New Orleans stretched out a friendly hand to Miss Anthony. The surprise of finding her a simple, motherly, gentle-mannered woman instead of the typical woman’s-rights exponent, disarmed and warmed their hearts, so that press and people received her cordially. She was invited to address the city public schools, and spoke to many appreciative audiences during the few weeks New Orleans had the uplift of her presence. In a private letter of that date she said to me: “I remember my visit to the Crescent City with a great deal of pleasure, and cherish the friendships I made there. We are finding out quite a good many fine things about women in the Gulf States, so that I think you may feel proud that so much true growth went on—even while that other problem of freedom was being settled.
“Susan B. Anthony.”
Miss Anthony’s work here made a permanent impression on public thought; the personal hospitality of the people meant a certain sort of receptivity of her cause, for which the war era and the more trying decade following it was a period of incubation; for unquestionably all times of stress and effort and experience of soul are seasons of enlargement, of suggestion, and form the matrix of a new life. If movement be once started in original cell structures, reforming is sure, and the new species depends on the character of the environment. Heart-rending and irremediable as were the personal effects of the war to thousands, there is little doubt but that it has resulted in definite gain to the whole people, by establishing a system of self-reliance in place of reliance upon the labor of others; and even more through the liberation of the general mind from captivity to the belief in the ethical rectitude of human slavery.
But it takes the North a long time to come to any true understanding of the Southern people. Certain transient, exterior features—which are as impermanent as the conditions that created them—have been mistaken for their real character, which depends upon indwelling ideals—and these have always been thoroughly American. The leisure for thought and study which ante-bellum ease allowed to many molded a high-thinking type that was true to the best intellectual and Christian models, as the character of Southern public men has evidenced. The simple integrity of the Southern ideal has had no match in national life except in the rigid standard of New England. Puritan and Huguenot—far apart as they seem—were like founders of the rugged righteousness of American principles; and in so far as we have forgotten our origin, has the national character lost its purity.
The love of freedom is ingrained in the ideals of the South. Its apparent conservatism is not hostility to the new nor intense devotion to the old; it is more an inevitable result of thin population scattered over wide areas, with little opportunity for the frequent and direct contact which is indispensable to the rapid and general development of a common idea. It is not true that Southern men are more opposed than others to the freedom of women. The several Codes show that the Southern States were the first to remove the inequality of women as to property rights. It must also be remembered that a vigorous propaganda for the enfranchisement of women has been conducted for fifty years, at great expense of time and talent, all over the North, while it may be said to have just begun in the South.
If in 1890 any effort had been made by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to influence the Constitutional Convention then in session in Mississippi, the woman’s ballot on an educational basis might have been secured. Henry Blackwell was the only prominent Northern suffragist who seemed to have a wide-open eye on that convention. What he could he did, gratis, to help the cause, and won the friendship and gratitude of many in that State. The leading women who were applied to offered not one word of appreciation of the situation—doubtless because they were accustomed to expecting nothing good out of Nazareth; perhaps also because they would not aid what seemed an unrighteous effort to eliminate the negro vote.
It is not the first time in suffrage history that the white woman has been sacrificed to the brother in black. A political necessity brought within a few votes the political equality of woman. If Mississippi had then settled the race question on the only statesmanlike and just plan—by enfranchising intelligence and disfranchising ignorance—other States would have followed; for the South generally desires a model for a just and legal white supremacy—without the patent subterfuge of “grandfather clauses.” The heartbreak of any human soul or cause is not to have been equal to its opportunity. The whole woman’s movement is yet bearing the consequences of that eclipse of vision ten years ago.
The first ground broken in the cultivation of greater privileges for Louisiana women was the organization of the Woman’s Club of New Orleans. In 1884—as narrated in its history prepared for the World’s Columbian Exposition—in response to a notice in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, twelve women met in the parlor of the Young Men’s Christian Association and organized the first Woman’s Club in the South.
Miss Elizabeth Bisland, now Mrs. Charles W. Wetmore of New York, was its first president. Miss Bisland had already earned fair fame in literature, and the South was justly proud of her. She afterwards challenged the world’s notice by her swift girdling of the globe in the interest of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. The charter members of the pioneer club were of the heroic type, and amid fluctuations of hope and despair, forced on by the irresistible spirit of the age, founded a society which numbered its members by hundreds, and which secured and retained the sympathy and respect of the people.
The Constitution provided at first only for working women, but afterward eliminated this restriction. It stated that, evolved as it was from a progressive civilization, its movements must be elastic, its work versatile and comprehensive. It estimated its own scope as follows: “The vital and influential work of our club must always be along sociological lines. The term embraces pursuits of study and pastime, our labors and relaxations. In the aggregate we are breaking down and removing barriers of local prejudice; we are assisting intellectual growth and spiritual ambition in the community of which we are a dignified and effective body—for the immense economy of moral force made possible by a permanent organization such as ours, is well understood by the thoughtful.” It extended hospitality in the public recognition of extraordinary achievements by women, and helped to bring aspirants in art, literature and sociology before appreciative audiences, and introduced to New Orleans many world-renowned women and men.