Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, the George Sands, the Fanny Kembles, of all ages; and now men mock us with the fact, and say we are ever cruel to each other. Let us end this ignoble record and henceforth stand by womanhood. If Victoria Woodhull must be crucified, let men drive the spikes and plait the crown of thorns.
Immediately after the Washington convention, Miss Anthony went to fill a lecture engagement at Kalamazoo, the arrangements made by her friend, the widely-known and revered Lucinda H. Stone. She spoke also at Grand Rapids and other points in Michigan. At Chicago she was fortunate enough to have a day with Mrs. Stanton, also on a lecturing tour, and then took the train for Leavenworth. At Kansas City the papers said she made "the success of the lecture season." She spoke in Leavenworth, Lawrence, Topeka, Paola, Olathe and other places throughout the State. Although it was very cold and the half-frozen mud knee deep, she usually had good audiences. At Lincoln, Neb., she was entertained at the home of Governor Butler and introduced by him at her lecture. At Omaha her share of the receipts was $100. At Council Bluffs she was the guest of her old fellow-worker, Amelia Bloomer. Cedar Rapids and Des Moines gave packed houses. She lectured in a number of Illinois towns, taking trains at midnight and at daybreak; and, waiting four hours at one little station, the diary says she was so thoroughly worn-out she was compelled to lie down on the dirty floor. On the homeward route she spoke at Antioch College, and was the guest of President Hosmer's family. According to the infallible little journal: "The president said he had listened to all the woman suffrage lecturers in the field, but tonight, for the first time, he had heard an argument; a compliment above all others, coming from an aged and conservative minister."
She spoke also at Wilberforce University, at Dayton, Springfield, Crestline, and in Columbus before the two Houses of the Legislature. At Salem she ran across Parker Pillsbury, who was lecturing there. When she took the train at Columbus "there sat Mrs. Stanton, fast asleep, her gray curls sticking out." Then again into Michigan she went, speaking at Jackson, Lansing, Ann Arbor and other cities. Mrs. Stanton had preceded her and it was many times said that her lecture needed Miss Anthony's to make it complete. Then to Chicago, where she spoke at a suffrage matinee in Farwell Hall and at the Cook county annual suffrage convention, and dined at Robert Collyer's; back to Iowa, speaking at Burlington, Davenport, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa; over into Nebraska once more, from there returning to Illinois; into Indiana, thence to Milwaukee and points in Wisconsin; and once more to Chicago, where, as was often the case, she was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Fernando Jones; from here across to Painesville and other towns in northern Ohio; then on to numerous places in western New York, and finally home to Rochester, April 25, having slept scarcely two nights in the same bed for over three months.
Such is the hard life of the public lecturer, the most exhausting and exacting which man or woman can experience. During all this long trip Miss Anthony had met everywhere a cordial welcome and had been entertained in scores of delightful homes. Her speech on this tour was entitled "The New Situation," and was a clear and comprehensive argument to prove that the Fourteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. Although composed largely of legal and constitutional references, it was not written but drawn from the storehouse of her wonderful memory, aided only by a few notes.
At the close of the Washington convention the advocates of woman suffrage honestly believed that the battle was almost won. They felt sure Congress would pass the enabling act, permitting them to exercise the right that they claimed to be conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment, in which claim they were sustained by some of the best constitutional lawyers in the country. The agricultural committee room in the Capitol was placed at the disposal of the national woman suffrage committee, who put Josephine S. Griffing in charge. The latter part of January she wrote:
Our room is thronged. Yesterday and today no less than twelve wives of members of Congress were here and large numbers of the aristocratic women of Washington. Blanche Butler Ames assures me that all her sympathies are with us. President Grant's sister, Mrs. Cramer, has been here and given her name, saying that Mrs. Grant sent her regards and sympathized with our movement, and that she had refused from principle to sign Mrs. Sherman's protest.... The daily press is on its knees and is publishing long editorials in our favor. You ask if this is a Republican dodge. I do not know. I feel as Douglass did, ready to welcome the bolt from heaven or hell that shivers the chains. If the Republicans hope to save their lives by our enfranchisement, let them live.
Mrs. Hooker wrote from Washington: "Everything conspires to bring about the early confirmation of our hopes. Republicans are discovering that without this new, live issue, they are dead, and once more party necessity is to be God's opportunity. Let us, who know so many good men and true who are in this party, be thankful that through it, rather than through the Democratic, deliverance is to come, for to owe gratitude to a pro-slavery party would nearly choke my thanksgiving."
To this Mrs. Stanton replied: "That is not the point, but which party, as a party, has the best record on our question. For four years I have chafed under the Republican maneuvering to keep us still. Let me call your attention to my speech on the Fifteenth Amendment, in which I said 'this is a new stab at womanhood, to result in deeper degradation to her than she has ever known before.'... Sometimes I exclaim in agony, 'Can nothing raise the self-respect of women?' I despise the Republican party for the political serfdom we suffer today, under the heel of every foreign lord and lackey who treads our soil. If all of you have turned to such idols, I will go alone to Jerusalem."
When the judiciary committee made its adverse report1 which was merely that Congress had not the power to act, most of the friends were not discouraged but believed another committee would decide differently. Mrs. Hooker, however, was at the boiling point of indignation over the report and reversed her decision in regard to the Republican party, writing: "Thank God! that party is dead; every one here knows it, feels it, and is waiting to see what will take its place. A great labor and woman suffrage party is ready to spring into life, and a hundred aristocratic Democrats are pledged to the work. You can have no conception of the new conditions unless you are here in the midst of things and read the telegrams from all parts of the country. Early next winter we shall be declared voting citizens." She then quotes a number of prominent Democratic politicians whom she has interviewed and who have given her reason for having faith in that party. But many of the women were fooled then by both political parties, just as they have continued to be up to the present time.
A letter from Phoebe Couzins expressed the sentiment of numbers which were received this spring: "We made a grand mistake in giving up the National. If you and Mrs. Stanton think best, as your fingers are on the pulse of the people, let us resolve the Union Society into the National Association. So say Mr. and Mrs. Minor, but whatever is done, the two grand women who have the qualifications for leadership must be at the head; the cause will languish until you are back in your old places."
The suffrage anniversary was held in Apollo Hall, New York, May 11 and 12, 1871. Mrs. Griffing read an able report on the work at Washington the previous winter. There were strong objections by a number of ladies to sitting on the platform with Mrs. Woodhull, but Mrs. Stanton said she should be sandwiched between Lucretia Mott and herself and that surely would give her sufficient respectability. She made a fine constitutional argument, to which the most captious could not object. The excitement created by her appearance at the Washington meeting was mild compared to that in New York City where she was becoming so well-known. The great dailies headed all reports, "The Woodhull Convention." The injustice and vindictiveness of the Tribune, that paper which once had been the champion of woman's cause, were especially hard to bear. It rang the changes upon the term "free love," insisted that, because the women allowed Mrs. Woodhull to stand upon their platform and advocate suffrage, they thereby indorsed all her ideas on social questions, and by every possible means it cast odium on the convention.
There is no doubt that the advocates of "free love," in its usually accepted sense, did endeavor to insinuate themselves among the suffrage women and make this movement responsible for their social doctrines, but every great reform has to suffer from similar parasites. The lives
