[Footnote 31:  A few years after the war, Miss Anthony chancing to be in Binghamton at the time of a teachers’ convention went in.  Immediately the whole body rose to give her welcome, she was escorted to the platform and, amid great applause, invited to address them.]

CHAPTER XIV.

WOMEN’S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.

1863—­1864.

It was with a sore and heavy heart that Miss Anthony again turned to her public work, but she was impelled by the thought that it would have been her father’s earnest wish, and also by the feeling that work alone could give relief to the sorrow which overwhelmed her.  She was bitterly disappointed that the “old guard” persisted in putting the question of the rights of women in the background, thus losing the vantage points gained by years of agitation.  She alone, of all who had labored so earnestly for this sacred cause, was not misled by the sophistry that the work which women were doing for the Union would compel a universal recognition of their demands when the war was ended.  Subsequent events showed the correctness of her judgment in maintaining that the close of the war would precipitate upon the country such an avalanche of questions for settlement that the claims of women would receive even less consideration than heretofore had been accorded.  Next to this cause, however, that of the slaves appealed to her most strongly and she willingly continued her labors for them, trusting that the day might come when Garrison, Phillips, Greeley and the other great spirits would redeem their pledges and unite their strength in securing justice for women.

On January 11, 1863, Miss Anthony received this letter from Theodore Tilton:  “Well, what have you to say to the proclamation?  Even if not all one could wish, it is too much not to be thankful for.  It makes the remainder of slavery too valueless and precarious to be worth keeping.  The millenium is on the way.  Three cheers for God!...  I had the pleasure of dining yesterday with Wendell Phillips in New York.  Shall I tell you a secret?  I happened to allude to one Susan Anthony.  ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘one of the salt of the earth.’” On the 16th came this from Henry B. Stanton:  “I date from the federal capital.  Since I arrived here I have been more gloomy than ever.  The country is rapidly going to destruction.  The army is almost in a state of mutiny for want of its pay and for lack of a leader.  Nothing can carry the North through but the Southern negroes, and nobody can marshal them into the struggle except the Abolitionists.  The country was never so badly off as at this moment.  Such men as Lovejoy, Hale and the like have pretty much given up the struggle in despair.  You have no idea how dark the cloud is which hangs over us....  We must not lay the flattering unction to our souls that the proclamation will be of any use if we are beaten and have a dissolution of the Union.  Here then is work for you.  Susan, put on your armor and go forth!”