For the censure of the world at large they did not care, but Phillips’ defection almost broke their hearts.  He was their ideal of the brave and the true and always before they had had his approval and assistance in every undertaking.  Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton:  “It is not for you or for me, any more than for Mr. Phillips, to dictate our platform; that must be fixed by the majority.  He is evidently greatly distressed.  I find my only comfort in that glorious thought of Theodore Parker:  ’All this is but the noise and dust of the wagon bringing the harvest home.’  These things must be, and happy are they who see clearly to the end.”  And to her friend Amy Post:  “It is wonderful what letters of approval we are receiving, some of them from the noblest women of the State, not connected in any way with our great movement but sympathizing fully with our position on the question of divorce.  I only regret that history may not see Wendell Phillips first and grandest in the recognition of this great truth; but he is a man and can not put himself in the position of a wife, can not feel what she does under the present marriage code.  And yet in his relations to his own wife he is the embodiment of chivalry, tenderness and love.”

In a letter to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton said:  “We are right.  My reason, my experience, my soul proclaim it.  Our religion, laws, customs, all are founded on the idea that woman was made for man.  I am a woman, and I can feel in every nerve where my deepest wrongs are hidden.  The men know we have struck a blow at their greatest stronghold.  Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth I have uttered.  One word of thanks from a suffering woman outweighs with me the howls of Christendom.”

Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony wrote Mr. Phillips for money from the Hovey fund to publish the report of the convention containing these very resolutions, and he sent it accompanied with a cordial letter.  With his generous disposition he soon recognized the fact that it was eminently proper to agitate this question of divorce, in order to make it possible for a woman to secure release from a habitual drunkard, or a husband who treated her with personal violence or willfully abandoned her, and to have some claim on their property and a right to their children, if she were the innocent party.  Before three months he wrote Miss Anthony, “Go ahead, you are doing grandly,” and he spoke many times afterwards on their platform.  During the height of this discussion Miss Anthony was in Albany and Rev. Mayo, thinking to annihilate her, said:  “You are not married, you have no business to be discussing marriage.”  “Well, Mr. Mayo,” she replied, “you are not a slave, suppose you quit lecturing on slavery.”