Shortly after the Seneca Falls convention, in 1850, our future Suffrage leader started working with the Underground Railroad in Rochester. She attended an antislavery meeting Syracuse where the new Fugitive Slave Law was debated. The law stipulated that a slave owner had the right to recapture a slave, even if the slave made it to a free state, such as New York.

The Power of Networking

Anthony’s friend Amelia Bloomer, edited an abolitionist newspaper, The Lily. Bloomer invited Anthony to Seneca Falls after the convention and introduced her to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the organizers of the 1848 convention. Ironically, women cannot seem to overcome curiosity about their chosen wardrobes. Anthony and Stanton both liked the new fashion of skirts that ended just below their knees, rather than the more traditional full long skirts. The preserve their modesty, they wore pants, nicknamed bloomers after Amelia Bloomer who initiated this shocking fashion trend.

Setting fashion issues aside, Anthony accompanied her new friend Stanton to a meeting of the Daughters of the Temperance. The daughters sat and listened to the men talk. Suffrage leader Anthony stood to say something. She was promptly chastised and told “sisters were not invited to speak, but to listen and learn.” She left the meeting. With Stanton’s encouragement, Anthony formed the Women’s New York Temperance Society and named Stanton president.

The Power of Speaking

In 1854 Anthony went on a statewide speaking tour, hoping to visit all fifty-four New York counties. Along the four-month long trip she visited her two married sisters. The visits convinced her the life of a wife and mother was not for her. She began garnering support from others. Her sisters supported her choice not to marry. An uncle she’d once lived with defended her when others wanted her to return to teaching. “No! Anyone can teach, but Susan’s real calling is to go around and set people thinking about the laws.”

She attended a teacher’s convention in 1857 and demanded that black and white children attend the same schools. She further scandalized those attending by saying the schools should be co-ed. Her persistent efforts began to get results. In 1860, due largely to the efforts of Suffrage Activist Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, the New York State granted married women the right to own property and handle business in their own names.

Disrupted by the Civil War

Due to the start of the Civil War in 1861 Anthony and Stanton decided to set aside advocating for women’s rights, a decision they would later regret. In 1862, lacking the constant pressure of Anthony, Stanton, and others who supported their cause, the New York State legislature reversed parts of the law that gave married women the right to own property and handle their own business affairs. It was a bitter setback, but it motived her to fight harder.

She continued speaking out against slavery. Her father died shortly after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Frederick Douglass attended his funeral. After the Civil War, the Constitution was amended to give all citizens the right to vote – white and black – but only male citizens. Anthony was furious. After all her hard work on behalf of abolition, she and all other women, were left out of the amended Constitution. In 1866 Wendell Phillips said at an Anti-Slavery meeting that this was the Negro’s hour and it was selfish for women to interfere with black suffrage by seeking it for themselves.

The Power of Protests

Anthony and Stanton collected 10,000 signatures for women’s suffrage on the petition they took to the New York State Congress. The congressmen removed the ‘white’ requirement to vote, but left it for men only. Sojourner Truth responded, “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights but not a word about the colored women theirs. You see, the colored men will be the masters over the women.”

Horace Greeley, editor of one of the country’s most influential papers, the Tribune, initially supported women’s suffrage. He later changed positions and argued against women’s right to vote, claiming, “The best women I know do not want to vote.”

Anthony, Stanton, and countless others continued their uphill battles to secure the vote for women. November 5, 1872 Susan B. Anthony, accompanied by her three sisters, showed up to vote in Rochester, New York. Susan decided to cast her vote for the next president of the United States. She carried with her the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, guaranteeing the right to vote to all citizens.

The Power of Persistence

Though they disagreed with her position, they backed down and let her, and her sisters, vote. Three weeks later, as she sat in her parlor in her Rochester home, a US Marshall deputy showed up to arrest her. The judge ended her trial without collecting the fine or keeping her in jail. She was free, but also blocked from taking her case to a higher court. She continued fighting into her eighties.

Her last public words were, “Failure is impossible.” She died March 13, 1906. The nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, was passed August 18, 1920.

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What drives a woman such as Susan B. Anthony to devote her life to improving the lives of others? Many women are born or marry into families with resources and connections to people of influence. Countless women come from families that value education for their daughters as well as their sons. Yet, only a few in any generation muster the long-term dedication of a Susan B. Anthony to use these assets to do so much for so many. Even fewer continue to advocate for others once they are persecuted, criticized, and blocked at every turn. Susan B. Anthony’s dedication came at the cost of great personal sacrifices and challenges. What factors form someone like Susan B. Anthony? What drove her to persevere against forces committed to stopping her? I got a glimpse of her life while on our 2021 road trip when I took the tour of her Rochester, NY home.

Childhood Factors

Susan B. Anthony was born in 1820 as the second child of a Massachusetts Quaker family that eventually would include seven children. Her parents believed their daughters, as well as their sons, needed good educations. Her school teacher did not agree with their decision. Susan was told to leave the school as the class progressed from learning basic reading and writing to mathematics. Her father started his own school in their home and Anthony’s studies continued.

Her father also gave her a job at the mill he established and paid her for her work. She spent her income on a set of coffee cups for her mother. The family spent their evenings together in the family parlor discussing the events of their days and current events. A significant factor in shaping Susan B. Anthony’s life was her parents’ determination to provide her an education. Another was her father’s willingness to let her experience the satisfaction of earning and spending her own money when she was still a child.

On the Job Training

When Susan B. Anthony was fifteen, she began teaching younger pupils in her father’s home school. At seventeen she moved in with a neighboring family to teach their children and help with household chores. She then attended a boarding school in Hamilton, PA. However, the 1837 economic depression forced her father to close his mill. She had to drop out of school, return home, and join her family in selling many of their personal things to pay their bills.

Now a young woman, she needed to find a way to support herself, and help her family. This she did by taking a teaching position at a Quaker boarding school in Rochelle, New York. Teaching was about the only position open to women in the 1800s, and only for single women. Women usually moved from their parents’ home to their husband’s home. Anthony wasn’t convinced she wanted to be anyone’s wife. Her experiences in leadership roles as a teacher were another factor in shaping the future life Anthony would lead.

Critical Life Decisions

Susan and Guelma were good friends as well as sisters; until Guelma got engaged to Aaron McLean. After that Susan no longer heard from her sister. Longing to communicate with Guelma, Susan wrote to her future brother-in-law. Though it is highly unlikely he meant to do so, his response no doubt helped set the stage for Anthony’s decision to stay single and focus her attention on political issues. He wrote, “Sisters are always twice as much trouble and bother as they are worth.” He may have thought he as being playful, but for Susan it was a glimpse into what could be her own future and she wanted no part of it.

Once married, Guelma no longer owned anything of her own. As was the situation for all wives of that era, she could not engage in any contracts on her own, had to defer to her husband for decisions impacting her life, and had no right to divorce her husband. That was not a life Susan B. Anthony was willing to live. When her sisters went to the altar to marry, she went to Canajoharie, New York to teach. She lived first with an uncle and later her cousin Margaret.

Choosing to remain single was another step forward on Anthony’s path to a life as an advocate for other people’s rights.

From Teacher to Political Activist

Teaching paid her living expenses, but Anthony’s real passion was engaging in political issues around temperance and slavery. Some of her family still supported slavery, but not Anthony. She was an abolitionist who believed that “the day will come when they must acknowledge their stupidity.” She gave her first public speech March 1, 1849 to 200 people at a supper for the Daughters of Temperance. It was her way of trying to assist women married to alcoholic husbands. Wives were powerless to address the poverty generated when a husband’s pay went to the bar rather than the grocery store.

Her cousin Margaret died and Anthony returned to the family home, now in Rochester, New York. Among her father’s many friends who visited was Frederick Douglass. A formerly enslaved man, he’d become a great abolitionist. The two spent many hours talking about helping people denied their human rights by virtue of their skin color or gender.

Her career as a women’s suffrage leader was born in July 1848 when she attended a conference in Seneca Falls, New York. The conference theme addressed the radical idea that women should be given the right to vote. Until then, she’d never entertained the notion of fighting for the right to vote. She wanted to learn more.

I’ll have more about her influence in the next blog. The statue pictured in this blog is Susan B. Anthony having tea with Frederick Douglass. It is located in a pocket park a few yards away from the Anthony home.

Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies available from BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/
Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eB00k, and audio.

The post Susan B. Anthony appeared first on How Wise Then.