never should finish
the History than from the thought of parting with all her friends.'"
The National Prohibition Alliance, which met in New York, October 18,
invited her to take an official part in its proceedings. She declined to
do so but attended the meeting and, after a visit to Mrs. Stanton, went
to Washington to the national convention of the W. C. T. U. She had
three reasons for this: 1st, she understood there was to be an attempt
to supersede Miss Willard, to whom she had become very much attached;
2d, an effort was to be made to commit the association to woman
suffrage; and 3d, she had made up her mind to see President Arthur on
business connected with her own organization. She sat in the convention
through all the three days' sessions and, on motion of Mrs. J. Ellen
Foster, was invited to address it and was introduced by Miss Willard in
words of strong approval. A prominent woman who was opposed to Miss
Willard's re-election went among the delegates, assuring them in the
most solemn manner that Miss Willard had insulted every one of them by
introducing Miss Anthony on the platform, as she did not recognize God.
"Well," replied one of them, an Indianapolis woman, "I don't know about
that, but I do know that God has recognized her and her work for the
last thirty years."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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