ted in a new house where we will have a room ready
for you.... I long to put my arms about you once more and hear you
scold me for all my sins and shortcomings.... Oh, Susan, you are very
dear to me. I should miss you more than any other living being on this
earth. You are entwined with much of my happy and eventful past, and
all my future plans are based on you as coadjutor. Yes, our work is
one, we are one in aim and sympathy and should be together. Come
home."

Parker Pillsbury also added his plea, "Why have you deserted the field
of action at a time like this, at an hour unparalleled in almost
twenty centuries?... It is not for me to decide your field of labor.
Kansas needed John Brown and may need you ... but New York is to
revise her constitution next year and, if you are absent, who is to
make the plea for woman?"

Reading her newspaper a few days later, she found that the politicians
had made their first move, introducing in the House of Representatives
a resolution writing the word "male" into the qualifications of voters
in the second section of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. She
started at once for the East.

* * * * *

On the long journey back, in the heat of August, traveling by stage
and railroad with many stops to make the necessary connections, Susan
not only visited her many relatives who had moved to the West, but
also called on antislavery and woman suffrage workers, and held
meetings to plead for free schools for Negroes and for the ballot for
Negroes and women. She found people relieved to have the war over and
busy with their own affairs, but with prejudices smoldering. Public
speaking was still an ordeal for her and she confessed to her diary,
"Made a labored talk.... Had a struggle to get through with speech,"
and again, "Had a hard time. Thoughts nor words would come--Staggered
through."[174] However, she was a determined woman. The message must
be carried to the people and she would do it whether she suffered in
the process or not.

Late in September, she reached her own comfortable home in Rochester,
but she had too much on her mind to stay there long, and within a few
weeks was in New York with Elizabeth Stanton, deep in a serious
discussion of how to create an overwhelming demand for woman suffrage
at this crucial time. Again they decided to petition Congress, this
time for the vote for both women and Negroes. Five years had now
passed since the last