the deficit which piled up
unrelentingly. Her goal was 100,000 subscribers.

She had gone to Washington at once to solicit subscriptions personally
from the President and members of Congress. Ben Wade of Ohio headed
the list of Senators who subscribed, and loyal as always to woman
suffrage, encouraged her to go ahead and push her cause. "It has got
to come," he added, "but Congress is too busy now to take it up."
Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts greeted her gruffly, telling her
that she and Mrs. Stanton had done more to block reconstruction in the
last two years than all others in the land, but he subscribed because
he wanted to know what they were up to. Although Senator Pomeroy was
"sore about Kansas" and her alliance with the Democrats, he
nevertheless subscribed, but Senator Sumner was not to be seen. The
first member of the House to put his name on her list was her
dependable understanding friend, George Julian of Indiana, and many
others followed his lead. For two hours she waited to see President
Johnson, in an anteroom "among the huge half-bushel-measure spittoons
and terrible filth ... where the smell of tobacco and whiskey was
powerful." When she finally reached him, he immediately refused her
request, explaining that he had a thousand such solicitations every
day. Not easily put off, she countered at once by remarking that he
had never before had such a request in his life. "You recognize, Mr.
Johnson," she continued, "that Mrs. Stanton and myself for two years
have boldly told the Republican party that they must give ballots to
women as well as to Negroes, and by means of _The Revolution_ we are
bound to drive the party to this logical conclusion or break it into a
thousand pieces as was the old Whig party, unless we get our rights."
This "brought him to his pocketbook," she triumphantly reported, and
in a bold hand he signed his name, Andrew Johnson, as much as to say,
"Anything to get rid of this woman and break the radical party."[209]

She was proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more
readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably
small print. The larger type and less crowded pages were inviting, the
articles stimulating.

Parker Pillsbury, covering Congressional and political developments
and the impeachment trial of President Johnson with which he was not
in sympathy, was fearless in his denunciations of politicians, their
ruthless intrigue and disre