FEMININE RECONSTRUCTION
During the era which is generally known in the political history of our
country as the "Reconstruction Period," there came about many and
significant changes in the status and thought of the women of our land,
particularly in the Southern portion thereof. It was a period of honest
error on the part of those who guided the destinies of the nation, and
the errors made by them, largely founded on the old base of
misunderstanding of actual conditions, reacted upon the womanhood of the
South and prolonged the sectional animosity which still held its place
of prejudice and bitterness in our midst. Justice of judgment, as far as
applied to national issues and affairs, was unknown; hence, amelioration
of existent conditions, always the work of wise and tolerant public
opinion, was impossible. During that period the South, and with it its
women, passed through greater stress and suffering than even the days of
the Civil War had brought upon it.
In the North there were no such hampering conditions to development,
therefore there was progress in all social matters. Society, as
generally termed, became re-formed and settled down to its old pursuits
and ambitions; but there had come a great difference in its conditions.
The era of centralization which had dawned with the close of the
Revolution had again passed away. Never again, as far as we can see and
foresee, was Washington to be the social centre of the country. The
traditions of the White House had been overthrown, and the leadership of
the social world was not to be looked for from that quarter as of old.
For the future, the mistress of the White House might be in theory "the
first lady of the land," but she was no longer to be at the head of a
court or even a coterie. The social glory of Washington had departed.
Society resumed its ways all over our country; but when American women
were spoken of there was no longer in the mind of speaker or listener
the inevitable suggestion of the social world as generally recognized.
The term had emerged from its narrowness of meaning and had resumed all
its old inclusiveness; North and South, East and West, it was recognized
that American womanhood includes society, and not society American
womanhood. And this recognition of a great truth helped the coming of a
new era which was hard at hand.
Meanwhile, America was two countries, joined in a force-born alliance
but with no true union, far less unity. And of all the manifestations of
this deplorable fact, none was so convincing as the bearing of our
womankind in their attitude toward those of the opposite section. The
women of the South steadfastly refused to be "reconstructed." The same
feeling was prevalent among the men of that section; but it was at its
height among the women, who utterly refused to pretend to any feeling of
loyalty to the Union, and, worse yet, did not affect to conceal their
hatred of all things Northern. Among the evils which Reconstruction had
brought in its train was the advent in the South of a type of Northern
woman, entirely honest in her enthusiasm in the cause of the negro and
entirely ignorant of the true methods to further that cause. She came
armed with a thousand ill-founded prejudices, and she calmly proceeded
to work upon the lines suggested by those prejudices, with utter
disregard of the real conditions which she desired to ameliorate and
with dense ignorance of the true tendencies and nature of the people,
white and black, among whom she worked. Lacking the long line of racial
traditions and experiences which alone could give grasp of the
situation, she took council of her preconceived ideas only, and from her
darkness of ignorance and prejudice believed that she could shed light
into benighted souls. She was honest to a fault; but her honesty was
based in the supreme folly which believes that it can better see into
the nature of things than they to whom those things have been life-long
conditions. Seeing her, the Southern woman naturally believed that she
was a type of the womanhood of the North,--which she was not. Hearing
her reports, written from a standpoint utterly fatal to their truth or
even fairness, of the existent culture in the conquered country, the
Northern woman believed that her accounts gave a true picture of the
conditions of civilization and thought prevailing in the South,--which
they did not. So increased the poison of misunderstanding in the veins
of both sections.
The Southern woman was rebellious; the Northern woman was intolerant.
Were the women alone to be consulted, there was small hope of ever
fusing into one the severed elements which theoretically composed the
nation. And yet, because of conditions arising from the deplorable state
of things which then existed, the women were to become, though only
gradually and not of set purpose, the dominating constituents in such
fusion. The mills of the gods were grinding and the grist was to prove
of sustenance to the country in unlooked-for ways. Before following to
its end the movement which began in want and need, however, it may be
well to cast a glance at the conditions which gave to that movement its
rise and direction.
Not only had the South become deeply impoverished as a result of the
long struggle and of the loss of its slaves, but it was suffering from
many of the evils which the cooler heads among statesmen, North and
South, had foreseen as the result of the sudden emancipation of the
negroes. Moreover, there had been imported into the Southland a most
undesirable element in the persons and families of those who were
contemptuously termed "carpet-baggers," and these were, unhappily, in
the ascendant in matters political and wished to become so in matters
social. It was a time of the rule of the demos in its worst form--the
_demos_ which has broken loose from restraint and has turned upon its
former masters as its natural prey. As a consequence of all these
things, society as once known did not exist in the South. The social
element was of course present and recognized; but it was unable to find
expression in its wonted manner. The man who once had lived upon the
labors of his dependents was now forced to earn his own bread, generally
in scanty quantity, by his own work, manual or mental; and his wife, who
had once glittered resplendent in the social circle and had found her
every desire as well as need supplied almost as quickly as formed, was
now compelled to assume even more than the normal duties of the typical
housewife and to bend all her energies toward eking out the small
subsistence which her husband was able to provide. Naturally, under such
uncongenial circumstances, there was little thought of social gathering
or function, except in a very few of the larger towns, which refused to
abandon their ways because of poverty. Such a town was New Orleans, with
its brilliant circles of Creoles. In general, however, there was no
attempt to emulate the gaiety of the capital of Louisiana; the women of
the South faced with courage the conditions which were imposed upon
them, but they could not make merry in their sadly altered
circumstances.
In the North the effects of the war were of course less severely felt;
but still there were effects detrimental to the interests of society as
generally understood. Many a home had lost its chief worker and felt the
sting of poverty as a consequence. The war had cost the North great
treasure of money as well as blood, and the cost, while never thought of
with a pang of regret, was often present to the consciousness of the
people who bore its results. There was less impulse of gaiety among all
classes; there was a graver trend of thought than ever before, and there
was the recognition of past peril and present loss. These changes
affected the women more than the men. The latter indeed felt but little
of the detrimental consequences of the war, for the most part taking up
their lives where they had temporarily put them aside to spend
themselves in the service of their country. The women, however, where
they felt the stress at all, felt it severely. Aside from their stricken
hearts, there were problems of everyday life presented to them which
clamored for solution, if that life were not to be made worse than a
burden. In far better case than their sisters of the South, they yet had
sufficient cause for gravity of thought and call of courage. Many were
the fortunes that had been made during the war by Northern men who
battened upon the needs of their country; but the more diffused loss of
sustenance more than overbalanced even these fortunes and swayed the
scale to the side of loss instead of gain in the totality of result.
Before considering the results which accrued from these conditions,
North and South, it may be interesting to turn aside for a moment to
make record of one of the most picturesque figures among American
womanhood of that day, even though her fame was but local. About 1815
there was born in the city of Baltimore, of Irish parentage, an infant
who was named Margaret Gaffney. She married young, and in 1836 went with
her husband, whose name was Haughery, to New Orleans. Left a penniless
widow in less than a year, she entered into the service of the city
orphan asylum as a domestic, and when the second building was erected
the Sisters, finding her faithful and intelligent, placed her in charge
of the large dairy which was a part of the establishment. Soon she
became associated with all the labors of the Sisters and by her efforts
materially contributed to free the establishment from debt. When this
had been done she opened a dairy on her own account, and in 1866 added a
bakery to her business. She made money with a rapidity which was
accountable only by the wide celebrity which she had gained by her
labors in the cause of the orphans, for she was known far and wide as
"Margaret, the Orphans' Friend." She retained the simplicity of her
thought and life throughout, herself driving the cart by means of which
her bread and milk were distributed, and all the money that she made was
contributed to the cause of the forsaken children whom she loved. She
died in 1882, and to her was erected the first monument to a woman ever
reared in the United States. As the first woman to be thus honored she
deserves to be remembered by more than local affection; and it speaks
well for our country that the pioneer shaft raised to a woman did not
commemorate the triumphs of intellect or even militant bravery, but the
labors and unselfishness of one who could not so much as write her name,
signing with a cross the will by which she made her last gift to the
orphans--Protestant as well as Catholic, for her large soul knew of them
nothing but that they were in need of care--of the city of New Orleans.
Even yet, in these days of rush and bustle, New Orleans has not
forgotten the woman whom it knew by the simple name of "Margaret,"
neglecting further identification of title; for to New Orleans there was
but one Margaret, and the name carried unique meaning, even as would
that of a reigning queen.
To return from this substitution of the individual for the general:
Reconstruction, in a political sense, was happily of brief life in the
South; but Feminine Reconstruction, which had its birth in the same time
as the political, was destined to prove lasting in its work and effects.
There was need of complete reconstruction, of thought as well as
society, if woman were not to be a clog rather than an aid to the
efforts of man; for the conditions which had enabled the latter, at
least in the South, to look upon woman as the companion only for his
leisure had disappeared, while in both sections there were left
destitute thousands of women, with mouths which must be fed, both of
themselves and of little ones. Moreover, in both sections the home was
no longer the inevitable and perfect refuge which it had been. Either
the father, the breadwinner, had been swept away by the destroying tide
of war, together with the brothers upon whom the home might still have
leaned, or he was so disabled in body or purse that he could not care
for those who by nature were dependent upon him. These conditions did
not press so heavily upon the Northern homes, since in that section
there was plenty of work for willing hands and the men had little
difficulty in obtaining a sufficient living for their households; but in
the South those conditions were widespread. They were imperative in
their instant demands; they must be satisfied; but how?
Only one answer met the necessities of the case; the women must work.
For themselves, and often for their households, they must win support;
the young girls, just verging upon womanhood, must go out from the homes
where they had been so carefully and tenderly nurtured and face the
battle for independence. It is difficult for us in these days of broader
thought to understand the horror with which the women of the South
contemplated this necessity. For a woman of the "upper classes"--and it
must be remembered that, in the South, there was practically no middle
class at that period--to labor for money was, in the eyes of the
Southern lady, reared in all the prejudices and traditions of affluence,
a real degradation. For herself she might have borne it uncomplainingly,
as she had borne so many other hardships; but for her daughters it was
terrible in her thought. To guard them from the rough touch of the world
had been one of her first duties; now she must learn to fit them, if
possible, for that contact, she must send them out to fight for their
hands in the strife of existence. Elder as well as younger women were
thus forced to fight; but it was for the latter, not for themselves,
that the elders felt the stress. They had learned in hard schools to
endure; but their daughters had been shielded as well as might be even
in the nearest coming of hardship and peril, and they could not bear the
thought of removing from those daughters their watchful and tender care.
The younger women themselves faced the situation with more courage; but
that they were daunted by the prospect cannot be denied. They were eager
to contribute to the support of those who had thus far cherished them;
they grudged no pain of labor to effect this end; but they recoiled from
the actual going out into the world, alone and unaided, to meet its
coarseness and lack of sympathy. Yet, the need once acknowledged and
proved, they met it firmly. They still retained some prejudices as to
the limits within which it was possible for a lady to labor and retain
her claim to the title she valued; they had not at a bound attained to
the independence of thought and action which is a mark of womanhood in
the days in which we of the present live; but they were ready to do all
that within those limits fell to their hands, if so they might relieve
their parents of part of the burden which weighed so heavily upon them.
Thus, in the pangs of bitter necessity, was born among women the era of
the worker. It was an era which was to last to the present and to reach
into the future as far as the eye of prophecy can penetrate; but, like
all infants, it was feeble at birth and even its first steps were
tottering and uncertain. The beginnings of the true Feminine
Reconstruction were made under stress of circumstance and not of choice;
but they were none the less admirable in result, though slower in
attaining thereto. This was the fruit of the Civil War, its great gift
to the womanhood of our land. That fruit first blossomed in the South,
since here there was the greater need; and her daughters went out from
their homes into the crowded marts of business and claimed a share in
the work of men. Not at first; indeed, the more radical impulse in this
wise came from the North, where also conditions had changed since the
first half of the century. The Southern girl saw but little proper
direction for her efforts beyond the profession of education; she went
out as teacher or governess, and considered that thus she had reached
the uttermost bourne of possibility in this wise. But the educational
circle became so thronged that on its margin, vainly endeavoring to
enter, stood a countless throng of girls and women who must work or be a
burden upon those they loved, if even this shameful refuge was open to
them. So perforce they turned away, battling with their prejudices, to
seek other employment; and when they had found it they discovered to
their relief and delight that they had gained rather than lost caste in
the eyes of the world, even of their own circles.
Under varying conditions but to similar purpose, there was an equal
movement among Northern womanhood. Timidly at first, for they too had
their prejudices to conquer, the women of the North sought to enter into
the great competition for the means of existence; and, having once
tasted independence, they found it sweet. There was almost the same
hesitancy and the same circumscription of womanly calling in the North
as in the South; but the Northern woman, with her stronger sense of
independence in right-doing, sooner shook herself free from the shackles
of tradition. Had there been equal need in both sections, the North
would doubtless have taken and maintained the lead in the emancipation
of women from the servitude of the obligations of caste as in those days
held; but because of the greater incentive among the women of the South
these were in the van in the new movement until that movement became so
general that there was no longer front or rear thereto. That time was
not long in coming; revolutionary as were its theories, the country had
long unconsciously been prepared for them, and when they were set up
they were almost universally acknowledged as the proper standard. There
still remained some whose prejudices in this respect were irrefragable,
but they gradually found themselves in a constantly weakening minority.
The worker in the hive of humanity found herself not only tolerated, as
she had hoped as the best possible, but honored, even more than the
queen bees; she found herself, though originally forced there by
circumstances, in an environment which was in all ways congenial to the
best of her nature. Not a little of this result, it must be proudly
admitted, was owing to the chivalry of the American man. With all
respect, as all courtesy, he welcomed to participation in his pursuits
the woman whom he had looked upon as by training and even nature cut off
from such participation, and he gladly embraced the opportunity to prove
to the women of the land that his deference for their sex was not
limited to the bounds of the drawing room, but was a thing which was
unlimited in application. With their contact with the world of affairs
thus made easy for them by those upon whose hitherto exclusive territory
they were intruding, the women of America found their new life not only
tolerable but pleasant.
That "the ages call and heroes come" has risen to the dignity of an
apothegm; but if "inventions" were substituted for "heroes" in the
saying it would be at least as true and perhaps of more practical value
and meaning. It does not appear that the typewriter has ever been
mentioned as one of the determining factors of our present feminine
status, but that it deserves such credit does not admit of a doubt. That
invention, whose use is now so nearly universal that it is difficult to
remember that it has been with us but a scant twenty years, came at the
psychological moment in the history of American womanhood. It opened, as
nothing else, an avenue for the direction of feminine effort in the
struggle for existence; and it displayed its possibilities just at the
period when the supply of women workers began far to exceed the demand.
There were still recognized limitations to female effort, far straiter
than those now laid down, if indeed any limitations, other than those
drawn by physical conditions can be said now to exist. As formerly in
educational circles, so now in those of affairs there was overcrowding
among the women who sought work; and just in time to relieve the stress
there was opened a new field of labor, peculiarly adapted to the
feminine nature and need, in the manipulation of the novel instrument of
record. Quickly was the field seized and cultivated by the eager women;
and it not only was itself rich in harvest, but it led into new and
hitherto uncultivated fields of effort, and from the time of the
acceptance of the typewriter as a necessity of business, the position of
women in the world of affairs was assured and established.
Before the nineteenth century had passed the eighth mile-stone of its
existence the foundation of Feminine Reconstruction had been laid in
enduring material, and each succeeding lustrum saw the edifice arise in
fairer and more definite proportions. So accustomed to the new status of
women did we soon become that we failed to recognize how radical was the
change which had taken place in the general conception of the sphere of
womanhood. The very fact that there was no definite and determined
movement looking to the desired end made for success. The woman worker
did not come with demand for equality of recognition, with parades and
conventions and speeches; she simply entered upon the field which she
desired to possess, and made it her own by right. Therefore that right
was instantaneously recognized, and there was tacit acceptance, which is
the most significant and enduring of all.
Meanwhile, the "reformers" among women had not been idle. In many
respects true reformation had taken place: legislation had from time to
time assured women of equal rights in property--in some respects had
even recoiled to the opposite extreme and had given to the married
woman, whose property was once entirely under the control of her
husband, immunity from just responsibilities and made her lot in this
respect far more enviable and secure than that of the man whose rights
she shared.
Though somewhat too radical in effect, the spirit of these things was
admirable, and women had cause for self-gratulation upon the success of
their efforts to be safeguarded and recognized in their just claims. Had
the efforts of the "reformers" stopped here there could have been but
praise for their work and its aims; but this was not the case. More and
more insistent became the cry for equal footing with the men in matters
which were not generally deemed within the sphere of femininity. The
advocates of female suffrage in particular uplifted their voices and
would not cease their clamor, though disowned by a majority of their own
sex. Near the beginning of the tenth decade of the century a large
number of the women of Massachusetts, to show their lack of sympathy
with the radicals, even formed themselves into a "Ladies' Anti-Suffrage
League." Yet even this open enmity to their cherished schemes among
those who were most concerned did not deter the "reformers." In 1884,
when political excitement reached its post-bellum height, Mrs. Belva
Lockwood, a female practitioner of law in Washington, actually announced
her candidacy for the presidential chair; and though she did not
ultimately go to the poll, she took the stump in her own behalf and in
all other respects emulated the male candidates for the chief
magistracy. This was the climax of feminine effort in politics and
doubtless had its deterrent effect in making disciples to the theory of
female suffrage.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a type of her class. Born in 181 5, and
living until 1902, nearly the whole of her long life was devoted to the
promulgation and attempt to establish theories of feminine equality with
men in all respects of "rights." She was one of those restless spirits
which find in fanaticism of some kind their needful expression, and she
was never weary of the notoriety and prominence that accrued from her
efforts for the "emancipation" of women. Her share in the first "Woman's
Rights" convention has already been mentioned. In 1854 she addressed the
New York legislature on the subject of the rights of married women, and
in 1860 she again appeared in the halls of law as an advocate for
divorce on the grounds of drunkenness. In 1867 she canvassed Kansas, and
in 1874 Michigan, when the question of female suffrage was submitted to
the decision of the people of those States. In 1868 she was actually a
candidate for a seat in Congress on the platform of female suffrage, and
though she failed in gaining a place in the legislature of the nation
she subsequently appeared many times before that legislature, or
committees thereof, in behalf of her cherished theory. These efforts,
together with her incumbency of numerous presidencies in societies and
leagues in sympathy with her purposes, made up the sum of her existence.
Personally she was a woman of many attractions of mind and bearing; but
her fanaticism in the fancied cause of those who repudiated, in their
vast majority, her theories and aims made her the type of the restless
and radical "reformer."
Yet the efforts of the would-be female reformers, however, misdirected
in their immediate aims, did good in rousing the women of America to a
consideration of their place in the polity, at least in social matters,
of the commonwealth. They might not care to go to the polls and struggle
with the men in an endeavor openly to rule the destinies of the nation;
but they awoke to a more intelligent interest than they had yet
displayed in the theories of government and the social questions of the
day. Many of the chief reforms in these matters which have come about
during late years have been effected by the direct influence of the
women of our land, either in leagues or through recognized and
accredited representatives of some accepted theories. This feminine
interest in the larger affairs of the nation, rightly directed to
internal rather than to external policy, has been admirable in its
results, and its rise and development may in large measure be attributed
to the incitement of the reform spirit in other matters. That the
concerted efforts of the women of our country are invariably wisely
directed and governed it were folly to claim; but the spirit is always
pure and high, and the masculine framers or advocates of legislation are
not of such unimpeachable wisdom that they can afford to speak in scorn
of the theories or work of the other sex in this wise, while at least
the motives that direct feminine influence cannot be called into
question. The tendency of the sex toward extremes, and its blindness, in
its sense of the desirability of its end, to the unwisdom of the means
which it sometimes proposes to use, are occasionally in evidence in
matters of paternal legislation, but these are but minor flaws, and are
not incorrigible.
So the era of Feminine Reconstruction resulted in the working woman and
the thinking woman; and on these lies much of the hope of our country's
future. Thus the Civil War at the last brought us a blessing instead of
a curse, and in the halls of labor American womanhood once more joined
hands in amity and became a unit in its aims and influence.