to arms," she declared, "was nothing
less than downright murder by the government.... I therefore hail the
day when the government shall recognize that it is a war for
freedom."[149]

A Women's National Loyal League was organized, electing Susan
secretary and Mrs. Stanton president. They sent a long letter to
President Lincoln thanking him for the Emancipation Proclamation,
especially for the freedom it gave Negro women, and assuring him of
their loyalty and support in this war for freedom. Their own immediate
task, they decided, was to circulate petitions asking for an act of
Congress to emancipate "all persons of African descent held in
involuntary servitude." As Susan so tersely expressed it, they would
"canvass the nation for freedom."

* * * * *

All the oratory over, Susan now undertook the hard work of making the
Women's National Loyal League a success, assuming the initial
financial burden of printing petitions and renting an office, Room 20,
at Cooper Institute, where she was busy all day and where New York
members met to help her. To each of the petitions sent out, she
attached her battle cry, "There must be a law abolishing slavery....
Women, you cannot vote or fight for your country. Your only way to be
a power in the government is through the exercise of this one, sacred,
constitutional 'right of petition,' and we ask you to use it now to
the utmost...." She also asked those signing the petitions to
contribute a penny to help with expenses and in this way she slowly
raised $3,000.[150]

At first the response was slow, although both Republican and
antislavery papers were generous in their praise of this undertaking,
but when the signed petitions began to come in, she felt repaid for
all her efforts, and when the Hovey Fund trustees appropriated twelve
dollars a week for her salary, the financial burden lifted a little.
Yet it was ever present. For herself she needed little. She wrote her
mother and Mary, "I go to a little restaurant nearby for lunch every
noon. I always take strawberries with two tea rusks. Today I said,
'all this lacks is a glass of milk from my mother's cellar,' and the
girl replied, 'We have very nice Westchester milk.' So tomorrow I
shall add that to my bill of fare. My lunch costs, berries five cents,
rusks five, and tomorrow the milk will be three."[151]

The cost of postage mounted as the petitions continued to go out to
all parts of the country.