iss Anthony" had
long ago become Susan to Elizabeth, but Susan all through her life
called her very best friend "Mrs. Stanton," playfully to be sure, but
with a remnant of that formality which it was hard for her to cast
off.

The speech was soon finished. Mrs. Stanton's imagination, fired by her
sympathetic understanding of women's problems, had turned Susan's cold
hard facts into moving prose, while Susan, the best of critics,
detected every weak argument or faltering phrase. They both felt they
had achieved a masterpiece.

Mrs. Stanton delivered this address before a joint session of the New
York legislature in March 1860. Susan beamed with pride as she watched
the large audience crowd even the galleries and heard the long loud
applause for the speech which she was convinced could not have been
surpassed by any man in the United States.

The next day the Assembly passed the Married Women's Property Bill,
and when shortly it was signed by the governor, Susan and Mrs. Stanton
scored their first big victory, winning a legal revolution for the
women of New York State. This new law was a challenge to women
everywhere. Under it a married woman had the right to hold property,
real and personal, without the interference of her husband, the right
to carry on any trade or perform any service on her own account and to
collect and use her own earnings; a married woman might now buy, sell,
and make contracts, and if her husband had abandoned her or was
insane, a convict, or a habitual drunkard, his consent was
unnecessary; a married woman might sue and be sued, she was the joint
guardian with her husband of her children, and on the decease of her
husband the wife had the same rights that her husband would have at
her death.

Susan did not then realize the full significance of what she had
accomplished--that she had unleashed a new movement for freedom which
would be the means of strengthening the democratic government of her
country.

FOOTNOTES:

[90] Harper, _Anthony_, I, pp. 173-174, 198.

[91] _Ibid._, p. 160.

[92] May 26, 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Vassar College
Library.

[93] _Ibid._, June 5, 1856. Antoinette Brown Blackwell was often
called Nette.

[94] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress.

[95] 1856, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress.

[96] Ms., Susan B. Anthony Papers, Library of Congress. A notation on
this ms. reads, "Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton--Deliv