_Deep Interest of My Parents in the Anti-Slavery Movement and in the
Civil War.—We Learn the Evil of Compromise.—A Trip to
Kansas.—Manners on the Mississippi Steamboats.—Fort Sumter Is
Attacked.—Mother’s Poems of the War.—Father’s Work on the Sanitary
Commission.—How the Flag Was Treated at Newport.—We Ride in the
“Jeff Davis.”_
I CANNOT remember when my father began his anti-slavery work, because at
that time I was an infant. It was the kidnapping of a runaway negro in
the streets of Boston that roused him to action. He called a meeting in
Faneuil Hall over which John Quincy Adams presided. My father made the
principal address. Colonel Higginson tells us that “Every sentence was a
sword-thrust.” The result of the meeting was the formation of a
Vigilance Committee of forty with my father as chairman. Its object was
to prevent the returning of fugitives to the slavery from which they had
escaped. To the descendants of the men who had fought in the Revolution
for the cause of Liberty, the thought that “the port of Boston had been
opened to the slave-trader” was intolerable.
The records of that Vigilance Committee have never been published. It is
to be hoped that some day they will be, unless they have been destroyed.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson has told us that my father’s part in the
anti-slavery movement was almost unique and wholly characteristic of the
man, who was a natural crusader or paladin.
The little Howes did not know of the existence of this committee.
Neither did we know of our father’s strenuous labors in connection with
the election to the Senate of his friend Charles Sumner. We were too
young to be intrusted with state secrets. But from our early childhood
my father taught us to love freedom and to hate slavery. He told us of
the successive aggressions of the slave power and of the steps by which
it had grown to threaten the whole land. We learned of the Missouri
Compromise, the Dred Scott Decision, the Kansas and Nebraska Bill.
We knew these, not as dry political facts from the office of a lawyer,
but as the successive invasions of a fire that was destined, ere many
years had passed, to involve our beloved country in the terrible
conflagration of the Civil War. To my father and his co-workers in the
anti-slavery cause, these successive encroachments of slavery on the
territory which the framers of our Federal Constitution had declared
should remain eternally free, were a growing menace of evil. He strongly
impressed upon our minds the sin of compromise of principle. Did he not
see, in the bloody struggle in Kansas, the sinister results of those
weak yieldings of the North?
The electric current of indignation that thrilled through our home we
felt very strongly, as we did the stir of action. Lowell’s lines,
splendid in themselves, gained a new force and intensity as my father
repeated them to us.
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
Sometimes I would hear him and his friends talking together over the
political situation with deep earnestness and indignation. Those were
exciting days. As children, we knew nothing of the approaching storm,
but we felt the stir in the air!
Brother Harry, a child of eleven, wrote an indignant letter, after the
capture of John Brown, to Governor Wise of Virginia. As it was couched
in abusive terms, I fear it was never mailed. Since few of our young
mates agreed with us in opinion, we had many arguments. In the early
days one of our friends at the Stevenson School laughingly called us
“Little Free-dirters,” because we belonged to the Free Soil party. As
events moved rapidly forward feeling grew more intense. We were very
indignant at the deadly assault in the Senate Chamber upon our friend,
Charles Sumner. As he sat pinioned down by his desk, and so unable to
rise, blows with a loaded cane were showered upon his head. Some of the
girls of our acquaintance sought to justify the attack. We countered
with the testimony of Henry Wilson (later Vice-President of the United
States), who had witnessed the scene where a colleague of Preston Brooks
stood guard, a pistol in either hand, to prevent any interference in
behalf of Sumner. For a long time, the victim’s life was in danger. His
seat in the Senate remained “eloquently empty” for three years. Yet
Charles Sumner lived to see slavery overthrown and the United States a
free country. Within a year his young assailant died of membranous
croup. It was thought that remorse for his brutal deed hastened his
death.
We children heard of Sumner’s great sufferings, and of the cruel
“Mochsa” treatment—the burning of his back.
In the Presidential election of 1856 we were greatly interested. I
remember a political procession in which a dead deer was borne aloft
with the device, “Old Buck Is Dead.” The result of the election was not
certain for some time. We held on to hope as long as we could. From
California no word could come for ten days! I asked my father whether
the result there might not change the result. He said, “No. There is
enough to settle the hash without California.” James Buchanan, the last
President of the slavery era, had indeed been elected.
My father was deeply interested in the struggle for freedom in Kansas.
When the colonists from the free states were almost overpowered by the
border ruffians, he again called a Faneuil Hall meeting where money was
raised and sent to help the settlers. He himself went out there, with
great risk to his life.
In the spring of 1857 my mother and I accompanied him on one of his
trips to Kansas, but, as I became ill at Louisville, he went on without
us. Part of our journey was made on the large steamboats of the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers. Great was the horror of the other women when my
mother took out a pack of cards to amuse me. This was owing to the
prevalence of gambling in that section of the country. Many years later,
in traveling through the Middle West, I found this prejudice had not
wholly died out.
There was little to do during the long spring days when the steamboats
sailed along the great, quiet rivers. It seemed very strange that every
one rushed so to get through the meals quickly. As the service was
_table d’hôte_, it is possible that people hurried in order to get all
that they could before the food was removed. My mother always made a
practice of eating slowly; hence her excellent digestion.
On this trip our mother purchased a red toy balloon for brother Harry.
It was then a novelty and cost something like a dollar. As it was
affixed to the tail of one of our dogs, it did not long survive. We had
supposed this fascinating object would be a lasting investment.
On our outward journey we stopped overnight at Harper’s Ferry. I
remember climbing the hill and looking down upon the valley where the
Judas tree was in blossom. Did it bloom in somber foreboding of the
blood to be shed there, a little later, in the John Brown raid and in
the Civil War?
I remember too vast engines with which we climbed the terrifying slopes
of the Alleghanies. No sleeping-cars were then to be seen, but only cars
with reclining chairs. Hence the advisability of traveling by water
whenever possible.
At Cincinnati, then the principal city of that part of the country and
much larger than Chicago, we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. William Greene,
the former a cousin of Grandfather Ward. We visited the observatory and
the Longworths’ wine-cellar, where I was discovered in a corner, a glass
of champagne tilted up against my nose. At the age of eleven I saw no
reason why I should _not_ partake of the wine, since they were kind
enough to offer it to me.
My memories of Louisville, Kentucky, are sinister. Here we were shown
the spot where several negroes had been lynched. We also went to court,
where a man was on trial for the murder of his wife. From the appearance
of his face, I fancy he must have committed the crime while drunk.
We stayed also at the house of my father’s great friend, Horace Mann,
then president of Antioch College, a coeducational institution of Ohio.
Mrs. Mann believed in using cream in cooking, rather than butter. If you
had no cream, you thickened milk with flour! The Manns were “so glad to
see us they almost ate us up”! Mrs. Mann was a woman of intellectual
tastes and interested in good works. She was the sister of the wife of
Nathaniel Hawthorne and of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who first introduced
the kindergarten in America.
Horace Mann himself had a pleasant, kindly face and beautiful snow-white
hair parted in the middle. This had suddenly turned white (in a single
night, it was said) through grief at the death of his first wife.
In this year, 1857, there was a terrible financial panic, of which I
heard some echoes. Nickel cents were then first coined, replacing the
large copper ones we had used previously.
During the winter of 1860–61 we heard rumors of war and secession. Some
young friends, the sons of Admiral Winslow of _Kearsarge_ fame, had
visited the South, and assured us that serious preparations were going
on there. Still, we of the North hardly dreamed of the struggle to come.
Meantime traitorous officials of the federal government were
transferring supplies of arms to the Southern states, knowing well these
would soon be used against the nation’s life. Officers trained at West
Point and bound by oath to support the government to which they owed not
only allegiance, but their education, were resigning from the regular
army and going to the South. The North in 1861, like the English in
1914, was unprepared. Many attempts have been made to disguise the
issue. Fifty years hence, when all the passions roused by the Civil War
have died away, as I pray they may, the truth will stand out clearly.
For the rest, it was clear enough in 1860–61. As soon as the Republican
party came into power, on a platform declaring, as the framers of the
Constitution had declared, that slavery should be extended no farther,
the Southern states seceded.
My father was one of those who from the very beginning saw the issue
clearly. When the news of the firing on Sumter was received he came,
with his quick, active step and gallant bearing, into the nursery at
“Green Peace,” crying out to us:
“Sumter has been fired upon! That’s the death-blow of slavery!”
He rejoiced that the irrepressible conflict had begun. Of course he did
not foresee—who could?—that the struggle would be so long and so
terrible. But he knew it must come. Throughout those four years he never
lost faith that the right would triumph. On learning of the attack on
Sumter, he wrote at once to Governor Andrew:
Since they will have it so—in the name of God, Amen! Now let all
the governors and chief men of the people see to it that war
shall not cease until emancipation is secure. If I can be of any
use, anywhere, in any capacity (save that of spy), command
me.[9]
Footnote 9:
from _Journals and Letters of Samuel Gridley Howe_. Dana, Estes & Co.
At the age of sixty, he was too old and too infirm in health to take the
field as a soldier. But his early experiences in Greece enabled him to
give valuable assistance in safeguarding the health of the army. Both
Governor Andrew and Abraham Lincoln were glad to accept my father’s
offer of his services. On the formation of the Sanitary Commission, he
was appointed a member of the board. His letters and reports are
expressed in his usual terse and vigorous style.
When Fort Sumter was fired upon a splendid wave of patriotism swept over
the country. That shot, the attack upon the flag, consolidated the men
of the North as nothing else could have done. “The Union, it must and
shall be preserved,” was the shibboleth of the hour. Democrats and
Whigs, as well as Republicans, rallied everywhere to the defense of the
Union.
It was said that if the Confederates had kept to the old flag, instead
of adopting a new one, they might have won. Yet we know that was
impossible, because the corner-stone of the sovereignty they sought to
establish was human slavery. The politicians and leaders of thought on
both sides knew this perfectly well from the beginning. The rank and
file at first felt it only dimly. But in the Northern army the men who
were doing the actual fighting were not long in doubt as to the real
issues of the conflict. They sang:
“John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the ground,
His soul is marching on.”
Old John Brown, who had died on the gallows that men might be free! They
had hanged him and buried him in the ground, but his spirit led the
Northern troops to victory! The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was a
nobler expression of the idea dimly outlined in the John Brown song.
Reading in later years the accounts written by Southern men and women, I
have realized that the war was never brought home to us in New England
in the same way as to the people of the South. It never came near us,
nor did we expect it would. Some timid souls were anxious lest the
Confederate rams should visit our Northern ports. But this was only a
brief scare.
While we were spared the grim horrors of actual warfare in our midst,
almost every aspect of life was affected by the four years’ conflict. In
the spring of 1861, on my daily walk to Boston, I saw the posters
calling for seventy-five thousand troops to serve for three months. We
heard with deep indignation of the assault of the plug-uglies on the
Massachusetts regiments as these passed through Baltimore. Several
soldiers were killed—the sons of the Old Bay State being the first to
shed their blood in defense of the Union.
During the stormy prelude to the Civil War my mother had written many
verses expressing her indignation at the crime against Kansas, the
attack on Charles Sumner, and the treatment of John Brown, as well as
her hatred of slavery itself. While the war was in progress her pen
continued active in the cause of human freedom and of patriotism. We of
the younger generation were especially interested in the composition of
“Our Country” because the music was written by our master, Otto Dresel.
The song had power and dignity, with the swing important in music of
this sort. A prize had been offered for a national song, but I do not
think it was ever awarded. To my mother’s regret, Mr. Dresel afterward
decided to use the tune as a setting for Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “Army
Hymn.” She told him that the words and music belonged together and ought
not to be divorced.
The hour was not yet ripe for the writing of a true national song. In
these earlier poems we see how much my mother was moved by the tragic
events of the day as the panorama of our national history unfolded
itself before her eyes. The white heat of emotion was only reached when
she saw the stern realities of war—the bivouacs, the camp-fires, the
rows of burnished steel, the hosts of our country’s defenders. The soul
of that army, the army of freedom, took possession of her after that
wonderful day when her carriage was surrounded by the marching soldiers.
That night the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written.
So she gave back to the soldiers of the Republic their half-expressed
aspiration, clothed now in words of fire. In every hour of national
crisis, whenever our country is in danger, those words flame up anew in
the hearts of men.
Nor are they for our country only. In this present war they have been
sung with wonderful effect under the great dome of old Saint Paul’s in
London as well as at the battle-front. For the “Battle Hymn of the
Republic,” terrible as it is, is a Christian song. No one could have
written it who was not familiar with the language and imagery of the
Bible, Old Testament as well as New. It was the daughter of Samuel Ward,
Puritan, who wrote, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of
wrath are stored.” But it was the wife of the old Revolutionist, the man
whose life had been one long battle in behalf of his fellow-men, who
wrote, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.”
“The Flag” was written after the second battle of Bull Run. In
ante-bellum days Newport had been a place of summer resort for
Southerners, some of whom appeared there during the first year of the
war. They behaved very badly toward the flag. Women would draw aside the
full skirts, then universally worn, to prevent their touching the Stars
and Stripes. It was said that in the Episcopal Church, when the prayer
for the President of the United States was read, the “Secesh” would rise
from their knees to mark their dissent, resuming their attitude of
devotion at its conclusion. I have always fancied that the line, “Salute
the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule,”, was inspired by
the behavior of the “Secesh” toward “Old Glory.” General Dix’s famous
saying, “If any man attempts to pull down the flag, shoot him on the
spot,” was much quoted in those days.
The attitude of the Southerners was very irritating. They really
supposed themselves to be the superiors of the Northern men. The former
subserviency of the latter in political matters was one reason of this
belief. Another was that constant association with an inferior race, the
negroes, had given them an exaggerated idea of their own talents and
capacity. We know now that this was, and still is, a great misfortune to
them.
When the members of a certain family expatiated in our presence on the
whipping the North was to receive at the hands of the South we were not
pleased.
My mother decided to give them a lesson. At one of our Paradise picnics
she asked Mrs. David Hall, the mother of my future husband, to personate
America. There was a certain realism in the selection, for Mrs. Hall’s
eldest son, Rowland Minturn Hall, was then fighting for our country in
the Northern army. We crowned her with flowers as the queen of the
occasion and saluted her with patriotic songs.
We did not feel very pleasantly toward Jefferson Davis, whose ambition
had much to do with bringing on the war. A photograph of him, in the
likeness of the Devil, was circulated, while the soldiers sang:
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple-tree.”
By a strange caprice of fate a carriage intended for the President of
the Southern Confederacy fell into the hands of a Northern abolitionist.
Owing to the war, the vehicle could not be delivered to Mr. Davis, and
my father bought it. It was a closed carriage, more strongly built than
the Confederacy itself, and lasted for many years. If we wished to go to
Newport on a rainy day, some one would say, “Oh, take the Jeff Davis,
and you won’t get wet!”
For the first two years of the war we were disheartened by repeated
defeats. In McClellan my father never believed, and we were glad when he
was displaced.
After a long period of anxious waiting we were rejoiced by the taking of
Vicksburg and the victory over Lee at Gettysburg, all on one glorious
Fourth of July. The tide had turned at last!
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