could be at home, the house was filled and fifteen or twenty people used to gather around the hospitable board. Susan always superintended these Sunday dinners, and was divided between her anxiety to sustain her reputation as a superior cook and her desire not to lose a word of the conversation in the parlor. Garrison, Pillsbury, Phillips, Channing and other great reformers visited at this home, and many a Sunday the big wagon would be sent to the city for Frederick Douglass and his family to come out and spend the day. Here were gathered many times the Posts, Hallowells, DeGarmos, Willises, Burtises, Kedzies, Fishes, Curtises, Stebbins, Asa Anthonys, all Quakers who had left the society on account of their anti-slavery principles and were leaders in the abolition and woman's rights movements. Every one of these Sunday meetings was equal to a convention. The leading events of the day were discussed in no uncertain tones. All were Garrisonians and believed in "immediate and unconditional emancipation." In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and all the resources of the federal government were employed for its enforcement. Its provisions exasperated the Abolitionists to the highest degree. The house of Isaac and Amy Post was the rendezvous for runaway slaves, and each of these families that gathered on Sunday at the Anthony farm could have told where might be found at least one station on the "underground railroad."
Miss Anthony read with deep interest the reports of the woman's rights convention held at Worcester, Mass., October, 1850, which were published in the New York Tribune.1 She sympathized fully with the demand for equal rights for women, but was not yet quite convinced that these included the suffrage. This, no doubt, was largely because Quaker men did not vote, thinking it wrong to support a government which believed in war. Even so progressive and public-spirited a man as Daniel Anthony, much as he was interested in all national affairs, never voted until 1860, when he became convinced it was only by force of arms that the question of slavery could be settled.
In 1851, the License Law having been arbitrarily repealed a few years before, there was practically no regulation of the liquor business, nor was there any such public sentiment against intemperance as exists at the present day. Drunkenness was not looked upon as an especial disgrace and there had been little agitation of the question. The wife of a drunkard was completely at his mercy. He had the entire custody of the children, full control of anything she might earn, and the law did not recognize drunkenness as a cause for divorce. Although woman was the greatest sufferer, she had not yet learned that she had even the poor right of protest. Oppressed by the weight of the injustice and tyranny of ages, she knew nothing except to suffer in silence; and so degraded was she by generations of slavish submission, that she possessed not even the moral courage to stand by those of her own sex who dared rebel and demand a new dispensation.
The old Washingtonian Society of the first half of the nineteenth century, composed entirely of men, because reformed drunkards only could belong to it, was succeeded by the Sons of Temperance, and these had permitted the organization of subordinate lodges called Daughters of Temperance, which, as subsequent events will show, were entitled to no official recognition. It was in one of these, the only organized bodies of women known at this time,2 that Miss Anthony first displayed that executive ability which was destined to make her famous. During 1851 she was very active in temperance work and organized a number of societies in surrounding towns. She instituted in Rochester a series of suppers and festivals to raise the funds which she at once saw were necessary before any efficient work could be done. An old invitation to one of these, dated February 21, 1851, and signed by Susan B. Anthony, chairman, reads: "The entertainment is intended to be of such a character as will meet the approbation of the wise and good; Supper, Songs, Toasts, Sentiments and short speeches will be the order of-the evening; $1 will admit a gentleman and a lady" A newpaper account says:
The five long tables were loaded with a rich variety of provisions, tastefully decorated and arranged. Mayor Samuel Richardson presided at the supper table. After the repast was over, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Directress of the Festival and President of the Association, introduced these highly creditable sentiments, which were greatly applauded by the assemblage:
"The Women of Rochester—Powerful to fashion the customs of society, may they not fail to exercise that power for the speedy and total banishment of all that intoxicates from our domestic and social circles, and thus speed on the day when no young man, be he ever so genteelly dressed or of ever so noble, origin, who pollutes his lips with the touch of the drunkard's cup, shall presume to seek the favor of any of our precious daughters.
"Our Cause—May each succeeding day add to its glory and every hour give fresh impetus to its progress...."
Many other toasts were proposed which space forbids quoting, but the following by one of the gentlemen deserves a place:
The Daughters—Our characters they elevate,
Our manners they refine;
Without them we'd degenerate
To the level of the swine.
It is curious how willing men have been, through all the centuries, to admit that only the influence of women saves them from being brutes and how anxious to confine that influence to the narrowest possible limits.
In the winter of 1851 Miss Anthony attended an anti-slavery meeting in Rochester, conducted by Stephen and Abby Kelly Foster. This was her first acquaintance with Mrs. Foster, who had been the most persecuted of all the women taking part in the anti-slavery struggle. She had been ridiculed, denounced and mobbed for years; and, for listening to her on Sunday, men and women had been expelled from church. Her strong and heroic spirit struck an answering spark in Miss Anthony's breast. She accompanied the Fosters for a week on their tour of meetings in adjoining counties, and was urged by them to go actively into this reform.
The following May she went to the Anti-Slavery Anniversary in Syracuse. This convention had been driven out of New York by Rynders' mob in 1850 and did not dare go back. On the way home she stopped at Seneca Falls, the guest of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, to hear again Wm. Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson, the distinguished Abolitionist from England, who had stirred her nature to its depths. Here was fulfilled her long-cherished desire of seeing Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their meeting is best described in that lady's own words: "Walking home with the speakers, who were my guests, we met Mrs. Bloomer with Miss Anthony on the corner of the street waiting to greet us. There she stood with her good, earnest face and genial smile, dressed in gray delaine, hat and all the same color relieved with pale-blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly from the beginning." Both Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Bloomer on this occasion wore what is known as the Bloomer costume. In the summer Miss Anthony went to Seneca Falls to a meeting of those interested in founding the People's College. Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and herself were entertained by Mrs. Stanton. The three women were determined it should be opened to girls as well as boys. Mr. Greeley begged them not to agitate the question, assuring them that he would have the constitution and by-laws so framed as to admit women on the same terms as men, and he did as he promised, making a spirited fight. Before the college was fairly started, however, it was merged into Cornell University.
This was Miss Anthony's first meeting with Lucy Stone and may be called the commencement of her life-long friendship with Mrs. Stanton. These women who sat at the dinner-table that day were destined to be recorded in history for all time as the three central figures in the great movement for equal rights. There certainly was nothing formidable in the appearance of the trio: Miss Anthony a quiet, dignified Quaker girl; Mrs. Stanton a plump, jolly, youthful matron, scarcely five feet high; and Lucy Stone a petite, soft-voiced young woman who seemed better fitted for caresses than for the hard buffetings of the world.
Miss Anthony's public life may be said to have fairly begun in 1852. The Sons of Temperance had announced a mass meeting of all the divisions in the state, to be held at Albany, and had invited the Daughters to send delegates. The Rochester union appointed Susan B. Anthony.
