vide the North, but
to watch events and bide their time, and he opposed those
abolitionists who wanted to withhold support of the government until
it stood openly and unequivocally for the Negro's freedom. From the
front page of the _Liberator_, he now removed his slogan, "No Union
with Slaveholders." Kindly placid Samuel J. May, usually against all
violence, now compared the sacrifices of the war to the crucifixion,
and to Susan this was blasphemy. Even Parker Pillsbury wrote her, "I
am rejoicing over Old Abe, but my voice is still for war."[135]

She was troubled, confused, and disillusioned by the attitude of these
men and by that of most of her antislavery friends. Only very few,
among them Lydia Mott, were uncompromising non-resistants. To one of
them she wrote, "I have tried hard to persuade myself that I alone
remained mad, while all the rest had become sane, because I have
insisted that it is our duty to bear not only our usual testimony but
one even louder and more earnest than ever before.... The
Abolitionists, for once, seem to have come to an agreement with all
the world that they are out of tune and place, hence should hold their
peace and spare their rebukes and anathemas. Our position to me seems
most humiliating, simply that of the politicians, one of expediency,
not principle. I have not yet seen one good reason for the abandonment
of all our meetings, and am more and more ashamed and sad that even
the little Apostolic number have yielded to the world's motto--'the
end justifies the means.'"[136]

Now the farm home was a refuge. Her father, leaving her in charge,
traveled West for his long-dreamed-of visit with his sons in Kansas,
with Daniel R., now postmaster at Leavenworth, and with Merritt and
his young wife, Mary Luther, in their log cabin at Osawatomie. As a
release from her pent-up energy, Susan turned to hard physical work.
"Superintended the plowing of the orchard," she recorded in her diary.
"The last load of hay is in the barn; and all in capital order....
Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the
frame.... Quilted all day, but sewing seems no longer to be my
calling.... Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of
Harriet Tubman."[137]

Although she filled her days, life on the farm in these stirring times
seemed futile to her. She missed the stimulating exchange of ideas
with fellow-abolitionists and confessed to her diary, "The all-alone
feeling