THIRTY
Postmortem

How could the vote have been so strongly opposed when their face-to-face discussions had nearly always ended with words of support? How could such a worthy cause, an inevitable hope, something so worth doing, have lost? Negroes had the vote, a race many men thought inferior in every way but who now began to be seen as equals, as citizens at least. Equal in their ability to vote, though she had read of poll taxes and other encumberments local jurisdictions flaunted against those people. Still, they had the right. It had to happen for women, too, and even Harvey had supported it. What had gone wrong?

“We’ll have to analyze what precincts we won and where we lost,” Kate noted. They had gathered at what Abigail called the “postmortem” to take apart the body politic.

“It appears we won in the countryside.” Sarah Maria looked at the tiny marks recorded on the clerk’s report. “Those farmers and ranchers know we women are no threat but rather helpmates. It’s in the cities where we lost. Actually, it was Portland who voted against us.” She turned to her youngest child, a four-year-old daughter, who leaned into her side. “We’ll get you the vote yet.”

“It was the liquor industry.” Harriet crocheted while they sorted through the embers of defeat. “Washington Territory’s women voters have been blamed for stricter liquor laws, and Portlanders likely saw empty glasses in their future.”

Abigail had written that Washington women were at risk to lose the vote because of the heavy spending by San Francisco and Portland liquor interests funding a repeal of the women’s suffrage there.

“We Washington voters have passed prohibition kinds of legislation,” Clara Belle said. She had taken the produce boat to offer solace to her mother. “And they don’t like it that women are on juries, and we might find for plaintiffs against corrupt liquor industries. Did you know they pay three dollars for jury duty? One woman told me it was better than a trip to San Francisco, that she got a day of rest, her family was still there when she returned home, and she had money to put aside for a rainy day.”

“I’ll write about that,” Abigail said. But how will I write about this defeat?

Earl played with a cousin in the yard. Children’s chatter was a wind chime sounding through the open windows, lightening the timbre in the room.

“Even the brewers turned against us.” Fanny sighed.

“And they said as much in those German newspapers that reach most of Portland, despite your newspaper’s efforts to counter them, Abigail.” The vice-chair of the association shook her head. “We worked so hard. Maybe we should have brought National in.”

“No. Oregon’s men would have their backs up if we had brought in eastern women,” Abigail said. She had to defend their tactics and yet, her strategy had not won them the vote. “Though we could have used more of their money returned from our dues, that’s certain.”

“They weren’t keen on being asked to stay out while we requested funds,” Kate said. “But I agree, Oregon flies with her own wings, as our state motto reads. When Aunt Susan’s group said they should ‘leave Oregon severely alone,’ she was right.”

At least she’d helped those Washington women get the vote. But here in this blessed state, she’d failed. Perhaps she should have come out for prohibition, but people ought to make their own decisions about the morality of drinking. And supporting it, she knew, would bring the liquor industry down upon them.

“What a waste of our effort.” Another young reformer spoke up. “All those posters and meetings and—”

“We had nearly twelve thousand men who understood and voted for us,” Fanny said. “Next time, we’ll double that. We must refocus our efforts in Portland before the next referral.”

“The next referral.” Abigail’s despair dropped into the room like a horse stepping on a woman’s toes. “With biennial legislative sessions, that means getting passage again in the ’86 session, ’88 session, too, with a hope for a referral vote in 1890. Or later. It’s another long walk toward uncertainty.”

“There’s a move to permit citizen initiatives, where with a certain number of signatures, ordinary people can make proposals for a general vote. We can move faster if that passes.” This from a younger member.

“Maybe the men are right. Do they know something we don’t know?” said another member.

Still another acolyte to the cause raised her voice. “Perhaps we should go back to our kitchens and parlors and bring up our sons so when they are men, they will grant their mothers the vote, if not their sisters and wives.”

The young woman’s comments held merit for Abigail. She was tired. Maybe staying home, spoiling Earl, and waiting on other grandchildren, writing her novels, tending to Ben, perhaps that is what she should be doing with the rest of her life. She’d be fifty years old this October and her bones felt it. She could lay down the sword of truth and righteousness, having witnessed her daughter be able to vote in Washington. They could sell the paper, the Portland home, and move to Idaho, where Ben had fallen in love with land near Hailey. Why not? That beam of light that had led her to spend her days promoting this cause, maybe it was only sunshine coming through the window. If it had truly been God’s work, wouldn’t the referral have passed? They’d misunderstood, she and Ben. And she’d led her brother down the primrose path, telling him they would win. And he’d supported them—safely, months before the vote. He probably wouldn’t ever talk with her again. But then, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to speak with him again either.

“You told me it would pass. I believed you.” Harvey paced his office where Abigail had gone to lament that they’d both lost something that mattered.

“I . . . I had reason, strong reason, to believe it would pass. In the rural areas, it did.”

Harvey harrumphed. “What do they know out there. Do they even read the newspapers, find out what’s happening around the world?”

“Perhaps if they had free high school education, more would be better informed.”

“Don’t go there, Abigail.” Harvey pointed his finger at her. Rage filled his eyes.

He’s frightening me. “I’m more distressed than you are. To spend my whole life on something and have it defeated? You can still run for the Senate whenever you want. But our work means slogging through two more sessions if we are to continue the fight. Maybe I’ll move to Washington. It’s a big territory. Did I tell you they invited me to run for governor?”

He guffawed. “That’ll be retracted when they realize how inept you are in understanding the electorate. They’ll likely repeal the woman vote anyway.”

“Why didn’t you repeat your support? Your November editorial made my heart sing, made all suffragists celebrate. You have so much influence.”

He glared at her. “Do you have any idea how many letters the paper received after that . . . that . . . lapse on my part?”

“Lapse? But the argument was well written, wise. When women do get the vote, and we will one day, they’d vote for you when you run.” She saw a flash of pain cross his eyes, his own political career careening out of his control. “We Scotts don’t like to lose, do we?”

“This vote was not my loss.”

“No. It’s mine. I’m devastated. But I am grateful that your Oregonian—you—supported it, once. I just didn’t understand why you stayed neutral at the eve of the election, printing as many negative letters as those in support. Yes, I counted. The greatest newspaper in the Northwest stayed neutral.” She sighed. “I came to thank you for that early support and ask for it again as we move forward.”

“It will never happen again, dear Sister. Never. Ever. Ever. From here on in, I stand with the majority of men in this state and never, do you hear me, will I write an editorial in support of the woman vote. In fact, I will confess my error and write editorials to defeat any future attempt. If you continue this fight, you will do so without my backing, and I will do everything I can do to defeat it.” He spoke to the window, then turned to face her. “I had to convince my board. And now, I have to wear my shame. Now go. I don’t want to see your face here again begging for my support for anything. Ever.”

Her steps from Harvey’s office were heavy. She was grateful for a cab close by to take her home. Old confetti from the anti-suffrage crowd scattered in the streets. Her life’s work, ended. Her relationship, such as it was with her brother, broken like a cane. She thought she could go no lower.

“We can’t sell the paper,” Ben said. “It’s our livelihood. We have children employed by it.” Their three oldest sons were engaged in some aspect of the business and the younger boys hoping for professions that would require they attend eastern schools. The paper was needed to support them. And Ben’s job was here in Portland. The cause that defined her life, it was here. No, there was no rest ahead in Idaho.

She thought of other times of despair. When her mother had died. When her brother had passed. When her father had the crisis of marriage. She had gotten up from those days realizing that when fatigue settled in, the worst thing one could do was to take a nap. Better was to increase her curiosity, expand her effort, multiply the time she spent in educating both men and women to the importance of the climb toward the peak of justice. It was what she’d done when Ben signed the notes and they’d lost the farm. It was that disaster that had spurred them on to new things: she’d begun the school, the millinery, and found suffrage as a life’s mission.

“The only thing to displace the bitterness of defeat is the taste of victory.” Abigail heard herself say those words even though she wasn’t sure she believed them anymore. “We begin again. Grief cannot hold us back. We are wiser but not worn down. Let us ponder what we know, and come next week with new strategies that might very well mean putting a wolf in sheep’s clothing into Harvey Scott’s shed.”

“Rather than a wolf,” Kate said, “we need a shepherd.”

“With a shepherd’s staff to gently, diplomatically, bring in the fold,” Fanny added. She winked at her sister.

“That leaves me out,” Abigail said to the knowing laughter of her siblings.

But she was also out of this campaign. She was tired. She would use her words to inspire, to further the cause in her newspaper, but perhaps it was time for her to step aside. Her heart wasn’t in it anymore.

The women began again with letter campaigns and meetings, speeches and sparring, without Abigail’s enthusiasm. She worked on her novel, meddled a little in her sons’ lives—Hubert had fallen for one of the boardinghouse girls but had proposed to another. She hovered over Ben, who suggested when she was asked, that she make the trip back east through the snows of the spring of ’85. “It’ll do you good. You’ll come back ready to take up the mantle.”

“I’m still carrying it.”

“You are. But you’re not meeting with legislators, pressing your still hunt. Maybe you should be.”

She made the trip meant to negotiate a truce between warring factions of associations working toward suffrage passage and seeing—with horror—the growing influence of prohibitionists attaching themselves to suffrage. It pleased her that she was asked to be the diplomat. Even Susan B. Anthony felt the causes must join hands, the position causing the two old friends to disagree. But in Abigail’s fifteen hundred miles of travel and forty-nine speeches given nationally, she could see that linking these two great causes would doom them both.

What she also found was that she came alive with the challenge; doing something worthy beyond her own life and family invigorated. She loved the travel. Oh, the coaches were uncomfortable and the trains cold as winter through the mountains at night. And the porters weren’t always quick to pick up her bags, even when they saw she used her cane. The Washington, DC, hotel she stayed in often had mice, and the different foods in Philadelphia made her stomach queasy. But in both places, she felt the stirrings of liberty, of what must have driven the Founding Fathers to risk everything for a new nation. Her writing was better from these places, and her words soared when she spoke in the churches and halls, bringing news of the forward-thinking West—Washington Territory’s advancement especially—to the burdened East. She never doubted on those days that she was doing the Lord’s work, lifting the downtrodden, visiting women in jails, freeing the spirits of all beings of God’s creation. She gained fuel for the fight when she traveled. Returning, she felt the old stirring. Things didn’t always turn out well, as Ben proposed, but some things were worth doing, regardless. There was another campaign to wage.