Missing the stimulous of work with her "girls," she took more and more pleasure in the company of William and Mary Gannett of the First Unitarian Church, whose liberal views appealed to her strongly. She liked to have young people about her and followed the lives of all her nieces and nephews with the greatest interest, spurring on their ambitions and helping finance their education. The frequent visits of "Niece Lucy" were a great joy during these years, as was the nearness of "Niece Anna O,"[451] who married and settled in Rochester. The young Canadian girl, Anna Dann, had become almost indispensable to her and to Mary, as companion, secretary, and nurse, and her marriage left a void in the household. Anna Dann was married at 17 Madison Street by Anna Howard Shaw with Susan beaming upon her like a proud grandmother.
Longing to see one more state won for suffrage, Susan carefully followed the news from the field, looking hopefully to California and urging her "girls" to keep hammering away there in spite of defeats. Her eyes were also on the Territory of Oklahoma, where a constitution was being drafted preparatory to statehood. "The present bill for the new state," she wrote Anna Howard Shaw, in December 1904, "is an insult to women of Oklahoma, such as has never been perpetrated before. We have always known that women were in reality ranked with idiots and criminals, but it has never been said in words that the state should ... restrict or abridge the suffrage ... on account of illiteracy, minority, sex, conviction of felony, mental condition, etc.... We must fight this bill to the utmost...."[452]
The brightest spot in the West was Oregon, where suffrage had been defeated in 1900 by only 2,000 votes. In June 1905, when the National American Association held its first far western convention in Portland during the Lewis and Clark Exposition, Susan could not keep away, although she had never expected to go over the mountains again. As she traveled to Portland with Mary and a hundred or more delegates in special cars, she recalled her many long tiring trips through the West to carry the message of woman suffrage to the frontier. In comparison, this was a triumphal journey, showing her, as nothing else could, what her work had accomplished. Greeted at railroad stations along the way by enthusiastic crowds, showered with flowers and gifts, she stood on the back platform of the train with her "girls," shaking hands, waving her handkerchief, and making an occasional speech.
Presiding over the opening session of the Portland convention, standing in a veritable garden of flowers which had been presented to her, she remarked with a droll smile, "This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago.... I am thankful for this change of spirit which has come over the American people."[453]
On Woman's Day, she was chosen to speak at the unveiling of the statue of Sacajawea, the Indian woman who had led Lewis and Clark through the dangerous mountain passes to the Pacific, winning their gratitude and their praise. In the story of Sacajawea who had been overlooked by the government when every man in the Lewis and Clark expedition had been rewarded with a large tract of land, Susan saw the perfect example of man's thoughtless oversight of the valuable services of women. Looking up at the bronze statue of the Indian woman, her papoose on her back and her arm outstretched to the Pacific, Susan said simply, "This is the first statue erected to a woman because of deeds of daring.... This recognition of the assistance rendered by a woman in the discovery of this great section of the country is but the beginning of what is due." Then, with the sunlight playing on her hair and lighting up her face, she appealed to the men of Oregon for the vote. "Next year," she reminded them, "the men of this proud state, made possible by a woman, will decide whether women shall at last have the rights in it which have been denied them so many years. Let men remember the part women have played in its settlement and progress and vote to give them these rights which belong to every citizen."[454]
Reporters were at Susan's door, when she returned to Rochester, for comments on ex-President Cleveland's tirade against clubwomen and woman suffrage in the popular Ladies' Home Journal. "Pure fol-de-rol," she told them, adding testily, "I would think that Grover Cleveland was about the last person to talk about the sanctity of the home and woman's sphere." This was good copy for Republican newspapers and they made the most of it, as women throughout the country added their protests to Susan's. A popular jingle of the day ran, "Susan B. Anthony, she took quite a fall out of Grover C."[455]
Susan, however, had something far more important on her mind than fencing with Grover Cleveland—an interview with President Theodore Roosevelt. Here was a man eager to right wrongs, to break monopolies, to see justice done to the Negro, a man who talked of a "square deal" for all, and yet woman suffrage aroused no response in him.
In November 1905, she undertook a trip to Washington for the express purpose of talking with him. The year before, at a White House reception, he had singled her out to stand at his side in the receiving line. She looked for the same friendliness now. Memorandum in hand, she plied him with questions which he carefully evaded, but she would not give up.