“Our old Revolution trio is now broken.”

ANTHONY, SUSAN B. (1820-1906). American woman-suffrage advocate. Significant Autograph Letter Signed, “Susan B. Anthony,” on illustrated and imprinted National American Woman Suffrage Association letterhead. Four very full pages, quarto. Rochester, N.Y., July 10, 1898. Minor edge wear, else very fine condition. To Helen Pillsbury Cogswell. Anthony writes:

“My dear Helen, This day is the 81st anniversary of the marriage of my father and mother! At the noon hour of Monday my thoughts were in your home at Concord—with the hope that you had not only your Unitarian minister to speak the good word, but dear William Garrison also to say what none save the son of his father could say. It is now 2 o’clock—and I have read aloud on the copy of my book, while Mrs. Harper has held and corrected the galley proof—ever since 8 A.M.—taking out the dinner hour—fully seven hours—and the last chapter was or is entitled “Campaigning with the Garrisonians”—1857 and 1858. Of course your dear father was one of the campaigners—the spring of 1857—he was very ill for weeks at my father’s farm home—and I left him there and made a tour of lectures to Boston, Salem, Bangor and Ellsworth—yes and North Haverhill. As we read along, and came to letters from Rev. Samuel May Jr., Mrs. H. said: ‘I wonder if Mr. May will die before this book is done?’ I had so hoped your father, when he came to read—or have you read to him—this book—that he would feel that I had done him the justice he deserves for his steadfastness to what seemed to Mrs. Stanton and me the fight [?] during the years of reconstruction after the war. I begged Mrs. Stanton to write her best word of your father—and here is her postcard just here—but her article has not yet arrived!—hope it will be here tomorrow. Do you know that Mrs. Stanton is almost blind? She can just see to write with blackest of ink, and coarsest of pen—but cannot see to read it over. She has a girl to read to her. She has never learned to dictate to a stenographer! I hope she will do so soon. Our old Revolution trio is now broken—but how very nothing that break is compared with yours dear Helen—as soon as possible, I am going to look for your father’s last note to me, in which he told of his daughter Helen and her marvelous development of character! Mrs. Harper expects to get through so as to leave the coming Saturday—and after that, Sister Mary and I will be left alone and can take up our own ordinary work; for a whole year and a half both of us have made everything … to Mrs. Harper and the book work. There are 50 chapters in it—and today we have read and returned chapter 10—one fifth of the book!! Well, this is … to assure you that my thought goes out to you in the hope that you are not wholly broken down! I wish I might hope for a visit from you. You must not give up to your loneliness. I know you will not, for if you could live on so beautifully and bravely after your beloved husband left you—and again—if you could live on so heroically after your darling mother left you alone, with only your now gone father, I know your ‘tried as by fire’ soul will now prove equal to the absolute stripping away of the third loved one of your household!! When the shock is far enough away so that you can write, I shall hope for a letter—but don’t feel compelled to write me unless it will be a relief to do so!! I wish I could say or do something to be a comfort to you, but well I know I cannot. At least you will, I am sure, believe me ever and always lovingly and sympathizingly yours, Susan B. Anthony.”

Facing the twilight of her life, Susan B. Anthony asked Ida Husted Harper to assist her in compiling and writing her memoirs. Harper, a journalist and writer chosen by Anthony to organize the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s press relations during the failed drive for suffrage in California, jumped at the chance. Moving to Anthony’s home in 1897, Harper spent two years transforming Anthony's rough notes, as well as numerous letters and other documents, into a three volume biography. In this letter, Susan B. Anthony laments the difficulties she and Harper faced in such a massive undertaking, a task she herself referred to the “the bog.” Recalling her experiences working as a New York agent for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society, the subject of an early chapter of her biography, Susan B. Anthony fondly comments on Parker Pillsbury, the recently deceased father of the letter’s recipient, Helen Pillsbury Cogswell. Parker Pillsbury, like Anthony, had devoted his life to the entwined causes of abolition and suffrage, serving as an agent in the Massachusetts and New Hampshire branches of the American Anti-Slavery Society, as well as acting as Vice President of the New Hampshire Women’s Suffrage Association. Aside from working together as abolitionists under Garrison, Pillsbury, with the aid of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, served as editor for Anthony’s militant feminist magazine, Revolution, from 1868 to 1870. Twenty five years later, the breaking of that “old Revolution trio” was acutely apparent to Anthony not only because of the passing of Pillsbury, but also in light of the declining health of her longtime friend and fellow activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton, whose declining eyesight is an additional point of concern for Anthony in this letter, would be blind by 1899. Still, she continued to dictate articles and revise her speeches orally, striving, like Anthony, to leave a history of the 19th century struggle for civil rights. By the time this letter was written, Susan B. Anthony was not far from seeing her dream of a lasting legacy come to fruition. The first two volumes of The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony were published later this year, and the third and final volume came to press not long after Anthony's death in 1908. This remarkable letter is a fascinating account of Susan B. Anthony’s attempt to record her nearly fifty year struggle for civil rights.

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