from that day forward.
The venerable Lucretia Mott presided, and Senator Pomeroy opened the convention with an eloquent speech, January 19, 1869. A feature of this occasion was the appearance of several young colored orators, speaking in opposition to suffrage for women and denouncing them for jeopardizing the black man's claim to the ballot by insisting upon their own. One of them, George Downing, standing by the side of Lucretia Mott, declared that God intended the male should dominate the female everywhere! Another was a son of Robert Purvis, who was earnestly and publicly rebuked by his father. Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, also condemned the women for their temerity and severely criticised the resolutions, which demanded the same political rights for women as for negro men.
Miss Anthony called on Senator Harlan, of Iowa, chairman of the District committee, who readily granted the women a hearing which took place January 26, when she and Mrs. Stanton gave their arguments. This was the first congressional hearing ever granted to present the question of woman suffrage. An appeal was sent to Congress praying that women should be recognized in the next amendment. In her letter to the Philadelphia Press, Grace Greenwood thus described the leading spirits of the convention:
Near Lucretia Mott sat her sister, Martha Wright, a woman of strong, constant character and rare intellectual culture; Mrs. Cady Stanton, of impressive and beautiful appearance, in the rich prime of an active, generous and healthful life; Miss Susan B. Anthony, looking all she is, a keen, energetic, uncompromising, unconquerable, passionately earnest woman; Clara Barton, whose name is dear to soldiers and blessed in thousands of homes to which the soldiers shall return no more—a brave, benignant-looking woman....
Miss Anthony followed in a strain not only cheerful, but exultant—reviewing the advance of the cause from its first despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged, it commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement, and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the "swift, keen intelligence," Miss Anthony, alert, aggressive and indefatigable, is its nervous energy—its propulsive force....
To see the three chief figures of this great movement sitting upon a stage in joint council, like the three Fates of a new dispensation—dignity and the ever-acceptable grace of scholarly earnestness, intelligence and beneficence making them prominent—is assurance that the women of our country, bereft of defenders or injured by false ones, have advocates equal to the great demands of their cause.
Immediately after this convention, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, by invitation of a number of State suffrage committees, made a tour of Chicago, Springfield, Bloomington, Galena, St. Louis, Madison, Milwaukee and Toledo, speaking to large audiences. At St. Louis they were met by a delegation of ladies and escorted to the Southern Hotel, and then invited by the president of the State association, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, to visit various points of interest in the city. At Springfield, Ill., the lieutenant-governor presided over their convention, and Governor Palmer and many members of the legislature were in the audience. With the Chicago delegation, Mrs. Livermore, Judge Waite, Judge Bradwell, Mrs. Myra Bradwell, editor of the Legal News, and others, they addressed the legislature. At Chicago, in Crosby Music Hall, the meeting was decidedly aggressive. Miss Anthony's resolutions stirred up the politicians, but she defended them bravely, according to report:
She stood outside of any party which threw itself across the path of complete suffrage to woman, and therefore she stood outside of the Republican party, where all her male relatives and friends were to be found. Republican leaders had told them to wait; that the movement was inopportune; but all the time had continued to put up bars and barriers against its future success. No woman should belong at present to either party; she should simply stand for suffrage.... She protested against any Republicans saying that Mrs. Stanton or herself had laid a straw in the way of the negro. Because they insisted that the rights of women ought to have equal prominence with the rights of black men, it was assumed that they opposed the enfranchisement of the negro. She repelled the assumption. She arraigned the entire Republican party because they refused to see that all women, black and white, were as much in political servitude as the black men.
At this meeting Robert Laird Collyer (not the distinguished Robert Collyer) made a long address against the enfranchisement of women, mixing up purity, propriety and pedestals in the usual incoherent fashion. He was so completely annihilated by Anna Dickinson that no further defense of the measure was necessary. Suffrage societies were organized in Chicago, Milwaukee and Toledo. In her account of this convention, Mrs. Livermore wrote of Miss Anthony:
She is entirely unlike Mrs. Stanton, notwithstanding the twain have been fast friends and diligent co-laborers for a quarter of a century.... Miss Anthony is a woman whom no one can know thoroughly without respect. Entirely honest, fearfully in earnest, energetic, self-sacrificing, kind-hearted, scorning difficulties of whatever magnitude, and rigidly sensible, she is the warm friend of the poor, oppressed, homeless and friendless of her own sex. Her labors in their behalf are tireless and judicious. You think her plain until she smiles, and then the worn face lights up so pleasantly and benignly that you forget to criticise and your heart warms towards her. Knowing her great goodness, and how she has devoted her life to hard, unpaid work for the negro slave and for woman, we can never read jibes and jeers at her expense without a twinge of pain. Let the press laugh at her as it may, she is a mighty power among both men and women, and those who really love as well as respect her are a host.
In this winter of 1869 the Press Club of New York made the startling innovation of giving a dinner to which ladies were invited. Among the guests were Phoebe and Alice Gary, Mary L. Booth, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Olive Logan, Mary Kyle Dallas and Miss Anthony. J. W. Simonton, of the Associated Press, was toast-master. Not having had the slightest intimation that she was expected to speak, Miss Anthony was called upon to respond to the question, "Why don't the women propose?" Without a moment's hesitation she arose and said: "Under present conditions, it would require a good deal of assurance for a woman to say to a man, 'Please, sir, will you support me for the rest of my life?' When all avocations are open to woman and she has an opportunity to acquire a competence, she will then be in a position where it will not be humiliating for her to ask the man she loves to share her prosperity. Instead of requesting him to provide food, raiment and shelter for her, she can invite him into her home, contribute her share to the partnership and not be an utter dependent. There will be also another advantage in this arrangement—if he prove unworthy she can ask him to walk out." It will be seen by this original and daring reply that Miss Anthony could not attend a dinner party even without creating a sensation.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and the Fourteenth establishing the citizenship of the negro, did not prove sufficient to protect him in his right of suffrage and, although Sumner and other Republican leaders contended that another amendment was not necessary for this, the majority of the party did not share this opinion and it became evident that one would have to be added.1 Those proposed by Pomeroy and Julian securing universal suffrage were brushed aside without debate, and the following was submitted by Congress to the State legislatures, February 27, 1869:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
Amendment XIV had settled the status of citizenship. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Now came the next measure to protect the citizen's right to vote, which proposed to guard against any discrimination on account of race, of color, of previous condition, but by the omission of the one word "sex," all women still were left disfranchised. At this time the leading Republicans believed in universal suffrage. Garrison, Phillips, Greeley, Sumner, Tilton, Wilson, Wade, Stevens, Brown, Julian and many others had publicly declared their
