h the expenses of the convention. Particularly on her mind
was a federal woman suffrage amendment, for since 1869 when a
Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women had been introduced in
Congress and ignored, no further efforts along that line had been
made. Now good news came from Mrs. Stanton, who had attended the
convention. She had persuaded Senator Sargent to introduce in the
Senate, on January 10, 1878, a new draft of a Sixteenth Amendment,
following the wording of the Fifteenth. It read, "The right of
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of sex."[333]

[Illustration: Clara Bewick Colby]

* * * * *

During the next few years the Sixteenth Amendment made little headway,
although the complexion of Congress changed, the Democrats breaking
the Republicans' hold and winning a substantial majority. Encouraging
as was the more liberal spirit of the new Congress and the defeat of
several implacable enemies, Susan found California's failure to return
Senator Sargent an irreparable loss. In addition she now had to face a
newly formed group of anti-suffragists under the leadership of Mrs.
Dahlgren, Mrs. Sherman, and Almira Lincoln Phelps, who sang the
refrain which Congressmen loved to hear, that women did not want the
vote because it would wreck marriage and the home.

Hoping to counteract this adverse influence by increased pressure for
the Sixteenth Amendment, Susan once more appealed for help to the
American Woman Suffrage Association through her old friends, William
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Garrison replied that her efforts
for a federal amendment were premature and "would bring the movement
into needless contempt." This she found strange advice from the man
who had fearlessly defied public opinion to crusade against slavery.
Wendell Phillips did better, writing, "I think you are on the right
track--the best method to agitate the question, and I am with you,
though between you and me, I still think the individual States must
lead off, and that this reform must advance piecemeal, State by State.
But I mean always to help everywhere and everyone."[334]

The American Association continued to follow the state-by-state
method, and this holding back aroused Susan to the boiling point, for
experience had taught her that in state elections woman suffrage faced
the prejudiced opposition of an ever-increas