The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) eBook

Ida Husted Harper
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2).

The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) eBook

Ida Husted Harper
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2).

It is not a part of this work to go into the merits of that discussion.  In brief, Mr. Garrison and his followers believed that, with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was forever abolished in the United States and there was no further need of the Anti-Slavery Society which he himself had founded.  Phillips and his following held that “no emancipation can be effectual and no freedom real, unless the negro has the ballot and the States are prohibited from enacting laws making any distinction among their citizens on Account of race or color.”  There were minor differences of opinion respecting men and measures, but the above are the fundamental points which led to the first breach that had occurred for a quarter of a century in the ranks of the great anti-slavery leaders, who had borne a persecution never equalled in the history of our country.  It resulted, at the May Anniversary in New York, in Garrison’s declining a re-election to the presidency of the society, which he had held for thirty-two years, and in the election of Phillips.

Those most intimately connected with Miss Anthony sustained the position of Mr. Phillips—­Mrs. Stanton, Parker Pillsbury, Robert Purvis, Charles Remond, Stephen Foster, Lucretia and Lydia Mott, Anna Dickinson, Sarah Pugh—­and she herself was his staunchest defender.  Believing as strongly as she did that the suffrage is the very foundation of liberty, that without it there can be no real freedom for either man or woman, she could not have done otherwise, and yet, so great was her reverence and affection for Mr. Garrison, it was with the keenest regret she found herself no longer able to follow him.  She writes:  “I am glad I was spared from witnessing that closing scene.  It will be hard beyond expression to leave him out of our councils, but he never will be out of our sympathies.  I hope you will refrain from all personalities.  Pro-slavery signs are too apparent and too dangerous at this hour for us to stop for personal adjustments.  To go forward with the great work pressing upon the society, without turning to the right or the left, is the one wise course.”

Parker Pillsbury was made editor of the Standard in place of Oliver Johnson, and was assisted by George W. Smalley, who had married an adopted daughter of Wendell Phillips.  Mr. Pillsbury wrote Miss Anthony soon after the anniversary: 

We could not see how the colored race were to be risked, shut up in the States with their old masters, whom they had helped to conquer and out of whose defeat their freedom had come; so we voted to keep the machinery in gear until better assurances were given of a free future than we yet possess.  We have offended some by our course.  I am sorry, but it was Mr. Garrison who taught me to be true to myself.  To my mind, suffrage for the negro is now what immediate emancipation was thirty years ago.  If we emancipate from slavery and leave the European doctrine of
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The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.