Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
since it became an organized Territory in 1854. There was not the
slightest reference, at first, to the women. One speaker said: "This
State was settled by three brothers, John, James, and Joseph, and from
them have sprung the great concourse of people that greet us here
to-day." I turned, and asked the Governor if all these people had
sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of John, James, and Joseph. He
urged me to put that question to the speaker; so, in one of his eloquent
pauses, I propounded the query, which was greeted with loud and
prolonged cheers, to the evident satisfaction of the women present. The
next speaker took good care to give the due meed of praise to Ann, Jane,
and Mary, and to every mention of the mothers of Nebraska the crowd
heartily responded.
In toasting "the women of Nebraska," at the collation, I said: "Here's
to the mothers, who came hither by long, tedious journeys, closely
packed with restless children in emigrant wagons, cooking the meals by
day, and nursing the babies by night, while the men slept. Leaving
comfortable homes in the East, they endured all the hardships of pioneer
life, suffered, with the men, the attacks of the Dakota Indians and the
constant apprehension of savage raids, of prairie fires, and the
devastating locusts. Man's trials, his fears, his losses, all fell on
woman with double force; yet history is silent concerning the part woman
performed in the frontier life of the early settlers. Men make no
mention of her heroism and divine patience; they take no thought of the
mental or physical agonies women endure in the perils of maternity,
ofttimes without nurse or physician in the supreme hour of their need,
going, as every mother does, to the very gates of death in giving life
to an immortal being!"
Traveling all over these Western States in the early days, seeing the
privations women suffered, and listening to the tales of sorrow at the
fireside, I wondered that men could ever forget the debt of gratitude
they owed to their mothers, or fail to commemorate their part in the
growth of a great people. Yet the men of Nebraska have twice defeated
the woman suffrage amendment.
In 1874 Michigan was the point of interest to all those who had taken
part in the woman-suffrage movement. The legislature, by a very large
majority, submitted to a vote of the electors an amendment of the
Constitution, in favor of striking out the word "male" and thus securing
civil and political rights to the women of the State. It was a very
active campaign. Crowded meetings were held in all the chief towns and
cities. Professor Moses Coit Tyler, and a large number of ministers
preached, every Sunday, on the subject of woman's position. The
Methodist conference passed a resolution in favor of the amendment by a
unanimous vote. I was in the State during the intense heat of May and
June, speaking every evening to large audiences; in the afternoon to
women alone, and preaching every Sunday in some pulpit. The Methodists,
Universalists, Unitarians, and Quakers all threw open their churches to
the apostles of the new gospel of equality for women. We spoke in jails,
prisons, asylums, depots, and the open air. Wherever there were ears to
hear, we lifted up our voices, and, on the wings of the wind, the glad
tidings were carried to the remote corners of the State, and the votes
of forty thousand men, on election day, in favor of the amendment were
so many testimonials to the value of the educational work accomplished.
I made many valuable acquaintances, on that trip, with whom I have
maintained lifelong friendships. One pleasant day I passed in the home
of Governor Bagley and his wife, with a group of pretty children. I
found the Governor deeply interested in prison reform. He had been
instrumental in passing a law giving prisoners lights in their cells and
pleasant reading matter until nine o'clock. His ideas of what prisons
should be, as unfolded that day, have since been fully realized in the
grand experiment now being successfully tried at Elmira, New York.
I visited the State prison at Jackson, and addressed seven hundred men
and boys, ranging from seventy down to seventeen years of age. Seated on
the dais with the chaplain, I saw them file in to dinner, and, while
they were eating, I had an opportunity to study the sad, despairing
faces before me. I shall never forget the hopeless expression of one
young man, who had just been sentenced for twenty years, nor how ashamed
I felt that one of my own sex, trifling with two lovers, had fanned the
jealousy of one against the other, until the tragedy ended in the death
of one and the almost lifelong imprisonment of the other. If girls
should be truthful and transparent in any relations in life, surely it
is in those of love, involving the strongest passions of which human
nature is capable. As the chaplain told me the sad story, and I noticed
the prisoner's refined face and well-shaped head, I felt that the young
man was not under the right influences to learn the lesson he needed.
Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral
weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not
change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual
faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in
our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the
self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the
criminal.
My heart was so heavy I did not know what to say to such an assembly of
the miserable. I asked the chaplain what I should say. "Just what you
please," he replied. Thinking they had probably heard enough of their
sins, their souls, and the plan of salvation, I thought I would give
them the news of the day. So I told them about the woman suffrage
amendment, what I was doing in the State, my amusing encounters with
opponents, their arguments, my answers. I told them of the great changes
that would be effected in prison life when the mothers of the nation had
a voice in the buildings and discipline. I told them what Governor
Bagley said, and of the good time coming when prisons would no longer be
places of punishment but schools of reformation. To show them what women
would do to realize this beautiful dream, I told them of Elizabeth Fry
and Dorothea L. Dix, of Mrs. Farnham's experiment at Sing Sing, and
Louise Michel's in New Caledonia, and, in closing, I said: "Now I want
all of you who are in favor of the amendment to hold up your right
hands." They gave a unanimous vote, and laughed heartily when I said, "I
do wish you could all go to the polls in November and that we could lock
our opponents up here until after the election." I felt satisfied that
they had had one happy hour, and that I had said nothing to hurt the
feelings of the most unfortunate. As they filed off to their respective
workshops my faith and hope for brighter days went with them. Then I
went all through the prison. Everything looked clean and comfortable on
the surface, but I met a few days after a man, just set free, who had
been there five years for forgery. He told me the true inwardness of the
system; of the wretched, dreary life they suffered, and the brutality of
the keepers. He said the prison was infested with mice and vermin, and
that, during the five years he was there, he had never lain down one
night to undisturbed slumber. The sufferings endured in summer for want
of air, he said, were indescribable. In this prison the cells were in
the center of the building, the corridors running all around by the
windows, so the prisoners had no outlook and no direct contact with the
air. Hence, if a careless keeper forgot to open the windows after a
storm, the poor prisoners panted for air in their cells, like fish out
of water. My informant worked in the mattress department, over the room
where prisoners were punished. He said he could hear the lash and the
screams of the victims from morning till night. "Hard as the work is all
day," said he, "it is a blessed relief to get out of our cells to march
across the yard and get one glimpse of the heavens above, and one breath
of pure air, and to be in contact with other human souls in the
workshops, for, although we could never speak to each other, yet there
was a hidden current of sympathy conveyed by look that made us one in
our misery."
Though the press of the State was largely in our favor, yet there were
some editors who, having no arguments, exercised the little wit they did
possess in low ridicule. It was in this campaign that an editor in a
Kalamazoo journal said: "That ancient daughter of Methuselah, Susan B.
Anthony, passed through our city yesterday, on her way to the Plainwell
meeting, with a bonnet on her head looking as if it had recently
descended from Noah's ark." Miss Anthony often referred to this
description of herself, and said, "Had I represented twenty thousand
voters in Michigan, that political editor would not have known nor cared
whether I was the oldest or the youngest daughter of Methuselah, or
whether my bonnet came from the ark or from Worth's."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SPIRIT OF '76.
The year 1876 was one of intense excitement and laborious activity
throughout the country. The anticipation of the centennial birthday of
the Republic, to be celebrated in Philadelphia, stirred the patriotism
of the people to the highest point of enthusiasm. As each State was to
be represented in the great exhibition, local pride added another
element to the public interest. Then, too, everyone who could possibly
afford the journey was making busy preparations to spend the Fourth of
July, the natal day of the Republic, mid the scenes where the
Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, the Government
inaugurated, and the first national councils were held. Those interested
in women's political rights decided to make the Fourth a woman's day,
and to celebrate the occasion, in their various localities, by
delivering orations and reading their own declaration of rights, with
dinners and picnics in the town halls or groves, as most convenient. But
many from every State in the Union made their arrangements to spend the
historic period in Philadelphia. Owing, also, to the large number of
foreigners who came over to join in the festivities, that city was
crammed to its utmost capacity. With the crowd and excessive heat,
comfort was everywhere sacrificed to curiosity.
The enthusiasm throughout the country had given a fresh impulse to the
lyceum bureaus. Like the ferryboats in New York harbor, running hither
and thither, crossing each other's tracks, the whole list of lecturers
were on the wing, flying to every town and city from San Francisco to
New York. As soon as a new railroad ran through a village of five
hundred inhabitants that could boast a schoolhouse, a church, or a
hotel, and one enterprising man or woman, a course of lectures was at
once inaugurated as a part of the winter's entertainments.
On one occasion I was invited, by mistake, to a little town to lecture
the same evening when the Christy Minstrels were to perform. It was
arranged, as the town had only one hall, that I should speak from seven
to eight o'clock and the minstrels should have the remainder of the
time. One may readily see that, with the minstrels in anticipation, a
lecture on any serious question would occupy but a small place in the
hearts of the people in a town where they seldom had entertainments of
any kind. All the time I was speaking there was a running to and fro
behind the scenes, where the minstrels were transforming themselves with
paints and curly wigs into Africans, and laughing at each other's jests.
As it was a warm evening, and the windows were open, the hilarity of the