In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (23 page)

Stanton was sympathetic to the plight of black slaves. She adapted the metaphor of bondage to women’s rights and genuinely believed that a middle-class white wife was as powerless as a Southern field hand. But whenever a choice had to be made, Stanton put women first. Until the war she had never had to make a choice. She had not been as active in antislavery as in women’s rights. This was partly because she had married a political abolitionist, whose organizational and political allies did not welcome female participation. To join female antislavery societies in Boston or elsewhere would have meant allying herself with Henry’s opponents. Her refusal to participate in antislavery fairs or petition drives was the result of a decision to put feminism first. After a conversation with Lucy Stone in the late 1850s, Stanton observed that “Mrs. Stone felt the slaves’ wrongs more deeply than her own—my philosophy was more egotistical.”
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Unlike most nineteenth-century white Americans, Stanton did not believe Negroes or women to be physically or mentally inferior. Her eventual hostility to black men was the result of her assumption that they behaved exactly like white men. She believed that black and white men opposed equal rights for women because it was in their self-interest to keep women subordinate. She later attacked black men on account of gender rather than race.

Stanton and Anthony also agreed on what kind of war work should be undertaken by women. Although they busied themselves with knitting socks and scraping lint for bandages, they did not consider these important tasks. Nor did they volunteer as inspectors for the Sanitary Commission or as nurses for the medical corps. Committed as they were to abolition, the two
joined their antislavery friends to push for emancipation in the political arena.

The abolitionists did not hesitate to criticize the administration they were credited with electing. They used the same tactics that had succeeded earlier. In speeches and newspaper articles they castigated Lincoln for not moving fast enough to free the slaves. To prove that emancipation had popular support, they initiated a massive petition drive. After Lincoln’s proclamation, issued January 1, 1863, the abolitionists became even more demanding.

Eager to play a visible role in this activity and prompted by Henry Stanton, Stanton and Anthony decided to create a political organization for Northern women. In March 1863 they issued “An Appeal to the Women of the Republic,” urging them to band together to “determine the final settlement” of the war. When interested women gathered in New York City in May, Stanton described the group’s purpose as education—they would educate themselves and the nation about the “great issues at stake.” Stanton proposed that the women “canvass the nation for freedom.” The women would serve as a national conscience, reminding the politicians that they were willing to sacrifice their husbands and sons only in a war that would end slavery.
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The women decided to collect three million petition signatures in favor of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, to free the slaves permanently. The connection between slaves and women was reiterated in a typically controversial resolution that was narrowly adopted. “There never can be a true peace in this republic until the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all women are practically established.”
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Persuaded by her own rhetoric Stanton was convinced that they were working both to free slaves and to enfranchise women.

After a two-day meeting the National Woman’s Loyal League was established. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected president and Susan B. Anthony secretary. Angelina Grimké Weld, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Lucy Stone, and Ernestine Rose were members. The Loyal League opened offices in the Cooper Union in New York City. A membership badge, showing a slave breaking his own bonds, was designed. Local members met weekly to discuss current political events and military developments and to address and collect petitions. Theodore Stanton, then twelve years old, worked after school counting names and rolling petitions into bundles.
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By the time it disbanded in August 1864, the Loyal League had collected four hundred thousand signatures. Congressional allies used the petitions as evidence of nationwide support for the Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1865.

While the National Woman’s Loyal League was modeled on the Union
League Club, a bastion of male patriotism, its leadership, membership, and purpose made it suspect to the establishment. The
New York Herald
reported that the Loyal League, “originally designed for the most patriotic and praiseworthy motive, had been distorted into . . . a revolutionary women’s rights movement.” Its editors hoped that the feminists would “beat a hasty retreat until further notice,” since no one had “time for such nonsense and tomfoolery.” Ignoring such insults, the Loyal League flourished. Like the Sanitary Commission, it gave women roles and responsibilities, contacts and skills that they would not otherwise have had, and that they applied to other endeavors after the war. As Stanton concluded from the vantage point of old age:

The leading journals used to vie with each other in praising the patience and prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the women who, when demanding civil and political rights . . . for themselves, had been uniformly denounced as “unwise,” “impudent,” “fanatical,” and “impracticable,” . . . and thus it ever is. So long as woman labors to second man’s endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights ... for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.
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Lincoln’s procrastination about emancipation, his impunitive reconstruction plan, and the vacillating course of the war caused abolitionists to seek an alternate candidate. Chase, Seward, and Frémont were promoted. Although the Stantons had met Lincoln in Washington, they refused to support him. Elizabeth enjoyed his anecdotes but made fun of his “shriveled appearance” and Mrs. Lincoln’s foolish economies.
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By the end of 1863 Elizabeth Cady Stanton had both political and personal reasons to want Lincoln out of office. She believed that Henry had lost his post on account of enemies in the Lincoln administration.

As deputy collector of the Port Authority of New York, Henry Stanton was in charge of bonds and seizures. According to tariff law and war regulations, all shippers were required to put up bonds to guarantee the legality of their shipments to foreign or domestic ports. The bonds were securities against illicit shipments. If the shipments proved contraband, the government kept the bonds; otherwise they were returned at the end of each voyage. If the bonds were returned to the shippers prematurely, the government had no other immediate remedy. Shippers without bonds had their goods temporarily seized.

Henry did not like his job. He disapproved of the practice of requiring bonds and was eventually removed from seizures by a superior critical of his “hesitation and unwillingness.” In a report to Secretary Chase in 1862, the chief collector, Hiram Barney, expressed disappointment in Stanton’s
performance. He charged that Stanton was neither diligent nor thorough, had failed to systematize the department, and was frequently absent, adding that “his mind is more absent than his body.”
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Stanton apparently had no hint that he was in disfavor. He moved his family to New York City, kept up his antislavery activities, and brought his oldest son into the office as his clerk.

The next report of trouble came when Barney learned from an informer that some bonds had been illegally removed from the office. In effect, no bonds were being held for certain shipments. Eventually it was ascertained that Neil Stanton had taken a bribe and forged his father’s signature on several documents. In the spring of 1863 Neil had accepted, recorded, and then removed six or eight bonds from the Customs House. An internal investigation was begun by the Treasury Department. All the evidence implicated Henry Stanton. When confronted in late October 1863, Henry questioned his son. Neil at first denied the charge, then admitted accepting the bribe. The boy was sent home, and Henry was temporarily relieved of his duties.

Then the newspapers got hold of the story. Headlines in the
Times
and the
World
screamed fraud in the Customs House. It was reported that the unnamed deputy collector had been arrested and charged with “conniving with the enemies of his country.” The next day, November 1, the
Times
corrected its original report: Henry Stanton had not been arrested and claimed to be ignorant of the theft of the bonds. Rumors spread. The
Albany Atlas
claimed that Henry had allowed munitions to reach enemy lines. The
Tribune
, out of loyalty to its former correspondent and Greeley’s friend, ignored the first rumors of scandal. Now it claimed that its competitors’ coverage was slanderous. It vouched for Henry’s character, noting with unwitting irony, “He is the sort of man who needs office neither to confer distinction nor to secure a livelihood.”
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In the absence of a Treasury Department report to clear his name, Henry sent an open letter to the
Times
and the
Tribune
. He denied any wrongdoing but admitted that Neil had returned the bonds. As the boy’s father and employer, Henry accepted responsibility. As he explained to an old associate in a letter marked “Private”:

My whole case lies in a nutshell. Nobody believes I had anything to do with the [theft] of the bonds. My young son, unfortunately, had. It is this embarrassing feature that cripples me when I try to defend myself. . . . Nothing I did was prohibited by law—though some fools think so—while political enemies raid on me. I have stood up against the rapacities of two officials in the Customs House. They have long tried to drive me out. They seize upon this sad case of my son, to carry out their purpose. . . . Thus one weak boy and two wily scoundrels try to do their worst as boys and scoundrels generally do.
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The incident gave the antiadministration press a chance to attack Lincoln through Chase and the Treasury Department. To counter charges of conspiracy, Chase ordered a special inquiry. Henry Stanton was put on leave in October and forced to resign in December 1863. The matter was turned over to a congressional subcommittee. After a three-month investigation the Committee on Public Expenditures presented its report to the House of Representatives. Although no grounds for criminal prosecution could be found, the report was critical of the conduct of Henry Stanton and his son.
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In some circles Henry’s reputation was ruined. His oldest friends, the antislavery radicals, believed he had been the victim of Chase’s antipathy. Henry believed that “political necessity and personal malignity were at the bottom of it.”
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Elizabeth believed Henry.

Neither parent blamed Neil. Although Henry’s family later claimed that Neil’s weak character was the result of his mother’s mismanagement, there is no record that Henry felt that way. Neither had ever been able to discipline their firstborn. A letter to his son in 1861 indicates Henry’s ineffectiveness.

My dear son, when I got home I was sorry to learn that you did not go to Geneva till the week after the term commenced. If you knew how bad such things make me feel you would not do them. This delay must have put you behind in your studies all this term. Unless you push on you will never be ready for college. Two years is the usual time allowed to prepare for college, and you are now in the last half of your third year at Reed’s. Mr. Keith has brought me his bill. It seems to be pretty much all for “pants for sons.” I want you at Geneva to wear your old clothes and not put on your new or best ones every day. . . . Rush on with your Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. Your affectionate father.

Neil never did complete his college preparatory course, and he avoided military service. Before he had taken the Customs House post, his mother had secured him a “good place” in a Livingston relative’s commercial firm. Seemingly undaunted by Neil’s role in the scandal, Mrs. Stanton asked another relative to give him government post in Washington. He got the job, but the Treasury Department ordered him discharged. There is no further record of his employment until the end of the war, when he joined the Reconstruction regime in Louisiana.
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First he was a harbor master for New Orleans, then supervisor of elections, and finally a “carpetbag” member of the legislature. When Daniel Cady Stanton finally returned to New York in the 1870s, he was a rich man and still his mother’s favorite son.

Both Henry and Elizabeth wrote autobiographies, but neither referred to the Customs House scandal or Henry’s tenure there, obviously a source of personal, political, and financial embarrassment. Unemployed from October 1863 until late 1864, Henry joined Greeley’s
Tribune
staff as an editorial
writer. In 1868 he moved to Charles Dana’s
New York Sun
, where he stayed for almost twenty years, until his death in 1887. Henry specialized in state politics, contributed occasional book reviews, and wrote the obituaries of many of his old friends and enemies, including William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, Thurlow Weed, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Charles Sumner, and Horace Greeley.
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When his second son graduated from law school, Henry became an associate in young Henry’s practice.

In the aftermath of the Customs House scandal, Elizabeth Cady Stanton felt personally and politically isolated. Old friends avoided the Stantons. She felt compelled to support Henry during this crisis, as she had in the past. She and Henry had been living together without interruption or absences for three years, longer than at any other period in their marriage, but she was more aware of and more critical of his character flaws than she was of Neil’s. She wondered if they should move west to start over again. She was also worried about her second son. By February 1865 young Henry was home from the war, suffering from a severe, undefined illness.
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