The address on this occasion was “Bread and the Ballot."[85] She returned at once to Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and by May 1, 1876, was able to write, “The day of Jubilee for me has come.  I have paid the last dollar of The Revolution debt!” It was just six years to the very month since she had given up her cherished paper and undertaken to pay off its heavy indebtedness, and all her friends rejoiced with her that it was finally rolled from her shoulders and she was free.  Even the newspapers offered congratulations in pleasant editorial paragraphs.[86] In a long notice, the Chicago Daily News said: 

Her paper lived a few years and then went down.  In the heart of the woman whose hopes went down with it, the little paper that cost so much and died so prematurely occupies, perhaps, the place which in other women’s hearts is occupied by the remembrance of a baby’s face, now shrouded in folds of white satin and hushed in death.  But The Revolution left behind a debt of several thousand dollars.  Susan B. Anthony was poor, yet she stepped forward and assumed, individually, the entire indebtedness.  By working six years and devoting to the purpose all the money she could earn she has paid the debt and interest.  And now, when the creditors of that paper and others who really know her, whatever they may think of her political opinions, hear the name of Susan B. Anthony, they feel inclined to raise their hats in reverence.

The Rochester Post-Express thus voiced the opinion of her own townspeople: 

The thousands of friends of the plucky and noble woman of whom we speak will rejoice with her over this success.  There are a good many men who have hidden behind their wives’ petticoats for a much smaller sum than $10,000.  It should be remembered, furthermore, that Miss Anthony has labored indefatigably in the cause of woman suffrage, paying her own expenses most of the time; has undergone a contemptible and outrageous persecution at the hands of the United States court for violating the election laws; has bent for months over the bed of a brother wounded almost to death by an assassin’s bullet; has watched tenderly over the steps of an aged mother; and has always, everywhere, been the soul of helpfulness and benevolence.  Here is an example, in a woman, who our laws say is not fit to exercise the active and defensive privilege of citizenship, that puts to shame the lives of ninety-nine in every hundred men.

It is not surprising that the letters of her friends during these past months should speak of “the pale, sad face, so worn by lines of care and toil,” but now all was over and she returned home.  To rest?  Far from it.  The third day found her en route for New York to attend the Suffrage Anniversary, May 10 and 11.