national woman's rights convention, and the
workers were scattered; some had lost interest and others thought only
of the need of the Negro. Lucretia Mott, Lydia Mott, and Parker
Pillsbury responded at once. Susan sought out Lucy Stone in spite of
the differences that had grown up between them, and after talking with
Lucy, confessed to herself that she had been unjustly impatient with
her.[175]

Hoping for aid from the Jackson or Hovey Fund, she went to New England
to revive interest there and in Concord talked with the Emersons,
Bronson Alcott, and Frank Sanborn. When she asked Emerson whether he
thought it wise to demand woman suffrage at this time, he replied,
"Ask my wife. I can philosophize, but I always look to her to decide
for me in practical matters." Unhesitatingly Mrs. Emerson agreed with
Susan that Congress must be petitioned immediately to enfranchise
women either before Negroes were granted the vote or at the same
time.[176]

Even Wendell Phillips, who did not want to mix Negro and woman
suffrage, gave Susan $500 from the Hovey Fund to finance the
petitions, but many of the friends upon whom she had counted needed a
verbal lashing to rouse them out of their apathy. Very soon she had to
face the unpleasant fact that by pressing for woman suffrage now, she
was estranging many abolitionists. Nevertheless she and Mrs. Stanton
went ahead undaunted, determined that a petition for woman suffrage
would go to Congress even if it carried only their own two signatures.

However, petitions with many signatures were reaching Congress in
January 1866--the very first demand ever made for Congressional action
on woman suffrage. Senator Sumner, for whom women had rolled up
400,000 signatures for the Thirteenth Amendment, now presented under
protest "as most inopportune" a petition headed by Lydia Maria Child,
who for years had been his valiant aid in antislavery work; and
Thaddeus Stevens, heretofore friendly to woman suffrage and ever
zealous for the Negro, ignored a petition from New York headed by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.[177]

By this time it was clear to Susan that since the two powerful
Republicans, Senator Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, both basically
friendly to woman suffrage, were determined to devote themselves
wholly to Negro suffrage and to the extension of their party's
influence, she could expect no help from lesser party members. Her
only alternative was to appeal to the Democrats or to an occasional
re