That there should be a paper published in the interest of the rights of women had been the dream of the advocates for many years. Antoinette Blackwell had written Miss Anthony several years before: "I wish we had the contemplated paper for Mrs. Stanton's especial benefit. I am afraid it will be too late for her when we get it fairly established, which does not promise to be very soon. Lucy believes her own talents lie in other directions, and gives no approval to the plan for herself." Lucy Stone had written: "We must have a paper and dear, brave, sensible Mrs. Stanton must be the editor." And at another time: "I feel very proud of Mrs. Stanton, she is so strong and noble. When we have a new paper she must be the editor."
Mrs. Stanton, with her house and her large family, had no desire for this position. Miss Anthony herself was not a writer, and many times of late years had agitated the question of raising money to have Lucy Stone and her husband at the head of a paper, they having now signified their willingness to hold such a place. The founding of The Revolution was totally unexpected and its editors accepted it only because of the great need of a medium through which the cause of woman might be thoroughly advocated. There was not the slightest desire to enter into rivalry with anybody or to antagonize the Republicans. If the latter had been willing to furnish the money to start a paper, or had allowed space in their own publications, the favor would have been most gladly accepted. Had the members of the Equal Rights Association raised a fund to establish an organ, so much the better, but although the subject had been talked of for years, the capital had not been forthcoming. There was no attempt to make the association responsible for the opinions of The Revolution, as this letter from Mrs. Stanton indicates:
Susan and I, though members of the Equal Rights Association, do many things outside that body for which no one is responsible. The idea of starting a paper under its auspices, or as an organ for it, never entered our minds. We went to Kansas as individuals; personal friends outside that association gave us money to go and contributed the funds to start a paper. We object to that resolution of censure, first, because we were outside its province; second, because it was an outrage to repudiate Susan and me, who have labored without cessation for twenty years and had just returned from a hard three months' campaign. For any one to question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to crush us and our paper.
In showing how the women were sacrificed, The Revolution said:
Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, with one consent, bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, "One idea for a generation," to come up in the order of their importance. First negro suffrage, then temperance, then the eight-hour movement, then woman suffrage. Three generations hence, woman suffrage will be in order! What an insult to the women who have labored thirty years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads. Gerrit Smith, forgetting that our great American idea is "individual rights," on which Abolitionists have ever based their strongest arguments for emancipation, says: "This is the time to settle the rights of races; unless we do justice to the negro we shall bring down on ourselves another bloody revolution, another four years' war, but we have nothing to fear from woman, she will not avenge herself!" Woman not avenge herself? Look at your asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the insane, and there behold the results of this wholesale desecration of the mothers of the race! Woman not avenge herself? Go into the streets of your cities at the midnight hour, and there behold those whom God meant to be queens in the moral universe giving your sons their first lessons in infamy and vice. No, you can not wrong the humblest of God's creatures without making discord and confusion in the whole social system.
In regard to the bitter persecution waged upon the two women, Ellen Wright Garrison said in a letter to Miss Anthony: "This sitting in judgment upon those whose views differ from our own, pouring vials of wrath on their heads and calling in the outside and prejudiced public to help condemn, is unwise and un-Christian." Her mother, Martha Wright, who at first was inclined to blame, wrote in the spring of 1868: "As regards the paper, its vigorous pages are what we need. I regret the idiosyncrasies of Mr. Train, as they give occasion to the sons and daughters of the Philistines to rejoice, and the children of the uncircumcised only wanted a good excuse to triumph. Shall you be at the May meeting? I will not be there under any circumstances without you and Susan and our good friend Parker; so whatever may become of Mr. Train or of the paper, count me now and ever as your true and unswerving friend."
The following graphic description, by the correspondent, Nellie Hutchinson, was published in the Cincinnati Commercial:
There's a peculiarly resplendent sign at the head of the third flight of stairs, and obeying its directions I march into the north corridor and enter The Revolution office. Nothing so very terrible after all. The first face that salutes my vision is a youthful one—fresh, smiling, bright-eyed, auburn-crowned. It belongs to one of the employes of the establishment, and its owner conducts me to a comfortable sofa, then trips lightly through a little door opposite to inform Miss Anthony of my presence.
I glance about me. What editorial bliss is this! Actually a neat carpet on the floor, a substantial round table covered by a pretty cloth, engravings and photographs hung thickly over the clear white walls. Here is Lucretia Mott's saintly face, beautiful with eternal youth; there Mary Wollstonecraft looking into futurity with earnest eyes. In an arched recess are shelves containing books and piles of pamphlets, speeches and essays of Stuart Mill, Wendell Phillips, Higginson, Curtis. Two screens extend across the front of the room, inclosing a little space around the two large windows which give light, air and glimpses of City Hall park. Glancing around the corner we see editor Pillsbury seated at his desk by the further window. Opposite is another desk covered with brown wrappers and mailing books. Close against the screen stands yet another, at which sits the bookkeeper, an energetic young woman who ably manages all the business affairs of The Revolution. There's an atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy about the place; everything is refreshingly neat and clean, and suggestive of reform.
Ah! here comes Susan—the determined—the invincible, the Susan who is possibly destined to be Vice-President or Secretary of State some of these days! What a delicious thought! I tremble as she steps rapidly toward me and I perceive in her hand a most statesmanlike roll of MSS. The eyes scan me coolly and interrogatively but the pleasant voice gives me a yet pleasanter greeting. There's something very attractive, even fascinating in that voice—a faint echo of the alto vibration—the tone of power. Her smile is very sweet and genial, and lights up the pale, worn face rarely. She talks awhile in her kindly, incisive way. "We're not foolishly or blindly aggressive," says she, tersely; "we don't lead a fight against the true and noble institutions of the world. We only seek to substitute for various barbarian ideas, those of a higher civilization—to develop a race of earnest, thoughtful, conscientious women." And I thought as I remembered various newspaper attacks, that here was not much to object to. The world is the better for thee, Susan.
She rises; "Come, let me introduce you to Mrs. Stanton." And we walk into the inner sanctum, a tiny bit of a room, nicely carpeted, one-windowed and furnished with two desks, two chairs, a little table—and the senior editor, Mrs. Stanton. The short, substantial figure, with its handsome black dress and silver crown of curls, is sufficiently interesting. The fresh, girlish complexion, the laughing blue eyes and jolly voice are yet more so. Beside her stands her sixteen-year-old daughter, who is as plump, as jolly, as laughing-eyed as her mother. We study Cady Stanton's handsome face as she talks on rapidly and facetiously. Nothing little or mean in that face; no line of distrust or irony; neither are there wrinkles of care—life has been pleasant to this woman.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
We hear a bustle in the outer room—rapid voices and laughing questions—then the door is suddenly thrown open and in steps a young Aurora, habited in a fur-trimmed cloak, with a jaunty black velvet cap and snowy feather set upon her dark clustering curls. What sprite is this, whose eyes flash and sparkle with a thousand happy thoughts, whose dimples and rosy lips and white teeth make so charming a picture? "My dear Anna," says Susan, starting up, and there's a shower of kisses. Then follows an introduction to Anna Dickinson. As we clasp hands for a moment, I look into the great gray eyes that have flashed with indignation and grown moist with pity before thousands of audiences. They are radiant with mirth now, beaming as a child's, and with graceful abandon she throws herself into a chair and begins a ripple of gay talk. The two pretty assistants come in and look at her with loving eyes; we all cluster around while she wittily recounts her recent lecturing experience. As the little lady keeps up her merry talk, I think over these three representative women. The white-haired, comely matron sitting there hand-in-hand with her daughter, intellectual, large-hearted, high-souled—a mother of men; the grave, energetic old maid—an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for all, and prophesies like an oracle of old.
May we not hope that America's coming woman will combine these salient qualities, and with all the powers of mind, soul and heart vivified and developed in a liberal atmosphere, prove herself the noblest creature in the world? And so I leave them there—the pleasant group—faithful in their work, happy in their hopes.
On May 14, 1868, the American Equal Rights Association held its second anniversary in Cooper Institute. Mrs. Stanton, who had a wholesome dread of anything disagreeable, was determined not to go, but Miss Anthony declared that to stay away would be showing the "white feather" and that, as their enemies had been many weeks working up a sentiment against them, their presence would prove they had nothing to fear. When the convention assembled, Lucretia Mott, the president, being absent on account of the recent death of her husband, Colonel Higginson said to Miss Anthony: "Now we want everything pleasant and peaceable here, do we not?" "Certainly," she replied. "Well then, we must have Lucy Stone open this meeting." "Why so," asked Miss Anthony, "when Mrs. Stanton is first vice-president? It would be not only an insult to her but a direct violation of parliamentary usage. I shall never consent to it." Finding that, nevertheless, there was a scheme to carry out this plan, she put Mrs. Stanton on the alert and, as the officers filed on the platform, gave her a gentle push to the front, whereupon she opened the convention with the utmost suavity.
It was here that these pioneers of the movement for woman suffrage had the humiliation of hearing Frederick Douglass announce that it was women's duty to take a back seat and wait till the negro was enfranchised before they put in their claim. Rev. Olympia Brown and Lucy Stone both declared the Republican party false to its principles unless it protected women as well as colored men in their right to vote, and in his report on the Kansas campaign, Mr. Blackwell, after speaking of the splendid work of Lucy Stone, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown, said: "Their eloquence and determination gave great promise of success; but, in an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and others saw fit in the Constitutional Convention to report adversely to woman suffrage in New York, which influenced the sentiment in the younger western State and its enterprise was crushed. Even the Republicans in Kansas set their faces against the extension of suffrage to women."