Occasionally there was an oasis of cleanliness and good food, as when they stopped at the railroad hotel in Salina and found it run by Mother Bickerdyke, who, marching through Georgia with General Sherman, had nursed and fed his soldiers. At such times Kansas would take on a rosy glow and Susan could report, "We are getting along splendidly. Just the frame of a Methodist Church with sidings and roof, and rough cottonwood boards for seats, was our meeting place last night ...; and a perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.... Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading matter is so very scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any kind.... All that great trunk full were sold and given away at our first 14 meetings, and we in return received $110 which a little more than paid our railroad fare—eight cents per mile—and hotel bills. Our collections thus far fully equal those at the East. I have been delightfully disappointed for everybody said I couldn't raise money in Kansas meetings."[198]
The reputation of both women preceded them to Kansas. Susan had to win her way against prejudice built up by newspaper gibes of past years which had caricatured her as a meddlesome reformer and a sour old maid, but gradually her friendliness, hominess, and sincerity broke down these preconceptions. Kansas soon respected this tall slender energetic woman who, as she overrode obstacles, showed a spirit akin to that of the frontiersman.
Mrs. Stanton, on the other hand, was welcomed at once with enthusiasm. The fact that she was the mother of seven children as well as a brilliant orator opened the way for her. She was good to look at, a queenly woman at fifty-two, with a fresh rosy complexion and carefully curled soft white hair. Her motherliness and refreshing sense of humor built up a bond of understanding with her audiences. People were eager to see her, hear her, talk with her, and entertain her.
This preference was obvious to Susan, but it aroused no jealousy. She sent Mrs. Stanton out through the state by mule team to all the small towns and settlements far from the railroad, along with their popular and faithful Republican ally, Charles Robinson, first Free State Governor of Kansas, counting on these two to build up good will. In the meantime, making her headquarters in Lawrence, she reorganized the campaign to meet the increasing opposition of the Republican machine, against which the continued support of a few prominent Kansas Republicans availed little. As the state was predominantly Republican, the prospects were gloomy, for the Democrats had not yet taken them up as Lucy Stone had predicted, but still opposed both the Negro and woman suffrage amendments. A new liquor law, which it was thought women would support, further complicated the situation, aligning the liquor interests and the German and Irish settlers solidly against votes for women.
While Susan was searching desperately for some way of appealing to the Democrats, help came from an unexpected source. The St. Louis Suffrage Association urged George Francis Train to come to the aid of women in Kansas, and always ready to champion a new and unpopular cause, he telegraphed his willingness to win the Democratic vote and pay his own expenses. Knowing little about him except that he was wealthy, eccentric, and interested in developing the Union Pacific Railroad, Susan turned tactfully to her Kansas friends for advice, although she herself welcomed his help. They wired him, "The people want you, the women want you";[199] and he came into the state in a burst of glory, speaking first in Leavenworth and Lawrence to large curious audiences. A tall handsome man with curly brown hair and keen gray eyes, flashily dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, white vest, black trousers, patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences held the people's attention whether they agreed with him or not. When he spoke in Leavenworth, the hall was packed with Irishmen who were building the railroad to the West. They hissed when he mentioned woman suffrage, but before long he had won them over and they cheered when he shook his finger at them and shouted, "Every man in Kansas who throws a vote for the Negro and not for women has insulted his mother, his daughter, his sister, and his wife."[200]
George Francis Train
At once the Republican press began a campaign of vilification, calling Train a Copperhead and ridiculing his eccentricities and conceits; and eastern Republicans, fearing they had harmed the Negro amendment in Kansas by their opposition to woman suffrage, tried to make last-minute amends by sending an appeal to Kansas voters to support both amendments. Even Horace Greeley lamely supported them in a Tribune editorial which Susan read with disgust: "It is plain that the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be tried; and, while we regard it with distrust, we are quite willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. She is a young State, and has a memorable history, wherein her women have borne an honorable part.... If, then, a majority of them really desire to vote, we, if we lived in Kansas, should vote to give them the opportunity. Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would conclude that the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, rather a plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of their husbands and fathers...."[201]
These halfhearted appeals were too late, for the political machine in Kansas had already done its work; and Susan, turning her back on such fair-weather friends, cultivated the Democrats even more sedulously. When the Democrat who had promised to accompany George Francis Train on a speaking tour failed him, she took his place. When Train demurred at the strenuous task ahead, she announced she would undertake it alone. Always the gallant gentleman, he accompanied her, and continued with her through the long hard weeks of travel in mail and lumber wagons over rough roads, through mud and rain, to the remotest settlements, far from the railroads. Because it was a necessity, traveling alone with a gentleman whom she hardly knew troubled her not at all, unconventional though it was.