LETTER: TLS to W.E. Colville, with her engraved card bearing an autograph sentiment signed.
Catt, Carrie Chapman. Typed Letter Signed, “Carrie Chapman Catt,” To W.E. Colville, New York, February 14, 1908; with her engraved card bearing an Autograph Sentiment Signed.
Single sheet, 8-1/4 x 11”; letterhead of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance with Carrie Chapman Catt as President; folded to fit its envelope, which accompanies; very good.
Mrs. Catt writes:
My Dear Sir: - / I am unable to give you the address of Miss / Phoebe Cousins, although I imagine if you should / direct a letter to her and give only St. Louis, it / would be forwarded to hear, as she has been a resident / of that city for many years. / [paragraph] Evidently I have misplaced the card you sent for / my autograph, but I enclose one of my own, which perhaps / will take its place. I am / Yours truly, / Carrie Chapman Catt
The accompanying card, 3-3/16 x 2-1/4,” is engraved: “Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt” and at the lower right, in smaller script, “2 West Eighty-sixth Street.” At the reverse, she has written: “ 'Equal Rights for all, / special privileges for / none' / Carrie Chapman Catt.” After Susan B. Anthony stepped down from the presidency of the NAWSA in 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded her as Miss Anthony’s choice. The ill health and subsequent death of her husband, however, forced her to resign in 1904. Mrs. Catt did not surrender all of her suffrage work. From 1904 until 1915 when she resumed presidency of the NAWSA, she focused on the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and on New York suffrage organizations. Letterhead from this period of Catt’s involvement with the International Woman Suffrage Alliance is relatively unusual. Affiliated woman suffrage organizations are listed for Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States.
Phoebe Couzins (as her name actually was spelled) (ca. 1839-1913), a lawyer and suffragist, was born in St. Louis and lived her entire life there. She was the first woman to receive a law degree from Washington University and later succeeded to her father’s position (briefly) as a federal marshal. Couzins also became prominent in the woman suffrage movement, attending meetings, and often traveling and speaking with Susan B. Anthony. When the AWSA and NWSA broke apart, Couzins followed Anthony and Stanton into the NWSA. As years passed, Couzins increasingly fell into difficulties. Her extravagance on clothes and personal luxuries perpetually strained her lean finances. Her prickly and dominating personality angered colleagues. For reasons never wholly clear to anyone other than herself, Couzins in 1897 renounced woman suffrage, a renunciation to which the contemporary press gave wide play in its pages. The coolness of Mrs. Catt’s response, and the fact she had no current address for this one-time suffrage stalwart, reflects how deeply Couzin’s defection was felt by former colleagues. A very nice example.
NAW I, pp. 309-313 (Catt); pp. 390-391 (Couzins).
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