A number of amusing letters were exchanged. From Miss Willard: "Mr. Taft is the most progressive believer in woman and admirer of you, dear Susan, that I know. He is in full sympathy with all of our ideas. I am sure that as a friend of mine, appreciated by me as highly as you are by any woman living, you will not place me in the position of declining to have this work done. Please do not take counsel of women who are so prejudiced that, as I once heard said, they would not allow a male grasshopper to chirp on their lawn; but out of your own great heart, refuse to set an example to such folly."
Mr. Taft himself wrote Miss Anthony: "I can put myself in your place sufficiently to appreciate in part the objections which you or your friends may feel toward having the work done by a man. My only regret is that I am not to be allowed to pay this tribute to one whom I was early taught to honor and revere.... Come to think of it, I believe I am provoked after all. Sex is but an accident, and it seems to me that it has no more to do with art than has the artist's complexion or the political party he votes with." Again from Miss Willard: "Do you not see, my friend and comrade, that having engaged a noble and large-minded young man, who believes as we do, to make that bust, engaged him in good faith and announced it to the public, it is a 'little rough on me,' as the boys say, for my dear sister to wish me to break my contract? We can not have too many busts of you, so let Miss Johnson go on and make hers, and let me have mine, and let those other women make theirs, and we will yet have one of them in the House of Representatives at Washington, the other in the Senate, the third in the White House!... My dear mother and Anna wish to be remembered to you, knowing that you are one of our best and most trusted friends, only I must say that you are a naughty woman in this matter of the 'statoot.'" Miss Anthony's common sense finally induced her to waive objections and she gave Mr. Taft as many sittings as he desired. When the work was finished Miss Willard wrote: "My beloved Susan, your statue is perfect. Lady Henry and I think that one man has seen your great, benignant soul and shown it in permanent material."
The 25th of May Miss Anthony attended a meeting of the Ohio association at Salem, where had been held in April, 1850, the second woman's rights convention in all history. There was present one of the pioneers who had called that convention, Emily, wife of Marius Robinson, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle. Miss Anthony read her paper for her, as she was over eighty years old, and added her own strong comments, of which the report of the secretary said: "Her burning words can never be forgotten, and many a soul must have responded to her call for workers to carry to glorious completion what was begun in such difficulty."
There was some talk at this time of holding a Southern Woman's Council and Miss Anthony wrote to the Arkansas Woman's Chronicle:
The New England States hold an annual suffrage convention and have done so for nearly thirty years, and I do not see any valid reason why the States of any section may not have a society or a convention. Larger numbers from the six New England States can meet and help each other in Boston, than could possibly go to Washington to get the soul-refreshing which comes through the gathering together of kindred spirits from the entire nation.
As I shall be glad to see the women of the South, of all possible aims and ends, meet in council, so I should rejoice to see them hold a southern States' suffrage convention. I say this because I want you to know that my heartiest sympathy goes with you in your effort to call together the women of your section of the Union; and I shall rejoice to see the women of the far-off northwestern States doing the same thing. Women should have their local societies and meetings, their county, State and section conventions, and then, for our great national gathering, each State should send its representatives to Washington, there to confer together and go before the committees of Congress to urge our claims. What a power women would be if all could but see eye to eye in their struggle for freedom!
She remained at home long enough to prepare the memorials to the national political conventions, and June 4 found her at Minneapolis ready for the Republican gathering. She was entertained by Mr. and Mrs. T. B. Walker, and found Mrs. J. Ellen Foster also a guest in that hospitable home. The memorial presented by the National-American W. S. A. contained the same unanswerable arguments for the enfranchisement of women which had been made for so many years, and asked for the following plank: "As a voice in the laws and the rulers under which we live is the inalienable right of every citizen of a republic, we pledge ourselves, when again in power, to place the ballot in the hand of every woman of legal age, as the only weapon with which she can protect her person and property and defend herself against all aggressive legislation."
Miss Anthony was notified that she could have a hearing before the platform committee on the evening of June 8. She was promptly on hand and was kept standing in the hall outside of the committee room until after 9 o'clock. Finally she was so tired she sent for one of the committee to ask how much longer she would have to wait. She learned that its chairman, J. B. Foraker, of Ohio, refused to preside or call the committee to order to hear any argument on woman suffrage. Senator Jones, of Nevada, then hunted him up and asked if he might preside in his place, and permission being given she was invited into the room. She spoke for thirty minutes as only a woman could speak who had suffered the persecution of an Abolitionist before the Republican party was born, who had been loyal to that party throughout all the dark days of the Civil War, who had not once repudiated its principles in all the years which had since elapsed. She pleaded that now she and the women she represented might have its support and recognition in their right to representation at the ballot-box. This committee was composed of twoscore of the most prominent men in the Republican party and, at the close of Miss Anthony's address, every one in the room arose and many crowded about her, giving her the most earnest assurance of their belief in the justice of her cause, but telling her frankly that they could not put a woman suffrage plank in their platform as the party was not able to carry the load! The plank eventually adopted read as follows:
We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in all public elections, and that such ballot shall be counted as cast; that such laws shall be enacted and enforced as will secure to every citizen, be he rich or poor, native or foreign, white or black, this sovereign right guaranteed by the Constitution. The free and honest popular ballot, the just and equal representation of all the people, as well as their just and equal protection under the laws, are the foundation of our republican institutions, and the party will never relax its efforts until the integrity of the ballot and the purity of elections shall be guaranteed and protected in every State.
This was identical with the one adopted in 1888, at which time a number of women had telegraphed the chairman asking if the convention intended it to apply to women, and he had answered that he did not understand it to have any such intention. Therefore the women who went to the Republican convention of 1892 asking for bread, received instead "the water in which the eggs had been boiled."
There were present at this convention two regularly appointed women delegates from Wyoming, and the difference in the attention bestowed upon them and upon those who came to press the claims of the great class of the disfranchised, ought to have been an object lesson to all who assert that women will lose the respect of men when they enter politics. Not a newspaper in the country had a slur to cast on these women delegates. The Boston Globe made this pertinent comment: "An elective queen in this country is no more out of place than one seated by hereditary consent abroad. It is no rash prediction to assert that the child is now born who will see a woman in the presidential chair. Thomas Jefferson will not be fully vindicated until this government rests upon the consent of all the governed."