then Susan, remembering a boarding house run by a
divorced woman she knew, hopefully rang her doorbell. She too refused
them, claiming all her boarders would leave if she harbored a runaway
wife. By this time it was midnight. Cold and exhausted, they braved a
Broadway hotel, where they were told there was no vacant room; but
Susan, convinced this was only an excuse, said as much to the clerk,
adding, "You can give us a place to sleep or we will sit in this
office all night." When he threatened to call the police, she
retorted, "Very well, we will sit here till they come to take us to
the station."[131] Finally he relented and gave them a room without
heat. Early the next morning, Susan began making the rounds of her
friends in search of shelter for Mrs. Phelps and her daughter, and
finally at the end of a discouraging day, Abby Hopper Gibbons, the
Quaker who had so often hidden fugitive slaves, took this fugitive
wife into her home.

Returning to Albany, Susan found herself under suspicion and
threatened with arrest by Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Phelps's brothers,
because she had broken the law by depriving a father of his child.
Letters and telegrams, demanding that she reveal Mrs. Phelps's hiding
place, followed her to Rochester and on her antislavery tour through
western New York. Refusing to be intimidated, she ignored them all.

When Garrison wrote her long letters in his small neat hand, begging
her not to involve the woman's rights and antislavery movements in any
"hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant" action, it was hard
for her to reconcile this advice with his impetuous, undiplomatic, and
dangerous actions on behalf of Negro slaves. "I feel the strongest
assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had
I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I
should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any
movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle
my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment
of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the
slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman."[132]

When later they met at an antislavery convention, Garrison, renewing
his efforts on behalf of Dr. Phelps, put this question to Susan,
"Don't you know that the law of Massachusetts gives the father the
entire guardianship and control of the children?"

"Yes, I know it," she answered. "