PLATFORMS.
My first public speech was the revelation of a talent hidden in a
napkin, and I set about putting it to usury. I wrote a lecture--"Women
and Politics"--as a reason for my anomalous position and a justification
of those men who had endorsed my right to be a political leader, and
gave sketches of women in sacred and profane history who had been so
endorsed by brave and wise men.
The lecture gave an account of the wrongs heaped upon women by slavery,
as a reason why women were then called upon for special activity, and I
never failed to "bring down the house" by describing the scene in which
the tall Kentuckian proposed to the tall Pennsylvanian that he should
horsewhip an old woman one hundred and two times, to compel her to earn
two hundred dollars with which his mightiness might purchase Havana
cigars, gold chains, etc., or to elicit signs of shame by relating the
fact of the United States government proposing to withdraw diplomatic
relations with Austria for whipping Hungarian women for political
offenses, while woman-whipping was the principal industry of our
American chivalry.
I stated that men had sought to divide this world into two
fields--religion and politics. In the first, they were content that
their mothers and wives should dwell with them, but in the second, no
kid slipper was ever to be set. Horace Mann had warned women to stand
back, saying: "Politics is a stygian pool." I insisted that politics
had reached this condition through the permit given to Satan to turn all
the waste water of his mills into that pool; that this grant must be
rescinded and the pool drained at all hazards. Indeed the emergency was
such that even women might handle shovels.
Chicago had once been in a swamp, but the City Fathers had lifted it six
feet. Politicians must "raise the grade," must lift their politics the
height of a man, and make them a habitation for men, not reptiles. At
this an audience would burst into uproarous applause.
As for the grand division, no surveyor could find the line; for no line
was possible between religion and politics. The attempt to divide them
is an assumption that there is some part of the universe in which the
Lord is not law-giver. The Fathers of the Republic had explored and
found a country they thought was outside the Divine jurisdiction, and
called it Politics. Because old world government had bowed to popes and
prelates, they would ignore Deity, and say to Omnipotence what Canute
did to the sea: "Thus far shalt thou go but no further, and here shall
thy proud waves be stayed." But God laughed them to scorn, and would
certainly dash them to pieces. The government which they had set up like
the golden image of Nebuchadnezzer, and demanded that all should bow
before it, this same government was bound to sustain men in scourging
women for chastity. Every man who voted a democratic ticket voted to put
down as insurrection any attempt to stand between the cradle and its
robber.
I never spoke of the St. Cloud trouble--there was too much else to talk
about. I was seldom interrupted by anything but applause; but in
Stillwater I was hissed for denouncing Buchanan's administration. I
waited a moment, then lowered my voice, and said I had raised a good
many goslings, and thought I had left them all in Pennsylvania, but
found some had followed me, and was sorry to have no corn for them.
There was no further interruption.
I was at that time the guest of a son of my Pittsburg friend, Judge
McMillan, who led the singing in our church, and with whom I expect to
sing "St. Thomas" in heaven. My host of that evening afterwards became
U.S. Senator from Minnesota.
A considerable portion of three winters I traveled in Minnesota and
lectured, one day riding thirty miles in an open cutter when the mercury
was frozen and the wind blew almost a gale. Have crossed houseless
prairies between midnight and morning, with only a stage driver, and I
never encountered a neglect or a rudeness: but found gentlemen in red
flannel shirts and their trowsers stuffed into the tops of their boots,
who had no knowledge of grammar, and who would, I think, have sold their
lives dearly in my defense.
Late in '60 or early in '61, I lectured in Mantorville, and was the
guest of Mr. Bancroft, editor of the _Express_, when he handed me a copy
of the New York _Tribune_, pointed to an item, and turned away. It was a
four line announcement that he who had been my husband had obtained a
divorce on the ground of desertion. I laid down the paper, looked at my
hands, and thought:
"Once more you are mine. True, the proceeds of your twenty years of
brick-making are back there in Egypt with your lost patrimony, but we
are over the Red Sea, out in the free desert; no pursuit is possible,
and if bread fails, God will send manna."
While I sat, Mrs. Bancroft came to me, caressed me, and said:
"Old things have passed away, and all things have become new."