of their performances.82
It is often said by those who know Miss Anthony best, that she has been my good angel, always pushing and guiding me to work, that but for her pertinacity I should never have accomplished the little I have; and on the other hand, it has been said that I forged the thunderbolts and she fired them. Perhaps all this is in a measure true. With the cares of a large family, I might in time, like too many women, have become wholly absorbed in a narrow family selfishness, had not my friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform, complacently deciding questions in which women had an equal interest, without an equal voice, readily roused me to a determination to throw a firebrand in the midst of their assembly.
Thus, whenever I saw that stately Quaker girl coming across my lawn, I knew that some happy convocation of the sons of Adam were to be set by the ears, by one of our appeals or resolutions. The little portmanteau stuffed with facts was opened, and there we had what the Rev. John Smith and the Hon. Richard Roe had said, false interpretations of Bible texts, the statistics of women robbed of their property, shut out of some college, half paid for their work, the reports of some disgraceful trial, injustice enough to turn any woman's thoughts from stockings and puddings. Then we would get out our pens and write articles for papers, or a petition to the Legislature, letters to the faithful here and there, stir up the women in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts, call on The Lily, The Una, The Liberator, and The Standard, to remember our wrongs as well as those of the slave. We never met without issuing a pronunciamento on some question.
We were at once fast friends, in thought and sympathy we were one, and in the division of labor we exactly complemented each other. In writing we did better work together than either could alone. While she is slow and analytical in composition, I am rapid and synthetic. I am the better writer, she the better critic. She supplied the facts and statistics, I the philosophy and rhetoric, and together we have made arguments that have stood unshaken by the storms of thirty long years: arguments that no man has answered. Our speeches may be considered the united product of our two brains.
So entirely one are we, that in all our associations, ever side by side on the same platform, not one feeling of jealousy or envy has ever shadowed our lives. We have indulged freely in criticism of each other when alone, and hotly contended whenever we have differed, but in our friendship of thirty years there has never been a break of one hour. To the world we always seem to agree and uniformly reflect each other. Like husband and wife, each has the feeling that we must have no differences in public. Thus united, at an early day we began to survey the State and nation, the future field of our labors. We read with critical eyes the proceedings of Congress and Legislatures, of General Assemblies and Synods, of Conferences and Conventions, and discovered that in all alike the existence of woman was entirely ignored.
Night after night by an old-fashioned fireplace we plotted and planned the coming agitation, how, when, and where each entering wedge could be driven, by which woman might be recognized, and her rights secured. Speedily the State was aflame with disturbances in temperance and teachers' conventions, and the press heralded the news far and near that women delegates had suddenly appeared demanding admission in men's conventions; that their rights had been hotly contended session after session, by liberal men on the one side; the clergy and learned professors on the other; an overwhelming majority rejecting the women with terrible anathemas and denunciations. Such battles were fought over and over in the chief cities of many of the Northern States, until the bigotry of men in all the reforms and professions was thoroughly tested. Every right achieved: to enter a college; to study a profession; to labor in some new industry, or to advocate a reform measure, was contended for inch by inch.
Many of those enjoying all these blessings, now complacently say, "If these pioneers in reform, had only pressed their measures more judiciously; in a more ladylike manner; in more choice language; in a more deferential attitude, the gentlemen could not have behaved so rudely." We give in these pages enough of the characteristics of these women, of the sentiments they expressed, of their education, ancestry, and position, to show that no power could have met the prejudice and bigotry of that period more successfully than they did, who so bravely and persistently fought and conquered them.
True, those gentlemen were all quite willing that women should join their societies and churches, to do the drudgery, to work up the enthusiasm in fairs and revivals, conventions and flag presentations, to pay a dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being members of their various organizations, to beg money for the church, circulate petitions from door to door, to visit saloons, to pray with or defy rum-sellers, to teach school at half-price, and sit round the outskirts of a hall like so many wall flowers in teachers' State Conventions; but they would not allow them to sit on the platform, address the assembly, nor vote for men and measures.
Those who had learned the first lessons of human rights from the lips of Beriah Green, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith, would not accept any such position. When women abandoned the temperance reform, all interest in the question gradually died out in the State, and practically nothing was done in New York for nearly twenty years. Gerrit Smith made one or two attempts toward an "anti-dram-shop party," but as women could not vote they felt no interest in the measure, and failure was the result.
I soon convinced my new friend that the ballot was the key to the situation, that when we had a voice in the laws we should be welcomed to any platform. In turning the intense earnestness and religious enthusiasm of this great-souled woman into this one channel, I soon felt the power of my convert in goading me forever forward to more untiring work. Soon fastened heart to heart with hooks of steel in a friendship that thirty years of confidence and affection have steadily strengthened, we have labored faithfully together.
After twelve added years of agitation, from the passage of the property bill, New York conceded other civil rights to married women. Pending the discussion of these various bills, Susan B. Anthony circulated petitions both for the civil and political rights of woman throughout the State, traveling in stage coaches and open wagons and sleighs in all seasons, and on foot from door to door through towns and cities, doing her uttermost to rouse women to some sense of their natural rights as human beings, to their civil and political rights as citizens of a republic; and while expending her time, strength, and money to secure these blessings for the women of the State, they would gruffly tell her they had all the rights they wanted, or rudely shut the door in her face, leaving her to stand outside, petition in hand, with as much contempt as if she were asking alms for herself. None but those who did that petition work in the early days for the slaves and the women, can ever know the hardships and humiliations that were endured. But it was done because it was only through petitions, a power seemingly so inefficient, that disfranchised classes could be heard in the national councils, hence their importance.
The frivolous objections some women made to our appeals were as exasperating as ridiculous. To reply to them politely at all times, required a divine patience. On one occasion, after addressing the Legislature, some of the ladies in congratulating me, inquired in a deprecating tone, "What do you do with your children?" "Ladies," I said, "it takes me no longer to speak than you to listen; what have you done with your children the two hours you have been sitting here? But to answer your questions. I never leave my children to go to Saratoga, Washington, Newport, or Europe, nor even to come here. They are at this moment with a faithful nurse at the Delavan House, and having accomplished my mission, we shall all return home together."
Miss Anthony, who was a frequent guest at my home, sometimes stood guard on such occasions.83 The children of our household say that among their earliest recollections is the tableau of "Mother and Susan," seated by a large table covered with books and papers, always writing and talking about the Constitution, interrupted with occasional visits from others of the faithful. Hither came Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Paulina Wright Davis, Frances Dana Gage, Dr. Harriot Hunt, Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelly,
