ANTI-SLAVERY WOMEN
My father was a subscriber to the _National Era_, the Anti-Slavery
weekly that was published in Washington City before the war by Dr.
Gamaliel Bailey. Being the youngest member of the family, I usually
went to the post-office for the paper on the day of its weekly
arrival. One day I brought it home and handed it to my father, who, as
the day was warm, was seated outside of the house. He was soon
apparently very much absorbed in his reading. A call for dinner was
sounded, but he paid no attention to it. The meal was delayed a little
while and then the call was repeated, but with the same result. At
last the meal proceeded without my father's presence, he coming in at
the close and swinging the paper in his hand. His explanation, by way
of apology, was that he had become very much interested in the opening
installment of a story that was begun in the _Era_, and which he
declared would make a sensation. "It will make a renovation," he
repeated several times.
That story, it is almost needless to say, was _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and
it is altogether needless to say that it fully accomplished my
father's prediction as to its sensational effects. Since the
appearance of the Bible in a form that brought it home to the common
people, there has been no work in the English language so extensively
read. The author's name became at once a cynosure the world over. When
Henry Ward Beecher, the writer's distinguished brother, delivered his
first lecture in England, he was introduced to the audience by the
chairman as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher Stowe.
The way in which the idea of writing the book came to the author was
significant of the will that produced it. A lady friend wrote Mrs.
Stowe a letter in which she said, "If I could use a pen as you can, I
would write something that would make the whole nation feel what an
accursed thing slavery is." When the letter reached its destination,
and Mrs. Stowe came to the passage above quoted, as the story is told
by a friend who was present, she sprang to her feet, crushed the
letter in her hand in the intensity of her feeling, and with an
expression on her face of the utmost determination, exclaimed, "If I
live, I will write something that will do that thing."
The circumstances under which she executed her great task would
ordinarily be looked upon as altogether prohibitory. She was the wife
of a poor minister and school-teacher. To eke out the family income
she took boarders. She had five children of her own, who were too
young to be of any material assistance, and, in addition, she
occasionally harbored a waif that besought her protection when fleeing
from slavery. Necessarily the most of her time was spent in the
kitchen. There, surrounded by meats and vegetables and cooking
appliances, with just enough of the common deal table cleared away to
give space for her writing materials, she composed and made ready for
the publisher by far the most remarkable work of fiction this country
has produced. Slavery is dead, but Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece lives, and
is likely to live with growing luster as long as our free institutions
survive, which it is to be hoped will be forever.
One of the most remarkable early workers in the Abolition cause was
Mrs. Lucretia Mott, a little Quaker woman of Pennsylvania. The writer
saw her for the last time shortly before her death. She was then
acting as presiding officer of an "Equal Rights"--meaning equal
suffrage--meeting. Sitting on one hand was Susan B. Anthony, and on
the other Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and next to one of them sat a
stately negro.
She was then an aged woman, but her eye seemed to be as bright and her
movements as alert as they had ever been. Framed by her becoming
Quaker bonnet, which she retained in her official position, the face
of the handsome old lady would have been a splendid subject for an
artist.
Mrs. Mott gave much of her time and all the means she could control to
the cause of the slave. She was an exceedingly spirited and eloquent
speaker. On one lecturing tour she traveled twenty-four hundred miles,
the most of the way in old-fashioned stage-coaches. By a number of
taverns she was denied entertainment.
Like other pioneers in the same movement, Mrs. Mott was the victim of
numerous mobbings. One incident shows her courage and resourcefulness.
An Anti-Slavery meeting she was attending was broken up by rowdies,
and some of the ladies present were greatly frightened. Seeing this
Mrs. Mott asked the gentleman who was escorting her, to leave her and
assist some of the others who were more timid. "But who will take care
of you?" he asked. "This man," she answered, lightly laying her hand
on the arm of one of the roughest of the mob. The man, completely
surprised, responded by respectfully conducting her through the tumult
to a place of safety.
But before Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Mott had taken up the work for the
bondman, two other remarkable women had become interested in his
cause. Their history has some features that the most accomplished
novel-writer could not improve upon. They were sisters, known as the
Grimké sisters, Sarah and Angelina, the latter becoming the wife of
Theodore W. Weld, a noted Abolition lecturer. They were daughters of a
Judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, their early home being
in Charleston.
The family was of the highest pretension, being related to the Rhetts,
the Barnwells, the Pickenses, and other famous representatives of the
Palmetto aristocracy. It was wealthy, and of course had many slaves.
The girls had their colored attendants, whose only service was to wait
upon them and do their bidding. That circumstance finally led to
trouble.
At that time there was a statute in South Carolina against teaching
slaves to read and write. The penalties were fine and imprisonment.
The Grimké girls, however, had little respect for or fear of that
law. The story of their offending is told by Sarah.
Her attendant, when she was little more than a child, was a colored
girl of about the same age. She says,
"I took an almost malicious satisfaction in teaching my little
waiting maid at night, when she was supposed to be occupied in
combing and brushing my long hair. The light was put out, the
key-hole screened, and flat on our stomachs before the fire, with
the spelling-book under our eyes, we defied the law of South
Carolina."
South Carolina was long noted for its rebels, but it never had a more
interesting one than the author of the above narrative; nor a braver
one.
As the sisters grew up, they more and more showed their dislike of
slavery and their disposition to aid such colored people as were
within their circle. Such conduct could not escape observation, and
the result was their banishment from their Southern home. They were
given the alternative of "behaving themselves" or going North to live.
They were not long in deciding, and they became residents of
Philadelphia. Here they joined the Quakers, because of their
coincidence of views on the slavery question. They had before been
Presbyterians, having been raised as such. They became industrious and
noted Anti-Slavery lecturers. To one of them is to be credited a
notable oratorical achievement.
Being no longer able to ignore the growing Anti-Slavery sentiment of
its constituency, the Massachusetts Legislature in 1838 appointed a
committee to consider the part that that State had in the subject of
slavery, and especially in connection with slavery in the District of
Columbia. The committee asked an expression of their views from those
entertaining different sentiments on the subject. The Anti-Slavery
people invited Angelina Grimké to represent them. The sessions of the
committee were to be held in the great hall of the Legislature in the
State House, where, up to that time, no woman had ever spoken. The
chairman of the committee, however, consented that Miss Grimké should
be heard, and the fact that she was a woman probably helped to bring
out an immense audience.
She spoke for two hours, and then, being asked to speak again, at the
next meeting, she spoke for two hours more. The impression she
produced may be inferred from the fact that the chairman of the
committee was in tears nearly the whole time she was speaking. The
effect upon all who heard her was admitted to be very great.
The sincerity of these women was put to an unusual test. They had a
brother who remained in South Carolina, where he was a prominent
citizen and a large slave-owner. Like many sharing the privileges of
"the institution," he led a double life. He was married to a white
woman by whom he had children. He also had a family by a colored woman
who was one of his slaves. In his will he bequeathed his slave family
to a son by his lawful wife, with the stipulation that they should not
be sold or unkindly treated.
Of these things the Grimké sisters knew nothing until after the war
which had freed their illegitimate relatives. Then all the facts came
to their knowledge. What should they do about it? was the question
that immediately confronted them. Should they--"Carolina's high-souled
daughters," as Whittier describes them, and not without some part in
the pride of the family to which they belonged--acknowledge such a
disreputable relationship? Not a day nor an hour did they hesitate.
They sent for their unfortunate kinspeople, accepted them as blood
connections, and took upon themselves the duty of promoting their
interests as far as it was in their power to do so.
Although a quiet and retiring person, and, moreover, so much of an
invalid that the greater part of her time was necessarily passed in a
bed of sickness, a New England woman had much to do with publishing
the doctrines of Abolitionism, through the lips of the most eloquent
man in the country. She was the wife of Wendell Phillips, the noted
Anti-Slavery lecturer.
"My wife made me an Abolitionist," said Phillips. How the work was
done is not without its romantic interest.
It was several years before he made his meteoric appearance before the
public as a platform talker, and while yet a law student, that
Phillips met the lady in question. The interview, as described by one
of the parties, certainly had its comical aspect. "I talked
Abolitionism to him all the time we were together," said Mrs.
Phillips, as she afterwards related the affair. Phillips listened, and
that he was not surfeited nor disgusted appears from the fact that he
went again and again for that sort of entertainment.
When Phillips asked for her hand, as the story goes, she asked him if
he was fully persuaded to be a friend of the slave, leaving him to
infer that their union was otherwise impossible.
"My life shall attest the sincerity of my conversion," was his gallant
reply.