THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
I sometimes feel as if words could not express the comfort and
instruction which have come to me in the later years of my life from two
sources. One of these has been the better acquaintance with my own sex;
the other, the experience of the power resulting from associated action
in behalf of worthy objects.
During the first two thirds of my life I looked to the masculine ideal
of character as the only true one. I sought its inspiration, and
referred my merits and demerits to its judicial verdict. In an
unexpected hour a new light came to me, showing me a world of thought
and of character quite beyond the limits within which I had hitherto
been content to abide. The new domain now made clear to me was that of
true womanhood,--woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her
opposite, man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and
purpose, as a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and
every human responsibility. This discovery was like the addition of a
new continent to the map of the world, or of a new testament to the old
ordinances.
"Oh, had I earlier known the power, the nobility, the intelligence which
lie within the range of true womanhood, I had surely lived more wisely
and to better purpose." Such were my reflections; yet I must think that
the great Lord of all reserved this new revelation as the crown of a
wonderful period of the world's emancipation and progress.
It did not come to me all at once. In my attempts at philosophizing I at
length reached the conclusion that woman must be the moral and spiritual
equivalent of man. How, otherwise, could she be entrusted with the awful
and inevitable responsibilities of maternity? The quasi-adoration that
true lovers feel, was it an illusion partly of sense, partly of
imagination? or did it symbolize a sacred truth?
While my mind was engaged with these questions, the civil war came to an
end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full
dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to
open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the
ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face?
While I followed, rather unwillingly, this train of thought, an
invitation was sent me to attend a parlor meeting to be held with the
view of forming a woman's club in Boston. I presented myself at this
meeting, and gave a languid assent to the measures proposed. These were
to hire a parlor or parlors in some convenient locality, and to furnish
and keep them open for the convenience of ladies residing in the city
and its suburbs. Out of this small and modest beginning was gradually
developed the plan of the New England Woman's Club, a strong and stately
association destined, I believe, to last for many years, and leaving
behind it, at this time of my writing, a record of three decades of
happy and acceptable service.
While our club life was still in its beginning, I was invited and
induced to attend a meeting in behalf of woman suffrage. Indeed, I had
given my name to the call for this meeting, relying upon the assurance
given me by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, that it would be
conducted in a very liberal and friendly spirit, without bitterness or
extravagance. The place appointed was Horticultural Hall. The morning
was inclement; and as I strayed into the hall in my rainy-day suit,
nothing was further from my mind than the thought that I should take any
part in the day's proceedings.
I had hoped not to be noticed by the officers of the meeting, and was
rather disconcerted when a message reached me requesting me to come up
and take a seat on the platform. This I did very reluctantly. I was now
face to face with a new order of things. Here, indeed, were some whom I
had long known and honored: Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Colonel
Higginson, and my dear pastor, James Freeman Clarke. But here was also
Lucy Stone, who had long been the object of one of my imaginary
dislikes. As I looked into her sweet, womanly face and heard her earnest
voice, I felt that the object of my distaste had been a mere phantom,
conjured up by silly and senseless misrepresentations. Here stood the
true woman, pure, noble, great-hearted, with the light of her good life
shining in every feature of her face. Here, too, I saw the husband whose
devotion so ably seconded her life-work.
The arguments to which I now listened were simple, strong, and
convincing. These champions, who had fought so long and so valiantly for
the slave, now turned the searchlight of their intelligence upon the
condition of woman, and demanded for the mothers of the community the
civil rights which had recently been accorded to the negro. They asked
for nothing more and nothing less than the administration of that
impartial justice for which, if for anything, a Republican government
should stand.
When they requested me to speak, which they did presently, I could only
say, "I am with you." I have been with them ever since, and have never
seen any reason to go back from the pledge then given. Strangely, as it
then seemed to me, the arguments which I had stored up in my mind
against the political enfranchisement of women were really so many
reasons in its favor. All that I had felt regarding the sacredness and
importance of the woman's part in private life now appeared to me
equally applicable to the part which she should bear in public life.
[Illustration: LUCY STONE
_From a photograph by the Notman Photographic Company._]
One of the comforts which I found in the new association was the relief
which it afforded me from a sense of isolation and eccentricity. For
years past I had felt strongly impelled to lend my voice to the
convictions of my heart. I had done this in a way, from time to time,
always with the feeling that my course in so doing was held to call for
apology and explanation by the men and women with whose opinions I had
hitherto been familiar. I now found a sphere of action in which this
mode of expression no longer appeared singular or eccentric, but simple,
natural, and, under the circumstances, inevitable.
In the little band of workers which I had joined, I was soon called upon
to perform yeoman's service. I was expected to attend meetings and to
address audiences, at first in the neighborhood of Boston, afterwards in
many remote places, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis. Among those who led
or followed the new movement, I naturally encountered some individuals
in whom vanity and personal ambition were conspicuous. But I found
mostly among my new associates a great heart of religious conviction and
a genuine spirit of selfsacrifice.
My own contributions to the work appeared to me less valuable than I had
hoped to find them. I had at first everything to learn with regard to
public speaking, and Lucy Stone and Mrs. Livermore were much more at
home on the platform than I was. I was called upon to preside over
conventions, having never learned the rules of debate. I was obliged to
address large audiences, having been accustomed to use my voice only in
parlors. Gradually all this bettered itself. I became familiar with the
order of proceedings, and learned to modulate my voice. More important
even than these things, I learned something of the range of popular
sympathies, and of the power of apprehension to be found in average
audiences. All of these experiences, the failures, the effort, and the
final achievement, were most useful to me.
In years that followed I gave what I could to the cause, but all that I
gave was repaid to me a thousandfold. I had always had to do with women
of character and intelligence, but I found in my new friends a clearness
of insight, a strength and steadfastness of purpose, which enabled them
to take a position of command, in view of the questions of the hour.
Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of
woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in
the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in
Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always
guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of
her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A.
Livermore,--all these things combined to give to our platform a novel
and sustained attraction. Noble men, aye, the noblest, stood with us in
our endeavor,--some, like Senator Hoar and George S. Hale, to explain
and illustrate the logical sequence which should lead to the recognition
of our citizenship; others, like Wendell Phillips, George William
Curtis, and Henry Ward Beecher, able to overwhelm the crumbling defenses
of the old order with the storm and flash of their eloquence.
We acted, one and all, under the powerful stimulus of hope. The object
which we labored to accomplish was so legitimate and rational, so
directly in the line of our religious belief, of our political
institutions, that it appeared as if we had only to unfold our new
banner, bright with the blazon of applied Christianity, and march on to
victory. The black man had received the vote. Should the white woman be
less considered than he?
During the recent war the women of our country had been as ministering
angels to our armies, forsaking homes of ease and luxury to bring succor
and comfort to the camp-hospital and battlefield. Those who tarried at
home had labored incessantly to supply the needs of those at the front.
Should they not be counted among the citizens of the great Republic?
Moreover, we women had year after year worked to build, maintain, and
fill the churches throughout the land with a patient industry akin to
that of coral insects. Surely we should be invited to pass in with our
brothers to the larger liberty now shown to be our just due.
We often spoke in country towns, where our morning meetings could be but
poorly attended, for the reason that the women of the place were busy
with the preparation of the noonday meal. Our evening sessions in such
places were precious to school-teachers and factory hands.
Ministers opened to us their churches, and the women of their
congregations worked together to provide for us places of refreshment
and repose. We met the real people face to face and hand to hand. It was
a period of awakened thought, of quickened and enlarged sympathy.
I recall with pleasure two campaigns which we made in Vermont, where the
theme of woman suffrage was quite new to the public mind. I started on
one of these journeys with Mr. Garrison, and enjoyed with him the great
beauty of the winter landscape in that most lovely State. The evergreen
forests through which we passed were hung with icicles, which glittered
like diamonds in the bright winter sun. Lucy Stone, Mr. Blackwell, and
Mrs. Livermore had preceded us, and when we reached the place of
destination we found everything in readiness for our meeting. At one
town in Vermont some opposition to our coming had been manifested
beforehand. We found, on arriving, that the chairman of our committee of
arrangements had left town suddenly as if unwilling to befriend us. A
vulgar and silly ballad had been printed and circulated, in which we
three ladies were spoken of as three old crows. The prospect for the
evening was not encouraging. We deliberated for a moment in the anteroom
of our hall. I said, "Let me come first in the order of exercises, as I
read from a manuscript, and shall not be disconcerted even if they throw
chairs at us." As we entered some noise was heard from the gallery. Mr.
Garrison came forward and asked whether we were to be given a hearing or
not. Instantly a group of small boys were ejected from their seats by
some one in authority. Mrs. Livermore now stepped to the front and
looked the audience through and through. Silence prevailed, and she was
heard as usual with repeated applause. I read my paper without
interruption. The honors of the evening belonged to us.
I remember another journey, a nocturnal one, which I undertook alone, in
order to join the friends mentioned above at a suffrage meeting
somewhere in New England. As I emerged from the Pullman in the cold
twilight of an early winter morning, carrying a heavy bag, and feeling
friendless and forlorn, I met Mrs. Livermore, who had made the journey
in another car. At sight of her I cried, "Oh, you dear big Livermore!"
Moved by this appeal, she at once took me under her protection, ordered
a hotel porter to relieve me of my bag, and saw me comfortably housed
and provided for. It was fortunate for us that the time of our
deliverance appeared to us so near, as fortunate perhaps as the
misinterpretation which led the early Christians to look daily for the
reappearing on earth of their Master.
Among my most valued recollections are those of the many legislative
hearings in which I have had the privilege of taking part, and which
cover a period of more than twenty years. Mr. Garrison, Lucy Stone, and
Mr. Blackwell long continued to be our most prominent advocates,
supported at times by Colonel Higginson, Wendell Phillips, and James
Freeman Clarke. Mrs. Livermore was with us whenever her numerous lecture
engagements allowed her to be present. Mrs. Cheney, Judge Sewall, and
several lawyers of our own sex gave us valuable aid. These hearings were
mostly held in the well-known Green Room of the Boston State House, but
a gradual _crescendo_ of interest sometimes led us to ask for the use of
Representatives' Hall, which was often crowded with the friends and
opponents of our cause. Among the remonstrants who spoke at these
hearings occasionally appeared some illiterate woman, attracted by the
opportunity of making a public appearance. I remember one of these who,
after asking to be heard, began to read from an elaborate manuscript
which had evidently been written for her. After repeatedly substituting
the word "communionism" for "communism," she abandoned the text and
began to abuse the suffragists in language with which she was more
familiar. When she had finished her diatribe the chairman of the
legislative committee said to our chairman, Mr. Blackwell, "A list of
questions has been handed to me which the petitioners for woman suffrage
are requested to answer. The first on the list is the following:--
"If the suffrage should be granted to women, would not the ignorant and
degraded ones hasten to crowd the polls while those of the better sort
would stay away from them?"
Mr. Garrison, rising, said in reply, "Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that
the question just propounded is answered by the present occasion. Here
are education, character, intelligence, asking for suffrage, and here
are ignorance and vulgarity protesting against it." This crushing
sentence was uttered by Mr. Garrison in a tone of such bland simplicity
that it did not even appear unkind.
On a later occasion a lady of excellent character and position appeared
among the remonstrants, and when asked whether she represented any
association replied rather haughtily, "I think that I represent the
educated women of Massachusetts," a goodly number of whom were present
in behalf of the petition.
The remonstrants had hearings of their own, at one of which I happened
to be present. On this occasion one of their number, after depicting at
some length the moral turpitude which she considered her sex likely to
evince under political promise, concluded by saying: "No woman should be
allowed the right of suffrage until _every_ woman shall be perfectly
wise, perfectly pure, and perfectly good."
This dictum, pronounced in a most authoritative manner, at once brought
to my mind the homely proverb, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander;" and I could not help asking permission to suggest a single
question, upon which a prominent Boston lawyer instantly replied: "No,
Mrs. Howe, you may not [speak]. We wish to use all our time." The
chairman of the committee here interposed, saying: "Mr. Blank, it does
not belong to you to say who shall or shall not be heard here." He
advised me at the same time to reserve my question until the
remonstrants should have been fully heard. As no time then remained for
my question, I will ask it now: "If, as is just, we should apply the
test proposed by Mrs. W. to the men of the community, how long would it
be before they could properly claim the privilege of the franchise?"
_Du reste_, the gentleman in question, with whom my relations have
always been entirely friendly, explained himself to me at the close of
the hearing by saying: "I treated you as I would have treated a man
under similar circumstances."
I now considered my occupations as fully equal to the capacity of my
time and strength. My family, my studies, and my club demanded much
attention. My elder children were now grown up, and some social
functions were involved in this fact, such as chaperonage, the giving of
parties, and much entertainment of college and school friends.
Nevertheless, a new claimant for my services was about to come upon the
scene. In the early summer of the year 1868, the Sorosis of New York
issued a call for a congress of women to be held in that city in the
autumn of the same year. Many names, some known, others unknown to me,
were appended to the document first sent forth in this intention. My own
was asked for. Should I give or withhold it? Among the signatures
already obtained, I saw that of Maria Mitchell, and this determined me
to give my own.
Who was Maria Mitchell? A woman from Nantucket, and of Quaker origin,
who had been brought to public notice by her discovery of a new comet, a
service which the King of Denmark had offered to reward with a gold
medal. This prize was secured for her through the intervention of Hon.
Edward Everett. She had also been appointed Professor of Astronomy at
Vassar College.
What was Maria Mitchell? A gifted, noble, lovable woman, devoted to
science, but heartloyal to every social and personal duty. I seemed to
know this of her when I knew her but slightly.
At the time appointed, the congress assembled, and proved to be an
occasion of much interest. Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour were prominent
among the speakers heard at its sessions. I viewed its proceedings a
little critically at first, its plan appearing to me rather vast and
vague. But it had called out the sympathy of many earnest women, and the
outline of an association presented was a good one, although the
machinery for filling it up was deficient. Mrs. Livermore was elected
president, Mrs. Wilbour chairman of executive committee, and I was glad
to serve on a sub-committee, charged with the duty of selecting topics
and speakers for the proposed annual congress.
Mrs. Livermore's presidency lasted but two years, her extraordinary
success as a lecturer making it impossible for her to give to the new
undertaking the attention which it required. Mrs. Wilbour would no doubt
have proved an efficient aid to her chief, but at this juncture a change
of residence became desirable for her, and she decided to reside abroad
for some years. Miss Alice Fletcher, now so honorably known as the
friend and champion of our Indian tribes, was a most efficient
secretary.
The governing board was further composed of a vice president and
director from each of the States represented by membership in the
association. The name had been decided upon from the start. It was the
Association for the Advancement of Women, and its motto was: "Truth,
Justice, and Honor."
[Illustration: MARIA MITCHELL
_From a photograph._]
Maria Mitchell succeeded Mrs. Livermore in the office of president. I
think that the congress held in Philadelphia in the Centennial year was
the occasion of her first presiding. Her customary manner had in it a
little of the Quaker shyness, but when she appeared upon the platform
the power of command, or rather of control, appeared in all that she
said or did. In figure she was erect and above middle height. Her dress
was a rich black silk, made after a plain but becoming fashion. The
contrast between her silver curls and black eyes was striking. Her voice
was harmonious, her manner at once gracious and decided. The question of
commencing proceedings with prayer having been raised, Miss Mitchell
invited those present to unite in a silent prayer, a form of worship
common among the Friends.
The impression made by our meetings was such that we soon began to
receive letters from distant parts of the country, inviting us to
journey hither and thither, and to hold our congresses east, west,
north, and south. Our year's work was arranged by committees, which had
reference severally to science, art, education, industrial training,
reforms, and statistics.
Our association certainly seemed to have answered an existing need.
Leading women from many States joined us, and we distributed our
congresses as widely as the limits of our purses would allow. Journeys
to Utah and California were beyond the means of most of our workers, and
we regretfully declined invitations received from friends in these
States. In our earlier years our movements were mainly west and east. We
soon felt, however, that we must make acquaintance with our Southern
sisters. In the face of some discouragement, we arranged to hold a
congress in Baltimore, and had every reason to be satisfied with its
result. Kentucky followed on our list of Southern States, and the
progressive women of Louisville accorded us a warm welcome and a three
days' hearing in one of the finest churches of the city. To Tennessee,
east and west, we gave two visits, both of which were amply justified by
the cordial reception given us. In process of time Atlanta and New
Orleans claimed our presence.
Among the many mind-pictures left by our congresses, let me here outline
one.
The place is the court-house of Memphis, Tenn., which has been
temporarily ceded for our use. The time is that of one of our public
sessions, and the large audience is waiting in silent expectancy, when
the entrance of a quaint figure attracts all eyes to the platform. It is
that of a woman of middle height and past middle age, dressed in plain
black, her nearly white hair cut short, and surmounted by a sort of
student's cap of her own devising. Her appearance at first borders on
the grotesque, but is presently seen to be nearer the august. She turns
her pleasant face toward the audience, takes off her cap, and unrolls
the manuscript from which she proposes to read. Her eyes beam with
intelligence and kindly feeling. The spectators applaud her before she
has opened her lips. Her aspect has taken them captive at once.
Her essay, on some educational theme, is terse, direct, and full of good
thought. It is heard with close attention and with manifest approbation,
and whenever, in the proceedings that follow, she rises to say her word,
she is always greeted with a murmur of applause. This lady is Miss Mary
Ripley, a public school teacher of Buffalo city, wise in the instruction
of the young and in the enlightenment of elders. We all rejoice in her
success, which is eminently that of character and intellect.
I feel myself drawn on to offer another picture, not of our congress,
but of a scene which grew out of it.
The ladies of our association have been invited to visit a school for
young girls, of which Miss Conway, one of our members, is the principal.
After witnessing some interesting exercises, we assemble in the large
hall, where a novel entertainment has been provided for us. A band of
twelve young ladies appear upon the platform. They wear the colors of
"Old Glory," but after a new fashion, four of them being arrayed from
head to foot in red, four in blue, and four in white. While the John
Brown tune is heard from the piano, they proceed to act in graceful dumb
show the stanzas of my Battle Hymn. How they did it I cannot tell, but
it was a most lovely performance.
In the year 1898, for the first time since its first meeting, our
association issued no call for a congress of women. The reasons for our
failure to do so may be briefly stated. Some of our most efficient
members had been removed by death, some by unavoidable circumstances.
But more than this, the demands made upon the time and strength of women
by the women's clubs, which are now numerous and universal, had come to
occupy the attention of many who in other times had leisure to interest
themselves in our work. The biennial conventions of the general
federation of women's clubs no doubt appear to many to fill the place
which we have honorably held, and may in some degree answer the ends
which we have always had in view. Yet a number of us still hold
together, united in heart and in hand. Although we have sadly missed our
departed friends, I have never felt that the interest or value of our
meetings suffered any decline. The spirit of those dear ones has seemed,
on the contrary, to abide among us, holding us pledged to undertake the
greater effort made necessary by their absence. We still count among our
members many who keep the inspiration under which we first took the
field. We feel, moreover, that our happy experience of many years has
brought us lessons too precious to hide or to neglect.
The coming together either of men or of women from regions widely
separate from each other naturally gives occasion for comparison. So far
as I have known, the comparisons elicited by our meetings have more and
more tended to resolve imagined discords into prevailing harmony. The
sympathy of feeling aroused by our unity of object has always risen
above the distinctions of section and belonging. Honest differences of
opinion, honestly and temperately expressed, tend rather to develop good
feeling than to disturb it. I am glad to be able to say that sectional
prejudice has appeared very little, if at all, in the long course of our
congresses, and that self-glorification, whether of State or individual,
has never had any place with us, while the great instruction of meeting
with earnest and thoughtful workers from every part of our country's
vast domain has been greatly appreciated by us and by those who, in
various places, have met with us.
We have presented at our meetings reports on a variety of important
topics. Our congress of three days usually concluding on Saturday, such
of our speakers as are accustomed to the pulpit have often been invited
to hold forth in one or more of the churches. In Knoxville, Tenn., for
example, I was cordially bidden to lift up my voice in an orthodox
Presbyterian church, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney spoke before the Unitarian
society, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell preached to yet another
congregation, and Mrs. Henrietta L. T. Wolcott improved the Sunday by a
very interesting talk on waifs, of which class of unfortunates she has
had much official and personal knowledge.
An extended account of our many meetings would be out of place in this
volume, but some points in connection with them may be of interest. It
often happened that we visited cities in which no associations of women,
other than the church and temperance societies, existed. After our
departure, women's clubs almost invariably came into being.
Our eastern congresses have been held in Portland, Providence,
Springfield, and Boston. In the Empire State, we have visited Buffalo,
Syracuse, and New York. Denver and Colorado Springs have been our limit
in the west. Northward, we have met in Toronto and at St. John. In the
south, as already said, our pilgrimages have reached Atlanta and New
Orleans.
We have sometimes been requested to supplement our annual congress by an
additional day's session at some place easily reached from the city in
which the main meeting had been appointed to be held. Of these
supplementary congresses I will mention a very pleasant one at St. Paul,
Minn., and a very useful one held by some of our number in Salt Lake
City.
At the congress held in Boston in the autumn of 1879, I was elected
president, my predecessor in the office, Mrs. Daggett, declining further
service.
As the years have gone on, Death has done his usual work upon our
number. I have already spoken of our second president, Maria Mitchell,
who continued, after her term of office, to send us valuable statements
regarding the scientific work of women. Mrs. Kate Newell Daggett, our
third president, had long been recognized as a leader of social and
intellectual progress in her adopted city of Chicago. The record in our
calendar is that of an earnest worker, well fitted to commend the
woman's cause by her attractive presence and cultivated mind.
Miss Abby W. May was a tower of strength to our association. She
excelled in judgment, and in the sense of measure and of fitness. Her
sober taste in dress did not always commend her to our assemblage,
composed largely of women, but the plainness of her garb was redeemed by
the beauty of her classic head and by the charm of her voice and manner.
She was grave in demeanor, but with an undertone of genuine humor which
showed her to be truly human. She was the worthy cousin of Rev. Samuel
Joseph May, and is remembered by me as the crown of a family of more
than common distinction.
The progress of the woman question naturally developed a fresh interest
in the industrial capacity of the sex. Experts in these matters know
that the work of woman enters into almost every department of service
and of manufacture. In order to make this more evident, it seemed
advisable to ask that a separate place might be assigned at some of the
great industrial fairs, for the special showing of the inventions and
handicraft of women. Such a space was conceded to us at one of the
important fairs held in Boston in 1882, and I was invited to become
president of this, the first recognized Woman's Department. In this work
I received valuable aid from Mrs. Henrietta L. T. Wolcott, who, in the
capacity of treasurer, was able to exercise a constant supervision over
the articles consigned to our care.
On the opening day of the fair General Butler, who was then governor of
Massachusetts, presided. In introducing me, he said, in a playfully
apologetic manner, "Mrs. Howe may say some things which we might not
wish to hear, but it is my office to present her to this audience." He
probably thought that I was about to speak of woman suffrage. My
address, however, did not touch upon that topic, but upon the present
new departure, its value and interest. General Butler, indeed, sometimes
claimed to be a friend of woman suffrage, but one of our number said of
him in homely phrase: "He only wants to have his dish right side up when
it rains."
The most noticeable points in our exhibit were, first, the number of
useful articles invented by women; secondly, a very creditable
exhibition of scientific work, largely contributed by the lady students
and graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; lastly, a
collection of books composed by women, among which were some volumes of
quite ancient date.
I suppose that my connection with this undertaking led to my receiving
and accepting an invitation to assume the presidency of a woman's
department in a great World's Fair to be held in New Orleans in the late
autumn and winter of 1883-84. Coupled with this invitation was the
promise of a sum of money amply sufficient to defray all the expenses
involved in the management of so extensive a work. My daughter Maud was
also engaged to take charge of an alcove especially devoted to the
literary work of women.
We arrived in New Orleans in November, and found our affairs at a
standstill. Our "chief of exposition," as she was called, Mrs. Cloudman,
had measured and marked off the spaces requisite for the exhibits of the
several States, but no timber was forthcoming with which to erect the
necessary stands, partitions, etc. On inquiry, I was told that the funds
obtained in support of the enterprise had proved insufficient, and that
some expected contributions had failed. There was naturally some censure
of the manner in which the resources actually at hand had been employed,
and some complaining of citizens of New Orleans who had been expected to
contribute thousands of dollars to the exposition, and who had
subscribed only a few hundreds.
I proceeded at once to organize a board of direction for the department,
composed of the lady commissioners in charge of exhibits from their
several States. One or two of these ladies objected to the separate
showing of woman's work, and were allowed to place their goods in the
general exhibit of their States. I had friendly relations with these
ladies, but they were not under my jurisdiction. Our embarrassing
deadlock lasted for some time, but at length a benevolent lumber dealer
endowed us with three thousand feet of pine boards. The management
furnished no workman for us, but the commanders of two United States
warships in the harbor lent us the services of their ship-carpenters,
and in process of time the long gallery set apart for our use was
partitioned off in pretty alcoves, draped with bright colors, and filled
with every variety of handiwork.
I was fond of showing, among other novelties, a heavy iron chain, forged
by a woman-blacksmith, and a set of fine jewelry, entirely made by
women. The exposition was a very valuable one, and did not fail to
attract a large concourse of people from all parts of the country. In
the great multitude of things to be seen, and in the crowded attendance,
visitors were easily confused, and often failed to find matters which
might most interest them.
In order to improve the opportunity offered, I bethought me of a series
of short talks on the different exhibits, to be given either by the
commissioners in charge of them, or by experts whose services could be
secured. These twelve o'clock talks, as they were called, became very
popular, and were continued during the greater part of the season.
In the same gallery with ourselves was the exhibit made by the colored
people of New Orleans. Of this I remember best a pathetic little art
gallery, in which was conspicuous a portrait of Governor Andrew. I
proposed one day to the directors of this exhibit that they should hold
a meeting in their compartment, and that I should speak to them of their
great friends at the North, whom I had known familiarly, and whose faces
they had never seen. They responded joyfully to my offer; and on a
certain day assembled in their alcove, which they had decorated with
flowers, surrounding a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. A choir of melodious
voices sang my Battle Hymn, and all listened while I spoke of Garrison,
Sumner, Andrew, Phillips, and Dr. Howe. A New Orleans lady who was
present, Mrs. Merritt, also made a brief address, bidding the colored
people remember that "they had good friends at the South also," which I
was glad to hear and believe.
The funds placed at our disposal falling far short of what had been
promised us at the outset, we found ourselves under the necessity of
raising money to defray our necessary expenses, among which was that of
a special police, to prevent pilfering. To this end, a series of
entertainments was devised, beginning with a lecture of my own, which
netted over six hundred dollars.
Several other lectures were given, and Colonel Mapleson allowed some of
his foremost artists to give a concert for the benefit of our
department, by which something over a thousand dollars was realized. We
should still have suffered much embarrassment had not Senator Hoar
managed to secure from Congress an appropriation of ten thousand
dollars, from which our debts were finally paid in full.
The collection over which my daughter presided, of books written by
women, scientific drawings, magazines, and so on, attracted many
visitors. Her colleague in this charge was Mrs. Eveline M. Ordway.
Through their efforts, the authors of these works permitted the
presentation of them to the Ladies' Art Association of New Orleans. This
gift was much appreciated.
My management of the woman's department brought upon me some vulgar
abuse from local papers, which was more than compensated for by the
great kindness which I received from leading individuals in the society
of the place. At the exposition I made acquaintance with many delightful
people, among whom I will mention Captain Pym, who claimed to be the
oldest Arctic voyager living, President Johnston of Tulane University,
and Mrs. Townsend, a poet of no mean merit, who had had the honor of
being chosen as the laureate of the opening exposition.
When my duties as president were at an end, I parted from my late
associates with sincere regret, and turned my face northward, with
grateful affection for the friends left behind me.