e conservative views, nor
would she give her crusading sheet an innocuous name. However, the
decision was taken out of her hands by _The Revolution's_ coverage of
the sensational McFarland-Richardson murder case, which so shocked
both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Stowe that they gave up all thought of being
associated in a publishing venture with Susan or Mrs. Stanton.

The whole country was stirred in December 1869 by the fatal shooting
in the _Tribune_ office of the well-known journalist, Albert D.
Richardson, by Daniel McFarland, to whose divorced wife Richardson had
been attentive. When just before his death, Richardson was married to
the divorced Mrs. McFarland by Henry Ward Beecher with Horace Greeley
as a witness, the press was agog. So strong was the feeling against a
divorced woman that Henry Ward Beecher was severely condemned for
officiating at the marriage, and Mrs. Richardson was played up in the
press and in court as the villain, although her divorce had been
granted because of the brutality and instability of McFarland.

Indignant at the sophistry of the press and the general acceptance of
a double standard of morals, _The Revolution_ not only spoke out
fearlessly in defense of Mrs. Richardson but in an editorial by Mrs.
Stanton frankly analyzed the tragic human relations so obvious in the
case. With Susan's full approval, Mrs. Stanton wrote, "I rejoice over
every slave that escapes from a discordant marriage. With the
education and elevation of women we shall have a mighty sundering of
the unholy ties that hold men and women together who loathe and
despise each other...."[249] When the court acquitted McFarland,
giving him the custody of his twelve-year-old son, Susan called a
protest meeting which attracted an audience of two thousand.

Such words and such activities disturbed many who sympathized with
Mrs. Richardson but saw no reason for flaunting exultant approval of
divorce in a woman suffrage paper, and they turned to the _Woman's
Journal_ as more to their taste.

Susan, however, reading the first number of the _Woman's Journal_,
found its editorials lacking fire. She rebelled at Julia Ward Howe's
counsel, "to lay down all partisan warfare and organize a peaceful
Grand Army of the Republic of Women ... not ... as against men, but as
against all that is pernicious to men and women."[250] Susan's fight
had never been against men but against man-made laws that held women
in bondage. There had always been