ng women.

* * * * *

In the spring of 1862, Susan helped Mrs. Stanton move her family to a
new home in Brooklyn, and spent a few weeks with her there, getting
the feel of the city in wartime. She then had the satisfaction of
discovering that at least one woman was of use to her country, young
eloquent Anna E. Dickinson.[140] Susan listened with pride and joy
while Anna spoke to an enthusiastic audience at Cooper Union on the
issues of the war. She took Anna to her heart at once. Anna's youth,
her fervor, and her remarkable ability drew out all of Susan's
motherly instincts of affection and protectiveness. They became
devoted friends, and for the next few years carried on a voluminous
correspondence.

Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur also helped restore Susan's confidence
in women during these difficult days when, forced to mark time, she
herself seemed at loose ends. Visiting the Academy of Design, she
studied "in silent reverential awe," the marble face of Harriet
Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci, and declared, "Making that cold marble
breathe and pulsate, Harriet Hosmer has done more to ennoble and
elevate woman than she could possibly have done by mere words...." Of
Rosa Bonheur, the first woman to venture into the field of animal
painting, she said, "Her work not only surpasses anything ever done by
a woman, but is a bold and successful step beyond all other
artists."[141]

This confidence was soon dispelled, however, when a letter came from
Lydia Mott containing the crushing news that the New York legislature
had amended the newly won Married Woman's Property Law of 1860, while
women's attention was focused on the war, and had taken away from
mothers the right to equal guardianship of their children and from
widows the control of the property left at the death of their
husbands.

"We deserve to suffer for our confidence in 'man's sense of justice,'"
she confessed to Lydia. " ... All of our reformers seem suddenly to
have grown politic. All alike say, 'Have no conventions at this
crisis!' Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Stanton,
etc. say, 'Wait until the war excitement abates....' I am sick at
heart, but cannot carry the world against the wish and will of our
best friends...."[142]

Unable to arouse even a glimmer of interest in woman's rights at this
time, Susan started off on a lecture tour of her own, determined to
make people understand that this war, so abhorrent