Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/284

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264
History of Woman Suffrage.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God in the darkness keeping watch above His own.

After speaking in all the chief cities from Leavenworth to New York,[1] Mrs. Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony turned their attention to the establishment in the city of New York of a woman suffrage paper, called The Revolution.[2] The funds for this enterprise were provided by two Democrats, David Melliss, the financial editor of the World, and George Francis Train. The editors were Parker Pillsbury and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the owner and publisher, Susan B. Anthony. This affiliation with Mr. Train and other Democrats, together with the aggressive tone of The Revolution, called down on Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton severe criticism from some of their friends, while they received sincere praise from others. In reviewing the situation, they have had no reason to regret their course, feeling that their determination to push their cause, and accept help from whatever quarter it was proffered, aroused lukewarm friends to action, who, though hostile at first to the help of Democrats, soon came to appreciate the difficulty of carrying on a movement with the press, pulpit, politicians, and philanthropists all in the opposition.

Abolitionists were severe in their denunciations against these ladies, because, while belonging to anti-slavery associations, they affiliated with the bitter enemies of the negro and all his defamers. To which they replied: "So long as opposition to slavery is the only test for a free pass to your platform and membership of your association, and you do not shut out all persons opposed to woman suffrage, why should we not accept all in favor of woman suffrage to our platform and association, even though they be rabid pro-slavery Democrats? Your test of faithfulness is the negro, ours is the woman; the broadest platform, to which no party has as yet risen, is humanity." Reformers can be as bigoted and sectarian and as ready to malign each other, as the Church in its darkest periods has been to persecute its dissenters.

So utterly had the women been deserted in the Kansas campaign by those they had the strongest reason to look to for help, that at times all effort seemed hopeless. The editors of the New York Tribune and the Independent can never know how wistfully, from day to day, their papers were searched for some inspiring editorial,

———

  1. This trip cost Mr. Train $2,500, as he paid all the expenses, advertising largely.
  2. The first number was published January 6, 1868, and ten thousand copies, under the frank of the Hon. James Brooks, were scattered throughout the country.