You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton? by Jean Fritz

Author:Jean Fritz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

CHAPTER SIX

Elizabeth had waited through seven babies to be “born an orator,” but in 1860 she was at last ready. It was a good year for orators, an election year when a new president would be chosen. The question was: would he be a slavery man or an antislavery man? He better not be antislavery, southerners warned. They would quit the Union before they’d let an antislavery man rule them. Elizabeth had no notion of lecturing on politics, but she could do what Lucretia Mott was doing—lecture on slavery. Indeed, more and more she was lumping women and slaves together when she talked.

“To you, white man,” she declared in one speech, “the world throws open wide her gates ... but the black man and the woman are born to shame.”

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency. Southerners branded him antislavery and they did exactly what they had threatened to do. In December, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed quickly by other states. Many abolitionists in the North were also dissatisfied with Lincoln. How strong was he against slavery? True, he had said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was opposed to slavery being introduced to new territories. On the other hand, he had pledged to uphold the Fugitive Slave Law, which required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners in the South. Northerners despised this law and so were suspicious of Lincoln. Furthermore, he wasn’t making any promises to emancipate slaves. Perhaps he wouldn’t. So why not step up the movement for emancipation before Lincoln was inaugurated in March?

The abolitionists went to work, holding meetings, handing out petitions. Elizabeth and Susan were assigned to cover New York State. From town to town Elizabeth went, but she might as well have stayed home. No one would listen to her. People thought abolitionists wanted war, and they didn’t want to hear any more of their talk. Still, they came to her meetings. They came in mobs, rowdy disorderly mobs. When she began to speak, they drowned her out, hissing, booing, heckling. In only one place was Elizabeth permitted to have her say. In Albany the mayor sat on the stage beside her, a revolver on his knee.

Henry wrote to her: “I think you risk your lives.... [The] mobcrats would as soon kill you as not.” He advised her to go home. And she did.

Elizabeth remembered the winter of 1861 as “the winter of mobs.” Sick of Seneca Falls, she longed for a change. So when Henry was given a minor job as deputy collector of customs in New York City, Elizabeth quickly packed up and moved the family there to join him. She was forty-six years old and had lived upstate long enough. Now she would be where the action was.

And once Lincoln took office, the pace of life picked up in a frightening way. War was declared. Susan was a pacifist, so she was against war. Any war for any reason. But not Elizabeth.

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