Editing Lucy Stone (section)

== Waning activism ==
After her marriage, from the summer of 1855 to the summer of 1857, Stone continued a full lecturing, petitioning, and organizing schedule.

In January 1856, Stone was a defense witness in the case of [[Margaret Garner]], a slave of the Gaines family in Kentucky, who had escaped with her husband and children across the frozen Ohio River into the free state of Ohio. When slavecatchers and U.S. Marshalls surrounded her cousin's house where the fugitives hid, Garner, reportedly, declared she would kill each of her children, before allowing them to be taken back to Kentucky. Garner's defense attorney wanted to test rights Garner might have under the [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]], which her owner had used to track her into the free state. However, by legal rules of the day, Garner could not testify, so, Stone testified about Garner's sexual exploitation by her new master,<ref>Tamika Y. Nunley, The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime & Clemency in Early Virginia (University of North Carolina Press 2023 {{ISBN|978-1-4696-7311-0}}) pp. 129-130</ref>  as well as to rebut a rumor put forward by the prosecution that Stone gave Garner the child-killing knife so that Garner could kill herself, if she was forced to return to slavery. Stone was referred to by the court as "Mrs. Lucy Stone Blackwell" and was asked if she wanted to defend herself; she preferred to address the assembly off the record after adjournment,<ref>Project Gutenberg. E-text. American Anti-Slavery Society. [http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/3/9/9/13990/13990.htm ''The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims'', Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071018223251/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/3/9/9/13990/13990.htm |date=October 18, 2007 }}, Retrieved on April 27, 2009.</ref> saying "...With my own teeth, I would tear open my veins and let the earth drink my blood, rather than wear the chains of slavery. How, then, could I blame her for wishing her child to find freedom with God and the angels, where no chains are?"<ref>Gordon, Avery F.; Radway, Janice. [https://books.google.com/books?id=LbaHaN4BhEQC&pg=PA157 ''Ghostly Matters''], University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 157–158. {{ISBN|978-0-8166-5446-8}}</ref> The Ohio court did not decide the case by referring to the Fugitive Slave Act, but instead, it returned Garner and her family to Gaines, who returned to Kentucky, before any legal decision was issued. This led to outrage among Ohio abolitionists, and Garner's surviving daughter died, during the family's steamboat journey south, and Garner was sold in New Orleans and died, in bondage, of typhoid fever in Mississippi.<ref>Nunley pp. 130-131</ref> 

The birth of her daughter in September 1857, however, began to reduce the level of Stone's activism. Stone had made preliminary arrangements for the 1857 national convention to be held in Providence, but because she would not be able to attend it, she handed responsibility to Susan B. Anthony and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. When the [[Panic of 1857]] disrupted Anthony's plan to move the convention to Chicago, Stone made the announcement that the next National Woman's Rights Convention would be in May 1858.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 239-42.</ref> Anthony helped Stone arrange the 1858 convention and then took sole responsibility for the 1859 meeting. Elizabeth Cady Stanton took charge of the 1860 convention.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 250-51, 260, 263-65.</ref>

Stone hired a nursemaid to help care for her daughter, who was in poor health for several years, but she didn't trust her ability to provide proper care, when Stone was absent. Stone, eventually, withdrew from most public work to stay at home with her child. She resigned from the Central Committee, which organized the annual women's rights conventions. She began to suffer from self-doubt and a lack of drive, in addition to the debilitating headaches that had plagued her for years. She made only two public appearances, during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] (1861–1865): to attend the founding convention of the [[Women's Loyal National League]] and the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]], both in 1863. Stone began to increase her reform activities back to a normal level, after the Civil War had ended.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 257-275</ref>

As a lifelong believer in [[nonresistance]], Stone could not support the war effort as so many of her friends did.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 56, 268</ref> She could certainly support the drive to end slavery, however, which the war had made into a realistic possibility. In 1863, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized the [[Women's Loyal National League]], the first national women's political organization in the U.S. It collected nearly 400,000 signatures on petitions to abolish slavery in the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time.<ref>Venet, Wendy Hamand, 1991, ''Neither Ballots nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=PfE0ULar1JgC&pg=PA148 p. 148]. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. {{ISBN|978-0813913421}}</ref> Despite her reduced public activity, Stone agreed to preside over the League's founding convention, and later, she agreed to manage its office for two weeks to give Anthony a badly-needed break. She declined, however, to go on lecture tours for the League.<ref>Million, 2003, p. 268.</ref>

For years, Henry Blackwell had worked with real estate investments. In 1864, amid wartime inflation, his investments began to pay off, handsomely. Stone was enormously relieved to have the family freed from the debts that had been contracted to buy investment property. This major improvement in the family's finances enabled Blackwell to scale back his business efforts and devote more of his time to social reform activities.<ref>McMillen, 2015, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tPCRBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA161 p. 161]</ref>

Beginning to ease back into public activity, Stone embarked on a lecture tour on women's rights in New York and New England, in the autumn of 1865.<ref>McMillen, 2015, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tPCRBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA162 p. 162]</ref> She was still experiencing periods of self-doubt, a year later, but, with Blackwell's encouragement, she traveled with him on a joint lecture tour, in 1866.<ref>McMillen, 2015, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tPCRBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA165 p. 165]</ref>