Tactfully the Republicans explained to women that even Negro suffrage could not be definitely spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment, if it were to be accepted by the people; and added that Negro suffrage was all the strain that the Republican party could bear at this time; but neither Susan nor Mrs. Stanton were fooled by this sophistry. They knew that Republican politicians saw in the Negro vote in the South the means of keeping their party in power for a long time to come, and could entirely overlook justice to Negro women since they were assured of enough votes without them. The women of the North need not be considered, since they had nothing to offer politically. They would vote, it was thought, just as their husbands voted.
Completely deserted by all their former friends in the Republican party, Susan and Mrs. Stanton now made use of an irregular Republican, Senator Cowan of Pennsylvania, whom the abolitionists had labeled "the watchdog of slavery." When Benjamin Wade's bill "to enfranchise each and every male person" in the District of Columbia "without any distinction on account of color or race," was discussed on the Senate floor in December 1866, Senator Cowan offered an amendment striking out the word "male" and thus leaving the door open for women. He stated the case for woman suffrage well and with eloquence, and although he was accused of being insincere and wishing merely to cloud the issue, he forced the Republicans to show their hands. In the three-day debate which followed, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts declared emphatically that he was opposed to connecting the two issues, woman and Negro suffrage, but would at any time support a separate bill for woman's enfranchisement. Senator Pomeroy of Kansas objected to jeopardizing the chances of Negro suffrage by linking it with woman suffrage, but Senator Wade of Ohio boldly expressed his approval of woman suffrage, even casting a vote for Senator Cowan's amendment, as did B. Gratz Brown of Missouri. In the final vote, nine votes were counted for woman suffrage and thirty-seven against.[182]
Susan recorded even this defeat as progress, for woman suffrage had for the first time been debated in Congress and prominent Senators had treated it with respect. The Republican press, however, was showing definite signs of disapproval, even Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Almost unbelieving, she read Greeley's editorial, "A Cry from the Females," in which he said, "Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power when she rules the world with the glance of an eye." With the Democratic press as always solidly against woman suffrage and the Antislavery Standard avoiding the subject as if it did not exist, no words favorable to votes for women now reached the public.[183]
It was hard for Susan to forgive the Antislavery Standard for what she regarded as a breach of trust. Financed by the Hovey Fund, it owed allegiance, she believed, to women as well as the Negro. In protest Parker Pillsbury resigned his post as editor, but among the leading men in the antislavery ranks, only he, Samuel J. May, James Mott, and Robert Purvis, the cultured, wealthy Philadelphia Negro, were willing to support Susan and Mrs. Stanton in their campaign for woman suffrage at this time. The rest aligned themselves unquestioningly with the Republicans, although in the past they had always been distrustful of political parties.
Discouraging as this was for Susan, their influence upon the antislavery women was far more alarming. These women one by one temporarily deserted the woman's rights cause, persuaded that this was the Negro's hour and that they must be generous, renounce their own claims, and work only for the Negroes' civil and political rights. Less than a dozen remained steadfast, among them Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Ernestine Rose, and for a time Lucy Stone, who wrote John Greenleaf Whittier in January 1867, "You know Mr. Phillips takes the ground that this is 'the Negro's hour,' and that the women, if not criminal, are at least, not wise to urge their own claim. Now, so sure am I that he is mistaken and that the only name given, by which the country can be saved, is that of WOMAN, that I want to ask you ... to use your influence to induce him to reconsider the position he has taken. He is the only man in the nation to whom has been given the charm which compels all men, willing or unwilling, to listen when he speaks ... Mr. Phillips used to say, 'take your part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove expedient.' Now he needs someone to help him see that point again."[184]
TIMES THAT TRIED WOMEN'S SOULS
Bitterly disillusioned, Susan as usual found comfort in action. She carried to the New York legislature early in 1867 her objections to the Fourteenth Amendment in a petition from the American Equal Rights Association, signed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and herself. People generally were critical of the amendment, many fearing it would too readily reinstate rebels as voters, and she hoped to block ratification by capitalizing on this dissatisfaction. She saw no disloyalty to Negroes in this, for she regarded the amendment as "utterly inadequate."[185]
This protest made, she turned her attention to New York's constitutional convention, which provided an unusual opportunity for writing woman suffrage into the new constitution. First she sought an interview with Horace Greeley, hoping to regain his support which was more important than ever since he had been chosen a delegate to this convention. When she and Mrs. Stanton asked him for space in the Tribune to advocate woman suffrage as well as Negro suffrage, he emphatically replied, "No! You must not get up any agitation for that measure.... Help us get the word 'white' out of the constitution. This is the Negro's hour.... Your turn will come next."[186]