Read In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton for Free Online

lunatics.” She reminded Gerrit Smith that “Tyranny on a southern plantation is far more easily seen bywhite men in the North than the wrongs of women in their own households.” Privately she tried to make amends for these public attacks. “I admire you more than any living man,” she wrote to her cousin, “though you do persist in putting Sambo, Hans, Patrick and Yung Fung above your noblest countrymen.” Smith did not relent, and Stanton “never let him know I noticed his coldness.” 38 She did not avoid confrontations. If she could not repair a broken relationship she tried to minimize the long-term damage and then ignored the problem.
    The Train connection, unpopular editorial stands, and Stanton’s strict prohibitions against certain products cut advertising revenue as well as circulation figures. As senior editor, Stanton refused to run ads for patent medicines, the largest newspaper advertisers at that time. Typically skeptical of medicine and physicians, she was convinced that patent medicines were dangerous and that some were thinly disguised abortifacients. Stanton opposed abortion because it was dangerous for women. She found abortion and the related act of infanticide “disgusting and degrading crimes,” but she did not blame the women who committed them. Temporarily contradicting her own recognition of female sexuality Stanton believed that women were forced into these desperate measures by the uncontrolled sexual appetities of men. 39 It was a subject she would expand upon in the 1870s.
    With few subscriptions or advertisements, Stanton and Anthony became more dependent on Train for financial support. But soon after the first issue of the
Revolution
appeared, Train left for England. There his outspoken support of Irish rebels resulted in a one-year jail sentence. No longer able or willing to subsidize the paper, Train insisted that the women remove his name from the masthead, but they were reluctant to do so. 40 For a while David Meliss underwrote the paper’s growing debt, but soon he too withdrew.
    After two and a half years, the
Revolution
failed. In May 1870, for the consideration of one dollar, it was sold to Laura Curtis Bullard. Ironically, Mrs. Bullard’s large fortune had been made from the sale of a quack cure, Dr. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. For eighteen months the newspaper became a literary and society journal, until it was taken over by the
New York Christian Enquirer
. Paulina Wright Davis, and later Theodore Tilton, replaced Pillsbury as editor. Anthony was saddled with a closing debt of ten thousand dollars and despaired at the loss of her “firstborn.” Stanton, in contrast, refused to reflect on their failure or to share responsibility for the debt. 41
    The
Revolution
had only been in print five months when the American Equal Rights Association convened its annual meeting in May 1868. Outraged reformers seized this opportunity to attack Stanton and Anthony onaccount of the Kansas defeat and their editorial demeanor. Henry Blackwell and Stephen Foster accused Anthony of using AERA funds to finance the Train lecture tour and the
Revolution
. Stunned by this smear, Anthony accounted for every penny spent in Kansas. Traveling without a subsidy, Stanton and Anthony had raised their own expenses and had spent them as they chose. Anthony’s financial statement satisfied the majority, but a residue of resentment and suspicion remained on both sides. The group then castigated both women for refusing to support the Fourteenth or Fifteenth amendments in their editorials.
    The major battle of the convention was waged over the Fifteenth Amendment, granting suffrage to black males. Stanton and Anthony stubbornly refused to endorse voting rights for black men only. They insisted that the proposed wording be changed to include black and white women. Olympia Brown and Lucy Stone demanded an explanation of the male-only strategy but did not side with Stanton. Frederick Douglass, Stanton’s