If she had been harassed only by these men, it would have caused her no especial worry, but letters and telegrams from friends poured in urging her to reveal the hiding-place and, most surprising of all, both Garrison and Phillips wrote that she had abducted a man’s child and must surrender it!  Mr. Phillips remonstrated:  “Let us urge you, therefore, at once to advise and insist upon this woman’s returning to her relatives.  Garrison concurs with me fully and earnestly in this opinion, thinking that our movement’s repute for good sense should not be compromised by any such mistake.”  In a letter from Mr. Garrison covering six pages of foolscap, he argued:  “Our identification with the woman’s rights movement and the anti-slavery cause is such that we ought not unnecessarily involve them in any hasty and ill-judged, no matter how well-meant, efforts of our own.  We, at least, owe to them this—­that if for any act of ours we are dragged before courts we ought to be able to show that we acted discreetly as well as with good intentions.”  Both men spoke kindly and affectionately but they were unable to view the question from a mother’s or even from a woman’s standpoint.  Miss Anthony replied to them: 

I can not give you a satisfactory statement on paper, but I feel the strongest assurance that all I have done is wholly right.  Had I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.  In all those hours of aid and sympathy for that outraged woman I remembered only that I was a human being.  That I should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any movement never crossed my mind, nor will I now allow such a fear to stifle my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel, inhuman treatment of her own household.  Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.

At the anti-slavery convention in Albany Mr. Garrison pleaded with her to give up the child and insisted that she was entirely in the wrong.  He said:  “Don’t you know the law of Massachusetts gives the father the entire guardianship and control of the children?” “Yes, I know it,” she replied, “and does not the law of the United States give the slaveholder the ownership of the slave?  And don’t you break it every time you help a slave to Canada?” “Yes, I do.”  “Well, the law which gives the father the sole ownership of the children is just as wicked and I’ll break it just as quickly.  You would die before you would deliver a slave to his master, and I will die before I will give up that child to its father.”  It was impossible for even such great men as Garrison and Phillips to feel for a wronged and outraged woman as they could for a wronged and outraged black man.  Miss Anthony wrote at this time:  “Only to think that in this great trial I should be hounded by the two men whom I adore and reverence above all others!” Through all this ordeal her father sustained her position, saying:  “My child, I think you have done absolutely right, but don’t put a word on paper or make a statement to any one that you are not prepared to face in court.  Legally you are wrong, but morally you are right, and I will stand by you.”