CHAPTER V.

ENTRANCE INTO PUBLIC LIFE.

1850--1852.

Ill the conditions were such as to make it most natural for Miss
Anthony, when she reached the age of maturity, to adopt a public career
and go actively into reform work, and especially to enter upon that
contest to secure equal rights for those of her own sex, which she was
to wage unceasingly for half a century. Her father's mother and sister
were "high seat" Quakers, the latter a famous preacher. Her mother's
cousin, Betsey Dunnell White, of Stafford's Hill, was noted as the only
woman in that locality who could "talk politics," and the men used to
come from far and near to get her opinion on the political situation.
She was brought up in a society which recognizes the equality of the
sexes and encourages women in public speaking. In her own home the
father believed in giving sons and daughters the same advantages, and
in preparing the latter as well as the former for self-support. The
daughters were taught business principles, and invested with
responsibility at an early age. Two of them married, and the third was
of a quiet and retiring disposition; but in Susan he saw ability of a
high order and that same courage, persistence and aggressiveness which
entered into his own character, enabling him to make his way in the
business world and rally from his losses and defeats. He encouraged her
desire to go into the reforms which were demanding attention, gave her
financial backing when necessary, moral support upon all occasions, and
was ever her most interested friend and faithful ally. She received
also the sympathy and assistance of her mother, who, no matter how
heavy the domestic burdens, or how precarious her own health, was never
willing that she should take any time from her public work to give to
the duties of home, although she frequently insisted upon doing so.

During Miss Anthony's stay at Canajoharie she went often to Albany and
there made the intimate acquaintance of Abigail Mott and her sister
Lydia, whose names are now a blessed memory with the leaders of the
abolition movement that still remain. Their modest home was a rallying
center for the reformers of the day, and here Miss Anthony met many of
the noted men and women with whom she was to become so closely
associated in the future. She reached home in 1849 to find a hot-bed of
discussion and fermentation. The first rift had been made in the old
common law, which for centuries had he