“Some one wishes to know which of the advocates of woman’s rights we think the ablest.  Why, Susan B., of course.  Without her, the organization would have been utterly broken to pieces and scattered.  She is the guiding spirit, the executive power that leads the forlorn hope and brings order out of chaos.  Others seek to promote their own interests, but Susan, earnest, honest, self-sacrificing, much-enduring, thinks only of the work she has in hand, and speculates solely on the chances of living long enough to accomplish it.  She has given up home, friends, her profession of teacher and the modest competence acquired by her labor; has been caricatured, ridiculed, maligned and persecuted, but has never turned aside or faltered in the work to which she has given her life.  Whatever may be the opinion of the conservative or fogy world with regard to Susan B. Anthony, those who know her well and have watched her career most attentively, know her to be rich in all the best and most tender of womanly virtues, and possessed of as brave and noble a spirit and as great integrity of character as ever fell to the lot of mortal woman.”

The legislature of Colorado had submitted the question of woman suffrage to be voted on October 2, 1877, and notwithstanding the lucrative business under the lyceum bureau, Miss Anthony could not resist offering her services to the women of Colorado with their little money and few speakers.  From Dr. Alida C. Avery, president of the State Suffrage Association, came the quick response:  “Your generous proposal was duly received, and laid before the executive committee, who resolved that the thanks of the association be tendered you for your friendly offer, which we gratefully accept.”

Although inured to hardship, Miss Anthony found this Colorado campaign the most trying she ever had experienced, not excepting that of Kansas ten years before.  The country was new, many of the towns were off the railroad among the mountains and in most of them woman suffrage never had been heard of; there was no one to advertise the meetings, nobody to meet her when she reached her destination, hotels were of the most primitive nature and there were few public halls.  There were, of course, some oases in this desert, and occasionally she found a good hotel or was hospitably entertained in a comfortable home.  At one place she spoke in the railroad station to about twenty-five men who could not understand what it was she wanted them to do, though all were voters.  Sometimes a landlord would clear out the hotel dining-room and she would gather her audience there, but they would have to stand and soon would grow tired.  The mining towns were filled with a densely ignorant class of foreigners, and some of the southern counties were almost wholly populated by Mexicans.  It was to these men that an American woman, her grandfather a soldier of the Revolution, appealed for the right of women to representation in this government.