In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (24 page)

Anthony, who had been steadfast during the various investigations, left for an eight-month visit to her brother in Kansas. Her father had died, and she was seeking solace within her own family. Elizabeth felt alone and lonely. A move into a new house at 464 West 34th Street failed to cheer her. It only made her miss Anthony more. As she wrote to her friend:

I hope in a short time to be comfortably located in a new house where we will have a room ready for you. . . . I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you scold me for all my sins and shortcomings. . . . Oh, Susan, you are very dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and all my future plans are based on you as coadjutor. Yes, our work is one, we are one in aim and sympathy, and should be together. Come home.
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The problems with Henry made Stanton value her friendship with Anthony even more. Anthony had never embarrassed or disappointed or deceived her. She had always encouraged Stanton’s public ambitions and helped her achieve them. More than any other friend, Anthony had sustained and supported Stanton.

Mrs. Stanton needed an ally. The antislavery movement was torn by political friction, including a dispute over whether to support Abraham Lincoln for reelection. The Stantons preferred Frémont and were critical of old friends who worked for the incumbent after Frémont withdrew. Abolitionists and radical Republicans believed that Lincoln’s reelection was a disaster for the nation. When Lincoln was shot, many abolitionists saw it as a “terrible exhibition of God’s wrath.” As Anthony wrote to Stanton, an angry God who resembled John Brown in appearance had struck the
president down, “just at the very hour he was declaring his willingness to consign those five million faithful, brave, loving, loyal [black] people of the South to the tender mercies of the ex-slavelords of the lash.” At the time, Mrs. Stanton agreed with Anthony that Lincoln deserved to die for his moderate reconstruction scheme. Later she would regret her harshness.
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Unfortunately for Stanton and the women’s movement, the reconstruction plans of Lincoln’s successors were even less acceptable to women or abolitionists. The politics of postwar reconstruction would compromise the goals of the abolitionists and destroy Stanton’s alliance with them. She would be forced to become even more self-reliant.

For Elizabeth Cady Stanton and advocates of women’s rights, Reconstruction would be more divisive and destructive than the Civil War. The fight over postwar reconstruction policy began before Lee had surrendered or Lincoln had been shot. It inflamed the summer of 1865. Its outcome would determine the future of the women’s movement in America.

In the five years following the Civil War feminists found themselves pitted against the Republican majority in Congress, against their longtime allies in antislavery, and against the former slaves they had worked to free. The women were defeated in every encounter. By insisting on primacy for women’s rights and parity for female suffrage, Stanton and her associates angered everybody. Having failed to promote suffrage in coalition efforts, Stanton and Anthony finally formed a separate organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association. But because of Stanton’s radical rhetoric and her wide-ranging demands, conservative feminists formed a rival group, the American Woman Suffrage Association. This division lasted twenty years and diminished the impact of feminists in the Gilded Age.

During the postwar period Elizabeth Cady Stanton was engaged in the public arena. Fifty years old in 1865, she was more active and controversial than at any other time in her life. Even before the end of the war she had traveled independently as an abolitionist speaker, addressed the New York legislature on married women’s property rights and divorce, established the National Woman’s Loyal League, and organized the largest petition drive to date in support of the Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery. After the war she reconvened the annual women’s rights conventions; started four organizations (the American Equal Rights Association, the
Working Women’s Association, the Woman Suffrage Association of America, and the National Woman Suffrage Association); campaigned for female suffrage in the District of Columbia, New York, and Kansas; ran for Congress as an independent; edited a newspaper; helped stop a move by the legislature to legalize prostitution in New York; opposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments; and formulated a plan for ratification of a sixteenth amendment enfranchising women. Stanton reasserted her claim to leadership of the women’s rights movement. She had not yet envisioned all that her future would encompass, but she was ready to become the political strategist, philosopher, and propagandist of the new movement. In five years her ambitions would become actualities.

Throughout this period Stanton was at the center of controversy for a more sustained period than she had been or would be again. By 1870 she had few friends among her former reform colleagues. In promoting female suffrage she opposed granting the vote to black males and made many racist and anti-male remarks. William Lloyd Garrison, the dean of antislavery reformers, castigated her as a “female demagogue.” He regarded her as “untruthful, unscrupulous and selfishly ambitious.”
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In the face of widespread disapproval Stanton depended more on the few people who did approve of her tactics. This small group still included Anthony, Libby Miller, and Mrs. Mott, although the older woman had more reservations than the others. Increasingly, Stanton approved herself. She relied on her self-confidence, good humor, optimism, self-protective habits, and resourcefulness to combat the pervasive public criticism of this period.

Stanton was again without role models among the women she knew. No one else had been so singularly outspoken. Unable to identify one model, she sought to combine the strengths of the women she admired, like Mott, with the talents of the men she had known in the antislavery movement, among them William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Stanton. Her failure to secure woman suffrage after the war may reflect the weakness and inappropriateness of her role models as well as the political realities of the era.

In essence, Stanton came to rely on the Garrisonian tactics of propaganda and persuasion. Because she had not been able to muster support for political action, her political efforts failed. So she chose preaching over politics. Stanton became convinced that she could not influence legislatures until she had changed public attitudes. She believed that women must be enfranchised because they had a natural right to vote and needed legal guarantees of equality. But she was unwilling to sacrifice her stands on marriage and divorce or working women, whatever was most immediate, in order to win eventual legislative support for suffrage. She did not compromise; she demanded every right. After this period of intense political activity Stanton would withdraw from the arena and redefine her role.

Personal and political developments enabled Stanton to undertake a more independent role after 1865. Her relationship with Henry was changing. Throughout the Customs House ordeal she had been resolute. For a short period, before the demands of her own life took precedence, she was affectionate, concerned, and optimistic. She envisioned a “new life” for them both, perhaps in a new place. As she wrote to Henry from Kansas in 1867:

This is the country for us to move to. . . . Ponies are cheap here, so that all our children could ride and breathe, and learn to do big things. I cannot endure the thoughts of living again that contracted eastern existence. Here the boys could rise. . . . You would feel like a new being here. I have not had a stiff knee or rheumatism since I came into the State. You could be a leader here as there is not a man in the State that can make a really good speech.
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But the Stantons did not settle in Kansas. By the time she returned from her trip the personal and political disagreements between them had sharpened, making it difficult for them to live together anywhere.

Rather than create a new life for them both, Stanton tried to make one for herself. For the first time in their marriage the decision to move was motivated not by Henry’s well-being but by hers. She no longer allowed Henry’s employment or lack of it to determine her residence or occupation. In 1868 she purchased a large country house in Tenafly, New Jersey.
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After longing to escape Seneca Falls for the city, Mrs. Stanton now wanted to move to the country. The Tenafly house, with its encircling porch and surrounding gardens, was financed by her Cady inheritance. It was within a mile of the commuter train station, so she, Henry, and the older boys could come and go into the city. During the week the Stantons and Susan Anthony stayed in town on Tenth Avenue. Soon Elizabeth was spending more time in Tenafly, while Henry spent less. “He comes home but once in two weeks,” she commented to Cousin Gerrit in 1869.
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Eventually their city-country arrangement evolved into two separate households, a conclusion that suited both her personal and physical needs.

As a couple, the Stantons spent less and less time together. By 1870 they maintained separate households, and they seemed to divide responsibility for the children. Both remained concerned parents, but Elizabeth no longer allowed her domestic roles to confine her. Her independence is reflected in one child’s early memory, in which train whistles signaled her mother’s arrival.
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There is little written evidence of the couple’s feelings for one another, but many factors may have contributed to the rift.

Mrs. Stanton’s refusal to acknowledge Neil’s guilt in the Customs House matter may have contributed to the couple’s physical and psychological
separation. Neil was responsible for the loss of her husband’s job and his reputation, yet her firstborn remained her favorite and could do no wrong in her eyes. This attitude may have alienated her older sons as well as her husband.

Sixty years old in 1865, Henry Stanton continued to attend political rallies and reform meetings, including some featuring his wife as speaker. He no longer despised Republicans, but they distrusted him. Among abolitionists, the Customs House scandal had obscured memories of his earlier heroism. He was forced into the background at the same time that his wife rose to prominence among his peers. In addition to writing for newspapers, Henry occasionally practiced law. He could afford less prestigious and less lucrative employment now that the Cady inheritance and his wife’s income from writing and lecturing provided for the children and maintained the Tenafly house.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s relationship with Susan Anthony was also changing. Anthony’s freedom to travel in the 1850s had made Stanton dependent on her. As she remarked in 1870, “Through all these years, Miss Anthony was the connecting link between me and the outer world—the reform scout who went to see what was going on in the enemy’s camp and returned with maps and observations to plan the mode of attack.”
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Put in the passive role of reacting to Anthony’s demands, Stanton responded with speeches, tracts, or organizational activity. Anthony’s interest in temperance, abolition, and education took precedence over Stanton’s concern for divorce reform, married women’s property rights, and suffrage. To compensate, Stanton made every topic she addressed a question of women’s rights. Their talents and tactics were complementary, but Stanton’s emphasis on agitation and Anthony’s preference for organization eventually created a rift between them as well.

It was during the 1860s that the two women first came into conflict. As Mrs. Stanton became more active and more visible, she became more assertive in their partnership. She overrode Anthony’s objections and forced her to put aside women’s rights questions for the duration of the Civil War. Stanton’s regret over that decision and her acknowledgment that she had been wrong subsequently enabled Anthony to regain the upper hand for a short time. During the critical period following the war Stanton preferred to act in unison with Anthony. “I have always found that when we see eye to eye we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong,” she admitted to Anthony in 1867. “I take my beloved Susan’s judgment against the world.”
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If they could not agree, Stanton and Anthony argued in private until one of them conceded. During the postwar period Stanton was usually the first
to compromise. Having broken with Henry she was unwilling to break with Anthony. She believed that “like husband and wife,” she and Anthony must always appear to agree in public. Even with Henry she maintained the appearance of marriage. She really had no model for discord. Her parents’ marriage and those of her friends had been cordial relationships, and the diplomatic mode appealed to her own disposition.
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By 1865 the Stanton-Anthony friendship had evolved into a partnership of equals. Each admired the other’s capacities and accepted any shortcomings. In the aftermath of the Customs House scandal and prelude to the reconstruction fight, Stanton needed the comfort of uncritical friendship and Anthony needed Stanton’s intelligence. As Stanton reassured her: “If your life depends on me, I will be your stay and staff to the end. No power in heaven, hell, or earth can separate us, for our hearts are eternally wedded together. Ever yours, and I mean
ever
, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”
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Throughout the war Stanton had been a loyal abolitionist. More active than during the antebellum years, she had worked for Lincoln’s election after the convention in 1860, joined the antislavery crusade in upstate New York in 1861, postponed her feminist demands, founded the National Woman’s Loyal League, amassed petition signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, supported Frémont over Lincoln in 1864, and backed Wendell Phillips when he challenged William Lloyd Garrison for leadership of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At the society’s annual meeting in May 1864 Garrison had moved to disband the organization. He insisted that its work had been completed with the Emancipation Proclamation and the anticipated passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The slaves had been freed. The majority of the society, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, disagreed. They supported Phillips’s argument that the work was incomplete until the slaves had been made citizens and enfranchised. Garrison’s motion to disband was defeated, and he resigned. He suspended publication of the
Liberator
, accepted a gift of thirty thousand dollars from admirers, and went to Paris. Stanton’s candidate, Phillips, was elected president of the group. For her loyalty to Phillips and the Anti-Slavery Society, Stanton expected abolitionists to include woman suffrage on their postwar agenda.