right to make her own constitution and laws is an outrage not to be tolerated. So the constitution and laws of a State and nation may be just as considerate of woman's needs and wants as if framed by herself, yet for man to deny her the right to a voice in making and administering them, is paralleled only by the Lecompton usurpation. For any human being or class of human beings, whether black, white, male or female, tamely to submit to the denial of their right to self-government shows that the instinct of liberty has been blotted out.
You blunder on this question of woman's rights just where thousands of others do. You believe woman unlike man in her nature; that conditions of life which any man of spirit would sooner die than accept are not only endurable to woman but are needful to her fullest enjoyment. Make her position in church, State, marriage, your own; everywhere your equality ignored, everywhere made to feel another empowered by law and time-honored custom to prescribe the privileges to be enjoyed and the duties to be discharged by you; and then if you can imagine yourself to be content and happy, judge your mother and sisters and all women to be.
It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."
She wrote Lydia Mott: "The new encyclopedia is just out and I notice in regard to Antoinette Brown Blackwell that it gives a full description of her work up to the time of her marriage, then says: 'She married Samuel Blackwell and lives near New York.' Not a word of the splendid work she has done on the platform and in the pulpit since. Thus does every married woman sink her individuality." This brought from Lydia a spirited answer:
For my part, when you speak of the individuality of one who is truly married being inevitably lost, I think you mistake. If there ever was any individuality it will remain. I don't believe it is necessary for development that the individual must always force itself upon us. We naturally fall into the habits and frequently the train of thought of those we love and I like the expression "we" rather than "I." I never feel that my interests and actions can be independent of the dear ones with whom I am surrounded. Even the one who seems to be most absorbed may, in reality, possess the strongest soul. This standing alone is not natural and therefore can not be right. I am sure one of these days you will view this matter from a different standpoint.
Miss Anthony so far yielded as to reply: "Institutions, among them marriage, are justly chargeable with many social and individual ills but, after all, the whole man or woman will rise above them. I am sure my 'true woman' never will be crushed or dwarfed by them. Woman must take to her soul a purpose and then make circumstances conform to this purpose, instead of forever singing the refrain, 'if and if and if!'" But later when one woman failed to keep a lecture engagement because her husband wanted her to go somewhere with him, and another because her husband was not willing she should leave home, she again poured out her sorrows to her friend:
There is not one woman left who may be relied on, all have "first to please their husband," after which there is but little time or energy left to spend in any other direction. I am not complaining or despairing, but facts are stern realities. The twain become one flesh, the woman, "we"; henceforth she has no separate work, and how soon the last standing monuments (yourself and myself, Lydia), will lay down the individual "shovel and de hoe" and with proper zeal and spirit grasp those of some masculine hand, the mercies and the spirits only know. I declare to you that I distrust the power of any woman, even of myself, to withstand the mighty matrimonial maelstrom!
But how did I get into this dissertation? If to you it seems morbid, pardon the pen-wandering. In the depths of my soul there is a continual denial of the self-annihilating spiritual or legal union of two human beings. Such union, in the very nature of things, must bring an end to the free action of one or the other, and it matters not to the individual whose freedom has thus departed whether it be the gentle rule of love or the iron hand of law which blotted out from the immortal being the individual soul-stamp of the Good Father. How I do wish those who know something of the real social needs of our age would rescue this greatest, deepest, highest question from the present unphilosophical, unspiritual discussers.
As might be expected, the legacy of $5,000 brought not only a flood of requests from all parts of the country, but some division of opinion among those who had it in control. Miss Anthony would use all of it in the work of propaganda, lectures, conventions, tracts and newspaper articles. Lucy Stone wished to use part in suits to prove the unconstitutionality of the law which taxes women and refuses them representation. Antoinette Blackwell wanted a portion to establish a church where she could spread the doctrine of woman's rights along with the gospel. Most of the women lecturers and some of the men wished to be engaged immediately at a fixed salary. Miss Anthony writes for advice to Phillips, who replies: "Go ahead with your New York plan as sketched to me. I am willing to risk spending $1,000 on it. Never apologize as if you troubled me; it is my business as much as yours, and I am only sorry to be of so little help." Brief records in the little diary say:
Sister Mary and I passed New Year's Day, 1859, most quietly and happily in the dear farm-home. Mother is in the East with sister Hannah, and father dined in the city with sister Guelma, who sent us a plate of her excellent turkey.... In the afternoon Mary and I drove to Frederick Douglass' and had a nice visit; stayed to tea and listened to a part of his new lecture on "Self-Made Men."... Father and Mary gone to their work in the city, and I am writing on my lecture "The True Woman." Ground out four commercial-note pages in five mortal hours, but they are strong.... Ten degrees below zero. Mother home; no writing today; all talk about the eastern folks.... Antoinette Blackwell preached here yesterday, and we have had a good visit together today. Just helped two fugitive slaves, perhaps genuine and perhaps not.... Went to the city to hear A.A. Willit's lecture on "A Plea for Home." Gives woman a place only in domestic life—sad failure.... Twenty letters written and mailed today. Took tea with the Hallowells. Am glad to learn that the money forwarded to the Anti-Slavery Bazar and lost was sent by a man instead of a woman.... Heard Bayard Taylor on "Life in Lapland." Hundreds could not gain admittance. Curtis lectured on "Fair Play for Women"; great success, but I feel that he has not yet been tried by fire. Afterwards visited with Curtis and Taylor, and Mr. Curtis said: "Rather than have a radical thinker like Mrs. Rose at your suffrage conventions, you would better give them up. With such speakers as Beecher, Phillips, Theodore Parker, Chapin, Tilton and myself advocating woman's cause, it can not fail."
Respectfully yours,
E. H. Chapin.
Miss Anthony did not hesitate to criticise even Mr. Curtis, writing him in reference to his great lecture, "Democracy and Education": "When all the different classes of industrial claimants for a voice in the government were enumerated, there was not one which could be interpreted to represent womanhood. Hence only the few who know that with George William Curtis, the words 'man,' 'people,' 'citizens,' are not, as with the vast majority of lecturers, mere glittering generalities, can understand that his grand principles of democracy are intended to be applied to woman equally with man. I listen for the unthinking masses and pray that every earnest, manly spirit shall help make women free." In reply Mr. Curtis closed a long and cordial letter by saying: "Believe me that I have thought of the point you make but the greater statement must inevitably include the less." She scribbled a comment on the back of this for her own satisfaction: "Men still the greater, women the less."
The last of January Miss Anthony went to Albany to attend the anti-slavery convention and remained six weeks during the legislative session to work in the interest of the women's petitions and the Personal Liberty Bill. This was a season of great enjoyment for her, notwithstanding much tramping about in the rain and snow and many discouraging experiences with the Legislature. She writes a friend: "Well, I am a member of the lobby but lacking the two most
