ved
heartily in woman's rights, and Senator Sargent in his campaign for
the Senate had boldly announced his endorsement of woman suffrage.

This friendly attitude among western men toward votes for women was
the most encouraging development in Susan's long uphill fight. These
men, looking upon women as partners who had shared with them the
dangers and hardships of the frontier, recognized at once the justice
of woman suffrage and its benefit to the country.

* * * * *

Susan traveled directly from Nevada to Washington instead of breaking
her journey by a visit with her brothers in Kansas, as she had hoped
to do. She even omitted Rochester so that she might be in time for the
national woman suffrage convention in Washington in January 1872, for
which Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Davis, and Mrs. Stanton were preparing. She
found Victoria Woodhull with them, her presence provoking criticism
and dissension.

Impulsively she came to Victoria's defense at the convention: "I have
been asked by many, 'Why did you drag Victoria Woodhull to the front?'
Now, bless your souls, she was not dragged to the front. She came to
Washington with a powerful argument. She presented her Memorial to
Congress and it was a power.... She had an interview with the
judiciary committee. We could never secure that privilege. She was
young, handsome, and rich. Now if it takes youth, beauty, and money to
capture Congress, Victoria is the woman we are after."[279]

"I was asked by an editor of a New York paper if I knew Mrs.
Woodhull's antecedents," she continued. "I said I didn't and that I
did not care any more for them than I do about those of the members of
Congress.... I have been asked along the Pacific coast, 'What about
Woodhull? You make her your leader?' Now we don't make leaders; they
make themselves."

Victoria, however, did not prove to be the leading light of this
convention, although she made one of her stirring fiery speeches
calling upon her audience to form an Equal Rights party and nominate
her for President of the United States. By this time, Susan had
concluded that Victoria Woodhull for President did not ring true and
she would have nothing to do with her self-inspired candidacy. Quickly
she steered the convention away from Victoria Woodhull for President
toward the consideration of the more practical matter of woman's right
to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

This time it was Susan,