With Mrs. Colby and Rev. Olympia Brown, assisted by local speakers, meetings were held at Waukesha, Ripon, Oshkosh, Green Bay, Grand Rapids, Eau Claire, LaCrosse, Evansville, Milwaukee and Madison. At the last place the ladies spoke in the Senate chamber of the State House to an audience containing a number of dignitaries, among them President Bascom, of the State University, and his wife, who from this time were Miss Anthony's steadfast friends. Mrs. Colby gives a graphic description of Miss Anthony's sudden outburst here, when several members had exasperated her by their remarks, which closes: "I was writing at the secretary's desk and as I looked up I realized the full grandeur of the scene. It was woman standing at the bar of the nation, pleading for the recognition of her citizenship. Miss Anthony seemed positively Titanic as she leaned far over from the speaker's desk. Her tone and manner were superb, and the vast and sympathetic audience caught the electric thrill...." In this city she was the guest of an old schoolmate, Elizabeth Ford Proudfit. The meetings closed December 3, and Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Spofford:
I intend now to make straight for Washington without a stop. I shall come both ragged and dirty. Think of two solid months of conventions, speaking every night! Don't worry about me. I was never better or more full of hope and good work. Though the apparel will be tattered and torn, the mind, the essence of me, is sound to the core. Please tell the little milliner to have a bonnet picked out for me, and get a dressmaker who will patch me together so I shall be presentable. Now for the Washington convention: Before settling upon the Universalist church, you would better pocket the insults and refusals of the Congregational church powers that be and send your most lovely and winning girls to ask for that. If you can't get it or the Metropolitan or the Foundry or the New York Avenue or any large and popular church, why take the Universalist, and then tell the saints of the fashionable churches that we dwell there because they refused us admission to their holy sanctuaries. Don't let us go into the heterodox houses, much as I love them, except because we are driven away from the orthodox.
In December the third volume of the History of Woman Suffrage at last was ready for the public, another book of nearly 1,000 pages. It completed the story up to 1884, and like its predecessors was cordially received by the press. The money swallowed up by this work hardly will be credited. Mrs. Stanton not being able or willing to revise the last volume until it was put into proof slips, and then making extensive changes, the cost for re-setting type was over $900. The fifty fine steel engravings and the prints made from them cost over $6,000. For proof reading $500 was paid, and for indexing, $250. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage, seeing that there never would be any profits from the books and that Miss Anthony proposed to give most of them away, sold out their rights to her, the former for $2,000 and the latter for $1,000. She also, as has been stated, bought out the interest of Fowler & Wells. When the first edition of the three mammoth volumes finally came into her sole possession, they represented an outlay on her part of $20,000.
While there were many criticisms from certain quarters as to various errors and so-called misstatements, and many threats to write a history which should be free from all imperfections, the fact remains that, although fifty years have passed since the inception of the great movement to secure equal rights for women, there never has been another attempt to preserve the story. But for Miss Anthony's careful collecting and saving of newspaper accounts, manuscripts of speeches, published reports and the correspondence of half a century, her persistent and determined effort for ten years to have them put into readable shape, and Mrs. Stanton's fine ability to do it, the student never would have been able to trace the evolution of woman from a chattel in the eye of the law to a citizen with legal and social rights very nearly equal to those of man. While there is necessarily some repetition, so long a time elapsing between the writing of the different volumes, and perhaps a little prolixity, there is not a dull page in the whole work and the reader will find it difficult to reach a place where she is willing to stop. It contains a resumé of early conditions; the persecutions endured by the pioneers in the struggle for freedom; the progress in each separate State, and in foreign countries; the action taken by different legislatures and congresses; the grand arguments made for equal rights; the position of woman in church and State. Into whatever library the student may go seeking information upon this question, it is to these volumes he must look to find it in collected and connected form. If Miss Anthony had done no other work but to produce this History, she would deserve a prominent place on the list of immortal names.
It was necessary to put so high a price upon it, $15 a set in cloth and $19.50 in leather binding, as to make a large sale impossible. Miss Anthony did not undertake it as a money-making scheme, and when the receipt of Mrs. Eddy's bequest enabled her to discharge all indebtedness connected with it, she felt herself at liberty to use it as a most valuable means of educating the people into an understanding of the broad principle of equality of rights. At her own expense she placed the History in over 1,000 of the libraries of Europe and America, including the British Museum, the university libraries of Oxford, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Finland, Melbourne, Toronto, and many of the university and public libraries of the United States. The members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in several Congresses were presented with sets, and there are hundreds of letters on file from prominent persons in England and this country acknowledging the receipt of the books.
Chapters might be made of commendatory letters received from officials, writers, public workers and friends in private life. A few specimens must suffice. A letter from Senator H. B. Anthony to his "dear cousin," closed by saying: "The three volumes form a valuable history of the important enterprise in which you have borne so conspicuous and honorable a part, and you have added to the reputation of the name that we both bear."
Mary L. Booth, the gifted editor of Harper's Bazar, thus expressed her opinion of the work:
You and your colleagues have industriously placed on record a copious mass of documentary evidence which will be of the utmost value when the time arrives to sum up the final results. When this era comes, you will be foremost among the band of heroic pioneers who have endured discomfort, obloquy and privation of much that is dear to women for the sake of those who will profit by your labors while failing to recognize them. Posterity will do you this justice, whether your contemporaries do or not; but indeed, it is universally known to those with any knowledge of the facts, that among all the champions of women, none has been more distinguished for utter self-abnegation, single-heartedness and devotion to her life-work than Susan B. Anthony.
As you know, I have always felt the deepest interest in the elevation of women, which is synonymous with that of humanity, for man must be always on the plane of his wife, sister and mother.... The antagonism to political equality is rapidly disappearing, as it is beginning to be recognized that in politics, as in everything else, woman's help is needed, and the republic can not afford to have her stand aloof. But this phase of the subject has been so much misunderstood, both by men and women, that time is needed to clear away the mists of misconception which envelop it; and to prove that the co-operation of women in political life is not only just and expedient, but absolutely indispensable to the public weal.
