In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (53 page)

BOOK: In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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14
. Victoria C. Woodhull,
Secession Speech
(N.p., 1871); ECS, “Women’s Suffrage Organizations.”

15
. ECS to SBA, [spring 1870], and Feb. 1871, TS-DL; ECS to SBA, [June 1870],
CE
, 204.

16
. ECS to MW, [1871], WLG-SSC; ECS to ESM, 12 June 1871,
Letters
, 132–33.

17
. SBA to family, [summer 1871],
CE
, 204; SBA to family, [summer 1871], Harper,
Anthony
, 1:396.

18
. The meeting was to have been closed to men, but male reporters disguised
themselves and then printed an account of the session.
San Francisco Chronicle
, 14 June 1871, Banner, “Stanton” (typescript), 167–68. The geographically different press treatment may reflect Greeley’s influence in the East and greater animosity toward ECS.

19
. SBA diary, 20 June 1871, SBA-LC; AL,
Anthony
, 188–89;
80Y
, 290–93.

20
. SBA to family, [Sept. 1871], Harper,
Anthony
, 1:396.

21
. ECS to ESM, 18 Sept. 1871, TS-DL; ECS to Theodore Tilton, 18 Sept. 1871, Tilton MSS, in J. F. Gluck MSS, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo, N.Y.

22
. ECS to MW, [fall 1871?], and ECS to SBA, [fall 1871], TS-DL.

23
.
HWS
, 2:493; AL,
Anthony
, 192–93.

24
.
CE
, 218.

25
. Ibid., 219–20.

26
. SBA diary, AL,
Anthony
, 195; ECS to Henry Blackwell, 9 Nov. 1872, NAWSA-LC; Mary Ormsbee Whitton, “At Home with Lucretia Mott,”
American Scholar
20 (Spring 1951): 182.

27
. ECS to ESM, 16 June 1872, TS-DL; ECS to MW, 19 June 1872, WLG-SSC; ECS to Amelia Willard, July 1872, and ECS to ESM, 16 Aug. 1877, TS-DL.

28
. Rice, “Henry Stanton,” 419.

29
. Platform of the Republican party, 1872, Rebecca Leet,
Republican Women Are Wonderful: A History of Women at Republican National Conventions
(Washington, D.C.: National Women’s Political Caucus, 1980); ECS to LM, 16 July 1872,
Letters
, 139; ECS to SBA, 30 June 1873, TS-DL; ECS to SBA, 11 July 1872, ECS-LC; ECS to SBA, 5 Nov. 1872, TS-DL.

30
. SBA to ECS, 5 Nov. 1872, AL,
Anthony
, 199.

31
. Flexner,
Century of Struggle
, 165–67.

32
. ECS to SBA, 19 Feb. 1873, TS-DL; see also ECS to GS, 29 Dec. 1872, GS-SU.

33
. ECS to SBA and Matilda Joslyn G. Gage, 25 June 1873, TS-DL.

34
. Flexner,
Century of Struggle
, 169–70.

35
.
CE
, 221.

36
. ECS to ESM, 26 Dec. 1872, TS-DL.

37
. Both ECS and Woodhull had been caricatured in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s latest book,
My Wife and I; or, Harry Henderson’s History
(New York: J. B. Ford, 1871). ECS still disliked Mrs. Hooker and found Catharine Beecher a “narrow, bigoted, arrogant woman” who might have become more humane had she ever “loved with sufficient devotion, passion and abandon any of Adam’s sons to have forgotten herself, her God, her
family
, and her propriety, and endured for a brief space of time the world’s coldness, ridicule or scorn.” ECS to Paulina W. Davis, 1 April 1872, AL-VC.

38
. ECS to SBA, [March 1874],
CE
, 222.

39
. ECS to ESM, 11 Aug. [1875?], TS-DL.

40
. ECS never mentioned the Woodhull scandal in
80Y
; see also
CE
, 221–23.

41
. ECS to SBA, 30 July 1874,
Letters
, 145–46.

42
.
CE
, 226–27.

43
. Ibid., 162.

44
.
Revolution
, 23 Dec. 1869;
CE
, 190.

45
. ECS to Josephine Griffing, 1 Dec. 1879, ECS-LC.

46
. ECS to Theodore Stanton, [1873], TS-DL.

47
. Carl Bode,
The American Lyceum
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956; reprint, Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1968); ECS to GS, 25 Jan. 1879, GSM-SU.

48
. ECS to ESM, 10 Aug. 1879,
Letters
, 128–29;
CY
, 36; ECS to Margaret Stanton, 1 Dec. 1872, AL-VC; ECS to ESM, 16 Aug. 1877, TS-DL.

49
.
Lily
, Nov. 1851;
Revolution
, 27 May 1870.

50
. ECS to Margaret Stanton, 1 Dec. 1872, AL-VC. Margaret traveled with her mother during 1877–78.

51
. ECS, “Lyceum Experiences” (clipping), ECS-LC.

52
. ECS to SBA, [1879?], TS-DL; ECS to Margaret Stanton, 1 Dec. 1872, AL-VC.

53
. Alexandra Gripenberg,
A Half-Year in the New World
(1888), ed. and trans. Ernest J. Moyne (Newark, Del.: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1954), 15;
San Francisco Chronicle
, July 1871, Banner, “Stanton” (typescript), 175; Mary Clemmer Ames,
A Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary
(New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1874), 67.

54
. ECS to Louise Chandler Moulton, 30 Aug. 1875, ECS-LC.

55
. ECS to Josephine Griffing, 1 Dec. 1870, TS-DL.

56
. ECS to ESM, 1 Dec. 1872, ibid.;
CE
, 198.

57
. ECS to Isabella Beecher Hooker, 12 April 1871, TS-DL, also
Letters
, 131–32; ECS to MW, 21 March 1871, ECS-LC.

58
. ECS, “Our Girls” (handwritten copy), ECS-LC; Lawrence, “Sketch,” 65.

59
. ECS to MW, 8 March 1873, WLG-SSC.

60
. SBA to Matilda Joslyn Gage, 19 Jan. 1876, SBA-LC.

61
. SBA, diary, [Spring 1876], Harper,
Anthony
, 1:473.

62
.
80Y
, 309–11.

63
.
HWS
, 3:31–34.

64
.
CE
, 238–39.

65
. Ibid., 149; Mary Clemmer, unidentified newspaper article, Harper,
Anthony
, 1:485–86.

66
. ECS, “National Protections for National Citizens” (handwritten copy), ECS-LC;
HWS
, 3:80–94;
80Y
, 319; ECS to SBA, 14 Jan. 1878, ECS-LC.

67
. ECS to SBA, Nov. 1878, TS-DL.

68
. ECS to ESM, 26 March 1879, and ECS to SBA, 4 May 1879, TS-DL.

10. WRITING AND WIDOWHOOD, 1880–88
 

1
. ECS diary, 15 Nov. 1880,
Letters
, 179.

2
. SBA to Mrs. Spencer, [winter 1880], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:516; ECS to SBA, 18 Aug. 1880, TS-DL.

3
. ECS to SBA, 20 Aug. 1880, TS-DL; ECS to Mrs. Spofford, 18 Jan. 1881, Harper,
Anthony
, 2:526.

4
.
80Y
, 335.

5
. ECS diary (quoting Robert Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra”), 12 Nov. 1880,
Letters
, 171; ECS to Harriot and Theodore Stanton, 12 Nov. 1880,
Letters
, 171–73.

6
. ECS diary, 12 Nov. 1880,
Letters
, 171. ECS need not have worried about her children’s devotion. Margaret remembered that “she always seemed to have plenty of time for fun and frolic with us young people, for a game of whist or chess, of which she was very fond and a good player. She was ever ready to sing to us, and play for us to dance, or go for a drive or walk. She was the companion of which
we children were most fond, as she entered into all our joys and sorrows, and was always sympathetic. Her sons and daughters confessed all their sins to her, she knew their lives as she did the pages of a well read book; we trusted her with our very souls.” Lawrence, “Sketch,” 84.

7
. ECS to SBA, [summer 1877?], TS-DL.

8
. ECS to Harriet Cady Eaton, 21 Dec. 1871, TS-DL; ECS diary, 2 March 1891,
Letters
, 272: “This is Neil’s birthday. . . . I dreamed of him last night. We seemed to be on the piazza at Tenafly, talking to Bob. I said, ‘Why, Danny, they told me you were dead.’ ‘Ah, no,’ he said with a sweet voice, ‘not to you, dear mother.’ . . . It was but a dream, a pleasant one. If he can come to me in dreams with sweet messages of love, I shall sleep with new pleasure.”

9
. Will of Daniel Cady Stanton, 1887, probated 1891, County of New York, Surrogate’s Court.

10
. Henry Stanton, Jr., to GS, 6 March 1873, GSM-SU; obituary,
New York Times
, 6 Dec. 1903. Although closer to his father than to ECS, Henry, Jr. always defended her. In 1870 he threatened to “cowhide” Greeley. ECS to SBA, n.d., TS-DL..

11
. ECS to SBA, 4 May 1879, TS-DL; obituary,
New York Times
, 25 April 1927; Archives, CU.

12
. ECS to Elizabeth B. Harbert, [1885], Harbert MSS, HEHL;
80Y
, 331.

13
. ECS to Joseph Pulitzer, 29 Dec. 1885, Pulitzer MSS, CU. To another publisher she wrote, “Contrasting him with my four other sons (though as good as the general run of young men), he seems to me as near perfection as a young man can be.” ECS to Mr. Underwood (editor of the
Index
), 19 Oct. 1886, AL-VC.

14
. Obituary,
New York Times
, 2 March 1925; Alumni Office, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

15
. ECS to Margaret Stanton, 16 May 1877,
Letters
, 151–53. Margaret’s copy of
In the Kitchen
, AL-VC. ECS’s inscription reads: “When we remember that the intellectual and moral ambition of a man depends on the food he eats, we appreciate the dignity and responsibility of those who feed the human family.”

16
. Lawrence, “As a Mother,” 322; Lawrence to Robert B. Stanton, 11 Nov. 1890, R. B. Stanton MSS, NYPL; clipping files, JPL; Alumnae Office, VC. Her sister found Maggie “by nature a character, an efficient, patient, even-tempered woman.”
CY
, 17–18.

17
. ECS to Elizabeth B. Harbert, [1885], Harbert MSS, HEHL;
CY
, 4.

18
. In addition to
CY
, see obituary,
New York Times
, 21 Nov. 1840; Alumnae Office, VC.

19
. Obituary,
New York Times
, 26 Feb. 1920; Alumni Office, Cornell University; Archives, CU; R. B. Stanton MSS, NYPL.

20
. Lucretia Mott died 11 Nov. 1880. ECS diary, 13 and Nov. 14 1880,
Letters
, 177–79; ECS to Mott children, 14 Nov. 1880, LM-FHS.

21
.
HWS
, 1:419, 407–431; 3:187–89.

22
. Partnership agreement, Harper MSS, HEHL.

23
. For Gage see
NAW
article by Elizabeth Warbasse;
HWS
, 1:465–66.

24
. ECS diary, 27 Dec. 1880,
Letters
, 181.

25
.
80Y
, 433. As part of the
History
project, SBA hired a young woman to paste her clippings into account books. Eventually they amounted to thirty-two scrapbooks and were deposited in SBA-LC.

26
. SBA to Rachel Foster, 19 Dec. 1880, SBA-LC; Lawrence, “As a Mother,” 323.

27
. Lawrence, “As a Mother,” 323.

28
. ECS to SBA, 10 Jan. 1880,
Letters
, 163–65.

29
. ECS to SBA, [May 1881], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:531–32.

30
.
CE
, 248; G. S. Stanton, “Aged Housekeeper”; ECS to Mrs. Laura Brownell Collier, 21 Jan. 1886, AL-VC: “For several reasons I have lost my interest in Vassar College. First, because of its narrow sectarianism. I hear the liberal element has been slowly weeded out and Baptist professors installed. 2d, the last chair endowed was on the condition that no woman should fill it. 3d, I sent a copy of
The History of Woman Suffrage
as a gift to The Library, which has rejected it without thanks.” See also SBA to ESM, 15 Feb. 1882, ESM-NYPL.

31
. ECS to SBA, 26 July 1881, TS-DL; ECS and SBA held meetings in Mass., Conn., R.I., Maine, and N.H. As a result, New England women attended the 1882 National meeting as delegates for the first time. Harper,
Anthony
, 2:534;
HWS
, 3:222.

32
. ECS diary, 28 Oct. 1881,
Letters
, 187, 184–85; SBA to [?], [Sept. 1881], and SBA diary, [Nov. 1881], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:537, 539.

33
. Wendell Phillips to SBA, [Jan. 1882], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:360.

34
. LS to ECS, 30 Aug. 1876, Harper MSS, HEHL;
HWS
, 2:756;
CY, 62–63
.

35
.
80Y
, 336.

36
. Ibid., 338–39.

37
. Lawrence, “Sketch,” 88; ECS diary, 20 July 1882,
Letters
, 191–93.

38
. ECS to ESM, Nov. 1882, TS-DL.

39
. ECS diary, 22 Nov. 1883,
Letters
, 213. In her diary, 10 Jan. 1895,
Letters
, 310, ECS revised her opinion: “I like the style and refinement of thought of all of [his] fiction. And then I am always drawn to him with affection because of his open advocacy of our political emancipation. The support of such men is a mighty aid in our uphill struggle.”

40
.
80Y
, 353;
Letters
, 200–209.

41
. ECS to SBA, [Mar. 1883], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:553.

42
. ECS diary, 7 Oct. and 15 Nov. 1883,
Letters
, 211–13.

43
.
80Y
, 187.

44
. ECS to SBA, [Jan. 1888], Harper,
Anthony
, 2:635;
CE
, 306.

45
.
HWS
, 1:459, 456–57. Others offered their opinions of the partnership. Amelia Bloomer wrote, “without the push of Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton would probably never have gone abroad into active work or achieved half what she has done; and without the brain of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony would never have been so largely known to the world by name and deeds.” Bloomer, “Recollections,” 339. Carrie Chapman Catt suggested the relationship was more sinister, writing to Alice Stone Blackwell, 18 Sept. 1930, Blackwell MSS, AES (courtesy of Ellen DuBois): “Miss Anthony always thought [ECS] could exceed anyone else in style and strength of her appeal and that is one reason she clung to her, but I see that it is just possible that there may have been other reasons. I always thought it strange that she was so under the influence of Mrs. Stanton. It always seemed to me that she thought and did things because Mrs. Stanton indicated that that was the way to do them.”

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