Miss Anthony took back to Rochester her little four-year-old niece and namesake, Susie B., and many touching entries in her journal show how closely the child entwined itself about her heart. She found that Lydia Mott still lived, and, allowing herself only two days' rest after all the hard weeks of physical and mental strain, she went to Albany to stay with her friend till the end came, a month later. The diary of August 20 says: "There passed out of my life today the one who, next to my own family, has been the nearest and dearest to me for thirty years."
On October 2, 1875, she heard Frances E. Willard lecture for the first time, and comments, "A lovely, spirited and spiritual woman, characterized by genuine Christian simplicity." Miss Anthony was a guest with Miss Willard at the home of Professor and Mrs. Lattimore. When they reached the hall Miss Willard asked her to sit on the platform, but Miss Anthony declined, saying, "No, you have a heavy enough load to carry without taking me." November 4 Miss Anthony gave her lecture on "Social Purity" in Rochester, introduced by Judge Henry R. Selden, and writes, "I had a most attentive and solemn listening." The rest of the year was spent in finishing the interrupted lectures in Iowa, and the beginning of 1876 found her in the far West with so many engagements that she decided, for the first time in all the years, not to go to Washington to the National Convention. This was in the capable hands of Mrs. Gage, who was then president; so she sent an encouraging letter and a liberal contribution.
Miss Anthony still continued on her weary round-through the inclement winter and spring, sometimes lecturing to meager and sometimes to crowded houses but netting an average of $100 a week, which was religiously applied to the payment of the debt. She returned to Chicago to lecture again in the Dime course, Sunday, March 26, and says in her diary: "An immense audience, hall packed, my speech was free, easy and happy, my audience quick to see and appreciate." The address on this occasion was "Bread and the Ballot."[85] She returned at once to Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, "The day of Jubilee for me has come. I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution debt!" It was just six years to the very month since she had given up her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness, and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from her shoulders and she was free. Even the newspapers offered congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.[86] In a long notice, the Chicago Daily News said:
Her paper lived a few years and then went down. In the heart of the woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in other women's hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby's face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death. But The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars. Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and assumed, individually, the entire indebtedness. By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn she has paid the debt and interest. And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, whatever they may think of her political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence.
The Rochester Post-Express thus voiced the opinion of her own townspeople:
The thousands of friends of the plucky and noble woman of whom we speak will rejoice with her over this success. There are a good many men who have hidden behind their wives' petticoats for a much smaller sum than $10,000. It should be remembered, furthermore, that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin's bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and has always, everywhere, been the soul of helpfulness and benevolence. Here is an example, in a woman, who our laws say is not fit to exercise the active and defensive privilege of citizenship, that puts to shame the lives of ninety-nine in every hundred men.
It is not surprising that the letters of her friends during these past months should speak of "the pale, sad face, so worn by lines of care and toil," but now all was over and she returned home. To rest? Far from it. The third day found her en route for New York to attend the Suffrage Anniversary, May 10 and 11.
The thinking women of the country were justly indignant, in this great centennial year of the Republic, at the high-handed manner in which they had been ignored in the vast preparations for its celebration, in spite of their protests and in face of the fact that women had purchased $100,000 of the centennial stock issued to pay expenses. It had been decided at the Washington convention that the National Association should open headquarters in Philadelphia, and at this May meeting Miss Anthony was made chairman of the 1876 campaign committee. The resolutions adopted show the spirit of the convention:
WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual before governments are founded, constitutions framed or courts created; and whereas, Governments exist to protect the people in the enjoyment of their natural rights, and when one becomes destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist and abolish it; and whereas, The women of the United States for one hundred years have been denied the exercise of their natural right of self-government; therefore
Resolved, That it is their natural right and most sacred duty to rebel against the injustice, usurpation and tyranny of our present government.
WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did not claim to be of the people, but on the contrary upheld the "divine right of kings;" and whereas, The women of this nation today, under a government which claims to be based upon individual rights, in an infinitely greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war of the Revolution; and whereas, the oppression is all the more keenly felt because our masters, instead of dwelling in a foreign land, are our husbands, fathers, brothers and sons; therefore
Resolved, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than had the men of 1776.
Resolved, That with Abigail Adams we believe "the passion for liberty can not be strong in the breasts of those who are accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty;" that, as she predicted in 1776, "we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we have no voice or representation."
WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and that a true republic is the best form of government in the world; and whereas, This government is false to its underlying principles in denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot; and one-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century of boasted liberty, are still political slaves; therefore
Resolved, That we protest against calling the present centennial a celebration of the independence of the people of the United States.
Resolved, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound to obey laws in whose making we have had no voice and, in presence of the assembled nations of the world gathered on this soil to celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the women of this land.
Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage had long had in view the preparation of a history of the woman's rights movement, which they expected to be a pamphlet of several hundred pages, and they offered this as a premium to every one who should send $5 toward the contemplated headquarters.[87] Fifty-two women responded at once, and with this $260 they ventured to rent fine, large parlors in a desirable part of Philadelphia and fit them up in an attractive manner. By the laws of Pennsylvania a married woman could not make a contract and Miss Anthony, being the only femme sole, was obliged to assume the financial responsibility. She and Mrs. Gage took charge of the headquarters May 25, and issued the following announcement: