"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance and bigotry."
Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of women."[409]
When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs. Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them they were setting up an inquisition.
Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."[410]
To a reporter who wanted her views on The Woman's Bible, she made it plain that she had no part in writing the book, but added, "I think women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to theirs. It was written by men, and therefore its reference to women reflects the light in which they were regarded in those days. In the same way the history of our Revolutionary War was written, in which very little is said of the noble deeds of women, though we know how they stood by and helped the great work; it is so with history all through."[411]
For some years, Susan's girls had been urging her to write her reminiscences, spurred on by the fact that Mrs. Stanton, Mary Livermore, and Julia Ward Howe were writing theirs. There were also other good reasons for putting her to work at this task. Writing would keep her safely at home and away from the strenuous work in the field which they feared was sapping her strength. It would keep her well occupied so that they could develop the work and the conventions in their own way.
Susan put off this task from month to month and from year to year, torn between her desire to leave a true record of her work and her longing to be always in the thick of the suffrage fight. Finally she began looking about for a collaborator, convinced that she herself could never write an interesting line. Ida Husted Harper, with her newspaper experience and her interest in the cause, seemed the logical choice, and in the spring of 1897, she came to 17 Madison Street to work on the biography.[412]
The attic had been remodeled for workrooms and here Susan now spent her days with Mrs. Harper, trying to reconstruct the past. She had definite ideas about how the book should be written, holding up as a model the biography of William Lloyd Garrison recently written by his children. Mrs. Harper also had high standards, and influenced by the formalities of the day, edited Susan's vivid brusque letters—hurriedly written and punctuated with dashes—so that they conformed with her own easy but more formal style. To this Susan readily consented, for she always depreciated her own writing ability. On one point, however, she was adamant, that her story be told without dwelling upon the disagreements among the old workers.
The household was geared to the "bog," as they called the biography. Mary, supervising as usual, watched over their meals and the housework with the aid of a young rosy-cheeked Canadian girl, Anna Dann, who had recently come to work for them and whom they at once took to their hearts, making her one of the family. Soon another young girl, Genevieve Hawley from Fort Scott, Kansas, was employed to help with the endless copying, sorting of letters, and pasting of scrapbooks, and with the current correspondence which piled up and diverted Susan from the book.[413] Through 1897 and 1898, they worked at top speed.