This "free soul," who had decided that she would remain free, met Cincinnati businessman Henry Blackwell in 1853, on one of her speaking tours. Henry, seven years younger than Lucy, courted her for two years. Lucy was especially impressed when he rescued a fugitive slave from her owners.
(This was the time of the Fugitive Slave Law, which required residents of non-slave-holding states to return escaped slaves to their owners -- and which brought many anti-slavery citizens to break the law as often as they could. This same law helped inspire Thoreau's famous essay, "Civil Disobedience.")
Henry was anti-slavery and pro-women's rights. His sister, Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), became the first woman physician in the United States, and another sister, Emily (1826-1910), became a physician also. Their brother, Samuel, later married Antoinette Brown (1825-1921), a friend of Lucy Stone's at Oberlin and the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States.
Two years of courtship and friendship convinced Lucy to accept Henry's offer of marriage. She wrote to him, "A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should her's. My name is my identity and must not be lost."
Henry agreed with her. "I wish, as a husband, to renounce all the privileges which the law confers upon me, which are not strictly mutual. Surely such a marriage will not degrade you, dearest."
And so, in 1855, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell married. At the ceremony, the minister, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, read a statement by the bride and groom, renouncing and protesting the marriage laws of the time, and announcing that she would keep her name. Higginson published the ceremony widely, with their permission. (Yes, this is the same Higginson known for his connection to Emily Dickinson.)
Their daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, was born in 1857. A son died at birth; Lucy and Henry had no other children. Lucy "retired" from active touring and public speaking, and devoted herself to raising her daughter. The family moved from Cincinnati to New Jersey.
"... for these years I can only be a mother - no trivial thing, either."
The next year, Stone refused to pay property taxes on her home. She and Henry carefully kept her property in her name, giving her independent income during their marriage. In her statement to the authorities, Lucy Stone protested the "taxation without representation" that women still endured, since women had no vote. The authorities seized some furniture to pay the debt, but the gesture was widely publicized as a symbolic gesture on behalf of women's rights.
Inactive in the suffrage movement during the Civil War, Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell became active again when the war ended and the Fourteenth Amendment was proposed, giving the vote to black men. For the first time, the Constitution would, with this Amendment, mention "male citizens" explicitly. Most woman suffrage activists were outraged. Many saw the possible passage of this Amendment as setting the cause of woman suffrage back.
In 1867, Stone again went on a full lecture tour to Kansas and New York, working for woman suffrage state amendments, trying to work for both black and woman suffrage.
The woman suffrage movement split, on this and other strategic grounds. The National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, decided to oppose the Fourteenth Amendment, because of the language "male citizen." Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Henry Blackwell led those who sought to keep the causes of black and woman suffrage together, and in 1869 they and others founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.
The next year, Lucy raised enough funds to start a suffrage weekly newspaper, The Woman's Journal. For the first two years, it was edited by Mary Livermore, and then Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell became the editors. Lucy Stone found working on a newspaper far more compatible with family life, compared with taking to the lecture circuit.
"But I do believe that a woman's truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children, and with large freedom, pecuniary freedom, personal freedom, and the right to vote." Lucy Stone to her adult daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell
Their daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, attended Boston University, where she was one of two women in a class with 26 men. Later, she also became involved in The Woman's Journal which survived until 1917, the later years under Alice's sole editorship.
