“CHARLES W. STUBBS.”
* * * * *
Evidently the good Dean retains the humorous pluck of his old Puritan
ancestor, and if on his next visit the irate Chicagoans cut off the
offending right hand which wrote the _Outlook_ article, the dean will
good-humoredly wave the bleeding stump and cry--“Bravo Chicago!”
WOMEN LECTURERS
WOMEN LECTURERS.
After my first experience as a manager with Ann Eliza Young and my
joining the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, the field enlarged quite as rapidly
as was desirable. Boston remained the headquarters, for the New England
States maintained very largely the older lyceum courses and
organizations. Women speakers were notably in demand, quite in contrast
with the public requirements of later years. The suffrage agitation held
place in the North with anti-slavery discussions and correlative topics.
It was the twin sister of the temperance movement which Gough so
graphically and eloquently presented, and there were strong
personalities among the women lecturers. Their cause commanded, in days
of public scorn and denial, the splendid service of orators like Wendell
Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and George William Curtis, as well as
scholars and speakers like Higginson, Hale, and others whose names come
to me in crowding memories.
But their most efficient arguments for mental, civic, and industrial
equality were always best illustrated in the person and speech of their
own brilliant agitators: Lucy Stone, the incomparable Susan B. Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and a score and more of others.
There were many able women of letters and art, too; among others, Julia
Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Mrs. Scott Siddons, Clara Barton,
Charlotte Cushman, Helen Potter, Clara Louise Kellogg, Annie Louise
Gary, and Mary Proctor.
Susan B. Anthony is one of the best-known women of our times and one of
our ablest women orators. She will occupy in the history of the Woman’s
Rights movement the same position that William Lloyd Garrison held in
the history of the anti-slavery movement--the position of a sincere
pioneer whose fidelity to principle and tenacity of purpose never
faltered or failed. She deserves a place in the foremost ranks of the
champions of her sex, for she has given her whole life and her whole
heart to the work. It seems probable that these veteran women may live
to see the triumph of their cause.
[Illustration]
Miss Anthony is now eighty years young, and her vigor of youth is
constantly growing. To show that there is no rivalry between her and
Mrs. Stanton, the two great champions of woman’s rights, I submit the
following tribute from Mrs. Stanton to her life-long friend on her
eightieth birthday:
I.
My honored friend, I’ll ne’er forget,
That day in June, when first we met:
Oh! would I had the skill to paint
My vision of that “Quaker Saint”:
Robed in pale blue and silver gray,
No silly fashions did she essay:
Her brow so smooth and fair,
’Neath coils of soft brown hair:
Her voice was like the lark, so clear,
So rich, and pleasant to the ear:
The “‘Prentice hand,” on man oft tried,
Now made in her the Nation’s pride!
II.
We met and loved, ne’er more to part,
Hand clasped in hand, heart bound to heart.
We’ve travelled West, years together,
Day and night, in stormy weather:
Climbing the rugged Suffrage hill,
And bravely facing every ill:
While resting, speaking, everywhere;
Quite often in the open air;
From sleighs, ox-carts, and mayhap coaches,
Besieged with beetles, bugs and roaches:
All this for the emancipation
Of the brave women of our Nation.
III.
Now, we’ve had enough of travel,
And, in turn, laid down the gavel.
In triumph having reached fourscore,
We’ll give our thoughts to art and lore.
In the time-honored retreat,
Side by side, we’ll take a seat,
To younger hands resign the reins,
With all the honors, and the gains.
United, down life’s hill we’ll glide,
Whate’er the coming years betide;
Parted only when first, in time,
Eternal joys are thine, or mine.
The following letter sent me by Miss Anthony, just as I was putting the
finishing touches on this book, shows that she is still active enough to
give personal attention to a large correspondence:
* * * * *
“MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just found your card of Christmas and New Year’s
greeting of 1898 and 1899--among _autograph letters_--a huge pile of
them--that I have undertaken to demolish this beautiful July Sunday
morning. How your card found its way into the pile is past my
knowledge, for I am sure the rest of the envelopes are not farther back
than six weeks. It seems but a very short time since I made a general
clearing up and out of a similar pile.
“Do you remember how Henry Ward Beecher used to say he enjoyed writing
his name for the boys and girls? Well, how few there are left of the
pioneers in either anti-slavery or woman’s rights. I feel almost like a
_Spared Monument_ of both crusades.
“I hope you are well and that all is well with you.
“Very sincerely yours,
“SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
“July 22, 1900. “Rochester, N. Y.”
* * * * *
[Illustration: JULIA WARD HOWE]
Julia Ward Howe comes from a long line of Puritan
ancestry. She was an ardent worker in the anti-slavery
cause. In 1856-57 she and her husband, Dr. Howe,
edited an anti-slavery paper, _The Boston Commonwealth_, and
were leaders with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson, and
Theodore Parker. It was Dr. and Mrs. Howe who brought
about meetings in Boston for the discussion of the problems
of the Abolitionists on one side and pro-slavery advocates
on the other. Robert Toombs of Georgia, who boasted that
he would hold his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill
Monument, and Colonel Sam Houston of Texas, took part.
“I remember,” said Mrs. Howe, “we had lively times.”
All through the Kansas Free State struggle and the startling
raid at Harper’s Ferry, in which the Doctor’s name
was closely connected with that of “Old John Brown,” Mrs.
Howe was the unflinching helpmate of the brave philanthropist
and scholar with whose name her own is interwoven.
In 1861 Mrs. Howe wrote the “Battle-Hymn of the Republic.”
She gave me the manuscript, which I have yet,
and she told me how she came to write it.
“Late in the autumn of 1861, I visited the capital with a
party of friends, among whom were Governor and Mrs. Andrew,
Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Whipple, and my pastor, the Rev.
James Freeman Clarke. One day we drove out to a review
of troops some distance from the city. The day was fine and
everything passed off well; but a _sudden surprise_ on the part
of _the enemy_ interrupted the proceedings before they were
well begun. A small body of our men had been surrounded
and cut off from their companions; reinforcements were sent
to their assistance, and the expected pageant was necessarily
given up. We turned our horses’ heads homeward. For a
long distance the foot soldiers filled the road. They were before
us and behind us, and we were obliged to drive very
slowly. We presently began to sing some of the well-known
songs of the war, and among them, ‘John Brown’s Body
Lies a-Mouldering in the Grave.’ This seemed to please the
soldiers, who cried, ‘Good for you!’ and they themselves
took up the strain. Mr. Clarke said to me, ‘You ought to
write some new words to that tune.’
“I replied that I had often wished to do so.
“In spite of the excitement of the day, I went to bed and
slept as usual, but awoke next morning in the gray of the
early dawn, and, to my astonishment, found that the wished-for
lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I hastily
rose, saying to myself, ‘I shall lose this if I don’t write it
down.’ Immediately I searched for a sheet of paper and an
old stump of a pen that I had had the night before, and began
to scrawl the lines almost without looking. Having completed
that, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not without
feeling that something of importance had happened to me.”
The poem was written at Willard’s Hotel, and, set to music,
was sung by every soldier in our army.
She has spoken to French scholars and wits in their own
tongue and chief city. In Florence and Rome she has spoken
to Italian audiences, having in Rome, during her last visit,
also read two sermons to liberal congregations. She is a person
of great wit, as well as learning, being as a speaker essentially
and intellectually womanly; but she can startle her
audience even now by some unexpected and spirited outburst
of opinion that justifies her high reputation as a poet and her
noble record as a brave, clear thinker. Her intellectual activity
is unremittent. She could always have more engagements
than she desires, and, as a marked favorite, is still in request.
Mrs. Howe is the aunt of Marion F. Crawford, the sister
of a famous banker, wit, and bon vivant; the mother, too, of
a brilliant daughter who has also made her own place before
the public.
She is past eighty years of age, and yet, if I said to her,
“Mrs. Howe, I have an engagement for you to speak in Omaha
next Monday night,” she would be there.
She is a great traveller and a great woman, and still available
for the lyceum.
Mrs. Howe has devoted her life untiringly to everything
that elevates humanity. For thirty years she has been lecturing
in all parts of the United States, and has always shown,
herself the elegant, well-bred, highly educated woman.
At the tenth annual reunion of the Medal of Honor Legion
of the United States, held in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn,
Tuesday evening, September 11, 1900, Mrs. Howe was
present and received such a welcome as she will probably
never forget. Despite the fact that the temperature ranged
away up into the nineties the great auditorium was crowded.
Over every available space in the entire building were draped
American flags whose folds across the front of the boxes and
across the proscenium were held in place by golden eagles
with outstretched wings. On the speaker’s desk was an immense
bouquet of lilies, which was presented to Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe after the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had
been sung.
The members of the Legion, numbering over two hundred,
occupied seats on the front of the stage to the right and to
the left of the speaker’s desk. Seated back of them and rising
tier upon tier clear back to the wall were four hundred
bright-faced young ladies, all in dainty gowns of white, who led
the inspiring singing as Mrs. Howe was conducted on the arm
of Col. Willis L. Ogden to the speaker’s stand from the box
on the right of the stage. While the band played her hymn
the great audience arose and greeted her with cheers and
storms of applause that were long continued.
After the singing of the hymn and after Mrs. Howe had
taken her seat at the front of the stage, Mr. James McKean,
in a few eloquent words, presented her the massive bouquet
of lilies. He said:
“Mr. Chairman, after the inspiring words of the ‘Battle
Hymn of the Republic,’ any words from, me must, indeed,
seem trivial and inopportune; but the committee in charge of
this reception request me in their behalf, and on behalf of this
great audience, and on behalf of our distinguished guests on
this occasion, to express the infinite pleasure given us that we
have here present that lady who was inspired to write this
noble hymn to the tune of which the armies of the Republic
have marched in the past and will march forever to victory
and success.
“Some of us can recall the first appearance of this magnificent
hymn and have participated in that discussion of the line,
‘In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea.’
There was a contention on the one side that reference was had
to the Mayflower, which carried the spirit of Christianity across
the ocean and planted on our shores the institutions of liberty
and glory. I suppose the true interpretation was the great
hymnology of Bethlehem, the meaning of the place where
‘Christ was born across the sea.’ Whether it have one meaning
or the other, we feel thankful that you have woven into
that beautiful hymn that reference to lilies. Perhaps that line
has suggested to the committee that they ask you to receive
to-night, as a very slight token of their appreciation, this bouquet
of lilies. Their beauty is temporal, their fragrance is
ephemeral, but be sure, in presenting them to you, it is a token
of our everlasting gratitude for what you have done and an
appreciation that you are able to be here to-night.”
Mrs. Howe, in a voice that was heard distinctly in every
part of the great Academy of Music, replied as follows:
“My dear sir and you defenders of the country--my country--I
am happy to be here to-night and in the presence of
this great multitude thank you for your reception to me.
When you were fighting in the field I was one of the women
who at home was praying for you. We were anxious every
time you entered a contest, but that dear old flag has never
been dishonored. I remember going to Washington just after
the war broke out and I thought, ‘What can I do?’ I had
children and I was obliged to look out for my soldiers at
home, but I still wondered what I could do. It was at this
time that the hymn which you have sung came to me, and if it
has cheered and made you happy I thank God for it. I am
glad there are so many of you left and I am glad that I am
here to see you.
“Some of you I know. I am now only an aged matron, but
I thank God that your courage and patriotism is to be handed
down to the future, and we are certain that the flag will go
nowhere except on honorable errands, and when once gone it
shall never be recalled. God bless you all.” (Great
applause.)
Mrs. Howe was born in New York, May 27, 1819. She is
therefore now in her eighty-second year.
Julia Ward Howe will be long remembered for her work
for women, for literature, and in the anti-slavery cause; but
she will be most loved and longest remembered for her inspiring
“Battle Hymn of the Republic”:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
REFRAIN.--Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.--REFRAIN.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.”--REFRAIN.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat:
O be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.--REFRAIN.
In the beauties of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.--REFRAIN.
Anna E. Dickinson, from her first appearance until she retired from the
lecture field, was without question the “Queen of the Lyceum.” She made
her début as a speaker early in the war. Attending a Quaker secular
meeting, or a woman’s rights meeting held under Quaker auspices, when
she was hardly out of short clothes, she heard a man make a bitter,
sarcastic speech in opposition to granting women equal political rights.
[Illustration]
“I got madder and madder,” said Anna, in telling the story, “and just as
soon as he sat down I jumped up like a Jack-in-a-box and began to reply
to his tirade. As I spoke I left the pew and walked down the aisle to
where he sat, and shook my fist in his face as I continued to answer
him. I had no idea of speaking at all, and was as much astonished as
anybody at what I did.”
That settled it. There was no escaping her destiny after that. The
speech astonished every one who heard it by its splendid rhetoric and
logical force. She was invited everywhere after that. When Fort Sumter
was fired on, she found her true vocation, for no one loved the Union
more passionately than this young Quaker girl, and an assault upon it
fired her soul with the intensest fervor. She took the stump for the
Republicans in New England, and created a cyclone of patriotic
enthusiasm wherever she went. The Democrats gave her the credit of
changing Vermont from a Democratic to a Republican State.
She went from there to Connecticut, and was equally successful in
arousing political patriotism and in urging men to volunteer. East and
West, wherever she appeared in the Northern States, the same story was
told. Everywhere she was recognized as an oratorical Joan of Arc.
During and after the war she lectured in regular courses, and became so
popular that only Gough and Beecher rivalled her as a lyceum favorite;
but it was on war topics that she was heard at her best. Then, in
pleading for the Union, she spoke and looked like one inspired, and
never failed to thrill and enthrall her audiences. In vituperation and
denunciation she had no rival among living orators. In politics she had
a “level head.” The power of her arguments was surpassed only by the
force of her anathemas.
This great woman had a passion for the stage, and after having
established a just claim to be regarded as one of the greatest actors in
a true sense in her country’s history, she yearned to win the reputation
of a great player on the mimic stage. Of course she failed. The stern
and stalwart personality, the imperious individuality that made her a
great factor in the history of her day, disqualified her for excellency
on the stage, and not even her most devoted friends could conceal or
deny the fact that she was a dead failure. “With all her skill as an
orator, and with all her ability as a writer, Anna Dickinson broke down
utterly when she attempted to win Thespian laurels.
[Illustration: MARY A. LIVERMORE]
Mrs. Livermore, still a favorite in her seventy-ninth year, is the most
successful woman on the platform I have known. Interested actively in
her husband’s pastoral and editorial work as a leading Universalist
minister, Mrs. Livermore was one of the first American women to fill a
pulpit or occupy an editorial position. She had given her public
“testimony” against chattel slavery before her marriage, upon her return
home from Virginia, where, in the early forties, she had been occupied
as a governess. Her career as a lecturer, however, fairly began with the
closing years of the Kansas strife and the first election of Abraham
Lincoln. Indeed, I first saw Mary A. Livermore among the reporters in
the Wigwam in Chicago in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was first nominated
for President.
At that time she was the busiest woman in the Northwest, editing her
husband’s paper, carrying on a regular correspondence for other
journals, writing books and magazine articles, managing hospitals and
homes, while advancing an extended temperance agitation. Withal her home
was always attended to. The civil war found the largest of place for
this great-brained woman. At the request of President Henry W. Bellows
of the United States Sanitary Commission, she, with her friend, Miss
Jane O. Hoge of Chicago, became associates in the Northwest and
co-operated in all the vast labors of both sanitary and Christian
commissions.
Soon after being placed in charge of the Northwestern branch of the
United States Sanitary and Christian Commission, she, with a few other
women, went to Washington to talk with President Lincoln.
“Can no woman go to the front?” Mrs Livermore asked.
“No civilian, either man or woman, is permitted by _law_,” said Mr.
Lincoln. But the great heart of the greatest man in America was superior
to the law, and he placed not a straw in their way.
Mrs. Livermore’s first broad experience of the war was after the battle
of Fort Donelson. There were no hospitals for the men, and the wounded
were hauled to the steamers in rough Tennessee wagons, most of them
dying before they reached St. Louis. Some poor fellows were chopped out
of the frozen mud where they had been lying from Saturday morning until
Sunday evening.
She asked a blue-eyed lad of nineteen, with both legs and arms
shattered:
“How did it happen that you were left so long?”
“Why, you see they could not stop to bother with us. _They had to take
the fort._”
The Sanitary and Christian Commission expended about $50,000,000 during
the war. Of this the women raised the greater portion, and Mrs.
Livermore was one of the most efficient helpers in raising the money.
She went among the people and solicited funds and supplies of every
kind.
One night it was arranged that she should speak in Dubuque, Iowa, that
the people in that State might hear direct from their soldiers at the
front. When she arrived, instead of finding a few women, she found a
large church packed with men and women eager to listen. The governor of
the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken to a
mixed assembly. It was arranged that a prominent statesman present
should jot down a few facts from her lips, and then, as best he could,
tell the audience the experiences of the woman who had been on the
battlefields amid the wounded and dying. As they were about going on the
platform, the gentleman said:
“Mrs. Livermore, I have heard you say at the front that you would give
your all for the soldiers--a foot, a hand, or a voice. Now is the time
to give your voice.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I will try.”
When she rose to speak, the great crowd before her seemed blurred and
dark. She could not even hear her own voice, but, as she went on, the
needs of the soldiers crowded upon her. She forgot all fear, and for two
hours held her audience spell-bound. Men and women wept, and patriotism
was rampant.
At eleven o’clock $8,000 was pledged, and then, at the suggestion of the
presiding officer, they remained until one o’clock to perfect plans for
a fair, from which they cleared $60,000. After this, Mrs. Livermore
spoke in all the cities, helping to organize many of the more than
12,500 aid societies formed during eighteen months.
As money was more and more needed, Mrs. Livermore decided to try a
Sanitary Commission Fair in Chicago, then her home. The women said, “We
will raise $25,000,” but the men laughed at this as an impossibility.
The farmers were visited and solicited to give vegetables and grain.
Fourteen of Chicago’s largest halls were hired. The women had gone into
debt $10,000, and the men of the city began to think and declare them
crazy. The Board of Trade called on them and advised that the Fair be
given up; the debts should be paid and the men would give the $25,000
when, in their judgment, it was needed.
The women thanked them courteously, but pushed forward in their work.
It had been arranged that the farmers should come on the opening day, in
a procession, with their gifts of vegetables. Of this plan the
newspapers made great sport, calling it the “potato procession.”
The day came: The school children had a holiday, the bells were rung;
one hundred guns were fired, and the whole city gathered to see the
“potato procession.”
Finally it arrived--great loads of cabbage and onions, and over four
thousand bushels of potatoes. The wagons each bore a motto draped in
black, with the words:
“WE BURIED A SON AT DONELSON,”
“OUR FATHER LIES AT STONE RIVER,”
and other similar inscriptions. The flags on the horses’ heads were
bound with black. The women, who rode beside a husband or son, were
dressed in deep mourning. When the procession stopped at Mrs.
Livermore’s house, the jeers were over, and the dense crowd wept like
children.
Six public halls were filled with things for sale, while eight were
closed so that no other attraction might compete with the Fair.
Instead of $25,000, the women cleared over $100,000! Then Cincinnati
followed with a Fair, making $225,000; Boston, $380,000; New York,
$1,000,000; Philadelphia, $200,000 more than New York.