AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.
Circular Letter--Cleveland Convention--Association Completed--Henry
Ward Beecher, President--Convention in Steinway Hall, New
York--George William Curtis Speaks--The First Annual Meeting held
in Cleveland--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, President--Mass Meeting in
Steinway Hall, New York, 1870--State Action Recommended--Moses Coit
Tyler Speaks--Mass Meetings in 1871 in Philadelphia, Washington,
Baltimore, Pittsburgh--Memorial to Congress--Letters from William
Lloyd Garrison and others--Hon. G. F. Hoar Advocates Woman
Suffrage--Anniversary celebrated at St. Louis--Dr. Stone, of
Michigan--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, President, 1872--Convention
in Cooper Institute, New York--Two Hundred Young Women march
in--Meeting in Plymouth Church--Letters from Louise May Alcott and
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps--The Annual Meeting in Detroit--Julia Ward
Howe, President--Letter from James T. Field--Mary F. Eastman
Addresses the Convention. Bishop Gilbert Haven President for
1875--Convention in Steinway Hall, New York--Hon. Charles Bradlaugh
Speaks--Centennial Celebration, July 3d--Petition to Congress for a
XVI. Amendment--Conventions in Indianapolis, Cincinnati,
Washington, and Louisville 756
Appendix 863
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.
Vol. II.
ANNA E. DICKINSON _Frontispiece._
CLARA BARTON page 25
CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D. 153
REV. OLYMPIA BROWN 265
JANE GRAHAM JONES 313
VIRGINIA L. MINOR 409
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER 489
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD 521
ELLEN CLARK SARGENT 553
MYRA BRADWELL 617
LUCY STONE 761
JULIA WARD HOWE 793
CHAPTER XVI.
WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.
The first gun on Sumter, April 12, 1861--Woman's military
genius--Anna Ella Carroll--The Sanitary Movement--Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell--The Hospitals--Dorothea Dix--Services on the
battle-field--Clara Barton--The Freedman's Bureau--Josephine
Griffing--Ladies' National Covenant--Political campaigns--Anna
Dickinson--The Woman's Loyal National League--The Mammoth
Petition--Anniversaries--The Thirteenth Amendment.
Our first volume closed with the period when the American people stood
waiting with apprehension the signal of the coming conflict between
the Northern and Southern States. On April 12, 1861, the first gun was
fired on Sumter, and on the 14th it was surrendered. On the 15th, the
President called out 75,000 militia, and summoned Congress to meet
July 4th, when 400,000 men and $400,000,000 were voted to carry on the
war.
These startling events roused the entire people, and turned the
current of their thoughts in new directions. While the nation's life
hung in the balance, and the dread artillery of war drowned alike the
voices of commerce, politics, religion and reform, all hearts were
filled with anxious forebodings, all hands were busy in solemn
preparations for the awful tragedies to come.
At this eventful hour the patriotism of woman shone forth as fervently
and spontaneously as did that of man; and her self-sacrifice and
devotion were displayed in as many varied fields of action. While he
buckled on his knapsack and marched forth to conquer the enemy, she
planned the campaigns which brought the nation victory; fought in the
ranks when she could do so without detection; inspired the sanitary
commission; gathered needed supplies for the grand army; provided
nurses for the hospitals; comforted the sick; smoothed the pillows of
the dying; inscribed the last messages of love to those far away; and
marked the resting-places where the brave men fell. The labor women
accomplished, the hardships they endured, the time and strength they
sacrificed in the war that summoned three million men to arms, can
never be fully appreciated.
Think of the busy hands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making
garments, canning fruits and vegetables, packing boxes, preparing lint
and bandages[1] for soldiers at the front; think of the mothers, wives
and daughters on the far-off prairies, gathering in the harvests, that
their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons might fight the battles of
freedom; of those month after month walking the wards of the hospital;
and those on the battle-field at the midnight hour, ministering to the
wounded and dying, with none but the cold stars to keep them company.
Think of the multitude of delicate, refined women, unused to care and
toil, thrown suddenly on their own resources, to struggle evermore
with poverty and solitude; their hopes and ambitions all freighted in
the brave young men that marched forth from their native hills, with
flying flags and marshal music, to return no more forever. The
untiring labors, the trembling apprehensions, the wrecked hopes, the
dreary solitude of the fatherless, the widowed, the childless in that
great national upheaval, have never been measured or recorded; their
brave deeds never told in story or in song, no monuments built to
their memories, no immortal wreaths to mark their last resting-places.
How much easier it is to march forth with gay companions and marshal
music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting
scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of
reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling
every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How
much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing to
stimulate hope or ambition.
The evils of bad government fall ever most heavily on the mothers of
the race, who, however wise and far-seeing, have no voice in its
administration, no power to protect themselves and their children
against a male dynasty of violence and force.
While the mass of women never philosophize on the principles that
underlie national existence, there were those in our late war who
understood the political significance of the struggle: the
"irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery; between national
and State rights. They saw that to provide lint, bandages, and
supplies for the army, while the war was not conducted on a wise
policy, was labor in vain; and while many organizations, active,
vigilant, self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the
material wants of the army, these few formed themselves into a
National Loyal League to teach sound principles of government, and to
press on the nation's conscience, that "freedom to the slaves was the
only way to victory." Accustomed as most women had been to works of
charity, to the relief of outward suffering, it was difficult to rouse
their enthusiasm for an idea, to persuade them to labor for a
principle. They clamored for practical work, something for their hands
to do; for fairs, sewing societies to raise money for soldier's
families, for tableaux, readings, theatricals, anything but
conventions to discuss principles and to circulate petitions for
emancipation. They could not see that the best service they could
render the army was to suppress the rebellion, and that the most
effective way to accomplish that was to transform the slaves into
soldiers. This Woman's Loyal League voiced the solemn lessons of the
war: liberty to all; national protection for every citizen under our
flag; universal suffrage, and universal amnesty.
As no national recognition has been accorded the grand women who did
faithful service in the late war; no national honors nor profitable
offices bestowed on them, the noble deeds of a few representative
women should be recorded. The military services of Anna Ella Carroll
in planning the campaign on the Tennessee; the labors of Clara Barton
on the battle-field; of Dorothea Dix in the hospital; of Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell in the Sanitary; of Josephine S. Griffing in the Freedman's
Bureau; and the political triumphs of Anna Dickinson in the
Presidential campaign, reflecting as they do all honor on their sex in
general, should ever be proudly remembered by their countrywomen.
ANNA ELLA CARROLL.
THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN.
Anna Ella Carroll, the daughter of Thomas King Carroll formerly
Governor of Maryland, belongs to one of the oldest and most patriotic
families of that State. Her ancestors founded the city of Baltimore;
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, was of the same family.
At the breaking out of the civil war, Maryland was claimed by the
rebellious States, and for a long time her position seemed uncertain.
Miss Carroll, an intimate friend of Gov. Hicks, and at that time a
member of his family, favored the national cause, and by her powerful
arguments induced the Governor to remain firm in his opposition to the
scheme of secession. Thus, despite the siren wooing of the South, in
its plaint of
"Maryland, my Maryland."
Miss Carroll was the means of preserving her native State to the
Union. Although a slave-owner, and a member of that class which so
largely proved disloyal, Miss Carroll freed her slaves, and devoted
herself throughout the war to the cause of liberty. She replied to the
secession speech of Senator Breckenridge, made during the July session
of Congress 1861, with such lucid and convincing arguments, that the
War Department not only circulated a large edition, but the Government
requested her to prepare other papers upon unsettled points. In
response she wrote a pamphlet entitled "The War Powers of the
Government," published in December, 1861. By the especial request of
President Lincoln she also prepared a paper entitled "The Relation of
Revolted Citizens to the National Government," which was approved by
him, and formed the basis of his subsequent action. In September,
1861, she also prepared a paper on the Constitutional power of the
President to make arrests, and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_;
a subject upon which a great conflict of opinion then existed, even
among persons of unquestioned loyalty.
Early in the fall of 1861, Miss Carroll took a trip to St. Louis to
inspect the progress of the war in the West. A gun-boat fleet, under
the special authorization of the President, was then in preparation
for a descent of the Mississippi. An examination of this plan by Miss
Carroll showed its weakness, and the inevitable disaster it would
bring to the National arms. Her astute military genius led her to the
substitution of another plan, upon which she based great hopes of
success, and its results show it to have been one of the profoundest
strategic movements of the ages. Strategy and generalship are two
entirely distinct forms of the art of war. Many a general, good at
following out a plan, is entirely incapable of forming a successful
one. Napoleon stands in the foremost ranks as a strategist, and is
held as the greatest warrior of modern times, yet he led no forces
into battle. So entirely was he convinced that strategy was the whole
art of war, that he was accustomed to speak of himself as the only
general of his army, thus subordinating the mere command and movement
of forces to the art of strategy. Judged by this standard, which is
acknowledged by all military men, Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland,
holds foremost rank as a military genius. On the 12th of November,
1861, while still in St. Louis, Miss Carroll wrote to Hon. Edward
Bates at Washington (the member of the Cabinet who first suggested the
expedition down the Mississippi), that from information gained by her
she believed this plan would fail, and urged him, instead, to have the
expedition directed up the Tennessee River, as the true line of
attack. She also dispatched a similar letter to Hon. Thomas A. Scott,
at that time Assistant Secretary of War. On the 30th of this month
(November, 1861), Miss Carroll laid the following plan, accompanied by
explanatory maps, before the War Department:
The civil and military authorities seem to me to be laboring
under a great mistake in regard to the true key of the war in the
South-west. It is not the Mississippi, but the Tennessee River.
Now, all the military preparations made in the West indicate that
the Mississippi River is the point to which the authorities are
directing their attention. On that river many battles must be
fought and heavy risks incurred, before any impression can be
made on the enemy, all of which could be avoided by using the
Tennessee River. This river is navigable for medium-class boats
to the foot of Muscle Shoals in Alabama, and is open to
navigation all the year, while the distance is but two hundred
and fifty miles by the river from Paducah on the Ohio. The
Tennessee offers many advantages over the Mississippi. We should
avoid the almost impregnable batteries of the enemy, which can
not be taken without great danger and great risk of life to our
forces, from the fact that our forces, if crippled, would fall a
prey to the enemy by being swept by the current to him, and away
from the relief of our friends. But even should we succeed, still
we have only begun the war, for we shall then have to fight the
country from whence the enemy derives his supplies.
Now an advance up the Tennessee River would avoid this danger;
for, if our boats were crippled, they would drop back with the
current and escape capture. But a still greater advantage would
be its tendency to _cut the enemy's lines in two_, by reaching
the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, threatening Memphis, which
lies one hundred miles due west, and no defensible point between;
also Nashville, only ninety miles north-east, and Florence and
Tuscumbia in North Alabama, forty miles east. A movement in this
direction would do more to relieve our friends in Kentucky, and
inspire the loyal hearts in East Tennessee, than the possession
of the whole of the Mississippi River. If well executed, it would
cause the evacuation of all those formidable fortifications on
which the rebels ground their hopes for success; and in the event
of our fleet attacking Mobile, the presence of our troops in the
northern part of Alabama, would be material aid to the fleet.
Again, the aid our forces would receive from the loyal men in
Tennessee would enable them soon to crush the last traitor in
that region, and the _separation of the two extremes_ would do
more than one hundred battles for the Union cause. The Tennessee
River is crossed by the Memphis and Louisville Railroad, and the
Memphis and Nashville Railroad. At Hamburg the river makes the
big bend on the east, touching the north-east corner of
Mississippi, entering the north-west corner of Alabama, forming
an arc to the south, entering the State of Tennessee at the
north-east corner of Alabama, and if it does not touch the
north-west corner of Georgia, comes very near it. It is but eight
miles from Hamburg to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, which
goes through Tuscumbia, only two miles from the river, which it
crosses at Decatur thirty miles above, intersecting with the
Nashville and Chattanooga road at Stephenson. The Tennessee never
has less than three feet to Hamburg on the "shoalest" bar, and
during the fall, winter, and spring months, there is always water
for the largest boats that are used on the Mississippi River. It
follows, from the above facts, that in making the Mississippi the
key to the war in the West, or rather in overlooking the
Tennessee River, the subject is not understood by the superiors
in command.
The War Department looked over these papers, and Col. Scott, the
Assistant Secretary, possessing a knowledge of the railroad facilities
and connections of the South, unequaled perhaps by any other man in
the country at that time, at once saw the vital importance of Miss
Carroll's plan. He declared it to be the first clear solution of the
difficult problem, and was soon sent West to assist in carrying it out
in detail. The Mississippi expedition was abandoned, and the Tennessee
made the point of attack. Both land and naval forces were ordered to
mass themselves at this point, and the country soon began to feel the
wisdom of this movement. The capture of Fort Henry, an important
Confederate post on the Tennessee River serving to defend the railroad
communication between Memphis and Bowling Green, was the first result
of Miss Carroll's plan. It fell Feb. 6, 1862, and was rapidly followed
by the capture of Fort Donelson, which, after a gallant defense,
surrendered to the Union forces Feb. 16th, and the name of Ulysses S.
Grant, as the general commanding these forces, for the first time
became known to the American people. By these victories the line of
Confederate fortifications was broken, and the enemy's means of
communication between the East and the West were destroyed.
All the historians of our civil war concede that the strategy which
made the Tennessee River the base of military operations in the
South-west, thus cutting the Confederacy in two by its control of the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, also made its final destruction
inevitable. At an early day the Government had neither a just
conception of the rebellion, nor of the steps necessary for its
suppression. It was looked upon from a political rather than a
military point of view, and much valuable time was wasted in
suggestions and plans worse than futile. But while the national
Government had been blind to the real situation, the Confederacy had
every hour strengthened its position both at home and abroad, having
so far secured the recognition of France and England as to have been
acknowledged belligerents, while threats of raising the blockade were
also made by the same powers.
In order to a more full understanding of our national affairs at that
time, we will glance at the proceedings of Congress. When this body
met in December, 1861, a "Committee on the Conduct of the War" was at
once created, and spirited debates upon the situation took place in
both the Senate and the House. It was acknowledged that the salvation
of the country depended upon military success. It was declared that
the rebellion must be speedily put down or it would destroy the
resources of the country, as $2,000,000 a day were then required to
maintain the army in the field. Hon. Mr. Dawes compared the country to
a man under an exhausted receiver gasping for breath, and said that
sixty days of the present state of things must bring about an
ignominious peace. Hon. Geo. W. Julian declared that the country was
in imminent danger of a foreign war, and that in the opinion of many
the great model Republic of the world was in the throes of death. The
credit of the nation was then so poor as to render it unable to make
loans of money from foreign countries. The treasury notes issued by
the Government were falling in the market, selling at five and six per
cent. discount. Mr. Morrill, in the Senate, gave it as his opinion
that in six months the nation would be beyond hope of relief.
England was anxiously hoping for our downfall. _The London Post_, Lord
Palmerston's paper, the organ of the English Government, prophesied
our national bankruptcy within a short time. _The London Times_
denounced us in language deemed too offensive to be read before the
Senate. It urged England's direct interference; counseled the pouring
of a fleet of gun-boats through the St. Lawrence into the lakes with
the opening of spring, "to secure, with the mastery of these waters,
the mastery of all," and declared that three months hence the field
would be all England's own. At that time the British Government had
already sent some thirty thousand men into its colonies in North
America, preparatory to an assault upon our north-western frontier.
The nation seemed upon the point of being lost, and the hopes of
millions of oppressed men in other lands destroyed by the
disintegration of the Union. The war had been waged six months, but
with the exception of West Virginia, the battle had been against the
Union. The fact that military success alone could turn the scale,
though now acknowledged, seemed to Congress as far as ever from
consummation. Our military commanders, quite ignorant of both the
geographical and topographical outlines of our vast country, were
unable to formulate the plan necessary for a decisive blow.
Such was the situation at the time Miss Carroll sent her plan of the
Tennessee campaign to the War Department. Fortunately for civilization
this plan was adopted, and with the fall of Fort Henry, the enemy's
center was pierced, the decisive point gained. From that hour the
nation's final success was assured. Its fall opened the Tennessee
River, and its capture was soon followed by the evacuation of Columbus
and Bowling Green. Fort Donelson was given up, its rebel garrison of
14,000 troops marched out as prisoners of war, and hope sprang up in
the hearts of the people. Pittsburg Landing and Corinth soon followed
the fate of the preceding forts. The President declared the victory at
Fort Henry to be of the utmost importance. North and South its
influence was alike felt. Gen. Beauregard was himself conscious that
this campaign sealed the fate of the "Southern Confederacy." The
success of the Tennessee campaign rendered intervention impossible,
and taught those foreign enemies who were anxiously watching for our
country's downfall, the power and stability of a Republic. Missouri
was kept in the Union by its means, Tennessee and Kentucky were
restored, the National armies were enabled to push to the Gulf States
and secure possession of all the great rivers and routes of internal
communication through the heart of the Confederate territory.
On the 10th of April, 1862, the President issued the following
proclamation:
It has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the
land and naval forces engaged in suppressing an internal
rebellion; and at the same time to avert from our country the
damages of foreign intervention and invasion.
During all this time the author of this plan remained unknown, except
to the President and his Cabinet, who feared to reveal the fact that
the Government was proceeding under the advice and plan of a civilian,
and that civilian _a woman_. Shortly after the capture of Forts Henry
and Donelson a debate as to the author of this campaign took place in
the House of Representatives.[2] The Senate discussed its origin March
13. It was variously ascribed to the President, to the Secretary of
War, and to different naval and land commanders, Halleck, Grant,
Foote, Smith, and Fremont. The historians of the war have also given
adverse opinions as to its authorship. Draper's "History of the Civil
War" ascribes it to Gen. Halleck; Boynton's "History of the Navy" to
Commodore Foote; Lossing's "Civil War" to the combined wisdom of
Grant, Halleck, and Foote; Badeau's "History of the Civil War"
credits it to Gen. C. F. Smith; and Abbott's "Civil War," to Gen.
Fremont.
But abundant testimony exists proving Miss Carroll's authorship of the
plan, in letters from Hon. B. F. Wade,[3] Chairman of the Committee on
the Conduct of the War; from Hon. Thos. A. Scott, Assistant Secretary
of War; from Hon. L. D. Evans, former Chief-Justice of the Supreme
Court of Texas (entrusted by the Government with an important secret
mission during the war); from Hon. Orestes A. Bronson, and many other
well-known public men; from conversations of President Lincoln and
Secretary Stanton; and from reports of the Military Committee of the
XLI., XLII., and XLVI. Congresses.[4] So anxious was the Government to
keep the origin of the Tennessee campaign a secret, that Col. Scott,
in conversation with Judge Evans, a personal friend of Miss Carroll,
pressed upon him the absolute necessity of Miss Carroll's making no
claim to the authorship while the struggle lasted. In the plenitude of
her self-sacrificing patriotism she remained silent, and saw the
honors rightfully belonging to her heaped upon others, although she
knew the country was indebted to her for its salvation.
Previous to 1862 historians reckoned but fifteen decisive battles[5]
in the world's history, battles in which, says Hallam, a contrary
result would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its
subsequent scenes. Professor Cressy, of the chair of Ancient and
Modern History, University of London, has made these battles the
subject of two grand volumes. The battle of Fort Henry was the
sixteenth, and in its effects may well be deemed the most important of
all.[6] It opened the doors of liberty to the downtrodden and
oppressed among all nations, setting a seal of permanence on the
assertion that self-government is the natural right of every person.
But it was not alone through her plan of the Tennessee campaign that
Miss Carroll exhibited her military genius; throughout the conflict
she continued to send plans and suggestions to the War Department. The
events of history prove the wisdom of those plans, and that had they
been strictly followed, the war would have been brought to a speedy
close,[7] and millions of men and money saved to the country.
Upon the fall of Fort Henry, February, 1862, she again addressed the
War Department, advising an immediate advance upon Mobile or
Vicksburg. In March, 1862, she presented a memorial and maps to
Secretary Stanton in person, in regard to the reduction of Island 10,
which had long been a vain effort by the Union forces, in which she
said:
The failure to take Island 10, which thus far occasions much
disappointment to the country, excites no surprise to me. When I
looked at the gun-boats at St. Louis, and was informed as to
their powers, and that the current of the Mississippi at full
tide runs at the rate of five miles per hour, which is very near
the speed of our gun-boats, I could not resist the conclusion
that they were not well fitted to the taking of batteries on the
Mississippi River, if assisted by gun-boats perhaps equal to our
own. Hence it was that I wrote Col. Scott from there, that the
Tennessee River was our strategic point, and the successes at
Forts Henry and Donelson establish the justice of these
observations. Had our victorious army, after the fall of Fort
Henry, immediately pushed up the Tennessee River and taken
position on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, between Corinth,
Miss., and Decatur, Ala., which might easily have been done at
that time with a small force, every rebel soldier in Western
Kentucky and Tennessee would have fled from every position south
of that railroad. And had Buell pursued the enemy in his retreat
from Nashville, without delay, into a commanding position in
North Alabama, on the railroad between Chattanooga and Decatur,
the rebel government at Richmond would necessarily have been
obliged to retreat to the cotton States. I am fully satisfied
that the true policy of General Halleck is to strengthen Grant's
column by such a force as will enable him at once to seize the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, as it is the readiest means of
reducing Island 10, and all the strongholds to Memphis.
In October, 1862, observing the preparations for a naval attack upon
Vicksburg, Miss Carroll again addressed the Secretary of War in the
following memorial:
As I understand an expedition is about to go down the river, for
the purpose of reducing Vicksburg, I have prepared the enclosed
map in order to demonstrate more clearly the obstacles to be
encountered in the contemplated assault. In the first place, it
is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a
loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only
about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank
range of their guns, not only from their water-batteries which
line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills,
while the enemy would be protected from the range of our fire.
By examining the map I enclose, you will at once perceive why a
place of so little apparent strength has been enabled to resist
the combined fleets of the Upper and Lower Mississippi. The most
economical plan for the reduction of Vicksburg now, is to push a
column from Memphis or Corinth down the Mississippi Central
Railroad to Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi. The
occupation of Jackson, and the command of the railroad to New
Orleans, would compel the immediate evacuation of Vicksburg, as
well as the retreat of the entire rebel army east of that line;
and by another movement of our army from Jackson, Miss., or from
Corinth to Meridan, in the State of Mississippi, on the Ohio and
Mobile Railroad, especially if aided by a movement of our
gun-boats on Mobile, the Confederate forces, with all the
disloyal men and slaves, would be compelled to fly east of the
Tombigbee. Mobile being then in our possession, with 100,000 men
at Meridan, would redeem the entire country from Memphis to the
Tombigbee River. Of course I would have the gun-boats with a
small force at Vicksburg, as auxiliary to this movement. With
regard to the canal, Vicksburg can be rendered useless to the
Confederate army upon the very first rise of the river; but I do
not advise this, because Vicksburg belongs to the United States,
and we desire to hold and fortify it, for the Mississippi River
at Vicksburg and the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad will become
necessary as a base for our future operations. Vicksburg might
have been reduced eight months ago, as I advised after the fall
of Fort Henry, and with much more ease than it can be done
to-day.
It will be recollected that after a month's attack upon Vicksburg,
commencing June 28, 1862, by the combined Farragut fleet, Porter
mortar flotilla and the gun-boat fleet under Capt. C. H. Davis, the
bombardment of the city was suspended, it being found impossible to
capture and hold it with the forces at command.
In October, 1862, Grant was appointed to the command of the forces
from New Orleans to Vicksburg under the name of the "Department of
Tennessee," and the capture of this "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" was
once more attempted. This was the period of Miss Carroll's memorial
above given, and the results proved the wisdom of her suggestions, as
it was not until the army, by an attack upon its rear, were enabled to
capture this stronghold, July 4, 1863, more than a year after the
first demand of Farragut's fleet for its capitulation. Had it been
attacked immediately after the fall of Fort Henry, according to Miss
Carroll's plan, many lives, costly munitions of war, and much valuable
time would have alike been saved. Miss Carroll's claim before Congress
in connection with the Tennessee campaign of 1862, shows that the
Military Committee of the United States Senate at the third session of
the 41st Congress, reported (document 337), through Senator Howard,
that Miss Carroll "furnished the Government the information which
caused the change of the military expedition which was preparing in
1861 to descend the Mississippi, from that river to the Tennessee
River." The same committee of the 42d Congress, second session
(document 167), reported the evidence in support of this claim. For
the House report of the 46th Congress, third session, see document
386.[8]
No fact in the history of our country is more clearly proved than that
its very existence is due to the military genius of Miss Carroll, and
no more shameful fact in its history exists, than that Congress has
refused all recognition and reward for such patriotic services because
they were rendered by a woman. While in the past twenty years
thousands of men, great and small, have received thanks and rewards
from the country she saved--for work done in accordance with her
plans--Grant, first made known at Donelson, having twice received the
highest office in the gift of the nation--having made the tour of the
world amid universal honors--having received gifts of countless value
at home and abroad--Miss Carroll is still left to struggle for a
recognition of her services from that country which is indebted to her
for its very life.
DOROTHEA DIX,
GOVERNMENT SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES.
Upon the breaking out of the war, Miss Dix, who for years had been
engaged in philanthropic work, saw here another requirement for her
services and hurried to Washington to offer them to her country. She
found her first work in nursing soldiers who had been wounded by the
Baltimore mob.[9] Upon June 10, 1861, she received from the War
Department, Simon Cameron at that time its head, an appointment as the
Government Superintendent of Women Nurses. Secretary Stanton,
succeeding him, ratified this appointment, thus placing her in an
extraordinary and exceptional position, imposing numerous and onerous
duties, among them that of hospital visitation, distributing supplies,
managing ambulances, adjusting disputes, etc. But while appointed to
this office by the Government, Miss Dix found herself as a member of a
disfranchised class, in a position of authority without the power of
enforcing obedience, and the subject of jealousy among hospital
surgeons, which largely militated against the efficiency of her
work.[10]
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.
THE SANITARY COMMISSION.
It has been computed that since the historic period, fourteen thousand
millions of human beings have fallen in the wars which men have waged
against each other. From careful statistics it has also been estimated
that four-fifths of this loss of life has been due to privation,
exposure, and want of care. At an early day the mortality from
sickness was evidently far greater than the above estimate; as late as
the Crimean War, this mortality reached seven-eighths of the whole
number of deaths. Military surgery was formerly but little understood.
The wounded and sick of an army were indebted to the chance aid of
friend or stranger, or were left to perish from neglect. Nothing has
ever been held so cheap as human life, unless, indeed, it were human
rights. But even from times of antiquity we read of women, sometimes
of noble birth, who followed the soldiers to the field, treating the
wounds of friend or lover with healing balms or rude surgical
appliance. To woman is the world indebted for the first systematic
efforts toward relief, through the establishment of hospitals for sick
or wounded soldiers. As early as the fifth century, the Empress Helena
erected hospitals on the routes between Rome and Constantinople, where
soldiers requiring it, received careful nursing.
In the ninth century an order of women, who consecrated themselves to
field work, arose in the Catholic Church. They were called Beguines,
and everywhere ministered to the sick and wounded of the armies of
Continental Europe during its long period of devastating wars.
To Isabella of Spain,[11] she who sold her jewels to fit Columbus for
the discovery of a New World, is modern warfare most indebted for a
mitigation of its horrors, through the establishment of the first
regular Camp Hospitals. During her war with the Moors she caused a
large number of tents to be furnished at her own charge, with the
requisite medicines, appliances, and attendants for the wounded and
sick of her army. These were known as the "Queen's Hospitals," and
formed the inception of all the tender care given in army hospitals by
the most enlightened nations of to-day.
It is but a few years since Christendom was thrilled by the heroism of
a young English girl of high position, Florence Nightingale, who
having passed through the course of training required for hospital
nurses, voluntarily went out to the Crimea at the time when English
soldiers, wounded and sick, were dying by scores and thousands without
medicine or care, broke over the red-tape rules of the army, and with
her corps of women nurses, brought life in place of death, winning the
gratitude and admiration of her country and mankind by her
self-sacrifice and her powers of organization. Rev. Henry Kinglake, in
his "History of the Crimea," says she brought a priceless
reinforcement of brain power to the nation at a time when the brains
of Englishmen had given signs of inanition.
A few years later brought our own civil war, and the wonderful
sanitary commission, more familiarly known as "The Sanitary," the
public records of which are a part of the history of the war; its
sacrifices and its successes have burned themselves deep into the
hearts of thousands upon thousands. Its fairs in New York, New
England, and the Northwest, were the wonders of the world in the
variety and beauty of their exhibits and the vast sums realized from
them. Scarcely a woman in the nation, from the girl of tender
years,[12] to the aged matron of ninety, whose trembling hands scraped
lint or essayed to knit socks and mittens for "the boys in blue," but
knows its work, for of it they were a part. But not a hundred of all
those thousands who toiled with willing hands, and who, at every
battle met anew to prepare or send off stores, knows that to one of
her own sex was the formation of the Great Sanitary due.[13]
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, returning to this country from England about
the time of the breaking out of the war, fresh from an acquaintance
with Miss Nightingale, and filled with her enthusiasm, at once called
an informal meeting at the New York Infirmary[14] for Women and
Children, where, on April 25th, 1861, the germ of the sanitary, known
as the Ladies' Central Relief,[15] was inaugurated. A public meeting
was held April 26, 1861, at the Cooper Union, its object being to
concentrate scattered efforts by a large and formal organization. The
society then received the name of the "Woman's Central Relief
Association of New York." Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler was chosen its
president. She soon sent out an appeal to women which brought New York
into direct connection with many other portions of the country,
enabling it "to report its monthly disbursements by tens of thousands,
and the sum total of its income by millions." But very soon after its
organization, Miss Schuyler saw the need of more positive connection
with the Government. A united address was sent to the Secretary of War
from the Woman's Central Relief Association, the Advisory Committee of
the Board of Physicians and Surgeons of the hospitals of New York, and
the New York Medical Association for furnishing medical supplies. As
the result of this address, the Sanitary Commission was established
the 9th of June, 1861, under the authority of the Government, and went
into immediate operation. Although acting under Government
authorization, this commission was not sustained at Government
expense, but was supported by the women of the nation. It was
organized under the following general rules:
1. The system of sanitary relief established by army regulations
was to be adopted; the Sanitary Commission was to acquaint itself
fully with those rules, and see that its agents were familiar
with all the plans and methods of the army system.
2. The Commission was to direct its efforts mainly to
strengthening the regular army system, and work to secure the
favor and co-operation of the Medical Bureau.
3. The Commission was to know nothing of religious differences or
State distinctions, distributing without regard to the place
where troops were enlisted, in a purely national spirit.
Under these provisions the Sanitary Commission completed its full
organization. Dr. Blackwell, in the Ladies' Relief Association, acted
as Chairman of the Registration Committee, a position of onerous
duties, requiring accord with the Medical Bureau and War Department,
and visited Washington in behalf of this committee. But the
Association soon lost her services by her own voluntary act of
withdrawal. Professional jealousy of women doctors being offensively
shown by some of those male physicians with whom she was brought in
contact, she chose to resign rather than allow sex-prejudice to
obstruct the carrying on of the great work originated by her. The
Sanitary, with its Auxiliary Aid Societies, at once presented a method
of help to the loyal[16] women of the country, and every city,
village, and hamlet soon poured its resources into the Commission.
Through it $92,000,000 were raised in aid of the sick and wounded of
the army. Nothing connected with the war so astonished foreign nations
as the work of the Sanitary Commission.
Dr. Henry Bellows, its President at the close of the war, declared in
his farewell address, that the army of women at home had been as
patriotic and as self-sacrificing as the army of men in the field, and
had it not been for their aid the war could not have been brought to a
successful termination.[17]
At every important period in the nation's history, woman has stood by
the side of man in duties. Husband, father, son, or brother have not
suffered or sacrificed alone.
"The old Continentals
In their ragged regimentals
Faltered not,"
because back of them stood the patriotic women of the thirteen
Colonies; those of the north-eastern pine-woods, who aided in the
first naval battle of the Revolution; those of Massachusetts,
Daughters of Liberty, who formed anti-tea leagues, proclaimed inherent
rights, and demanded an independency in advance of the men; those of
New York, who tilled the fields, and, removing their hearth-stones,
manufactured saltpetre from the earth beneath, to make powder for the
army; those of New Jersey, who rebuked traitors; those of
Pennsylvania, who saved the army; those of Virginia, who protested
against taxation without representation; those of South Carolina, who
at Charleston established a paper in opposition to the Stamp Act;
those of North Carolina, whose fiery patriotism secured for the
counties of Rowan and Mecklenberg the derisive name of "The Hornet's
Nest of America." The women of the whole thirteen Colonies everywhere
showed their devotion to freedom and their choice of liberty with
privation, rather than oppression with luxury and ease.
The civil war in our own generation was but an added proof of woman's
love for freedom and her worthiness of its possession. The grandest
war poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was the echo of a woman's
voice,[18] while woman's prescience and power were everywhere
manifested. She saw, before President, Cabinet, generals, or Congress,
that slavery must die before peace could be established in the
country.[19] Months previous to the issue by the President of the
Emancipation Proclamation, women in humble homes were petitioning
Congress for the overthrow of slavery, and agonizing in spirit because
of the dilatoriness of those in power. Were proof of woman's love of
freedom, of her right to freedom needed, the history of our civil war
would alone be sufficient to prove that love, to establish that right.
WOMEN AS SOLDIERS.
Many women fought in the ranks during the war, impelled by the same
patriotic motives which led their fathers, husbands, and brothers into
the contest. Not alone from one State, or in one regiment, but from
various parts of the Union, women were found giving their services and
lives to their country among the rank and file of the army.[20]
Although the nation gladly summoned their aid in camp and hospital,
and on the battle-field with the ambulance corps, it gave them no
recognition as soldiers, even denying them the rights of
chaplaincy,[21] and by "army regulations" entirely refusing them
recognition as part of the fighting forces of the country.
Historians have made no mention of woman's services in the war;
scarcely referring to the vast number commissioned in the army, whose
sex was discovered through some terrible wound, or by their dead
bodies on the battle-field. Even the volumes especially devoted to an
account of woman's work in the war, have mostly ignored her as a
common soldier, although the files of the newspapers of that heroic
period, if carefully examined, would be found to contain many accounts
of women who fought on the field of battle.[22]
Gov. Yates, of Illinois, commissioned the wife of Lieut. Reynolds of
the 17th, as Major, for service in the field, the document being made
out with due formality, having attached to it the great seal of State.
President Lincoln, more liberal than the Secretary of War, himself
promoted the wife of another Illinois officer, named Gates, to a
majorship, for service in the hospital and bravery on the field.
One young girl is referred to who served in seven different regiments,
participated in several engagements, was twice severely wounded; had
been discovered and mustered out of service eight times, but as many
times had re-enlisted, although a Canadian by birth, being determined
to fight for the American Union.
Hundreds of women marched steadily up to the mouth of a hundred cannon
pouring out fire and smoke, shot and shell, mowing down the advancing
hosts like grass; men, horses, and colors going down in confusion,
disappearing in clouds of smoke; the only sound, the screaming of
shells, the crackling of musketry, the thunder of artillery, through
all this women were sustained by the enthusiasm born of love of
country and liberty.
Amid "sighing shot and shrieking shell
And the splintered fire of the shattered hell,
And the great white breaths of the cannon smoke
As the growling guns by the battery spoke.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Right up to the guns, black-throated and grim,
Right down on the hedges bordered with steel,"
bravely marched hundreds of women.
Nor was the war without its naval heroines. Among the vessels captured
by the pirate cruiser _Retribution_, was the Union brigantine, _J. P.
Ellicott_, of Bucksport, Maine, the wives of the captain and mate
being on board. Her officers and crew were transferred to the pirate
vessel and ironed, while a crew from the latter was put on the
brigantine; the wife of the mate was left on board the brig with the
pirate crew. Having cause to fear bad treatment at the hands of the
prize-master[23] and his mate, this woman formed the bold plan of
capturing the vessel. She succeeded in getting the officers
intoxicated, handcuffed them and took possession of the vessel,
persuading the crew, who were mostly colored men from St. Thomas, to
aid her. Having studied navigation with her husband on the voyage, she
assumed command of the brig, directing its course to St. Thomas, which
she reached in safety, placing the vessel in the hands of the United
States Consul, who transferred the prize-master, mate, and crew to a
United States steamer, as prisoners of war. Her name was not given,
but had this bold feat been accomplished by a man or boy, the country
would have rung with praises of the daring deed, and history would
have borne the echoes down to future generations.
Not alone on the tented field did the war find its patriotic victims.
Many women showed their love of country by sacrifices still greater
than enlistment in the army. Among these, especially notable for her
surroundings and family, was Annie Carter Lee, daughter of Gen. Robert
E. Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the rebel army. Her father and three
brothers fought against the Union which she loved, and to which she
adhered. A young girl, scarcely beyond her teens when the war broke
out, she remained firm in her devotion to the National cause, though
for this adherence she was banished by her father as an outcast from
that elegant home once graced by her presence. She did not live to see
the triumph of the cause she loved so well, dying the third year of
the war, aged twenty-three, at Jones Springs, North Carolina,
homeless, because of her love for the Union, with no relative near
her, dependent for care and consolation in her last hours upon the
kindly services of an old colored woman. In her veins ran pure the
blood of "Light-Horse Harry" and that of her great aunt, Hannah Lee
Corbin, who at the time of the Revolution, protested against the
denial of representation to taxpaying women, and whose name does much
to redeem that of Lee from the infamy, of late so justly adhering to
it. When her father, after the war, visited his ancestral home,[24]
then turned into a vast national cemetery, it would seem as though
the spirit of his Union-loving daughter must have floated over him,
whispering of his wrecked hopes, and piercing his heart with a
thousand daggers of remorse as he recalled his blind infatuation, and
the banishment from her home of that bright young life.
Of the three hundred and twenty-eight thousand Union soldiers who lie
buried in national cemeteries, many thousands with headboards marked
"Unknown," hundreds are those of women obliged by army regulations to
fight in disguise. Official records of the military authorities show
that a large number of women recruits were discovered and compelled to
leave the army. A much greater number escaped detection, some of them
passing entirely through the campaigns, while others were made known
by wounds or on being found lifeless upon the battle-field. The
history of the war--which has never yet been truly written--is full of
heroism in which woman is the central figure.
The social and political condition of women was largely changed by our
civil war. Through the withdrawal of so many men from their accustomed
work, new channels of industry were opened to them, the value and
control of money learned, thought upon political questions compelled,
and a desire for their own personal, individual liberty intensified.
It created a revolution in woman herself, as important in its results
as the changed condition of the former slaves, and this silent
influence is still busy. Its work will not have been accomplished
until the chains of ignorance and selfishness are everywhere broken,
and woman shall stand by man's side his recognized equal in rights as
she is now in duties.
CLARA BARTON.
MINISTERING ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.
Clara Barton was the youngest child of Capt. Stephen Barton, of
Oxford, Mass., a non-commissioned officer under "Mad Anthony Wayne."
Captain Barton, who was a prosperous farmer and leader in public
affairs, gave his children the best opportunities he could secure for
their improvement. Clara's early education was principally at home
under direction of her brothers and sisters. At sixteen, she commenced
teaching, and followed the occupation for several years, during which
time she assisted her oldest brother, Capt. Stephen Barton, Jr., a man
of fine scholarship and business capacity, in equitably arranging and
increasing the salaries of the large village schools of her native
place, at the same time having clerical oversight of her brother's
counting-house. Subsequently, she finished her school education by a
very thorough course of study at Clinton, N. Y. Miss Barton's
remarkable executive ability was manifested in the fact that she
popularized the Public School System in New Jersey, by opening the
first free school in Bordentown, commencing with six pupils, in an old
tumble-down building, and at the close of the year, leaving six
hundred in the fine edifice at present occupied.
At the close of her work in Bordentown, she went to Washington, D. C.,
to recuperate and indulge herself in congenial literary pursuits.
There she was, without solicitation, appointed by Hon. Charles Mason,
Commissioner of Patents, to the first independent clerkship held by a
woman under our Government. Her thoroughness and faithfulness fitted
her eminently for this position of trust, which she retained until
after the election of President Buchanan, when, being suspected of
Republican sentiments, and Judge Mason having resigned, she was
deposed, and a large part of her salary withheld. She returned to
Massachusetts and spent three years in the study of art,
belles-lettres, and languages. Shortly after the election of Abraham
Lincoln, she was recalled to the Patent Office by the same
administration which had removed her. She returned, as she had left,
without question, and taking up her line of duty, awaited
developments.
When the civil war commenced, she refused to draw her salary from a
treasury already overtaxed, resigned her clerkship and devoted herself
to the assistance of suffering soldiers. Her work commencing before
the organization of Commissions, was continued outside and altogether
independent of them, but always with most cordial sympathy. Miss
Barton never engaged in hospital service. Her chosen labors were on
the battle-field from the beginning, until the wounded and dead were
attended to. Her supplies were her own, and were carried by Government
transportation. Nearly four years she endured the exposures and rigors
of soldier life, in action, always side by side with the field
surgeons, and this on the hardest fought fields; such battles as Cedar
Mountain, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Falmouth, and old
Fredericksburg, siege of Charleston, on Morris Island, at Wagner,
Wilderness and Spotsylvania, The Mine, Deep Bottom, through sieges of
Petersburg and Richmond, with Butler and Grant; through summer without
shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far
disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe
battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed
at all times, but never wounded.
Firm in her integrity to the Union, never swerving from her belief in
the justice of the cause for which the North was fighting, on the
battle-field she knew no North, no South; she made her work one of
humanity alone, bestowing her charities and her care indiscriminately
upon the Blue and the Gray, with an impartiality and Spartan firmness
that astonished the foe and perplexed the friend, often falling under
suspicion, or censure of Union officers unacquainted with her motives
and character for her tender care and firm protection of the wounded
captured in battle. Their home-thrusts were met with the same calm
courage as were the bullets of the enemy, and many a Confederate
soldier lives to bless her for care and life, while no Union man will
ever again doubt her loyalty. All unconsciously to herself she was
carrying out to the letter in practice the grand and beautiful
principles of the Red Cross of Geneva (of which she had never heard),
for the entire _neutrality_ of war relief among the nations of the
earth, that great international step toward a world-wide recognized
humanity, of which she has since become the national advocate and
leader in this country.
[Illustration: Clara Barton. "Very Sincerely Yours Clara Barton."]
At the close of the war she met exchanged prisoners at Annapolis.
Accompanied by Dorrence Atwater, she conducted an expedition, sent at
her request by the United States Government to identify and mark the
graves of the 13,000 soldiers who perished at Andersonville. From
Savannah to that point, as theirs were the first trains which had
passed since the destruction of the railroads by Sherman, they were
obliged to repair the bridges and the embankments, straighten bent
rails, and in some places make new roads. The work was completed in
August, 1865, and her report of the expedition was issued in the
winter of 1866.
The anxiety felt by the whole country for the fate of those whom the
exchange of prisoners and the disbanding of troops failed to reveal,
stimulated her to devise the plan of relief, which, sanctioned by
President Lincoln, resulted in the "search for missing men," which
(except the printing) was carried on entirely at her own expense, to
the extent of several thousand dollars, employing from ten to fifteen
clerks. In the winter of '66, when she was on the point, for want of
further means to carry out her plan, of turning the search over to the
Government, Congress voted $15,000 for reimbursing moneys expended,
and carrying on the work. The search was continued until 1869, and
then a full report made and accepted by Congress. During the winter of
1867-8 Miss Barton was called on to lecture before many lyceums
regarding the incidents of the war.
In 1869, her health failing, she went to Switzerland to rest and
recover, where she was at the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian
war, and immediately tendered her services there, as here, on the
battle-field, under the auspices of the Red Cross of Geneva. Her Royal
Highness the Grand Duchess of Baden, daughter of the Emperor of
Germany, invited Miss Barton to aid her in the establishment of her
noble Badise hospitals, a work which consumed several months. On the
fall of Strasburg she entered the city with the German army, organized
labor for women, conducting the enterprise herself, employing
remuneratively a great number, and clothing over thirty thousand. She
entered Metz with hospital supplies the day of its fall, and Paris the
day after the fall of the Commune. Here she remained two months,
distributing money and clothing which she carried, and afterward met
the poor in every besieged city in France, extending succor to them.
She is a representative of the "International Red Cross of Geneva,"
and President of the American National Association of the Red Cross,
honorary and only woman member of "Comité de Strasbourgeois"; was
decorated with the "Gold Cross of Remembrance" by the Grand Duke and
Duchess of Baden, and with the "Iron Cross of Merit" by the Emperor
and Empress of Germany.
Miss Barton may be said to have given her whole life to humanitarian
affairs, largely national in character. The positions she has
occupied, whether remunerative or not--and she has filled but few paid
positions--have been pioneer ones, in which her efforts and success
have been to raise the standard of woman's work and its recognition
and remuneration. Her time, her property, and her influence have been
held sacred to benevolence of that character that will assist in true
progress. Nevertheless, she is one of the most retiring of women,
never voluntarily coming before the world except at the call of
manifest duty, and shrinking with peculiar sensitiveness from anything
verging on notoriety.
Her summers are passed at her pleasant country residence at Dansville,
New York, where she has regained in a most gratifying degree her
shattered health and war-worn strength, and her winters in Washington
in the interests and charge of the great International movement which
she represents in America.
JOSEPHINE SOPHIE GRIFFING.
_The National Freedman's Relief Association._
BY CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.
Josephine Sophie White was born at Hebron, Conn., December, 1816, and
was educated in her native State. She grew to young womanhood in the
pure and religious atmosphere of the New England hills, and developed
a strength of constitution and character which was the basis of her
truly beneficent life-work. Refined, sympathetic, and conscientious,
with the golden rule for her text, her career was ever marked with
deeds of kindness and charity to the oppressed of every class. Taking
an active part in both the "Anti-slavery" and "Woman's Rights"
struggles, she early learned the very alphabet of liberty. With her
the perception of its blessings and its glory was also a rich
inheritance, and the vigilance and courage to conquer and secure it
for others was not less a noble legacy. The love of liberty flowed
down to her through two streams of life. On the mother's side she was
descended from Peter Waldo[25], after whom the Waldenses were named;
and on the father's, from Peregrine White, who was born in
Massachusetts in 1620, the first child of Pilgrim parents. It is not
strange she was by temperament and constitution a reformer, and a
protestant against all despotisms, whether of mind, body, or estate.
In the agitation for human rights of one class after another, in their
historical order, she enlisted with the Abolitionists, with the Woman
Suffragists, with the Loyal League and sanitary workers, and after the
war, in relief of the Freedmen. Her interest in her own sex began
early, and continued to the last.
At the age of twenty-two she married, and about the year 1842 removed
with her family to Ohio, where her home soon became the refuge of the
fugitive slave, and the resting-place of his defenders. In 1849 she
began, with her husband, Chas. S. S. Griffing, her public labors in
connection with the "American" and the "Western Anti-Slavery
Societies," speaking at first to small audiences in school-houses, and
when prejudice and bitterness gave way, to conventions, and
mass-meetings; opposition and curiosity yielding finally to sympathy
and aid. But for years the meetings were often broken up by mobs. The
effort to uproot slavery was pronounced either absurd, treasonable, or
irreligious; that it would incite insurrection of the slaves; or if
successful, bring great responsibility upon the Abolitionists, and
disaster to the whole country.
In 1861, Mrs. Griffing, prompted by the same loyal spirit that moved
all the women of the nation, turned from the ordinary occupations of
life to see what she could do to mitigate the miseries of the war. She
united at once with "The National Woman's Loyal League," lecturing and
organizing societies in the West for the soldiers and freedmen, to
whom large quantities of clothing and other supplies were sent, and
circulating petitions to Congress for the emancipation of slaves as a
war measure.
While thus engaged, her thoughts naturally turned to the large number
of Southern slaves coming with the army into Washington, whose future
she foresaw would be beset with distress and want during the long
period of change from chattelism to the settled habits of freedom.
They were coming by the hundreds and thousands in 1863, with a vague
idea of being cared for by "the Governor," but the Government had as
yet made no provision, separate from that for the soldiers, when Mrs.
Griffing went to Washington and began her labors for them, which were
continued until her death.
She at once counseled with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton as
to the best methods for immediate relief; proposed plans which they
approved, and received from them every aid possible in their
execution. Her first step was to open three ration-houses, where she
fed at least a thousand of the old and most destitute of the freed
people daily. She visited hundreds in the alleys and old stables, in
attics and cellars, and in almost every place where shelter could be
found, and became acquainted personally with their necessities, and
the best means of supplying them. There were 30,000 in the capital at
this time, and it would be difficult to give an idea to one not there,
of the time and labor it cost to hunt out the old barracks and get
them transformed into shelters for these outcasts. Upon the personal
order of the Secretary of War, she was allowed army blankets and wood,
which she distributed herself, going with the army wagons to see that
those suffering most were first supplied. This "temporary relief" was
necessarily continued for some time, during which Mrs. Griffing was
made the General Agent of "The National Freedman's Relief Association
of the District of Columbia." She opened a correspondence with the Aid
societies of the Northern and New England States, which resulted in
her receiving supplies of clothing and provisions, which were most
acceptable. These were carefully dispensed by herself and two
daughters, who were her assistants. Mrs. Griffing opened three
industrial schools, where the women were taught to sew;[26] a price
was set on their labors, and they were paid in ready-made garments.
The Secretary aided in the purchase of suitable cloth, and with that
sent from the North, such outfits were supplied as could be afforded.
It was soon apparent to Mrs. Griffing that the Government must provide
for the old and the infirm, and that until labor could be found, even
a majority of the strong must be included in the provision--with the
understanding, however, that they must seek employment and exert
themselves to find homes--and that educational and political interests
must be established and encouraged. The stress of the situation can
not be said ever to have relaxed during our friend's life, except as
to numbers--at any rate in the early years; but as soon as some system
grew out of the confusion, and all that could be, were supplied with
bread and shelter, she turned her attention in part to the larger
plan, and urged a bureau under Government; a department for these
freedmen's interests. This plan was favored by Messrs. Sumner, Wade,
Wilson, and a few other Senators and Members of Congress, and in
December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was introduced in
the House of Representatives by Hon. Mr. Elliot, of Massachusetts. It
received no welcome; few cared to listen to the details of the
necessity, and it was only through Mrs. Griffing's brave and unwearied
efforts that the plan was accepted, and carried through in March,
1865, under the title of "The Freedman's Bureau." The writer has had
testimony to the truth of this from Senators Wade of Ohio, Howard of
Michigan, and others, as well as to the fact that a majority of the
Congressional Committee in charge of the bill, wished that Mrs.
Griffing should be made Commissioner (among whom, and most active in
support of the bill, was Senator Henry Wilson), but it was decided to
place the Bureau in the War Department, with a military man at the
head, Mrs. Griffing being appointed "Assistant Commissioner." She
really held the position but a few weeks--in name, five months--a
second military officer standing ready to take the appointment, as men
have ever done, and as they will always crowd women aside so long as
they are held political inferiors, without the citizen's charter to
sustain their claim. This officer had the title and drew the pay,
while our noble friend went on as before in her arduous and almost
superhuman labors. The Bureau adopted _her_ plan of finding homes in
the North, sending the freedmen at Government charge, and of opening
employment offices in New York City and in Providence, R. I.;
nevertheless it was necessary to supplement Government provision by
private generosity; and moreover, that Congress should provide
temporary relief for the helpless in the District. Appropriations were
made in sums of $25,000, amounting in all to nearly $200,000, for the
purchase of supplies, a very large proportion of which were
distributed by Mrs. Griffing in person from her own residence.[27]
"Shirley Dare," in writing to _The New York World_, after a little
time spent with Mrs. G., said:
"I sat an hour this morning in Mrs. Griffing's office during the
distribution of rations, and a curious scene it was. There was
not a sound creature among the crowd which filled the yard, and
which hangs about all day from nine till four, and which the
neighborhood calls 'Mrs. Griffing's signs.' It reminded me of
another crowd of impotent folk, lame, halt, and blind, which
filled the loveliest space in Jerusalem, and was a _sign_ of joy
and charity in the place. Queer, tender, wistful faces, so
earnest one forgets their grotesque character and ragged, faded
forms, cluster in the porch; such a set as one might once have
seen put up at auction as a 'refuse lot' of plantation negroes.
The men wear old army cloaks, while the women, with dresses in
every stage of decay, are so comic, one struggles between the
ludicrous and the pitiful.... The faith of this class seems to be
fastened nowhere so strongly as upon Mrs. Griffing. Salutations
follow her along the streets, enough to satisfy the proudest
Pharisee, and it provokes one between a smile and a tear, to see
the women waiting timidly, yet eagerly, for a word from her, to
set their faces all aglow. They used to say, persistently, 'We
belongs to you,' and no efforts could induce them to change that
phrase. 'Who has we but the Lord and you?' was the simple
argument which stayed protest from the kind, proud woman who was
their benefactress. A few words from her will draw out histories
simple, funny, and sad beyond question."
Our friend had a strong belief that the able in body could sustain
themselves if labor were provided, which it could not be there, so she
urged them to go to the North, which greatly needed laborers to fill
the places of Northern men in the army. Woman's help, too, was as much
in demand, for in many places large farms were wholly managed by women
in the absence of husbands and sons; but it was learned by Mrs.
Griffing and daughters through repeated testimony, that the life-long
teaching of the slaves had been, that no good could come from
Northern people,[28] and this led the many in their pitiable ignorance
to believe that, somewhere in the North, the monsters surely lived who
were waiting to destroy them, and that the kind few whom they had met
were of a different race; that "the North" was beyond the sea, and
they could never return, nor hear from their friends left behind; so
persistent argument was needed to convince the most ignorant of their
false notions, and many of them never were, until some had gone and
returned with good tidings. The first company prepared to go numbered
sixty persons, for whom Mrs. Griffing procured Government
transportation and a day's rations. She went with them to New York
City, and as they passed from the cars the sight was a new and strange
one. Filing through the streets, the anxious, wondering women dressed
partly in neat garments given them, with others of their own selection
in less good taste; while on the men an occasional damaged silk hat
topped off a coat that would have made Joseph's of old look plain;
with ironclad army shoes; or a half-worn wedding swallow-tail, eked
out by a plantation broad-brim, and boots too much worn for either
comfort or beauty. This motley band, led by a gentle and
spiritual-faced woman, will not soon be forgotten by those who saw it
depart. Leaving a few at one depot, and a few at another, to be met at
the journey's end by their employer, Mrs. Griffing took those
remaining to Providence, near which place homes had been provided.
After these sent messages back to friends, others went more readily,
and during a little more than two years over seven thousand freed
people left Washington under Mrs. Griffing's special supervision and
direction for homes in the North. I wish I could say how many parties
she actually convoyed on the journey, and how many miles she traveled,
but I know that she went as far as New York with a great many; and as
I have seen them start, knew and felt that it was too much for her,
and longed that some stronger person should appear to share her
burdens, and relieve her from these exhausting duties. Perhaps she had
written letters till twelve o'clock the night before; had taken a long
walk beyond the Navy-Yard cars, in the afternoon, to visit her
centenarians; or had received calls, and talked till her voice had
almost given out.
But she had the comfort of knowing that many remained where they had
been sent, some buying homes and planting vines about the roof-tree.
To behold this, she had wrought heroically in the past for
emancipation. She was busy with her hands, busier with her brain, and
her spiritual nature was like a spring of sweet waters, overflowing in
bounteous blessing on all around. Of the great painter Leonardo da
Vinci, his biographer says: "He always saw four things he wanted to do
at once." Our friend always saw many more. Her mind was teeming not
only with ideals as beautiful as those of the great artist, but with
practical plans to educate the ignorant, and lift them to self-support
and self-protection. Her being was instinct with constructive and
spiritual force.
It would be hard to find any sphere of woman's activity in which she
had not been leader. Believing that "the manifest intention of nature
is the perfection of man," she faithfully did her part. In the
laborious and the menial she served the colored poor, while she
neglected no opportunity to open their spiritual vision. She fed,
warmed, and clothed them; ministered to the sick; attended the dying;
procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the hymns
at their funerals. She instructed them in their Sunday meetings, and
gained release for those in prison for petty offences, or for those
unjustly accused. Soldiers often appealed to her to assist and aid
them. Her work at the jails was very wearing, for the poor creatures,
not unfrequently the mother of an infant left at home, arrested for an
imaginary offense, or for _stealing_ bread to avert starvation, would
_plead_ so hard for her to get them released, and had such full faith
that she could, that it was a constant tax upon her sympathy and
strength, as was all her work connected with them.
Josephine Griffing had to deal too much with the realities of life and
death to make many records of her work, save those required in the
routine of her office. These were mostly kept by her daughter Emma,
her official assistant. But the substance of what was done in these
years may be found in the archives of the Government. On the calendar
of both Houses of Congress, in the _Congressional Globe_, in the War
Office, in the Freedman's Bureau, in the offices of District
Government and District Courts, and perhaps in the prisons, the future
historian may find abundant records of the patient and humane labors
of this merciful, vigilant, and untiring woman. Whether he finds them
in her name is not so certain!
Mrs. Griffing not only devoted to these people the six days of the
week allotted to labor, but her Sundays were given to public
ministrations as well as private visits to the distant and aged,
unable to come to the Relief rooms during the week. But for a real
picture of the condition of these people, nothing can be more graphic
or full of feeling, than her own account in a letter to Lucretia
Mott,[29] intended as an appeal to the Society of Friends in
Philadelphia. It, with others, had early responded, and with its
contributions in part, she had established the soup-houses before
noted. Her account is also in connection with the Bureau, of
historical interest. During this long struggle her evenings were spent
in writing letters to the North, framing bills, petitions, and appeals
to amend the laws of the District. As she was interested in all the
reforms of the day, she was frequently called upon for active service
in conventions and political gatherings.
Of the public men whom she consulted, two at least, I know, made
everybody and everything yield when she appeared; these were Secretary
Stanton and Chas. Sumner--so interested were they in the objects of
her devotion, and so sure that Mrs. Griffing would not take their time
without sufficient reason. Benj. F. Wade and Henry Wilson would not
yield the palm in their respect to her, and Senator Howard, of
Michigan, was also one of her most friendly helpers. Stevens, Julian,
Dawes, Ashley--all the friends in Congress--could tell of her great
achievements, and their unbounded confidence in her, as the following
letters show:
WASHINGTON, D. C., _March 11, 1865._
_To the Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau_:
SIR:--I take pleasure in giving my influence to this application
for a place at the head of freedmen's affairs in the District of
Columbia for Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, believing her to be
eminently qualified to develop the resources of the freed people
in this District, most of whom are women and children--secure the
national interest, and give satisfaction to the country. Mrs.
Griffing has given successful public and private efforts in
behalf of the colored race for many years, and has devoted the
entire time of the last year to an investigation of the condition
and best method of giving relief to the multitudes of freed
people in and around the National Capital. Finding many thousands
of women with families without employment or the means of
self-support, she has conferred with the President and Governors
of the Northwestern States upon the practicability of encouraging
their emigration. To meet the destitution of these people in this
city during the past winter, Mrs. Griffing has disbursed from the
Government about $25,000 in wood and blankets and rations, and
$5,000 in clothing and money from the public charity. I believe
the appointment of Mrs. J. S. Griffing to a chief clerkship or
general agency for the District in this Bureau will be creditable
to the Government and satisfactory to the freed people.
Z. CHANDLER.
I fully concur with my colleague. Mrs. Griffing is both worthy
and capable, and I trust her services will be secured.
J. M. HOWARD.
If I had this appointment to make, I would make Mrs. Griffing
Commissioner.
J. M. ASHLEY.
I know Mrs. Griffing to be capable and humane, and very devoted
to the colored race. I hope that her services may be secured.
CHARLES SUMNER.
I most cheerfully join in this recommendation.
H. WILSON,
J. N. GRIMES.
I fully concur in the above, and hope that Mrs. Griffing will
receive a conspicuous place in the Freedman's Bureau. She is the
best qualified of any person within my knowledge; her whole heart
is in the work.
B. F. WADE, SOLOMON FOOT,
IRA HARRIS, E. D. MORGAN,
W. P. FESSENDEN.
I most fully concur.
J. V. DRIGGS,
T. W. FERRY.
I fully concur in all that is said within in behalf of Mrs.
Griffing, and earnestly commend her to the favor sought.
GEO. W. JULIAN.
WASHINGTON, _July 9, 1869_.
Mrs. Griffing has for several years devoted herself with great
industry, intelligence, and success to the freed people in the
District of Columbia, and in this service she has accomplished
more good than any other one individual within my acquaintance.
When the War Department was in my charge, she rendered very
efficient aid of a humane character to relieve the wants and
sufferings of destitute freed people, and was untiring in her
benevolent exertions. Property for distribution was often placed
in her hands, or under her directions, and she was uniformly
trustworthy and skillful in its management and administration. In
my judgment, she is entitled to the most full confidence and
trust.
EDWIN M. STANTON.
JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Nov. 12, 1869_.
MY DEAR MRS. GRIFFING:--On my return from Washington I found your
kind letter of the 28th, ult. I regret much that I did not meet
with you at Washington. I know your merits. I know that no person
in America has done so much for the cause of humanity for the
last four years as you have. Your disinterested labors have saved
hundreds of poor human beings not only the greatest destitution
and misery, but from actual starvation and death. I also know
that in doing this you have not only devoted your whole time, but
all the property you have. And I know, too, that your labors are
just as necessary now as they ever have been. Others know all
this as well as I do. Secretary Stanton can vouch for it all, and
I can not doubt that Congress will not only pay you for what you
have done, but give you a position where this necessary work may
be done by you effectually. This is the very thing that ought to
be done at once. Since the Bureau has been abolished it will be
impossible to get along with the great influx of imbecility and
destitution which gathers and centers in Washington every
winter, without some one being appointed to see to it, and
certainly everybody knows that there is no one so competent for
this work as yourself. To this end I will do whatever I can, but
you know that I am now out of place, and have no influence at
Court, but whatever I can do to effect so desirable an object
will be done.
Truly yours, B. F. WADE.
SENATE CHAMBER, _April 2_.
DEAR MADAM:--I have your note of the 31st, and am very sorry to
hear that there is so much distress in the city. I shall endeavor
to bring the charter up as soon as I have an opportunity; but
while this trial is pending,[30] it is improbable that any
legislative business will be done. I am as anxious as you are to
secure its adoption.
Yours truly, CHARLES SUMNER.
MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington.
BOSTON, _27th July, 1869_.
DEAR MADAM:--The statement or memorial which you placed in my
hands was never printed. It is, probably, now on the files of the
Senate. I wish I could help your effort with the Secretary of
War. You must persevere. If Gen. Rawlins understands the case, he
will do all that you desire. Accept my best wishes, and believe
me, faithfully yours,
CHARLES SUMNER.
Will Mrs. Griffing let Mr. Sumner know what institution or person
should disburse the money appropriated?
SENATE CHAMBER,
Tuesday.
LETTERS ON THE FREEDMAN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION.
WASHINGTON, _April 8, '71_.
_To the Mayor and Board of Common Council, City of Washington,
District of Columbia_:
MESSRS.:--I have the honor to state that the aged, sick,
crippled, and blind persons, for whom the National Freedman's
Relief Association of this District partially provides, are at
this time in very great destitution, many of them in extreme
suffering for want of food and fuel. The Association has provided
clothing. It is now twelve weeks since the Government
appropriation for their temporary support for the last year was
exhausted. This Association has by soliciting contributions, up
to this time, relieved the most extreme cases, that otherwise
must have died; but the want of food is so great among at least a
thousand of these, not one of whom is able _to labor_ for a
support, that it is impossible to provide the absolute relief
they must have, by further contributions from the charitable and
the humane.
I would therefore most earnestly appeal in their behalf, that the
Hon. Council and Mayor will appropriate from the market fund for
their temporary relief one thousand dollars, to be disbursed by
the above-named association, which sum will enable these
destitute persons to subsist until, as is hoped and believed,
Congress will make the usual special appropriation for their
partial temporary support. This Association to report the use of
such money to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of
Washington, D. C.
Very respectfully, J. S. GRIFFING,
_General Agent N. F. R. Association, D. C._
TRIBUNE OFFICE, NEW YORK, _Sept. 7, 1870_.
MRS. GRIFFING:--In my judgment you and others who wish to
befriend the blacks crowded into Washington, do them great
injury. Had they been told years ago, "You _must_ find work; go
out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery. They
are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow,
and liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course
aggravates their weaknesses, when you should raise their ambition
and stimulate them to self-reliance. Unless you change your
course speedily and signally, the swarming of blacks to the
District will increase, and the argument that Slavery is their
natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened. So long as
they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they are
not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages
who would rather some one else than herself should pay her
passage to the place where she can have work, then she needs
reconstruction and awakening to a just and honest self-reliance.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.
MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington, D. C.
_Sept. 12, 1870_.
HORACE GREELEY:
DEAR SIR:--Much as I respect your judgment, and admire your
candor, I must express entire dissent with your views in
reference to those who are laboring to befriend the Freedmen, and
also of your estimate of the character of the black race.
When you condemn my work for the old slaves, who can not labor,
and are "crowded into Washington" by force of events
uncontrollable, as a "great injury," I am at a loss to perceive
your estimate of any and all benevolent action. If, to provide
houses, food, clothing, and other physical comforts, to those
broken-down aged slaves whom we have liberated in their declining
years, when all their strength is gone, and for whom no home,
family friendship, or subsistence is furnished; if this is a
"great injury," in my judgment there is no call for alms-house,
hospital, home, or asylum in human society, and all
appropriations of sympathy and material aid are worse than
useless, and demand your earnest rebuke and discountenance, and
to the unfortunates crowded into these institutions, you should
say, "You must find work, go out and seek it." So far as an
humble individual can be, I am substituting to these a freedman's
(relief) bureau; sanitary commission; church sewing society, to
aid the poor; orphan asylum; old people's home; hospital and
alms-house for the sick and the blind; minister-at-large, to
visit the sick, console the dying, and bury the dead; and wherein
I fail, and perhaps you discriminate, is the want of wealthy,
popular, and what is called honorable associations. Were these at
my command, with the field before me, it would be easy to
illustrate the practical use as well as the divine origin of the
Golden Rule.
If, in your criticism, you refer to my secondary department in
which I have labored to furnish employment to the Freedmen both
in the District and out, is it not a direct reflection upon all
efforts made for the distribution of labor? Is my course more
aggravating to the weakness of destitute unemployed freed people,
than emigrant societies, intelligence offices, benevolent ladies'
societies, and young men's Christian associations, to give work
to the poor of all nations; and lastly the Government Indian
department, that has wisely called to its aid the American
missionary, and the Quaker societies, to farm out the poor
Indians? or, if the measures put forth by these admissible agents
can raise the ambition and stimulate to self-reliance their
beneficiaries, will you be good enough to show wherein the same
means, which I claim to employ, must have the opposite effect
upon the freedmen crowded into Washington.
Is it possible that the swarming of the Irish, Swiss, and German
poor, to the city of New York, is attributable to the
intelligence offices and immigration societies of your city, and
not, as we have supposed, to the want of work and bread at home,
and is there really a danger, that in providing and calculating
for them, we shall strengthen the argument of race, while our
institutions of charity are filled with descendants of the Saxon,
the Norman, the Goth, and the Vandal? I think not.
Respectfully yours, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.
_From the New National Era._
MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING THE ORIGINATOR OF THE FREEDMEN's
BUREAU.
This truly excellent and noble woman was fitly spoken of in the
_New National Era_ just after her death, but at that early date
it was not possible to obtain the facts to prove the statement at
the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic
justice.
Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League
in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive
system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the
trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit
persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin
her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing
daunted by coldness or indifference she nobly persisted, until in
December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was
introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott,
of Massachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee
of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of
Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman's
Bureau finally passed in March, 1865, and was signed by President
Lincoln just before his assassination.
The original idea was Mrs. Griffing's; her untiring efforts gave
it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South
especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and
gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor
sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great
national charity, the Freedman's Bureau.
The following letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Giles B. Stebbins,
then in Washington, corroborates the above statements:
ROXBURY, MASS., _March 4, 1872_.
MY DEAR FRIEND: ... I was glad to see the well-merited tributes
paid by yourself and others to the memory of Mrs. Josephine S.
Griffing. She was, for a considerable period, actively engaged in
the anti-slavery struggle in Ohio, where by her rare executive
ability and persuasiveness as a public lecturer, she aided
greatly in keeping the abolition flag flying, enlightening and
changing public sentiment, and hastening the year of jubilee.
With what unremitting zeal and energy did she espouse the cause
of the homeless, penniless, benighted, starving freedmen, driven
by stress of circumstances into the national capital in such
overwhelming numbers; and what a multitude were befriended and
saved through her moving appeals in their behalf! How like an
angel of mercy must she have seemed to them all! No doubt the
formation of the Freedman's Bureau was mainly due to her
representations as to its indispensable necessity; and how much
good was done by that instrumentality in giving food, clothing,
and protection to those who were so suddenly brought out of the
house of bondage, as against the ferocity of the rebel element,
it is difficult to compute because of its magnitude. She deserves
to be gratefully remembered among "the honorable women not a
few," who, in their day and generation, have been
"Those starry lights of virtue that diffuse,
Through the dark depths of time their vital flame,"
whose self-abnegation and self-sacrifice in the cause of
suffering humanity having been absolute, and who have nobly
vindicated every claim made by their sex to full equality with
men in all that serves to dignify human nature. Her rightful
place is among "the noble army of martyrs," for her life was
undoubtedly very much shortened by her many cares and heavy
responsibilities and excessive labors in behalf of the pitiable
objects of her sympathy and regard.
Very truly yours, WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
PARKER PILLSBURY, in a letter to Mrs. Stebbins says: "The
anti-slavery conflict could never boast a braver, truer, abler
advocate than Josephine Griffing. It was always an honor and
inspiration to stand by her side, no matter how fierce the
encounter. I have seen her when an infuriated mob assailed our
Conventions, and dashed down doors, windows, seats, stoves,
tables, everything that would yield to their demoniac rage, stand
amid the ruins calm and unmoved, and with her gentle words of
remonstrance shame the intruders, until one by one they shrank
away, glad to get out of her sight.
Her beautiful home hospitalities; her warm welcome ever extended
to the faithful friends of freedom and humanity, were equal to
her unshaken courage and self-control in public assemblies. We
used to call that humble home in Litchfield, 'The Saint's Rest,'
and such it was to many a fugitive slave, as well as soldier in
his cause.
To the first demand for the enfranchisement of women in 1848, Mrs.
Griffing heartily responded, and in this reform she was ever untiring
in effort, wise in counsel, and eminent in public speech. In 1867 she
helped to organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District
of Columbia, of which she was president for years. She was also
Corresponding Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association,
and was ever considered the organizing power at Washington. She first
suggested the importance of annual conventions at the capital, in
order to influence Congressional action.
Mrs. Griffing's last appearance in public was at the May Anniversary
of the National Woman Suffrage Association, held in New York in 1871,
and so feeble was her condition that a screen was placed behind her to
enable the audience to hear her voice. At the close of the Convention
she went to the home of her childhood, in Hebron, Conn., hoping that
the bracing air of the New England hills would give her new life and
strength, until she could finish her work. But it was already
finished. She had taxed herself to the uttermost, beyond nature's
power to recuperate. In November she returned to Washington, and
enjoyed the sweet presence and tender care of her daughters until she
passed away on Feb. 18, 1872.
THE LADIES' NATIONAL COVENANT.
After the war was fairly inaugurated, the manufactories of the country
largely turned their attention to the production of material required
by the army, which, combined with the immense number of volunteers
from such avocations, and the rise in prices of all home manufactures,
created an immense import of foreign goods, which, pouring into our
country when gold was at the highest, brought to our doors a danger no
less formidable than that of the Rebellion. It was shown from official
returns, in 1863, that during a period of nine months, the imports, at
the port of New York alone, amounted to $160,000,000 in gold; equal,
including exchange, freight, insurance, etc., to twice that sum, while
our exports amounted to only $120,000,000 in paper.
This ruinous state of our trade brought on us the taunts of foreign
enemies, and roused the attention of the country to devise some method
of meeting the new danger; Congress temporarily raised duties fifty
per cent. in hopes of stemming the tide of importation. The patriotic
women of the nation, ever on the alert for methods of aiding the
country, early in 1864 called a meeting of the loyal women of
Washington, at which time an association, pledging women to the use of
home manufactures, was formed under the name of "The Ladies' National
Covenant," with offices in every State and Territory within the
national lines. Mrs. General Jas. Taylor was elected President; Mrs.
Stephen A. Douglas, Vice-President; Mrs. Rebecca Gillis and Miss
Virginia Smith, Recording Secretaries; with ten Corresponding
Secretaries, of whom Mrs. H. C. Ingersoll was the most active.
This association, formed for the purpose of encouraging domestic
manufactures, was composed at its first meeting of the wives of
members of the Cabinet and of Senators and Representatives, women of
fashion, popular authoresses, mothers who had lost their sons, and
wives who had lost their husbands. An Advisory and Organizing
Committee was appointed, consisting of women from each State and
Territory within the national line. An ADDRESS TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA
was issued, and a constitution consisting of eleven sections, together
with the following pledge, was adopted:
THE PLEDGE.
For three years, or during the war, we pledge ourselves to each
other and the country, to purchase no imported goods where those
of American manufacture can be obtained, such as "dress goods of
velvet, silks, grenadines, India crape, and imported organdies,
India lace and broche shawls, fine wrought laces and
embroideries, watches and precious stones, hair ornaments, fans,
artificial flowers and feathers, carpets, furniture, silks and
velvets, painted china, ormolu, bronze, marble, ornaments, and
mirrors."
The emblem of this Covenant was a black or gilt bee, worn as a pin
fastening the national colors, upon the hair, arm, or bosom, as a
public recognition of membership. In August of the same year the
Secretary stated that orders for the emblem, the badge of the
Covenant, were received by the manufacturer of the pin from all parts
of the Union. A meeting was held in New York, rooms opened in Great
Jones Street, and the Covenant was in a fair way to assume large
proportions. When Lee's capitulation was announced the necessity for
the Covenant ended, and with peace, trade was allowed to drift into
its natural channels.
ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.
Foremost among the women who understood the political significance of
the great conflict, was Miss Dickinson, a young girl of Quaker
ancestry, who possessed remarkable oratorical power, a keen sense of
justice, and an intense earnestness of purpose. In the heated
discussions of Anti-Slavery Conventions, she had acquired a clear
comprehension of the province of laws and constitutions; of the
fundamental principles of governments, and the rights of man. Like a
meteor, she appeared suddenly in the political horizon, as if born for
the eventful times in which she lived, and inspired by the dangers
that threatened the life of the republic.
At the very beginning of the war her radical utterances were heard at
different points in her native State.[31] Her admirable speech on the
higher law, first made at Kennett Square, and the discussion that
followed, in which Miss Dickinson maintained her position with
remarkable clearness and coolness for one of her years, were a
surprise to all who listened. The flattering reports of this meeting
in several of the Philadelphia journals introduced her at once to the
public.
On the evening of February 27, 1861, she addressed eight hundred
people in Concert Hall, Philadelphia. This was her first appearance
before so large an assembly, and the first time she had the sole
responsibility of entertaining an audience for an entire evening. She
spoke two full hours extemporaneously, and the lecture was pronounced
a success, not only by the press, but by the many notables and
professional men present. Although it was considered a marvelous
performance for a young girl, Miss Dickinson herself was mortified, as
she said, with the length of her speech and its lack of point, order,
and arrangement.
Soon after, she entered the United States Mint, to labor from seven
o'clock in the morning to six at night. Although she was ever faithful
to her duties and skillful in everything she undertook, soon becoming
the most rapid adjuster in the Mint, her radical criticisms on the war
and its leaders cost her the loss of the place. At a meeting just
after the battle of Ball's Bluff, in summing up the record, after
exonerating Stone and Baker, she said, "Future history will show that
this battle was lost not through ignorance and incompetence, but
through the treason of the commanding general, George B. McClellan,
and time will vindicate the truth of my assertion." She was hissed all
over the house, though some cried, "Go on!" "Go on!" She repeated this
startling assertion three times, and each time was hissed.
When Gen. McClellan was running against Lincoln in 1864, after she had
achieved a world-wide reputation, she was sent by the Republican
Committee of Pennsylvania to this same town, to speak to the same
people, in the same hall. In again summing up the incidents of the
war, when she came to Ball's Bluff, she said, "I say now, as I said
three years ago, history will record that this battle was lost, not
through ignorance or incompetence, but through the treason of the
commanding general, George B. McClellan." "And time has vindicated
your assertion," was shouted all over the house.
It was the speech made in 1861, that cost her her place in the mint,
for while laboring there daily with her hands, her mind was not
inactive nor indifferent to the momentous events transpiring about
her. She kept a close watch of the progress of the war, and the policy
of the Republican leaders. When ex-Governor Pollock dismissed her, he
admitted that his reason was that Westchester speech, for at that time
McClellan was the idol of the nation.[32]
With remarkable prescience all through the war, and the period of
reconstruction, Miss Dickinson took the advance position. Wendell
Phillips used to say that "she was the young elephant sent forward to
try the bridges to see if they were safe for older ones to cross."
When wily politicians found that her criticisms were applauded by
immense audiences, they gained courage to follow her lead. As popular
thought was centering everywhere on national questions, Miss Dickinson
thought less of the special wrongs of women and negroes and more of
the causes of revolutions and the true basis of government; hence she
spoke chiefly on the political aspects of the war, and thus made
herself available in party politics at once.
In the intervals of public speaking, she made frequent visits to the
Government hospitals, and became a most welcome guest among our
soldiers. In long conversations with them, she learned their
individual histories, experiences, hardships, and sufferings; the
motives that prompted them to go into the army; what they saw there;
what they thought of war in their hours of solitude, away from the
camp and the battle-field. Thus she acquired an insight into the
soldier's life and feelings, and from these narratives drew her
materials for that deeply interesting lecture on hospital life, which
she delivered in many parts of the country.
This lecture, given in Concord, New Hampshire, in the autumn of 1862,
was the turning-point of her fortunes. In this speech she proved
slavery to be the cause of the war, that its continuance would result
in prolonged suffering to our soldiers, defeat to our armies, and the
downfall of the Republic. She related many touching incidents of her
experiences in hospital life, and drew such vivid pictures of the
horrors of both war and slavery, that by her pathos and logic, she
melted her audience to tears, and forced the most prejudiced minds to
accept her conclusions.
It was on this occasion that the Secretary of the State Central
Committee heard her for the first time. He remarked to a friend at the
close of the lecture, "If we can get this girl to make that speech all
through New Hampshire we can carry the Republican ticket in the coming
election." Fully appreciating her magnetic power over an audience, he
resolved at once, that if the State Committee refused to invite her,
he should do so on his own responsibility. But through his influence
she was invited by the Republican Committee, and on the first of March
commenced her regular campaign speeches. During the four weeks before
election she spoke twenty times, everywhere to crowded, enthusiastic
audiences. Her march through the State was a succession of triumphs,
and ended in a Republican victory.
The member in the first district having no faith that a woman could
influence politics, sent word to the Secretary, "Don't send that damn
woman down here to defeat my election." The Secretary replied, "We
have work enough for her to do in other districts without interfering
with you." But when the would-be honorable gentleman saw the furor she
created, he changed his mind, and inundated the Secretary with letters
to have her sent there. But the Secretary replied, "It is too late;
the programme is arranged and published throughout the State; you
would not have her when you could, and now you can not have her when
you will."
It is pleasant to record that this man, who had the moral hardihood to
send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble
girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly
Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that
the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was awarded to Anna
Dickinson. The Governor-elect made personal acknowledgment that her
eloquent speeches had secured his election. She was serenaded,
feasted, and feted, the recipient of many valuable presents, and
eulogized by the press and the people.
New Hampshire safe, all eyes were now turned to Connecticut. The
contest there was between Seymour and Buckingham. It was generally
conceded that, if Seymour was elected, Connecticut would give no more
money or troops for the war. The Republicans were completely
disheartened. They said nothing could prevent the Democrats from
carrying the State by four thousand, while the Democrats boasted that
they would carry it by ten thousand. Though the issue was one of such
vital importance, there seemed so little hope of success, that the
Republicans were disposed to give it up without making an effort. And
no resistance to this impending calamity was made until Anna Dickinson
went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life.
She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular
sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her
by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the
warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her
likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke
were so densely packed, that Republicans stayed away to make room for
the Democrats, and the women were shut out to give place to those who
could vote. There never was such enthusiasm over an orator in this
country. The period of her advent, the excited condition of the
people, her youth, beauty, and remarkable voice, and wonderful
magnetic power, all heightened the effect of her genius, and helped to
produce this result. Her name was on every lip; ministers preached
about her, prayed for her, as a second Joan of Arc, raised up by God
to save that State to the loyal party, and through it the nation to
freedom and humanity. As the election approached, the excitement was
intense; and when at last it was announced that the State was saved by
a few hundred votes, the joy and gratitude of the crowds knew no
bounds. They shouted and hurrahed for Anna Dickinson, serenaded her
with full bands of music, sent her books, flowers, and ornaments,
manifesting in every way their love and loyalty to this gifted girl,
who through so many years had bravely struggled with poverty to this
proud moment of success in her country's cause. Some leading gentlemen
of the State who had invited her there presented her a gold watch and
chain, a hundred dollars for every night she had spoken, and four
hundred for the last night before election, in Hartford. The comments
of the press, though most flattering, give the reader but a faint idea
of the enthusiasm of the people.[33]
Fresh from the victories in New Hampshire and Connecticut, she was
announced to speak in Cooper Institute, New York. That meeting, in
May, 1862, was the most splendid ovation to a woman's genius since
Fanny Kemble, in all the wealth of her youth, beauty, and wonderful
dramatic power, appeared on the American stage for the first time.
There never was such excitement over any meeting in New York; hundreds
went away unable even to get standing places in the lobbies and outer
halls. The platform was graced with the most distinguished men and
women in the country, and so crowded that the young orator had scarce
room to stand. There were clergymen, generals, admirals, judges,
lawyers, editors, the literati, and leaders of fashion, and all alike
ready to do homage to this simple girl, who moved them alternately to
laughter and tears, to bursts of applause and the most profound
silence.
Henry Ward Beecher, who presided, introduced the speaker in his
happiest manner. For nearly two hours she held that large audience
with intense interest and enthusiasm, and when she finished with a
beautiful peroration, the people seemed to take a long breath, as if
to find relief from the intensity of their emotions. Loud cries
followed for Mr. Beecher; but he arose, and with great feeling and
solemnity, said: "Let no man open his lips here to-night; music is the
only fitting accompaniment to the eloquent utterances we have heard."
The Hutchinsons closed with one of their soul-stirring ballads, and
the audience slowly dispersed, singing the John Brown song with
thrilling effect, as they marched into the street.[34]
After her remarkable success in New York, the Philadelphia Union
League invited her to speak in that city. The invitation, signed by
leading Republicans, she readily accepted. Judge Wm. D. Kelley
presided, and a most appreciative audience greeted her. In this
address, reviewing the incidents of the war, she criticised General
McClellan as usual, with great severity. Some of his personal friends,
filled with indignation, left the house, while a derisive laugh
followed them to the door. The Philadelphia journals vied with each
other in their eulogiums of her grace, beauty, and eloquence. The
marked attention she has always received in her native city has been
most grateful to her, and honorable to her fellow-citizens.
In July, 1862, the first move was made to enlist colored troops in
Pennsylvania. A meeting was called for that purpose in Philadelphia.
Judge Kelley, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Dickinson were there, and
made strong appeals to the people of that State to grant to the
colored man the honor of bearing arms in defence of his country. The
effort was successful. A splendid regiment was raised, and the first
duty they discharged was to serenade the young orator, who had spoken
so eloquently for their race all through the war.
In September a field-day was announced at Camp William Penn. General
Pleasanton reviewed the troops. It was a brilliant and interesting
occasion, as many were about to leave for the seat of war. At the
close of the day when the people began to disperse it was noised round
that Miss Dickinson was there; a cry was heard at once on all sides,
"A speech! a speech!" The moon was just rising, mingling its pale rays
with those of the setting sun, and throwing a soft, mysterious light
over the whole scene. The troops gathered round with bristling
bayonets and flags flying, the band was hushed to silence, and when
all was still, mounted on a gun-wagon, with General Pleasanton and his
staff on one side, General Wagner and his staff on the other, this
brave girl addressed "our boys in blue." She urged that justice and
equality might be secured to every citizen in the republic; that
slavery and war might end forever and peace be restored; that our
country might indeed be the land of the free and the home of the
brave.
As she stood there uttering words of warning and prophecy, it seemed
as if her lips had been touched with a live coal from the altar of
heaven. Her inspired words moved the hearts of our young soldiers to
deeds of daring, and gave fresh courage to those about her to bid
their loved ones go and die if need be for freedom and their country.
The hour, the mysterious light, the stillness, the novel surroundings,
the youth of the speaker, all gave a peculiar power to her words, and
made the scene one of the most thrilling and beautiful on the page of
history.
In January, 1864, she made her first address in Washington. Though she
now felt that her success as an orator was established, yet she
hesitated long before accepting this invitation.[35] To speak before
the President, Chief-Justice, Judges, Senators, Congressmen, Foreign
Diplomats, all the dignitaries and honorables of the Government was
one of the most trying ordeals in her experience. She had one of the
largest and most brilliant audiences ever assembled in the Capitol,
and was fully equal to the occasion. She made a profound impression,
and her speech was the topic of conversation for days afterward. At
the close of her address she was presented to many of the
distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and chief among them the
President. This was one of the grandest occasions of her life. She was
honored as no man ever had been before. The comments of the press[36]
must have been satisfactory to her highest ambition as well as to that
of her admiring countrywomen.
One of the most powerful and impressive appeals she ever made was in
the Convention of Southern Loyalists held in Philadelphia in
September, 1866. In this Convention there was a division of opinion
between the Border and the Gulf States. The latter wanted to
incorporate negro suffrage in their platform, as that was the only
means of success for the Liberal party at the South. The former,
manipulated by Northern politicians, opposed that measure, lest it
should defeat the Republican party in the pending elections at the
North. This stultification of principle, of radical public sentiment,
stirred the soul of Miss Dickinson, and she desired to speak. But a
rule that none but delegates should be allowed that privilege,
prevented her. However, as the Southern men had never heard a woman
speak in public, and felt great curiosity to hear her, they adjourned
the Convention, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole, and
invited her to address them.
An eye-witness[37] thus describes the scene: "As the young maiden
stepped forward to deliver a speech as denunciatory as was ever
listened to against the action of the Border States, on her right sat
Brownlow, on her left John Minor Botts with his lips tightly
compressed, and his face telling plainly that he remained there from
courtesy, and would remain a patient listener to the end. She began;
and for the first time since it met, the Convention was so still that
the faintest whisper could be heard."
She had not spoken long before she declared that Maryland had no
business in the Convention, but should have been with delegates that
came to welcome. There was vehement applause from the Border States.
"This is a direct insult," shouted a delegate from Maryland. She went
on in spite of interruptions, reviewing the conduct of the Border
States with scorn, and an eloquence never equalled in any of her
previous efforts, in favor of an open, manly declaration of the real
opinion of the Convention for justice to the colored Loyalist, not in
the courts only, but at the ballot-box. The speech was in Miss
Dickinson's noblest style throughout--bold, but tender, and often so
pathetic that she brought tears to every eye. Every word came from her
heart, and it went right to the hearts of all. Kentucky and Maryland
now listened as eagerly as Georgia and Alabama; Brownlow's iron
features and Botts' rigid face soon relaxed, and tears stood in the
old Virginian's eyes; while the noble Tennesseean moved his place, and
gazed at the inspired girl with an interest and wonderment which no
other orator had moved before. She had the audience in hand, as easily
as a mother holds her child, and like the child, this audience heard
her heart beat. It was a marvelous speech. Its greatness lay in its
manner and effect, as well as its argument. When she finished, one
after another of the Southern delegates came forward and pinned on her
dress the badges of their States until she wore the gifts of Alabama,
Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland.
And thus it was from time to time that this remarkable girl uttered
the highest thought in American politics in that crisis of our
nation's history. While in camp and hospital she spoke words of
tenderness and love to the sick and dying, she did not hesitate to
rebuke the incapacity and iniquity of those in high places. She was
among the first to distrust McClellan and Lincoln, and in a lecture,
entitled "My Policy," to unveil his successor, Andrew Johnson, to the
people. She saw the scepter of power grasped by the party of freedom,
and the first gun fired at Sumter in defence of slavery. She saw our
armies go forth to battle, the youth, the promise, the hope of the
nation--two millions strong--and saw them return with their ranks
thinned and broken, their flags tattered and stained, the maimed, the
halt and the blind, the weary and worn; and this, she said, is the
price of liberty. She saw the dawn of the glorious day of emancipation
when four million African slaves were set free, and that night of
gloom when the darkest page in American history was written in the
blood of its chief. Through the nation's agony was this young girl
born into a knowledge of her power; and she drew her inspiration from
the great events of her day.
THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.
MAMMOTH PETITION.
Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement,
suspended their Conventions during the war and gave their time and
thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political
significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as
the sure, quick way of cutting the gordion knot of the rebellion. To
this end they organized a National League, and rolled up a mammoth
petition, urging Congress to so amend the Constitution as to prohibit
the existence of slavery in the United States.
From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York, they sent out
their appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large;
tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were
scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings were held
every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely
discussed, approved or condemned. Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the
Freedman's Commission, then residing in New York, aided and encouraged
this movement from the beginning, frequently speaking in the public
meetings.
That this League did a timely educational work, is manifested by the
letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in
most of the Northern States, fully endorsing its action and
principles.[38] The clearness of thinking women on the cause of the
war; the true policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining
the principles of freedom, are worthy of consideration. With this
League, Abolitionists and Republicans heartily co-operated. In a
course of lectures secured for its benefit in Cooper Institute, we
find the names of Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, William D.
Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E. P. Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Theodore
D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, Dr. Bellows, and Mrs. Frances D. Gage. Many
letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its measures,
and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of emancipation
petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press, too, was
highly complimentary. The _New York Tribune_ said: "The women of the
Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their
efforts to one object, the most important which any society can aim
at, in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never
has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a
petition."
The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and
prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, the patriotism of the
women of the League, and yet these were the same women, who when
demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for
themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent,"
"fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own
claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire
the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican
party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted."
But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women
should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the
Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues
vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long
as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt _his sex_ above
her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand
rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress,
personal appearance, character, are subjects for ridicule and
detraction.
In March, 1863, an appeal[39] to the women of the Republic, was
published in the _New York Tribune_, and in tract form extensively
circulated with "a call"[40] for a National Convention in New York,
which assembled in Dr. Cheever's church May 14th. An immense audience,
mostly women, representing a large number of the States, crowded the
house at an early hour. Miss Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to
order and nominated Lucy Stone for President; the other officers[41]
of the Convention being chosen, Mrs. Stanton made the opening address,
and stated the objects of the meeting.
Miss Anthony having received large numbers of letters[42] which it
was impossible to read, said that the one word which had come up from
all quarters showed an earnestness of purpose on the part of women to
do everything in their power to aid the Government in the prosecution
of this war to the glorious end of freedom. The President in
introducing Angelina Grimké Weld, said:
This lady, once a South Carolina slaveholder, not only gave
freedom to all her slaves twenty years ago, but has spent the
strength of her younger years in going up and down among the
people, urging the Northern States to make their soil sacred to
freedom, to so amend their laws and constitutions that slavery
can find no protection within their borders.