Susan B. Anthony had hair as black as soot, skin as white as snow. Susan B. Anthony had a red, red cape that she loved to pieces and refashioned into a banner. Wicked stepmothers tried and failed to force her to go to the ball, marry sensibly, to be the stepmother of the dreaming daughters of her own generation. Susan B. Anthony would not.
Susan B. Anthony lived in a house of straw and then a house of sticks and finally a house of bricks. Huffing, puffing men couldn’t blow her house down. Susan B. Anthony once dressed as a boy and destroyed her mother’s china.
Susan B. Anthony could talk to animals and steam engines. She had magic dancing shoes. The magic was that they were comfortable.
Diary of Susan B. Anthony, August 14, 1849
Breakfast with Frederick Douglass.
“Women must have equal rights,” I said, spreading butter on toast with great efficiency.
“Yes, of course,” said Frederick, “but slavery must also be abolished.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “We must all have equal rights.”
“Absolutely,” Fred agreed.
Bit more discussion on that. Then, hard-boiled eggs and baked apples.
Susan B. Anthony was born before railroads. When the railroads came she fixed them with a steely glance. “Do your work, and do it well,” she said. She picked her own train carriage. When snow covered the tracks she raised her carriage up on chicken legs, and it carried her to all her speeches. “This is a warning,” she called over her shoulder at the railroad. The snow on the tracks tried hard to melt. Later in life she would say the only good railroad was an Underground Railroad.
When she was eighty-three she met an automobile. “Stop!” she ordered the driver from the back of her mule. “Show me how it works.”
The driver showed her how to crank it and how to steer it and all about acceleration and braking.
Susan shook her head in disgust. “This before suffrage,” she said, and stole the car and drove it three times down the lane before returning it to its owner.
Diary of Susan B. Anthony, June 23, 1851
New friend: Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Excellent woman. Organized a convention! Ought I to spell out my middle name?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was Susan B. Anthony’s best friend. “Hey B,” Liz would say when they rallied together. “Get your knickers on, and let’s do this thing!” Elizabeth Cady Stanton was older than Susan B. Anthony; she could talk like that. Susan B. Anthony never sullied her speech with words like get.
“Girls’ night?” Susan B. Anthony suggested. “My house?”
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton arrived Susan took her coat and then locked her in the study. “You can come out when you’ve finished your speech!” she shouted. She personally guarded the door to make sure Elizabeth didn’t escape until she had written a meaty three pages for the latest convention, with at least one good nugget for the newspapers. Liz was a lovely writer but procrastinated dreadfully. Her unwritten speeches itched at Susan’s skin.
Finally Elizabeth Cady Stanton emerged, exhausted, her hands covered with ink. Susan examined the speech. “Perfect,” she said. “Terrific work. Shall we have tea?”
“Whiskey,” Elizabeth declared. She started searching the cupboards.
Susan waited without saying anything, then shrugged. “Temperance,” she explained.
Diary of Susan B. Anthony, July 29, 1869
Never did I expect the lawless West to outpace the civilized East. One hears of nothing but drinking and shooting and high-altitude adaptations to large-herd ranching. Is there a single woman in that land who has not earned her keep behind the filthy counter of a cowboy saloon?
And yet it is these women who shall first see the right to vote in this nation. Does thin air lead to clear heads? If only I had made our case from the peak of Mt. Washington!
“Ultimately,” the territory of Wyoming reasoned, “we might as well be on the right side of history on this one. It’s not like there are enough people out here to work up a good protest.” The territory of Wyoming paused to watch its own tumbleweeds blowing. A geyser erupted, and Susan B. Anthony cheered.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Susan said. “Henceforth, you’ll be known as the Equality Territory. When Europe talks about America, they won’t be talking about New York and Massachusetts anymore.”
Wyoming was excited. Really, Wyoming was thrilled to be on the frontier of equality, as well as the frontier of everything else. Wyoming just hoped this wouldn’t delay its statehood bid. It really wanted to beat Idaho.
…
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