"A woman's noblest station is retreat,
Her fairest virtues fly from public sight,"
and so, of course, she had no need of a special committee. It was vigorously opposed also by Senator Beck, of Kentucky, who said "the colored women's votes could be bought for fifty cents apiece;" and by Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who made a stump speech on "dissevered homes, disbanded families, pot-house politicians seated at the fireside with another man's wife, women fighting their way to the polls through crowds of negroes and ruffians," etc.[6] It was carried in the Senate by a vote of 35 to 23; in the House, a month later, by a vote of 115 to 84. Miss Anthony says of this in her diary: "If the best of worldly good had come to me personally, I could not feel more joyous and blest."
In addition to the usual distinguished array of speakers were Rev. Frederick Hinckley, Representative G. S. Orth, of Indiana, Senator Saunders, of Nebraska, Clara B. Colby, Harriette R. Shattuck and Helen M. Gougar, all new on the National platform. The Senate committee on woman suffrage just appointed, granted a hearing January 20, and at its close expressed a desire to hear other speakers among the ladies on the following day. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton presented each of the members of the committee with the first volume of the History of Woman Suffrage.
The convention closed with the usual handsome reception at the Riggs House and immediately afterwards most of the speakers went to Philadelphia, where Rachel Foster had arranged for another convention.[7] This was held at St. George's Hall, January 23, 24, 25, welcomed by Rev. Charles G. Ames, and was highly successful. A pleasant feature of this occasion was a luncheon given by that revered Quaker and temperance worker, Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, of Germantown, to twelve of the prominent speakers.
The two historians hastened back to their work, which was interrupted only by Miss Anthony's going to the New York State Suffrage Convention held in Chickering Hall, February 1. Calls for her presence and help came from many parts of the country. "O, how I long to be in the midst of the fray," she writes, "and here I am bound hand and foot. I shall feel like an uncaged lion when this book is off my hands." On February 15, her birthday was celebrated by suffrage clubs in many places,[8] but she refused to be drawn out of her retreat, where she was remembered with telegrams, newspaper notices and gifts. In quoting a complimentary reference from the Rochester Herald, the Elmira Free Press commented:
The Herald says too little. Miss Anthony has labored for the most part without money, and from pure love of the principle to which she has devoted her life. She is as good a knight as has enlisted in any crusade, and has sacrificed as much and been as faithful and true. She has been thrice true, indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps had as many of the frowns of this "good gray poet" of the woman's cause as anybody. It has seen enough of them to know, however, that behind that somewhat frigid exterior is a sensitiveness which would well become a girl of sixteen rather than a lady of sixty-two and which shows that the woman is always the woman; and it wants to present its compliments to the bravest and grandest old lady within the circle of its acquaintance.
The Washington Republic furnished another example of the pleasant things said:
Miss Anthony, whom we know well and of whom we can speak from personal experience, is so broad in her charity, so cosmopolitan in her sympathies, that she will stand, without fearing speck or soil, beside any publican or sinner whose eyes have been opened to see the good in woman's rights, and who is willing to help on the work in his own way. For herself she never deviates from the principles she espoused when, stepping upon the rostrum to plead for disfranchised women, she determined that her life work should be endeavoring to procure for her sex all the rights and privileges of which exclusively male legislation had for ages defrauded them. With eyes steadily fixed upon the goal she has in view, neither the jeers nor ridicule of the crowds without, nor the jealous asides of those claiming to be workers in the same cause, have had power to distract her attention or make her turn from her labor to answer or rebuke.
The last of April the second volume of the History was completed and its editors found to their dismay that they still had enough material on hand for a third huge volume. Mrs. Stanton sailed for Europe with her daughter Harriot, and after Miss Anthony had read the last bit of proof and seen all safe at the publishers, she obeyed an urgent call from the women at Washington and hastened thither to look after the congressional committees on woman suffrage.