Base art thou yet, oh, Rum, as when the wise man warned us of thy
power and bade us flee thy enchantment. Vile art thou yet as when thou
first went forth on thy unholy mission――filling earth with desolation
and madness, woe and anguish. Deadly art thou yet as when thy
envenomed tooth first took fast hold on human hearts, and thy serpent
tongue first drank up the warm life-blood of immortal souls. Accursed
art thou yet as when the bones of thy first victim rotted in a damp
grave, and its shriek echoed along the gloomy caverns of hell. Yes,
thou infernal spirit of rum, through all past time hast thou been, as
through all coming time thou shalt be, accursed everywhere.
In the fiery fountains of the still; in the seething bubbles of the
caldron; in the kingly palace and the drunkard’s hovel; in the rich
man’s cellar and the poor man’s closet; in the pestilential vapors of
foul dens and in the blaze of gilded saloons; in the hand of beauty
and on the lip of manhood, rum is vile and deadly and accursed
everywhere.
Rum, we yield not to thy unhallowed influence, and together we have
met to plan thy destruction. And by what new name shall we call thee,
and to what shall we liken thee when we speak of thy attributes?
Others may call thee child of perdition, the base-born progeny of
sin and Satan, the murderer of mankind and the destroyer of immortal
souls; but I will give thee a new name among men and crown thee with
a new horror, and that new name shall be the sacramental cup of the
Rum-Power, and I will say to all the sons and daughters of earth――Dash
it down! And thou, Rum, shalt be my text in my pilgrimage among men,
and not alone shalt my tongue utter it, but the groans of orphans in
their agony and the cries of widows in their desolation shall proclaim
it the enemy of home, the traducer of childhood, and the destroyer of
manhood, and whose only antidote is the sacramental cup of temperance,
cold water!
* * * * *
THE POWER OF HABIT.
(DESCRIPTIVE, SPIRITED AND DRAMATIC.)
I REMEMBER once riding from Buffalo to the Niagara Falls. I said to a
gentleman, “What river is that, sir?”
“That,” said he, “is Niagara river.”
“Well, it is a beautiful stream,” said I; “bright, and fair and glassy.
How far off are the rapids?”
“Only a mile or two,” was the reply.
“Is it _possible_ that only a mile from us we shall find the water in
the turbulence which it must show near the Falls?”
“You will find it so, sir.” And so I found it; and the first sight of
Niagara I shall never forget.
Now, launch your bark on that Niagara river; it is bright, smooth,
beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow; the silver wake
you leave behind adds to your enjoyment. Down the stream you glide,
oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set out on your pleasure
excursion.
Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, “Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we have heard of the rapids; but we are not such fools as
to get there. If we go too fast, then we shall up with the helm, and
steer to the shore; we will set the mast in the socket, hoist the sail,
and speed to the land. Then on, boys, don’t be alarmed, there is no
danger.”
“Young men, ahoy there!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff; all things delight us. What care we
for the future! No man ever saw it. Sufficient for the day is the evil
thereof. We will enjoy life while we may, we will catch pleasure as it
flies. This is enjoyment; time enough to steer out of danger when we
are sailing swiftly with the current.”
“Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“Beware! beware! The rapids are below you!”
“Now you see the water foaming all around. See how fast you pass that
point! Up with the helm! Now turn! Pull hard! Quick! quick! quick!
pull for your lives! pull till the blood starts from your nostrils,
and the veins stand like whip-cords upon your brow! Set the mast in
the socket! hoist the sail! Ah! ah! it is too late! Shrieking, howling,
blaspheming, over they go.”
Thousands go over the rapids of intemperance every year, through _the
power of habit_, crying all the while, “_When I find out that it is
injuring me, I will give it up!_”
* * * * *
WHAT IS A MINORITY?
WHAT is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a
minority. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege
that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for you by the blood and
tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority
that have vindicated humanity in every struggle. It is a minority
that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all
that is noble in the history of the world. You will find that each
generation has been always busy in gathering up the scattered ashes
of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the golden
urn of a nation’s history. Look at Scotland, where they are erecting
monuments――to whom?――to the Covenanters. Ah, _they_ were in a minority.
Read their history, if you can, without the blood tingling to the tips
of your fingers. These were in the minority, that, through blood, and
tears, and bootings and scourgings――dying the waters with their blood,
and staining the heather with their gore――fought the glorious battle
of religious freedom. Minority! if a man stand up for the right,
though the right be on the scaffold, while the wrong sits in the seat
of government; if he stand for the right, though he eat, with the
right and truth, a wretched crust; if he walk with obloquy and scorn
in the by-lanes and streets, while the falsehood and wrong ruffle it
in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the right and truth
are there are always
“Troops of beautiful, tall angels”
gathered round him, and God Himself stands within the dim future, and
keeps watch over His own! If a man stands for the right and the truth,
though every man’s finger be pointed at him, though every woman’s lip
be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a majority; for God and good
angels are with him, and greater are they that are for him, than all
they that be against him.
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CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW.
AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS AFTER-DINNER ORATOR.
IT is impossible in a sketch like this to do justice to the remarkable
versatility of Mr. Depew. His admirable addresses would fill several
bulky volumes. As an after-dinner speaker, he is without a peer, and
his wit, logic and eloquence never fail him. What could be more apt
than his words, when, upon entering a public hall where a number of
leading men were straining themselves to prove the Christian religion
a delusion and a sham, and there were instant and clamorous calls for
him, he said: “Gentlemen, my mother’s Bible is good enough for me;
have you anything better to offer?” And then with touching pathos
and impassioned words he made an appeal for the religion which they
reviled, which must have pierced the shell of more than one agnostic
heart.
Chauncey Mitchell Depew was born at Peekskill, New York, April 23,
1834. His remote ancestors were French Huguenots, who founded New
Rochelle, in Westchester County. His father, Isaac Depew, was a
prominent and highly esteemed citizen of Peekskill, and his mother,
Martha Mitchell, was a representative of the distinguished New England
family, one of whose members, Roger Sherman, was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence.
Chauncey spent his boyhood in Peekskill, where he prepared for
college. He was a bright student, and at the age of eighteen entered
Yale College, from which he was graduated in 1856, with one of the
first honors of his class. In June, 1887, Yale conferred upon him the
degree of LL.D. It will be noted that Mr. Depew reached his majority
at about the time of the formation of the Republican Party. Although
of Democratic antecedents, he had been a close student of politics and
his sympathies were with the aims of the new political organization,
to which he speedily gave his allegiance.
Mr. Depew studied law in his native village, and was admitted to
the bar in 1858. In the same year, he was elected as a delegate to
the Republican State Convention, this being an acknowledgment of
the interest he had taken in the party, and the skill and energy he
had shown in advocating its policy. He began the practice of law in
1859, and was highly successful from the first. In his early manhood,
his striking power as a stump speaker, his readiness at repartee,
and his never-failing good humor, made him a giant in politics, to
which he was literally forced to give attention. But with all these
extraordinary gifts, he could launch the thunderbolts of invective
against wrong and stir the profoundest depths of emotion by his
appeals. He loved liberty and hated oppression, and has always
believed that the United States of America is the happiest and
greatest country upon which the sun ever shone. His patriotic speeches
are models of eloquence and power.
In 1860 he took the stump for Abraham Lincoln and added greatly to his
reputation as a ready, forceful, and brilliant pleader for that which
he believed to be right. It cannot be denied that he contributed much
to the success of that memorable election.
In 1861 Mr. Depew was nominated for the Assembly in the Third
Westchester County District, and, although the constituency was
largely Democratic, he was elected by a handsome majority. He fully
met all the high expectations formed, and was re-elected in 1862. By
his geniality, wit, integrity and courtesy he became as popular among
his political opponents as among his friends. He was made his party’s
candidate for Secretary of State, directly after the Democrats had
won a notable triumph by the election of Horatio Seymour as Governor;
but by his dash and brilliancy and his prodigious endurance (he
spoke twice a day for six weeks), he secured a majority of 30,000. So
admirably did he perform the duties of the office that he was offered
a renomination, but declined.
During the administration of President Johnson, Secretary of State
Seward appointed Mr. Depew Minister to Japan, but after consideration,
the offer was declined. He seemed to have decided to withdraw from
politics and to devote his time and energies to his profession. That
shrewd railway man and financier, Commodore Vanderbilt, had watched
the career of Depew, and had formed a strong admiration for him,
while the eldest son, William H. Vanderbilt, became his firm friend.
In 1866 Mr. Depew was appointed the attorney for the New York and
Harlem Railroad Company, and three years later, when that road was
consolidated with the New York Central, he was made the attorney of
the new organization, being afterward elected a member of the Board
of Directors.
As other and extensive roads were added to the system, Mr. Depew, in
1875, was promoted to be general counsel for them all, and elected
to a directorship in each of the numerous organizations. The year
previous the Legislature had made him Regent of the State University,
and one of the Commissioners to build the Capitol at Albany.
In 1884 the United States senatorship was tendered to Mr. Depew, but
he was committed to so many business and professional trusts that
he felt compelled to decline the honor. Two years before, William H.
Vanderbilt had retired from the presidency of the New York Central,
and in the reorganization Mr. Depew was made Second Vice-President.
The President, Mr. Rutter, died in 1885, and Mr. Depew was elected to
the presidency, which office he still holds.
At the National Republican Convention of 1888, New York voted solidly
for Mr. Depew as its candidate for the Presidency, but he withdrew
his name. At the convention at Minneapolis in 1892 he was selected
to present the name of President Harrison, and made one of the best
speeches of his life. When Mr. Blaine resigned as Secretary of State,
President Harrison urged Mr. Depew to accept the place, but after
a week’s deliberation he felt obliged to decline the honor. He has,
however, continued to take an active interest in politics.
During the last ten years Mr. Depew has been frequently abroad, and
some of his happiest speeches have been delivered on board steamers
and in foreign banqueting halls, where he never forgets to speak in
words of patriotic praise of America.
* * * * *
THE PILGRIMS.
THEY were practical statesmen, these Pilgrims. They wasted no time
theorizing upon methods, but went straight at the mark. They solved
the Indian problem with shotguns, and it was not General Sherman, but
Miles Standish, who originated the axiom that the only good Indians
are the dead ones. They were bound by neither customs nor traditions,
nor committals to this or that policy. The only question with them was,
Does it work? The success of their Indian experiment led them to try
similar methods with witches, Quakers, and Baptists. Their failure
taught them the difference between mind and matter. A dead savage was
another wolf under ground, but one of themselves persecuted or killed
for conscience sake sowed the seed of discontent and disbelief. The
effort to wall in a creed and wall out liberty was at once abandoned,
and to-day New England has more religions and not less religion, but
less bigotry, than any other community in the world.
In an age when dynamite was unknown, the Pilgrim invented in the cabin
of the “Mayflower” the most powerful of explosives. The declaration
of the equality of all men before the law has rocked thrones and
consolidated classes. It separated the colonies from Great Britain
and created the United States. It pulverized the chains of the
slaves and gave manhood suffrage. It devolved upon the individual the
functions of government and made the people the sole source of power.
It substituted the cap of liberty for the royal crown in France, and
by a bloodless revolution has added to the constellation of American
republics, the star of Brazil. But with the ever-varying conditions
incident to free government, the Puritan’s talent as a political
mathematician will never rust. Problems of the utmost importance
press upon him for solution. When, in the effort to regulate the
liquor traffic, he has advanced beyond the temper of the times and the
sentiment of the people in the attempt to enact or enforce prohibition,
and either been disastrously defeated or the flagrant evasions of the
statutes have brought the law into contempt, he does not despair, but
tries to find the error in his calculation.
If gubernatorial objections block the way of high license, he will
bombard the executive judgment and conscience by a proposition to
tax. The destruction of homes, the ruin of the young, the increase of
pauperism and crime, the added burdens upon the taxpayers by the evils
of intemperance, appeal with resistless force to his training and
traditions. As the power of the saloon increases the difficulties of
the task, he becomes more and more certain that some time or other and
in some way or other he will do that sum too.
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HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
THE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN ORATOR AND JOURNALIST.
IT is only a few times in a century that some unselfish soul, coupled
with a towering genius of mind, rises in grandeur and goodness so far
above his fellows as to command their almost worshipful admiration and
love. Such a man was Henry W. Grady. No written memorial can indicate
the strong hold he had upon the Southern people, nor portray that
peerless personality which gave him his marvelous power among all men
with whom he came into contact.
Grady was, perhaps, above all other prominent political leaders of his
times, devoid of sectional animosities, and did more, by voice and pen,
than any other man, during the decade of his prominence, to bridge the
bloody chasm between the North and South, which designing politicians
on both sides were endeavoring to keep open. Notwithstanding the
fact that his father was a Southern slaveholder, and lost his life
in fighting for the cause of secession, young Grady recognized the
providence of God in the failure of that cause, and rejoiced in the
liberation of the black man, though with his fallen shackles lay
the wrecked fortune of himself, his widowed mother and his beloved
Southland. The Union was the pride of Grady’s life. Daniel Webster
was not more loyal to its Constitution or bolder in defending its
principles. In writing or speaking on any subject to which he was
moved by an inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction of duty, he
was always eloquent, logical, aggressive and unanswerable. It was with
logic, earnest honesty of conviction and a tongue of tender pathos
and burning eloquence, together with a personal magnetism that always
accompanies a great orator, that he literally mastered his audiences,
regardless of their character, chaining them to the train of his
thought, and carrying them captive to his convictions. Such a man
could not be held within the narrow limits of any section. Wherever
he went the power of his individuality quickly made him known, and his
splendid genius needed only an opportunity to make him famous.
Like Patrick Henry, his great fame as an orator rested principally
upon three speeches. One was made before the New England Society, at
a banquet held in New York, in 1889, in which his theme was “The New
South” and its message to the North. Another was at the State Fair
at Dallas, Texas; but the most magnificent and eloquent effort of
his life was delivered in Boston, December 13, 1889, just ten days
before he died. The theme of this address was “The Race Problem,”
and it is accorded by all who heard it, or have read it, as the most
soul-stirring speech, and, withal, the fairest and most practical
discussion of this vexed subject which has yet been presented by any
man.
Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Atlanta, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and
died there December 23, 1889. His father was a merchant in that city
before the war, and Henry was the oldest of a family of three children.
His mother, whose maiden name was Gartrell, was a woman of strong
mind, quick intelligence, deep religious convictions, sweetness of
disposition, and force of character happily blended. Grady was a boy
of promise, and his youth was a fair index of his after-life. He was
always brilliant, industrious, patriotic, enterprising, conscientious,
and devoted to his parents to a marked degree. The tragic death of
his father, when the boy was fourteen, profoundly affected him, but
it, perhaps, hastened his own precocious growth by leaving him as the
mainstay of his mother in providing for the family.
At the age of seventeen Henry Grady was graduated at the University
of Georgia (1868); but he subsequently attended the University of
Virginia, where he took his degree before he was twenty years old,
and in less than a year was married to the sweetheart of his youth.
His majority found him occupying the position of editor and part owner
of the Rome (Georgia) “Commercial.” This failed, and cost the young
editor nearly all his savings. Soon after this he removed to Atlanta,
and connected himself with the Atlanta “Herald,” the columns of
which he made the brightest in the South; but misfortune overtook its
financial management and consumed all the remainder of Grady’s fortune.
Thus, at twenty-three years of age, he had failed twice and was almost
despairing when the old adage, “A friend in need is a friend indeed,”
was now verified to him. Cyrus W. Field loaned the penniless young man
twenty thousand dollars to buy a controlling interest in the Atlanta
“Constitution.” He made it the greatest paper in the South.
Besides the editorial work on his own paper, Mr. Grady contributed
much to others, among them the New York “Ledger,” to which he
contributed a series of articles on “The New South,” the last of which
was published only a few days before his death. When his brilliant
and beneficent career was cut short at the early age of thirty-eight,
the whole country had become interested in his work, and joined in
common mourning over his loss. A fund of over twenty thousand dollars,
contributed from all parts of the country, was quickly collected to
build a monument to his memory. It was erected in Atlanta, Georgia,
and unveiled with imposing ceremonies on October 21, 1891.
One who knew Henry W. Grady well thus writes of him: “He had a
matchless grace of soul that made him an unfailing winner of hearts.
His translucent mind pulsated with the light of truth and beautified
all thought. He grew flowers in the garden of his heart and sweetened
the world with the perfume of his spirit. His endowments are so
superior, and his purposes so unselfish that he seemed to combine all
the best elements of genius and live under the influence of an almost
divine inspiration. When building an aircastle over the framework
of his fancy, or when pouring out his soul in some romantic dream,
or when sounding the depths of human feeling by an appeal for sweet
charity’s sake, his command of language was as boundless as the realm
of thought, his ideas as beautiful as pictures in the sky, and his
pathos as deep as the well of tears.”
* * * * *
THE NEW SOUTH.¹
¹ Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.”
THERE was a South of secession and slavery――that South is dead. There
is a South of Union and freedom――that South is living, breathing,
growing every hour.
I accept the term, “The New South,” as in no sense disparaging to the
Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my
people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old,
but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please,
new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself. You
have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies of
the North, and the grand review at Washington. I ask you, gentlemen,
to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soldier, who, buttoning up
in his faded gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to
his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his face southward
from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved,
heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. Having fought to
exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades,
and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the
graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his
brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find?――let
me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find all the welcome you
had justly earned, full payment for your four years’ sacrifice――what
does he find, when he reaches the home he left four years before?
He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves freed,
his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away,
his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his
very traditions gone, without money, credit, employment, material, or
training――and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem
that ever met human intelligence――the establishing of a status for the
vast body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do――this hero in gray with a heart of gold――does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely, God, who had
scourged him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity! As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.
The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the furrow; the horses
that had charged upon General Sherman’s line marched before the plow,
and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with
the harvest in June. From the ashes left us in 1864, we have raised
a brave and beautiful city; and, somehow or other, we have caught
the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded
therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in
this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the
uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate South――misguided, perhaps,
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always.
On the records of her social, industrial, and political restoration we
await with confidence the verdict of the world.
* * * * *
REGARD FOR THE NEGRO RACE.
From speech on the Race Problem, at annual banquet of the
Boston Merchants’ Association, Dec., 1889.
THE resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South――the men
whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of
American history――whose courage and fortitude you tested in four years
of the fiercest war――realize, as you cannot, what this race problem
means――what they owe to this kindly and dependent race. Nor are they
wholly to blame for the presence of slavery. The slave-ships sailed
from your ports――the slaves once worked in your fields, and you sold
them to the South. Neither of us now defends the traffic, nor the
institution.
The love the whites of the South feel for the negro race you cannot
measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old
black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless, and through
the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as
thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling
into sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of
an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons
fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and
anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down
with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I
feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands――now worn and wrinkled,
but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger
yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man――as they lay a mother’s
blessing there while at her knees――the truest altar I yet have
found――I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her
slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber door,
puts a black man’s loyalty between her and danger.
I catch another vision. The crisis of battle――a soldier struck,
staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke,
winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling
death――bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on
the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay
down his life in his master’s stead. I see him by the weary bedside,
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble
heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy
and in honor to still the soldier’s agony and seal the soldier’s life.
I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering
for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him
when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed,
turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into
new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until
his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter
day. And from the grave comes a voice saying, “Follow him! Put your
arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend
as he was mine.” And out into this new world――strange to me as to him,
dazzling, bewildering both――I follow! And may God forget my
people――when they forget these.
* * * * *
APPEAL FOR TEMPERANCE.¹
(In no cause in which his sympathies were enlisted was Mr.
Grady more active and earnest than in that of temperance. The
following extract is from one of his speeches delivered during
the exciting local campaign in Georgia in 1887.)
¹ Copyright, C. H. Hudgins & Co.
MY friends, hesitate before you vote liquor back into Atlanta, now
that it is shut out. Don’t trust it. It is powerful, aggressive and
universal in its attacks. To-night it enters an humble home to strike
the roses from a woman’s cheek, and to-morrow it challenges this
Republic in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a crust from
the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow levies tribute from the
government itself. There is no cottage in this city humble enough
to escape it――no palace strong enough to shut it out. It defies the
law when it cannot coerce suffrage. It is flexible to cajole, but
merciless in victory. It is the mortal enemy of peace and order. The
despoiler of men, the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face
of children, the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls
unshrived to judgment, than all the pestilences that have wasted life
since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua
stood beyond Jericho. O my countrymen! loving God and humanity, do
not bring this grand old city again under the dominion of that power.
It can profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, revive
no interest, remedy no wrong. You know that it cannot. It comes to
turn, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine. It
comes to mislead human souls and crush human hearts under its rumbling
wheels. It comes to bring gray-haired mothers down in shame and sorrow
to their graves. It comes to turn the wife’s love into despair and her
pride into shame. It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little
children. It comes to stifle all the music of the home and fill it
with silence and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and mind, to
wreck your home, and it knows that it must measure its prosperity by
the swiftness and certainty with which it wreaks this work.
FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS
Illustration: FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD • SUSAN B. ANTHONY
FRANCES WILLARD • MARY A. LIVERMORE • JULIA WARD HOWE
ELIZABETH C. STANTON • ANNA DICKINSON
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JULIA WARD HOWE.
AUTHOR OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.”
ON Beacon Street, Boston, in an old-fashioned home, lives a woman
mingling the twilight of her eventful life with the evening of the
closing century, who has been a potent factor in its progress and
developments. In her unpretentious little home have sat and talked
the greatest men of America, and many of the European celebrities who
have visited this country. Even the casual visitor to the home of this
aged woman feels in the atmosphere of the place, with its mementoes of
great men and women, some indefinable flavor, like a lingering perfume
which tells him there has been high thinking and noble speech within
the walls which surround him.
This noted poet, author, and philanthropist was born in New York City
on May 27, 1819. Her father was Samuel Ward, and she numbers among
her ancestors the famous General Marion, of South Carolina; Governor
Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island; and Roger Williams, the apostle of
religious tolerance. F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, is the son of
her sister, who married Mr. Crawford, the artist. Mrs. Howe’s mother
died when she was only five years of age, and her father five years
later. But he had been a prosperous banker and provided to give her
every advantage of a liberal education, which provision was carried
out――her instructions including music, German, Greek, and French. She
began to write verses while very young.
In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Doctor Samuel G. Howe. They went
abroad on their wedding tour, spending a year in the Old World.
Again, in 1850, she went to Europe, passing the winter in Rome with
her two youngest children. The next year she returned to Boston,
and in 1852 and 1853 published her first volume of poems, entitled
“Passion Flowers,” which attracted much attention. At the same time
her “Words for the Hour, a Drama in Blank Verse,” was produced in a
leading theatre in New York and also in Boston. Her interest in the
anti-slavery question began in 1851. In 1857 she visited Havana,
and published her observations in a book, entitled “A Trip to Cuba,”
which so vigorously attacked the degrading institutions of the Spanish
rule that its sale has since been prohibited on that island. In 1861
appeared her famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the chorus
“John Brown’s Body, etc.,” which was published in her third volume,
entitled “Later Lyrics.” The song and chorus at once became known
throughout the country and was sung everywhere. In 1867 Mrs. Howe and
her husband visited Greece, and won the gratitude of that nation by
aiding them in the effort they were making for national independence.
Her book “From Oak to Olive” was written after her visit to Athens. In
1868 Mrs. Howe joined the Woman Suffrage Movement, and the next year,
before the Legislature in Boston, made her first speech urging its
principles; and from that time forward has been officially connected
with the movement.
Mrs. Howe visited England in 1872, where she lectured in favor of
arbitration as the means of settling national and international
disputes. At the same time she held, in London, a series of
Sunday-evening services, devoted to Christian missionary work.
During the same year she attended, as a delegate, the Congress for
Prison Reform, held in London. On her return to the United States she
organized or instituted the Woman’s Peace Festival, which still meets
every year on the twenty-second of June.
Since her husband’s death, in 1876, Mrs. Howe has preached, lectured
and traveled much in all parts of the United States, the most popular
of her lectures being “Is Polite Society, Polite?” “Greece Revisited,”
and “Reminiscences of Longfellow and Emerson.” In 1878 Mrs. Howe
made another journey abroad, and spent over two years in travel in
England, France, Italy, and Palestine. She was one of the presiding
officers of the Woman’s Rights Congress, which met at Paris, and
she lectured in that city and in Athens on the work of the various
women’s associations in America. She has served as President in
the Association of Advancement for Women for several years, and,
notwithstanding her advanced age, retains her connection with this
organization, and is an earnest promoter of their interest. She has
formed a number of social Women’s Clubs, having for their object,
mental improvement, in which the members study Latin, French, German,
literature, botany, political economy and many other branches. She has
been a profound student of philosophy, and has written numerous essays
on philosophical themes.
Mrs. Howe’s three living daughters, all of whom are married, have been
followers of her theories concerning woman’s freedom. One of them,
Mrs. Laura Richards, is a well-known writer of stories for children,
some of them being classics of their kind. “Captain January” is her
best-known book. Mrs. Maud Howe Elliot, the third daughter, is a
successful lecturer and also a novelist. Mrs. Florence Howe Hall,
another daughter of Mrs. Howe, is a writer of acknowledged ability on
social topics.
* * * * *
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.
MINE eye hath 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.
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.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished 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.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty 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.
* * * * *
OUR COUNTRY.
ON primal rocks she wrote her name,
Her towers were reared on holy graves,
The golden seed that bore her came
Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.
The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest
To clasp the wide-embracing shores;
Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land
To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While Sages, strong in heart and hand,
Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.
O Exile of the wrath of Kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee.
First in the glories of thy front
Let the crown-jewel Truth be found:
Thy right hand fling with generous wont
Love’s happy chain to furthest bound.
Let Justice with the faultless scales
Hold fast the worship of thy sons,
Thy commerce spread her shining sails
Where no dark tide of rapine runs.
So link thy ways to those of God,
So follow firm the heavenly laws,
That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.
O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!
Be thine the blessing of the years,
The gift of faith, the crown of song.
* * * * *
THE UNSPEAKABLE PANG.
(FROM “A TRIP TO CUBA, 1860.”)
WHO are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin,
with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their
eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite
bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their “No, thank you,”
is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they
be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of
dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves
the roast beef offers at the same time a slice of fat; this is too
much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous
and complete....
To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this steamboat-cabin,
with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are those
sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the _alti guai_ rehearsed by
the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual
torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,――“Nice
mutton-chop, sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries, of “No, no!”
resound, and the wretched turn again and groan. The philanthropist
has lost the movement of the age,――keeled up in an upper ♦berth,
convulsively embracing a blanket――what conservative more immovable
than he? The great man of the party refrains from his large theories,
which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin
somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no
more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons
yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if like
Farinata――
“averse l’inferno in gran dispetto,”
“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”
♦ ‘birth’ replaced with ‘berth’
Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every
night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole
world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to
chaos, and fearing to launch away.... But all things have an end, and
most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests
itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered
to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering
heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,――the
luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning
life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of
recognition,――the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering
angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors
for pickled oysters.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE.
FAMOUS SCHOLAR, TEACHER, ARMY NURSE, EDITRESS,
LECTURER, ABOLITIONIST AND WOMAN’S SUFFRAGIST.
IT seems almost incredible,” says a writer, “that a woman now so
famous made mud pies in her childhood, was often sent supperless
to bed, and was frequently bounced down into a kitchen chair with
an emphasis that caused her to see stars.” When a young girl,
struggling to support herself, she took in shop-work, made shirts, and
subsequently learned the trade of a dressmaker, at which she worked
for twenty-five cents a day. At eighteen she ran away from home like
a boy, and spent three eventful years on a Southern plantation――years
full of comedy and tragedy, and packed with thrilling experiences.
Here were nearly five hundred slaves, with whom, and with their white
masters, she was brought face to face daily. Here she witnessed scenes
as tragic as any described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her description of
the whipping of negro Matt, the cooper; his agonizing but unavailing
plea for mercy; her subsequent visit alone to his cabin, when she
entreated him to “run away, Matt, I’ll help you,” and his lonely death,
will bring tears to the eyes of every reader.
Mrs. Livermore was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and was born in
Boston, December 19, 1821. Notwithstanding the above reference to her
early experiences, Mrs. Livermore had and improved all the advantages
of the time for a thorough education. She graduated from the public
schools of Boston at the age of fourteen, receiving a medal for good
scholarship, and afterwards completed a four years’ course in the
seminary at Charleston, Mass., in two years, and was elected a member
of the faculty as a teacher of Latin and French. While performing
these duties she continued the study of Greek and metaphysics under
private tutors, and at the age of eighteen, as above suggested,
she left home and went South to take charge of a family school on a
plantation in Southern Virginia, remaining there nearly thee years.
Her experiences in the South made her a most radical abolitionist,
and on her return North she actively seconded every movement for the
freedom of the slaves. She opened a select school for young ladies
from fourteen to twenty years, at Duxbury, Mass., but relinquished
it in 1845 on her marriage to Dr. D. P. Livermore, a Universalist
minister, in Falls River, Mass. She made a most excellent minister’s
wife, organizing literary clubs among the membership, and wrote many
hymns and songs for church and Sunday-school books. She was also an
active temperance worker, organizing a cold-water army of 1500 boys
and girls, whom she delighted with temperance stories which she wrote
and read to them. These stories were published in 1844 under the title
of the “Children’s Army.” In 1857 she removed with her husband to
Chicago, where Mr. Livermore became the editor of the Universalist
organ for the Northwest, with his wife as assistant editor. During
her husband’s absence in his church work she had charge of the entire
establishment, paper, printing office and publishing house included,
and wrote for every department of the paper except the theological, at
the same time furnishing stories and sketches to Eastern publications,
and was also active and untiring in Sunday-school, church and
charitable work. At the convention in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln
was nominated, she was the only woman reporter who had a place among
the hundred or more of men. During the Civil War she made her name
famous by resigning all positions, save that on her husband’s paper,
even securing a governess for her children, and devoting herself
entirely to the work of relief and assistance to the soldiers through
the United States Sanitary Commission. She organized Soldiers’ Aid
Societies, delivered public addresses, wrote circulars, bulletins
and reports, and made trips to the front with sanitary stores, giving
personal attention to the distribution of the same, and bringing back
numbers of invalid soldiers, accompanying many of them in person to
their homes. She organized and conducted Sanitary Fairs, detailed
nurses for the hospitals and accompanied them to their posts, and at
the close of the war published her reminiscences, entitled “My Story
of the War,” which is regarded as the most complete record of the
hospital and sanitary work in the Northern army during this great
fratricidal struggle.
Returning home after the war Mrs. Livermore became an ardent supporter
of the Woman’s Suffrage movement as the best means not only of
improving the condition of women, but with the broad, philanthropic
idea of giving them a greater opportunity for doing good. Before the
war she had opposed the placing of the ballot in the hands of women,
but her experiences in the army taught her differently. She arranged
for the first Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Chicago, elicited the
aid of the leading clergymen of the city, and secured the attendance
of the most prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of
the country. The association was duly organized with Mrs. Livermore
as its first president. “The Agitator,” a Woman’s Suffragist paper,
was started by her in 1869 at her own expense and risk, in which she
espoused the temperance cause, as well as woman’s suffrage. In 1870
she became the editor of the “Woman’s Journal” of Boston, and the
family removed to Melrose, Massachusetts. Mrs. Livermore, however,
retained the editorship but two years, resigning it, in 1872, that
she might give her more undivided time to the lecture field.
During the last quarter century she has been heard in the lyceum
courses of this country, visiting almost every State in the Union,
and also lecturing at many points in Europe. The volume “What Shall
We Do with Our Daughters and Other Lectures,” published in 1883, and a
subsequent of the same character comprise her most important published
discourses. The charm of Mrs. Livermore’s manner and the eloquence
of her delivery have been equalled by few modern speakers. “At her
feet,” writes one of her eulogists, “millions of people have sat and
listened in admiration and wonder. The rich and poor, the high and
low, the learned and unlearned, have been alike thrilled and moved
by her burning words. She has swayed brilliant audiences of fashion;
has spoken in State prisons, jails and penitentiaries; to audiences
composed of outcasts; and to audiences numbering thousands of children.
With untold wealth of mental resources, and a brain teeming with
soul-stirring thoughts, these lectures overflow with grand principles;
while the extraordinary scenes, thrilling stories, and remarkable
facts given in them illustrate those principles with great clearness
and force. Throughout her public speeches, whatever the theme, the
listener never tires, but is rather uplifted by the ‘golden thoughts’
and ‘living truths’ that enrich them from beginning to end.”
During this period her pen was not idle. Her articles have appeared
in the “North American Review,” the “Arena,” the “Chautauquan,”
“Independent,” “Youth’s Companion,” “Christian Advocate,” “Woman’s
Journal” and other high-class periodicals. She is identified with the
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for ten years being president of
the Massachusetts branch of that organization. She is also president
of the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, of the Beneficent
Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, and was the first
president for two years of the Woman’s Congress. Mrs. Livermore,
notwithstanding her advanced age, keeps steadily at work with voice,
pen and influence. After she was seventy-five years of age, at the
earnest request of many prominent friends and admirers throughout the
United States, she wrote her autobiography, a large volume of over
700 pages, issued in 1897.
We cannot better close this article than by quoting, from Mrs.
Livermore herself, a retrospective paragraph with a prospective
closing which is beautiful to witness in one standing, as she now
does, in the twilight of a long and eventful career: “I cannot say
that I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once
more from beginning to end. I am afraid it would prove wearisome――‘a
twice-told tale.’ And so while rejoicing in the gains of the past and
in the bright outlook into the future, I prefer to go forward into
the larger life that beckons me further on, where I am sure it will
be better than here. And when the summons comes, although the world
has dealt kindly with me, I shall not be sorry to lift the latch and
step out into ‘that other chamber of the King, larger than this and
lovelier.’”
* * * * *
USEFUL WOMEN.¹
(FROM “WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS,” 1883.
LECTURES ON “_Superfluous Women_.”)
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard, Boston, Mass.
ROSA BONHEUR has achieved world-wide fame and pecuniary independence
as one of the most skilful painters of animals; the boldness and
independence of her own character inspiring her pencil, and her
faithfulness to nature giving great force to her work. The whole
civilized world does homage to her genius; and, during the siege of
Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crown Prince of Prussia gave
orders that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared
and respected.
Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly
accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of
institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating
the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt
the need of an institution which should be its counterpart in the
Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all
over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system
of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse
in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine.
For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great
work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea,
when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws,
the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the
fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England.
Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps
of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.
The disorder, the want――while storehouses were bursting with the
needed hospital supplies――the incompetence, the uncleanliness,
the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the
shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari
to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her
executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into
models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes
standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing
to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly
overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning
the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men
too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her
shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality
in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not
an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the
improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her
busy brain and pen.
Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant
helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary
from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent
observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters
of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in
recognition of her work.
Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her
experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she
lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force
of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances.
She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world
in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen
analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every
illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and
unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre”
marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.
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BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD.
FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
FOR heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of
mind, logic and eloquence,――and withal true womanliness of character,
the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in
any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she devoted
her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must have
impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which remain
are worthy to live. She has had one idea in life――to enfranchise
woman――and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition
in which she had to fight and conquer the United States, she has,
from every advanced step, held back the helping hand to her more
timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will live in future
history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex.
Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24,
1830, on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a
district school and in the academy of her native town. At fourteen
years of age she began to teach in summer, attending school in winter.
At eighteen she married a young farmer, Uriah H. McNall, who died in
1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow entered Genesee College
in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she graduated with the
degree of A. B. four years later. She was immediately elected to a
position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive
principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies,
conducting the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties
as professor of higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four
years later she became proprietor of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New
York, which she conducted until the close of the Civil War, at which
time she removed to Washington, D. C., and in March, 1868, married
Rev. Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the war.
Dr. Lockwood died in 1877. At this late date Mrs. Lockwood resumed her
studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she
graduated with the degree of A. M. She had previous to this studied
law in Washington, graduating from the National University Law School
with the degree of D. C. L. in May, 1873. In the same year she was
admitted to practice in the highest court of the District, and in
1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was refused;
first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she
was a married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme
Court of the United States. This was denied her because there was no
English precedent. It was in vain that she pleaded that Queens Eleanor
and Elizabeth had both been supreme chancellors of the realm, that
Countess Ann had sat with the judges on the bench at the Assizes of
Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its introduction into
both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting women
to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since
that time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being
privileged to appear before any Court in the United States. Nine other
women have since been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court under
the above Act.
Among the services which Mrs. Lockwood has rendered her sex may
be mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the
women employees of the government, of whom there are many thousands,
the same pay as men receive for similar work. She also secured the
passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for the aid of sailors and
mariners. She has frequently appeared before congressional committees
in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final
enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses
succeeds this article. Mrs. Lockwood is also an intense advocate of
temperance and labor reform.
When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her
application for appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again
in 1888, she was nominated for President of the United States by
the Equal Rights Party of San Francisco, California, and though
knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the ridicule
of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her
theory of woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made
a canvass that awakened the people of the United States to no small
consideration of the subject. The popularity given her by these
several movements has called her largely to the lecture platform and
into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was a
delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one
of the opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language
on “International Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she
was again a delegate to the same convention in London, and her paper
there on “Disarmament” was widely commented upon. Even at this late
date her thirst for knowledge again evinced itself, for she remained
in London to take a course of University Extension lectures at Oxford.
In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Rome, where
her influence was equally as conspicuous as before.
Of late years Mrs. Lockwood, in addition to her law practice,
has acted as assistant editor of the “Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia
magazine, all the time pursuing her studies and contributing no
small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen and lectures, to the
furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, however,
that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due
to her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final
enfranchisement of woman.
* * * * *
ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASHINGTON,
IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.
GENTLEMEN of the Committee: We come before you to-day, not with any
studied eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new theories for the
metamorphosis of our government, or the overthrow of our social
economy and relations, but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth,
for the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our side――for the
mothers who bore us, and the sisters who go hand in hand with us;
for the orphan and the widow unprotected; for the wretched inebriate
and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who throng our streets
and the inmates of our jails and asylums――for these we ask you that
we too may have a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so
nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our eternal salvation.
We ask you that we may have an interest that shall awaken from its
apathy fully one-half of the moral and intellectual resources of the
country, fully one-half of its productive interest――an interest which
contains in the germ the physical power and vital force of the whole
nation. Weakness cannot beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom,
disease cannot produce health. Look at our women of to-day, with
their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intellects, laxness of moral force,
without enough of healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare
them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and the Martha Washington
school. Here you find a woman who dared to control her own affairs;
who superintended a farm of six hundred acres; giving personal
instructions to the workmen, writing her own bills and receipts, and
setting an example of industry and frugality to the neighboring women
who called to see her.
I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to
prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated
creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the
present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the
adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression
but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the
audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God
Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen
Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige――the proud
pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth.
Isabella I. of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose
generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never
nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the
crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her
own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake
it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise
the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins
of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself
equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity
to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the
zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late
disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance
of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a
shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence
Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the
Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart,
has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible
for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine,
of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the
wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia;
or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the
church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and
fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of
Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control
the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the
decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known
fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the
latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important
State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they
have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France,
since the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., through the period of
the ascendency of Napoleon I. down to the reign of Napoleon III., has
employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work
entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our
own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be
especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia
for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on
diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by
households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.
Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers
of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They
are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of
colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are
admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming
and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more
recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already
ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected
as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin,
Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine,
Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York and
St. Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the
schools of the land.
This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women
school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the
East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school
elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.
Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments.
They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to
the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the
land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the
President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in
the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to
confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded
officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”
And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever
may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women,
committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have
mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your
decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared
to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,”
but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an
opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal――an opportunity that
comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in
the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain?
I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city
pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it
is accomplished.
“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But ♦Error, wounded, writhes in pain
And dies amid her worshippers.”
♦ ‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’
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SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
FOUNDER OF THE FIRST WOMEN’S TEMPERANCE ORGANIZATION.
AMONG the famous names of our time, history will, no doubt,
record that of Susan B. Anthony with the greatest of reformers and
progressive thinkers. Once held in derision, she now enjoys the reward
of being esteemed and loved by her fellow men, while she is looked up
to, by those of her own sex who believe in woman suffrage as one of
the pioneers whose herculean efforts will eventually place the ballot
in the hands of the women of the United States.
Miss Anthony was born in South Adams, Mass., February 15, 1820. She
was brought up in New York under the most religious influence of a
Baptist mother and a Quaker father. From her childhood her character
has been strongly marked by individuality and native strength.
Mr. Anthony was a manufacturer and a wealthy man. He fitted his
daughters and sons for teachers, and at the age of fifteen Susan began
to teach in a Quaker family, her salary being one dollar per week and
board. In 1837, a financial crash caused the failure of her father,
who was, after this, aided in his efforts to retrieve his fortune
by his children. Susan was particularly successful and progressive
in her work, and identified herself actively with the New York
Teachers’ Association, rendering herself conspicuous by pleading in
the conventions for higher wages and equal rights for women in all
the honors and responsibilities of the association. The women teachers
throughout America owe her a debt of gratitude for their improved
position and compensation to-day.
The subject of temperance also claimed Miss Anthony’s attention from
the time of her childhood. In 1852, she organized the New York State
Women’s Temperance Association, which was the first open temperance
organization of women, and the foundation for the modern society known
as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
was president, and Miss Anthony for several years secretary, of this
first organization. It was in this work that Miss Anthony discovered
the impotency of women to advance the cause of temperance without the
ballot, and she at once became an ardent woman suffragist. She was
also a pronounced and active abolitionist; and, during the war, with
her friend and co-worker, Mrs. Stanton, and others, she presented
a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery, bearing nearly
400,000 signatures from all parts of the country. These petitions
were so powerful in arousing the people, and also Congress, that
Charles Sumner urged Miss Anthony to continue in the work. “Send on
the petitions,” he wrote, “they furnish the only background for my
demands.”
The most dramatic event of Miss Anthony’s life was her arrest and
trial for voting at the presidential election of 1872. When asked by
the judge, “You voted as a woman, did you not?” she replied, “No, sir,
I voted as a citizen of the United States.” Before the date set for
the trial Miss Anthony thoroughly canvassed her county and instructed
the people in citizen’s rights, intending in this way to have the
jurors, whoever they might be, well instructed in advance. To her
chagrin change of venue was ordered to another county, setting the
date three weeks ahead. Miss Anthony was equal to the emergency; in
twenty-four hours dates were set and appointments made for a series
of meetings in that county, and the country was thoroughly aroused in
Miss Anthony’s behalf. The jury would no doubt have acquitted her, but
the judge took the case out of their hands saying it was a question of
law and not of fact, and pronounced Miss Anthony guilty and fined her
$100.00 and costs. “I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim,”
she said. “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” She intended
to take the case to the Supreme Court, and further to help her cause
did not desire to give bond, preferring to be imprisoned, but her
counsel gave bond and thus frustrated her purpose of carrying it to
the Supreme Court. The inspectors who received the ballot from her and
her friends were fined and imprisoned, but were pardoned by President
Grant. Miss Anthony steadfastly adhered to her vow and never paid the
fine.
Miss Anthony has always been in great demand on the platform and has
lectured in almost every city and hamlet in the North. She has made
constitutional arguments before congressional committees and spoken
impromptu in all sorts of places. Wherever a good word in introducing
a speaker, or a short speech to awaken a convention, or a closing
appeal to set people to work was needed she always knew how to
say the right thing, and never wearied her audience. There was no
hurry, no superfluity in her discourse, and it was equally devoid of
sentiment or poetry. She was remarkably self-forgetful and devoted to
the noblest principles. A fine sense of humor, however, pervaded her
logical arguments. She had the happy faculty of disarming and winning
her opponents. She possessed a most wonderful memory, carrying in her
mind the legislative history of each state, the formation and progress
of political parties, and the public history of prominent men in our
national life, and in fact whatever has been done the world over to
ameliorate the condition of women. She is said to be a most congenial
and instructive companion, and her unfailing sympathy makes her as
good a listener as talker.
It must be consolingly comforting and pleasant for this ardent worker,
who has stemmed a violent tide of opposition throughout a long life,
to have the tide of popular esteem turn so favorably toward her last
years. Once it was the fashion of the press to ridicule and jeer, but
at last the best reporters were sent to interview her and to put her
sentiments before the world with the most respectful and laudatory
personal comment. Society, too, threw open its doors, and into
many distinguished gatherings she carried a refreshing breath of
sincerity and earnestness. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated by
the National Woman Suffrage Association with an outburst of gratitude
which is perhaps unparalleled in the history of any living woman. In
1892 she was elected president of this association, at which time,
though seventy-two years of age, she was still of undiminished vigor
and activity. Standing at the head of this organization, of which she
was forty years before among the founders, Susan B. Anthony is one of
the most heroic figures in American history.
* * * * *
WOMAN’S RIGHT TO SUFFRAGE.
After its delivery, this address was printed and distributed
in Monroe and Ontario counties prior to her trial, in June,
1873, the charge against her being that she had violated the
law by voting in the presidential election in November, 1872.
This address is necessarily argumentative; but it contains
occasional passages which exhibit the power of her oratory.
_Copied from an account of the trial published in Rochester,
New York, 1874._
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I stand before you to-night, under
indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last
Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It
shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting,
I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my
_citizen’s right_, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens
by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.
* * * * *
The preamble of the federal constitution says:
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure _domestic_ tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this constitution for the United States of America.”
It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we,
the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And
we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them;
not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to
the whole people――women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery
to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while
they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided
by this democratic-republican government――the ballot.
The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported
to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first
article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting
equality of suffrage. Article IV. said:
“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse
between the people of the different States of the Union, the free
inhabitants of each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives
from justice excepted,) shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of the free citizens of the several States.”
Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of
the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to
all――in order to produce the desired result――a harmonious union and
a homogeneous people.
* * * * *
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days’ discussion in the
United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan’s motion to strike male
from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:
“Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I
stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle,
do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of
race or sex.”
* * * * *
Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the thirteenth
amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the
United States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights――the right
to vote and to be voted for.
* * * * *
Article 1 of the New York State Constitution says:
“No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the
rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law
of the land or the judgment of his peers.”
And so carefully guarded is the citizen’s right to vote that the
Constitution makes special mention of all who may be excluded. It says:
“Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons
who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny or any infamous
crime.”
* * * * *
“The law of the land” is the United States Constitution, and there
is no provision in that document that can be fairly construed into
a permission to the States to deprive any class of their citizens of
their right to vote. Hence, New York can get no power from that source
to disfranchise one entire half of her members. Nor has “the judgment
of their peers” been pronounced against women exercising their right
to vote; no disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or juror,
and none but disfranchised persons can be women’s peers; nor has
the Legislature passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or
lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny or any
infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground for
the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York.
No barriers whatever stand to-day between women and the exercise of
their right to vote save those of precedent and prejudice.
* * * * *
For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the
disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill
of attainder, or an _ex post facto_ law, and is therefore a violation
of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are
forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this
government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed.
To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It
is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful
aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy
of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning,
where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of
race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this
oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons the
oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of
every household; which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects;
carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the
nation.
* * * * *
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person,
in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment, by which slavery
was forever abolished, and black men transformed from _property_ to
_persons_, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in
harmony with these definitions. To be a _person_ was to be a _citizen_,
and to be a _citizen_ was to be a _voter_.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And
I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say
they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no State
has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall
abridge their ♦privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination
against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is
to-day null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.
♦ ‘priviliges’ replaced with ‘privileges’
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ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
FOUNDER OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.
AMONG the few women who have shown themselves the polemic equals of
the most trained and brilliant men of their times, the subject of this
sketch stands prominently with the first. Mrs. Stanton was always a
vigorous woman of commanding size with the mental force of a giant.
In public debates and private arguments, she has shown herself to be
an orator, forceful, logical, witty, sarcastic and eloquent. Like all
great orators, she is imbued with one great idea which presses to the
front in all she says or does and has been the moving force of her
life. She believes that social and national safety lies alone in the
purity of individuals and in the full and free bestowal upon every
individual, regardless of sex, of all the rights and privileges of
citizenship. In other words, whatever other excellencies or merits she
may possess, she is primarily a Woman Suffragist.
Elizabeth Cady was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and was born
in Johnstown, N. Y., November 12, 1815. She was a child of marked
intelligence and was thoroughly educated by her parents and graduated
in Troy, N. Y., in 1832. She was learned in Latin and Greek, was
a great lover of sports and, it is said that in early life she
frequently complained that she had been born a girl instead of a boy.
She used to discuss law in her father’s office and always insisted
that no law was just which denied to women an equal right with men.
She was anxious to complete her education in Union College where her
brother had been educated, and her indignation was unbounded when
she was refused entrance because girls were not admitted to that
institution. Thus it will be seen how she became a Woman’s Rights
believer, and with her strong and cultured mind it was only natural
that she should become one of its chief advocates. At the age of
twenty-five, in 1840, she married Henry B. Stanton, an Anti-slavery
orator, journalist and author. Thus she became an Abolitionist and
entered, with her usual force and zeal, into that movement. She was
a delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, which met the next
year in London. With Lucretia Mott, she signed the first call for a
Woman’s Rights Convention, which met in Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the
19th of July, 1848. Mrs. Stanton received and cared for the visitors,
wrote the resolutions, declarations and aims of the organization,
and had the satisfaction of being ridiculed throughout the United
States. Even her father, Judge Cady, imagined that she had gone crazy
and journeyed all the way to Seneca Falls in order to endeavor to
reason her out of her position; but she remained unshaken. Since that
convention, Mrs. Stanton has been one of the leaders of the movement
in the United States.
In 1854, Mrs. Stanton addressed the New York Legislature, endeavoring
to bring about such a change in the constitution as would enfranchise
women, an extract from which, we insert in this volume. She delivered
another address to the same body in 1860 and again in 1867. In Kansas
and in Michigan in ’67 and ’74, when those states were submitting the
question of “Woman’s Suffrage” to the people, she did heroic work by
canvassing and speaking throughout both of these Commonwealths. Until
the year of 1890, she was President of the National Woman’s Suffrage
Association. In 1868, she ventured to run as candidate for Congress
and, in her speech to the electors of the district, she announced her
creed to be “Free speech, free press, free men and free trade.”
The “New York Herald” ventured to support her in this effort; but of
course she was defeated, as she expected, her object being only to
emphasize and advertise the principle of “Woman Suffrage.”
The literary works of Mrs. Stanton consist of her contributions to
“The Revolution,” a magazine published in New York City, of which she
became editor in 1868, Susan B. Anthony being the publisher. She was
also joint-author of the “History of Woman’s Suffrage” of which three
volumes have appeared. She has, also, lectured much and contributed to
the secular press.
Mrs. Stanton, with all her public works, has been a thoroughly
domestic woman. She has a family of seven children, five sons and two
daughters, all of whom were living up to a recent date and some of
them have inherited the talents of their mother and bid fair to become
famous. Mrs. Stanton possesses conversational powers of the highest
order. In the light of recent developments, the retrospect of her long
career must afford her unusual pleasure. She was met with bitterness,
ridicule and misrepresentation at the beginning of her crusade.
She has lived down all of this and has seen her cherished ambition
fruited here and there, while many of the leading men of the age in
all sections of the country have been brought to look upon “Woman
Suffrage” as something to be desired; while in the minds of the
public generally, the seed of thoughts sown by her are so fast rooting
themselves and springing up, that she looks with confidence forward to
the early realization of her hopes――the enfranchisement of woman.
* * * * *
A PLEA FOR EQUAL RIGHTS.
Delivered at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the assembling of the
first Woman-Suffragist Convention, July 19, 1848. Mrs. Stanton
begins by saying:
I SHOULD feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at this time,
having never before spoken in public, were I not nerved by a sense of
right and duty.
[After delivering a masterly and eloquent argument of nearly
two hours length announcing the principles and setting forth
the arguments which have since signalized the movement, Mrs.
Stanton closed in the following eloquent strain:]
Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary societies,
Sunday Schools, and prayer meetings and innumerable charitable and
reform organizations are all in operation, but still the tide of vice
is swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything, and the
battlements of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of
sin and death. Verily the world waits the coming of some new element,
some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and love. The voice of
woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home,
but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race
unaided. There are deep and tender cords of sympathy and love in
the hearts of the down-fallen and oppressed that woman can touch
more skilfully than man. The world has never yet seen a truly great
and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of woman the very
fountains of life are poisoned at their source. It is vain to look
for silver and gold from the mines of copper and lead. It is the wise
mother that has the wise son. So long as your women are slaves you may
throw your colleges and churches to the winds. You can’t have scholars
and saints so long as your mothers are ground to powder between the
upper and nether millstone of tyranny and lust. How seldom, now, is
a father’s pride gratified, his fond hopes realized, in the budding
genius of his son. The wife is degraded, made the mere creature of
caprice, and the foolish son is heaviness to his heart. Truly are the
sins of the father visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generation. God, in his wisdom, has so linked the whole human family
together, that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt
throughout its length, and here, too, is the law of restoration,
as in woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the race
be recreated. “Voices” were the visitors and advisers of Joan of
Arc. Do not “voices” come to us daily from the haunts of poverty,
sorrow, degradation and despair, already too long unheeded. Now is
the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free
institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can
best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy――contempt and ridicule.
The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work
nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some men and
women for the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our work
to-day is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by
the prophet――Joel ii. 28, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy.” We do not expect our path will be strewn
with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry
and prejudice will be our way, and on our banners will beat the dark
storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves
behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have
fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we
will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft.
Undauntedly we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm
cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more
clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it, “Equality of
Rights.”
“Then fear not thou to wind thy horn,
Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn.
Ask for the Castle’s King and Queen,
Though rabble rout may rush between,
Beat thee senseless to the ground,
And in the dark beset thee round,
Persist to ask and it will come,
Seek not for rest in humbler home,
So shalt thou see what few have seen;
The palace home of King and Queen.”
* * * * *
MRS. STANTON’S ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK.
UNDER THE SANCTION OF THE STATE WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
FEBRUARY 14, 1854.
_To the Legislature of the State of New York_:
THE tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense.
His majesty no longer awes the multitude――his sceptre is broken――his
crown is trampled in the dust――the sentence of death is pronounced
upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned
and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and
caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to
demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for
liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief.
Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century,
we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of ’76, demand at
your hands the redress of our grievances――a revision of your state
constitution――a new code of laws.... We demand the full recognition
of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons;
native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet we are
denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support
ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your
poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery
of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have
every qualification required by the constitution, necessary to
the legal voter; but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous and
intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man
himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and
negroes;... in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either;
for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess
himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and
the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a
fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established
missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy and
statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the
professor’s chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants
of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are
denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came
not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood!... Now,
gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised
one-half of the people of this state?... Would that the men who can
sanction a constitution so opposed to the genius of this government,
who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung,
Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of
this republic need not blush to own their sons!... Again we demand in
criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our
own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date
that its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by
a jury of one’s own peers is a great, progressive step of advanced
civilization.... Would it not, in woman’s hour of trial at the
bar, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise
and virtuous of her own sex; by those who had known the depth of a
mother’s love and the misery of a lover’s falsehood; to know that
to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her
sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a
change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts,
an impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who are
shut up in the prisons of this state, not one has enjoyed that most
sacred of all her rights――that right which you would die to defend for
yourselves――trial by a jury of one’s peers.
(After referring to the law relating to woman’s inability to
make contracts; to own property and to control the property
of her children after her husband’s death (except by special
provision in his will); the inability of the wife to protect
the family property against the drunken husband; her inability
to prevent her children from being bound out for a term of
years against her express wishes,――Mrs. Stanton closes her
address in the following words:)
For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add all
the laboring women, who are loudly demanding remuneration for their
unending toil――those women who teach in our seminaries, academies and
common schools for a miserable pittance, the widows, who are taxed
without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work-houses, poor-houses
and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small
class of fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days,
seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and
the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then; they
too will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand, in
their turn, justice and equity at your hands.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
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FRANCES E. WILLARD.
THE ORGANIZER AND HEAD OF THE W. C. T. U.
WITH the latter years of this century a new power has made itself felt
in the world――the power of organized womanhood. Fifty years ago such
a body as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was not only unknown,
but impossible; and fifty years ago the woman who has done more than
any other to bring it into being was a bright, healthy child of five
years, living at Oberlin, Ohio, whither her father and mother had
moved from Monroe County, New York, where she was born in September,
1839. In 1846 there was another move westward, this time to Forest
Home, near Janesville, Wisconsin. Here Miss Willard spent twelve years,
in which she grew from a child to a woman. She had wise parents, who
gave free rein to the romping, freedom-loving girl, and let her grow
up “near to nature’s heart.” She could ride a horse or fight a prairie
fire “just as well as a man.”
After twelve years of life on Wisconsin prairies, the Willard family
moved to Evanston, on the shore of Lake Michigan, just north of
Chicago. Here Miss Willard began her work as a teacher, which she
pursued in different institutions until 1870, when she was chosen
president of Evanston College for Ladies. This place she filled until
1874, when she finally gave up teaching to enter upon a new and still
larger work.
In 1873 occurred in Ohio the memorable “Women’s Crusade” against the
rum shops. Bands of devoted women besieged the saloons for days and
weeks together, entreating the saloon-keepers to cease selling liquor,
praying and singing hymns incessantly in bar-rooms or on the sidewalks,
until the men who kept them agreed to close them up, and in many cases
emptied barrels of liquor into the gutters. This movement at once
arrested Miss Willard’s attention. She saw in it the germ of a mighty
power for good. She resigned her position as president of the college
at Evanston, and threw all her energies into the anti-liquor movement.
With her customary thoroughness she entered upon a systematic study
of the subject of intemperance and the sale of liquor, and of the
different measures which had been undertaken to abate this mighty evil.
She sought the counsel of Neal Dow and other leaders in the temperance
cause. She joined in the crusade against liquor-selling in Pittsburgh,
kneeling in prayer on the sawdust-covered floors of the saloons, and
leading the host in singing “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and “Rock of
Ages,” in strains which awed and melted the hearts of the multitude
thronging the streets. The result of her work was a determination to
combine in one mighty organization the many separate bands of women
temperance workers which had sprung up over the country; and this was
achieved in the autumn of 1874, in the organization at Cleveland of
that wonderful body, the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
The resolution which was adopted at that meeting, written by Miss
Willard herself, beautifully expresses the spirit in which they
entered upon the work. It read as follows:――
“_Resolved_, That, recognizing that our cause is and will be
contested by mighty, determined, and relentless forces, we will,
trusting in Him who is the Prince of Peace, meet argument with
argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kindness,
and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer.”
From that time Miss Willard’s life is the history of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union. Like the “handful of corn in the tops of
the mountains,” all over this and in other lands it has taken root
and grown until the fruit does indeed “shake like Lebanon.” In almost
every corner of the United States is a subordinate organization of
some sort, a local union, a children’s band, a young woman’s circle,
or perhaps all of these. It has built the great “Temperance Temple,”
one of the largest of the immense business buildings in Chicago. It
has organized a large publishing business, from whose busy presses
temperance literature is constantly being circulated in all parts of
the country. It has by its political power made and unmade governors,
senators, and representatives; and it has done much to hasten the time
when women shall take an equal share in the government of church and
state. In all this work the head and guiding spirit has been Frances
E. Willard.
Overwork has of late somewhat impaired her health, and made travel
and rest abroad necessary. But in whatever corner of the world she may
dwell, there is always a warm corner kept for her in the many thousand
hearts and homes that have been cheered and brightened by her work
“for God and home and native land.”
Miss Willard’s friend and co-worker, Hannah Whitall Smith, says of
her: “Miss Willard has been to me the embodiment of all that is lovely
and good and womanly and strong and noble and tender in human nature.
She has done more to enlarge our sympathies, widen our outlook, and
develop our gifts, than any man or any other woman of our time.”
* * * * *
HOME PROTECTION.
(FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PHILADELPHIA, 1876.)
LONGER ago than I shall tell, my father returned one night to the
far-off Wisconsin home where I was reared, and sitting by my mother’s
chair, with a child’s attentive ear I listened to their words. He
told us of the news that day had brought about Neal Dow, and the great
fight for Prohibition down in Maine, and then he said: “I wonder if
poor, rum-cursed Wisconsin will ever get a law like that?” And mother
rocked awhile in silence, in the dear old chair I love, and then she
gently said: “Yes, Josiah, there’ll be such a law all over the land
some day, when women vote.”
My father had never heard her say as much before. He was a great
conservative; so he looked tremendously astonished, and replied, in
his keen, sarcastic voice: “And pray, how will you arrange it so that
women shall vote?” Mother’s chair went to and fro a little faster for
a minute, and then, looking not into his face, but into the flickering
flames of the grate, she slowly answered: “Well, I say to you, as
the Apostle Paul said to his jailor: ‘You have put us into prison,
we being Romans, and you must come and take us out.’”
That was a seed-thought in a girl’s brain and heart. Years passed on,
in which nothing more was said upon this dangerous theme. My brother
grew to manhood, and soon after he was twenty-one years old he went
with father to vote. Standing by the window, a girl of sixteen years,
a girl of simple, homely fancies, not at all strong-minded, and
altogether ignorant of the world, I looked out as they drove away, my
father and brother, and as I looked I felt a strange ache in my heart,
and tears sprang to my eyes. Turning to my sister Mary, who stood
beside me, I saw that the dear little innocent seemed wonderfully
sober, too. I said, “Don’t you wish that we could go with them when
we are old enough? Don’t we love our country just as well as they do?”
and her little frightened voice piped out: “Yes, of course we ought.
Don’t I know that; but you mustn’t tell a soul――not mother, even; we
should be called strong-minded.”
In all the years since then, I have kept those things, and many others
like them, and pondered them in my heart; but two years of struggle in
this temperance reform have shown me, as they have ten thousand other
women, so clearly and so impressively, my duty, that I have passed the
Rubicon of Silence, and am ready for any battle that shall be involved
in this honest declaration of the faith that is within me. “Fight
behind masked batteries a little longer,” whisper good friends and
true. So I have been fighting hitherto; but it is a style of warfare
altogether foreign to my temperament and mode of life. Reared on the
prairies, I seemed pre-determined to join the ♦cavalry force in this
great spiritual war, and I must tilt a free lance henceforth on the
splendid battlefield of this reform; where the earth shall soon be
shaken by the onset of contending hosts, where legions of valiant
soldiers are deploying; where to the grand encounter marches to-day
a great army, gentle of mien and mild of utterance, but with hearts
for any fate; where there are trumpets and bugles calling strong souls
onward to a victory which Heaven might envy, and
“Where, behind the dim Unknown,
Standeth GOD within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.”
♦ “calvary” replaced with “cavalry”
I thought that women ought to have the ballot as I paid the
hard-earned taxes upon my mother’s cottage home――but I never said as
much――somehow the motive did not command my heart. For my own sake,
I had not courage, but I have for thy sake, dear native land, for
thy necessity is as much greater than mine as thy transcendant hope
is greater than the personal interest of thy humble child. For love
of you, heart-broken wives, whose tremulous lips have blessed me;
for love of you, sweet mothers, who in the cradle’s shadow kneel this
night, beside your infant sons; and you, sorrowful little children,
who listen at this hour, with faces strangely old, for him whose
footsteps frighten you; for love of you, have I thus spoken.
Ah, it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune.
Out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved, with
fearful odds against them, with snares that men have legalized and
set for them on every hand. Beyond the arms that held them long,
their boys have gone forever. Oh! by the danger they have dared; by
the hours of patient watching over beds where helpless children lay;
by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted from their gentle lips
to Heaven, I charge you give them power to protect, along life’s
treacherous highway, those whom they have so loved. Let it no longer
be that they must sit back among the shadows, hopelessly mourning over
their strong staff broken, and their beautiful rod; but when the sons
they love shall go forth to life’s battle, still let their mothers
walk beside them, sweet and serious, and clad in the garments of power.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
AUTHOR OF “AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS
CALLED AFRICANS.”
NEXT to Harriet Beecher Stowe, no woman, perhaps, has contributed
more to the liberation of the black man than has the subject of
this sketch. It was Lydia Maria Child who wrote the famous reply
to Governor Wise, of Virginia, after the hanging of John Brown,
and it was to her that the wife of the Senator from Massachusetts,
the author of the “Fugitive Slave Law,” wrote, threatening her with
future damnation for her activity against the operation of that law.
Mrs. Child’s reply to Governor Wise, of Virginia, and Mrs. Mason
was published with their letters in pamphlet form, and three hundred
thousand copies were quickly distributed throughout the North. On the
altars of how many thousand hearts they kindled the fires of universal
liberty of person can never be known; but it is certain that after the
appearance of this pamphlet, and Mrs. Stowe’s immortal book, the fate
of slavery in the United States was sealed, and the rising star of the
black man’s liberty and the setting sun of the accursed institution
simultaneously rose and fell.
But Lydia M. Child was more than an abolitionist. She was one of the
most prolific and varied writers of the second and third quarters
of the nineteenth century, as subsequent reference to her books and
letters will show.
Lydia M. Francis was born in Medford, Massachusetts, February 11,
1802, and was the daughter of David Francis. Her early education was
received at the hands of an odd, old woman and her brother, Converse
Francis, afterwards Professor of Theology in Harvard College. After
leaving private instruction, she studied in public schools, and
subsequently spent a year in the seminary. From 1814 to 1820 she
lived with her married sister in Maine. At the age of eighteen she
returned to Watertown, Massachusetts, to live with her brother.
He discovered her literary ability and encouraged her to study and
write. In 1823 “Hobomok,” her first story, was published. This proved
to be successful, and she issued another book, under the title of
“Rebels,” which was also well received. She then brought out, in rapid
succession, “The Mother’s Book,” “The Girl’s Book,” “The History of
Women,” and “The Frugal Housewife.” The first passed through twelve
English and one German editions, while the last reached thirty-five
editions. In 1826 she began to write for children, and published
her “Juvenile Miscellanies.” In 1828 she became the wife of David
Lee Child, a lawyer, and removed to Boston, Massachusetts, where
they settled. In 1831 both wife and husband became interested in the
then new “Anti-Slavery Movement.” Mr. Child became the leader of the
Anti-Slavery Party; and, in 1833, Mrs. Child published her famous
book, entitled “An Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans Called
Africans.” When this work appeared, Dr. Channing, it is said, was so
delighted with it that he at once walked from Boston to Roxbury to see
the author, though a stranger to him, and thank her for it. This was
nearly twenty years before “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared, and, so far
as the writer is aware, was the first book ever published――in America
at least――opposing the institution of slavery.
There were at this time in the North very few people who were openly
opposed to slavery, and the appearance of the book cut Mrs. Child
loose from the friends of her youth. Both social and literary circles,
which had formerly welcomed her, now shut their doors against her
entrance. She was at this time editing a magazine, which had a large
subscription, and her books were selling well. Suddenly, the sale of
her books fell off, subscriptions were withdrawn from her paper, and
her life became one of ostracized isolation and a battle for existence.
The effect of this, was, however, to stimulate rather than intimidate
her zeal in the cause which she espoused. Through it all she bore her
trouble with the patience and courage worthy of a heroine, and in the
midst of her disappointment and labors found time to produce the “Life
of Madame Roland” and “Baroness de Staël,” and also her Greek romance
“Philothea.” At the same time, with her husband, she editorially
supervised the “Anti-Slavery Standard,” in which was published those
admirable “Letters from New York,” and, during the same troublous
times, prepared her three-volumed work on “The Progress of Religious
Ideas,” which evinces a depth of study and inquiry into the history of
various religions from the most ancient Hindoo records to recent times
that perhaps no woman in more modern times has approached. In 1840
Mr. and Mrs. Child removed to New York City, where they resided until
1844, when they removed to Wayland, Massachusetts, where she continued
to reside for the next thirty-six years of her life, dying there
October 20, 1880, in the seventy-eighth year of her age. She lived
to see a reversal of the opinions that greeted her first plea for
the personal liberty of all mankind, and became once more the honored
centre of a wide circle of influential friends.
The books of Mrs. Child are numerous. We mention beside those referred
to above “Flowers for Children,” three volumes (1844–1846); “Fact and
Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (1851); “A True Life of Isaac
P. Hopper” (1853); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset”
(1864); “The Freedman’s Book” (1865); “Maria” (1867); and “Aspirations
of the World” (1878), which was the last work of the long and busy
life of the grand, old woman――issued just three years before her
death. In 1882, two years after her demise, a volume of her letters
was published with an introduction by the Anti-Slavery poet, Whittier,
and an appendix by the Anti-Slavery orator, Wendell Phillips.
* * * * *
A LITTLE WAIF.
(FROM “LETTERS FROM NEW YORK.”)
THE other day I went forth for exercise merely, without other hope
of enjoyment than a farewell to the setting sun, on the now deserted
Battery, and a fresh kiss from the breezes of the sea, ere they passed
through the polluted city, bearing healing on their wings. I had not
gone far, when I met a little ragged urchin, about four years old,
with a heap of newspapers, “more big than he could carry,” under
his little arm, and another clenched in his small red fist. The
sweet voice of childhood was prematurely cracked into shrillness by
screaming street cries, at the top of his lungs, and he looked blue,
cold and disconsolate. May the angels guard him! How I wanted to warm
him in my heart.
I stood looking after him as he went shivering along. Imagination
followed him to the miserable cellar where he probably slept on dirty
straw. I saw him flogged after his day of cheerless toil, because he
had failed to bring home pence enough for his parents’ grog; I saw
wicked ones come muttering, and beckoning between his young soul and
heaven; they tempted him to steal to avoid the dreaded beating. I
saw him years after, bewildered and frightened, in the police-office
surrounded by hard faces. Their law-jargon conveyed no meaning to
his ear, awakened no slumbering moral sense, taught him no clear
distinction between right and wrong; but from their cold, harsh tones,
and heartless merriment, he drew the inference that they were enemies;
and as such he hated them. At that moment, one tone like a mother’s
voice might have wholly changed his earthly destiny; one kind word of
friendly counsel might have saved him――as if an angel, standing in the
genial sunlight, had thrown to him one end of a garland, and gently
diminishing the distance between them, had drawn him safely out of
the deep and tangled labyrinth, where false echoes and winding paths
conspired to make him lose his way. But watchmen and constables were
around him, and they have small fellowship with angels. The strong
impulses that might have become overwhelming love for his race are
perverted to the bitterest hatred. He tries the universal resort of
weakness against force; if they are too strong for _him_, he will
be too cunning for _them_. _Their_ cunning is roused to detect _his_
cunning; and thus the gallows-game is played, with interludes of
damnable merriment from police reports, whereat the heedless multitude
laugh; while angels weep over the slow murder of a human soul. God
grant the little shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny than I have
foreseen for him.
* * * * *
TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
I THANK thee, friend, for words of cheer,
That made the path of duty clear,
When thou and I were young and strong
To wrestle with a mighty wrong.
And now, when lengthening shadows come,
And this world’s work is nearly done,
I thank thee for thy genial ray
That prophesies a brighter day
When we can work, with strength renewed,
In clearer light, for surer good.
God bless thee, friend, and give thee peace,
Till thy fervent spirit finds release;
And may we meet, in worlds afar,
My Morning and my Evening Star!
* * * * *
POLITENESS.
IN politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation
of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin
inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to
form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to
chance influences. The _golden rule_ contains the very life and soul
of politeness. Children may be taught to make a graceful courtesy or
a gentlemanly bow; but unless they have likewise been taught to abhor
what is selfish, and always prefer another’s comfort and pleasure
to their own, their politeness will be entirely artificial, and used
only when it is their interest to use it. On the other hand, a truly
benevolent, kind-hearted person will always be distinguished for
what is called native politeness, though entirely ignorant of the
conventional forms of society.
* * * * *
FLOWERS.
HOW the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed
round the cradle, the marriage-altar, and the tomb. The Persian in the
far East delights in their perfume, and writes his love in nosegays;
while the Indian child of the far West clasps his hands with glee,
as he gathers the abundant blossoms,――the illuminated scripture of
the prairies. The Cupid of the ancient Hindoos tipped his arrows
with flowers; and orange-buds are the bridal crown with us, a nation
of yesterday. Flowers garlanded the Grecian altar, and they hang in
votive wreaths before the Christian shrine.
All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck the brow of the
youthful bride; for they are in themselves a lovely type of marriage.
They should twine round the tomb; for their perpetually renewed beauty
is a symbol of the resurrection. They should festoon the altar; for
their fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship before
the Most High.
* * * * *
UNSELFISHNESS.
(From: “Letters from New York.”)
I FOUND the Battery unoccupied, save by children, whom the weather
made as merry as birds. Every thing seemed moving to the vernal tune
of
“Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green.”――_Scott’s Rokeby._
To one who was chasing her hoop, I said, smiling, “You are a nice
little girl.” She stopped, looked up in my face, so rosy and happy,
and, laying her hand on her brother’s shoulder, exclaimed, earnestly,
“And _he_ is a nice little boy, too!” It was a simple, childlike
act, but it brought a warm gush into my heart. Blessings on all
unselfishness! on all that leads us in love to prefer one another!
Here lies the secret of universal harmony; this is the diapason which
would bring us all into tune. Only by losing ourselves can we find
ourselves. How clearly does the divine voice within us proclaim this,
by the hymn of joy it sings, whenever we witness an unselfish deed
or hear an unselfish thought. Blessings on that loving little one!
She made the city seem a garden to me. I kissed my hand to her, as
I turned off in quest of the Brooklyn ferry. The sparkling waters
swarmed with boats, some of which had taken a big ship by the hand,
and were leading her out to sea, as the prattle of childhood often
guides wisdom into the deepest and broadest thought.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.
IN 1861, a young girl of nineteen years, sprang like a Minerva fully
armed into the moral and political arena, and for a time stirred the
hearts of those who fell under her influence, as few other speakers
have done. From the day she first appeared before the public, she
feared not to utter the boldest truths and most scathing rebukes of
sin in high places. Whether the principle for which she strove is
right or wrong the world of course will judge for itself, but that
this woman was honest, logical, sincere, and eloquent in advocacy, no
one who ever listened to her earnest appeals or read what she wrote
could for one moment doubt.
Anna E. Dickinson was born October 28, 1842, in the city of
Philadelphia. When she was two years old her father died, leaving
the family in straightened circumstances. Her parents belonged to
the Society of Friends, and Anna was sent in her early years to the
Friends’ Free School. At the same time she had little ways of her own
in earning money, which she carefully husbanded and spent for books.
When fourteen years old she made her appearance before the public by
writing an article on slavery, which was published in “The Liberator,”
and in 1857 made her debut as a public speaker by replying to a man
who had delivered a tirade against women. From that time she spoke
frequently on the subjects of slavery and temperance. In 1859 and 1860
she taught a country school, and in 1861 became an employee in the
Philadelphia Mint, from which position she was soon dismissed, because
in a speech in West Chester she declared the battle of Ball’s Bluff
had been lost through the treason of General McClellan. Thus cast
upon the world she entered immediately the lecture platform. William
Lloyd Garrison heard one of her addresses and named her “The Girl
Orator.” He invited her to speak in Boston, Massachusetts, where she
delivered a famous address on the “National Crisis” in Music Hall.
From there she entered upon a lecture tour, speaking in New Hampshire,
Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and until the close of the
war devoted her time to lecturing. In Washington, D. C., in 1864, the
proceeds of one of her lectures, amounting to a thousand dollars, she
devoted to the Freedmen’s Relief Society. She was frequently called
to the hospitals and the camps, where she addressed the soldiers.
After the war she took up the cudgel in favor of woman’s suffrage.
She visited Utah to inquire into the condition of women there, and
returning delivered her famous lecture on the “Whited Sepulchres.”
Other prominent lectures were entitled “Demagogues and Workingmen,”
“Joan of Arc,” “Between Us Be Truth,” “Platform and Stage.”
Miss Dickinson made the mistake of her life when she deserted the
platform for the stage in 1877. She wrote a play entitled “A Crown
of Thorns,” in which she attempted to “star.” She next assayed
Shakespearian tragic roles, including “Hamlet” and others, and
afterwards gave dramatic readings. In all of these attempts she was
out of her element, therefore, unsuccessful, and returned to the
lecture platform, but continued to write plays. The only one of
these, however, which was even moderately popular with the masses was
entitled “The American Girl,” played by Fanny Davenport. The noted
actor, John McCullough, was preparing to produce her “Aurelian,” when
the failure of his powers came and it was never put upon the stage.
Miss Dickinson also wrote a number of books. Among them we mention the
novel “What Answer;” “A Paying Investment,” and “A Ragged Register of
People, Places and Opinions,” the latter being a sort of diary, and
perhaps the most valuable of the lot.
The last ten years added other mistakes and misfortunes which have
tended to detract from the well-earned fame of her earlier life. These
difficulties began with a suit brought against the Republican managers
in 1888 for services rendered in the Harrison presidential campaign.
Following this came family difficulties. Her health failed and she was
placed by her relatives for a time in an insane asylum, from which she
was eventually released, but was involved in further law-suits. Let
it be said to her credit, however, that while she acquired an ample
fortune from her lectures, she has given away the bulk of it to all
kinds of charities, and it is from the money that she has made and
her liberal disposition to dispose of it for the benefit of humanity,
rather than to her relatives, which has involved her in much of the
family trouble.
As an orator Miss Dickinson was a woman of singular powers. Together
with a most excellent judgment, and a keen, analytic mind, enabling
her to dissect theories and motives, she was a mistress of sarcasm,
pathos and wit, and possessed that rare eloquence and dramatic fervor
which go to make the great orator, and which can be understood only by
those who have heard her on the platform. In her work she was always
unique, and while as a whole her books and plays were not popular
successes they contain passages of undisputed marks of genius.
* * * * *
WHY COLORED MEN SHOULD ENLIST IN THE ARMY.
Extract from speech delivered at a mass meeting held in
Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the promotion of enlistment of
colored men in the Union Army. The efficiency of colored troops
having been demonstrated by recent battles in the Southwest,
several hundred gentlemen of Philadelphia addressed a memorial
to the Secretary of War, asking authority to raise three
regiments for three years of the war, from among the colored
population of Pennsylvania. Permission to this effect was
promptly given. Accordingly a mass meeting was called to arouse
the colored people to prompt action. Judge Kelly and Frederick
Douglass spoke at the same meeting, but Miss Dickinson’s
appeal was the oratorical feature of the occasion. We quote
the extract below as a specimen of her eloquence.
TRUE, through the past we have advocated the use of the black man. For
what end? To save ourselves. We wanted them as shields, as barriers,
as walls of defence. We would not even say to them, fight _beside_ us.
We would put them in the _front_; their brains contracted, their souls
dwarfed, their manhood stunted; mass them together; let them die! That
will cover and protect us. Now we hear the voice of the people, solemn
and sorrowful, saying, “We have wronged you enough; you have suffered
enough; we ask no more at your hands; we stand aside, and let you
fight for your own manhood, your future, your race.” (Applause.)
Anglo-Africans, we need you; yet it is not because of this need that I
ask you to go into the ranks of the regiments forming to fight in this
war. My cheeks would crimson with shame, while my lips put the request
that could be answered, “Your soldiers? why don’t you give us the same
bounty, and the same pay as the rest?” I have no reply to _that_.
(Sensation.)
But for yourselves; because, after ages of watching and agony, your
day is breaking; because your hour is come; because you hold the
hammer which, upheld or falling, decides your destiny for woe or
weal; because you have reached the point from which you must sink,
generation after generation, century after century, into deeper depths,
into more absolute degradation; or mount to the heights of glory and
fame.
The cause needs you. This is not our war, not a war for territory; not
a war for martial power, for mere victory; it is a war of the races,
of the ages; the stars and stripes is the people’s flag of the world;
the world must be gathered under its folds, the black man beside the
white. (Cheers and applause.)
Thirteen dollars a month and bounty are good; liberty is better.
Ten dollars a month and no bounty are bad; slavery is worse. The two
alternatives are put before you; you make your own future. The to
be will, in a little while, do you justice. Soldiers will be proud
to welcome as comrades, as brothers, the black men of Port Hudson
and Milliken’s Bend. Congress, next winter, will look out through
the fog and mist of Washington, and will see how, when Pennsylvania
was invaded and Philadelphia threatened, while white men haggled over
bounty and double pay to defend their own city, their own homes, with
the tread of armed rebels almost heard in their streets; black men,
without bounty, without pay, without rights or the promise of any,
rushed to the ♦beleaguered capital, and were first in their offers
of life or of death. (Cheers and applause.) Congress will say, “These
men are soldiers; we will pay them as such; these men are marvels
of loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage; we will give them a chance of
promotion.” History will write, “Behold the unselfish heroes; the
_eager_ martyrs of this war.” (Applause.) You hesitate because you
have not all. Your brothers and sisters of the South cry out, “Come
to help us, we have nothing.” Father! you hesitate to send your boy
to death; the slave father turns his face of dumb entreaty to you,
to save his boy from the death in life; the bondage that crushes soul
and body together. Shall your son go to his aid? Mother! you look with
pride at the young manly face and figure, growing and strengthening
beside you! he is yours; your own. God gave him to you. From the
lacerated hearts, the wrung souls of other mothers, comes the wail,
“My child, my child; give me back my child!” The slave-master heeds
not; the government is tardy; mother! the prayer comes to _you_; will
you falter?
♦ “beleagured” replaced with “beleaguered”
Young man, rejoicing in the hope, the courage, the will, the thews and
muscles of young manhood――the red glare of this war falls on the faces
and figures of other young men, distorted with suffering, writhing in
agony, wrenching their manacles and chains――shouting with despairing
voices to you for help――shall it be withheld? (Cries of No! No!)
The slave will be freed――with or without you. The conscience and heart
of the people have decreed that. (Applause.) Xerxes scourging the
Hellespont, Canute commanding the waves to roll back, are but types
of that folly which stands up and says to this majestic wave of public
opinion, “Thus far.” The black man will be a citizen, only by stamping
his right to it in his blood. Now or never! You have not homes!――gain
them. You have not liberty!――gain it. You have not a flag!――gain it.
You have not a country!――be written down in history as the race who
made one for themselves, and saved one for another. (Immense cheering.)
MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES AND CHOICE GEMS
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES,
FROM VARIOUS AMERICAN AND ANONYMOUS AUTHORS,
CHOSEN WITH A VIEW TO THEIR GENERAL POPULARITY OR ADAPTATION
FOR READING AND RECITATION
* * * * *
HOME, SWEET HOME.
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, the author of the following beautiful and
perhaps most widely known song in the world, was born in New
York, on the ninth of June, 1792. His remarkable career as an
actor and dramatist belongs to the history of the stage. As a
poet he will be known only by a single song. He died at Tunis,
in 1852, where he was for some time Consul for the United
States.
MID pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home! home, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly that come at my call:
Give me these, and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home! sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home.
* * * * *
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.