RECEPTION OF THE VISITER.
While preparing matter for the first number of the _Visiter_, I had time
to think that so far as any organization was concerned, I stood alone. I
could not work with Garrison on the ground that the Constitution was
pro-slavery, for I had abandoned that in 1832, when our church split on
it and I went with the New School, who held that it was then
anti-slavery. The Covenanters, before it was adopted, denounced it as a
"Covenant with death and an agreement with hell." I had long ago become
familiar with the arguments on that side, and I concluded they were
fallacious, and could not go back to them even for a welcome into the
abolition ranks.
The political action wing of the anti-slavery party had given formal
notice that no woman need apply for a place among them. True, there was
a large minority who dissented from this action, but there was division
enough, without my furnishing a cause for contention. So I took pains to
make it understood that I belonged to no party. I was fighting slavery
on the frontier plan of Indian warfare, where every man is
Captain-lieutenants, all the corporals and privates of his company. I
was like the Israelites in the days when there was no king, and "every
man did that which, was right in his own eyes."
It seemed good unto me to support James G. Birney, for President, and to
promulgate the principles of the platform on which he stood in the last
election. This I would do, and no man had the right or power to stop
me. My paper was a six column weekly, with a small Roman letter head, my
motto, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward," the
names of my candidates at the head of the editorial column and the
platform inserted as standing matter.
It was quite an insignificant looking sheet, but no sooner did the
American eagle catch sight of it, than he swooned and fell off his
perch. Democratic roosters straightened out their necks and ran
screaming with terror. Whig coons scampered up trees and barked
furiously. The world was falling and every one had "heard it, saw it,
and felt it."
It appeared that on some inauspicious morning each one of three-fourths
of the secular editors from Maine to Georgia had gone to his office
suspecting nothing, when from some corner of his exchange list there
sprang upon him such a horror as he had little thought to see.
A woman had started a political paper! A woman! Could he believe his
eyes? A woman! Instantly he sprang to his feet and clutched his
pantaloons, shouted to the assistant editor, when he, too, read and
grasped frantically at his cassimeres, called to the reporters and
pressmen and typos and devils, who all rushed in, heard the news, seized
their nether garments and joined the general chorus, "My breeches! oh,
my breeches!" Here was a woman resolved to steal their pantaloons, their
trousers, and when these were gone they might cry "Ye have taken away my
gods, and what have I more?" The imminence of the peril called for
prompt action, and with one accord they shouted, "On to the breach, in
defense of our breeches! Repel the invader or fill the trenches with our
noble dead."
"That woman shall not have _my_ pantaloons," cried the editor of the big
city daily; "nor my pantaloons" said the editor of the dignified weekly;
"nor my pantaloons," said he who issued manifestos but once a month;
"nor mine," "nor mine," "nor mine," chimed in the small fry of the
country towns.
Even the religious press could not get past the tailor shop, and
"pantaloons" was the watchword all along the line. George D. Prentiss
took up the cry, and gave the world a two-third column leader on it,
stating explicitly, "She is a man all but the pantaloons." I wrote to
him asking a copy of the article, but received no answer, when I replied
in rhyme to suit his case:
Perhaps you have been busy
Horsewhipping Sal or Lizzie,
Stealing some poor man's baby,
Selling its mother, may-be.
You say--and you are witty--
That I--and, tis a pity--
Of manhood lack but dress;
But you lack manliness,
A body clean and new,
A soul within it, too.
Nature must change her plan
Ere you can be a man.
This turned the tide of battle. One editor said, "Brother George, beware
of sister Jane." Another, "Prentiss has found his match." He made no
reply, and it was not long until I thought the pantaloon argument was
dropped forever.
There was, however, a bright side to the reception of the _Visiter_.
Horace Greeley gave it respectful recognition, so did N.P. Willis and
Gen. Morris in the _Home Journal_. Henry Peterson's _Saturday Evening
Post, Godey's Lady's Book_, Graham's and Sargeant's magazines, and the
anti-slavery papers, one and all, gave it pleasant greeting, while there
were other editors who did not, in view of this innovation, forget that
they were American gentlemen.
There were some saucy notices from "John Smith," editor of _The Great
West_, a large literary sheet published in Cincinnati. After John and I
had pelted each other with paragraphs, a private letter told me that
she, who had then won a large reputation as John Smith, was Celia, who
afterwards became my very dear friend until the end of her lovely life,
and who died the widow of another dear friend, Wm. H. Burleigh.
In the second number of the _Visiter_, James H. McClelland, as secretary
of the county convention, published its report and contributed an able
article, thus recognizing it as the much needed county organ of the
Liberty Party.