quite remote from Mrs. Stowe's disinterested mind. As she wrote in a
letter to a friend: "Having been poor all my life, and expecting to
be poor for the rest of it, the idea of making money by a book which
I wrote just because I could not help it, never occurred to me." But
from this time forth she was to be free from the anxieties of poverty.
As the first payment of three months' sale, Mrs. Stowe received ten
thousand dollars.
The following year Professor and Mrs. Stowe went to Great Britain,
having been urgently invited to visit in many Scotch and English
houses. Even in foreign lands, Mrs. Stowe found herself known and
loved. Crowds greeted her in Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and
London. Children ran ahead of her carriage, throwing flowers to her,
and officials of the Anti-Slavery Societies met her and offered
hospitality.
A national penny offering, turned into a thousand golden sovereigns,
was presented to her on a magnificent silver salver for the advancement
of the cause for which she had written. This offering came from all
classes of people.
A personal gift which Mrs. Stowe valued highly was a superb gold
bracelet presented by the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland who
entertained her at Stafford House. It was made in the form of a slave's
shackle and bore the inscription, "We trust it is a memorial of a chain
that is soon to be broken." On two of the links were already inscribed
the dates of the abolition of slave trade and of slavery in the English
territories. Years afterward, on the clasp of the bracelet, Mrs. Stowe
had engraved the date of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing
slavery in the United States.
Upon Mrs. Stowe's return from her visit to Europe in the autumn
of 1853, she became very active in public affairs. She supported
anti-slavery lectures, established schools for the colored people,
assisted in buying ill-treated slaves and setting them free, and
arranged public meetings for the advancement of anti-slavery opinions,
using the money which had been given to her in England to support the
work. In addition, she kept up a correspondence with influential men
and women on the subject of the abolition of slavery.
The books she wrote after this were _Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands_;
_Dred_, a great anti-slavery story; _The Minister's Wooing_; _Agnes of
Sorrento_; _The Pearl of Orr's Island_; and _Old Town Folks_. All have
been widely read, but _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, though lacking in literary
form and finish, written as it was at white heat and with no thought
of anything but its object, remains her greatest work. It made the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law impossible, by making people see
slavery in all its inhumanity.
In addition to her books, Mrs. Stowe wrote an appeal to the women of
America, in which she set forth the injustice and misery of slavery,
begging all thoughtful women to use their influence to have the wicked
system abolished. Here are a few paragraphs:
What can the women of a country do? Oh! women of the free states,
what did your brave mothers do in the days of the Revolution? Did not
liberty in those days feel the strong impulse of woman's heart?
For the sake, then, of our dear children, for the sake of our common
country, for the sake of outraged and struggling liberty throughout
the world, let every woman of America now do her duty!
Nobly, indeed, did the women of America respond to her call, for
during the Civil War, which was begun before the abolition of slavery
was an accomplished fact, the women, though they went not to the war
themselves, loyally sent out their fathers, husbands and brothers. Who
shall say these women were not heroic?
After the close of the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe purchased a home in
Florida overlooking the St. John's River, where she lived during the
winter, going in summer to her old home in Hartford.
On her seventieth birthday, June 14, 1882, her publishers, Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin Company, of Boston, gave a reception for her in
the form of a garden party at the beautiful residence of ex-Governor
Claflin of Massachusetts in Newtonville, one of Boston's fine suburbs.
Here gathered men and women well known in the literary and artistic
world, eager to do honor to the woman whose life had been such an
inspiration to others, and whose work of such benefit to mankind. Mr.
Houghton made an address of congratulation and welcome, to which Henry
Ward Beecher replied. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke, and many poems and
letters from noted persons were read.
This was the last public appearance of Mrs. Stowe. Her husband died in
August, 1886, and she herself, passed away July 1, 1896, at Hartford,
at the age of eighty-four. She was buried in the cemetery of the
Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, next to her husband.
[Illustration: MARIA MITCHELL]
MARIA MITCHELL
(1818-1889)
"On the cultivation of women's minds depends the wisdom of men."
—_Richard Brinsley Sheridan_
Maria Mitchell was born on the Island of Nantucket, Massachusetts,
August 1, 1818, and to-day if you go there, you may see a monument
erected to her memory.
Her ancestors were Quakers who had fled hither from Massachusetts
because of religious persecution. Nantucket Island then belonged to
New York State, and here these good people were free to worship God as
they pleased. Almost all of the inhabitants of the Island belonged to
the Society of Friends, from which sect have sprung many of our notable
men and women, among them John G. Whittier, "the Quaker Poet," who all
his life wore the Quaker garb and spoke the language of that religious
society.
The Mitchell family were not very strict; that is, they did not wear
the plain clothes of the sect, although they probably used the "thee"
and "thou." Maria's mother was a woman of great strength of character.
Her father was a kindly gentleman, whose affection for his children was
so great that he could refuse them nothing. Often Mrs. Mitchell was
obliged to check him, fearing they would be spoiled by his indulgence.
The little girls were brought up to be industrious. They learned to
make their own clothes by making those of their dolls, and frequently
they made their own dolls, too, the eldest sister painting the faces.
Maria received the first rudiments of her education from her mother
and an excellent woman teacher, but not until she entered her father's
school, at the age of eleven, did she begin to show marked ability as a
student.
Mr. Mitchell was greatly interested in the study of astronomy, and
owned a small telescope, which he used to examine the heavens at night.
Maria was especially fond of her father's pursuit. She also had a
taste for mathematics, without which astronomy as a science cannot be
mastered, and she watched, patient and absorbed, when her father would
compute distances by means of his scientific instruments. There was
no school in the country where Maria Mitchell could be taught higher
mathematics, so she continued to study with her father.
Every fine night the telescope was placed in Mr. Mitchell's back yard,
and the neighbors would come in to gaze through it at the moon and
the planets. Little Maria was always on hand listening for scraps of
information.
In 1831, and while Maria was still a child, there occurred a total
eclipse of the sun at Nantucket. With her father, Maria observed
this eclipse through a new Dolland telescope which had been recently
purchased and, for the first time in her life, counted the seconds of
the eclipse. At that time she was studying with Mr. Cyrus Pierce, who
took a great interest in her, and who helped her in her mathematics.
At the age of sixteen she left school, becoming for a while an
assistant teacher, but she soon gave up teaching to accept the new
position of librarian in the Nantucket Atheneum. This post she
continued to fill for twenty years. She had much time while acting as a
librarian to study her favorite subject, and she used the opportunity
to advantage.
Every evening Miss Mitchell spent on the housetop "sweeping" the
heavens. One memorable evening, October 1, 1847, she had put on her
old clothes and taken her lantern to the roof as usual. After gazing
through her telescope for a few minutes, she observed an object which
she concluded must be a comet. Hurriedly she called her father, who
also examined the unusual body in the heavens and agreed with her that
it was a comet.
He immediately announced the discovery to Professor Bond of Cambridge.
It was learned afterward that the same comet had been seen in Rome by
an astronomer on October 3, and in England by another on October 7,
and still later in Germany. To Maria Mitchell was given the credit of
the first discovery, and she received the gold medal which had been
promised by the King of Denmark to the first discoverer of a telescopic
comet. This brought her letters of congratulation from astronomers in
all parts of the world.
Miss Mitchell had always had a desire to travel abroad, and as her
tastes were simple she soon saved enough from her small salary to
enable her to do so. During her visits in foreign countries, she met
many eminent scientists, among them Herschel, Airy, Mrs. Somerville,
and Humboldt. The plain Nantucket lady was perfectly at home in the
society of these distinguished people, whose tastes and occupations
were similar to her own. They all opened their observatories for her
inspection and their homes for social intercourse.
The Greenwich Observatory especially interested Miss Mitchell. It
stands in Greenwich Park, which comprises a group of hills with many
beautiful oak trees which are said to date back to the time of Queen
Elizabeth. The observatory was then in charge of Sir George Airy, who
showed Miss Mitchell all the treasures of the place, among them the
instruments used by the great astronomers Halley, Bradley, and Pond.
The meridian of Greenwich is the zero point of longitude for the
globe, and you can perhaps imagine the pleasure which Miss Mitchell
experienced in being on the spot where time is set for the whole world.
Miss Mitchell became Professor of Astronomy and Director of the
Observatory at Vassar College, where her work gave the subject a
prominence which it has never had in any other woman's college. She
was not only a famous astronomer, but a noble, inspiring woman, much
interested in the higher education of women and devoting much of her
time to advancing this work. Many a young girl can trace the success
of her life work to the impulse she received from Maria Mitchell.
At the age of sixty-nine Miss Mitchell's health began to fail and she
resigned her position in the College, going to live at her home in
Lynn, Massachusetts, where she died June 28, 1889.
[Illustration: LUCY STONE]
LUCY STONE
(1818-1893)
"Woman is a creation between men and the angels."
—_Honoré de Balzac_
In the town of West Brookfield, Massachusetts, in 1818, lived a farmer,
named Francis Stone, and his wife, a gentle and beautiful woman, whose
life was spent in devotion to her husband and in aiding him in his work
on the farm. Mrs. Stone worked continuously from early morning until
late at night, often milking eight cows after the necessary housework
was done. The family consisted of seven children. When, on August 18th,
the eighth was born, and Mrs. Stone was told that the new baby was a
girl, she said, "Oh, dear! I am sorry it is a girl. A woman's life is
so hard!"
It seems as if this little girl, who was called Lucy, must have
understood her mother's words, for, as she grew up, she showed very
clearly that she intended to try to make life easier for all women.
Her childhood was spent in doing useful work about the house and on
the farm. She cooked, swept, dusted, made butter and soap. She drove
the cows, planted seeds, weeded the garden,—in short, was never idle.
But all the time she worked in this way, Lucy was thinking deeply and
comparing her life with that of her brother at college. She pondered
deeply over questions like the following:
Why are not girls permitted to earn their living like their brothers?
Why is it that mother works so hard, and father has all the money?
Why are boys given the great benefits of a college education and girls
refused it?
She could think of no satisfactory answers. At last, gathering up her
courage, she asked her father to assist her to go to college like her
brothers. Mr. Stone was both astonished and angry. He told Lucy that
it was enough for her to learn how to read and cipher and write, as
her mother did. But Lucy persisted in her determination to gain an
education. She earned a little money by picking berries and gathering
chestnuts, and with it she bought some books. Her mother could not help
her, for, though she worked very hard, she had not a penny to bless
herself with. Her husband took all that came in through their joint
labors, and spent it as he thought best.
When Lucy had learned enough to fit her for teaching, she got a
position in a district school at a salary of one dollar per week. A
little later she was earning sixteen dollars a month, and when her
brother, who received thirty dollars a month for teaching, became ill,
Lucy took his place, receiving sixteen dollars for exactly the same
work. The committee said that sixteen dollars was enough for a woman.
Lucy Stone studied for a while at Mt. Holyoke Seminary under Mary
Lyon, and also at Wilbraham Academy, and later at Oberlin College,
Ohio, which was then the only college in the country willing to admit
women,—all the while paying her own tuition fees by means of teaching
and doing housework in boarding houses.
When the question of slavery came into prominence, Lucy Stone quickly
took her position as a friend of the slave. She taught in a school for
colored people, which was established at Oberlin, and her first public
speech was made in their behalf. Though severely criticized for her
public speaking and obliged to bear unpleasant comment because of it,
she never swerved from her idea of what she believed to be right.
Soon she was engaged by the Anti-Slavery Society, in which William
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were officers, to lecture for their
cause, and while doing so, traveled over the greater part of the United
States, speaking both for woman suffrage and for the abolition of
slavery.
But the rights of woman stood first in the heart of Lucy Stone. As a
child, she had seen her mother overruled by a stern husband, who never
allowed her an opinion contrary to his will, nor a penny to use without
his sanction.
It may have been because of this early object lesson that Lucy Stone
made up her mind never to marry; or because she thought that she could
carry on her work for the advancement of women better by being entirely
free. Nevertheless, she did consent to marry Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, a
merchant of Cincinnati, Ohio, who overcame her objections by sharing
all her views on suffrage and slavery, and they were married by Rev.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, May 1, 1855.
Before their marriage Mr. Blackwell and Lucy signed a protest which
read:
We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never
be forfeited except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and
permanent partnership and so recognized by law.
This protest was the beginning of much serious thought about the rights
of man and woman as individuals, and led the way to improved laws. In
most states, to-day, a married woman may own her own property and may
will a part of it away from her husband, if she wishes to; she may live
an individual life, also, and control equally with her husband the
education of their children.
Lucy Stone retained her maiden name, never adopting that of her
husband. Their married life proved to be remarkably happy, one child, a
daughter, being born to them.
Mrs. Stone helped to organize the American Equal Rights Association,
which grew into the American Woman Suffrage Association. William Lloyd
Garrison, George William Curtis, Colonel Higginson, Julia Ward Howe,
and other prominent people joined in the work with her. She served
as President of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and even
studied law that she might learn how to correct legal injustice to
women. In 1877, Mrs. Stone and Mr. Blackwell went to Colorado to assist
in the Woman Suffrage movement in that state. Sixteen years later the
constitutional amendment granting the suffrage to woman was carried by
popular vote, and women were given "exactly the same rights as men in
exercising the elective franchise."
Lucy Stone did not live to see success in Colorado, but she did see
school suffrage gained in twenty-two states, and full suffrage in
Wyoming. She lived, also, to see many great colleges admit women.
In the summer of 1893, Mrs. Stone was obliged to rest from her labors.
A little later she wrote Mrs. Livermore, her devoted friend and
co-worker: "I have dropped out, and you will go on without me! Good-by.
If we don't meet again, never mind. We shall meet sometime, somewhere;
be sure of that."
She passed away in the presence of her husband and her daughter, Alice,
on October 18. Her gentleness and sweetness of character had made her
beloved by all, and her great work for the advancement of woman in
intellectual, social, and political life will never be forgotten.
[Illustration: JULIA WARD HOWE]
JULIA WARD HOWE
(1819-1910)
"We all are architects of fate,
Working in these walls of time,
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme."
—_Henry W. Longfellow_
Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819, in New York City. Her father,
Samuel Ward, was a wealthy banker, and her mother a descendant of the
Marions of South Carolina, being a grand-niece of General Marion.
Both parents came from families of refined and scholarly tastes, and
little Julia directly inherited her love of good books. Her mother died
at an early age, leaving six little children, Julia, the fourth, being
then only five years old.
Julia, who from babyhood had given promise of superior intellectual
attainments, received special attention from her father. Mr. Ward
was anxious that she should know the joy which only true knowledge
and right living can give. He did not wish her to become merely a
fashionable girl with no thought of doing anything in life but amuse
herself. Every advantage was given her, therefore, for reading, and the
best teachers in music, German, and Italian were selected for her.
Julia well repaid this care. She showed great fondness for books, and
at nine years of age was studying Paley's _Moral Philosophy_ in a
class with girls twice her age. At fourteen, she was an accomplished
musician. Her friends thought she should devote her life to music, but
she was equally fond of literature. At sixteen she wrote her first
poem. Her brother, Samuel Ward, Jr., shared in all her tastes, and
together the brother and sister enjoyed the society of the most noted
musicians and literary men and women of the day, the poet Longfellow
being one of their closest friends.
The death of their beloved father brought a change in the home, and
the family went to live with an uncle, Mr. John Ward. Julia continued
to spend her time in the cultivation of her mind and in the enjoyment
of the fine arts. She excelled in the study of the German language,
reading Goethe, Schiller, Swedenborg, Kant, and other great German
poets and philosophers, and translating much of their work. She wrote
many verses and began to dream of publishing a play.
In Boston, Julia Ward was a welcome addition to the circle of
distinguished literary people then living there. She met Margaret
Fuller, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, Ralph Waldo Emerson. All were
charmed with the brilliant and intellectual young woman from New York.
Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a philanthropist and reformer, was one of this
delightful group.
Dr. Howe, a graduate of Brown University, was deeply interested in the
Greek War for Independence. He went to Greece to offer his services as
a surgeon and for the purpose of organizing hospitals, but later took
such an active part in the war that he endeared himself to the Greeks
for his assistance and sympathy. Contracting a fever, however, he was
obliged to leave Greece for a better climate. For some time he traveled
abroad, studying and attending lectures.
But to help others was his sole object in life. At that time there
were no schools for the blind in the United States. Through Dr. Howe's
influence, men of wealth became interested in this matter and helped
him to establish such a school. Going again to Europe, to investigate
such schools in foreign lands, he was temporarily turned aside from
his project by the condition of Poland, oppressed as it then was by
Prussia. In consequence of the assistance he gave this unhappy country,
he was arrested, and imprisoned for some time.
All the world knows now of Dr. Howe through his kindness to Laura
Bridgman, a child, who at the age of two years, and before she had
learned to speak, became blind and deaf through a severe illness. When
she was about eight, Dr. Howe took her into his home and taught her to
read, write, do needlework, and play the piano. His success with Laura
was so great that he, later, gave almost his entire energy to work for
feeble-minded children and in this accomplished many wonderful results.
Dr. Howe fell in love with Julia Ward. Two such souls could hardly meet
and not love each other. Though he was eighteen years older than she,
similar tastes and aims naturally united them.
Their marriage took place when Julia was twenty-four years of age. Soon
after the wedding, Dr. and Mrs. Howe made an extensive tour of Europe.
For five months they lived in Rome, where their first child was born.
On their return to Boston, Dr. Howe bought a large estate near the
Institute for the Blind, of which he was a Director, and in this happy
home were born five more children. While a devoted mother, Mrs. Howe
still found time to continue her studies, reading the Latin poets and
the German philosophers, and all the while writing essays and poems for
the magazines.
At the age of thirty-five she published her first volume of poems
entitled _Passion Flowers_, and two years later, another called _Words
for the Hour_. She also assisted her husband in editing the _Boston
Commonwealth_, an anti-slavery newspaper, for in this cause both became
leaders, being associated with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson,
and Theodore Parker.
In 1862, Mrs. Howe published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ her best known
poem, _Battle Hymn of the Republic_. This inspiring hymn reached the
prisoners in Libby Prison through Chaplain McCabe, who sang it to
celebrate a victory of the Union troops. After Chaplain McCabe was
released from prison, and while he was lecturing in Washington, he
narrated this incident. This attracted the attention of the public, so
that the beautiful hymn soon became popular throughout the country.
Later, it became the battle cry of the Union army, being sung by the
men as they marched into action.
When Colonel T. W. Higginson urged Mrs. Howe to sign a call for a Woman
Suffrage Convention to be held in Boston, she not only signed, but
attended the Convention, and later became intimately associated with
the movement, often making speeches on the subject.
She was a delegate to the Congress for Prison Reform in England,
where, besides speaking earnestly against the flogging of prisoners,
she also urged arbitration as the means of settling international
disputes. In her own country, she organized the Women's Peace Festival,
with the object of turning the attention of women to the horrors and
needlessness of war. Thus we find this remarkable woman always in the
van of progress and generally much ahead of her time.
In 1876, after a brief illness, Dr. Howe died. Mrs. Howe then took her
daughter Maud to Europe, where she remained for two years, trying by
travel to dull the sharp edge of her affliction. It was at this time
that Mrs. Howe took up the study of Greek, in which she became very
proficient, and the study of which she kept up until her last illness.
For a long period of years Mrs. Howe lectured and wrote on subjects
which concerned the social improvement of mankind.