Susan B. 2020

Susan B. ______

A full-length play

By Daphne White

Contact: Daphne White 2107 Sacramento Street Berkeley, CA 94702 301-704-2860 [email protected]

©2019 SUSAN B.

Synopsis

Susan B. was a fierce fighter who refused to let anything stand in her way: not the gun- toting mobs who burned her in effigy, not the blinding snowstorms that kept male speakers at home, and not the newspaper editors who tried to deny her free speech.

A Quaker and abolitionist, Susan B. had the outlandish notion that women and men were created equal. But in a world where women were considered the property of their husbands even after the slaves were freed, Susan B. had to make gut-wrenching choices. Should she support the Fifteenth Amendment, which offered suffrage to black men but not to women? Should she accept funding from a Trump-like racist who supported woman suffrage, but not black suffrage?

More than 150 years before the #MeToo movement, Susan B. Anthony was defending women who had been sexually exploited, discarded, and left to die in insane asylums. She was called “shrill,” she was called “unreasonable,” and if she were running for office today she would certainly be called “unelectable.” How can we understand the battle between the sexes if we don’t even know our own history? 2.

CHARACTERS

(5F, 4M)

Susan B. Anthony, white, 31 when we first see her. Tall, thin, tightly wound, stands very erect. In the first two scenes she wears simple plaid dresses; from the third scene forward she wears all-black dresses; in later scenes she adds her trademark red scarf.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, white, 52 when we first see her. Short, stout, sunny, brilliant, forthright, but also haughty. She is matronly and cultivates a Martha Washington look. Also plays First Woman.

Lucy Stone, white, 33 when we first see her. Plain-looking, with a mole on her face, but famous for her mellifluous yet very powerful voice. Also plays Phoebe Harris (Phelps), an upper-class white woman in her early thirties.

Anna Dickinson, white, 24 when we first see her. Petite, charismatic, brilliant, temperamental, a prima donna, and one of the most famous lecturers of her day. Also plays Elizabeth Warren and Second Woman.

Sojourner Truth, black, 54 when we first see her. Six feet tall and muscular, she speaks with the confidence and cadence of a practiced preacher. She wears home-spun clothes, and always carries her autobiography and photos with her in public settings. She speaks with a slight Dutch (not Southern) accent.

Frederick Douglass, black, 49 when we first see him. Tall, dignified, elegantly dressed, and charismatic. His hair is not yet gray.

Wendell Phillips, white, 56 when we first see him. Wealthy Boston brahmin, lawyer, orator, one of best-known men of his day. Also plays First Minister, First Senator, and Judge Hunt.

George Francis Train, white, 38. Eccentric, narcissistic, colorful Trump-like figure who was the real-life inspiration for Around the World in 80 Days. Wears patent leather boots; a white vest; blue jacket and lavender kid gloves. Also plays Second Minister, Second Senator, Jack Winthrop and District Attorney. 3.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

At rise, the stage is dark. After a few seconds, there is a very loud clap of thunder, followed by bursts of lightening.

Suddenly, SUSAN appears out of the darkness. She is disheveled and wind-blown, her clothes fluttering around her wildly. She looks lost and disoriented, until she notices a door in the middle of the stage. (This door is not connected to anything, but we cannot see what is on the other side.) Susan straightens her hair and tries to get her dress under control as she walks over to the door and starts knocking frantically.

SUSAN Elizabeth! Open the door!

ELIZABETH

Unseen, speaking from behind the door. No!

SUSAN Do you know how hard it was for me to get here?

ELIZABETH Silence.

SUSAN The border is almost impermeable now!

ELIZABETH You don’t need to tell m that.

SUSAN So let me in!

ELIZABETH No! 4.

SUSAN Elizabeth Cady Stanton! You open that door right now!

ELIZABETH Excuse me?

SUSAN Elizabeth, please! I don’t know how much time we have. [Beat.] You have never even tried to cross! You have no ideas of the dangers involved.

ELIZABETH Who is this?

SUSAN You know perfectly well!

ELIZABETH Actually, I haven’t the foggiest.

SUSAN Well, perhaps my voice has changed, what with being on the other side for so long ... and, come to think of it, Elizabeth, you don’t sound quite yourself either. [Beat.] All right, then. It’s Susan!

ELIZABETH Susan who?

SUSAN Susan B. Anthony, that’s who! Now open up, before I have to break that door down. I’ve done it before -- do not make me do it again!

Elizabeth Warren opens the door, wearing her signature outfit of black pants, a black top and a jewel-tone jacket.

SUSAN Who on earth are you? I am looking for Elizabeth!

ELIZABETH I am Elizabeth. [Beat.] Elizabeth Warren.

SUSAN Elizabeth who? [Taking in Elizabeth’s pants.] I would have been stoned for wearing trousers like that. But ... they are quite attractive, actually. Even nicer than Bloomers! 5.

ELIZABETH Thank you. But I don’t quite see ...

SUSAN Remind me who you are again, young lady?

ELIZABETH Young! Right. Of course. My name is Elizabeth Warren. I am ... er ... running for President of the United States. The election is coming up in 2020.

SUSAN I see. That is splendid, dear, splendid! I predicted this, you know, more than a century ago. So tell me: how many women presidents have we had so far?

ELIZABETH Silence.

SUSAN Go on, don’t hold me in suspense! Three?

ELIZABETH No.

SUSAN Heavens to Betsy! More than three? I always said that failure was impossible. So five? Seven?

ELIZABETH Actually ... none.

SUSAN None? But that is not possible! I have heard that women got suffrage ... let me see now ... one year ago our time, that is 100 years your time! You mean to tell me that in all that time, you did not manage to elect one woman President? You cannot be serious, Elizabeth!

ELIZABETH Well ... the deck has been rather stacked against us.

SUSAN For one hundred years? 6.

ELIZABETH We have tried. We are still trying! Persisting, even. But any time a woman dares to run for president, she is immediately demeaned and called “unelectable.”

SUSAN Unelectable! What a pile of horse manure! [Beat.] You still have horses, don’t you?

ELIZABETH We have horse’s asses.

SUSAN Is that why you were hiding behind that door?

ELIZABETH I am having a ... dark night of the soul. I rarely allow myself the luxury, but tonight ... it has been rather a lot lately.

SUSAN There is no time for that. No time! Look, half the population fo this country is still female, is it not?

ELIZABETH Yes, but/

SUSAN /And when women are given the opportunity to vote for another woman, surely/

ELIZABETH /It hasn’t quite worked out that way, Miss Anthony.

SUSAN I don’t understand. Why on earth not?

ELIZABETH They say we are shrill. We are not “likable.”

SUSAN For heaven’s sake. Andrew Jackson was not likable -- but he was still elected president!

ELIZABETH Well, that’s different. He was a man. And people could imagine having a beer with him.

SUSAN Excuse me? 7.

ELIZABETH “Likable,” today, means that a voter would want to have beer with you.

SUSAN So if you want to run for president, you have to like beer?

ELIZABETH Well ... no. But people have to like having beer with you!

SUSAN I have never tasted any alcoholic drink in my life. I would as soon touch arsenic!

ELIZABETH Temperance is not what it used to be.

SUSAN I am sorry to hear that. You know, even at the Boston Tea Party, the men took care to throw the women’s favorite beverage into the harbor, but they kept their own drinks dry. And the tax on tobacco and whiskey was just as high!

ELIZABETH Increasing taxes on the tobacco-and-whiskey crowd is a big part of my plan, actually. But people say that I want to change too much, too fast.

SUSAN My dear, they told us the same thing! We were called “unreasonable” and “hysterical” and “fanatical radicals.” We were even called “unsexed socialists.”

ELIZABETH Unsexed socialists?

SUSAN Oh, yes! Elizabeth and I were great admirers of Karl Marx. We believed it was important to reconstruct the very foundations of society and teach the nation the sacredness of all human rights.

ELIZABETH That sounds like deep structural change to me! But why “unsexed?”

SUSAN Because men were under the impression that when women think too much, the blood needed to sustain their ovaries and womb is delivered to the brain, which results in serious illness. With severe and irreversible consequences. 8.

ELIZABETH Men are still spooked by female bodies. Our current president has said that a female journalist had blood coming out of her “wherever.”

SUSAN I would have thought that kind of claptrap would have ended by now! You know, we were told that women should not go into polling places, because politics were filthy and would sully our dresses.

ELIZABETH So you did you do it, Miss Anthony? How did you keep up the fight for five decades?

SUSAN We dealt in thunderbolts, Elizabeth and I. She forged them, I threw them. We always understood that cautious, careful women never can bring about a reform.

ELIZABETH You were the original nasty women!

SUSAN We were not nasty, no -- we were angry. Rage is what got me out of bed in the morning! Elizabeth always said that men’s government resulted in nothing but violence, conquest, acquisition, slavery and slaughter. We had rather hoped that once women go the vote, things would change for the better.

ELIZABETH Well, Miss Anthony, a lot has changed since you were last in ...

SUSAN Corporeal form.

ELIZABETH Yes. But an awful lot has remained the same. Especially as it relates to women. And violence. And/

SUSAN /But you have at least passed that bill that Alice Paul was all hopped about -- the Equal Rights Amendment? So that at least woman’s rights are enshrined in the Constitution?

ELIZABETH Well ... no. Not yet. Soon, maybe.

SUSAN How soon? How “maybe?” You mean to tell me that the word “woman” still does not appear in the Constitution -- or any of the Amendments? 9.

ELIZABETH It’s not for lack of trying, Miss Anthony!

SUSAN Don’t talk to me about “trying,” Elizabeth! The women of my generation -- who were not even considered citizens under the law-- were able to get a woman suffrage amendment passed in seventy years. But in the hundred years since then, you haven’t even managed to pass a simple Equal Rights Amendment? I had such high hopes for the women of the future ... what is wrong with you?

ELIZABETH I started out as a teacher just like you, Miss Anthony. Then I went to law school and became a professor, and now I am running for President. Why are you looking at me?

SUSAN Because you called me down here!

ELIZABETH How does that work, exactly?

SUSAN I don’t know. But sometimes I am able to pass, for a few moments at least. Usually I move down just one level, from mine to Elizabeth’s. This time I seem to have dropped further. But I do feel myself slipping away ...

ELIZABETH So what do we do now?

SUSAN Start forging thunderbolts, and then throw them. Hard! [Beat.] And don’t make me come back down here. You modern women are breaking my heart!

There is a loud sizzling sound, and the stage goes dark. After a short pause, there is another bolt of lightening. SUSAN is gone, and ELIZABETH is lying in bed, tossing and turning.

After a pause, there is a video projection of Sen. Mitch McConnell, wagging his finger threateningly.

SENATOR MCCONELL She was warned! She was given an explanation! Nevertheless, she persisted. 10.

Video projection of former Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm.

CONGRESSWOMAN CHILSOLM How dare you? Have you forgotten that you are a woman?

Video projection of former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Patricia Schroeder.

CONGRESSWOMAN SCHROEDER

If I was born in a prior generation, I would probably be dead or in a mental institution.

SCENE TWO

PROJECTION:

Women’s Rights Convention. Akron, Ohio church, 1851.

At rise, the church is packed with ENSEMBLE as light from stained glass windows are projected on the walls. A young SUSAN is standing in back, and LUCY is trying to call the meeting back to order. TWO MINISTERS, talking loudly, purposefully disrupt the meeting.

LUCY Once again, I would like to call the resolution to a vote! All in favor/

FIRST MINISTER /The mere idea of women voting is a travesty. It cannot be seriously entertained!

SECOND MINISTER Women’s place is in the home! When they become involved in man’s sphere, they become unsexed.

SOJOURNER TRUTH enters and tries to find a seat, but as all the spots are taken, she walks slowly up to the pulpit and sits on the steps.

FIRST MINISTER Has science not proven that women’s brains are six percent smaller than men’s? 11.

LUCY I must ask you gentlemen to please sit/

SECOND MINISTER /Was Christ not a man? Would God not have given some token of his wish to have woman equal, if he had such a wish?

FIRST WOMAN [Whispering to Second Woman.] Who invited these ministers? They have completely taken over our meeting!

LUCY Order, please! We will never get through our agenda at this rate!

SECOND MINISTER Those “suffragists” claim that women should be allowed to vote in order to protect themselves. Against what, I ask? Against whom?

FIRST MINISTER These are just a rebellious group of aged spinsters and fanatical radicals, trying to avenge themselves by making others more miserable than themselves!

SECOND MINISTER Is this not the most long-necked, grim-visaged, dyspeptic, Puritanical, nasal-twanged agglomeration of women ever assembled on the face of this earth?

SOJOURNER makes a move as though to stand up and speak, but then settles down again.

SECOND WOMAN [Whispering to Lucy.] For God’s sake, Miss Stone, don’t let her speak -- it will ruin us! Every newspaper in the land will have the woman’s rights cause mixed up with Negroes and abolition.

FIRST MINISTER The problem with the suffragists is that they are abnormal women -- old maids and hens that crow.

SOJOURNER stands up, laying her bonnet at her feet.

SOJOURNER May I say a few words, Miss Stone? 12.

LUCY

Raising her hand to quiet the growing hisses from both the men and women, and speaking very quietly. Sojourner Truth.

SOJOURNER [Speaking in an assured preacher’s voice.] Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter. I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North -- all talking about rights -- the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. That man over there -- he says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles. Ain’t I a woman? Look at me!

SOJOURNER slowly bares her powerful right arm -- shocking the ENSEMBLE, who gasp audibly -- and raises it high in the air.

Look at my arm. I have ploughed. And I have planted. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as any man, and bear the lash as well. And ain't I a woman? [Pointing to First Minister.] He talks about this thing in the head. What do they call it?

LUCY Intellect.

SOJOURNER That’s it. What’s intellect got to do with women’s rights or black folks’ rights? Those little men in black there say women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from? From God and woman. [Laughter and applause from the women.] Man had nothing to do with him! If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again.

SOJOURNER sits down to applause from the women and jeering from the men.

LUCY [To the jeering men.] This will not do! I am trying to run a Woman’s Rights meeting here. [Beat.] But for as long as I can remember, I have been a disappointed woman. In education, in marriage, in religion, even in public meetings -- in everything she attempts, disappointment is the lot of woman. 13.

It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman’s heart until she bows down to it no longer. If the world scoff, let it scoff—if it sneer, let it sneer. And if the men in black want to laugh -- let them laugh!

SCENE THREE

PROJECTION:

Five years later. The same church, after the conclusion of another Woman’s Rights Convention. 1856.

SUSAN, LUCY and SOJOURNER are relaxing in the hall after the meeting. It is later in the afternoon, and the light from the stained glass windows is reflected at a different angle.

SUSAN How many of these conventions have we had now?

LUCY How many times have I given that disappointed woman speech?

SUSAN Enough so I know it by heart! [Mimicking Lucy.] “For as long as I can remember, I have been a disappointed woman. Disappointed in men, disappointed in the law, disappointed in those yapping ‘unsexed’ ministers, disappointed in my non-existent property rights, dis/”

LUCY /Please, stop! Stop! [Both start laughing uncontrollably.] But, really ... it is only getting worse!

SOJOURNER Here is what I don’t understand: why do you English women tremble and whimper when those little men begin with the hissing and the groaning and the barking?

SUSAN I certainly do not tremble or whimper!

SOJOURNER But I do not see you or Miss Stone stopping those white men from interrupting your meetings! 14.

SUSAN Well, I have suggested many times that we close our meetings to men.

LUCY But women want their husbands to be able to attend.

SUSAN Those ministers who show up at every meeting are nobody’s husbands!

SOJOURNER These men been talking when they please, where they please, about what they please for the past six thousand years. I be thinking it is high time you tell these women to stop begging for their rights, and just take them!

LUCY You make it sound so easy!

SOJOURNER I speak from experience. When I was a slave in New York, my master promised to let me go one year before the state law was going to make him do it. But when he broke his word, I just took up and left! I didn’t ask anyone for permission.

SUSAN God did not make a lot like you, Sojourner. [Beat.] The first time I heard you speak -- right over there! -- I felt like I was struck by lightening. It had never occurred to me that I could interrupt a large posse of grown men like that ...

SOJOURNER Those little men bark real loud, but they are just terrified -- like the slaveholders are terrified of the slaves.

SUSAN And the abolitionists are not much better, when it comes to women. They want to free the slaves, but keep women under their thumbs.

SOJOURNER Are they not men?

SUSAN And do men not bark? 15.

SOJOURNER Like hyenas! [Beat.] Now if will forgive me, I am tired down to my bones. Time for old Sojourner to go home.

SUSAN and LUCY get up with SOJOURNER, and accompany her to the door.

LUCY Will you join us at the next convention?

SOJOURNER God willing and the creek don’t rise!

SOJOURNER leaves, humming a hymn to herself; SUSAN and LUCY return and sit down companionably on one pew.

LUCY That woman could order the creek to rise, and the waters would have no choice but to obey!

SUSAN If we had a hundred more like her, there is no telling how far we could go ...

LUCY True. But don’t underestimate yourself, Susan! You have been organizing up a storm these past few years.

SUSAN Yes, but I have a tongue of lead. I can’t move people, like you and Sojourner.

LUCY You just need a bit more practice. Besides, you have twice as much stamina as the rest of us.

SUSAN That’s only because I have maintained my freedom -- like you, and Sojourner. If only we could convince more women not to marry, our Cause would really/

LUCY /Susan ... um ... perhaps this is a good time to, um ...

SUSAN No! 16.

LUCY I have been wanting to ...

SUSAN Please, no! The rumors I have been hearing cannot be true!

LUCY I am still just ... considering it.

SUSAN As long as I have known you, you swore you would never do this!

LUCY I know ... my intention was never to ....

SUSAN No! I beg of you! This would be a death knell for our work!

LUCY You know that this is not an easy decision. But sometimes ... things change. [Beat.] Henry Blackwell has been pursuing me for the past two/

SUSAN /Henry Blackwell? Elizabeth has met the man, and she said he is like a ... a comet that has not found its center, and goes wandering wildly through space.

LUCY No! He has changed. [Beat.] I am thirty three years old ...not a handsome woman. This might be my last chance. I travel constantly, I am never home and/

SUSAN /I am never home either! Do you imagine that I am immune to that all-alone feeling?

LUCY No! That’s why, of all people, I thought you would understand. Life on the road just gets more soul-draining every year. Those rickety, springless carriages. Sleeping on straw mats in the Western territories. And the fleas: I must have picked a thousand out of my dress in the past week alone! It weighs on me -- the thought of growing old alone.

SUSAN I do understand, but ... you recruited me to help you in the Cause, remember? And now you want me to cheer as you abandon it? 17.

LUCY I am not abandoning anything! Henry says he will accompany me on my travels, and help with the petitioning. So there will be two of us instead of just me.

SUSAN But Henry is a man ... How long do you think he will be happy traveling by your side and working for woman’s rights?

LUCY Henry is a very unusual man. He truly believes in the Cause.

SUSAN And how does Henry Blackwell make his living, at present?

LUCY His family owns a hardware store. It is in a spot of financial trouble, at the moment, but/

SUSAN /Lucy Stone! Your lecture fees ... they are our biggest source of income. If your husband’s business is in a “spot” of trouble, do you doubt that he will take every last penny of your earnings to keep it afloat, as is his legal right?

LUCY He wouldn’t do that!

SUSAN He can, and he will! You know what the law says: when a woman marries a man, they become one. And that “one” is the man! The minute you sign that marriage contract, your legal rights will be gone!

LUCY But I won’t really disappear. [Beat.] Henry said I can keep my name. That would set a precedent. I won’t be like Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- I will always be Lucy Stone only!

SUSAN Well, that is something ... But still -- you and I are the only ones who are still free! Look what happened to the other leaders: they got married, had babies, and became housebound -- like potted plants.

LUCY Don’t think I haven’t considered all that ...

Nearby, church bells ring loudly. LUCY puts her hands to her head, at the onset of a migraine. 18.

SUSAN Your hard headaches have returned? You had been doing so well!

LUCY Yes ... they are more painful than ever. [Beat.] Have you never been tempted to marry?

SUSAN Tempted? By what? Becoming the legal property of my husband -- my body and belongings to be used at his pleasure? No longer being able to sign my own contracts? Signing over my house, my furniture -- even my dresses and hat pins -- to a man?

LUCY [Still holding on to her aching head.] Whenever I think of breaking off our relationship, my headaches get worse. I start to feel as though I am losing my sanity. I don’t know what to do! [Beat.] I have always been terrified at the thought of ... communion with a man. The very idea ...

SUSAN I have never felt the need for those kinds of relations with a man. And think of the risk! Even if you survive the pregnancies, your lecturing life will be over.

LUCY But Henry has already organized a speaking tour for me.

SUSAN Then perhaps you can at delay your wedding until after the tour is over? I can’t do this on my own, Lucy!

LUCY You will do what needs to be done, Susan. You always do. [Collapses in pain.]

SCENE FOUR

PROJECTION

Eleven years later. Susan’s bedroom. Rochester, New York, 1867.

SUSAN and ANNA have their hair down, and their dresses are partly undone. SUSAN is wearing a simple, severe black dress; ANNA is wearing expensive, stylish clothes. 19.

ANNA is dancing around the room, picking up random objects and throwing them playfully at SUSAN, in a kind of dreamy juggling sequence. At rise, they are laughing and playing a word game.

SUSAN Promiscuous!

ANNA A loose woman. Such as yourself.

Kisses SUSAN on the lips sensuously.

SUSAN No! A mixed audience. Such as the first time I spoke in public, when it was scandalous for women to speak in front of men.

ANNA I knew that! I was just teasing you. Brain atrophy!

SUSAN A tragedy that happens to women who think too much!

ANNA Dysmorphia!

SUSAN A disease of women with too much education, such as ourselves. [In a mocking tone.] “The blood leaves their reproductive organs and pools in their brain, leaving them unable to bear children. Leading to ...”

ANNA Hysteria! Anemia! Weakness in the knees!

SUSAN I suffer from those every time you are near, my darling Chick-A-Dee! How I have missed you ... beyond all reason, I am afraid.

Pulls ANNA to her, and kisses her deeply. 20.

ANNA I would have come sooner if I could ... But you know how busy I have been!

SUSAN Campaigning for those “Radical Republicans?” I hear that many of those Congressmen and Senators are starting to abandon women. Now that the War is over, they seem to have forgotten their promises and are working on suffrage for Negro males only. How can you keep working with them?

ANNA One step at a time, Susan They are doing very good work on Reconstruction! [Beat.] Oh, let’s not fight! It’s been so long since we’ve been together ... Let’s just snuggle and forget about politics for a little while. You’ll be the saint, I’ll be the sinner -- just like always!

SUSAN Of course, my darling. You are right.

ANNA goes over and sits in SUSAN’S lap. They cuddle for a long moment, and then SUSAN tickles ANNA, making her laugh.

Oh, how I have missed hearing your laugh! I have missed everything about you -- your silky hair, your long fingers, that darling waist ... I can’t bear to lose you again! Now that the election season is over, won’t you even consider coming to Kansas with me?

ANNA Kansas? Why, it’s the very outskirts of civilization! The governor took me around on my last visit, and his carriage was open to the elements -- in winter! We were led by two mules, each wearing a pail of freezing water and a basket of rotting apples. I am not going back there! [Beat.] But we are so close to Niagara Falls. Why don’t we go and see the tightrope walkers instead? I have a few days before my next lecture.

SUSAN My darling Chick-Chick -- I promise we can watch those tightrope-walking men after we win the woman suffrage referendum in Kansas. We may not be able to win in Washington right now, but if we could only win in one state, others will surely follow. Wouldn’t that be a lovely way to celebrate?

ANNA But what if you lose? Let’s just go to Niagara, now!

SUSAN Nonsense! With you by my side, failure is impossible -- you are “America’s Joan of Arc,” after all! The newspapers love you, the crowds love you, even the men love you! 21.

ANNA Not in Kansas, they don’t! Susan ... I have heard whispers that the Kansas Republicans are no longer supporting the woman’s suffrage referendum.

SUSAN But ... that’s impossible! It was the local Republicans who put both referendums on the ballot! One for Negro male suffrage and one for woman/

ANNA /One Kansas Senator put woman suffrage on the ballot. The rest of the state party is putting funds and support behind Negro male suffrage only. Here -- I think I even saw it in The North Star.

SUSAN

Reaching for the newspaper, and reading. Oh, no. No, no! I was so busy getting ready for your visit, I didn’t even read the newspaper. How can this be? [Beat.] I had such hopes ...

ANNA They say that woman’s time hasn’t yet come.

SUSAN Nonsense! I have been to Kansas, and I have seen the pioneering spirit there. They are much more open-minded than the crusty old dogs of New England.

ANNA That may be, but I still don’t think you can win without the support of the Radical Republicans.

SUSAN We will have to work twice as hard. You must help us!

ANNA I can’t! You know how I need my freedom -- I can’t be confined to just one issue. Besides, I have to support my mother and my sister now that my father has died.

SUSAN If you help fight for women’s rights, your mother and your sister will be able to earn their own keep! You know we are fighting for equal rights for equal work, and for men to allow women to join their unions. You must see that our work/ 22.

ANNA /Stop! I have already signed up for another lecture season with the Lyceum. But if you are so impatient, why don’t you talk to the Democrats? I hear they are interested in the woman’s vote.

SUSAN But only to counteract the votes of Negro men. Anna, you know I can’t work with the Party of the Confederacy -- how can you even suggest it?

ANNA Because it’s your only realistic option, if you insist on being so impatient. Otherwise, you will just have to wait until Negro men get the vote. As soon as that happens, the Radical Republicans keep their promise to us. Just give them time!

SUSAN No! I agreed to stop organizing during the War -- we have waited long enough. Our time is now! [Long beat.] Look, Elizabeth and I have an appointment to see Wendell Phillips next month. He is one of the few Republicans who still supports us.

ANNA Isn’t he the Executor of the Hovey Fund?

SUSAN Yes! [Beat.] Wait -- how did you know that?

ANNA Um ... I hear all kinds of things.

SUSAN So you must know that our time is now! The will stipulates that once the slaves are freed, the rest of the funds will support woman’s rights. And as soon as we get that money, I will be able to pay you handsomely for your lectures. You could cancel your Lyceum tour, work with us, and still live in the style you have become accustomed to. [Beat.] How long have you known Wendell?

ANNA I first heard him speak when I was fifteen years old. I volunteered to mop the sidewalk in front of the hall so I could get in. I could listen to him forever -- he has the most divine voice!

SUSAN He is by far the best speaker the abolitionists ever produced. Except for you, my Chick-a- dee-dee! [Beat.] But Wendell is not one of us. He is a Boston Brahmin: wealthy, patrician, and very much of the male sex. 23.

ANNA If by that you mean that he is charismatic, I agree!

SUSAN He is a married man, Anna!

ANNA He invited me to visit him the next time I am in Boston.

SUSAN But his wife is an invalid -- they rarely entertain.

ANNA Half of these famous men’s wives are invalids of one kind or another. I won’t overstay my welcome. So -- how much money are you expecting to get?

SUSAN Eight thousand dollars a year -- more money than we have ever had! Please tell me you will think about/

Loud knocking at the door.

ANNA You didn’t tell me you were you expecting anyone! You said we would have a quiet evening, just the two of us!

Knocking resumes, more insistent. SUSAN and ANNA quickly tighten up each other’s dresses, and pull their hair back into tight buns.

SUSAN [Annoyed, toward the door.] Just a minute! [To Anna.] I have invited no one. I want only you, my darling! Whoever it is, I will send them packing.

SUSAN goes to the parlor to open the front door, as ANNA remains just out of sight. A heavily-veiled, terrified and disheveled PHOEBE stands outside. She looks around furtively to make sure she is not being followed before stepping inside.

PHOEBE Miss Anthony! I know you are a Conductor! Please, help me! 24.

SUSAN I was a Conductor! There is no longer any need for/

PHOEBE Please! You don’t understand! My life is in mortal/

ANNA moves into the doorway, frightening PHOEBE.

PHOEBE Who is this woman? I must not be seen!

SUSAN This is my ... friend, Anna. [Indicating Phoebe’s veil.] You are safe -- she cannot see your face. But tell me/

PHOEBE /No! She must leave! Now!

SUSAN waves for ANNA to leave the parlor, and ANNA grudgingly complies.

SUSAN It’s all right now. We are alone. Please, give me your coat.

PHOEBE removes her coat, but keeps her veiled hat and gloves on. You are safe now.

SUSAN holds out her other hand for PHOEBE’S hat. PHOEBE resists, but finally hands over her hat and gloves. She tries to hide her face, which is badly bruised, but SUSAN recognizes her after a beat. Mrs. Harris? What are you doing here?

PHOEBE I am a fugitive wife, Miss Anthony. You must help me!

SUSAN But -- what has happened to your face? May I bring you/

PHOEBE /I am all right. 25.

SUSAN I have got some salve I could/

PHOEBE /No, no. Please, don’t touch me! I am used to this.

SUSAN Used to it?

PHOEBE My husband.

SUSAN Your husband? Senator Harris, the abolitionist, did this?

PHOEBE He is a tyrant at home. And a philanderer. He entertained his women in my home, on Beacon Hill. I found letters, and ... I even caught him in [indicates “bed”] ... with one of those ... women. I finally threatened to expose him, and the very next morning he had me kidnapped. He convinced one of his doctor friends to declare me insane.

SUSAN You have always seemed perfectly sane to me. And you are one of my favorite authors!

PHOEBE Thank you, Miss Anthony, but ... I haven’t been able to publish in the past few years.

SUSAN I have been so busy, I really hadn’t/ ... But however did they come to such a ludicrous diagnosis?

PHOEBE They took my pulse.

SUSAN Your pulse?

PHOEBE Exactly! The doctor immediately came up with the diagnosis of “brain strain.” He said I was attempting intellectual and active pursuits beyond my “native capacity as a woman.”

SUSAN The gall! 26.

PHOEBE They locked me away at the lunatic asylum, and threw away the key. There were hundreds of us. I am sure you would know some of them. Even Mr. Vanderbilt sent his wife to one of these ...[Beat.] The conditions there are ... unspeakable.

SUSAN I am so sorry, Mrs. Harris. I have never actually talked to/

PHOEBE /Most women don’t want to talk about it. And when they do, no one believes them.

SUSAN But -- these prisons must not be allowed to exist!

PHOEBE It was like a prison, except I did not commit any crime. And I had no trial!

SUSAN Your crime was being born a woman. A trial was not necessary.

PHOEBE Some of the smartest, most independent women I knew ended up there -- it’s the price we paid for speaking our minds. [Beat.] I was confined in a damp dark room, with no heat. I was given pills that set my very nerves on fire. I had to lie our my own filth, Miss Anthony!

SUSAN My dear Mrs. Harris! I cannot even begin to imagine ... [Beat.] How did you ever manage to escape?

PHOEBE My brother spent more than a year fighting to get me released. Of course the authorities insisted I be returned to the custody of my husband -- my “legal guardian.” But when I arrived home, he had another woman in the house, and he was enraged to see me. We fought, and he ... pushed me down the stairs.

SUSAN So you ran away.

PHOEBE He is vengeful. He wants to lock me up again: he doesn’t want me talking to anyone. He threatened to send a private investigator and hunt me down ... like a wild animal, he said! I would rather die than go back there, Miss Anthony! 27.

SUSAN So ... you want me to find a place where you can hide for a while?

PHOEBE Yes.

SUSAN gets up and starts pacing, furiously shaking her head.

SUSAN The problem is, your husband travels in abolitionist circles, where I am known. It is very likely that he will send his investigator here.

PHOEBE But we could be long gone before he arrives!

SUSAN Your husband is close friends with Wendell Phillips, is he not?

PHOEBE Yes.

SUSAN If your husband found out I was helping you, he would surely pressure Wendell to cut off my funding. So while I was helping hide you, I would no longer be able to help countless other women.

PHOEBE Do you know what it’s like to be chained to your bed, Miss Anthony? Have you ever spent time in a straight-jacket? Have you ever had your head dunked under water until you felt you were drowning?

SUSAN I do understand your pain, Mrs. Harris. Of course I do!

PHOEBE So you will help me find a safe house?

SUSAN You are putting me in an impossible situation, Mrs. Harris ... But yes. All right.

PHOEBE Thank you! Oh, thank you! I do feel as though you have saved my life. 28.

SUSAN Yes, well ... the problem is I am fast running out of safe houses in New York. Fugitive slaves were one thing -- men were willing to break the law to hide them -- but it is much more difficult to help fugitive wives. And in your case, it will be almost impossible -- you are the wife of a famous Boston abolitionist. They will see him as one of their own.

PHOEBE But surely, my life is worth as much as that of a slave? Won’t they be able to understand that?

SUSAN That remains to be seen.

SCENE FIVE

PROJECTION

A few weeks later. Rochester, NY. 1867.

SUSAN and FREDERICK are having tea in Frederick’s parlor. At rise, FREDERICK is finishing up a joke.

FREDERICK So then he says, “Do Spiritualists move in high society?” and I said, “No, they are only mediums!” And we’ve been friends ever since!

SUSAN I am not a fan of the Spiritualists. Did I tell you about the time Elizabeth dragged me to see a medium? Why a woman as smart as Elizabeth falls for that claptrap is beyond me ... But at any rate, the “medium” managed to dredge up my Aunt Gwendolyn, of all people. I told her: “I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Aunt Gwen when she was alive, and I will be damned if I will sit here and listen to anything she has to say now!” And I got up and left, right then and there!

FREDERICK You did not!

SUSAN I did!

FREDERICK Sometimes I wonder about you, Susan! For a Quaker, you can be quite ... intolerant. 29.

SUSAN How is your wife doing, by the way? I was hoping she could join us.

FREDERICK She has developed neuralgia and rheumatism, and other mysterious ailments that the doctors can’t seem to help with. Women’s problems.

SUSAN I am sorry ... this will make my request all the more difficult.

FREDERICK You have a request? And here I was hoping this was just a friendly social visit ... Does your request involve my wife?

SUSAN Well ... that depends.

FREDERICK On what?

SUSAN Whether you say yes or no.

FREDERICK In that case, no! I can smell trouble a mile away, especially when you come bearing a plate of your ginger cookies. So let’s just enjoy the cookies. Did I tell you about the/

SUSAN /Please, Frederick! This is a delicate matter.

FREDERICK Naturally! You never have simple requests.

SUSAN I wish that I did ... this is not for my own self, Frederick.

FREDERICK I know, I know ... It’s always for “woman.” What is it this time?

SUSAN I have been asked to help conduct a fugitive wife ... 30.

FREDERICK A white woman?

SUSAN Yes. There have been others, as well.

FREDERICK Why am I not surprised. But how do your fugitive wives involve me?

SUSAN I am about to leave Rochester for several months. I have to travel to Albany, Boston, Kansas ... if Wendell does not cut off my funding, that is.

FREDERICK Why would he cut off your funding?

SUSAN Oh, let’s not talk about that! The thing is, several women have come to my house asking for refuge. It would be very dangerous for them to linger when I am not around. When the next one arrives -- exhausted and scared and hungry -- what will she do?

FREDERICK I haven’t the slightest idea. But you know how dangerous this is! Wives must be returned to their husbands! You could go to jail for harboring them. It’s the law!

SUSAN That didn’t stop you from harboring fugitive slaves!

FREDERICK That was a different matter altogether.

SUSAN How was it different?

FREDERICK For one thing, it involved actual slaves. For another, it did not involve divorce. Marriage is a sacred union made before God. Once it’s done, it cannot be undone.

SUSAN But Frederick -- these women who take the risk to flee ... While not technically slaves ... by the time they manage to arrive here, they have all been abused -- even tortured -- in some way. So if they manage to reach us, how can we turn them away? 31.

FREDERICK When did this become “we?” These women belong to/

SUSAN Belong? Are you listening to yourself, Frederick?

FREDERICK I just said ... I do not intend to get between a white man and his wife.

SUSAN I was hoping you might consider/

FREDERICK /No! I will not consider!

SUSAN I haven’t even/

FREDERICK /I know what you are up to, Susan! You are suggesting we create an Underground Railroad, for fugitive white wives.

SUSAN We don’t need an actual railroad. Just ... a stop, a temporary respite. A safe house .

FREDERICK Right ... and of all the people you know, you have selected me as the most likely candidate for your crazy and, shall I say, illegal scheme? I thought you were my friend, not my executioner!

SUSAN Well ... I thought perhaps ... since you have experience helping so many others, you might be willing to ... maybe just for one night? [Beat.] Nobody would think to look for white women in a black man’s house!

FREDERICK Of course! Because said black man could be lynched for a much lesser offense. Susan, have you totally lost your mind?

SUSAN Hear me out, please! I wouldn’t be asking if I had any other options! All the women I know in Rochester have husbands or fathers who refuse to help.

FREDERICK Because they are sane! Because they understand the consequences! 32.

SUSAN But you already have two white women who have lived in your house for months at a time!

FREDERICK Yes! But Julia is a British abolitionist with a lot of experience running a newspaper, and The North Star wouldn’t stay afloat without her. And Ottilie is a German journalist, who is barely eking out a pittance. I get grief about both of them, but neither of them is an American woman, let alone some man’s wife!

SUSAN But these are two white women who have been seen going in and out of your house for years. So it’s not unprecedented. I have taken the liberty of writing both of them/

FREDERICK /You did what?

SUSAN /and asking whether they might be willing to start wearing veils the next time they visit.

FREDERICK Veils?

SUSAN Yes, that way, the fugitive wives -- who are always hidden and veiled -- could easily be confused with one of them when they arrive.

FREDERICK So you went behind my back and wrote two of my closest friends ... before even talking to me?

SUSAN I wanted to think it though first, to see if it might work ... And they both said they would be happy to help!

FREDERICK I am glad to hear it. But this is my home, not theirs!

SUSAN Elizabeth has told me how you spoke up in favor of woman’s suffrage back in Seneca Falls, when her own husband fled town rather than be “embarrassed/”

FREDERICK /So because I was willing to stick my neck out twelve years ago, you are asking me to put my life on the line now? 33.

SUSAN Just ... let them shelter here for one night, and then they can continue on to Canada, or to the Western territories.

FREDERICK You are putting me in an unthinkable position ... this will put my entire family at risk, not just myself. Just last night, my wife told me how much improvement is needed in my temper and disposition, not to mention in my performance as a husband and father. This will be the last straw.

SUSAN Frederick, please -- these women are running for their lives! They are fugitives from violent and abusive husbands! [Beat.] Would you help if they were black women?

FREDERICK I do not countenance the idea of divorce -- or support rebellious wives who run away from their legally-wedded husbands. [Beat.] I cannot help you, Susan.

SCENE SIX

PROJECTION

A few days later. Seneca Falls, NY, 1867.

SUSAN, ELIZABETH and SOJOURNER are assembled around a large wooden table, cutting and preparing vegetables. From this scene forward, unless otherwise mentioned, Susan is always wearing a beautiful red shawl over her simple black dress.

SOJOURNER is quietly humming a hymn to herself as she works. The melody slowly gathers steam, until she is singing out loud, and slowly ELIZABETH and SUSAN chime in to create a playful three-part harmony. When they finish the hymn, SOJOURNER speaks.

SOJOURNER It’s been a long time since I stopped my travels long enough to spend time in a vegetable garden. And you have such a mighty fine one here, Mrs. Stanton! 34.

ELIZABETH That garden -- and the orchard, too -- are slowly taking over my life. The work just never ends. And of course, this time of year, we have so many rabbits ...

SUSAN It’s not the garden that is taking over your life, Elizabeth. It is all those children you had! Seven of them! Speaking of rabbits ...

ELIZABETH Susan!

SUSAN It would have been much better if you had listened to me, and controlled yourself. You should have stopped at three, or maybe four. That would have been quite sufficient to prove you are not “unsexed”!

SOJOURNER I have five children. I would not give a one of them/

SUSAN /But seven! Every time a speech needs writing, I must come up here and take care of that entire litter, just so Elizabeth can get some work done. It is not the best use of my time.

SOJOURNER I suppose there are some benefits to being unschooled! I have never had to waste any of my time sitting down and writing. I just go about my business, and when the time comes to speak, I wait until the Lord moves me.

ELIZABETH You have a heart of love and a tongue of fire, Sojourner. But the Lord stopped talking to me years ago.

SUSAN Elizabeth prepares her speeches meticulously, like a lawyer. Which she would have been, had she not been born a girl.

SOJOURNER If you ask me, all the big trouble of the world came from those who could read, and not from those who could not.

SUSAN There is something to be said for that. But still -- it is important to be able to read and write. [Beat.] I used to be a school teacher. I could teach you to read, if you’d like! 35.

SOJOURNER Thank you kindly, Miss Anthony! But I find that white people have no interest in educated black women. They do love to hear about slavery, though! You see how they come out for my lectures?

SUSAN You are a great preacher! But wouldn’t it be even better if you could read the Bible yourself?

SOJOURNER I like to keep my mind clear -- leave space for God. I don’t need to be cluttering things up. Do you believe in God, Miss Anthony? Do you make time to pray?

SUSAN I pray every minute of my life! But not on my knees. I pray with my work.

SOJOURNER Well, you could help me with your work, then. I have been hearing that you and Mrs. Stanton are advocating that only educated folk be allowed to vote. By my reckoning, that ain’t right. Can’t I see through a politician better than someone with his nose up a book?

ELIZABETH You are the exception, Sojourner. Most people without a proper education are too easy for unscrupulous politicians to manipulate.

SOJOURNER I have never seen anything in the Bible about a literacy test!

ELIZABETH The Bible is lacking in many respects ...

SOJOURNER That’s what Frederick tells me, too.

SUSAN Have you heard from him lately? I don’t understand why he won’t be joining us at the hearing tomorrow!

SOJOURNER Perhaps he does not wish to compete with me.

SUSAN Why -- what has happened between you two? 36.

SOJOURNER Nothing happened! Frederick just wants to be all highfalutin, like some ... European man. He has a house full of books, and foreign women visiting from England and Germany and who knows where-all. He likes to talk his fancy ideas with them, but he treats me low.

ELIZABETH Douglass has his faults, like any man. But he’s the best woman’s rights man we’ve got.

SOJOURNER You are an educated woman, Mrs. Stanton. Of course he gives you respect. But I do not care for being called “an uncultured Negro.”

SUSAN Did he really ... ?

SOJOURNER He did!

SUSAN I will give that man a piece of my mind the next time I see him!

SOJOURNER starts another hymn to calm herself, singing quietly.

SOJOURNER Miss Anthony, I really do understand about book learning, especially for women. I want to help set up schools down South, for children who were born as slaves -- it’s easier for them to learn reading and writing than an old woman like me. [Beat.] And you are right, of course -- we need women lawyers, and judges, even women in Congress one day.

ELIZABETH [Raising a teacup.] I’ll drink to that!

SOJOURNER I always believed that men can make dirt, but they can’t clean it up. It will never be done till women get into government. Whoever saw a man clean up a house?

All three women devolve into laughter. There is a knock at the door and ELIZABETH goes to answer it, returning with a large stack of papers. 37.

ELIZABETH That was Matilda, with the last of the petitions. We now have twenty eight thousand signatures -- more than we need to deliver to the Senators tomorrow!

SOJOURNER I will pray that they listen to us ... But in my experience, twenty eight thousand women’s signatures don’t carry as much weight as that of one white man!

SCENE SEVEN

PROJECTION

The next day. State Senate hearing room. Albany, NY, 1867.

THREE SENATORS are up on a dais. ELIZABETH has to look up to speak to them. SUSAN, SOJOURNER and ENSEMBLE make up the citizen audience.

ELIZABETH Honored Senators: Our existing New York Constitution opens grandly: “No member of this state shall be deprived of any of the rights secured to any citizen thereof.” Had the white male left the Constitution just there, it would have needed no amending. But unfortunately, in that one grand burst of eloquence, he exhausted all his generosity. Because he then immediately wrote the second article, which disenfranchised all the women, and all Negroes not worth two hundred and fifty dollars -- more than half the people in this state! Having thus cleared the deck, he proudly walks up and down and said, “We, the people of this State!” Why did he not say, “We, the white male citizens of the State?” [Laughter from ENSEMBLE.]

The white male who so pompously parades himself in all our codes and constitutions does not recognize women and Negroes as his equals. Therefore, his judgement in our case amounts to nothing. [Applause.] On the theory that the majority governs, what is to become of the white male when the woman and the Negro wake up?

Laughter as ELIZABETH delivers the petitions to the SENATORS. ENSEMBLE women wave white handkerchiefs to support ELIZABETH.

FIRST SENATOR That is all very well and good, Mrs. Stanton. But you know that the ballot and the bullet go together. So my question to is this: if you women get the vote, are you ready to fight? 38.

ELIZABETH Yes, sir, we are ready to fight, just as you fought in the last war. At the point of a goose quill! [More laughter.]

As the ELIZABETH leaves the speaker’s platform and SOJOURNER approaches, SENATORS and ENSEMBLE men hiss and jeer.

SOJOURNER You may hiss as much as you please! But women will get their rights, anyway. You can’t stop us, neither!

FIRST SENATOR Serve us your stew, woman!

SECOND SENATOR Yeah, go ahead! We have all day to listen to your nasal ramblings!

SOJOURNER Thank you, kind gentlemen! Is it not good for me to come and draw forth a spirit, to see what kind of spirit people are made of? I see that some of you have got the spirit of a goose, and some have got the spirit of a snake. I am a citizen of the state of New York, and I was a slave here. But I’ve been looking round and watching things, and I know a little mite about woman’s rights, too. I am sometimes told that woman ain’t fit to vote. I am told, “Why, don’t you know that a woman had seven devils in her?” Seven devils ain’t no account -- a man has a legion in him!

SENATORS whisper to each other as SOJOURNER leaves the podium, while ENSEMBLE women wave their white handkerchiefs.

FIRST SENATOR That woman has spent her entire life in New York!

SECOND SENATOR We never had any plantations here!

FIRST SENATOR Let’s give the woman the benefit of the doubt. I believe that she believes she was a slave! 39.

SCENE EIGHT

PROJECTION:

The next day. Same hearing room. Albany, NY, 1867.

SUSAN, ELIZABETH and SOJOURNER are in the audience, along with ENSEMBLE. SECOND SENATOR delivers the committee’s decision.

SECOND SENATOR Our committee has deliberated with much care regarding all the testimony. As part of our new Constitution, we are pleased to announce that we will remove the two hundred and fifty dollar property qualification for black men. [Cheers from ENSEMBLE men.] On the other matter -- this committee can not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women. [Gasps from the women.] However defensible in theory, we are satisfied that public sentiment does not demand, and would not sustain, an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping -- so openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes -- as woman suffrage. The idea is simply too radical and would upend social and domestic life in our great state.

The women get up to leave in outrage, and SOJOURNER knocks over her chair loudly in protest, as she turns her back on the men.

SCENE NINE

PROJECTION:

The next evening. Wendell Phillips’ parlor. Boston, 1867.

SUSAN and ELIZABETH arrive at WENDELL’S house, directly from the train station. They are still carrying their carpetbags.

WENDELL What a ... surprise! I wasn’t expecting you until next week! I am ... er, just preparing to leave for ... er ... dinner. My wife is away, visiting her mother, so I have nothing to offer you in the way of refreshments ... Could we perhaps meet ... another day? 40.

SUSAN We must talk now! We are leaving for Kansas in the morning.

WENDELL But it’s almost the dinner hour! I have plans! What could be so/

SUSAN /You have been one of our staunches allies, yet when we were in Albany, we heard that you have just made an about-face on woman suffrage. In fact, we heard you are now writing a draft of the Fifteenth Amendment that supports male Negro suffrage only!

WENDELL Well ... The thing is ... after much reflection, I have come to believe that this is the Negro’s hour. As Abraham Lincoln said, “One war at a time.”

ELIZABETH So it’s true?

SUSAN And when exactly did you have this change of heart?

WENDELL It has happened gradually ... I can’t recall the exact day.

ELIZABETH Yet you told us nothing!

WENDELL I had no doubt you would find out, in due time.

SUSAN In due time! By which time it would be too late for us to provide you with any suggestions!

WENDELL You don’t need to provide me with any “suggestions.” I am very well aware of your concerns and wishes.

SUSAN Wishes! We were promised that after the war was won, women would get the vote. Have you forgotten everything women did to support the war effort, and how hard we worked for abolition? 41.

WENDELL Of course I remember. But I have come to see that the nation can only focus on one major issue at a time. We must put Negro suffrage in one bottle, and woman’s suffrage in another.

SUSAN You are putting women in a bottle?

WENDELL It is unwise to mix the movements, because such mixture would lose for the Negro far more than we should gain for the woman.

ELIZABETH Let me ask you a question. Do you believe the African race is composed entirely of males?

WENDELL Elizabeth! We have to be very careful now. Do you remember what happened when women were admitted into the abolition societies? The controversy over their participation broke that movement in half!

ELIZABETH Only because the men decided that women’s participation in abolition meetings was “contrary to the usages of the civilized world.” You can hardly blame us for that!

SUSAN How can you stand there and support an amendment which will cut out half the population of this country, including your wife?

WENDELL Great revolutions do not happen all at once, Susan. Whenever a new reform is started, people seem to think that the world is going to take a great stride all at once. But the world never takes strides. The moral world is exactly like the natural: the sun comes up minute by minute, ray by ray, until the twilight deepens into dawn, and dawn spreads into noon. Woman’s suffrage will be enacted into law one day soon, perhaps as a Sixteenth Amendment.

SUSAN But when? Before Reconstruction, there were no amendments to the Constitution in sixty four years! So if we pass up our chance now... it could be another sixty four years before women get the right to vote!

WENDELL It will not take six decades for dawn to spread into noon, I promise you that. 42.

SUSAN Please stop me with the overblown rhetoric, Wendell! You are not on stage here. We are simply having a conversation.

WENDELL Let’s have that conversation, then. Surely, you see how the Fourteenth Amendment has been subverted in the South. The Negros have been given their freedom, but they still have no political rights. Woman, on the other hand, is educated, influential, walking down the highway of society, wielding all her power.

ELIZABETH What power are you talking about exactly, Wendell?

WENDELL Well, the considerable power she has as wife and mother. In her own home. The women’s sphere has considerable power. She can talk to and influence her husband, and he can vote to represent her interest.

ELIZABETH Her interest is to vote!

WENDELL I disagree. Most women in this country are not agitating for the vote. You just need to sit back a little. [Beat.] The reality is that we simply don’t have the votes for woman suffrage.

SUSAN And how do you know that, as no vote has been taken?

WENDELL We know that Negro men will vote Republican, since the Democrats are the party of the Slave Power. But there are three million Negro men, and ten million women. If we give women the vote, Southern women will surely vote with their husbands, and the Confederacy will take over our government. Do you two want to be responsible for a President Robert E. Lee?

SUSAN I don’t think you can assume that all Southern women will vote with their husbands, any more than that all Negroes will vote Republican.

WENDELL It’s a pretty safe bet. Believe me, I know! 43.

SUSAN So, once the Republicans win a majority in Congress, and the Presidency, what incentive do they have to offer the vote to women in the future?

WENDELL Trust me! Your time will come. But for right now, it is selfish for women oppose the rights of others.

ELIZABETH Oh, no! No, no, no! It is men who are selfish here! It was easy for Northern white men to fight slavery because they had no slaves. But now you are unwilling to embrace woman’s rights because it would impact your own dominance, at home. That’s what is really going on behind all your fancy talk!

WENDELL I am not the enemy, Elizabeth. Please be careful! You know that personally I believe women should have the same rights as men. But you have taken your movement way beyond common-sense positions. And yes, some men are ... uncomfortable. With your position about divorce, for example. And free love.

ELIZABETH /Why are you so sensitive about divorce, Wendell? Surely your marriage is a happy one!

WENDELL Of course it is! But that’s just the thing: marriage affects men as much as women. So divorce is not a “woman’s rights” issue. Your ideas are simply too radical. And too early. You must be patient.

ELIZABETH We have been patient since this Republic was created! How much more patient do we need to be?

SUSAN A hundred more years, if these men have anything to say about it. [Beat.] Wendell, we just have one other small piece of/

WENDELL /There’s no more time. I have a dinner engage/

SUSAN /The Hovey Fund. That money should have been released to us months ago. If you will just give us that check, we will be gone. 44.

WENDELL Well, the Hovey estate ... this is not the best/

SUSAN /That’s exactly what you said the last time we met! But the terms of the will are clear: once the slaves are emancipated, the rest of the money is to go for woman’s rights.

WENDELL Yes, but ... you see ... until the Fifteenth Amendment is passed, the Hovey Fund must be used for Negro male suffrage.

SUSAN Dear God! But that’s against/

ELIZABETH /When did this happen? You have failed to inform us about this, also!

WENDELL I was fully intending to tell you!

SUSAN You don’t understand -- our coffers are absolutely empty! How are we going to pay for Kansas? We have already started making expenditures/

WENDELL /That was premature, and presumptuous! Charles Hovey made me the executor of his estate, and I have the final discretion over how this money will be used.

SUSAN And you ask us to trust you?

SUSAN gets up, and motions for ELIZABETH to follow.

SUSAN Elizabeth, let’s go. We are finished here.

SUSAN and ELIZABETH pick up their coats, and bags, and walk to the door. WENDELL stops them just as they reach the threshold.

WENDELL There is one other quick matter/ 45.

SUSAN /There is nothing more to talk about. Good night!

WENDELL Mr. Harris -- he is very worried about his wife. She was last seen at your house.

SUSAN I haven’t been at my house in weeks.

WENDELL Come, Susan -- you know that helping to hide a fugitive wife is illegal.

SUSAN It is only illegal because men write the laws to suit themselves. Do you know that it was perfectly legal for Mr. Harris to imprison his wife in an insane asylum for two years? And then to push her down a flight of stairs?

WENDELL He did not push her down any stairs. She must have tripped. Or ... slipped. Now Susan, you are putting me in a very difficult position here. When you help abduct a child and help a wife escape from her rightful husband ...

SUSAN Rightful husband? You speak as though she is a slave, or a piece of property!

WENDELL I am sick to death of hearing this rant! To turn marriage into a mere business contract would turn the whole world into one vast brothel.

ELIZABETH So you are conceding, finally, that marriage is a legalized form of prostitution!

WENDELL I am conceding no such thing! You know that my marriage is one of equals.

ELIZABETH Would you be willing to trade places with your wife, then?

WENDELL That is a ridiculous question! You know that my wife is very ill and/

ELIZABETH /She became ill right around the time you got married, did she not? 46.

WENDELL I don’t recall the exact timing ... [Beat.] What are you suggesting, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH I am suggesting that the confinement and restrictions of marriage might have something to do with your wife’s illness. Has it not occurred to you that men’s dainty notions of womanhood have made females such hot-house plants that one half of them are now invalids? I can’t help but notice that while many of my married friends have succumbed to mysterious and undiagnosable illnesses -- delicately diagnosed as “hysteria” -- my single friends -- such as Susan here -- are as strong as oxen.

SUSAN Elizabeth!

WENDELL You are hurting your cause with this action, Elizabeth. This time, you have gone too far!

ELIZABETH And you, Wendell Phillips, have not gone far enough.

ANNA, who just woken up, calls from off-stage. She thinks WENDELL is alone.

ANNA Wendell, darling, you were supposed to wake me!

ANNA bursts into the parlor bare-foot and disheveled, wearing an open robe over a sheer negligee. Sweetheart, we are going to be la/

ANNA stops abruptly when she sees SUSAN and ELIZABETH. SUSAN turns away, trying to cover her shock.

SCENE TEN

PROJECTION:

Several weeks later. ELIZABETH’s hotel bedroom. Kansas, 1867. 47.

ELIZABETH is sleeping as SUSAN comes into the dark room, holding a lantern.

ELIZABETH What ... what is it?... What time is it?

SUSAN Three a.m.

ELIZABETH What are you doing here? Go away!

SUSAN I can’t sleep.

ELIZABETH Oooooo ... I was dreaming ...

SUSAN I can’t sleep!

ELIZABETH You never sleep! But I need my sleep. I need so much sleep...

SUSAN I can’t go on.

ELIZABETH Oh ... OK .... Ummm ... Can’t we talk about this in the morning?

SUSAN No!

Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, SUSAN starts weeping. This finally gets ELIZABETH’s attention. She rousts herself and sits up, wiping sleep from her eyes.

ELIZABETH What? ... What is happening?

SUSAN I ... 48.

ELIZABETH What?

SUSAN I ... can’t go on.

ELIZABETH What has happened? Has ... has someone hurt you?

SUSAN No ... I don’t know ... I ... I can’t ...

ELIZABETH Come here.

Motions for SUSAN to sit next to her on the bed. Susan, please talk to me!

SUSAN continues to cry silently. ELIZABETH tries to focus.

ELIZABETH Dear me ... What is happening? ... What could this ... Oh! Is this about Wendell? The Hovey Fund?

SUSAN Um ... yes!

ELIZABETH Oh! We will just have to work harder. We will find a way to go on.

SUSAN But that’s just it -- we can’t! I have borrowed all I can against my mother’s house, and no bank will talk to me. We are starved for funds -- I don’t even know if we will be able to pay our hotel bill when this is over! How long is it going to take for our enemies to label us “irresponsible women?” [Beat.] Our situation is hopeless.

ELIZABETH Nonsense, Susan! We have exactly the same amount of hope that we have had for the past twenty years! Let’s get some sleep, and it will all look better in the morning!

SUSAN It’s just that -- I had thought the tide was finally turning! But if anything, our Cause is dying a slow death in Kansas ... 49.

ELIZABETH Susan, if you could just get go back to bed!

SUSAN’S crying intensifies.

ELIZABETH What? Susan! [Beat.] I don’t believe I have ever seen you cry, in all these years ... What could possibly ...

SUSAN I just want ... [Long beat.]

ELIZABETH What? What is it? [Beat.] Oh! ... It’s not about any of those things, is it? It’s about ... Anna!

SUSAN Anna? Why would I/ ... I don’t know what you are talking about!

ELIZABETH I know you better than anyone, Susan. I am only sorry it has taken me so long to see!

SUSAN See what? Anna is like a niece to me.

ELIZABETH You have had many “nieces,” Susan. I have seen them come and go, but I hadn’t realized that Anna ... [Beat.] But, of course! Anna is different -- very powerful, magnetic. And very headstrong, like you. You feel a very passionate ... affection for her, don’t you?

SUSAN You have no right to judge me!

ELIZABETH I am not judging you! You have chided me often about the repercussions of my “moments of pleasure.” Far be it from me to deny you love and affection! I am not prudish about matters of the heart. I prefer men myself, but I can feel Anna’s magnetism.

SUSAN It’s just ... I had been hoping that Anna would take my place in the struggle, when the time came. I have invested so much in her! I let her braid my hair! I thought she felt ... We understood each other in so many ways. Anna spent Christmas at my house last year, Elizabeth! She was my closest ... 50.

ELIZABETH So that is why you didn’t come to our house last Christmas!

SUSAN I was in a tee-total collapse of the heart. The defeats, the jeering, the endless hostility ... Anna was the only one who could soothe me ... When I nestled my heart next to hers, I could feel my soul come back to me ... I had such plans ... but she threw all that away ... And then, to see her in Wendell’s house! It is more than my old heart can bear ...

ELIZABETH Anna is ... confused. She is the youngest person on the Lyceum circuit -- a beautiful young woman, always surrounded by adoring older men. And you know how persuasive Wendell can be! There is no telling what tales he has woven for her. They are both such stars, they think the normal rules of gravity don’t apply to them.

SUSAN Betrayed ... by two people I thought were my trusted friends. How can I go on?

ELIZABETH We will go on ... This little dalliance is not going to stop us!

SUSAN I am not talking about a dalliance! I am talking about the future. Anna and Wendell are lost to us now, and of course Frederick is going to support his gender before he supports us. I wouldn’t blame Sojourner if she votes for her race before her gender, when it comes down to it. [Beat.] We are more alone than we have ever been.

ELIZABETH We are not alone! We have thousands of women behind us.

SUSAN Perhaps. But we have millions of men against us! We lost in New York, we are losing in Kansas. We are about to lose the fight for the Fifteenth ...Why go on?

ELIZABETH Because we have come too far to stop now. I won’t let you quit!

SUSAN Since when do you decide when I quit?

ELIZABETH Since you would not let me quit -- not when I was pregnant; not when I had newborn babies to nurse. I am not letting you quit now over a mere broken heart. You will get over it! 51.

SUSAN I don’t think I will get over it ...

ELIZABETH Do you think you are the only woman to suffer such a loss?

SUSAN What do you know about it? You married Henry so young! You have never/

ELIZABETH /But I have!

SUSAN Not like this, or I would have heard about it! You are not one to keep secrets, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH In general, that is true. But there is one secret I have kept in my heart for more than twenty years.

SUSAN You must tell! You know my secret, so you must tell me yours.

ELIZABETH It was such a long time ago ... it hardly matters...

SUSAN If you want me to go on, you must tell me!

ELIZABETH Well ... it has been a heavy secret to carry alone ... I have often wished ... [Beat.] But you must promise!

SUSAN You know I keep secrets, Elizabeth. Unlike/

ELIZABETH /All right! Before I met Henry, I fell in love with/ ... I was just a girl, Susan ... This is so ... It was ... my brother-in-law.

SUSAN Which one? 52.

ELIZABETH Edward Bayard. The homeopath. He was so kind, and so intelligent. We were both interested in history, and travel ... I was a young girl when he married my sister. But as I grew up, we spent more and more time together. My sister was busy with her babies ... But it was an impossible situation. He wanted me to run away to England with him, and I almost did. But I turned back at the very last minute, because I couldn’t imagine never seeing my family again, betraying my sister ... When I met Henry, I decided he would have to do. Otherwise, Edward would never have left me alone. As it was, he accused me of betraying him when I got married!

SUSAN I have always wondered why you and Henry spend more time apart than together. Does he know?

ELIZABETH Of course not! [Beat.] We do what we have to do, to survive. And you will as well.

SUSAN How long?

ELIZABETH How long what?

SUSAN Before it stops hurting.

ELIZABETH It never stops! I still can’t be alone in a room with Edward, all these years later. [Beat.] But most of the time, I am able to focus my attention elsewhere. On my children, and the Cause!

SUSAN You have managed not to betray your sister, despite your own desires. But I have been betrayed ... and our Cause has been betrayed. Where is left for us to turn?

ELIZABETH [Long beat.] I have been thinking a lot about this, Susan. I wasn’t sure if you would be willing to listen. But perhaps the time has come. [Beat.] We will be roundly criticized if we do this. But since the Republicans have betrayed us, there is only one place for us to turn.

SUSAN You mean that businessman, George Frances Train? Has he been wooing you, too? 53.

ELIZABETH Yes. I hadn’t wanted to mention it before ... I know how opposed you are ...

SUSAN It smacks of desperation.

ELIZABETH And we are desperate women. What have we got to lose?

SUSAN Our dignity.

ELIZABETH Dignity? When was the last time a woman was treated with dignity in the political arena?

SUSAN I don’t know ... I hear Mr. Train is quite eccentric. He lives at the very fringes of the Democratic Party. Nobody takes him seriously! He is very rich, but not very well respected. It’s a big risk ... Suffragists have always been aligned with the Republicans.

ELIZABETH But women have been betrayed by the Republicans! Mr. Train and the Democrats are our only option.

SUSAN We are heading off in a dangerous direction, Elizabeth ... if we start down this path, we will not be able to turn back.

ELIZABETH We have helped the abolitionists, and they have left us high and dry. They laughed at us in New York, and they have abandoned us in Kansas. Their leading speaker stole our money. We have no good options left, Susan.

SUSAN I don’t know ...

ELIZABETH Pull yourself together, Susan! You have always said that failure is impossible. So we’ve got no choice. Starting tomorrow, we are going to war!

INTERMISSION 54.

ACT TWO

SCENE ELEVEN

PROJECTION:

The next afternoon. A hotel dining room. Kansas, 1867.

TRAIN is sitting at a table for three at a luxury hotel. He periodically checks his reflection and twirls his waxed moustache. As SUSAN and ELIZABETH enter, he impulsively jumps up and hugs SUSAN, sweeping her off her feet, twirling her around, and kissing her on the mouth.

TRAIN Mrs. Stanton! What an unbelievable honor!

SUSAN [Somehow delighted by his enthusiasm, despite herself.] I am Susan B. Anthony. That is Mrs. Stanton.

TRAIN My apologies! But you two fine women are something of a pair, are you not? [To Susan.] I have heard that you forge the thunderbolts, and she flings them.

SUSAN It’s the opposite, actually. Mrs. Stanton ... forges the thunderbolts, as you put it. And I fling them.

TRAIN Indeed! Indeed! It is such a tremendous honor to meet you both! [Kisses Elizabeth’s hand, after determining that she is too heavy to twirl.] Such an honor! Please, please, sit down ...

Pulls chairs out for each of them in a theatrical gesture. You do know I have travelled around the world in eighty days, and have only recently returned? 55.

ELIZABETH Of course, Mr. Train! We have been following your articles in the newspaper. You have had quite a journey! If I didn’t have quite so many children/

TRAIN /Yes! Well, what I wanted to say is, in my travels around the entire world, I have never run into women as accomplished as you. I love all women, of course! I love women. Even my own wife!

ELIZABETH What a pleasure to meet a man who is both witty and well-travelled, Mr. Train!

TRAIN And have you also heard that I am running for President? I find that Ulysses S. Grant is appalling. Grovelin’ Grant, I call him! He has no idea how to make money, or keep it. I, on the other hand, set up the Credit Mobilier, based on the French financing system. We are doing a terrific job funding the railroads. Terrific!

ELIZABETH We are in no position to discuss presidential candidates, Mr. Train, as we live in a country that does not allow even its most intelligent women to vote.

TRAIN And that is a crying shame! A crying shame! The way I look at it, Mrs. Stanton, if women can rule monarchies, they can certainly vote in Republics.

ELIZABETH At last! A man with a head on his shoulders.

TRAIN The wedge of woman suffrage -- once inserted in Kansas -- will populate the nation with ten million voting women. And I am willing to bet that all of them will vote for me!

ELIZABETH That is an ... interesting thought.

TRAIN No woman can resist me! Is that not right, Miss Anthony?

SUSAN Certainly! You are quite ... irresistible. 56.

TRAIN Of course I am! And I presume that you are both here because you want to throw the support of the woman’s suffrage movement behind me?

SUSAN clears her throat nervously.

TRAIN Here is my platform: Woman first, Negro last. I have even written a little ditty for this campaign. May I sing it for you?

ELIZABETH Please ...

TRAIN Woman votes the black to save, The black he votes to make woman slave. Hence when blacks and ‘Rads ‘ -- [winking and whispering] Radical Republicans -- unite to enslave the whites, ‘Tis time the Democrats championed woman’s rights!

SUSAN Hmmm.....

ELIZABETH Mr. Train, we prefer that women and Negroes get the franchise together -- we are fighting for universal suffrage.

TRAIN Yet you would not have the Negro go through the gate before you?

ELIZABETH Of course not! We mean to go through together. There are two referendums in Kansas, and we support them both.

TRAIN But as you know, those rabid, rascally Radical Republicans are putting their support behind the Negro only. They do not intend to let woman get to the Promised Land in Kansas. Democrats, on the other hand, are happy to help fair ladies such as yourselves. As long as you leave those Negroes behind.

SUSAN Kansas is a very open-minded state. I believe they can support both referendums. 57.

TRAIN Let us work together to ensure that Beauty, Virtue and Intelligence has precedence over Muscle, Color and Ignorance. If we can agree on that, I am willing to campaign with you until election day. You will travel in my private coach, and stay in first-class hotels, and eat at fine dining establishments, such as this one.

SUSAN We have never had the budget for that! In fact, we barely have the money to pay for/

TRAIN /Cost is no object! I am a very rich man -- very rich. If you agree to my terms I will finance the rest of your Kansas campaign very handsomely. Newspaper ads, petitions, lecture halls, even paid staff to canvass voters. I can easily spare a hundred thousand dollars for your Cause. But you must let me know immediately, so I can adjust my schedule -- and my budget!

ELIZABETH Mr. Train, may I have a moment alone with Miss Anthony?

TRAIN Of course! Of course! Take all the time you need.

TRAIN gets up and bounds offstage.

ELIZABETH He is offering a hundred thousand dollars! What choice do we have?

SUSAN We abandon our friends. And our principles.

ELIZABETH Or we abandon The Cause.

SUSAN gets up from the table, and starts pacing nervously. TRAIN barges back into the room, waving a newspaper.

TRAIN Ladies! I forgot to mention that last night I spoke with my wife -- she supports your Cause, of course -- and she informed me that most newspapers are closed to you now.

ELIZABETH That’s because all the papers that used to support us are owned by Republican men and/ 58.

TRAIN /Say no more! My wife tells me she would like to be able to follow suffrage more closely - - she especially loves reading about your speeches, Mrs. Stanton. So I would like to propose a sweetener for this deal. I will fund a woman’s newspaper/

SUSAN /A newspaper! That would make all the difference!

TRAIN You must call it “The Revolution” -- because you ladies are fomenting a revolution, just like myself!

ELIZABETH You understand us perfectly!

TRAIN The motto will be ... let me see ... how about: “Men, their rights, and nothing more. Women, their rights, and nothing less.” You, Mrs. Stanton, will be the editor and you, Miss Anthony, will be the proprietress. And of course in your first editorial, you must endorse me for President!

SUSAN and ELIZABETH look at each other and sigh. Then, as they realize they will finally have funding and even a newspaper to call their own, they smile.

ELIZABETH Of course!

SUSAN When do we start publishing?

SCENE TWELVE

PROJECTION:

A few days later. Susan’s hotel room. Evening. Kansas, 1867.

At rise, SUSAN is sitting at a desk, reading a letter. A knock at the door startles her. As she gets up, she looks old, defeated, depressed -- and then she opens the door and sees ANNA. 59.

SUSAN My darling! You have come back to me! Come in! Come in!

SUSAN closes the door, then opens her arms and hugs ANNA passionately, kissing her face and forehead. After an initial hesitation, ANNA gives in and allows herself to be hugged and fussed over. SUSAN removes ANNA’s coat.

SUSAN I have had such a time of it since ... I could barely get out of bed. And now, here you are, back in my arms, like a gift from heaven! My very own angel ...

ANNA Susan ... I want to/

SUSAN /It’s all right! You are forgiven, my bright, glorious, young spirit! I have had no peace since you left. Nowhere to rest my head. [Beat.] I know I have a reputation of being maybe ... a little bit ... vengeful ... but I forgive you. Totally and completely! You are so irresistible. How can I not?

SUSAN holds ANNA close again and gives her a lingering kiss on the mouth.

ANNA Susan ... Susan ... I have missed you, too. I have never met a woman like you. I have learned so much from/

SUSAN /No! Stop! Why does everything suddenly sound so ... past?

ANNA Because ... our past is beautiful. I would never change one moment that we shared toge/

SUSAN /But the present? And our future, Anna? I have such plans ...

ANNA Susan ... I can’t.

SUSAN Can’t what? 60.

ANNA Can’t have a future. With you.

SUSAN Why on earth not? Surely, you don’t believe that that Wendell can offer you more than ... He is married! He will never leave his wife, no matter what he tells you! And he is a man! I thought we both agreed ...

ANNA I never agreed to anything, Susan. You had all the dreams. You set all the rules. You determined the agenda. I have loved you, really I did ... But now I need my freedom!

SUSAN And you have your “freedom” with, what ... Wendell?

ANNA I have no need to marry Wendell. We are both free to pursue/

SUSAN /Pursue what?

ANNA Our lives. Separately when we wish, together when we wish. [Beat.] It’s for the best, Susan.

SUSAN And your work? Your lecturing? Is Wendell supporting you, as I supported you? Only a woman can understand the passions, the desires of another.

ANNA As a matter of fact, Wendell understands me perfectly. He is a brilliant speaker himself, and he is very well-connected. [Beat.] In fact, he has convinced the Republicans to sponsor my trip to Kansas.

SUSAN Last I heard, you hated Kansas. And now you are here to support the ... Negro suffrage referendum?

ANNA Yes.

SUSAN [Long beat.] I see. So that’s why you are here. To tell me that! 61.

ANNA I wanted to tell you myself, so you wouldn’t be/

SUSAN /And you came into my room, at night, and you let me kiss you, and you let me believe ...

ANNA You believed whatever you wanted to believe. You didn’t let me say a word before you started to/

SUSAN /I see. So when you told me back in Rochester that you wanted “freedom” to talk about a variety of different issues, what you really meant was that you wanted the freedom to lecture for the highest bidder.

ANNA That’s not what I meant! Lecturing about woman’s issues has just become too dangerous! When I give speeches about woman suffrage, I have my best dresses ruined -- men throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at me! They heckle me on the street, and ruin my dinner when they see me at my hotel. I can no longer tolerate the constant abuse!

SUSAN Anna -- I have been burned in effigy. In Syracuse, men threw broken benches at me, and in Buffalo they brandished knives and pistols. But I grow stronger with every mob I face - - and you can, too! If you just/

ANNA /I am not built as sturdily as you, Susan. I have a more delicate constitution.

SUSAN I do not believe that for an instant: you have incredible inner strength. [Beat.] How could I have been so wrong about you?

ANNA You weren’t wrong ... It’s not how it looks!

SUSAN How is it, then?

ANNA It’s just that ... Negro men need suffrage, too! They have no rights, either, and now they are being disenfranchised by the Black Codes. They have no one to speak for them! 62.

SUSAN So you have “voluntarily” taken on that task, at the rate of, what? One hundred dollars a lecture? Two hundred?

ANNA Negro men need suffrage at least as much as women do. Maybe more.

SUSAN Maybe more ... All I see is that you are making more money lecturing on behalf of the Negro than on behalf of your own kind. [Long beat, as Susan paces and considers her options.] What do you think would happen to you, Anna, if I started spreading the word that America’s “Joan of Arc” is having an affair with Wendell Phillips, America’s most famous abolitionist?

ANNA Please, Susan! No! You wouldn’t do that! You know that would be the end of my career! My reputation! You said that you care for me ...

SUSAN Cared for you! [Beat.] The punishment for adultery is prison -- surely, they would want to make an example of you. Perhaps, if you are very lucky, you would be allowed to go home and live out your days with your mother. Wendell’s career would go on, of course -- men never suffer when it comes to “free love.” But your lecturing career would be/

ANNA /You said you wouldn’t be vengeful with me, Susan. You said!

SUSAN Said. Past tense. Just like you. [Picks up letter from the desk.] I just received a letter from Wendell’s wife. I don’t know what she wants, but I will pay her a visit on my next visit to Boston. I might drop a hint or two. She will confide everything in her sister, and her sister, God bless her, is the best gossip in Boston. I won’t have to lift a finger!

Long beat as both women start pacing the room in circles, like caged lionesses, considering their next moves.

ANNA You are not the only one who can spread vicious rumors. I can tell people about your “nieces.” Think how your enemies will love that tasty tidbit! If word gets out about your true love of women, it would set your precious Cause back fifty years. 63.

SUSAN [Roaring.] That is enough. Get. Out!!!

ANNA

Slowly and deliberately walks to the door and then turns around, hand on the knob. My voice -- my lectures -- are all I have. I will do everything in my power to protect them. I will keep your dirty little secret. But if I hear that you have spread nasty rumors about me -- I will destroy you. I am not going down alone!

SCENE THIRTEEN

PROJECTION:

The next morning. The same hotel dining room. Kansas, 1867.

SUSAN is sitting at a table set for two, waiting for ELIZABETH. JACK WINTHROP spots her, and swoops in.

WINTHROP Miss Anthony! Jack Winthrop, from The Daily Kansas Tribune. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions.

SUSAN I have only a few minutes. I am expecting Mrs. Stanton to join/

WINTHROP /I will be quick then. Someone placed an announcement in our newspaper, and my editors are somewhat ... confused. We would like to be able to explain what this means to our readers. Did you not write in an editorial last week ... Yes, here we are ... [pulling out a newspaper clipping from his pocket]: “It will be said that the husband provides for the wife ... Yes! He keeps her, as he does a favorite horse.”

SUSAN Please, let me expl/

WINTHROP And did you not also write, “When I think of all the wrongs that have been heaped upon womankind, I feel I shall go stark raving mad, my eyes a fountain of tears, my lips overflowing with curses, and my hand against every man and brother.” Are these your words, Miss Anthony? 64.

SUSAN Actually, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that. People often confuse us.

WINTHROP I see. But how about this: “the male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing; loving war, violence, and acquisition” ...etcetera, etcetera ... oh, yes ... “breeding discord, disease and death everywhere it goes?”

SUSAN I don’t have all day, Mr. Winthrop. I fail to see what any of this/

WINTHROP /Did you not place a wedding announcement in our newspaper this very morning, Miss Anthony? Or was that also Mrs. Stanton?

SUSAN I did place the announcement, yes. But I can’t for the life of me see the need for this ... ambush!

WINTHROP My editors disagree! They simply want to know how a woman -- an avowed spinster -- who has remained unmarried for so many years -- and who has nothing but rage and disdain for the male gender -- how such a woman would suddenly decide to get married?

SUSAN That is between me and my fiancee. I don’t see how this is any business of/

WINTHROP /But, Miss Anthony! You are the morning star of the woman’s rights movement! You have always said you were “married to the Cause.” Surely your ... followers have a right to know the reason for this sudden turnaround?

SUSAN Well, Mr. Stinson has been a good friend and neighbor to me over many years, and he has been ... wooing me for quite some time now. Neither of us is getting any younger, so I thought ... perhaps the time has come. Even spinsters and confirmed bachelors deserve some happiness, don’t you agree, Mr. ... Whitlaw?

WINTHROP Winthrop. Will you continue working for woman’s rights after you become Mrs. Richard Stinson?

SUSAN Mrs. Stinson? Whatever gave you that idea! I will always be Susan B. Anthony. And I will be working for women’s rights until I the day I die. 65.

WINTHROP I see ... Do you have a photograph of Mr. Stinson?

SUSAN I am not in the habit of keeping photographs of my beaus, Mr. Winterhopper/

WINTHROP /Winthrop.

SUSAN If you want a photo, you will have to send a photographer to Rochester.

WINTHROP “Beaus?”

SUSAN You are surprised? I may not be a beautiful woman, but I have had admirers. It’s just that ... the time was never right. Or the man was not right.

ELIZABETH walks into the dining room, confused to see a reporter at the table.

And now, if you don’t have any further questions, I have /

WINTHROP Where will the wedding take place?

SUSAN I have been far too busy here in Kansas to think of wedding plans, Mr. Winterbottom. All in good time! And now Mrs. Stanton and I have a speech to write.

WINTHROP Miss Anthony, we cannot in good faith print a wedding announcement without so much as a date. When you can provide us with one, we will be happy to print your announcement.

SUSAN gets up abruptly, angrily. WINTHROP attempts to shake her hand, but she rebuffs him. WINTHROP gathers his papers and leaves.

ELIZABETH [Whispering.] Wedding plans? What on earth is going on here, Susan? 66.

SUSAN Anna paid me a visit in my room last night. She threatened to ... expose me.

ELIZABETH Oh. I see! So your solution is to get married? I don’t quite see how/

SUSAN /You have long urged me to talk about my “beaus,” Elizabeth. To keep the hounds off the scent. So, a few years ago, I talked to my neighbor. He is of a similar disposition -- but with men. We agreed that should either of us need to ward off a scandal, we would announce an engagement. This engagement would drag on for months -- years, if need be -- and then it will quietly be called off.

ELIZABETH And when he suddenly sees his name in the paper ... with you hundreds of miles away?

SUSAN He will understand immediately, and will play his role to the hilt. He is a bright man, and a good sport. [Beat.] It doesn’t hurt that he loves my ginger cookies!

SCENE FOURTEEN

PROJECTION

Two years later. Offices of The Revolution. New York, 1869.

The office is spacious and sunny, with comfortable seating and sofas at key places. It is welcoming and warm -- a very feminine place but also serious and business-like.

FREDERICK and LUCY have just arrived, to find SUSAN and ELIZABETH frantically putting the paper to bed. d

ELIZABETH This is not a good time! As you can see, we have our hands full with The Revolution, and we have to get ready for the American Equal Rights Association convention tomorrow.

SUSAN Please -- come back next week! 67.

FREDERICK That won’t be possible -- we are actually here to discuss the convention.

SUSAN Whatever needs discussing can be done at the meeting.

FREDERICK That’s just the thing. It was suggested that this might be less ... difficult ... for all involved if we did it in private.

SUSAN Do what?/

FREDERICK Lucy and I were asked to meet with you. This is very a very delicate matter ... we are simply the ... messengers.

ELIZABETH Can’t you see we are frantic with work here? Just deliver the message!

FREDERICK All right ... Yes, well ... You and I have been friends so long ...

ELIZABETH English, Frederick! Say it, and get it over with!

FREDERICK All right then. There is really no way to soften ... A number of key AERA members are requesting that you step down as chair of tomorrow’s conference.

ELIZABETH Absolutely not!

SUSAN On what grounds?

FREDERICK Many reasons. Your unremitting opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment, for one/

LUCY /And the fact that your association with Mr. Train caused us to lose the Kansas referendum. Many people have still not forgotten that. 68.

SUSAN That referendum lost because of Republican opposition. Besides, it’s all water under the bridge now!

ELIZABETH [Enraged.] I will not step down!

SUSAN Elizabeth and I created the AERA to unite the abolition and woman suffrage movements. We were intending to work for universal suffrage, but we clearly made a mistake inviting the abolitionists. Elizabeth, I told you we shouldn’t have/

FREDERICK Susan -- we are all in this together! The abolitionists/

SUSAN /are white men!

Frederick points at himself.

SUSAN I stand corrected. But are you not proposing that a treacherous white male chair this meeting on universal suffrage?

Frederick nods.

ELIZABETH I will not have it! That is like asking the fox to guard the hen house!

SUSAN Do you know what our lead story in The Revolution is this week?

Frederick shakes his head. It is about the upcoming execution -- execution!-- of a poor, innocent woman who was first raped by her employer, then thrust out of his house when he discovered she was with child/

FREDERICK /I think I may have heard something about/

SUSAN /You only heard about it because we started writing about it! [Picking up a galley and reading from it.] She finally finds a freezing, unheated attic room where she can give birth, alone. 69.

Then, when she is finally discovered, at death’s door -- clutching the body of her frozen baby -- she is charged with murder! Not her employer who raped her, not the landlords who refused her proper lodging -- this poor young woman is the guilty party!

Video clip from “The Story of V” trailer fades up slowly and then fades down quickly, partially overlapping with Susan and Frederick. “She was 15, and her employer was 35. He’s taking advantage of a young woman, and she gets sentenced.”

FREDERICK It is a terrible tragedy, but that is not the/

SUSAN /Was this woman tried by a jury of her peers before being condemned to the gallows? No, she was not, because her peers are forbidden from serving on juries! Who serves on juries? Men! The same men who want to take over our convention!

Video clip from “The Story of V” trailer fades up slowly and then fades down quickly, partially overlapping with Susan and Frederick. “The history of what happened to these girls has everything to do with what is happening to girls and women today.”

FREDERICK Susan, please! Let’s not get carried away with side issues/

SUSAN /Side issues? You are calling the upcoming execution of an innocent woman a side issue? We are trying to save her life here! And you are keeping us from/

FREDERICK /The rate of infanticide is growing at alarming rates among the poor, Susan. The jury doubtless believed that by making an example of this mother, they can save the lives of other babies. It is not something I agree with, but I can’t serve on a jury either. So, if we could get back to the issue of/

SUSAN /Wendell Phillips! He is behind this motion to remove Elizabeth, is he not?

FREDERICK There are ... several others who/ 70.

SUSAN /Do you know how many miles I have travelled this year? Thirteen thousand! How many miles did Wendell or the other men travel on our behalf?

FREDERICK I wouldn’t know about/

SUSAN /Of course you wouldn’t! Because those men were sitting in their comfortable, warm New England parlors, crafting version after version of the Fifteenth Amendment, each one weaker than the last ... and all of them carefully designed to exclude women!

FREDERICK I understand you are unhappy. But it seems to me that the goals of the AERA are more important than the role of any one person, so/

ELIZABETH /Don’t you lecture me on the goals of this organization, Frederick! Susan and I created the AERA, and I will be running the meeting. You have delivered your message, and you can leave -- now!

LUCY Well, there is also the matter of Mr. Train and his support for you and this newspaper. Mr. Train is a crack-brained lunatic and a harlequin, and AERA members refuse to be associated with him.

SUSAN This “lunatic,” as you call him, has been willing to devote money and enthusiasm for our Cause, when no other man would. I see no reason why we should turn him away.

FREDERICK I have always known you and Elizabeth to be intelligent women. But when it comes to Mr. Train, you have quite lost your minds! What is even more upsetting is that you two are starting to sound just like him. I can’t believe the rhetoric you spout about Negro men, and the Chinese, and the Irish. What happened to the women I used to know?

SUSAN The women you used to know have been repeatedly burned at the stake, Frederick. You are looking at their charred remains.

FREDERICK I understand ... and I am sorry. But you have to give me something! If Lucy and I go back empty-handed, I have to warn you -- that convention hall will be half-empty tomorrow. It won’t look good for any of us. 71.

Long beat as ELIZABETH and SUSAN pace and think.

ELIZABETH All right! I will not step aside -- that is non-negotiable -- but I agree we cannot afford to have a public fight right now. So I will be magnanimous. I will ask Mr. Train to step away from our movement, since he seems to be so universally disliked.

LUCY Despised!

ELIZABETH It will not be easy, but Susan and I will have to carry on without him. I will go see him as soon as we put the paper to bed.

SUSAN What are you saying, Elizabeth? My name is on all the contracts related to this newspaper, and the cost is twenty thousand dollars per year! You insisted that you could not take the risk, and when I agreed -- reluctantly -- to sign on as sole proprietress, I was counting on Mr. Train’s financial support. Perhaps Frederick or Lucy would like to contribute ten thousand dollars per year for the upkeep?

FREDERICK shrugs.

LUCY I would never support any paper called “The Revolution.”

SUSAN How am I going to manage?

ELIZABETH The Revolution is still a new paper, but it is getting excellent reviews.

Holds up two newspapers.

These just arrived, look! The Cincinnati Enquirer says our paper is “spicy, readable and revolutionary!” and the Home Journal says it is “plucky, keen and wide awake.” Women will find us, and our circulation will grow.

SUSAN You can’t be sure of that! Right now we have only two thousand subscribers. We will need five times that many to break even. 72.

ELIZABETH We will sell more ads. We will ... You will find a way! You always do!

SUSAN And what if I can’t? What if this perpetual poverty of our Cause never ends? [Beat.] This newspaper is all I have left. It is the only newspaper in the country that is woman- operated -- where do you propose that our women printers get jobs, Elizabeth? And where will all our female writers get published? Unlike all of you, I have no children. This newspaper is my baby! Losing The Revolution means losing my soul!

SUSAN walks over to a table, and picks up a printer’s tool with a wooden handle and metal shaft. She walks up close to ELIZABETH first, then FREDERICK, then LUCY, and points the tool menacingly at each of them.

If this newspaper folds, I will hold all of you responsible! This newspaper has been my baby, and you are all complicit in ... strangling it!

SUSAN glares at each of them as she picks up her dress and swooshes angrily out of the room, flinging the metal tool behind her. It clangs loudly on the floor.

SCENE FIFTEEN

PROJECTION:

The next day. American Equal Rights Association meeting. New York City, 1869.

Applause as ELIZABETH comes to the podium to chair the meeting. SUSAN, LUCY, FREDERICK, WENDELL, and SOJOURNER are in the audience, along with ENSEMBLE.

ELIZABETH The annual meeting of the AERA is hereby called to order!

SUSAN raises her hand, and is acknowledged. 73.

SUSAN As the first order of business, I would like to submit a resolution to oppose the Fifteenth Amendment. Let me be clear: we oppose this amendment not for what it is, but for what it is not. Not because it enfranchises black men, but because it does not enfranchise all women, black and white. It is not the little good it proposes, but the greater evil it perpetuates that we deplore. Our protest is not that all men are lifted out of the degradation of disenfranchisement, but that all women are left in.

WENDELL Objection! Mrs. Stanton, before we go any further/

ELIZABETH /Excuse me, Mr. Phillips! As the chair, I/

WENDELL /No! No! As the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society/

ELIZABETH /The former president, Mr. Phillips. Let me remind you that slavery has now been abolish/

WENDELL /At present, there is no support in Congress for woman suffrage! You ladies must learn to be satisfied with your present gains, and labor on for another generation if needs be. [Jeering from ENSEMBLE women.] The best women I know do not want the vote!

SUSAN And who would these “best” women be, Mr. Phillips? Are you talking about your wife, or are you talking about Miss Dickin/

ELIZABETH /Manhood suffrage is national suicide and woman’s destruction! Let me remind Mr. Phillips that the Fifteenth Amendment takes in a larger population than the Negro men on the southern plantations. It takes in all the foreigners daily landing in our Eastern cities, and the Chinese crowding our Western shores. Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who cannot read the Declaration of Independence or Webster’s spelling book. Should they be allowed to vote before educated women?

SUSAN The ignorant foreign vote already holds the balance of power in this country by sheer force of numbers. This amendment will create an antagonism everywhere between educated, refined women and the lower orders of men, especially in the South. 74.

ELIZABETH What will become of this nation if clowns make laws for queens? I do not see how it is proper for my Irish gardener and .... and immigrant men who collect horse manure to have the privilege of voting, while I cannot! Your laws, Mr. Phillips, put women in the same legal category as criminals and the insane!

FREDERICK I have always championed women’s right to vote, but I do not see how anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to the woman as to the Negro. It is true that the idea of woman suffrage meets with ridicule, and that is lamentable. Yet there is no deep-seated hatred against women. In fact, the government of this country loves women: they are the sisters, mothers, wives and daughters of our rulers. [ [ENSEMBLE men applaud.] But the Negro is loathed. Name the right of the Negro to vote, and all hell is turned loose, and the Ku-Klux and the Regulators hunt and slay the unoffending black man. With us, the matter is a question of life and death. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own. [ENSEMBLE men applaud.]

ELIZABETH What you say about the Negro race is correct. But tell me, Mr. Douglass: isn’t everything you said about the fate of Negros also true about the fate of black women?

FREDERICK Yes, yes, yes; it is true of the black woman, but not because she is a woman, but because she is black.

SOJOURNER No, Frederick! If colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. You men have been having our rights so long, you think -- like a slaveholder -- that you own us. I know it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give it up -- it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.

SUSAN Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro; but with all the outrages that he today suffers, he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 75.

FREDERICK Mrs. Stanton sits at the table of a white man every night. I am sure she makes her opinions very clear to him, at great length, on every possible occasion. [ENSEMBLE men snicker.] And then, after taking her views into consideration, her husband can vote her interest at the ballot box.

ELIZABETH If that were true, my husband would have supported woman suffrage back at Seneca Falls. I disagree with my husband on a great many things.

SUSAN And what of unmarried women, Mr. Douglass? I can assure you that when women can vote and write laws, they will make sure that women get equal pay for equal work. In order to survive, a woman should not have to choose between marriage or prostitution. It is true that white women are not presently lynched as the black man is. But hundreds of women are being imprisoned in mental institutions every day. They are handcuffed and shackled, treated no better than slaves. So, Mr. Douglass, I would venture that suffrage is a matter of life and death for us women, as well.

SOJOURNER I agree with Miss Anthony -- what we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights, we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and maybe you will ask us for money. Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom -- we are just asking for our rights. [ENSEMBLE women cheer.]

LUCY There are laws in most states that give men -- not mothers -- control over disposition of their children. Here in the North, there are also Ku-Kluxes, who take children away from their mothers and separate them as completely as if done on the auction block. Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the Negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that can not be fathomed. I will be thankful in my soul if anybody can get out of the terrible pit. But I believe the influence of woman will save the country before any other power.

SOJOURNER Praise be to God! We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again.

ELIZABETH I believe we are all in agreement. I move this body vote to support universal suffrage, and oppose the Fifteenth/ 76.

WENDELL /No! We are not all in agreement. Absolutely not! But since Mrs. Stanton insists on her doomed agenda, I move that Mrs. Stanton be removed as chair. Do I have a second? [Long beat.]

FREDERICK I second, with a heavy heart.

WENDELL All in favor?

WENDELL, FREDERICK, a reluctant LUCY and the majority of ENSEMBLE slowly raise their hands and there is a loud “Aye.”

ELIZABETH I am running this meeting, Wendell. All agains/

SUSAN

Quickly steps in front of Elizabeth, grabbing her gavel. [To Elizabeth, whispering.] Let me handle this. [Loudly.] All against?

SUSAN, ELIZABETH, SOJOURNER and one or two other ENSEMBLE women raise their hands. They yell“No,” but their voices were clearly outnumbered by the “Ayes.”

The motion is defeated!

SUSAN bangs the gavel loudly, and quickly leaves the podium, followed by ELIZABETH. Chaos breaks out, as the audience objects to the vote miscount. WENDELL gets up and moves to pick up the gavel. He is about to start a re-count as SUSAN reaches the edge of the stage and begins struggling with a large metal lever, trying to turn the gas lights off. FREDERICK sees what she is doing and yells over the cacophony.

FREDERICK Susan, stop! [Beat, as Susan continues struggling.] You can’t just halt the arc of history! 77.

SUSAN Watch me!

As she says this, SUSAN finally manages to turn the lever, and the room is plunged into darkness. The crowd panics and disperses noisily.

SCENE SIXTEEN

PROJECTION

Two years later. Office of The Revolution. 1872.

The office is in the process of being dismantled: the furniture is covered, typewriters and tools are sitting on boxes, piles of newspapers are sitting on the floor. There should be a funereal feel to the space -- the earlier warmth and color is now all ashen. The gas light is off, and gray light comes from the windows.

SUSAN and ELIZABETH are both wandering around the space, touching things for the last time. They are wearing black, as for a funeral. SUSAN’s red scarf is discarded on a chair, trailing down to the floor like a river of blood. It is the only color in the room.

SUSAN When did it all go so wrong?

ELIZABETH When God created Adam?

SUSAN Seriously! I told you that I would cut off my right arm rather than lose The Revolution. And now ... [She looks at her arm, and impulsively grabs the tool she had wielded in the earlier Revolution scene.]

ELIZABETH Susan, stop this! We will survive. We have survived worse. 78.

SUSAN No! Nothing we have faced has come close to this loss!

ELIZABETH Please! Don’t be so maudlin.

SUSAN Maudlin? I am simply stating cold, hard facts! All the newspapers -- all the male newspapers -- are closed to us now. No one will print our letters, our announcements ... or our editorials. On top of everything else, we have now been stripped of our voice!

ELIZABETH That is true, yes ... But all is not lost... [Struggling to come up with something to combat Susan’s pessimism.] Why don’t you start planning for the next National Woman Suffrage Association meeting now? I know it’s months away, but ... Think of it as your new baby: the first national organization run by women, for women! Organizing will take your mind off/

SUSAN /Take my mind off? Have you not read today’s New York Times? These young whipper snappers -- jealous and envious women who were in diapers when I started my work -- had the gall to call me an autocrat! Now that we have created this movement, they think they have as much right to manage matters as we have.

Sounds of loud banging, like a hammer on marble, comes from outside the window. SUSAN goes to look. And now this!

ELIZABETH What?

SUSAN They are putting up another one.

ELIZABETH Another what?

SUSAN Another horrid statue! Of another horrid man! Another monument to Mr. Lincoln’s War. A war effort to which women contributed food, clothing, bandages, nurses -- two thousand nurses! Have you seen a monument to just one woman in this city? 79.

ELIZABETH Those poor men just don’t want us to forget that they were fighting to protect us helpless women!

SUSAN They are willing to protect us in every way, except by giving us an actual ballot . Or any actual rights. [Beat.] I saw a poster on a billboard today -- I was so angry, I nearly ripped it to shreds.

ELIZABETH What did it say?

SUSAN “You don’t need a ballot to fix a sink spout!”

ELIZABETH You should have ripped it up!

SUSAN How will it end? All that work ... Men get marble memorials, we get -- forgotten!

ELIZABETH [Long beat.] Susan. I think the time has come.

SUSAN For what? For this old spinster to go into her dotage? Is that what you are trying to tell me?

ELIZABETH No! Just the opposite. I think the time has come to start working on our History of Woman Suffrage.

SUSAN You have been talking about that book for years! And I keep telling you: it’s too early! We haven’t even/

ELIZABETH /Look, it will keep us busy. It will give us a voice -- not just the weekly voice of a newspaper, but a voice that will ring throughout history!

SUSAN I don’t know ... I am much better suited to run a newspaper than to attempt history. 80.

ELIZABETH Truth is, we should probably lay low for a while. People will eventually forget ...

SUSAN Forget what? The things you said about Negro men, and the Irish, and the Chinese? That will always be a stain on your record, Elizabeth. You can’t un-write that. You went too far.

ELIZABETH And you were standing right next to me. That has always been the key to our success -- don’t you forget! [Beat.] But that’s another reason we should write our own history. Because if we don’t, someone else will. And I can guarantee that if that happens, you are not going to like it!

SUSAN We can’t write a history about a movement that hasn’t accomplished anything!

ELIZABETH We haven’t won suffrage, that’s true, but we have accomplished a lot! Women can speak in public now.

SUSAN With a minimal amount of harassment!

ELIZABETH And some colleges now admit women.

SUSAN And ... I suppose ... some of the Western states have granted women property rights.

ELIZABETH In some places, they can even vote in school board elections ... and the world is still spinning on its axis!

SUSAN But women have never written a history before. Certainly not a woman’s history!

ELIZABETH Which is exactly why we should do it. [Beat.] We will contact all the leaders, and ask them to send us their recollections; memorabilia; newspaper clippings from their scrapbooks. It will be a grand undertaking. You will organize everything, and I will write. Just like always! 81.

SUSAN I feel exhausted just thinking about it. It will take years!

ELIZABETH Which is why we should start now! While we still have time ... and the memories are still fresh in our minds.

SUSAN The betrayals ...

ELIZABETH Will be told from our point of view!

SUSAN Where will we start? Should we go back to Abigail Adams or the Grimke sisters, or/

ELIZABETH /No! We must start with Seneca Falls. That’s where our story began!

SUSAN Yes, of course! Your famous Declaration of Sentiments: “We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men and women are created equal.” But ... [Susan trails off, looking disturbed.]

ELIZABETH What?

SUSAN I wasn’t there!

ELIZABETH Nobody remembers that!

SUSAN But people always assume ...

ELIZABETH We will let them assume. Remember: we write the history, and we will tell it the way we want it told.

SUSAN What about Lucy? She will refuse to collaborate with us. Ever since/

ELIZABETH /If she doesn’t contribute to the history, she won’t be included. 82.

SUSAN And Anna?

ELIZABETH She was close to your heart, but she never committed to our Cause!

SUSAN Sometimes, late at night, I still ...

ELIZABETH It’s time to move on, Susan.

SUSAN Of all the broken promises, hers ... [Susan tears up, and taps her heart in pain.]

ELIZABETH [Trying to change the subject, and distract Susan.] Speaking of the New Departure ...

SUSAN What?

ELIZABETH The New Departure -- that new theory being bandied about -- that, since the Fourteenth Amendment states all citizens can vote, then women can vote. Women are citizens, right?

SUSAN You know perfectly well that we are not!

ELIZABETH Well, why don’t you take a stand and test it?

SUSAN You mean why don’t I go out and vote? I hadn’t really had the chance to think about it, what with ... [Waves her hands around the office.]

ELIZABETH You have been spending too much time brooding! It’s time to stop.

SUSAN I don’t have a brood of loving daughters and granddaughters to distract me, like you do. This is all I had!

ELIZABETH [Waving Susan’s objections away.] Of course, if we want to test the New Departure, there is no better person to do it than Susan B. Anthony. 83.

You are a single woman, and a tax payer. If you go out and vote, and they want to rule that you are not a citizen, they would have to put you in jail! Taxation without representation!

SUSAN [Perking up at this.] Again the threats of jailing me! Let them try! [Beat.] All right. I will do it. And I will make sure there is at least one newspaper reporter with me when I cast my ballot. The chance to see Susan B. Anthony in chains -- for that, I think we can still get newspaper coverage!

SCENE SEVENTEEN

PROJECTION

One year later. Circuit Court, Northern District. Rochester, NY, 1873.

SUSAN is sitting at a witness table. The DISTRICT ATTORNEY is at a table across from her. JUDGE HUNT walks in and sits up on a dais above them.

JUDGE HUNT The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony, will please stand up. The Honorable U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of New York will now make his concluding statement.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY May it please the Court and the gentlemen of the jury: In November of eighteen seventy two there was held in this state a general election. The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony, resided in the city of Rochester, and upon that day she voted for a representative for Congress. At that time, she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that. The law states that a woman is not a citizen, and therefore cannot vote. As such, we respectfully request that the jury find Miss Anthony guilty. Of voting.

JUDGE HUNT The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

SUSAN Yes, your honor. [Beat.] I have many things to say. My every right -- Constitutional, civil, political and judicial -- has been tramped upon. 84.

I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all, as you dismissed the jury and you entered the plea yourself.

JUDGE HUNT Sit down, Miss Anthony. I cannot allow you to argue the question.

SUSAN I shall not sit down. I will not lose my only chance to speak!

JUDGE HUNT The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

SUSAN May it please Your Honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed/

JUDGE HUNT /The Court must insist -- the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

SUSAN Yes, Your Honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women. The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall [banging her hand on the table] continue to do.

JUDGE HUNT Miss Anthony, please sit down!

SUSAN I do not ask the clemency of the Court. I came into it to get justice, and, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law. I demand a jury of my peers. Or even a jury not of my peers, as you will allow no women on your jury.

JUDGE HUNT I have had enough! The sentence of the court is one hundred dollars’ fine and the costs of the prosecution.

SUSAN May it please Your Honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All I possess is a ten thousand dollar debt, incurred by publishing my paper, The Revolution. 85.

The sole object of this paper was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done -- rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law. I shall persist in urging all women to heed the old Revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

JUDGE HUNT Madam, the Court will not order you imprisoned until the fine is paid.

SUSAN Your Honor may imprison me at any time. But the fine will not -- I repeat, will not -- be paid!

SUSAN bangs the table on the second “not,” and her banging is accompanied by another clap of thunder. The stage goes dark after SUSAN finishes the line, and very quickly a video projection appears of Sen. McConnell (same clip as in Scene One.) This time, the lines are repeated three times -- each one louder than the last.

SENATOR MCCONELL She was warned! She was given an explanation! Nevertheless, she persisted!

There is one last clap of thunder, and the stage goes dark.

CURTAIN