Late in September, she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester, but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton, deep in a serious discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for woman suffrage at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now passed since the last national woman's rights convention, and the workers were scattered; some had lost interest and others thought only of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with Lucy, confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with her.[175]
Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey Fund, she went to New England to revive interest there and in Concord talked with the Emersons, Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he thought it wise to demand woman suffrage at this time, he replied, "Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide for me in practical matters." Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same time.[176]
Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and woman suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures.
However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in January 1866—the very first demand ever made for Congressional action on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up 400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child, who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[177]
By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional recalcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way, not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate as well as in the House—a few because they saw justice in the demands of the women, others because they believed white women should have political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000 signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans.
In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young editor of the Independent. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell Phillips he suggested for president, and the Antislavery Standard as the paper of the new organization.
This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips, however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May 1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society, she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union had been given to the members of the antislavery group and therefore there was no way for them to vote their organization into an Equal Rights Association. Not to be sidetracked, she then asked the woman's rights convention to broaden its platform to include rights for the Negro. To her this seemed a natural development as she had always thought of woman's rights as part of the larger struggle for human rights.
"For twenty years," she declared, "we have pressed the claims of women to the right of representation in the government.... Up to this hour we have looked only to State action for the recognition of our rights; but now by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage reverts back to the United States Constitution. The duty of Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of representation in a republican form of government.
"There is, there can be, but one true basis," she continued. "Taxation and representation must be inseparable; hence our demand must now go beyond woman.... We therefore wish to broaden our woman's rights platform and make it in name what it has ever been in spirit, a human rights platform."[178]
The women, so often accused in later years of fighting only for their own rights, had the courage at this time to attempt a practical experiment in generosity. Susan and Mrs. Stanton with all their hearts wanted this experiment to succeed, and yet as they resolved their woman's rights organization into the American Equal Rights Association, they were apprehensive.