CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MARCH 1871
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
I was finally home in New York and eager to get back to business. I had more fire in my belly than since announcing my candidacy for president. Both the press and the suffrage leaders were on my side, and I wasn’t going to lie down simply because Congress had told me no. That hadn’t worked for my father when I was little, and I’d be damned if it was going to work for them.
If my own enthusiasm wasn’t enough to motivate me to step up my efforts to get out my message, the overflowing bags of mail waiting on my desk at the brokerage on Monday did the trick.
I picked up one envelope and removed its contents. It was a scathing rebuke from Mrs. Catharine Beecher. She accused me of not only “making a shameful mockery of womanhood” but of corru
