As the collections, taken up after her lectures, were too small to pay her expenses, her financial problems weighed heavily. The notes she had signed for The Revolution were in the main still unpaid, and one of her creditors was growing impatient. She had recently paid her counsel, Judge Selden, $200 and John Van Voorhis, $75, leaving only $3.45 in her defense fund, but as usual a few of her loyal friends came to her aid, and both Judge Selden and John Van Voorhis, deeply interested in her courageous fight, gave most of their time without charge.[301]

If this campaign was a problem financially, it was a success in the matter of nation-wide publicity. The New York Herald exulted in hostile gibes at women suffrage and published fictitious interviews, ridiculing Susan as a homely aggressive old maid, but the New York Evening Post prophesied that the court decision would likely be in her favor. The Rochester Express championed her warmly: "All Rochester will assert—at least all of it worth heeding—that Miss Anthony holds here the position of a refined and estimable woman, thoroughly respected and beloved by the large circle of staunch friends who swear by her common sense and loyalty, if not by her peculiar views." In fact the consensus of opinion in Rochester was much like that of the woman who remarked, "No, I am not converted to what these women advocate. I am too cowardly for that; but I am converted to Susan B. Anthony."[302]

This, however, was far from the attitude of Lucy Stone's Woman's Journal, which had ignored Susan's voting in November 1872 because it was out of sympathy with this militant move and with her interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Later, as her case progressed in the courts, the Journal did give it brief notice as a news item, but in 1873 when it listed as a mark of honor the women who had worked wisely for the cause, Susan B. Anthony's name was not among them, and this did not pass unnoticed by Susan; nor did the fact that she was snubbed by the Congress of Women, meeting in New York and sponsored by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Maria Mitchell. This drawing away of women hurt her far more than newspaper gibes. In fact she was sadly disappointed in women's response to the herculean effort she was making for them.

Even more disconcerting was the adverse decision of the Supreme Court on the Myra Bradwell case, which at once shattered the confidence of most of her legal advisors. The court held that Illinois had violated no provision of the federal Constitution in refusing to allow Myra Bradwell to practice law because she was a woman and declared that the right to practice law in state courts is not a privilege or an immunity of a citizen of the United States, nor is the power of a state to prescribe qualifications for admission to the bar affected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, filing a dissenting opinion, lived up to Susan's faith in him, but Benjamin Butler wrote her, "I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens. But the difficulty is, the courts long since decided that the constitutional provisions do not act upon the citizens, except as guarantees, ex proprio vigore, and in order to give force to them there must be legislation.... Therefore, the point is for the friends of woman suffrage to get congressional legislation."[303]

Susan, however, never wavered in her conviction that she as a citizen had a constitutional right to vote and that it was her duty to test this right in the courts.

"IS IT A CRIME FOR A CITIZEN ... TO VOTE?"

Charged with the crime of voting illegally, Susan was brought to trial on June 17, 1873, in the peaceful village of Canandaigua, New York. Simply dressed and wearing her new bonnet faced with blue silk and draped with a dotted veil,[304] she stoically climbed the court-house steps, feeling as if on her shoulders she carried the political destiny of American women. With her were her counsel, Henry R. Selden and John Van Voorhis, her sister, Hannah Mosher, most of the women who had voted with her in Rochester, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose interest in this case was akin to her own.

In the courtroom on the second floor, seated behind the bar, Susan watched the curious crowd gather and fill every available seat. She wondered, as she calmly surveyed the all-male jury, whether they could possibly understand the humiliation of a woman who had been arrested for exercising the rights of a citizen. The judge, Ward Hunt, did not promise well, for he had only recently been appointed to the bench through the influence of his friend and townsman, Roscoe Conkling, the undisputed leader of the Republican party in New York and a bitter opponent of woman suffrage. She tried to fathom this small, white-haired, colorless judge upon whose fairness so much depended. Prim and stolid, he sat before her, faultlessly dressed in a suit of black broadcloth, his neck wound with an immaculate white neckcloth. He ruled against her at once, refusing to let her testify on her own behalf.

She was completely satisfied, however, as she listened to Henry Selden's presentation of her case. Tall and commanding, he stood before the court with nobility and kindness in his face and eyes, bringing to mind a handsome cultured Lincoln. So logical, so just was his reasoning, so impressive were his citations of the law that it seemed to her they must convince the jury and even the expressionless judge on the bench.

Pointing out that the only alleged ground of the illegality of Miss Anthony's vote was that she was a woman, Henry Selden declared, "If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent and laudable, but honorable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime.... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court, merely on account of her sex."[305] He claimed that Miss Anthony had voted in good faith, believing that the United States Constitution gave her the right to vote, and he clearly outlined her interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, declaring that she stood arraigned as a criminal simply because she took the only step possible to bring this great constitutional question before the courts.

After he had finished, Susan followed closely for two long hours the arguments of the district attorney, Richard Crowley, who contended that whatever her intentions may have been, good or bad, she had by her voting violated a law of the United States and was therefore guilty of crime.

At the close of the district attorney's argument, Judge Hunt without leaving the bench drew out a written document, and to her surprise, read from it as he addressed the jury. "The right of voting or the privilege of voting," he declared, "is a right or privilege arising under the constitution of the State, not of the United States.[306]

"The Legislature of the State of New York," he continued, "has seen fit to say, that the franchise of voting shall be limited to the male sex.... If the Fifteenth Amendment had contained the word 'sex,' the argument of the defendant would have been potent.... The Fourteenth Amendment gives no right to a woman to vote, and the voting of Miss Anthony was in violation of the law....

"There was no ignorance of any fact," he added, "but all the facts being known, she undertook to settle a principle in her own person.... To constitute a crime, it is true, that there must be a criminal intent, but it is equally true that knowledge of the facts of the case is always held to supply this intent...."

Then hesitating a moment, he concluded, "Upon this evidence I suppose there is no question for the jury and that the jury should be directed to find a verdict of guilty."

Immediately Henry Selden was on his feet, addressing the judge, requesting that the jury determine whether or not the defendant was guilty of crime.

Judge Hunt, however, refused and firmly announced, "The question, gentlemen of the jury, in the form it finally takes, is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the Fourteenth Amendment which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote.

"And I have decided also," he continued, "that her belief and the advice which she took does not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and therefore I direct that you find a verdict of guilty."

Again Henry Selden was on his feet. "That is a direction," he declared, "that no court has power to make in a criminal case."

The courtroom was tense. Susan, watching the jury and wondering if they would meekly submit to his will, heard the judge tersely order, "Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk."

"Gentlemen of the jury," intoned the clerk, "hearken to your verdict as the Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of the offense whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all."

Claiming exception to the direction of the Court that the jury find a verdict of guilty in this a criminal case. Henry Selden asked that the jury be polled.

To this, Judge Hunt abruptly replied, "No. Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged."

That night Susan recorded her estimate of Judge Hunt's verdict in her diary in one terse sentence, "The greatest outrage History ever witnessed."[307]

The New York Sun, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and the Canandaigua Times were indignant over Judge Hunt's failure to poll the jury. "Judge Hunt," commented the Sun, "allowed the jury to be impanelled and sworn, and to hear the evidence; but when the case had reached the point of rendering the verdict, he directed a verdict of guilty. He thus denied a trial by jury to an accused party in his court; and either through malice, which we do not believe, or through ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the Constitution of the United States.... The privilege of polling the jury has been held to be an absolute right in this State and it is a substantial right ..."[308]

Claiming that the defendant had been denied her right of trial by jury. Henry Selden the next day moved for a new trial. Judge Hunt denied the motion, and, ordering the defendant to stand up, asked her, "Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced."[309]

"Yes, your honor," Susan replied, "I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored...."

Impatiently Judge Hunt protested that he could not listen to a rehearsal of arguments which her counsel had already presented.

"May it please your honor," she persisted, "I am not arguing the question but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers ..."

"The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on," interrupted Judge Hunt; but Susan, ignoring his command to sit down, protested that her prosecutors and the members of the jury were all her political sovereigns.

Again Judge Hunt tried to stop her, but she was not to be put off. She was pleading for all women and her voice rang out to every corner of the courtroom.

"The Court must insist," declared Judge Hunt, "the prisoner has been tried according to established forms of law."

"Yes, your honor," admitted Susan, "but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women...."

"The Court orders the prisoner to sit down," shouted Judge Hunt. "It will not allow another word."

Unheeding, Susan continued, "When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis—that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice—failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers—I ask not leniency at your hands—but rather the full rigors of the law."

Once more Judge Hunt tried to stop her, and acquiescing at last, she sat down, only to be ordered by him to stand up as he pronounced her sentence, a fine of $100 and the costs of prosecution.

"May it please your honor," she protested, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper—The Revolution ... the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the government.... I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.'"

Pouring cold water on this blaze of oratory. Judge Hunt tersely remarked that the Court would not require her imprisonment pending the payment of her fine.

This shrewd move, obviously planned in advance, made it impossible to carry the case to the United States Supreme Court by writ of habeas corpus.

That same afternoon, Susan was on hand for the trial of the three election inspectors. This time Judge Hunt submitted the case to the jury but with explicit instructions that the defendants were guilty. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the inspectors, denied a new trial, were each fined $25 and costs. Two of them, Edwin F. Marsh and William B. Hall, refused to pay their fines and were sent to jail. Susan appealed on their behalf to Senator Sargent in Washington, who eventually secured a pardon for them from President Grant. He also presented a petition to the Senate, in January 1874, to remit Susan's fine, as did William Loughridge of Iowa to the House, but the judiciary committees reported adversely.

Because neither of these cases had been decided on the basis of national citizenship and the right of a citizen to vote, Susan was heartsick. To have them relegated to the category of election fraud was as if her high purpose had been trailed in the dust. Wishing to spread reliable information about her trial and the legal questions involved, she had 3,000 copies of the court proceedings printed for distribution.[310]

It was hard for her to concede that justice for women could not be secured in the courts, but there seemed to be no way in the face of the cold letter of the law to take her case to the Supreme Court of the United States. This would have been possible on writ of habeas corpus had Judge Hunt sentenced her to prison for failure to pay her fine, but this he carefully avoided.

Even that intrepid fighter, John Van Voorhis, could find no loophole, and another of her loyal friends in the legal profession, Albert G. Riddle, wrote her, "There is not, I think, the slightest hope from the courts and just as little from the politicians. They will never take up this cause, never! Individuals will, parties never—till the thing is done.... The trouble is that man can govern alone, and that, though woman has the right, man wants to do it, and if she wait for him to ask her, she will never vote.... Either man must be made to see and feel ... the need of woman's help in the great field of human government, and so demand it; or woman must arise and come forward as she never has, and take her place."[311]

The case of Virginia Minor of St. Louis still held out a glimmer of hope. She had brought suit against an election inspector for his refusal to register her as a voter in the presidential election of 1872, and the case of Minor vs. Happersett reached the United States Supreme Court in 1874. An adverse decision, on March 29, 1875, delivered by Chief Justice Waite, a friend of woman suffrage, was a bitter blow to Susan and to all those who had pinned their faith on a more liberal interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Carefully studying the decision, Susan tried to fathom its reasoning, so foreign to her own ideas of justice. "Sex," she read, "has never been made of one of the elements of citizenship in the United States.... The XIV Amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men.... The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters."[312]

She read on: "The Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens.... In this case we need not determine what they are, but only whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It certainly is nowhere made so in express terms....

"When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had Constitutions of their own.... We find in no State were all citizens permitted to vote.... Women were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by the express provision of their constitutions and laws ... No new State has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered valid objection to her admission. On the contrary ... the right of suffrage was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey, without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have been reorganized under a requirement that, before their Representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress, they must have adopted new Constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these Constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States have all been restored to their original position as States in the Union ... Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, this is one....

"Our province," concluded Chief Justice Waite, "is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.... Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the Constitutions and laws of the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily void, we affirm the judgment of the Court below."

"A states-rights document," Susan called this decision and she scored it as inconsistent with the policies of a Republican administration which, through the Civil War amendments, had established federal control over the rights and privileges of citizens. If the Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage, she asked herself, why does it define the qualifications of those voting for members of the House of Representatives? How about the enfranchisement of Negroes by federal amendment or the enfranchisement of foreigners? Why did the federal government interfere in her case, instead of leaving it in the hands of the state of New York?

Like most abolitionists, Susan had always regarded the principles of the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, who said, "Whenever the question of liberty runs doubtful, the decision must be given in favor of liberty."[313]

In the face of such a ruling by the highest court in the land, she was helpless. Women were shut out of the Constitution and denied its protection. From here on there was only one course to follow, to press again for a Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women.

SOCIAL PURITY

At the moment the prospect looked bleak for woman suffrage. In Congress, there was not the slightest hope of the introduction of or action on a Sixteenth Amendment. In the states, interest was kept alive by woman suffrage bills before the legislatures, and year by year, with more people recognizing the inherent justice of the demand, the margin of defeat grew smaller. Whenever these state contests were critical, Susan managed to be on hand, giving up profitable lecture engagements to speak without fees; in Michigan in 1874 and in Iowa in 1875, she made new friends for the cause but was unable to stem the tide of prejudice against granting women the vote. After the defeat in Michigan, she wrote in her diary, "Every whisky maker, vendor, drinker, gambler, every ignorant besotted man is against us, and then the other extreme, every narrow, selfish religious bigot."[314]

A new militant movement swept the country in 1874, starting in small Ohio towns among women who were so aroused over the evil influence of liquor on husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, that they gathered in front of saloons to sing and pray, hoping to persuade drunkards to reform and saloon keepers to close their doors. Out of this uprising, the Women's Christian Temperance Union developed, and within the next few years was organized into a powerful reform movement by a young schoolteacher from Illinois, Frances E. Willard.

A lifelong advocate of temperance, Susan had long before reached the conclusion that this reform could not be achieved by a strictly temperance or religious movement, but only through the votes of women. Nevertheless, she lent a helping hand to the Rochester women who organized a branch of the W.C.T.U., but she told them just how she felt: "The best thing this organization will do for you will be to show you how utterly powerless you are to put down the liquor traffic. You can never talk down or sing down or pray down an institution which is voted into existence. You will never be able to lessen this evil until you have votes."[315]

As she traveled through the West for the Lyceum Bureau, she did what she could to stimulate interest in a federal woman suffrage amendment, speaking out of a full heart and with sure knowledge on "Bread and the Ballot" and "The Power of the Ballot," earning on the average $100 a week, which she applied to the Revolution debt.

Lyceum lecturers were now at the height of their popularity,—particularly in the West, where in the little towns scattered across the prairies there were few libraries and theaters, and the distribution of books, magazines, and newspapers in no way met the people's thirst for information or entertainment. Men, women, and children rode miles on horseback or drove over rough roads in wagons to see and hear a prominent lecturer. Susan was always a drawing card, for a woman on the lecture platform still was a novelty and almost everyone was curious about Susan B. Anthony. Many, to their surprise, discovered she was not the caricature they had been led to believe. She looked very ladylike and proper as she stood before them in her dark silk platform dress, a little too stern and serious perhaps, but frequently her face lighted up with a friendly smile. She spoke to them as equals and they could follow her reasoning. Her simple conversational manner was refreshing after the sonorous pretentious oratory of other lecturers.

Continuous travel in all kinds of weather was difficult. Branch lines were slow and connections poor. Often trains were delayed by blizzards, and then to keep her engagements she was obliged to travel by sleigh over the snowy prairies. There were long waits in dingy dirty railroad stations late at night. Even there she was always busy, reading her newspapers in the dim light or dashing off letters home on any scrap of paper she had at hand, thinking gratefully of her sister Mary who in addition to her work as superintendent of the neighborhood public school, supervised the household at 7 Madison Street. Hotel rooms were cold and drab, the food was uninviting, and only occasionally did she find to her delight "a Christian cup of coffee."[316] She often felt that the Lyceum Bureau drove her unnecessarily hard, routed her inefficiently, and profited too generously from her labors. Now and then she dispensed with their services, sent out her own circulars soliciting engagements, and arranged her own tours, proving to her satisfaction that a woman could be as businesslike as a man and sometimes more so.[317]

Weighed down by worry over the illness of her sisters, Guelma and Hannah, she felt a lack of fire and enthusiasm in her work. Anxiously she waited for letters from home, and when none reached her she was in despair. At such times, hotel rooms seemed doubly lonely and she reproached herself for being away from home and for putting too heavy a burden on her sister Mary. Yet there was nothing else to be done until the Revolution debt was paid, for some of her creditors were becoming impatient.

As often as possible Susan returned to Rochester to be with her family, and was able to nurse Guelma through the last weeks of her illness. Heartbroken when she died, in November 1873, she resolved to take better care of Hannah, sending her out to Colorado and Kansas for her health. She then tried to spend the summer months at home so that Mary could visit Hannah in Colorado and Daniel and Merritt in Kansas.

These months at home with her mother whom she dearly loved were a great comfort to them both. They enjoyed reading aloud, finding George Eliot's Middlemarch and Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter of particular interest as Susan was searching for the answers to many questions which had been brought into sharp focus by the Beecher-Tilton case, now filling the newspapers. Like everyone else, she read the latest developments in this tragic involvement of three of her good friends. She was especially concerned about Elizabeth and Theodore Tilton, in whose home she had so often visited and toward whom she felt a warm motherly affection. Her sympathy went out to Elizabeth Tilton, whose help and loyalty during the difficult days of The Revolution she never forgot. Although she had often differed with Theodore, whose quick changes of policy and temperament she could not understand, he had won her gratitude many times by befriending the cause. The same was true of Henry Ward Beecher, who had found time in his busy life to say a good word for woman's rights.

Susan was close to the facts, for in desperation a few years before, Elizabeth Tilton had confided in her. Unfortunately both Elizabeth and Theodore had made confidants of others less wise than Susan. Mrs. Stanton had passed the story along to Victoria Woodhull, who late in 1872 had revived her Weekly for a crusade on what she called "the social question" and had published her expose, "The Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case." As a result the lives of all involved were being ruined by merciless publicity.

The Beecher-Tilton story as it unfolded revealed three admirable people caught in a tangled web of human relationships. Henry Ward Beecher, for years a close friend and benefactor of his young parishioners, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton, had been accused by Theodore of immoral relations with Elizabeth. Accusations and denials continued while intrigue and negotiations deepened the confusion. The whole matter burst into flame in 1874 in the trial of Henry Ward Beecher before a committee of Plymouth Church, which exonerated him. Reading Beecher's statement in her newspaper, Susan impulsively wrote Isabella Beecher Hooker, "Wouldn't you think if God ever did strike anyone dead for telling a lie, he would have struck then?"[318]

When early in 1875 the Beecher-Tilton case reached the courts in a suit brought by Theodore Tilton against Henry Ward Beecher for the alienation of his wife's affections, it became headline news throughout the country. The press, greedy for sensation, published anything and everything even remotely connected with the case. Reporters hounded Susan, who by this time was again lecturing in the West, and she seldom entered a train, bus, or hotel without finding them at her heels, as if by their very persistence they meant to force her to express her opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Henry Ward Beecher. They never caught her off guard and she steadfastly refused to reveal to them, or to the lawyers of either side, who astutely approached her, the story which Elizabeth Tilton had told her in confidence. Yet in spite of her continued silence, she was twice quoted by the press, once through the impulsiveness of Mrs. Stanton, who expressed herself frankly at every opportunity, and again when the New York Graphic without Susan's consent published her letter to Mrs. Hooker.

The sympathy of the public was generally with Henry Ward Beecher, whose popularity and prestige were tremendous. A dynamic preacher, whose sermons drew thousands to his church and whose written word carried religion and comfort to every part of the country, he could not suddenly be ruined by the circulation of a scandal or even by a sensational trial. Behind him were all those who were convinced that the future of the Church and Morality demanded his vindication. On his side, also, as Susan well knew, was the powerful, behind-the-scenes influence of the financial interests who profited from Plymouth Church real estate, from the earnings of Beecher's paper, Christian Union, and from his book the Life of Christ, now in preparation and for which he had already been paid $20,000.

Susan and Mrs. Stanton paid the penalty of being on the unpopular side. When Elizabeth Tilton was not allowed to testify in her own defense, they accused Beecher and Tilton of ruthlessly sacrificing her to save their own reputations. In fact, Susan and Mrs. Stanton knew far too much about the case for the comfort of either Beecher or Tilton, and to discredit them, a whispering campaign, and then a press campaign was initiated against them. They and their National Woman Suffrage Association were again accused of upholding free love. Their previous association with Victoria Woodhull was held against them, as were the frank discussions of marriage and divorce published in The Revolution six years before.

Actually Susan's views on marriage were idealistic. "I hate the whole doctrine of 'variety' or 'promiscuity,'" she wrote John Hooker, the husband of her friend Isabella. "I am not even a believer in second marriages after one of the parties is dead, so sacred and binding do I consider the marriage relation."[319]

Although in public Susan uttered not one word relating to the guilt or innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which denies it."[320]

Susan's silence probably brought her more notoriety than anything she could have said on this much discussed subject, and it heightened her reputation for honesty and integrity. "Miss Anthony," commented the New York Sun, "is a lady whose word will everywhere be believed by those who know anything of her character." The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle had this to say: "Whether she will make any definite revelations remains to be seen, but whatever she does say will be received by the public with that credit which attaches to the evidence of a truthful witness. Her own character, known and honored by the country, will give importance to any utterances she may make."[321]

She was not called as a witness by either side during the 112 days of trial which ended in July 1875 with the jury unable to agree on a verdict.

Realizing that many taboos were being broken down by the lurid nation-wide publicity on the Beecher-Tilton case and that as a result people were more willing to consider subjects which hitherto had not been discussed in polite society, Susan began to plan a lecture on "Social Purity."

She was familiar with the public protest Englishwomen under the leadership of Josephine Butler were making against the state regulation of vice. Following with interest and admiration their courageous fight for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which placed women suspected of prostitution under police power, Susan found encouragement in the support these reformers had received from such men as John Stuart Mill and Jacob Bright. Such legislation, she resolved, must not gain a foothold in her country, because it not only disregarded women's right to personal liberty but showed a dangerous callousness toward men's share of responsibility for prostitution.

She was awake to the problems prostitution presented in cities like New York and Washington, its prevalence, the police protection it received, the political corruption it fostered and the reluctance of the public to face the situation, the majority of men regarding it as a necessity, and most women closing their eyes to its existence.

During the winter of 1875, while the Beecher-Tilton case was being tried in Brooklyn, she delivered her speech on "Social Purity" at the Chicago Grand Opera House, in the Sunday dime-lecture course, facing with trepidation the immense crowd which gathered to hear her. Even the daring Mrs. Stanton had warned her that she would never be asked to speak in Chicago again, and with this the manager of the Slayton Lecture Bureau agreed. But they were wrong. The people were hungry for the truth and for a constructive policy. In the past they had heard the "social evil" described and denounced in vivid thunderous words by eloquent men and by the dramatic Anna E. Dickinson. Now an earnest woman with graying hair, one of their own kind, talked to them without mincing matters, calmly and logically, and offered them a remedy.

Calling their attention to the daily newspaper reports of divorce and breach-of-promise suits, of wife murders and "paramour" shootings, of abortions and infanticide, she told them that the prevalence of these evils showed clearly that men were incapable of coping with them successfully and needed the help of women. She cited statistics, revealing 20,000 prostitutes in the city of New York, where a foundling hospital during the first six months of its existence rescued 1,300 waifs laid in baskets on its doorstep. She courageously mentioned the prevalence of venereal disease and spoke out against England's Contagious Diseases Acts which were repeatedly suggested for New York and Washington and which she described as licensed prostitution, men's futile and disastrous attempt to deal with social corruption.

Declaring that the poverty and economic dependence of women as well as the passions of men were the causes of prostitution, she quoted more statistics which showed a great increase in the poverty of women. Work formerly done in the household, she explained, was being gradually taken over by factories, with the result that women in order to earn a living had been forced to follow it out of the home and were supporting themselves wholly or in part at a wage inadequate to meet their needs. No wonder many were tempted by food, clothes, and comfortable shelter into an immoral life.

Her solution was "to lift this vast army of poverty-stricken women who now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women like men must have an equal chance to earn a living."[322]

"Whoever controls work and wages," she continued, "controls morals. Therefore we must have women employers, superintendents, committees, legislators; wherever girls go to seek the means of subsistence, there must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women preachers, lawyers, doctors—that wherever women go to seek counsel—spiritual, legal, physical—there, too, they will be sure to find the best and noblest of their own sex to minister to them."

Then she added, "Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.... Marriage never will cease to be a wholly unequal partnership until the law recognizes the equal ownership in the joint earnings and possessions."

She asked for the vote so that women would have the power to help make the laws relating to marriage, divorce, adultery, breach of promise, rape, bigamy, infanticide, and so on. These laws, she reminded them, have not only been framed by men, but are administered by men. Judges, jurors, lawyers, all are men, and no woman's voice is heard in our courts except as accused or witness, and in many cases the married woman is denied the right to testify as to her guilt or innocence.

Never before had the audience heard the case for social purity presented in this way and they listened intently. When the applause was subsiding, Susan saw Parker Pillsbury and Bronson Alcott, fellow-lecturers on the Lyceum circuit, coming toward her, smiling approval. They were generous in their praise, Bronson Alcott declaring, "You have stated here this afternoon, in a fearless manner, truths that I have hardly dared to think, much less to utter."[323]

She repeated this lecture in St. Louis, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas, and while most city newspapers, acknowledging the need of facing the issues, praised her courage, small-town papers were frankly disturbed by a spinster's public discussion of the "social evil," one paper observing, "The best lecture a woman can give the community ... on the sad 'evil' ... is the sincerity of her profound ignorance on the subject."[324]

Having bravely done her bit for social purity, Susan with relief turned again to her favorite lecture, "Bread and the Ballot." Her message fell on fertile ground. These western men and women saw justice in her reasoning. Having broken with tradition by leaving the East for the frontier, they could more easily drop old ways for new. Western men also recognized the influence for good that women had brought to lonely bleak western towns—better homes, cleanliness, comfort, then schools, churches, law and order—and many of them were willing to give women the vote. All they needed was prodding to translate that willingness into law.

As she continued her lecturing, she kept her watchful eye on her family and the annual New York and Washington conventions, attending to many of the routine details herself. Finally, on May 1, 1876, she recorded in her diary, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of the Revolution debt."[325]

Even the press took notice, the Chicago Daily News commenting, "By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn, she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence."[326]

A FEDERAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT

Philadelphia had always been a friendly city because of Lucretia Mott. Now Lucretia came almost daily to the women's headquarters, bringing a comforting sense of support, approval, and friendship. When Mrs. Stanton, free at last from her lecture engagements, joined them in June, Susan's happiness was complete and she confided to her diary, "Glad enough to see her and feel her strength come in."[327]

Susan and Mrs. Stanton now sent the Republican and Democratic national conventions well-written memorials pointing out the appropriateness of enfranchising women in this centennial year. But no woman suffrage plank was adopted by either party. Susan put Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage to work on a Women's Declaration of 1876, and so "magnificent" a document did they produce that she not only had many copies printed for distribution but had one beautifully engrossed on parchment for presentation to President Grant at the Fourth of July celebration in Independence Square.

Unable to secure permission to present this declaration, she made plans of her own. For herself, she managed to get a press card as reporter for her brother's paper, the Leavenworth Times. Mrs. Stanton and Lucretia Mott refused to attend the celebration, so indignant were they over the snubs women had received from the Centennial Commission, and they held a women's meeting at the First Unitarian Church. When at the last minute four tickets were sent Susan by the Centennial Commission, she gave them to the most militant of her colleagues, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereux Blake, Sarah Andrews Spencer, and Phoebe Couzins. With Susan in the lead, they pushed through the jostling crowd to Independence Square on that bright hot Fourth of July and were seated among the elect on the platform.

By this time they had learned that Thomas W. Ferry of Michigan, Acting Vice President, would substitute for President Grant at the ceremony. Because he was a good friend of woman suffrage, Phoebe Couzins made one more effort for orderly procedure, sending him a note asking for permission to present the Women's Declaration. This failed, and rather than take part in creating a disturbance, she withdrew, leaving her four friends on the platform.

"We ... sat there waiting ..." reported Mrs. Blake. "The heat was frightful.... Amid such a throng it was difficult to hear anything ... We decided that our presentation should take place immediately after Mr. Richard Lee of Virginia, grandson of the Signer, had read the Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' and cried, 'Now is the time.'

"We all four rose, Miss Anthony first, next Mrs. Gage, bearing our engrossed Declaration, and Mrs. Spencer and myself following with hundreds of printed copies in our hands. There was a stir in the crowd just at the time, and General Hawley who had been keeping a wary eye on us, had relaxed his vigilance for a moment, as he signed to the band to resume playing. He did not see us advancing until we reached the Vice President's dais. There Miss Anthony, taking the parchment from Mrs. Gage, stepped forward and presented it to Mr. Ferry, saying, 'I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of the United States.'"[328]

Nonplussed, Mr. Ferry bowed low and received the Declaration without a word. Then the four intrepid women filed out, distributing printed copies of their declaration while General Hawley boomed out, "Order! Order!"

Leaving the square and mounting a platform erected for musicians in front of Independence Hall, they waited until a curious crowd had gathered around them. Then while Mrs. Gage held an umbrella over Susan to shield her from the hot sun, she read the Women's Declaration in a loud clear voice that carried far.

"We do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our experiment of self-government," she began. "Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement."[329]

Then she enumerated women's grievances and the crowd applauded as she drove home point after point.

"Woman," she continued, "has shown equal devotion with man to the cause of freedom and has stood firmly by his side in its defense. Together they have made this country what it is.... We ask our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges.... We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever."

Stepping down from the platform into the applauding crowd which eagerly reached for printed copies of the declaration, she and her four companions hurried to the First Unitarian Church where an eager audience awaited their report and hailed their courage.