The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 52

For two hours, without a moment's intermission, Miss Anthony clasped hands with those who were presented to her and listened to congratulatory expressions. A number of local organizations of women, and also the entire members.h.i.+p of the Was.h.i.+ngton College of Law, for women, attended the reception in a body.

On the second floor hung her fine portrait which was presented to the Corcoran Gallery of Art last night by Mrs. John B. Henderson, wife of the former Senator from Missouri. The portrait is in oil and represents Miss Anthony in full profile, attired in black with lace at the throat, and about her shoulders the red shawl which has come to be regarded as the emblem of her office as president of the National a.s.sociation.

During the two hours it seemed as if every one who greeted Miss Anthony had met her at some time or at some place long ago.

Everybody wanted to stop and converse with her, and in the brief minute they stood before her they plied her with countless questions. In speaking of the event after she had returned to the Riggs House, she said: "Wasn't it wonderful? It seemed as if every other person in that vast throng had met me before, or that I had during my long life been a visitor at the home of some of their relatives. It was grand. It was beautiful. It is good to be loved by so many people. It is worth all the toil and the heartaches."

From a little band apparently leading a forlorn hope, almost universally ridiculed and condemned, Miss Anthony had increased her forces to a mighty host marching forward to an a.s.sured victory. From a condition of social ostracism she had brought them to a position where they commanded respect and admiration for their courageous advocacy of a just cause. The small, curious, unsympathetic audiences of early days had been transformed into this great gathering, which represented the highest official life of the nation's capital and the intellectual aristocracy of all the States in the Union. It was a wonderful change to have been effected in the lifetime of one woman, and all posterity will rejoice that the leader of this greatest of progressive movements received the full measure of recognition from the people of her own time and generation.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] From the founding of the National a.s.sociation in 1869 the presidency was usually held by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, while Miss Susan B Anthony was either vice president, corresponding secretary or chairman of the executive committee, although she sometimes filled the presidential chair. Mrs. Stanton continued as president until 1892, when she resigned at the age of seventy six. Miss Anthony was elected that year and held the office until 1900, when she resigned at the age of eighty.

Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery served as corresponding secretary for twenty one years, from 1880 to 1901. Her resignation was reluctantly accepted and a gift of $1,000 was presented to her, the contribution of friends in all parts of the country.

The other officers since 1884 have been as follows: Vice presidents at large, Miss Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Phoebe W. Couzins, Abigail Scott Duniway and, from 1892, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, treasurers, Jane H. Spofford from 1880 to 1892, and since then Harriet Taylor Upton, recording secretaries, Ellen H. Sheldon, Julia T. Foster, Pearl Adams, Julia A. Wilbur, Caroline A. Sherman, Sara Winthrop Smith, Hannah B. Sperry and, since 1890, Alice Stone Blackwell, auditors, Ruth C. Denison, Julia A. Wilbur, Eliza T. Ward, Ellen M. O'Connor, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Harriet Taylor Upton, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, May Wright Sewall, Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Josephine K. Henry, H. Augusta Howard, Annie L. Diggs, Sarah B. Cooper, Laura Clay, Catharine Waugh McCulloch. Mrs. Sewall was chairman of the executive committee from 1882 until she resigned in 1890 and Lucy Stone was elected; in 1892 she begged to be relieved as she was seventy four years old. The committee was then abolished, its duties being transferred to the business committee.

[132] Miss Shaw referred to Miss Lucy E. Anthony, who for twelve years had been her secretary and companion.

[133] The most of the numerous gifts were presented during the convention, as related earlier in the chapter.

[134] Miss Anthony received on this occasion 1,100 letters and telegrams, every one of which she acknowledged later with a personal message.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE a.s.sOCIATION.[135]

_1884._--The American Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation which was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, in November, 1869, held its sixteenth annual meeting, November 19, 20, at Hershey Hall, Chicago. Lucy Stone in the _Woman's Journal_ said:

Beginning with a good-sized audience, it went on increasing in numbers until the gallery, the stairs and the side aisles were literally packed with people.

Reports of the work done by auxiliary and other societies came in from Maine to Oregon and all the way between, showing in some cases very little and in others a great deal of good work. But each one was helpful in its measure to the final success, just as streams of all sizes flow to make great rivers and the seas.

There were present some of the oldest workers--Dr. Mary F. Thomas of Indiana and Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler of Illinois--who, having put their hands to the plow in the beginning of the movement, have never looked back. To supplement and continue the work there were n.o.ble and earnest younger women, who came down from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan and up from Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Illinois, women who can speak well for the cause and whose reports show that they know how to work well for it, too. It was a joy and a comfort to meet them....

Not the least pleasant feature was the cordial friendliness that seemed all-pervasive. Troops of women we had never seen came to shake hands.... A bevy of bright girls stood below the platform on the last evening and, looking up, they said: "We are school-girls now, but we are bound to help." The collections more than paid the expenses, and two hundred members.h.i.+ps were taken.

All the local arrangements had been admirably made by a committee of influential Chicago women.[136] The city papers gave friendly reports, those of the _Inter-Ocean_ being especially full.

The convention was not expected to open till Wednesday evening, but so large a number of delegates and friends met in the hall in the afternoon that an informal meeting was held in advance. Mrs. Cutler called the a.s.sembly to order, and the Rev. Florence Kollock offered prayer. A telegram was read from Chief-Justice Roger S. Greene, of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, saying: "Be a.s.sured that woman suffrage has worked well, done good, and been generally exercised by women at our State election."

Brief addresses were made by Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert. Dr. Mary F. Thomas, in the name of the Indiana W. S. A., the oldest State a.s.sociation in the country, organized in 1851, presented the a.s.sociation with a bouquet of never fading chrysanthemums.

On Wednesday evening Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett gave the address of welcome. In referring to the influence of the woman suffrage movement upon the legal status of women, she said that Kansas entered the Union as a State with women's personal and property rights legally recognized as never before. This was largely because a delegate to the Kansas const.i.tutional convention which met in Leavenworth, (Mr. Sam Wood), wrote to Lucy Stone at her home in Orange, N. J., asking her to draft a legal form, which she did, with her baby on her knee, and its suggestions were afterwards incorporated in the organic law of that State.[137] As one result of School Suffrage in the hands of women, Kansas had the best schools in the United States while the people still lived in cabins.

Mrs. Mary B. Clay, of Kentucky, president of the a.s.sociation, made a special plea for work in the South, saying in part:

Alabama has given married women equal property rights with their husbands. This monied equality I regard as one of the most essential steps to our freedom, for as long as women are dependent upon men for bread their whole moral nature is necessarily warped. There never was a truer thought than that of Alexander Hamilton, when he said, "He who controls my means of daily subsistence controls my whole moral being." I therefore recommend to the Southern women particularly the pet.i.tioning for property rights, because pecuniary independence is one of the most potent weapons for freedom, and because that claim has less prejudice to overcome....

Mississippi also has made equal property laws for women; and Arkansas allows married women to hold their own property, and all women to vote on the licensing of saloons within three miles of a church or school-house. A lady writing from there says: "The welcome accorded the law by the women of the State refutes all adverse theories, and establishes the fact that woman's nature possesses an inherent strength and courage which no surroundings can extinguish, and which only need the light of hope and the voice of duty to call them into action." I would recommend that whenever it is possible, we hold our conventions and send our speakers through the South....

Henry B. Blackwell said: "This is not an anti-man society. Suffrage is demanded as much for the sake of men as for the sake of women. What is good for one is good for both;" and Mrs. Livermore said, "Women should have a share in the government because the whole is better than the half."

In the annual report of Mrs. Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee, she said in part: "During the past year, the chief effort of the society has been directed to aid the work in Oregon, where a const.i.tutional amendment had been submitted to the voters. One thousand dollars were raised for this purpose by our auxiliary societies, and forwarded to the Oregon Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation.[138]

The society has also printed and circulated at cost more than 100,000 tracts and leaflets."

Officers for the next year were elected, as follows: President, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, State Senator of Indiana; vice-presidents-at-large, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, the Hon. George William Curtis, N. Y.; the Hon. George F. h.o.a.r, Ma.s.s.; Mrs. Mary B.

Willard, Mrs. H. M. T. Cutler, Ill.; Mrs. D. G. King, Neb.; Mrs. R. A.

S. Janney, O.; Mrs. J. P. Fuller, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, Mo.; Mrs.

Martha A. Dorsett, Minn.; Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, Ia.; Mrs. Mary B.

Clay, Ky.; foreign corresponding secretary, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe; corresponding secretary, Henry B. Blackwell; recording secretary, Mrs.

Margaret W. Campbell; treasurer, Mrs. Abbie T. Codman; chairman executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone.[139]

Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, reported resolutions which were adopted with a few changes as follows:

_Resolved_, In the words of Abraham Lincoln, That "we go for all sharing the privileges of the government who a.s.sist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women;" that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, must be a government of men and women, by men and women, for men and women; and that any other form of government is unreasonable, unjust and inconsistent with American principles.

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the triumph of woman suffrage in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory; in the continued success of woman suffrage in Wyoming; in the exercise of School Suffrage by the women of twelve States; in the establishment of Munic.i.p.al Woman Suffrage by Nova Scotia and Ontario, and in the steady growth of woman suffrage during the past year as shown by more than 21,000 pet.i.tioners for it in Ma.s.sachusetts, by increased activity in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oregon, by the recent formation of an active State a.s.sociation in Vermont, and by the presence with us to-day of sixty-six delegates from organized societies in fifteen States.

_Resolved_, That the American a.s.sociation is non-partisan; that success will be promoted by refusing to connect woman suffrage with any political party, or to take sides as suffragists in any party conflict; but that we will question candidates of all parties for State Legislatures, and use every honorable effort to secure the election of suffragists as legislators irrespective of party lines, provided they be men of integrity.

_Resolved_, That this a.s.sociation expresses its appreciation of the services rendered by the co-workers who since our last meeting have been gathered with the honored dead: Mrs. Frances D.

Gage, who from the beginning of our movement until the last week of her life never ceased to do what she could for its success; Wendell Phillips, who as early as 1850 attended a woman's rights convention at Worcester, Ma.s.s., and made an argument which covered the whole ground of statement and defense, and with serene faith advised: "Take your part with the perfect and abstract right and trust G.o.d to see that it shall prove the expedient." Besides these we record the names of Kate Newell Doggett, Laura Giddings Julian, Bishop Matthew Simpson, Mrs. L.

B. Barrett, Emily J. Leonard and Jane Gray Swisshelm.

Speaking to the memorial resolution Mrs. Cutler said: "Some years ago I paid a visit to an old and valued friend who had long been an invalid, though never so absorbed in her own suffering as to forget the great needs of her human brothers and sisters. Said she, 'If you outlive me, I hope you will say for me that I tried honestly and earnestly to do my duty.' The promise then given I now attempt to fulfil in behalf of Mrs. Frances Dana Gage, our beloved 'Aunt f.a.n.n.y,'

who entered upon her rest Nov. 10, 1884." Mrs. Cutler gave a full and appreciative review of Mrs. Gage's life. Dr. Mary F. Thomas spoke feelingly of her, of Mrs. Julian and Mr. Phillips; and Mrs. Livermore paid a warm tribute to Mr. Phillips and Mrs. Doggett.

The plan of work adopted was in part as follows:

1. That the officers of this a.s.sociation memorialize Congress in behalf of a sixteenth const.i.tutional amendment prohibiting all political distinctions on account of s.e.x.

2. That while we do not undervalue any form of agitation, State or national, we hold that practical woman suffrage can at present be best promoted by urging legislative as well as const.i.tutional changes, and by appealing to State as well as national authority; therefore we urge the establishment of active State societies, with their working centers in the State capitals and their corresponding committees in every representative district.

3. That in every State, at each session of its Legislature, pet.i.tions should be presented by its own citizens asking for woman suffrage by statute in all elections and for all officers not expressly limited by the word "male" in the State const.i.tution.

4. That School Suffrage having been secured for women by statute in twelve States, our next demand should be for Munic.i.p.al Suffrage by statute; also for Presidential Suffrage by statute, under Article 2, Section 1, par. 2, of the United States Const.i.tution.

5. And, whereas, in three Territories, viz., Wyoming, Utah and Was.h.i.+ngton, our cause is already won by statutes, therefore a special effort should be made to secure similar statutory action in the remaining Territories, viz.: Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico.

Addresses were made by the Rev. S. S. Hunting, Mrs. Margaret W.

Campbell of Iowa and Dr. Thomas. Mr. Foulke, Mrs. Mary E. Haggart of Indiana, Mrs. Livermore and Lucy Stone addressed the evening meeting, and the singing of the Doxology closed a memorable convention.

_1885._--The Seventeenth annual meeting was held in Minneapolis, October 13-15, in the Church of the Redeemer (Universalist), the finest in the city, which was given without charge. Here, as the daily papers said, "the most brilliant audiences that ever a.s.sembled in Minneapolis" gathered evening after evening until the last when crowds of people went away unable to find even standing room. The pulpit steps were occupied, extra seats were brought in, the aisles were crowded, and as far as one could see over the throng that filled the doorway, was another a.s.sembly eager to hear what it could. The earnest, interested, a.s.senting faces of the vast audience and their hearty applause attested their sympathy with the ideas and principles expressed.

Every evening several of the speakers addressed large audiences in St.