Dear friends,
Historically, woman suffragettes were usually
abolitionists first. One such person who began as an abolitionist and later
became a renowned speaker for women's rights was Susan B. Anthony. Yet, Anthony
seemed to have questionable qualities regarding her feelings about human
liberation. You see, suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton were, in fact, vigorously opposed to Lincoln's version of the
Emancipation Proclamation, because it would eventually lead to African American
men - and no women of any group - having the right to vote. Even worse, much of her
public life, at least at one point, was financed by a man, George Francis
Train, a white supremacist ideologue and spokesman.
Susan
B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had responded to what they considered to
be a Republican "betrayal" by agreeing to share the lecture platform
with a flamboyant Democrat, George Francis Train. An effective, if eccentric, speaker, Train scandalized abolitionists and suffragists alike by his frequent
recourse to racial slurs and by his advocacy of woman suffrage as an
alternative to Black suffrage. Despite mounting pressure from their fellow
reformers, Anthony and Stanton refused to dissociate themselves with Train, the
only man willing to provide them with consistent strategic and financial
support. He not only took it upon himself to pay the two women's expenses when
funds ran low, but also offered to bankroll Anthony's dream of a pro-suffrage
journal in exchange for their continued presence on his return lecture tour to
the East. In what seems like an obvious victory of expediency over principle,
both women accepted the offer, insisting on their 'right to accept proffered
aid without looking behind it for the motive.' It was not the last time they
would have to engage in such a defense - (please refer to The Isabella Beecher Hooker
Project, edited by Anne Throne Margolis)
G. Djata bumpus
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