LETTER: ALS to M.P. Cavert, Principal of the Amsterdam Female Seminary.
EARLIEST AVAILABLE SUSAN B. ANTONY LETTER
“THE VERY MASTERLY MANNER IN WHICH YOU VINDICATED THE CAUSE…”
Anthony, Susan B., et al. Autograph letter (composed by D.W.C. Rice), signed by
Anthony and other early feminists, to M.P. Cavert, Principal of the Amsterdam
Female Seminary, December 13, 1848.
A letter establishing the temperance roots of the early suffragettes, signed by Anthony
and also by Elizabeth Wentworth, who, like Anthony, was a representative of the
Montgomery Division No. 29 Daughters of Temperance, and D.W.C. Rice, S.A.H.
McKim, and C.H. Brown from the Fountain Division No. 136 Sons of Temperance.
Though this letter is not in Anthony’s hand, she is a signatory, making this the earliest
known SBA to be offered in decades: the earliest once auctioned in the last 40 years was
dated 1854 – six years after this one, which reads in full:
At the Festival given in this village on Thursday the 7th inst, by the Ladies
of Montgomery Division No. 29 D[aughters] of T[emperence], we
together with a large & intelligent Company listened with pleasure to the
very able & eloquent address delivered by Yourself. In behalf of our
respective ‘Orders’ we would cordially tender you our sincere thanks for
the very masterly manner in which you vindicated the cause & answered
the objections usually urged against the ‘Orders’ of the Daughters & Sons
of Temperance. Believing that the extensive circulation of your address
will not only advance the welfare of our ‘Orders” but favor the cause of
truth, virtue & humanity, we would most respectfully solicit a copy for
publication. Yours in L[ove], P[urity] & F[idelity]…
Influenced by her father’s Quaker religion and commitment to temperance and abolition,
Anthony’s initial involvement in social activism began with the temperance movement
while acting as the headmistress of the all-women Canajoharie Academy in New York’s
Montgomery County. It was there that she first took up the cause of women’s rights,
unsuccessfully seeking equal pay.
“Shortly after moving to Canajoharie in 1846, Anthony had joined the Daughters of
Temperance, set up by the Sons of Temperance as the appropriate vehicle for women to
aid the movement. Indeed, temperance was perhaps the only social reform in which
women could acceptably engage. She took the post of secretary, but it would be three
years before, in March, 1849, she made her first public speech. ‘Our motive,’ she said, is
a ‘radical change in our Moral Atmosphere.’…Attending the Sons of Temperance
convention in Albany in 1852, however, her credentials were accepted but not her voice.
The presiding officer informed her that ‘the sisters were not invited here to speak but to
listen and learn.’ Anthony stormed out. That same night she helped organize a Woman’s
State Temperance Convention, which convened in April 1852,” and from which the
Woman’s State Temperance Society was born, (Statesmanship, Character, and
Leadership in America, Newell). On behalf of that organization, Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton submitted a petition to New York State asking that liquor sales be limited.
The legislature rejected the request because most of the signers, nearly 30,000 in total,
were women and children. It was this event that galvanized Anthony to agitate for
women’s suffrage, spending the remainder of her life working for equal rights for both
women and blacks.
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