y Mrs. Stanton came back into
line, but both Mrs. Hooker and Mrs. Davis seemed bound to drift under
Victoria's influence, and the promising young lawyer, Belva Lockwood,
campaigned for the Equal Rights party and its candidate Victoria
Woodhull.

* * * * *

While Victoria Woodhull's fortunes were speedily dropping from the
sublime heights of a presidential nomination to the humiliation of
financial ruin, the loss of her home, and the suspended publication
of her _Weekly_, Susan was knocking at the doors of the Republican and
Democratic national conventions. She had previously appealed to the
liberal Republicans, among whose delegates were her old friends George
W. Julian, B. Gratz Brown, and Theodore Tilton, but they had ignored
woman suffrage and had nominated for President, Horace Greeley, now a
persistent opponent of votes for women. The Democrats did no better.
Faced with Grant as the strong Republican nominee, they too nominated
Horace Greeley with B. Gratz Brown as his running mate, hoping by this
coalition to achieve victory. The Republicans, still unwilling to go
the whole way for woman suffrage by giving it the recognition of a
plank in their platform, did, however, offer women a splinter at which
Susan grasped eagerly because it was the first time an important,
powerful political party had ever mentioned women in their platform.

"The Republican party," read the splinter, "is mindful of its
obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to
the cause of freedom; their admission to wider fields of usefulness is
received with satisfaction; and the honest demands of any class of
citizens for equal rights should be treated with respectful
consideration."[283]

Thankful to have escaped involvement with Victoria Woodhull and her
Equal Rights party just at this time when the Republicans were ready
to smile upon women, Susan basked in an aura of respectability thrown
around her by her new political allies. She was even hopeful that the
two woman-suffrage factions could now forget their differences and
work together for "the living, vital issue of today--freedom to
women."

She at once began speaking for the Republican party, looking forward
to carrying the discussion of woman suffrage into every school
district and every ward meeting. In the beginning the Republicans were
generous with funds, giving her $1,000 for women's meetings in New
York, Philadelphia, Roche