calcitrant Republican, and she allowed nothing to stand in her way,
not even the frenzied pleas of her abolitionist friends. She found
James Brooks of New York, Democratic leader of the House, willing to
present her petitions, and she made use of him, although he was
regarded by abolitionists as a Copperhead and although he was now
advocating conciliatory reconstruction for the South of which she
herself disapproved. Other Democrats came to the rescue in the Senate
as well as in the House--a few because they saw justice in the demands
of the women, others because they believed white women should have
political precedence over Negroes, and still others because they saw
in their support of woman suffrage an opportunity to harass the
Republicans. During 1866, petitions for woman suffrage with 10,000
signatures were presented by Democrats and irregular Republicans.

In the meantime, conferences in New York with Henry Ward Beecher and
Theodore Tilton were encouraging, and for a time Susan thought she had
found an enthusiastic ally in Tilton, the talented popular young
editor of the _Independent_. Theodore Tilton, with his long hair and
the soulful face of a poet, with his eloquence as a lecturer and his
flare for journalism, was at the height of his popularity. He had
winning ways and was full of ideas. After the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, in December 1865, he had
proposed that the American Antislavery Society and the woman's rights
group merge to form an American Equal Rights Association which would
fight for equal rights for all, for Negro and woman suffrage. Wendell
Phillips he suggested for president, and the _Antislavery Standard_
as the paper of the new organization.

This sounded reasonable and hopeful to Susan, and she hurried to
Boston with a group from New York, including Lucy Stone, to consult
Wendell Phillips and his New England colleagues. Wendell Phillips,
however, was cool to the proposition, pointing out the necessity of
amending the constitution of the American Antislavery Society before
any such action could be taken. Never dreaming that he would actually
oppose their plan, Susan expected this would be taken care of; but
when she convened her woman's rights convention in New York in May
1866, simultaneously with that of the American Antislavery Society,
she found to her dismay that no formal notice of the proposed union
had been given to the members of the antislavery grou