by Marge Piercy
“You don’t know how vile women can be,” he said to Maggie, touching her shoulder gently.
“Oh, when I was in school, there were girls with tongues as low as many of the boys, believe me, Tony. I know there are bad women. When we walk past the saloons on our way from church, I see women in those dens as well as men. I see fallen creatures selling themselves in the next neighborhood.”
“You should never have to see such sights.”
“Passing by corruption does not corrupt, Tony. We simply go on by.”
“I’m troubled by how vile women, who should be pure, who should by their higher nature lift us up toward God, can do far more damage than men. I’m talking about so-called respectable women who interfere with God’s gift of fertility. I am talking about desexed women who prattle and speechify about their rights and wrongs and want to smoke cigars and vote and hold down jobs and flaunt themselves in public. This country’s on the verge of a great evil. It takes all of my effort every day, every night, to try to contain it.”
Anthony was appalled at what was going on in his own fine city of Brooklyn, where respectable people moved to get away from the vice and filth of Manhattan. He had pulled Beecher’s chestnuts out of the fire once by silencing that witch Woodhull, but Beecher had landed himself in muck up to his neck. Anthony thought him lax, sentimental, preaching poppycock to his congregation so they would feel good on Sundays and not think about their sins. Anthony had grown up with real religion, hellfire and brimstone, ministers who believed what they preached and made sure their flocks believed too. It wasn’t easy to be a real Christian, but Beecher made it sweet and bland and smooth to swallow as blancmange.
Now that worm Theodore Tilton was suing Beecher, all their dirty laundry aired before thousands of spectators. Anthony would have gladly drowned them both like unwanted puppies. Beecher sat there in the witness chair, “I don’t remember,” “I can’t recall,” “I have no memory of that.” If Anthony were in charge, he would force Beecher to remember. But he had no sympathy for Theodore Tilton, an adulterer himself who had been a cohort of Woodhull when it suited him and then run for cover when she got into trouble. This was exactly the scandal Anthony expected from those women howling about their rights. Tilton had brought such women into his house, Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Henry Stanton, and what did he expect? His idiot wife went astray. Anthony did not doubt Beecher had seduced her, but Tilton deserved no better.
When the jury was hung after six months, he regretted the wasted trial. He could have nailed Beecher on the stand. Anthony felt as if respect for organized religion and men of the cloth had dropped several degrees. Beecher may have escaped with his income intact, but the very air of Brooklyn felt tainted by all those stories of adultery and faith betrayed. He heard that Woodhull was barging around the country giving lectures on the whole sordid affair. She wasn’t breaking any laws he could dig up in recounting the story of Mrs. Tilton, doubly unfortunate in her husband and her paramour, who both abandoned her. He knew she was living in near poverty with her children, whoever the fathers actually were.
He zigzagged across the country, persecuting pornographers, abortionists, purveyors of obscene books, postcards and theater pieces. He could have filled an entire freight train with books he had burned. There were certain judges in whose courts he could always count on a conviction, judges upright and firm in their religion. Occasionally, he encountered a sleazy judge who went on about rights and free speech and he lost a case.
He came home exhausted. Sometimes the scar on his face ached where Conroy’s knife had severed four arteries. He fingered it to remind himself to keep on, no matter how tired he was. Still, when he came home to Maggie, when he looked at Adele sitting demurely with her hands in her lap as Maggie had taught her, he knew she was as much his daughter as if Maggie had borne her. She was a fine little woman, silent, well behaved, eager to please. She was perfect.
FORTY
ELIZABETH WAS NOT as spry as she had been. She was carrying a lot of weight, and her joints were achy She had as much mental energy as ever, but at sixty-one her physical strength was limited. The younger of her children were in college now, but all of them came home frequently and sometimes moved back in, like her eldest and in some ways her favorite, Neil, a scamp who was always getting into some kind of money troubles.
Susan ran the National, serving as president and keeping up with organizational and bureaucratic details that bored the stuffing out of Elizabeth. The younger women all adored Susan. They were not as comfortable with her. They called Susan “Aunt” as her own children had, but her they addressed formally. Whenever there was a state that appeared to have a chance of passing woman suffrage, she got on a train and went racketing around the state giving sometimes two speeches in a day, once, three. She could still make her voice carry to the back of the hall or to the back of the crowd without sounding shrill, but speaking outdoors was especially draining. She and Susan would canvass the state end to end. They were still losing, but the margins of defeat were lessening. They were not as close as they had been—the rift over Victoria had never completely healed. Moreover, Susan was singing only one note these days, like many of the younger women, suffrage, suffrage, suffrage, all the livelong day and all the weary night.
A woman who could not feed her family or whose children were dying of cholera would never care about the ballot box. The depression that had begun in ’73 had only deepened by ’76; the situation of working people was desperate. When Elizabeth went into New York, she saw soup lines stretching for blocks for a bowl of watery turnip gruel. Men and women piled into the basements of police stations to sleep on boards for the night because they had been thrown from their lodgings. Landlords grew rich on tenements where people were living twenty to a room. Bitter strikes broke out in coal mining, cigar making, textiles, the railroads, iron making. Most strikes were violently suppressed, throwing still more workers into the ranks of the hungry. Three-fifths of their wages went for food. She and Susan were looking at different worlds. In her world, the voices of the hungry, the beaten, the homeless were louder than the voices of women from comfortable homes. As she crisscrossed the country, she saw men, women and children begging in the streets, people shuffling along dressed in rags with their hands out.
Lately she had also become aware how many of the poor ended up in jail or prison. She took an interest in reform and began giving talks to prisoners. She was not afraid, and the men greeted her warmly because she did not scold them or preach to them, but discussed how prisons could be reformed and what the women’s vote might mean to them when it finally arrived. She went to Sing Sing twice to speak.
Susan came to see her in Tenafly, arriving while she was celebrating the engagement of her son Gat to his fiancée. Susan had no time to join in the festivities but got right to business, plunking herself down at the dining room table that had witnessed so many of their plots and strategies. She had, if anything, grown leaner. Her nose was more prominent and her hair was sparser and iron gray now, worn in the same tight bun. Elizabeth’s own hair was still abundant and curly around her face but white as parchment. As Elizabeth grew plumper, Susan grew leaner. They were more than ever Jack Sprat and his wife.
Susan ate the soup and bread Amelia put before her but could not refrain from launching at once on her mission. “The centennial celebrations in Philadelphia are going to be immense. Especially around the Fourth of July. We must demand a part.”
Elizabeth groaned. “Philadelphia in July is closer to hell than I care to come, no matter what our detractors say.”
“This is no time for self-indulgence, Mrs. Stanton. You are needed! Even Lucretia Mott’s going to take part, at her age. She sends a special message that you should join us.”
She hadn’t visited her dear friend Lucretia in six months. When a woman got to Lucretia’s age, no matter how hale and hearty, upon each parting a friend never could know if they would meet again. “What do you want of me this time?”
; “The Beecher-Tilton scandal—not to mention Woodhull’s taint—has painted the suffrage movement with an air of loose living. We need to seize the opportunity of this great patriotic festival. It’s a chance to place ourselves in a more favorable light and get our message out to thousands, to millions of people.”
“They’ll never grant us a place in the spotlight.”
“We’ll demand it. In addition, it’s time for a new Declaration of Rights. It should be read from the grand platform right after the Declaration of Independence.”
Elizabeth frowned. “What’s wrong with the old Declaration?” She was still proud of her work at Seneca Falls.
“We need something up to date.”
“Susan, dear Susan, isn’t it time for some of the younger women to do their part? We’re old warhorses. My brain is brighter than ever but my body’s dimming.”
Susan glared at her. “This is a centennial, Mrs. Stanton. They won’t have another one for a hundred years. I’m going directly to Philadelphia. Matilda Gage is coming too. So are many of the younger women you want to see engaged.”
Elizabeth had known Matilda Joslyn Gage since 1852, just after meeting Susan. Matilda was an attractive woman—married young to a successful dry goods merchant. Matilda’s home had been a way station on the Underground Railroad. She was an outspoken abolitionist who joined the woman’s rights movement early and gave her full intelligence and passion to their work. Matilda had borne three daughters and one son who lived. Elizabeth noticed that sometimes they understood each other in ways Susan couldn’t share. Matilda still had a close relationship with her husband. He was more supportive than Henry ever had been. She would enjoy seeing Matilda. “I can’t go next week. I have too many commitments. But I’ll come in a few weeks. After all, it’s only May third.”
“Get there as soon as you can, Mrs. Stanton. Your presence and your assistance are sorely needed.…By the way, I paid off the last of the Revolution debt last week. Six years of paying it off, Mrs. Stanton.”
Elizabeth nodded, not wanting to reopen that old source of conflict. If she suffered a twinge of guilt, she wasn’t going to admit it to Susan.
She did not go to Philadelphia until well into June. By then the public work on the international exhibit in Fairmount Park had been completed. The women had set up an office on Chestnut Street, where Elizabeth finally saw Lucretia, who rode in most days from her farm bringing cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs as well as fine Oolong tea to make lunch for women in the office. Elizabeth was startled by how frail, almost gaunt, Lucretia looked. We’re all getting on, she thought.
Elizabeth watched Susan with the younger women. She would listen to them with great intensity, as if every word were a revelation. She treated their smallest problems and weakest notions with passionate seriousness, conversations that, even overhearing them, Elizabeth found tedious. Susan had great patience, smiling at their jokes, giving them little tasks and praising them fulsomely. She brought them along a step at a time; indeed Elizabeth could see Susan was rewarded not only with devotion but with their full participation in the movement. They became truly her disciples.
“No, Margaret, you don’t seem at all forward. It’s important to speak your mind. You worry that it’s not ladylike, but is it admirable for a woman to lack backbone? Do you admire doormats on which people wipe their muddy boots?”
“Amanda, if he says things like that to you, perhaps he is not the suitor you should favor. If he is so critical of you now when you’re courting, imagine how he will treat you when you have been married for five years.”
“Oh, Phoebe, you must remember that your mother grew up in different times. You have opportunities that were closed to her. Don’t judge her too harshly, but never let her clip your wings.”
Coming on the scene late in the preparations, Elizabeth sat down to write the Declaration, but it turned out to be a committee affair. Every word and phrase was haggled over. Every direct, strong and militant phrase raised some woman’s hackles. Elizabeth spent the better part of ten days working on draft after draft, but she found the end product much inferior to her earlier Declaration. They decided on the Fourth of July as the day they wanted a public appearance. Elizabeth wrote to General Hawley, in charge of arrangements, asking for a place on the platform and the opportunity to speak. The general refused but sent six tickets to attend.
“That’s his mistake,” Susan said. “We must seize the chance to speak out.” Susan came up with a plan. They would rush the stage and present their Declaration, which would then have to go into the official record of the proceedings. Elizabeth and Lucretia wanted to hold a countercelebra-tion at the First Unitarian Church instead. After a great deal of arguing and raised voices, they agreed that Elizabeth and Lucretia would open the counterfestivities and Susan and Matilda Gage would lead four younger women into the centennial with copies of the Declaration.
The Centennial Exhibition was the first world’s fair ever to be mounted in the States. The women, prevented from setting up an exhibition in the main hall, raised money for their own building with its own steam engine, operated by a woman engineer from Canada. There the Declaration was printed, along with a woman’s rights newspaper.
On May 6, President Grant had opened the centennial with a speech and turned on the immense Corliss steam engine, powering everything in the exhibits except the women’s building. Since that day, millions had attended the Great Exhibition and the shantytown of carnival and sideshow exhibits just outside.
Harriot had come down to help. “Mother, let’s go to the fair. Why not? Half the country is going.”
“Don’t tell Susan. She won’t approve. But why not? I’m curious too.”
They took the special train out to the fairgrounds. Everybody had been saying how impressive the exhibition was. Certainly it was large and crowded, covering 450 acres of asphalt laid down in Fairmount Park, with pavilions from thirty-eight nations and every state. It cost fifty cents to enter.
“This is shameful. Four dollars for a little plate of chicken.” Elizabeth was incensed. “They have a captive audience and they’re gouging.”
Even the ice cream cost three times what it would outside. “This is outrageous in the middle of the worst depression we’ve lived through.” Elizabeth glared around her. Most exhibits struck them as tacky. Two immense statues of little merit depicted a Pegasus and an Amazon with a horse. There was a kneeling woman made of butter. An animated wax statue of Cleopatra boasted a wing-flapping wax parrot. Cleopatra reclined, occasionally blinking, on a barge while pink cupids looked left and then right. George Washington’s false teeth were on exhibit along with a new device, called a telephone. What most impressed Elizabeth was the Sholes Printing Machine. When levers were pressed, it produced type, not as clear as printing, but useful.
“Mother, that’s what you need. Then maybe I can actually read the letters you write me.”
“Harriot, believe me, I try. But my mind runs ahead of my hand.”
The Fourth of July dawned oppressively hot and humid as if the air could be wrung out. In fifteen pounds of skirts and underskirts, Elizabeth felt faint, but when she was called upon to speak, she held forth strongly to the crowd. She said they must resume trying to get Congress to pass a new amendment to the Constitution. The church was jammed. The meeting had been under way for two hours when Susan led in the contingent from the centennial.
As soon as the original Declaration of Independence had been read, while the band was playing a march, Susan had led the delegation forward. The men standing before the platform gave way, assuming they were part of the program. Susan marched up on the stage and presented the chairman with a parchment copy of the women’s own Declaration. The chairman was so startled he simply accepted it. Then they filed out of the hall, passing out copies right and left. Once outside, Susan climbed on the deserted bandstand—the band was playing within—and read the Declaration to the crowd. Matilda held an umbrella over her to shield her from the sun.
/> Susan was proud of their action, but Elizabeth considered it more symbolic than useful. She began a new petition drive. Within a few weeks, they gathered ten thousand signatures. But when they presented it to Congress in the fall, they were greeted with jokes and ridicule. Senator Butler arranged for Elizabeth to testify. It was humiliating. The men talked among themselves, got up, walked about, used the spittoons, smoked and ignored her.
The presidential election was approaching. Matilda, Susan and she had sent memorials to both parties, asking for a suffrage plank. The Democrats nominated Governor Samuel Tilden of New York, someone Elizabeth could actually support, for he had been instrumental in overthrowing the Tweed ring. He was as close to an honest governor as New York had seen in her adult life. Senator Blaine from Maine expected to be nominated by the Republicans, but the Union Pacific Railroad scandal stood in his way. Instead, after a huge battle in Cincinnati, the Republicans chose the governor of Ohio, one Rutherford B. Hayes, noted mostly for being inoffensive and having served honorably enough on the Union side.
The Democrats had been more open to the women than the Republicans, who took their support for granted. Tilden had a good chance of gaining the presidency. The smelly corruption of the Grant administration had annoyed many. Just that spring, an investigation revealed the Whiskey Ring had defrauded the country of millions in unpaid taxes; the scandal had been traced to the president’s personal secretary and another Grant crony, a revenue agent in St. Louis. There had been scandals involving Indian reservation supply posts, a rich source of revenue. The continuing hard times made voters consider a change. Susan and Elizabeth were supporting Tilden. Spending those weeks in Philadelphia had partly mended the tear in their long weave of friendship. They wrote twice a week. Susan resumed her visits.
The whole family including Amelia crowded into the Manhattan apartment for election night so they could stay in touch with what was happening through Henry’s political connections and his position on the Sun. By midnight, when they finally got into bed, it was clear that Tilden had won the popular vote by a considerable margin. As the Herald trumpeted the next morning, Samuel Tilden was now president.
