Susan had always been a champion of coeducation, speaking for it as early as the 1850s at state teachers' meetings and proposing it for Columbia University in her Revolution. In 1891, she and Mrs. Stanton had agitated for the admission of women to the University of Rochester. Seven years later the trustees consented to admit women provided $100,000 could be raised in a year, and Susan served on the fund-raising committee with her friend, Helen Barrett Montgomery. Because the alumni of the University of Rochester opposed coeducation and the city's wealthiest men were indifferent, progress was slow, but the trustees were persuaded to extend the time and to reduce by one half the amount to be raised.
With so much else on her mind in 1900, including the sudden death of her brother Merritt, she had given the fund little thought until the committee appealed to her in desperation when only one day remained in which to raise the last $8,000. Immediately she went into action. Remembering that Mary had talked of willing the University $2,000 if it became coeducational, she persuaded her to pledge that amount now. Then setting out in a carriage on a very hot September morning, she slowly collected pledges for all but $2,000. As the trustees were in session and likely to adjourn any minute, she appealed to Samuel Wilder, one of Rochester's prominent elder citizens who had already contributed, to guarantee that amount until she could raise it. To this he gladly agreed. Reaching the trustees' meeting with Mrs. Montgomery just in time, with pledges assuring the payment of the full $50,000, she was amazed at their reception. Instead of rejoicing with them, the trustees began to quibble over Samuel Wilder's guarantee of the last $2,000 because of the state of his health. When she offered her life insurance as security, they still put her off, telling her to come back in a few days. Even then they continued to quibble, but finally admitted that the women had won. Disillusioned, she wrote in her diary, "Not a trustee has given anything although there are several millionaires among them."[435] Only her life insurance policy and her dogged persistence had saved the day.
This effort to open Rochester University to women, on top of a very full and worrisome year, was so taxing and so disillusioning that she became seriously ill. When she recovered sufficiently for a drive, she asked to be taken to the university campus and afterward wrote in her diary, "As I drove over the campus, I felt 'these are not forbidden grounds to the girls of the city any longer.' It is good to feel that the old doors sway on their hinges—to women! Will the vows be kept to them—will the girls have equal chances with the boys? They promised well—the fulfilment will be seen—whether there shall not be some hitch from the proposed to a separate school."[436]
Still keeping her watchful eye on the National American Association, Susan traveled to Minneapolis in the spring of 1901 for the first annual convention under the new administration. There was talk of an "entire new deal," the retirement of all who had served under Miss Anthony, and the election of a "new cabinet of officers," and Susan was so concerned that there might also be a change in the presidency that she felt she must be on hand to guide and steady the proceedings.[437]
Mrs. Catt was re-elected and Susan returned to Rochester well satisfied and ready to devote herself to completing the fourth volume of the History of Woman Suffrage on which she and Mrs. Harper had been working intermittently for the past year. It was published late in 1902. While working on the History, Susan, although more than satisfied with Mrs. Harper's work, often thought nostalgically of her happy stimulating years of collaboration with Mrs. Stanton. She seldom saw Mrs. Stanton now, but they kept in touch with each other by letter.
In the spring of 1902, she visited Mrs. Stanton twice in New York, and planned to return in November to celebrate Mrs. Stanton's eighty-seventh birthday. In anticipation, she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "It is fifty-one years since we first met and we have been busy through every one of them, stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women.... We little dreamed when we began this contest ... that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women. But our hearts are filled with joy to know that they enter upon this task equipped with a college education, with business experience, with the freely admitted right to speak in public—all of which were denied to women fifty years ago.... These strong, courageous, capable, young women will take our place and complete our work. There is an army of them where we were but a handful...."[438]
Two weeks before Mrs. Stanton's birthday, Susan was stunned by a telegram announcing that her old comrade had passed away in her chair. Bewildered and desolate, she sat alone in her study for several hours, trying bravely to endure her grief. Then came the reporters for copy which only this heartbroken woman could give. "I cannot express myself at all as I feel," she haltingly told them. "I am too crushed to speak. If I had died first, she would have found beautiful phrases to describe our friendship, but I cannot put it into words."[439]
From New York, where she had gone for the funeral, she wrote in anguish to Mrs. Harper, "Oh, the voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt that I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea—but the Laws of Nature are still going on—with no shadow or turning—what a wonder it is—it goes right on and on—no matter who lives or who dies."[440]