and wisdom. Listening to the debate, she was heartsick. Anna Howard
Shaw and Mrs. Catt as well as Alice Stone Blackwell spoke for the
resolution. Only a few raised their voices against it, among them her
sister Mary, Clara Colby, Mrs. Blake, and a young woman new to the
ranks, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.

Susan was presiding, and leaving the chair to express her opinions,
she firmly declared, "To pass such a resolution is to set back the
hands on the dial of reform.... We have all sorts of people in the
Association and ... a Christian has no more right on our platform than
an atheist. When this platform is too narrow for all to stand on, I
shall not be on it.... Who is to set up a line? Neither you nor I can
tell but Mrs. Stanton will come out triumphant and that this will be
the great thing done in woman's cause. Lucretia Mott at first thought
Mrs. Stanton had injured the cause of woman's rights by insisting on
the demand for woman suffrage, but she had sense enough not to pass a
resolution about it....[408]

"Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people?" she
asked them. "We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when
you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create
and call out breadth and toleration. You had better organize one woman
on a broad platform than 10,000 on a narrow platform of intolerance
and bigotry."

Her voice tense with emotion, she concluded, "This resolution adopted
will be a vote of censure upon a woman who is without a peer in
intellectual and statesmanlike ability; one who has stood for half a
century the acknowledged leader of progressive thought and demand in
regard to all matters pertaining to the absolute freedom of
women."[409]

When the resolution was adopted 53 to 40, she was so disappointed in
her "girls" and so hurt by their defiance that she was tempted to
resign. Hurrying to New York after the convention to talk with Mrs.
Stanton, she found her highly indignant and insistent that they both
resign from the ungrateful organization which had repudiated the women
to whom it owed its existence. The longer Susan considered taking this
step, the less she felt able to make the break. She severely
reprimanded Mrs. Catt, Rachel, Harriet Upton, and Anna, telling them
they were setting up an inquisition.

Finally she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning
and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it
my