in December the anti-slavery committee insisted that Miss Anthony should resume the management of their conventions, as they wished to hold a series throughout the large cities of the State and had been unable to find any one who could so successfully conduct them. Abby Kelly Foster, though often critical and censorious, wrote her regarding one of her speeches: "It is a timely, noble, clear-sighted and fearless vindication of our platform. I want to say how delighted both Stephen and myself are to see that you, though much younger than some others in the anti-slavery school, have been able to appreciate so entirely the genius of our enterprise." The distinguished George B. Cheever, of the Church of the Puritans in New York, one of the few orthodox clergymen who stood with the Abolitionists in those early days, wrote Miss Anthony: "May God be with you and guide and bless you in your efforts. That is the strength we all need and must have if we accomplish anything good and permanent in this terrible conflict."
A single instance will show how closely the question of woman's rights was connected with that of anti-slavery in the popular mind. When Miss Anthony and Mrs. Blackwell were at Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake George, they spoke one evening in the hotel parlors. There were a number of southerners present and many of them were delighted with the meeting, whose doctrines were entirely new to them, and made liberal contributions. The next day the speakers left in the stage with one of these, Judge John J. Ormond and his two daughters, of Tuscaloosa, Ala. He told Miss Anthony he had been instrumental in securing many laws favorable to women in that state and it would be a pleasure to him to see that their memorial was presented to the Alabama Legislature. When she reached home she sent it to him with the following letter:
Enclosed is a copy of our woman's rights memorial. Will you give me a full report of the action taken upon it?... I hope you and your daughters arrived home safe. Say to the elder I shall be most happy to hear from her when she shall have fairly inaugurated some noble life work. I trust each will take to her soul a strong purpose and that on her tombstone shall be engraved her own name and her own noble deeds instead of merely the daughter of Judge Ormond, or the relict of some Honorable or D. D. When true womanhood shall be attained it will be spoken of and remembered for itself alone. My kindest regards to them, accompanied with the most earnest desire that they shall make truth and freedom the polar star of their lives.
To this Judge Ormond made cordial reply, October 17, 1859:
DEAR MADAM: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 2d inst., with the papers enclosed. The petition to the Legislature will be presented by the senator from this county and I will apprise you of the action had upon it. My daughters are obliged to you for the interest you take in them. To a certain extent I agree with you as to the duties of woman. I am greatly in favor of her elevation to her proper sphere as the equal of man as to her civil rights, the security of her person, the right to her property and, where there is a separation after marriage, her equal right with the father to the custody and education of the children. All this as a legislator I have endeavored to accomplish, making large innovations upon the ancient common law. If I differ from you as to her political rights, it is because I think that, from political as well as moral considerations, she is unfit for, indeed incapacitated from, the performance of most of the duties which are now performed by men as members of the body politic; but there are many avocations and professions now exclusively occupied by men which women are as well, perhaps better fitted to fill. I hope these will soon be thrown open to an active competition of both sexes.
Then came the raid on Harper's Ferry and all its terrible consequences, and in December Judge Ormond wrote again:
MADAM: In redemption of my promise to tell you the fate of the woman's rights petition to our Legislature, I have the honor to inform you that it was virtually rejected, being laid on the table. I interested a distinguished member of our Senate in its presentation and, in addition, wrote a letter which under ordinary circumstances would have insured its respectful consideration. But after your petition was forwarded came the treasonable and murderous invasion of John Brown. The atrocity of this act, countenanced as it manifestly was by a great party at the North, has extinguished our last spark of fraternal feeling. Whilst we are all living under a Constitution which secures to us our right to our slaves, the results of which are in truth more beneficial to the whole North, and especially to the New England States, than to us, you are secretly plotting murderous inroads into our peaceful country and endeavoring to incite our slaves to cut the throats of our wives and children. Can you believe that this state of things can last? We now look upon you as our worst enemies and are ready to separate from you. Measures are in progress as far as practicable to establish non-intercourse with you and to proscribe all articles of northern manufacture or origin, including New England teachers. We can live without you; it remains to be seen how you will get along without us. You will probably find that fanaticism is not an element of national wealth or conducive to the happiness or comfort of the people.
In conclusion, let me assure you this is written more in sorrow than in anger. I am not a politician and have always been a strenuous friend of the Union. I am now in favor of a separation, unless you immediately retrace your steps and give the necessary guarantees by the passage of appropriate laws that you will faithfully abide by the compromises of the Constitution, by which alone the slaveholding States can with honor or safety remain in the Union. But that this will be done, I have very little hope, as "madness seems to rule the hour;" and as you have thus constituted yourselves our enemies, you must not be surprised at finding that we are yours.
1. A critic said of this: "It is the most faultless presentation of the question to which I have listened. Mr. Curtis takes the broadest view of the subject, his logic in its sweep is convincing as demonstration itself. His satire is cutting, but not bitter; his wit keen as a Damascus blade. He came out bravely for the suffrage." For forty years the advocates of equal rights have been using this lecture as one of their strongest documents.
2. By an odd coincidence, while this chapter was being written a letter came to Miss Anthony from Dean M. Jenkins, of Detroit, which said: "Enclosed please find my check to help on the good work to which you have devoted your life. You see I have almost pardoned you for saying, 'I have never quite forgiven you for marrying Helen Philleo and taking her away from the suffrage work.' In place of one worker you now have four. Mrs. Jenkins made a convert of me. Our daughter, Mrs. Spalding, is as earnest a worker for the suffrage cause as her mother, and our son is a defender of his mother's principles...."
3. He had become temporarily insane on account of the persecution he suffered in connection with the John Brown raid.
Chapter XII:
Rift in Common Law—Divorce Question
(1860)
Early Woman's Rights meetings not Suffrage conventions; Legal Status of Woman outlined by David Dudley Field; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as co-workers and writers; Tilton's description of the two; before the N.Y. Legislature; Married Woman's Property Law; woman's debt to Susan B. Anthony; Emerson on Lyceum Bureau; letters from Mary S. Anthony on injustice to school-teachers; Beecher's lecture on Woman's Rights; convention at Cooper Institute; Mrs. Stanton on Divorce; Phillips' objections; Mrs. Dall's proper convention in Boston; battle renewed at Progressive Friends' meeting; Miss Anthony's home duties; letter from her birthplace; Anti-Slavery depository at Albany; Agricultural address at Dundee; Miss Anthony's defiance of the law giving child to father.
During the first decade of its history the movement toward securing a larger liberty for women was known by the comprehensive term "woman's rights." At its inception, under the English common law which everywhere
