The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
Gaffney said in her tribute:
....The Christian world reckoned by centuries is just coming of age. Therefore women are beginning to put away childish things and to realize the greatness of womanhood. They have had to let ideals wait. They submitted to conditions because they were afraid that if they did not man would take to the woods and become again a wild barbarian. They were flattered by the fact that men liked them as they were, and they failed to realize that their power to civilize was God-given.
They needed a leader to rally them, to give them the courage of their convictions; and such a leader Miss Anthony has been. She spoke to the world in tones which rang out so clear and true that they will echo down the centuries. Some who had been protected and petted were slow to rally; others who had broader views accepted sooner the doctrine of rights—not privileges—of rights for all women. Miss Anthony taught us the sisterhood of woman, and that the privileges of one class could not offset the wrongs of another....
Mrs. Sewall, president of the International Council of Women, composed of the Councils of thirteen nations, and the largest organization of women in the world, said in part:
It is proper that the International Council should remember today "to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," and to pay tribute to the organization which it may not regard as other than its direct progenitor. There are certain incidents, simple in themselves, in which probably the actors are always at the time quite unconscious of their perennial significance, and yet which become landmarks in the evolution of the human spirit. Such are Thermopylæ and Marathon and Bunker Hill. Such was that first convention at Seneca Falls.... The light from that meeting, springing from a vital source, has vitalized every point it has touched. Other torches lit by that have become beacon lights, and every one has stood for the illumination of women....
In the name and in the blended tongues of the women of the different nationalities who belong to the International Council, I salute and congratulate you.... I beg the proud honor of placing your name, Miss Anthony, among the list of Patrons of the Council as a birthday gift, where it shall one day be pronounced in every language....
The Rev. Ida C. Hultin brought the gratitude of the ministers, saying:
....Women have failed to see that the work of every woman has touched that of every other. The woman who works with the hand helps her who works with the brain. To-day we know there could be no choice of work until there was freedom of choice to work. O, beloved leader, we of the ministry, as they of all ministries of service, bring our greetings and benediction. I hear the voices which shall tell of the new gospel and among them are the glad tones of women and the intonations of this one who spake in tears, who dared to speak before other tongues were loosed. Years will never silence that voice. Woman in her highest moods will catch the cadence of its melody and in the future there shall be that which will work back and forth to the enlightenment of the world because you have lived and ever shall live....
Miss Hirschler thus closed the tribute of her profession: "In the generations to come when courts of law shall have become courts of justice, women lawyers will think of Susan B. Anthony as one who paved the way and made this possible."
Mrs. Hollister said in part: "Miss Anthony has opened the portals of activities; has dignified labor; has made it possible for women to manage their own affairs—four millions to-day earning independent incomes. Women have given their lives for philanthropies and reforms, but the one we honor to-day gave hers for woman. Olive Schreiner tells of an artist who painted a wonderful picture and none could learn what pigments he used. When he died a wound was found over his heart; he had painted his masterpiece with his own blood. Such women as Miss Anthony are painting their masterpieces with their life's blood."
Mrs. Cook, with a dignity and simplicity which won the audience, said:
....It is fitting on this occasion, when the hearts of women the world over are turned to this day and hour, that the colored women of the United States should join in the expressions of love and praise offered to Miss Anthony upon her eightieth birthday. ....She is to us not only the high priestess of woman's cause, but the courageous defender of rights wherever assailed.
We hold in high esteem her strong and noble womanhood, for in her untiring zeal, her uncompromising stand for justice to women, her unfailing friendship for all good work, she herself is a stronger and better argument in favor of woman's rights than the most gifted orator could put into words. When she first championed woman's cause, humiliation followed her footsteps and injustice barred the door of her progress among even the most favored classes of society; while among less enlightened and enslaved classes the wrongs which woman suffered were too terrible to mention. Carlyle has said, "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon this earth." When Susan B. Anthony was born, a thinker was "let loose." Her voice and her pen have lighted a torch whose sacred fire, like that of some old Roman temples, dies not, but whose penetrating ray shall brighten the path of women down the long line of ages yet to come. Our children and our children's children will be taught to honor her memory, for they shall be told that she has been always in the vanguard of the immortal few who have stood for the great principles of human rights. Grander than any achievement that has crowned the work of woman in this woman's century has been that which has led her away from the narrow valley of custom and prejudice up to the lofty height where she can accept the Divine teaching that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men."
Not until the suffrage movement had awakened woman to her responsibility and power, did she come to appreciate the true significance of Christ's pity for Magdalene as well as of His love for Mary; not till then was the work of Pundita Ramabai in far away India as sacred as that of Frances Willard at home in America; not till she had suffered under the burden of her own wrongs and abuses did she realize the all-important truth that no woman and no class of women can be degraded and all womankind not suffer thereby.
And so, Miss Anthony, in behalf of the hundreds of colored women who wait and hope with you for the day when the ballot shall be in the hands of every intelligent woman; and also in behalf of the thousands who sit in darkness and whose condition we shall expect those ballots to better, whether they be in the hands of white women or black, I offer you my warmest gratitude and congratulations.
Mrs. Thompson presented $200 from the District of Columbia, with the following affectionate tribute:
....In behalf of the Suffragists of the District of Columbia, both men and women, I am happy to say I am deputized to present to you a gift which expresses their regard and love for you as well as their appreciation of the almost superhuman efforts you have made for the past fifty years to secure justice and civil and political equality for women.
The gift is in the form of what is often called "the sinews of war"—money. Not coarse, dead cash, such as passes from hand to hand in everyday transactions, but money every penny of which is alive with sincere thanks and earnest, loving wishes for happiness and continued success in all your endeavors....
We do not hail you, love you, as one who has made woman's life easier, strewn it with more rose leaves of idleness, shielded it from more stress and storm, but as one who has taken the grander, truer view, that by equally sharing stress and storm, by equal effort and work, by equality in rights, privileges, powers and opportunities with her other self—man—woman will evolve and will reach her loftiest, loveliest development. Not as an apostle of ease, parasitism and shrinking fear do we regard you, but as the apostle, the incarnation, of work, of high courage and deathless endeavor.
We wish our gift were myriad-fold greater, but it would never express more appreciation of what you stand for and what you are—a Liberator of Woman.
Mrs. Helen M. Warren, wife of the Senator from Wyoming, speaking in a fine, resonant voice which would do credit to any legislative hall, read the poem written by Miss Phoebe Cary for the celebration of Miss Anthony's fiftieth birthday, presented her with a brooch, a little American flag, made of gold and jewels, and said: "I feel honored on this, your eightieth birthday, to represent the State of Wyoming which has espoused your cause for more than thirty years. I have in my hand a flag, which bears on its field forty-one common stars and four diamonds, representing the four progressive or suffrage States—Wyoming, the banner State;