Negroes, Charles Remond and his sister, Sarah.

In debt from her last woman's rights campaign, she could not afford a
new dress for these tours, but she dyed a dark green the merino which
she had worn so proudly in Canajoharie ten years before, bought cloth
to match for a basque, and made a "handsome suit." "With my Siberian
squirrel cape, I shall be very comfortable," she noted in her
diary.[72]

She had met indifference and ridicule in her campaigns for woman's
rights. Now she faced outright hostility, for northern businessmen had
no use for abolition-mad fanatics, as they called anyone who spoke
against slavery. Abolitionists, they believed, ruined business by
stirring up trouble between the North and the South.

Usually antislavery meetings turned into debates between speakers and
audience, often lasting until midnight, and were charged with
animosity which might flame into violence. All of the speakers lived
under a strain, and under emotional pressure. Consequently they were
not always easy to handle. Some of them were temperamental, a bit
jealous of each other, and not always satisfied with the tours Susan
mapped out for them. She expected of her colleagues what she herself
could endure, but they often complained and sometimes refused to
fulfill their engagements.

When no one else was at hand, she took her turn at speaking, but she
was seldom satisfied with her efforts. "I spoke for an hour," she
confided to her diary, "but my heart fails me. Can it be that my
stammering tongue ever will be loosed?"

Lucy Stone, who spoke with such ease, gave her advice and
encouragement. "You ought to cultivate your power of expression," she
wrote. "The subject is clear to you and you ought to be able to make
it so to others. It is only a few years ago that Mr. Higginson told me
he could not speak, he was so much accustomed to writing, and now he
is second only to Phillips. 'Go thou and do likewise.'"[73]

In March 1857, the Supreme Court startled the country with the Dred
Scott decision, which not only substantiated the claim of
Garrisonians that the Constitution sanctioned slavery and protected
the slaveholder, but practically swept away the Republican platform of
no extention of slavery in the territories. The decision declared that
the Constitution did not apply to Negroes, since they were citizens of
no state when it was adopted and therefore had not the right of
citizens to sue for freedom or to claim freedom in