Davis, the
chairman, without any thought of their possessing a deeper meaning than
appeared on the surface, but they fell flat on the convention, and were
neither discussed nor voted upon. The papers got possession of them,
nevertheless, declared that they were adopted as part of the platform,
read "free love" between the lines, and used them as the basis of many
ponderous and prophetic editorials.

A national committee was formed of one woman from each State, with Mrs.
Stanton as chairman, of which the New York Standard, edited by John
Russell Young, said: "Miss Susan B. Anthony holds a modest position,
but we can well believe that in any movement for the enfranchisement of
women, like MacGregor, wherever she sits will be the head of the
table." The New York Democrat commented: "She deals with facts, not
theories, but just gets hold of one nail after another and drives it
home.... Her words were to the point, as they always are, and abounded
in telling hits in every direction." Even the Tribune was generous
enough to say: "The ranks of the agitators with whom Captain Anthony is
identified contain no one more indiscreet, more reckless or more
honest. We have no sort of sympathy with the object to which the fair
captain is now devoting her life; but we know no person before the
country more single-minded, sincere and unselfish and, for these
reasons, more honestly entitled to the regard of a public which will
always appreciate upright intentions and disinterested devotion."

In the closing days of May, she wrote to her old paper, The Revolution:

Your "Stand by the Cause," this week, is the timely word to the
friends of woman suffrage. The present howl is an old trick of the
arch-fiend to divert public thought from the main question, viz:
woman's equal freedom and equal power to make and control her own
conditions in the state, in the church and, most of all, in the
home.

Though the ballot is the open sesame to equal rights, there is a
fundamental law which can not be violated with impunity between
woman and man, any more than between man and man; a law stated a
hundred years ago by Alexander Hamilton: "Give to a man a right
over my subsistence, and he has power over my whole moral being."
Woman's subsistence is in the hands of man, and most arbitrarily
and unjustly does he exercise his consequent power, making two
moral codes: one for himself, with largest la