an
bread."[56] Merritt was ready and eager to join John Brown.

The Anthony farm was virtually a hotbed of insurrection with Merritt
planning resistance in Kansas and Susan reform in New York. Susan
mapped out an ambitious itinerary, hoping to canvass with her
petitions every county in the state. With her father as security, she
borrowed money to print her handbills and notices, and then wrote
Wendell Phillips asking if any money for a woman's rights campaign had
been raised by the last national convention. He replied with his own
personal check for fifty dollars. His generosity and confidence
touched her deeply, for already he had become a hero to her second
only to William Lloyd Garrison. This tall handsome intellectual, a
graduate of Harvard and an unsurpassed orator, had forfeited friends,
social position, and a promising career as a lawyer to plead for the
slave. He was also one of the very few men who sympathized with and
aided the woman's rights cause.

Horace Greeley too proved at this time to be a good friend, writing,
"I have your letter and your programme, friend Susan. I will publish
the latter in all our editions, but return your dollars."[57]

Her earnestness and ability made a great appeal to these men. They
marveled at her industry. Thirty-four years old now, not handsome but
wholesome, simply and neatly dressed, her brown hair smoothly parted
and brought down over her ears, she had nothing of the scatterbrained
impulsive reformer about her, and no coquetry. She was practical and
intelligent, and men liked to discuss their work with her. William
Henry Channing, admiring her executive ability and her plucky reaction
to defeat, dubbed her the Napoleon of the woman's rights movement.
Parker Pillsbury, the fiery abolitionist from New Hampshire,
broad-shouldered, dark-bearded, with blazing eyes and almost fanatical
zeal, had become her devoted friend. He liked nothing better than to
tease her about her idleness and pretend to be in search of more work
for her to do.

* * * * *

So impatient was Susan to begin her New York State campaign that she
left home on Christmas Day to hold her first meeting on December 26,
1854, at Mayville in Chatauqua County. The weather was cold and damp,
but the four pounds of candles which she had bought to light the court
house flickered cheerily while the small curious audience, gathered
from several nearby towns, listened to the first woman