LETTER: Autograph letter signed, to her cousin Benjamin Anthony.
Anthony Writes To Her Cousin
Of Her Work
Anthony, Susan B. Autograph letter signed, “Susan B. Anthony,” to her cousin Benjamin Anthony, Rochester, April 4, 1867, one leaf, two pages; handwritten envelope, postmarked April 5, 1867. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
An early letter written by Anthony to her cousin, Benjamin Anthony, and his wife, residents of Medina, N.Y., where she would be speaking the following week. The meeting she will attend takes place in the midst of her efforts, with Stone and Stanton, to unite the causes of black suffrage and woman suffrage under one banner, that of the “The American Equal Rights Association,” thus gaining financial and political support from visible Republicans such as Theodore Tilton.
Petitioning and lobbying through 1866 and 1867, the Equal Rights Association took its major stand in Kansas—a state sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—where it hoped to remove the word “male” from the new state constitution thus enabling the female vote. The failure of the Kansas Campaign resulted in the withdrawal of support from those abolitionist organizations on whom they had relied, and who were determined to pursue black suffrage before woman suffrage. In 1868, they therefore allied themselves with prominent abolitionists such as Parker Pillsbury and Thomas Wentworth Higginson; it is Pillsbury’s involvement with which Anthony begins this letter, which opens,
Rochester Apr. 4, 1867
Dear Cousin
Parker Pillsbury is very sick, and I have recalled the Tuesday evg. mtg. at Medina. Only Mrs. Stanton and I will speak there on Wednesday evg the 10th.
Will you try your minister and as many others as you please, to give notice of our meeting?—I have also cut the admission fee down to 10 cts…
Anthony goes on to discuss arrangements for visiting with her cousins—or, rather, her inability to do so—and in the process expounds on the sort of woman needed to convert to the cause:
—Tell cousin Siffire not to make an effort to have us at your home—because we shall only be in Medina one night—and no time for visiting—and she has no time either.
If there were any woman who had plenty of time & Servants to do the work—who wished to honor herself with our resting under her roof—why we should accept—because we might do something toward converting her—but Siffire’s hands are too full of work—so I beg you give it no thought.
She closes, with hopes for modest success at Medina:
I hope we may get a bakers dozen at the meeting.
Sincerely yours
Susan B. Anthony
She has addressed the envelope, also present, to “Benjamin Anthony / Medina / N.Y. / or Wife.”
(#6726)
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