ned him down neither to praise nor
unfriendliness, but Susan was grateful to read, "_The Revolution_ from
the start will arouse, thrill, edify, amuse, vex, and non-plus its
friends. But it will command attention: it will conquer a hearing."
Newspapers were generally friendly. "Miss Anthony's woman's rights
paper," declared the Troy (New York) _Times_, "is a realistic,
well-edited, instructive journal ... and its beautiful mechanical
execution renders its appearance very attractive." The Chicago
_Workingman's Advocate_ observed, "We have no doubt it will prove an
able ally of the labor reform movement." Nellie Hutchinson of the
Cincinnati _Commercial_, one of the few women journalists, described
sympathetically for her readers the neat comfortable _Revolution_
office and Susan with her "rare" but "genial smile," Susan, "the
determined--the invincible ... destined to be Vice-President or
Secretary of State...," adding, "The world is better for thee,
Susan."[211]

While new friends praised, old friends pleaded unsuccessfully with
Mrs. Stanton and Parker Pillsbury to free themselves from Susan's
harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret
and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their
senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be
associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic,"
George Francis Train. She published his letter in _The Revolution_
with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often
the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had
welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed
in his ideas, "a motley crew it was." She recalled the label of
fanatic which had been attached to him, how he had been threatened and
pelted with rotten eggs for expressing his unpopular ideas and for
burning the Constitution which he declared sanctioned slavery. With
such a background, she told him, he should be able to recognize her
right and Susan's to judge all parties and all men on what they did
for woman suffrage.[212]

None of these arguments made any impression upon Garrison, or upon
Lucy Stone, whose bitter criticism and distrust of Susan's motives
wounded Susan deeply. Only a few of her old friends seemed able to
understand what she was trying to do, among them Martha C. Wright,
who, at first critical of her association with Train, now wrote of
_The Revolution_, "Its vigorous pages are what